Yesterday Medina Spirit, the Kentucky Derby winner, tested positive for a banned substance, betamethasone (which, alliteratively, we tried to work into the headline, but just could not find a way). The horse’s trainer, Bob Baffert, had been hailed after the Run for the Roses as it marked a record-breaking seventh victory in the race from three year-olds under his care.
Here’s what has happened in the aftermath:
•Baffert has been suspended by the Churchill Downs racetrack pending a review. He will not be allowed to run any of his horses there.
•The horse is in serious jeopardy of having his victory disqualified. Apparently, Medina Spirit was unable to get in touch with Rob Manfred early enough to exchange his testimony (straight from the horse’s mouth) in exchange for immunity.
Bob Baffert calls the Churchill Downs statement about Medina Spirit a "cancel culture kind of thing." pic.twitter.com/QOULGwIcZ7
For the first time since before the gold rush of 1849, California (statehood: 1850), experienced a population decrease last year. More than 180,000 residents, net, departed, with nearly one-third of them making an exodus from L.A. Where are they headed? Arizona, Idaho, Montana.
Places where life is cheaper and, to be honest, redder. They’re gassing up their private jets in their hangars and flying to Sedona.
Good News From The Apocalypse (And You’re Not Invited)
Took a trip north out of the Valley of the Sun last week, which at first depressed me. Later, though, I was filled with hope.
See, I was raised in the Phoenix area 40 or so years ago when there was no route 51 or 101 or 202 or even 303. The last three are essentially concentric circles ringing the Valley as development mushrooms out of control (where do they think they’re going to get enough water to sustain life, much less golf courses and plush, gated communities with amenity lakes?
And, yes, a lot of the new residents (as my family once was; I’m part of the problem, too) are just seeking better weather. While a shiteload are from California. Anyway, it was depressing to see that there’s really no break in civilization between Phoenix and New River anymore, as you travel up the I-17. And depressing to see haze as I gazed over toward Oak Creek Canyon.
But then, when I reached the Grand Canyon, I peered out across a timeless backdrop that literally took billions of years to take shape. Then, embedded on a rim path, I saw a plaque that gave me hope (also, if this blog’s favorite copy editor happens to reading, one that directly contests what those who follow the Old Testament verbatim would say is the correct age of the planet).
And here it is:
That’s right. The Earth is 4.56 billion years old. Phoenix has only been growing recklessly for about 75 years (post-WW II boom). Civilization as we appreciate it has only been around less than 3,000 years. To give you an approximation of what man’s contribution to this planet has been, in terms of time, it’s about 1/1,500,000th.
In other words if the Earth had been around 1.5 million years, we’ve been around one year. Or, if it had been around 126,000 years, we’ve been around one month. Or if it had been around for 30,000 years, we’ve been around one day.
Think of how long one day is. Then think that man has been around, in civilized form, 3,000 years. So multiply that denominator by 10 without moving the numerator.
That’s our footprint on this massive rock.
It will be around long, long, long after we’re gone. And we will be gone. Because it’s wired within us to have a fatal flaw or two: 1) we are unable to live in peace with one another 2) we don’t come by conservation naturally, 3) we succumb to our appetites and beliefs over rational arguments.
In three minutes Randy Rainbow can conjure a more trenchant political Op-Ed piece than all of the minds at The New York Times and Washington Post combined. Well done, sir. I’m tossing garlands your way.
So What Is Dogecoin?
It must be satisfying to be Michael Che. To speak to the world’s second-wealthiest man on live television and point out that his latest money-making scheme is no more valid than a three-card monte game on the corner of 44th an Broadway.
We Just Disagree
A very happy 75th birthday to musician Dave Mason, who in the midst of the disco boom of 1977 released a song that defies genre (adult contemporary, I guess) and was one of the best of its, or any, generation. Mason, from England, was also a founding member of Traffic with Steve Winwood.
A couple more notes on “We Just Disagree”: Mason’s top-charting song, it rose to No. 12 at a time when the Bee Gees ruled the charts. Also, it was not actually penned by Mason. It was written by Jim Krueger, a guitarist in Mason’s band from Wisconsin. Krueger was only 24 or 25 when he wrote the song, whose themes of breakup and loss sound to have come from a much more grizzled and aged soul. Krueger died in 1993 at age 43 of pancreatitis.
In a matinee getaway game in Seattle, Baltimore southpaw John Means throws the first no-hitter the Orioles have had since Jim Palmer’s in 1969. He also tosses the third no-hitter (yes, we know) of this young season. Means’ came a wild pitch away from a perfect game, as he struck out the Mariners’ Sam Haggerty in the bottom of the 3rd inning but strike three bounced in the dirt and eluded the catcher. Haggerty was thrown out attempting to steal second base, so Means faced the minimum 27 batters.
On Twitter, the illustrious and very smart Tim Burke (@bubbaprog) argued that this should be a perfect game, but we disagree. How can a pitcher be credited with a perfect game when he has an error, which is what a wild pitch is scored as?
By the way, here’s another thing I love about baseball. Look at that photo. It could be from 1969. The uniforms, the infield, the daylight, it’s quite nostalgic, no?
India
Covid-19 related deaths in India the past five days, or in the month of May:
Saturday: 3,688
Sunday: 3,422
Monday: 3,438
Tuesday: 3,786
Wednesday: 3,982
That’s more than 18,000 deaths in the past five days. Granted, it’s the world’s 2nd-most populous country and the ‘rona sorta bypassed India the first time around. The nation’s now bypassed 230,000 deaths, which puts it in third place. Behind Brazil and… you guessed it.
We’re still No. 1, America! And we should be eclipsing 600,000 deaths, or a city proper the size of Denver, by this time next week.
Mitchin’
Here’s Sen. Mitch McConnell (R, for Reptile-Kentucky), speaking at a press conference in his home state yesterday: “One hundred percent of my focus is standing up to this administration.”
So I guess that whole “unify the country” schpiel back in mid-January was merely a smokescreen?
And Moanin’
Caitlyn Jenner to Hannity: "My friends are leaving California. My hangar, the guy right across, he was packing up his hangar and I said, where are you going? And he says, 'I'm moving to Sedona, Arizona, I can't take it anymore. I can't walk down the streets and see the homeless'" pic.twitter.com/Z1WbBBQXq7
Facebook’s oversight board just announced that the ban on The Former Guy will not be rescinded. In the ruling, “the Board found that, in maintaining an unfounded narrative of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr. Trump created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible.”
Facebook (FB) was going to be criticized by nearly half the country no matter what it ruled. Of course, Facebook itself did not make the ruling. The “oversight board” was constructed as a fall guy to take the heat for a decision that is really Facebook’s own to make. But now Zuckerberg is able to say, Well, it wasn’t my call. As various pundits have noted, FB once again (shocker!) shirked its responsibility here. The board responded by telling FB that this is not a permanent ban. You punt it to us, we’ll punt it back to you.
It’s not a lifetime ban. It’s just the board kicking the can down the road until 2022. Meanwhile, the chances of MAGA types fleeing Facebook in support of Trump are nil. Too many pics of grandchildren to view.
Twitter and now Facebook. Maybe he should try TikTok. After all, that’s where all the kids are.
A Bucket Of Blood
The MH staff wakes up, alights from its chamber, turns on the TCM, and this 1959 flick (title above), a satire on the Beatnik generation, is playing. Here’s the TV guide synopsis: “A waiter, who is jealous of the beatnik crowd hanging out at his cafe, becomes an art sensation after he inadvertently kills his landlady’s cat and covers the corpse with clay.”
The film is layered (as is the feline). There’s a line where a patron requests “a papaya cheesecake and a bottle of Yugoslavian white wine.”
We’re only a little into it, but it seems that our protagonist recognizes the only way to maintain his fame is to continue creating art the way he made his original piece… but moves on to humans as his models.
Someone greenlit this script. God bless ’em.
Bronx Cheer
The Yankees met the Astros last night for the first time since the infamous Game 7, trash can-abetted defeat in the 2019 ALCS. Yanks win, 7-3, and the fans let Houston and Jose Altuve what they thought of them.* However, the Astros have not been stripped of their World Series championship. Maybe the Facebook oversight board needs to turn its attention to baseball?
Both the Yankees, winners of nine of their last 12, and the Astros are now 15-14.
*As Wally comments below, the trash can ploy is not what the Astros deployed versus the Yankees (apparently). Though I do believe it’s fair to call Altus’s blast baseball’s first “buzzer-beater.”
Cap ‘n Goon Ceremony
The Astros were not the only villains to visit NYC this week. Here’s Cap Tom Wilson inciting a riot with an unprovoked punch to the face of a Ranger skater who was flat on his stomach at the time. The Rangers social media web site responded vociferously.
Today is Cinco de Mayo, but it feels like Dia de los Muertos in Mexico City. At least two dozen people perished when this subway platform collapsed a few nights ago. Not much to add here, but you just never know when it’s going to be your time.
Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced after 27 years of marriage. The couple who started a namesake foundation find themselves unable to maintain their own. It happens.
Gates, one of the world’s five wealthiest men at $124 billion, joins fellow world’s wealthiest clubbers Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos in the Billionaire Bachelors Club. Elon Musk is divorced, but he’s since either remarried or re-hooked-up, we ain’t sure. Your hopes of a single-sex partnership between the two, which the pundits would dub ElonGates, just is not happening.
All the money in the world cannot alone protect a relationship. So what can? Trust and soft lighting.
Liz vs Lies
Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) is up against it: she’s the lone high-ranking Republican publicly calling out The Former Guy for continuing to propagate The Big Lie. For doing so, Cheney has become a pariah in her own party (and something of a heroine to those folks who think of themselves as objective). She has chosen truth over tribe, and that may cost her her seat in the House (although she could always cross the aisle some day).
Here’s what David Gerson wrote in The Washington Postabout the current state of Republican fealty to Donald Trump, Orwellian fever dreams, Roy Cohn and the like:
“Nothing about this is normal. The GOP is increasingly defined not by its shared beliefs, but by its shared delusions. To be a loyal Republican, one must be either a sucker or a liar. And because this defining falsehood [that Trump actually won the election] is so laughably false, we can safely assume that most Republican leaders fall into the second category. Knowingly repeating a lie—an act of immorality—is now the evidence of Republican fidelity.”
Rising sophomore wide receiver Jordan Johnson is entering the transfer portal. This announcement from the Notre Dame wide receiver comes two days after the annual Blue-Gold intra-squad scrimmage.
Worth noting: in its assessment of Notre Dame’s 2020 recruiting class, Rivals.com awarded the coveted 5-star rating to just one recruit: Johnson, the 6’2″ wideout out of St. Louis. Classmates such as tight end Michael “Baby Gronk” Mayer (a future first-round pick), Tosh Baker (who will start at OT this fall) and Chris Tyree (second on the team in rushing as a frosh last season) all garnered only four stars.
But Johnson failed to make an imprint last season. He finished with zero catches. Johnson was listed as a starter on the Blue team in Saturday’s game, but again finished with zero catches. This is a five-star recruit at a position where the Irish are sorely hurting for a five-star talent: wide receiver.
Worth noting: Javon McKinley entered the Irish program as a highly-touted recruit in 2016 (far more hyped than classmate Chase Claypool) but had trouble seeing the field his first three seasons due to injury. It was only last season, as a fifth-year senior that he was able to remain healthy all autumn. McKinley wound up leading the Irish, tied with Mayer, in receptions at 42. Over the weekend McKinley signed with the Detroit Lions as an underrated free agent and was given a $100,000 guarantee.
Johnson can arrive at any school in August and suit up and play this September for them. The NCAA now allows a one-time transfer waiver, meaning that a player may transfer once without having to sit out a year. It’ll be interesting to see where Johnson heads. He’s a 5-star wideout with no mileage on his tires after a season of college football during a pandemic. The mystery will remain why he couldn’t make an impact in South Bend and why he did not have the patience to see where this season would take him.
Don’t Bring Me Down*
*The judges will also accept “Non-Government Bale Out,” “Garish Bale,” “Hay, Now” and “Hay, Hay, Hay”
This isn’t exactly news, but we’d never head of this weirdest of rock star deaths. If Spinal Tap hadn’t already been made, this story would have fit nicely.
Mike Edwards was a cellist who was part of the original lineup of ELO, the Electric Light Orchestra. He took the stage with Jeff Lynne and the others in their debut performance in 1972 and remained in the group for a few years. In September of 2010 Edwards met an untimely demise in a most English manner, and perhaps near an English manor. He was driving a lorry that was struck by a runaway bale of hay, weighing 1,300 pounds, that was rolling down the hillside.
Never knew about this one.
Matinee Idle
A simple request: every day of the Major League Baseball season, from early April to late September, should feature at least one day game. Every one.
If you checked the schedule yesterday, there was not a single matinee contest. Today and the rest of the week, including Friday, there will be. There’s as many as seven scheduled for Thursday. But yesterday, zero.
The Matinee Game would appeal to 1) bettors 2) television 3) deadbeat stimulus cash-checkers who’ve gotten rich off GME, AMC and dogecoin and wanna have something to do when they wake up at noon besides just another bong hit. Let’s make it happen, commish!
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/sports/baseball/2021/05/05/john-means-throws-no-hitter-orioles-beat-mariners-6-0/WATW136-55_2021_220445.jpg)
