Starting Five

1. “I think it’s certainly the biggest interview I’ve ever done…” (Tom Cruise is going to be couch-hopping mad at that assertion). Finally, after all these hours, Oprah Winfrey opens up about her interview with Lance Armstrong that occurred yesterday and will not air until Thursday. How did CBS land this interview? Gayle King. In that clip Oprah informs us that she had the erstwhile seven-time Tour de France winner visit her at her Maui valhalla and they spoke for four hours about agreeing to do this interview. Now THAT is the conversation I’d really enjoy hearing. Oh, and you should watch this compelling 2006 conversation between ESPN’s Bob Ley and Lance.

2. Apple dropping at a Newtonian rate Sir Isaac himself would be astonished that the world’s wealthiest company, whose stock (ticker AAPL) peaked at a few dollars over $700 in late September, has now fallen below $500. It began with the thud of Apple Maps replacing Google Maps, and then there was the revelation that CEO Tim Cook attended Auburn (!). But seriously, we recall a morning in late September, when the stock was treading water at just above $700, when CNBC’s Jim Cramer said, “I think people might want to hold off on buying Apple”, which was code for, “SELL APPLE!” How low will it go? One analyst gives it a downside risk of $400, which is where it was at this time last year.

3. For best results, read this transcript of Jodie Foster’s Golden Globes soliloquy while listening to this classic Diana Ross tune. I encourage you to read Patrick Strudwick’s essay in The Guardian if for no other reason than that it is so well-written, from the lede itself to lines such as, when acknowledging that Foster was revealing her true self, that “this is as rare in Hollywood as egg yolks.” But mostly you should read it because Strudwick is British, writing for a British publication, and they’re smarter than we are. And you needn’t watch Downton Abbey to know that.

4. Heinz 57, Hawks 58… Atlanta scores just five points in the second quarter, 20 in the first half and 58 all game in a 97-58 plucking in Chicago. Just two nights earlier in the same building the Bulls had lost by 16 to the Phoenix Suns, who have last place in the Pacific Division locked down. The NBA: It’s all about how late your players are out the night before.

5. We know that Brent Musburger did not say that Holly Rowe herself was “really smokin’ tonight” because, I mean, c’mon, do I have to explain why? For those of you under the age of 35 or 40, this is Phyllis George, who was always smoking back in the Seventies back when she was Brent’s NFL Today co-host. Phyllis was the proto-Erin Andrews, kids.

 

Reserves

This! THIS! by John Oliver of The Daily Show is phenomenal. Hilarious, sad and inspired. I don’t know if they give Peabody Awards for faux news show segments, but this should be taught by every highbrow adjunct professor at a J-school in the nation. Really, CNN is eliminating its investigative news division? Isn’t this like McDonald’s eliminating hamburgers? 

And the dude who is a media consultant, his surname is Adgate??? (first-ballot All Aptly-Named Team right there). Listen. If you don’t watch this, and right now, I will go full Liam Neeson in Taken. I will hunt you down. I will find you. And I will kill you.

And stick around for the Will McAvoy cameo, kids.

Also, if you don’t think investigative journalism, overseas or domestic, can influence history, I give you “All The President’s Men” or this outstanding tome, which you probably haven’t read but will love, “Once Upon a Distant War.”

HARMSTRONG

So, it’s 1996 and Lance Armstrong is first diagnosed with testicular cancer. At the time he has yet to win anything more than a stage or two of the Tour de France, but certainly he is one of the world’s most promising cyclists at the age of 25. Anyway, no more than a day or two after the diagnosis, whom does Lance phone?

Steve Scott.

Steve Scott, at the time, had held the American record in the mile (3:47.69) for 14 years and indeed would do so until 2007. Scott, then age 40, was a testicular cancer survivor. So possibly, and who could dispute it without any real evidence, Lance was simply phoning Steve, one superior athlete who just happened to get testicular cancer before the age of 35, to another. That may be all that it was.

 

 

I don’t know the stats on contracting testicular cancer, or how much greater the risk becomes if one takes steroids and other types of PEDs. I don’t know. But I do know that Lance phoned Steve and I do wonder what they spoke about.

Now, for those of you who equivocate all of Lance’s misdeeds in the name of what he has done to assist the fight against cancer, well, everyone is anti-cancer. And all of his work has been monumental. You cannot take that away. On the other wheel, how authoritative a spokesperson would Armstrong have been had he never won a Tour de Farce France.

And to that point, yes, they just don’t give away Tour de France triumphs. That Armstrong won one, much less seven, after beating cancer is, like so much of his life, miraculous. But none of that goes to the character of the man: a person who was willing to lie, to threaten and bully, to destroy the credibility of others (which he did) for years, in pursuit of his own glory.

He’s not honest, man. It’s just that simple.

To paraphrase the lyrics of an erstwhile paramour, “He don’t bring us anything but down.”

******

Regional covers for this week’s Sports Illustrated. Penny-wise and pound-foolish.

Speaking of coins, that whole trillion-dollar coin idea, one that folks such as Brian Williams kept intoning that “serious people” are talking about (as opposed to us frivolous people?). Do you need to be a Nobel Prize-winning economist to understand that the idea is batshit crazy? It makes no more sense than that old Saturday Night Live bit about the bank that does nothing more than make change (“People ask how we make a profit. My answer: volume.”). The only fiduciary aspect of such coin that makes any sense to us is that, unlike the penny, the coin would cost less to mint than its actual value.

More Golden Globules

Doesn’t Molly Shannon deserve at least a shout-out for the opening of Jodie Foster’s speech (she didn’t even use Sally O’Malley or “Saturday Night Live” but simply “SNL”)….Did George Clooney win an award for bringing the same date to the same awards show for more than one consecutive year? And are there Stacy Keibler elves, and what exactly do they do?… Loved this Amy Poehler line: “Hi Ben. I’m from Boston, too….you’re not better than me”….So the surrogate father of Jodie Foster’s kids was The Geek from “Sixteen Candles”?… where, by the way, is John Cusack in all of this? I miss him… The James Franco line was particularly funny because he’s a serious friend of the SNL cast…