by John Walters

Starting Five

1. 55-5

The Dubs’ record is now a classic TV phone number prefix. Golden State won its 44th consecutive home game last night (121-106 over OKC), tying the Chicago Bulls’ (Jordan era, post-baseball career) for the all-time record. They’ll break it on Monday against Orlando.

Time-capsule play came late in the contest: Andrew Bogut deflects a pass in the front court and  Steph Curry chases it down to the sideline, free-throw line extended. Steph runs down the ball, passes it over his head and behind his back to Shaun Livingston, who is running up court. Shaun tries to pass it to his left to Klay Thompson, but the pass is deflected near midcourt. Shaun chases that down, passes to Draymond Green, who himself is racing up court. Green takes pass in full stride, takes two dribbles, passes to an open Klay Thompson for dunk.

Everything I just described transpired in six seconds. You can watch it here (go to 2:55)

2. Jesse’s Girl

Testimony in the Erin Andrews civil suit is expected to conclude today. Yesterday the jury heard testimony from Jesse Palmer, which you can listen to here. Earlier this week Michael Peskind, a dope who is an executive for West End Hotel partners, actually was out to dinner at the Margot Cafe in Nashville with friends and, only one day after he had taken the stand to testify, allegedly pulled out his phone and showed his dinner companions the video.

A bartender at the restaurant ratted out Peskind, whose little stunt might just wind up costing his company $75 million. That’s a pretty expensive download, sir.

3. Handemonium*

*The judges will also accept “Game Of Inches” and “Stump Speech” (Thanks to the tweeps who supplied those)

The last GOP debate was a figurative bleep-swinging contest, and last night’s was a literal one. The Donald: “Look at those hands, are they small hands? And, [Rubio] referred to my hands — ‘if they’re small, something else must be small.’ I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee.”

And all I was thinking was, It’s too damn bad that this had to be the night Ben Carson chose to stop appearing in debates. How funny would it have been if he had just cleared his throat at the moment (cue Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles: “It’s twue! It’s twue!”)

New Donald theme song should be borrowed from Bruce: “Trumps like us, baby, we were born to run….

4. You’ll Get Nothing And Like It

Our friends at The Big Lead put out a Top 10 Comedy Films (of “All Time,” of course; everything in the internet age is ranked on an “all-time” basis, which usually can be translated as “as far back as 1980”) list yesterday.  Here was their “Groupthink” (all the TBL writers submitted 15 films) list of top comedies, ranked here in order: Anchorman, The Big Lebowski, Coming To America, Dumb and Dumber, Animal House, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles, Old School, Airplane!, Annie Hall.

There are actually four pre-1980 films on the list, which is better than I expected. I don’t think anyone at TBL is over 40 years old, and the age bias here shows (just as my nearly-50 age bias probably shows on the list below). The staff at Medium Happy got together in wake of seeing this and compiled its own list, with the proviso that we did not attempt to rank them. But here’s our Top Ten, some of which overlap: Airplane!, Caddyshack, Blazing Saddles, Animal House, Annie Hall, Duck Soup, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, This Is Spinal Tap, Groundhog Day, The Hangover.

Honorable Mentions: Anchorman, Young Frankenstein, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Dumb and Dumber, The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, The Sure Thing, Kingpin, Role Models, What About Bob?, Pitch Perfect.

Most Overrated Comedy: Ghostbusters.

Feel free to flay me in the Comments section.

5. Utter Lunarcy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dmJdixbHCk

So we have this friend. Let’s call him Sorp. He’s a Stanford grad and a quasi-practicing attorney. He has two engineering patents even though he was not an engineering major. He’s kind of intelligent.

Now, I’ll let you decide whether he leans toward genius or insanity, but he has written a book, Moonfraud (also the title of my upcoming book about the Peyton Manning case), declaring that the Apollo 11 lunar landing was a hoax. I’ve posted his YouTube video above, which briefly and perhaps not quite clearly lays out his argument. You’re probably smarter about astrophysics than we are, so if you want to dissect his argument and/or disavow it, please go ahead. We’re all just looking for truth here.

Music 101

Rapper’s Delight

Is that a musical genre I hear being born? In 1979 The Sugarhill Gang out of Englewood, N.J., released this 14-plus minute atomic bomb that changed the entire vector of popular music. Nobody had ever head anything like this before (Blondie’s “Rapture” [rap-ture, get it?] would not be released for another year. If you read up on the history, Blondie actually had a lot to do with this song, and hip-hop, being launched (so did the band Chic and its song “Good Times,” by the way). Anyway, this was the first hip hop single to chart (it peaked at No. 36) and it was the band’s only hit single. According to Wikipedia, this song was recorded in one take.

Remote Patrol

Saturday

Tottenham at Arsenal

7:40 a.m. NBC Sports Net

You get three points for a win, one for a draw in soccer. Tottenham is in second place in the English Premier League with 54 points, or just three behind surprising upstart Leicester City (57). Arsenal is in third place with 51 points. The Gunners (Arsenal) would love to pull even with Hotspur (Tottenham) in what is known as the North London derby. Both clubs lost on Wednesday.