Monthly Archives: May 2021

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

Laundered Money*

*The judges will also accept “Ticket-Take Charade”

What we do know: A lottery ticket that came in and is worth $26 million was sold at a service station in Norwalk, Calif., last November 14. No one redeemed it by the six-month deadline.

What is believed to have happened: a woman who purchased the life-changing ducat claims she left it in her pants when putting them through the washing machine. While there is video footage of the woman purchasing a ticket, there’s no real way to prove that she is purchasing the winning ticket. The prize, taken as a lump sum, would be worth $19.7 million. That money will now be sent to California public schools.

Camo Lot

This weekend I was buying items at a supermarket and before my card was approved, I was asked if I wanted to make a donation… to military families. WTF?

This as various teams (including the Phillies and Blue Jays, above) were wearing camo outfits this weekend. That was in honor of Armed Forces Day, which is not to be confused with Memorial Day or Veterans’ Day.

A couple of items:

  1. So, the USA already spends $15 of every $100 in the federal budget on the military, but somehow that is not to enough to keep soldiers and their families from being charity cases? As I’ve harped on before, let me know when a supermarket machine has the same option for teachers.
  2. You’ll notice that nearly 50% of the federal budget goes to two major socialist programs benefitting seniors. These are the same seniors watching Fox News and decrying socialism and voting MAGA. How self-unaware can you be?

Winter Olympics Of Our Discontent

You remember Beijing? It’s that massive city in China that hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Well, about seven or eight months from now Beijing is scheduled to host the 2022 Winter Olympics (as far as we can tell, a first in Olympics history, the Summer-Winter combo). Anyway, the problem is that Beijing happens to be in China, and China happens to have the worst human-rights record anywhere (though Israel sure is making a late push, isn’t it?). And now folks are calling for a boycott.

You’ve got the genocide being committed against the Uyghurs. And the Tibetan situation. And then there’s Hong Kong. We don’t even get to Apple employees until page 2. Part of the problem is that you and I probably aren’t related to or know a single Uyghur, or Tibetan, or even Hong Konger (is that what they’re called). And people tend not to take action unless it’s personal.

Yes, objectively, China’s actions are reprehensible. But America boycotted Russia in 1980, and look what happened (the U.S.S.R. ceased to exist as is less than a decade later, but that’s not important right now). It’s the Roger Goodall-Ray Rice deal all over again. You can know what is taking place, but unless there’s video proof of it to move the masses, nothing happens. Derek Chauvin is free today if not for that cellphone video. Man, isn’t today’s blog a bummer? This is what happens when you forget to restock the coffee bucket.

The Games will likely go on. Americans will wag a finger. Mike Tirico will likely steer clear of the subject with the possible exception of a tangential remark. That’s showbiz.

Najee Whiz

What if Marshawn Lynch maintained his degree of obtuseness but happened to be personable and a little more loquacious with the media? Welcome, Pittsburgh Steeler rookie Najee Harris (the only running back drafted in the first round). I think myself and yinzers are gonna love this kid.

A League Of Her Own

We don’t know her name, but she’s a Helen Reddy All-Star, no?

The Kid

…demonstrated he was human on Friday night as the Reds lost to the Rockies, 9-6.

He’s now 3-1 and down to $1,200.

So what’s up for tonight? He’s playing it safe, taking Gerritt Cole and the Yankees at Texas -280.

So if he wins, $100; if he loses, down $280.

Cole, at 1.37, has baseball’s 3rd-lowest ERA (and New York City’s 2nd-lowest). The Rangers, despite being in last place in the A.L. West, have the 7th-best hitting team in the A.L.

By the way, how much does pitching matter? The Twins, who have baseball’s worst record, have better team hitting numbers than Texas.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

She’s No Racist; She’s Just Doing Her Job

This is Jessica Anderson, a cum laude graduate of the University of Florida. She’s the executive director of Heritage Action For America, a D.C. conservative ratfuck group. Yesterday Mother Jones obtained this leaked video in which Anderson tells big-money donors how Heritage Action is writing voter suppression bills for Republican legislators.

Here’s the thing we all must remember: common sense and a simple belief in what is ethical will always win out is not enough. It’s a nice start, but it’s hardly enough. The far right and its big, BIG money backers are pissed that Trump lost. They’re pissed that we’re turning into a democracy in which whitey doesn’t always win.

Remember when you were a kid and you asked your parents for something and they said, “We’ll see.” And then you laid out your argument for whatever it was that you were advocating for and your argument was stronger than theirs ( I was an easy child to be around, as you can see). And then remember when they realized that they could not win on points so they just struck down your request based on, “Because I said so.”

That’s where the Republican Party currently is in terms of our fragile democracy. They’ve reached the “Because I said so” stage.

Yachta Yachta Yachta

Jeff Bezos is starting a navy.

The Amazon founder and world’s wealthiest man apparently read the William Randolph Hearst/Howard Hughes playbook and realized he had yet to do enough in the way of overcompensating for loneliness and lack of an honest, loving relationship with hyper-expensive toys.

So now he’s building a yacht (with its own support yacht) valued at $500 million.

Of course, he could take that same cash and pay EVERY SINGLE AMAZON EMPLOYEE an extra $950 for the year, but why do that, right?

What’s $950 to each of them? As opposed to a $500 million yacht he sorely needs. The yacht will be 417-feet long, or longer than the Statue of Liberty is tall. God Bless America.

Royals

(Danny Duffy still has an ERA below 2.00)

Remember back in April when we noted that the low-budget Kansas City Royals had the best record in the American League? Probably about the same time that we pointed out that Bitcoin was shattering another ceiling.

Anyway, the Royals have lost 11 in a row, plummeting back to terra firma and below in spectacular fashion. They’re now 16-20, which is the same record the Angels have. But then the Halos have Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani in their lineup, so how do you explain that?

In The Good Ol’ Summit Time

Here’s John Branch of The New York Times with a fascinating article about whether people who’ve climbed the world’s tallest peaks have actually reached the summit. Which we’d always assumed was synonymous and identical. But apparently… well, read for yourselves.

The Kid

…won again last night as the Avs beat the Kings, 5-1. The Kid took the same team two nights in a row against the same opponent and that team, the Avs, outscored the Kings cumulatively 11-1.

The Kid now stands at 3-0 and is his bank is up to $1,300.

Today’s wager: Reds +101 at ROCKIES

Betting $100 to win $101

“Reds are 13-3 in their last 16 Friday games FWIW. I will take the better offensive team with the better pitcher on slight plus money here.”

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | Leave a comment

by John Walters

That’s How I Got To Memphis

Simon and Garfunkel sang about a bridge over troubled water, but what about a troubled bridge over water.

That there’s a fissure on the Hernando de Soto Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River on Interstate 40. There may be one or two bridges in all of the USA more vital to commercial trucking. Or this may be it.

So that’s going to take a few months to fix. Is infrastructure week here yet?

More than 50,000 vehicles cross the bridge, which opened in 1973, daily.

Chancel Cheney

In the aftermath of Liz Cheney’s ouster from her No. 3 position in the House GOP by “voice vote” (hence, no names will be attached to the votes to avoid accountability, though as one tweep suggested, why doesn’t Cheney just claim voter fraud here?), a number of GOP “leaders” spoke out about the election and January 6. Some merely gaslit, while House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy pulled a new feat by gas lighting the gas lighting.

Hunh? McCarthy, who led the charge to oust Cheney for her failure to publicly buy into the lie that the election was stolen, stood on the White House South Lawn and said, and we quote here, “I don’t think anybody is questioning the legitimacy of the presidential election.”

Then why did McCarthy lead the movement to chancel Cheney?

Of course, there was also the run-of-the-lamp gas lighting we’ve come to expect from Retrumplicans. Here’s congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia:

It was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, who aptly stated, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Of course, Goebbels was able to fib more easily in an era before Twitter and mobile phone videos. The fact that so many MAGAmaniacs continue to buy into such a lie is less about Hitler and more about Orwell: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

January 21, 2025

I sought out The Kid yesterday and asked him to place odds on the following four scenarios for where Donald Trump will be on the above date: the White House, prison, dead, none of the above. Here’s what he returned with:

President 7-1: I despise people who say it can’t happen

Dead 15-1: Convinced Keith Richards and Donald Trump are the only two people with indestructible immune systems

Prison 25-1: This should be more like 40-1 but I’m going to get plenty of action regardless because this is like betting on your favorite team

None Of The Above 3-1: Reading Dr. Seuss tomes and eating hamburders to his heart’s content at MAGA-Largo

Battery Baron Batters Bitcoin

Yesterday Elon Musk, citing environmental concerns, tweeted that Tesla will not be accepting Bitcoin as payment until further notice.

Now, if you study the charts, Bitcoin is a giant drain on the environment in terms of emissions.

However, what we do find funny is that Tesla has never had a problem accepting 100s of millions of dollars in federal government subsidies in order to do business, and the federal government is worse in terms of emissions than Bitcoin. Pick your battles, eh, Elon?

Now, just in case you think I’m stubbornly, implacably defending Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general, I strongly urge you to watch Bill Maher eviscerate all of it below. BM makes plenty of sense (cents) and something tells me Elon Musk watched this some time soon after hosting SNL:

I’ll only add that Warren Buffett’s warning that crypto’s value is entirely based on the belief that someone will buy it off you for more than you paid for it, and then it’s their problem… well, that’s how our entire stock market works these days. Valuation? Schmaluation. Ask anyone who bought Tesla more than a year ago and held.

The Kid

He won last night (the Avs beat the Kings, 6-0).

So if you’re scoring, he’s now 2-0 and the bank that started at $1,000 is now up to $1,200.

Today:

Bet $410 to win $100 on AVALANCHE vs Kings

This is not a typo. The Avs are hosting the Kings for a second consecutive night and The Kid is letting it ride.

“The Avs have been through two Covid pauses and a stretch of 14 of 17 on the road and have come too far to get tripped up at the ninth hurdle. I am going to gamble that they are not Lolo Jones and that they are going to cross the finish line. Certainly not as confident as I was yesterday just because it feels as if I’m tempting fate.”

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 6 Comments

by John Walters

And Still, She Persisted

It shouldn’t be so difficult, should it? Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) stood up in the House chamber last night and boldly spoke the truth:

For this Cheney (whose father, as vice-president it must be noted, propagated the first Big Lie of this century, that Saddam had “weapons of mass destruction”) was ousted from her position of leadership within the GOP inside the House.

One. One Republican has the nuts to speak the truth to this death-to-democracy cult. And she doesn’t even have nuts.

They Got The Beat

Even though they only wrote the second-best song titled “Head Over Heels” in the ’80s, the Go Go’s have long deserved to be inducted into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame. Name another exclusively distaff band that released as many great tunes and played all their own music. None exists.

“Our Lips Are Sealed,” “Vacation,” “Head Over Heels,” “Turn To You,” “Beneath The Blue Skies,” “Cool Jerk,” and, of course, the song that started it all, “We Got The Beat.” To have been in high school while all of this was happening, and to see the girls I knew of (but didn’t actually know) be so heavily influenced by the Go Go’s style, well, what a time it was to be alive.

They came outta nowhere (L.A., actually) and flamed out within, well, three years, but in that short span Belinda Carlisle and the girls seemed to be having as much fun and exuding it through their music as any SoCal band since the Beach Boys.

They’re in. It’s long overdue. Next up: Boston.

Hoarders

Worried about a short-term gas shortage, white, obese southeasterners (how did you know?) hurried to the pumps to load up on petrol. The less industrious and prepared used plastic bags to fill with gasoline. Just waiting for the first story of how an entire trailer park went up in flames in Tennessee.

Warriors, Come Out And Play-ayyyyy

On consecutive nights, the Golden State Warriors hosted the teams with the NBA’s top-two records, the Utah Jazz and the Phoenix Suns. And the Dubs, who might’ve been back to .500 had they been swept, instead won both games.

Last night GSW beat the Phoenix Suns, 122-116, despite Steph Curry shooting just 1-11 from beyond the arc. Andrew Wiggins, former No. 1 overall pick, scored 38.

Harbinger or anomaly? We’ll see. The Dubs most certainly will meet the Lakers in the first play-in game and will likely face either Phoenix or Utah in the first round.

R.I.P., Colt

Former Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan has died at the age of 37, a victim of a fentanyl overdose. Brennan never took a regular season snap in the NFL, but he was a legit legend as a college QB.

A former high school back up at Mater Dei in Orange County to Matt Leinart, Brennan spent one season at Colorado and was dismissed from the squad. He wound up in Honolulu and quickly embraced June Jones’ high-octane passing offense. In 2006 Brennan threw an NCAA-record 58 TD passes (only eclipsed in 2019 by Joe Burrow of LSU). I was at the 2006 Christmas Eve Hawaii Bowl where Brennan tossed 5 TD passes in an annihilation of Arizona State.

The following season he’d throw 38 TD passes, lead Hawaii to a 12-0 record and a Sugar Bowl berth (the Rainbow Warriors were pasted by Georgia, 41-10) and finish third in Heisman Trophy voting.

His death seems linked to a car accident he had a few years back, the aftermath of which got him hooked on pain-killer opioids. As if HBO’s doc that premiered on Sunday about the Sackler family, “The Crime Of The Century,” needed any more of a nudge.

The Kid

…won his initial bet yesterday, picking the Dodgers to beat the Mariners against the moneyline.

So his account now stands at $1,100 from an initial account of $1,000. We’ll see if he provides a wager for tonight. Stay tuned.

UPDATED:

AVALANCHE -345 vs Kings

Bet $345 to win $100 on the Avs.

From The Kid:

“This is one of those rare instances where I will be more upset with the team than with myself if it’s a loss.

“There is not a single team in America that has more to play for tonight than the Avs. They went into Vegas and escaped with a victory and now control their own destiny for the overall number-one seed. They recently just beat the Kings twice on the road and are 14-0-1 at home in the last 15 games.“

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Triage

Here’s a pet theory I’ve been mulling for a few weeks now: the Biden administration is not ultimately going to ignore the pernicious and treasonous acts of everyone from Donald Trump to William Barr to Mike Pompeo to Rudy to those various members of Congress. They will get around to dealing with it. Just not yet.

It’s a lot like… triage. In triage patients are assigned one of four tag colors: RED means immediate attention (life-threatening injuries), YELLOW means delayed attention (no threat to life or limb), GREEN means minor injuries and BLACK means dead.

My intonation is that the first 100 or so days of this administration has been about RED issues: stomping out the pandemic, getting Americans vaccinated, keeping the economy robust and simply creating an atmosphere of stability and calm. That Joe Biden’s at a 63% approval rating right now while the worst the GOP can bring up is “they’re canceling Dr. Seuss” and “bamboo fibers” tells you that the plan is working.

Eventually, I believe, Biden’s administration will get around to the yellow tag issues: properly dealing with the January 6 insurrection (the DOJ has been quietly working on this already, and hundreds of arrests have been made) and holding its principles accountable.

I thus far do not see this administration as anything close to incompetent or unaware. They know what’s up. They know the Republicans will do everything possible to return to power and manufacture an autocracy. They know the lesson of Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch, his minor punishment (at least he did do jail time), and his ultimate victory one decade later. These are not oblivious or obtuse folks in this administration. They have just opted to tackle the red-tag issues before the yellow-tag issues. You might say they’re…

…Biden their time.

TE bow?

Heisman Trophy winner. National champion. Lightning-rod cultural icon. NFL quarterback. New York Met. ESPN personality who has never quite clicked. And now… Jacksonville Jaguar tight end?

New JaxJags HC Urban Meyer, TT’s college coach at Florida, has signed Tim Tebow to a one-year contract to play tight end for his hometown team. Meyer just bought a home in Tebow’s neighborhood.

It has been eight years since Tebow, 33, played in the National Foo’baw League. If nothing else, it makes the offseason more interesting. Florida now has Tom Brady and Tim Tebow on NFL rosters. It’ll be interesting to see which one is the most popular in The Villages.

Mulaney

Lots of John Mulaney news yesterday. First, returning from a 60-day rehab stint for addiction to alcohol and cocaine, Mulaney announced that he and his wife of seven years, Anna Tendler, were divorcing. Then he hopped right into the first of five sold-out shows at the City Winery down in NYC’s TriBeCa district.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I spent a good two hours one-on-one with Mulaney back in 2013 (or ’14) at a West Village coffee shop. The person you see onstage is not the person I met (granted, I’m a journalist, not a buddy or an audience). I found the overall mood to be… somber/depressing. Not the manic, wildly creative and funny person I see onstage. And I only met him because I was, and continue to be, a huge fan and lobbied hard for Newsweek to let me do a profile of him (to my editor Bob Roe’s credit, he trusted my judgment here).

Anyway, who knows what happened in the marriage? I dunno, but start on 4:30 above and continue to the end. Stephen Colbert should’ve charged the going therapist rate for this session. He completely peeled the onion.

There’s some wisdom Mulaney provides at the end that I’ll share here in case you choose not to watch: “The worst dancer at a wedding is the one who’s not dancing.”

Who Killed Kenny?

In his typical deadpan style (“salary-cap hit”), ESPN’s Kenny Mayne announced on Twitter yesterday that he was out at the WWL after a 27-year run. Mayne arrived in Bristol right as the SportsCenter phenomenon was peaking. Keith and Dan (and Chris and Bob and Linda) had already turned the broadcast into zeitgeist viewing, but then Kenny and John Buccigross and Craig Kilborn and John Anderson and Steve Levy and Stuart Scott would carry it further.

There’s simply no one like Mayne, 62, although Patrick was the most similar. And Neil Everett is the closest thing to him now. The former UNLV backup QB was committed to not sounding cliche and also to not sounding as if he cared too much about any of the results of which he was reporting. A true original, from “tastes like chicken” or “sounds like Pearl Jam” (metaphors to represent the fact that he was subbing in a phrase that is tired and worn for a sports phrase that would be so, too) to “this tiny ballpark cannot handle my gargantuan blasts, bring me the finest meats and cheeses,” Mayne was sui generis.

(from left: Anderson, Buccigross, Levy, Mayne)

He did get away with barely working, or so it seemed, for more than a decade while he relocated to the Sea-Tac area. You gotta respect that. In the end, though, you have to imagine that his quasi-Yossarian personality, his penchant for being the anti-Mike Greenberg, never served to ingratiate him with the suits (i.e., Norby). And so his run has ended.

The Kid

So we are going to attempt to launch a new segment here, a wagering segment. I will not be doing the wagering. I’m no expert.

However, we do know someone, we’ll call him “The Kid” until we come up with something better (“the Better Bettor?”) who has supported himself for a few years gambling professionally. This line of work is not for just anybody, but The Kid is uniquely suited to it: he’s a sports nut (and a superior athlete, by the way) who devours and processes information and data unlike almost anyone we’ve ever met. He’s near Rainman-scale in terms of this.

So what the MH staff has done is to ask him to begin with an imaginary bank of $1,000 and to give us his picks. Never more than one per day and if he misses a day, that’s okay. Here’s his first pick:

$100 on the Dodgers -215 versus the Mariners.

That’s a moneyline bet. If the Dodgers win, The Kid gets $100. If they lose, he’s down $215 (if I understand it correctly).

Current bank: $1,000