Starting Five
1. It Is, After All, March
Fifty years to the day after civil rights activists are beaten and fire-hosed in Selma, Ala., what is known as “the Bloody Sunday that Bono Does Not Sing About,” the African-American president of the United States leads a march through town (either that or the AIDS Walks are starting earlier this year). Karma is a bitch.
If you look closely you can see Bill O’Reilly and Brian Williams near the back of the throng.
The Ku Klux Klan found their own way to get involved in the festivities, too.
One thing the weekend highlighted, besides the strides in civil rights in the past half-century, is that our nation could probably need a few new bridges. That Edmund Pettus Bridge is p’rty enough, but it’s older than most people in this photo…
(Potus 44 & 43: The first annual Edmund Pettus 5-K had both an Chief Executive and a wheelchair division.
By the way, this is the bridge’s namesake.
Wikipedia says that he was a lawyer and an enthusiastic champion of slavery. Edmund Pettus served as a Confederate general during the Civil War and was captured three times. After emancipation (his and theirs), Pettus opened a number of not-so-successful fried chicken outlets.
2. Four Play
Boy Wonderful: Curry’s innocent face and his prodigious talent is about to make him the most marketable player in the NBA. Just watch….
Last night on SportsCenter John Buccigross, in saluting Russell Westbrook’s 7th triple double of the season, said as if it’s a foregone conclusion, “He will not win the MVP.”
Seriously? How does anyone presume to “know” who deserves to be the NBA MVP already? It’s a legitimate four-man race (though I would really love to know what LeBron James during that two week midseason sabbatical in south Florida).
Russell Westbrook: Last night his seventh triple double of the season, and he now leads the NBA in scoring.
Stephen Curry: the Warriors have the league’s best record, they’re now 27-2 at home, and he’s the best thing to happen to Vine since cute kids and animals.
James Harden: Second in the league in scoring. Where would Houston be without him.
LeBron: Could the most dominant player in the NBA finish 4th? It says here that, even if everyone acknowledges that Susie B.’s favorite player is the league’s best, he’s not taking the trophy this year unless the Cavs go on an insane 16-1 run to end the season. Even then, I”m not so sure even though he is 3rd in the NBA in scoring.
Oh…enjoy Steph’s teammate, Draymond Green, not enjoying being shoved by Dahntay Jones post-game. Something more going on behind the scenes here? Green scored 23 in GSW’s win; Dahntay got a DNP. Green’s reaction afterward is here.
3. Drum Lines
I still haven’t seen Whiplash, but this opening scene is seductive. Love this recurring segment from the New York Times, “Anatomy of a Scene.” It lets you know just how much a good director is trying to impart to an audience in any given moment in a film. Here’s their “AoaS” from my favorite film of last year, Nightcrawler and this is from the Best Picture Oscar winner, Birdman.
I imagine they don’t have one for Boyhood because they shot it so long ago, who can remember what Linklater was thinking?
4. Targaryen Meets Taylor
The folks at Nerdist merged “Blank Space” with George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones to create this mash-up. Not bad, although he looks less like the Seven Kingdoms’ creator than he does Franklin Delano Romanowski, the friend of Kramer’s who told him to “Drop Dead.”
FDR
5. Members Only
Hemsworth heated up the SNL stage and brought a late winter Thor. He’ll be invited back as a host.
Simply announcing that you have a large reproductive organ counted as a joke on Saturday Night Live over the weekend–it counted as a joke in three different sketches in the first 40 minutes. Cabin fever and that long winter is beginning to affect the writing staff.
Honestly, I wasn’t offended as a prude–I was offended as a comedian. I mean, the dick joke is the last refuge of the lazy comic mind (see: Deadspin).
It was actually a pretty decent episode and Super Handsome Guy Chris Hemsworth put his all into a love scene with a real live chicken (who, let it be said, got more air time than some cast members this week). He was terrific in “So You Think You Can Live With Brian?”, which was the best Beck Bennett/Kyle Mooney film yet.
It feels as if SNL is still in transition phase, as if we are still playing “New SNL Cast Member or Arcade Fire.” The stars are Taran Killam and Kate McKinnon. They’re carrying the show right now. Cecily Strong is just a notch below them, and Pete Davidson has a bright future. Kenan Thompson is a glue guy.
Colin Jost is beginning to grow into his WU role. I liked the way he came back at Leslie Jones with “Nice transition” last night. Not a big Leslie Jones fan. LOUDER does not make something that ain’t funny any funnier.
Music 101
The Go Go’s, who actually lived up to the hype. By the time Talk Show, their album third in four years, was released in 1984 the five females had slept with/snorted/smoked/drank everything. It’s a little too bad, because songs like “Beneath the Blue Sky” demonstrated they were only getting more mature. And how underrated is Belinda Carlisle’s voice? I always thought she had a late Sixties sound that was sent to the future. My favorite Go Go’s song that no one ever mentions.
Remote Patrol
The Thomas Crown Affair
TCM 10:30 p.m.
As much as I want to steer you –yet again–to Better Call Saul (AMC, 10 p.m.), this is the original 1968 version with Steve McQueen and an in-her-prime Faye Dunaway. Put them up against Pierce Brosnan and an in-her-own-prime Rene Russo in the 1999 version and I call that a push.
Also, worth noting that tonight on CNBC (6 p.m.) marks the 10th anniversary of Jim Cramer’s Mad Money. Boo-yah, skeedaddy!
1st thing- I’m STILL giggling over “sealfie”. The giddy expression (hmmm, do animals HAVE “expressions” if they don’t have human emotions?) on the seal’s face is the EXACT look on 99% of the human doofuses (doofi?) that snap selfies ad nauseum (emphasis on the NAUSEA).
2nd – LeBron will be my MVP as long as he’s playing (ok, breathing) but the ONLY way he will win this year’s title would be if the Cavs win all but 2 of their remaining games AND pass the Hawks for 1st place in the East AND Sweet Pea scores at least 35 every night AND he cuts the turnovers down to 2/game. Even then, I doubt they’d give it to him! He’s being penalized for missing 11 games & will probably sit out 1-3 more games near the end of the regular season to “rest up” for the Playoffs (as he has the last 2 years). I read something last week that said over the past several years, the MVP has rarely missed more than 5 regular season games due to injury. If this is some kind of unwritten rule, it would exclude LeBron AND Westbrook. Of course, 4 of those MVP wins were by LeBron, one of the most amazingly DURABLE players of at least the past 25 years so he’s being judged against his HERCULEAN self. Sigh.
Also, you sound like Simmons! LeBron did NOT spend his entire 2 off-weeks down in Florida. He spent a few days down there with one of his trainers and to get out of the OHIO cold. If you needed to rehab in JANUARY, wouldn’t YOU rather do it in Miami than Cleveland? Hmpfh! Well, actually, I’m not entirely sure what was going on with LBJ’s sabbatical. (Except that he was NOT in Florida the entire time!). Was it totally injury-related? Was it part psychological &/or emotional because things weren’t going so well at the time & maybe he thought he’d made a horrible mistake? Either way, I’m FINE with his break as he’s been the NBA plow horse/show pony for 12 years & if he needed some time off to rehab/re-focus/re-energize, it’s A-OK with me! Sooprize, sooprize! 🙂 Plus, look at the results since! Now, if only he could stop those terrible turn-overs. (Seriously, I’m worried about these, why so many this year?)
As for the guys who will never-be-as-good-as-LeBron but are the unofficial 2015 MVP finalists – Westbrook has also missed too many games AND even though he’s having all those triple-doubles, his TEAM is losing or almost losing too many of those games. For pete’s sake, the lowly, tanking Sixers took them to Overtime! Harden – AKA the Foul Snatcher, if he wasn’t trying to get a foul called on his opponent, he’d have NO game! Plus, anyone with that facial hair should automatically be disqualified. Which leaves us with ‘Angelface-I can shoot with my eyes closed’ Curry. His team is atop the West, he handily won the recent All-Star weekend 3-pt contest, he’s not obnoxious with the press or public, he’s got that cute SC commercial, & as long as he doesn’t get arrested or go into a 6 week shooting slump which causes his team to plummet to 4th or lower in the standings, he’s your official 2015 MVP winner. He should start writing his speech now as unless he announces a cure for cancer at his ceremony, it will be deemed a ‘let-down’ as compared to last year’s KD-most-repeat-broadcasted version of any speech since Jimmy V & Lou Gehrig.
Also, you seem to have forgotten, but last year the PTB decided KD was the MVP BEFORE the freakin All Star break! No matter how many 30 pt (61 with the broken nose) games LBJ had in the 2nd half of the season, it mattered naught.