by John Walters

Starting Five

POTUS Operandi

Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, delivers his final State of the Union address. Props to the camera guy and producer who, when Obama delivered a line about extremist views,  focused directly on Kim Davis. 

2. Billions*

The Powerball lottery is going to be at least $1.5 billion by the time the numbers are selected tonight. The bad, or if you want to look at it another way, good news is that even if you win you won’t be one of the 400 wealthiest people in America. But you probably won’t feel so conflicted by having both HBO and Showtime.*

*See what we did there? Billions premieres on Showtime this Sunday. MH expects a healthy residual payment for this.

3. House of David (Bowie)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DazZAI7Vq9U

In 1992 David Bowie was one of the performers who appeared at a tribute to Freddie Mercury at Wembley Stadium in London. Wearing a lime suit, he performed Under Pressure, naturally, with Annie Lennox sitting in for Queen’s lead singer, and then he closed with Heroes. Before leaving the stage, though, he took a knee and recited the Lord’s Prayer.

I’ve updated my Bowie song list from Monday, by the way—how did I forget “Young Americans?” Also, this tune was an MTV staple in the mid-Eighties….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTYvjrM6djo

4. Meet Me, But Not In St. Louis

Take that, Thomas Wolfe: You can go home again. The St. Louis Rams are going from Kurt Warner to Curt, Warmer, and moving back to Los Angeles. So how come no one in the City of Angels really seems to care? And have you been to Carson? It may be uglier than East Rutherford. I have a better idea: the Billings Bighorns. I’ll tell you more later.

Here is the home page for the St. Louis Rams today….

5. Andrew Smith, Butler

Former Butler center Andrew Smith passed away from cancer at the age of 25 on Monday. Way too young, of course. In his brief life Smith appeared in not one but two NCAA basketball championship games, something that March Madness legends such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Danny Manning cannot say.

Smith played one minute in Butler’s 2010 loss to Duke, a 61-59 thriller. He started and played 29 minutes the following year in the Bulldogs’ 8-poing loss to U Conn, scoring 5 points and grabbing a team-high 9 rebounds. Here’s Brad Stevens, who got away from coaching the Celtics last week to say goodbye, on his former player.

Music 101

Blow Away

Some day we’re going to do a blog post on how, if you compiled the best solo work by John, Paul, George and Ringo in the Seventies, you’d have one hell of a Beatles album. Maybe even a double album.

This George Harrison song is so simple, but catchy, as most great pop songs are. This reached No. 11 on the U.S. charts in 1979, and climbed to No. 1 in the UK.

Remote Patrol

I checked. There’s really nothing on tonight. Go to the gym. You could lose a few pounds.