Starting Five
Early steakateria roll call. Hence the briefer post. Oh, and those of you who sounded off on me about Bill Simmons yesterday: You are right. I was wrong. My bad.
“Glorrrrrria, G-L-O-R-I-A, Glorrria!”
1. Octa-mom!
That Gloria Mackenzie is 84 and both 1) realized that she had won the $590 Powerball jackpot and 2) upon that realization, did not suffer a heart attack, is astounding. And that someone let her go in front of them in line at the Zephyrhills Publix, hence altering the outcome of the largest payout in lottery history and in effect, the order of the universe, boggles the mind. Mackenzie took the $370 million lump sum payout, which should be $284 million after taxes, which should at least get her to her 90th birthday.
If there is a lesson here, it is that time is the most valuable of all commodities.
2. From 84 to “1984”
The National Security Agency is the Ministry of Information, that Orwellian agency from the author’s ominous and prophetic novel that spies on everyone. Turns out the NSA collects the phone records of MILLIONS of domestic Verizon customers daily, via a top secret court order issued in April. I’m expecting Eric Holder to hold a press conference later this month in which he announces that the NSA has determined that I do not phone my mom often enough. (Guilty, Phyllis). Oh, and NBC’s Richard Engel interviewed a former Air Force drone operator, Brandon Bryant, whose “missions” that originated from a chair in a room at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada were responsible for 1,626 deaths.
3. “Viva Puig!”
A few of you may remember back in March when we went bazonkers praised the spring that Los Angeles Dodger prospect Yasiel Puig was enjoying. He hit nearly .500 in spring training. Earlier this week the Dodgers finally brought him up to The Show, and the Cuban defector did not disappoint. In his second Major League game, Puig homered twice and drove in five runs –batting leadoff, no less- in a 9-7 defeat of the San Diego Padres. Puig also enjoyed the honor of having Vin Scully calling his first career home run. Through three games and a dozen at-bats the 22 year-old rightfielder has five hits and is batting .417. Also, through three games he has taken two curtain calls, which may be a record.
4. Bruins Take 3-0 Lead Versus Penguins
As a matter of fact, there are “We Got The Moves Like Jagr” T-shirts.
It took 95 minutes and 19 seconds, but the Boston Bruins overcame the Penguins late in the second overtime to win 2-1 and take what sports announcers delight in calling a “commanding lead” in the Eastern Conference Stanley Cup finals. BB Jaromir Jagr, 41, the ex-Penguin, outdueled a PP for the puck that led to Patrice Bergeron’s game-winning goal. Sidney Crosby, alias Sid the Kid, has yet to score a goal or record an assist in the series.
5. For Whom The Bell Trolls
Doyel
Last week: “Dwyane Wade is a dirty player.”
This week: “Brian Kelly is screwing Eddie Vanderdoes.”
The nuanced prose of CBSSports.com’s Gregg Doyel sounds more like an anguished wail to be offered a spot on “Around The Horn” or “First Take.”
I’d like to coin a new term to take the place of “page views”, and that is “rage views.” Columns such as yesterday’s, in which Doyel eviscerates Brian Kelly for adhering to a rule (Florida State’s Jimbo Fisher is currently doing the same thing with a dissident recruit, but his name and the school’s appears nowhere in the column; which begs the question, Was Gregg even aware of the FSU connection? Did he report this story at all beyond combing the archives for Deontay Greenberry-related quotes) seem explicitly written to do little more than garner hits due to outraged fans passing the stories to one another via links and asking, “Can you believe this guy?”
Doyel: cool guy, doesn’t pull punches. There’s fearless. And then there’s reckless. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for the national columnist — or SportsCenter — to dive into the mess at Navy, where a couple of football players are being investigated for rape. Would this be the lead story on SportsCenter if it were Notre Dame, the other school involved in the longest-running continuous intersectional football game in the FBS? And is it at all possible, since CBS airs the Army-Navy game each December, that the suits at CBS Sports wouldn’t take very kindly to one of their columnists attacking Annapolis in print?
On the other hand, Amir Carlisle, a former USC tailback, was allowed to transfer to Notre Dame and not have to sit out a year due to a ridiculous NCAA waiver that deals with the relocation of parents. That was a joke. And maybe that’s a point Doyel could have made to strengthen his argument about Brian Kelly being a hypocrite (the Philadelphia Eagles’ flirtation shows that Kelly is, at best, disingenuous with the media)… if only he had known about it.
Reserves
Taylor Swift performs “Red” at the CMT Awards. She’s got legs, she knows how to use ’em.
–JW
From Monticello.org: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild,[1] and government to gain ground.” – Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, Paris, May 27, 1788
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I live about 10 miles from Zephyrhills. It is the city that shows up as default in my address as the closest post office. Ah, to be close to a hundredmillionaire.