by John Walters
That’s great. It’s starts with an earthquake. Snails and snakes an, areoplane. And Lenny Bruce is not afraid. A Medium Happy 56th to Michael Stipe.
Starting Five
Wayne Rogers (Trapper John) died on New Year’s Eve. It was a bad day for Hawkeyes all around.
1. Christian Soldiers Onward
Our Red Grange Award winner, Christian McCaffrey, gains 75 yards and scores a touchdown on an underneath route, without being touched, on the very first play of the Rose Bowl. Brent and Jesse didn’t even have time to give us the family lineage backstory, and he was already gone.
It was a Grange-worthy (vs. Michigan, 10/18/24) first half for the sophomore, who later in the first half returned a punt 66 yards for a TD, too. He had 368 all-purpose yards, a Rose Bowl record (and also became the first player in the game’s 113-year history to rush for 100 yards and have 100 yards receiving), and it would have been above 400 if his 50-plus yard TD run for scrimmage hadn’t been called back because of a hold that was not necessary. Christian McCaffrey does NOT need you to cheat for him.
We think he can hear you
Reactions on McCaffrey’s game (Stanford raced out to a 35-0 halftime lead, and won 45-16):
Stanford coach David Shaw: “I think he was the best player in America before this game, so I think it’s just the icing on the cake,”
Bro Who Video-Bombed Post-game Interview with Maria Taylor and Looked Too Much Like a Young Jim Harbaugh: “Heisman! Heisman! Heisman!”
2. Injustice For All
He’ll have Avery difficult time overturning a second felony conviction.
“Of course I’m dangerous. I’m police. I can do terrible things with impunity.”
Rust Cohle‘s statement kept popping up in my head as I devoured all 10 episodes of Making a Murderer on NetFlix this weekend. If you’re curious and have yet to watch: This is the true story of a man from Simpleton, Wisconsin, ( <–go with it) who was wrongly imprisoned for 18 years for a sexual assault he did not commit. Upon release, facts come to light that the sheriff and a few other law enforcement officials from Manitowoc County railroaded his conviction. They knew of another more likely suspect and ignored him (that man later confessed).
Of all the punchable faces in Making a Murderer, attorney Len Kachinsky seems the punchable-est.
Oh, but it gets worse. Our poorly educated, white-trash hero (or is he?) sues the county. For $36 million, enough money to bankrupt the Manitowoc County. Three weeks later a woman goes missing and her Rav4 is found in his salvage yard. Then a lot of key evidence just happens to turn up on his property (but only after multiple searches, and only after some bizarre coincidences). And it just keeps getting worse.
At one point during a TV interview, when the sheriff is asked about suspicions that they are framing Avery for a murder he did not commit, the sheriff actually says, by way of declaring his innocence, “It would’ve been easier for us to eliminate him than to frame him.”
Scary. And depressing. I’ll admit that I ordinarily see prosecutors as no-nonsense and direct, and defense lawyers as a little too slick and shady. I got exactly the opposite impression here. Dean Strang and Jerry Buting come off as heroic. Ken Kratz, the prosecutor, is downright sleazy (he will later resign as a County D.A. after he is caught sexting a battered woman whose case he prosecuted).
Did Avery do it? He might’ve. But watching how the state “builds” its case against Avery will erode your trust in law enforcement (unless you’re black, in which case you’re saying, “I told you so”).
Here’s a piece on how the filmmakers made this documentary.
3. Commanders-In-Chief In Corvettes Getting Coffee
Jerry just learned that he received a presidential pardon for mail fraud.
If you have 20 spare minutes and access to the internet, avail yourself of this outstanding webisode of CICGC. It really heats up about halfway through when our host, Jerry Seinfeld, and his guest, the 44th president of the United States of America, become getting comfortable with each other.
Jerry: “I never retired. I’m still working.”
Obama: “You still doing stand-up?”
Jerry (pause): “You still making speeches?”
So many nice touches, such as when Jerry arrives at the Oval Office by knocking on the window, and Obama just gives him the disdainful “Go around to the door” wave. It’s just like an episode of Seinfeld except that it takes place at the White House and there’s an African-American character who is not playing a security guard.
4. Yokel Haram*
They refuge to budge
*Not mine, but I wish it were. They’re also being referred to as “Y’AllQueda” and “White ISIS.”
Al Bundy. Peg Bundy. Ted Bundy. McGeorge Bundy. Clive Bundy, and his kin. There are just a bundle of bad Bundy out there.
I haven’t got the complete picture, yet, but apparently 150 or so heavily armed not-terrorists (it’s very important to them that you know that) have taken over a federal building in a wildlife refuge in Oregon and aren’t going to budge. This is Bundy’s Last Stand. They’re a little sick of the government interfering with their property. And, you know, they may owe a lot in back taxes.
It’s sort of a perversion of the Woody Guthrie line. They’re singing, “This land is our land, this land is our land…”
Anyway, I don’t get it. If you want to live somewhere that is devoid of government interference and you can do whatever pleases you, just move to Wall Street.
5. Bowl Bummers
Nooooooooooo!
—Jaylon Smith’s “significant” knee injury in the Fiesta Bowl, in what should have been his final Notre Dame game before being a Top 10 NFL draft pick.
–Alabama 38, Michigan State 0. Stanford 35, Iowa 0 at the half. Georgia 24, Penn State 3 in the third quarter (ended 24-17). Tennessee 45, Northwestern 6. To be fair, the B1G went 5-5 in bowl games, with wins versus USC, UCLA and Florida. It’s just that when they did lose, it seemed that much more visible.
–The boring semis, although, again, to be fair, the first half of the Orange Bowl had an electric atmosphere. I really didn’t mind the New Year’s Eve time slot, but then I’m not the guy who wears the glasses with the numerical year cut out for them. If the contests had been closer, I think the TV ratings still would have suffered, but the overall derision and griping would have been less.
–The targeting rule: Did you really pay that much money to attend the Fiesta Bowl simply to see the potential No. 1 pick in the NFL draft get ejected for hitting a quarterback in the sternum? C’mon. At the very least, targeting needs to be changed to a Flagrant 1/Flagrant 2 situation, if for no other reason than that we can have ESPN broadcasters get all didactic about what the difference between the two is.
–An overall prevailing sense that ESPN completely runs college football and spoon feeds us the story lines, etc. A lot of people at ESPN do a great job (special salutes to Chris Spielman and Brent Musburger), and it’s not as if they don’t care. It’s just that if I wanted a sports league and a television network to be indivisible from one another, I’d still be watching the XFL.
p.s. The Alamo Bowl was great. A friend of mine took Oregon minus the points. Poor him.
Music 101
New Year’s Day
An obvious choice (for our first post of the new year), but this song AND video is what first caught everyone’s attention about U2. In the early 1980s, New Wave bands from the UK (and Ireland) were churning out on the MTV at a rate of one per week (or more), but there was something different about these guys. We just knew. Either that or they were a slightly better version of Big Country. Anyway, though torn in two/we can be one (just like Ireland!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0adDZ2-Y9_s
Remote Patrol
Johnny Belinda
AMC 6 p.m.
Why, man? Why are you doing this?
In the golden age of Hollywood, this 1948 film was nominated for TWELVE Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Jane Wyman (above) won for Best Actress. In an adaptation of an actual incident, Wyman plays a deaf mute who is raped by a town drunk and then marries the star of Bedtime for Bonzo. Or something like that. Anyway, I’ve never seen it, either. Maybe we should all tune in. Twelve Oscar nominations, after all.