by John Walters

Starting Five

Pitt Stop

First Hiddleswift, and now Brangelina? This is why I always refer to them separately as William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman, as opposed to MaHuf. If you haven’t heard, Angelina Jolie has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt. They have six children.

2. Warren (Says Her) Piece

I hope Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf knows a good proctologist, because he suffered quite the ass-chewing while being grilled by a Congressional subcommittee on Capitol Hill yesterday. One senator rightly asked Stumpf, after he claimed he first learned about fraud within his company in 2013 even though 1,000 employees had been fired for committing fraud two years earlier, in 2011, “Why doesn’t this prove that a company like yours is not only too big to fail, but too big to manage?”

But it was Elizabeth Warren who seriously ripped him a new one, telling Strumpf that he should resign and referring to his stewardship as “gutless leadership.”

3. The White Knight of Queen of Katwe

This is my very close friend Tim Crothers. More than a decade ago, this UNC alum living in Chapel Hill was a regular in soccer coach/icon Anson Dorrance‘s near-daily afternoon roller hockey game. The two developed a friendship.

That led to Tim writing a critically-acclaimed biography of Dorrance, The Man Watching.

That led to Dorrance lobbying Tar Heel hoops coach Roy Williams on Crothers’ behalf for him to write a bio on Williams, which he did, titled Hard Work.

That led to Tim giving a talk at a local seafood restaurant in Chapel Hill on St. Patrick’s Day, 2010, where a man showed him a newspaper clipping (the man had tossed it in the trash three times, but then thought better of it each time and retrieved it) about a young girl from the slums of Kampala, Uganda, who was an international chess champion.

That led to Tim writing a story about the girl, Phiona Mutesi, for ESPN the Magazine, which entailed him traveling first to Uganda and then Siberia, which was nominated for a National Magazine Award, which led to his book, The Queen of Katwe, which has led to the Disney release this Friday in select cities of the film, Queen of Katwe.

One of my favorite things about my friend is his dry and self-deprecating sense of humor. When I spoke to him a week ago, he told me that they’d had a screening of the film in Chapel Hill recently. However, the way films and TV shows are now sent out is they send a link that you can download, but it comes with a password. Well, the theater was given the incorrect password and the movie was delayed. Tim was asked to stretch, to do a Q&A with the crowd during the delay.

He did that for 10 to 15 minutes, but they still had no password. So someone suggested Tim go out in the lobby and sell/sign a few books. He did. He was doing that for half an hour or so when someone approached and said, “You know, they started the movie about 10 minutes ago.” That’s kind of a writer’s life in a nut shell.

There are a lot of celebrated sports writers and sports writers-turned-talking heads out there. Tim Crothers and Steve Rushin are the two best that I know of. They’re the real deal. The story of Phiona Mutesi is a true underdog tale, but so then is the story of Crothers, whom SI  laid off in June of 2001 (along with two other hacks, Bill Nack and Leigh Montville, as well as yours truly), but he has recovered quite nicely.

4. Scranton-Wilkes Barre Tops El Paso

Not sure why there’s so little fanfare for the championship game of the highest domestic level of baseball outside the Major Leagues, but you probably did not hear that the Scranton/Wilkes Barre Railriders defeated the El Paso Chihuahuas last night in the AAA Championship Game. S/WB’s Chris Parmalee hit a three-run homer before the Railriders made their first out in the first inning, and those were all the runs they needed in the 3-1 victory. S/WB are the Yankees’ top affiliate.

Also last night, S/WB alum Gary Sanchez hit the game-winning homer for the Yanks at Tampa Bay. That’s Filthy Sanchez’s 17th homer in just 43 games, tying him for the most home runs in that opening span in MLB history (he had 10 in 73 games with S/WB this season before being called up in August).

Also, Boston’s David Ortiz hit his 36th home run in Boston’s win at Baltimore. That breaks Dave Kingman’s record for the most home runs by a player in his final season, which makes everyone in Boston implore, “WHY must this be your final season, Big Papi?”

5. Skittles Skam

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0qCXXTo5iw

Here’s Stephen Colbert dismantling Donald Trump, Jr.’s Skittles meme…

Music 101

Smoke On The Water

There’s a classic rock tune whose opening riff you can play on the guitar after just one lesson, and this tune by Deep Purple is it. If someone wants to call this 1972 tune the birth of heavy metal, I’m not sure I’d disagree (though Jimmy Page and Ozzy Osbourne might). The tune peaked at No. 4 in the U.S. and that is, as the deejays at KUPD-FM in Phoenix used to say, “the blazing guitar of Ritchie Blackmore” you are hearing. Vocals by Ian Gillan.

(Listen to the comments by the former band member [not sure which this is] after the song; very funny.)

Remote Patrol

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

TCM 8 p.m.

This 1963 comic bouillabaise, the Cannonball Run of its era, is loaded with Hollywood funny men of the time: Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, Phil Silvers and Dick Shawn. But it also has Jimmy Durante, Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney and Peter Falk. Everyone is vamping here, just having a good time and basically playing themselves before I assume hitting The Sands or The Desert Inn for happy hour.