Starting Five

1. Burning Man Overboard

 

Firefighters in the Black Rock Desert, 100 miles north of Reno, report that they have this year’s Burning Man Festival 100% contained. The week-long arts festival concluded on Labor Day with the incineration, in effigy, of a spaceship. If you are still jonesing to get your pyre on, the Zozobra Festival takes place tomorrow night in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And if you cannot make it there, find the original version of “The Wicker Man” on Netflix and fast forward to the film’s final five minutes.

2. Really, AP and USA Today Voters, Really?!?

It’s only Week 2, after all, and the voters will improve –I hope — but somehow Ohio State earned No. 1 votes (four overall) in both polls following their desultory defeat of Buffalo. The Buckeyes are ranked No. 3 in the AP poll and No. 2 in the USA Today, ahead of Clemson, which defeated a talented Georgia team in the opening weekend’s best game.

Items and Thoughts:

–Clemson (4/5) should be No. 1 or No. 2 after scoring the weekend’s lone victory by a team over a Top 10 opponent, with no other data available to voters outside their preconceived prejudices of how good or bad teams should be this season. Likewise, Louisville (8/8) is a deserving Top 5 squad and Washington (20/23), again, after destroying a Top 25 Boise State squad in Week 1, deserves a top 10 berth.

–Oregon destroys a nobody FSC team by 63 points and is rewarded with 2/3 rankings. No. 5 Georgia travels to a hostile atmosphere, witnesses “the most exciting 25 seconds in college football” (click on that; so cool; and consider how many cameras it took ABC to pull that off), and comes up just short, and drops to 11/12. And you wonder why we cannot get coaches and ADs to agree to more of these types of games. Voters who dropped the Dawgs but bark about FCS matchups are the people who piss upstream and then whine about the quality of the potable water.

—Andy Staples of SI and Charles Davis of Fox, two college football minds that I respect as much as anyone’s, placed Notre Dame higher than anyone else, No. 6 and 8, respectively. I didn’t see a Top 10 team last Saturday, but they did. What do they know that I don’t (do me a favor and don’t answer that; why kill your entire day?)?

–Scott Wolf does not have USC in his Top 25. Someone check his vitals.

–My Top 10, and again, I go on one week of performances and nothing else:

1. Clemson

2. Alabama

3. Oregon

4. Stanford (You have to put the 0-0 Cardinal somewhere)

5. Louisville

6. Florida State

7. Texas A&M

8. LSU

9. Georgia

10. Washington

— Favorite AP voter of Week 2? Doug Lesmerises. I’m not in complete accord with the Cleveland Plain Dealer writer’s vote, but I do like that he put Clemson No. 1, LSU No. 2, Louisville No. 4 and Washington No. 6. Lesmerises voted based on performance, not preconception.

–Chris Fowler put Louisville at No. 14.

—Bob Asmussen of the Champaign News-Gazette has Ohio State at No. 1 (you lost me right there), South Carolina at No. 3, Florida four spots above Florida State, and Arizona State (which has yet to play) at No. 17.

To reiterate, I’m more than happy to shuffle the deck after Week 2. Maybe Ohio State looks more impressive and leaps past U-Dub, Louisville, FSU, etc. But if I’m a voter, I don’t know how you base your vote on anything besides what you witnessed (or DVR’ed off “College Football Final”) and with just a one-game sample for most everyone, I’m confoozed by some of the ballots.

3. It Sucks To Be Chris Sale

There are four hurlers in the American League who have an ERA under 3.00 and a WHIP that is below 1.10. Max Scherzer, who lost last night because the Tigers did not support him with the standard six runs, is 19-2. Hisashi Iwakuma and Yu Darvish, of the Mariners and Rangers, respectively, are both 12-6. And then there’s the White Sox’ lanky southpaw, Chris Sale, who is having a career year (2.97, 1.06) except for his 10-12 record. Last night Sale departed Yankee Stadium with a 4-1 lead in the bottom of the 8th, the lone run being unearned. There were Yankee runners on second and third. Not long after the Yankees led 6-4 and Sale earned a No Decision.

Meanwhile, New York’s win puts them 10 games above .500 for the first time since June and now has them just two games back in the wild card race. The Bronx is awake.

4. The Boss is Back

 

Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show last night after a three-month hiatus absence sabbatical boondoggle and of course the writers had to conjure some memorable means to commemorate the return of the scepter to the ruler. After doing the Carlos Danger chair dance with interim host Jon Oliver, Stewart tackled the Syrian crisis. “Oh, right, we have to bomb Syria because we’re in the seventh grade…Why does holding back look like weakness?” Feel free to disagree, but it is refreshing to hear a contrarian voice.

(In related news, Jason Jones and Samantha Bee dined at the cookoutateria last night. As is our habit with celebrities, we did not poke at them.)

5. Nontroversy Alert

—Jameis Winston said that he’d have gone to Texas if only they’d winked in his direction, sending a slew of reporters to talk to his high school coaches and Longhorn magister Mack Brown.

—Brian Kelly opens his Tuesday noon press conference with “This (Notre Dame-Michigan) is a great and historic rivalry…so let’s dispense with the nonsense”, thus extinguishing a budding nontroversy that began on Sunday when he referred to it as a great “regional matchup.”

—Joe Girardi wants to be sure that Mariano Rivera, he of the 40 saves and 2.12 ERA, is sure he wants to retire. This story won’t die until Mo is spotted laying in a hammock in Panama next March.

—Rex Ryan sojourns to Clemson to watch his son, who is on the Tiger roster, suit up for the season-opener, as opposed to staying back in Florham Park, N.J., on the final day of cuts. Yo, that’s the turk’s job, anyway. It’s the lead story on “Olbermann”, though. T-Rex has been the lead topic twice thus far on the program, which puts him in the lead.

My one minor quibble with “Olbermann”, which I like very much: It’s Duane Reade-ing its audience. Duane Reade is a monopolistic pharmacy in NYC that almost compels its customers, who have few other choices, to purchase Duane Reade-supplied generic products as opposed to brands we prefer. Olbermann’s first guests thus far have been Jason Whitlock, Tony Kornheiser, Jeremy Schaap and Michael Smith (I must have missed one or two, but you get the point). All are bright, but all are also ESPN employees. KO has such a lively mind, I’d love to see him converse, engage, even spar against, minds who have not pledged fealty to the Worldwide Leader.

Reserves

He’s Gone-ja

The Phoenix Suns put former No. 2 overall first pick Michael Beasley on the first Pineapple Express out of town. Which is a bummer, because I was looking forward to “Michael Beasley Bobble-Eyed Doll” night at US Airways Arena next season. The one franchise that should NOT seek to acquire The Beaz? Denver (“legal weed!”), where he’d redefine the meaning of “Rocky Mountain High.”

Here is what Beasley’s former boss with the Minnesota Timberwolves, David Kahn, once said about him: “”He’s a very young and immature kid who smoked too much marijuana and has told me that he’s not smoking anymore, and I told him that I would trust him as long as that was the case.” Kahn was fined $50,000 for those comments, even though they were accurate. y,

Ariel Goes Aerial, With Fatal Effect

Convicted Cleveland kidnapper, rapist and all-around monster Ariel Castro hanged himself in his jail cell last night. Castro had spent 119 days in captivity, which by my calculations (checking the math, carrying the zero) is a lot less than 10 years.

***

Passan The Buck

Yahoo! baseball columnist Jeff Passan tweets, “The Indians are 3 1/2 games back of a playoff spot and can’t even draw 10,000 vs. one of the teams they’re chasing. Straight embarrassing.”

And San Francisco-based pundit Ray Ratto retorts, “And who should be embarrassed specifically?”

Exactly.

Passan has hit upon one of my great pet peeves about sports writers: the writer who chides fans for not attending games in person.

Points:

1) Sports writers attend the games for free so, right there, shut up.

2) Sports writers should be aware, more than most, that PRO sports is a business. The charade that the Indians are OUR team just because we live in the Cleveland area is something that the owner and his minions sell us. And I expect them to. But why is a sports writer doing so?

3) It’s discretionary income, Jeff, the money we would use to purchase tickets. Do you chide people for not attending the ballet? Or for not seeing a film that was recently released?

4) As Steve Rushin once noted, the most underrated seat for any sporting event is my couch. The beer is colder and cheaper, there’s no parking fees, and I can hear the broadcasters. Besides, the odds of my being beaten into a coma as I make my way to my vehicle after the game decrease exponentially (while not entirely disappearing).

5) Passan’s father, Rich, has worked in the sports department of the Cleveland Plain Dealer for more than 40 years. So you can make the argument that he didn’t pay to see games, either, and hence blithely passed on that ignorance to his son. Or that he should’ve –and might’ve — passed on the accurate idea that scribes don’t harass fans for not spending their incomes to watch baseball games in person because, after all, how anyone chooses to spend the money they earn is their business..

“Bob’s Your Uncle”

If you’ve heard people use that slang phrase, which essentially translates to “It’s all good”, you may wonder whence its origin. If you in fact employ the word “whence.” Anyway, I’m reading a book about a dude who assisted the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s (back when we were on their side), and the etymology is revealed. Back in the 19th century when the British invaded Afghanistan, the Brit commander, Lord Frederick Roberts, was both well-respected and greatly loved by his men. It was avuncular. And so they shortened it from Lord Frederick Roberts to the cheerier “Bob” and men kne w that if they were under his command (“Bob’s your uncle”), they were in good hands. And so there you go (although Wikipedia provides a second possible origin).

***

David Frost died on Monday at the age of 74.  I never wanted to see a film based on a TV presenter interviewing a disgraced former U.S. president, but “Frost/Nixon” was compelling. And few films made in the past two decades have done a better job of capturing the spirit of the 1970s.

Remote Patrol

Good Will Hunting

CMT 8 p.m.

 

 

Too many classic ’90s films to list here, but two of the very best are on this evening. This one and “Pulp Fiction” (AMC, 8 p.m.), whose script is simply genius. A cinephile friend once noted that “Pulp Fiction” takes every classic film noir set-up and then provides exactly what you don’t expect to happen. As for GWH, repeated viewings reward you with the standout performance, in a minor role, by Casey Affleck –and shouldn’t he play Robin in his big bro’s Batman movie?

May I recommend that you do a “Last Channel” special of “Good Will Hunting” complemented by the Tigers-Red Sox game from Fenway Pahk, on ESPN?

Lastly, in case you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend you DVR “From Russia With Love” (Encore, 8 p.m.), the second (1963) and easily one of the two or three best James Bond films.