Monthly Archives: April 2021

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

Suggs To Be U(CLA)*

*The judges will also accept “Bank Heist” or “The Sweet Smell of Suggs-cess”

If you were tuned in to CBS Saturday night, did you just witness the greatest March Madness game there ever was? Maybe, maybe not. Here’s what you did see:

*the longest buzzer-beater in Final Four history (you were sooooo close, Gordon Hayward)

*a heavyweight bout between the greatest upstart program of the 21st century and the greatest program, period

*overtime

*a second half in which no team ever led by more than five points (and Gonzaga did so with less than 1:20 remaining, our friend Andrew Hammond tweeted “This one’s over” and we wanted to reply, “Haven’t you learned by now?”)

A few more notes:

–as incredible as Suggs’ 40-ish foot game winner was, his earlier play (block, recover, half-court bounce pass) was more special. Except that he should have been whistled for a foul on UCLA’s Cody Riley whom, it should also be mentioned, played an outstanding second half. They kept ceding him the open 15-footer, and he kept knocking it down.

–Drew Timme is an unstoppable force anywhere near the hoop. Combine his deft footwork, his long limbs, and his ability to spin right or left and put it up with either hand with ease and you’ve got an unstoppable force.

—The Bruins, even down 5 with less than 80 seconds left in regulation, had a great chance to end it there. Good on Mick Cronin for not calling timeout, but Johnny Juzang either needs to jump-stop and pass to a wide open Tyger Campbell on the left wing or jump-stop and shoot. Players are coached to take it to the rack and draw contact, but I still don’t know why. I mean, I do, but it’s a dumb hoops play, as that charge demonstrated.

—You’re going to hate hearing this, but the athlete the precocious Jalen Suggs most reminds me of? Derek Jeter.

He’s Not Here

Sometimes an Op-Ed, no matter where it appears, is just too powerful not to be shared. Loved this secular Easter homily from Jennifer Finney Boylan in The New York Times. Curiously, when I read this on Sunday morning the column was titled “He’s Not Here.” I’m wondering if the NYT felt a little pushback from its readers and opted with a more bland headline.

Which reminds me: last week I got into a little trouble with a couple of friends when I texted something about “Jesus Christ and the Seven Dwarfs.” It was an attempt at both humor and a little truth. In both stories, we have a virginal, pure and wholly virtuous character surrounded by a small group of men who do not have families and who live in adoration of said character. Then the character is killed by a jealous rival but, miraculously, is resurrected.

One is a fairy tale. The other is the basis for Christianity…

Halle-Kaluuya

Here’s British actor Daniel Kaluuya, best known for Get Out, absolutely killing it as a comic in his SNL monologue. Oh, he’ll be back.

Brazilian Flash Mob

The voice on that señorita! Oy, mama!

Secretary Pete

I love watching Fox News try, with their tiny brains, to paint Pete Buttigieg into a corner only for him to remind them, with civility and courtesy, that he’s six chess moves ahead of them. It never gets old.

Moo-vin’ In

https://twitter.com/buitengebieden_/status/1378850422752960512?s=20

The message on this tweet…

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Once Upon A Time In Comerica

Opening Day.

Ninety minutes later in Detroit, it would be sunny. But in the bottom of the first, when Miguel Cabrera lofted this home run to right field, it was a winter wonderland. Miggy slid into second base, not sure if his ball had left the park.

https://twitter.com/JoeyMulinaro/status/1377258961884299273?s=20

Cabrera’s snow-mer came off reigning AL Cy Young winner Shane Bieber, who struck out 12 but took the loss.

Gaetz Of Hell

Matt Gaetz Play List: “Sexy And Seventeen,” (Stray Cats) “Girls, Girls, Girls,” (Motley Crue), “Young Girl,” (Gary Puckett) “Edge Of Seventeen” (Stevie Nicks), “Go Away, Little Girl” (Bobby Vinton), and of course, “I Love Little Girls” (Oingo Boingo) or “Private Life” (also by Oingo Boingo, the band name of which sounds well, kinda dirty).

We predicted Gaetz will resign by Easter Sunday and there’s nothing quite like a holiday weekend Friday afternoon for a news dump. It is curious, though, how so many God-fearing Christians in the GOP will head to worship services secure in the knowledge that God/Jesus espouses Republican values while casually ignoring the manifold misdeeds of men such as Gaetz and, of course, his hero, Donald Trump. Some of us are old enough to remember when Gaetz, 38, a Florida congressman, flew all the way to Wyoming simply to appear at a rally condemning Republican senator Liz Cheney for condemning the January 6 insurrection. Weird.

Fox News and Fox Business News has not mentioned “Matt Gaetz” since that disastrous Tucker Carlson interview. He’s already been disappeared.

The Interactive Exhibits Are Lit. Literally.

Enter The Ring, Exit The Ring Finger

How intense are MMA fights? At the Cage Fighting Fury Championship in Philadelphia, fighter Khetag Pliev lost his ring finger. Not a ring on his finger. His finger.

The referee stopped the bout so that those closest to the action could search for the missing digit. The finger was eventually found, dislodged from Pliev’s hand, inside his glove after several minutes of searching. The finger was later reattached at a hospital.

Pliev lost the fight. The real calamity here.

That Tree Has More Than One Trunk

We don’t know who the photo editor for the Bing home page is, but he or she does a fantastic job. Each day they post a photo that perfectly illustrates what a big, wide, wonderful planet we live on. It’s totally my favorite planet (of the ones I’ve visited). Anyway, this was their pic yesterday.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

The Edge Of Seventeen

Advice for both Matt Gaetz and the NFL that any inveterate Blackjack player would tell them: do not hit on 17. Why can’t To Catch A Predator stick to sports? Why does it have to get politics involved?

Are we done here? I think so.

Gaetz will resign within a week.

Trifecta

It’s Opening Day, April Fool’s Day AND Holy Thursday. I really don’t know how you mash all three of those together seamlessly, but maybe invite 12 of your closest friends to dinner and have everyone sit on one side of the table while watching the Mets-Senators game and do NOT believe anyone who says Rocky Mountain oysters are seafood.

In The Rough

Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives have reportedly determined what caused Tiger Woods’ car crash last month but will not reveal it, citing privacy issues. In short, they won’t reveal it unless Tiger does. Which sounds rather passive aggressive, no?

This leaves it up to all of our imaginations as to what might have caused the morning crash in which no other vehicles were apparently involved. The suggestions range from the sublime (he swerved to avoid a Caddy) to the ridiculous (sexting Kobe’s widow… too soon?).

We’ll have to wait and see.

Feeling Minnesota

Slide over there, hockey. Maybe Minnesota is really a basketball state?

For our money, the two most valuable players in the respective NCAA tournaments are true freshmen from the Land of 10,000 Lakes. That would be Paige Bueckers of UConn and Jalen Suggs of Gonzaga

Suggs is last year’s Minnesota Basketball AND Football prep player of the year just a year. Teammate Corey Kispert was his conference’s player of the year. Fellow teammate Drew Timme is the tournament’s leading scorer (and non-verbal smack talker). But Suggs just has “IT.”

Once his outside shooting range catches up to his maturity and control of the flow, watch out. He’s our No. 1 draft pick because you can build a franchise around hist talent, his leadership and his marketability.

Bueckers, meanwhile, has been UConn’s top targeted recruit since she was a freshman in high school. She was just named AP Player of the Year as a frosh, is Geno’s first freshman to ever average 20 ppg (20.1) and is scoring at a 22.5 ppg clip during the tourney. If female players turned pro after one season, she’d be gone.

Even Suggs has said of his fellow native Minnesotan: She’s the GOAT.

Woop! There Goes Gravity

*The judges understand if you’d prefer to go old school and use Steve Miller’s “Space Cowboy” title as opposed to this Eminem lyric.

We were excited when we saw this on the Twitters this morning, but then did a little research and discovered that McCandless actually did this back in 1984. So what do we know? Still, quite a photo there.

Song Crafting

This is fabulous, as Paul Simon reveals that his 1970 classic came together from quite disparate bits ranging from a Bach chorale to a gospel group. It’s also wonderful interviewing by Dick Cavett, as he does something not enough of his successors (looking directly at you, Conan and Fallon) have learned to do: sit back and listen; don’t interrupt.

Quite a gem. There’s another interview between these two men in which Simon informs Cavett that Garfunkel did not like the song when he first heard it.