by John Walters
A Medium Happy 57th birthday to Bradley Whitford. This may be my favorite scene from The West Wing, and this ran years before Twitter existed and before the true nature of commenters, trolls, etc., was fully appreciated. Long live LemonLyman.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAB858elJOw
Starting Five
Well… #debate #trump pic.twitter.com/SDBHUSfeUI
— ? (@E__R__O) October 10, 2016
Pu**y Riot*
*The judges mean “Puppy.” What did you think we meant?
Thoughts and ideas from Debate II and the latest weekend of Trump….
—First Donald Trump threw Mike Pence under the bus, then he boarded the bus and told Billy Bush about how his fame allowed him to sexually assault women.
Look out! He’s behind you….
—Even if it is “locker room talk (it’s not)”, Trump wasn’t in a locker room.
K-Bone! You rock.
—Kenneth Bone, (K-Bone?) you’ve just extended Bobby Moynihan‘s career on SNL. You also down with a Bone-Pence 2020 ticket?
—Yes, the most dangerous Bush to Trump all year turns out to be Billy…
“She’s Just Not That Into You” https://t.co/0moaFXgh3K
— Medium Happy (@jdubs88) October 10, 2016
—Even your own daughter knows….
—Hillary looked feckless on the emails and on that whole “I saw a Stephen Spielberg film once” answer. She should have gone with Saving Paul Ryan. Not her best debate, She’s definitely hiding something on the deleted emails. Nothing as bad as, “We need to out nuke Russia,” but something bad.
“I had the time of my life/And I’ve never felt like this before/And I swear/It’s the truth/And I owe it all to you-ooou-ooooo”
—I mean, even @KellyAnnePolls is subject to a slip.
—Trump suggested that he’d be throwing HRC in jail if he becomes president. He’ll make a wonderful Third World dictator.
—Is Donald still answering the Aleppo question? Call me when he’s done.
—”And I’m unproud to be an American…”
—Just broked: NBC has suspended “Bushy.”
2. Toronto Rougneds Up Texas
Sign of the times, eh?
Toronto sweeps Texas, 3-0, and sends home a second team in one week with a walk-off hit at the Rogers Centre…okay, this one was a walk-off fielder’s choice with an error, the first such series-ending play in divisional series history.
One out, bottom 10th, runners on first and second. Russell Martin hits a grounder to short off Texas reliever Matt Bush (yet another Bush from Texas), Elvis Andurs throws a low relay to Rougned Odor, renowned Jose Bautista abuser, who throws a one-hopper that pulls first baseman Mitch Moreland off the bag, and that he fails to field cleanly. Blue Jay runner Josh Donaldson sprints home and dives headfirst into the ALCS.
Blue Jays win, 7-6. Series-ending error on Odor. Do you believe in karma?
3. We AARP The World*
The Stones brought their A-game, or so we are told….
*The judges are also considering “Rock of Aged,” Sucking In Their Seventies,” “Long-Lived Rock,” and Their Generation.”
Considering the lineup over the three days—Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters and The Who—I expected to hear more about the inaugural Desert Trip in Indio, Calif., but I really didn’t. The Los Angeles Times gave the shows an Under-My-Thumbs Up
4. Mark Burnett
Burnett started out in the USA as a Malibu nanny and selling T-shirts on Venice Beach. No lie.
In October of 2002 I had the good fortune of spending three weeks in Fiji, covering the final Eco Challenge. The event’s founder, Mark Burnett, was there the whole time. I had a lot of time to hang out with him and a few other journalists.
Now Burnett is better known as the creator of Survivor, The Apprentice and Shark Tank. All of which brings us to Donald Trump. What intrigues me about Burnett, who had as much to do with where Trump is today as anyone outside of Fred Trump, is that unlike Donald he is a self-made man; a war hero; an immigrant.
There’s actually a youth hostel and a bar on this island. I spent an excellent Sunday there once.
And yet he appears to be a Trump supporter, albeit not a vocal one. I guess once you get into that top one-tenth of one percent, your perspective changes. It’s also curious that Burnett produces Shark Tank, whose star is Mark Cuban, an outspoken Trump adversary. Arguably THE most outspoken one among billionaires.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this nugget of wisdom I recall Burnett sharing with me, as he discussed why some four-person Eco-Challenge teams were less likely to succeed than others. One night he said, “You’re never completely a failure until you blame someone else.” I wonder if he remembers saying that. And I wonder if he ever thinks about that wisdom in his assessment of Donald Trump.
5. Splashmouth Football
N.C. State: We came to rain!
It just keeps spiraling downward for Notre Dame (in a downward direction, Brian Kelly can really spin it), which has now lost six of its last eight games. Saturday’s 10-3 loss to North Carolina State in the outer reaches of Hurricane Matthew might have been forgivable if Coach I-Know-What-I’m-Doing had put the Fighting Irish in position to win.
But Kelly didn’t. Despite having at least two future first or at worst second round picks on his offensive line, Kelly insisted on throwing the ball in a hurricane (according to the indomitable and intrepid Pete Sampson of Irish Illustrated, the Irish ran just two more times than they passed in 64 plays). You’ve got Quenton Nelson and Mike McGlinchey, future NFL starters, on the same side. Run the ball behind them.
Subtract sacks from the rushing attempts and add them to passes. Notre Dame finished with 33 rushes/31 passes in hurricane conditions.
— Irish Illustrated (@PeteSampson_) October 8, 2016
You’ve got Malik Zaire and C.J. Sanders, two of your five best playmakers, and you give each of them the ball once. You mess with your punt call, which is the play that cost you the game.
In short, your hubris compelled you to think that your mental acumen, translated to the actions of your players, could transcend a natural disaster. You sped right into the iceberg because you believed nothing could stop you. And yelling at your center, Sam Mustipher, at the end of the game was a pretty bad look. No one gets to yell at you. Trust me, they want to.
The Irish are 2-4 with five of their final six games against teams that can beat them. Irish do host Stanford next, maybe the only school having as bad a time the past few weeks outside of them and Michigan State.
Music 101
Time of the Season
The British band The Zombies recorded this tune in 1967 at Abbey Road Studios in London. It climbed to No. 3 on the charts in 1968. A quintessential late Sixties tune, right down to the Hammond organ. This may be the best Doors song that the Doors didn’t actually write.
Remote Patrol
Baseball Orgy
Nationals at Dodgers (4 p.m., MLBN, 1-1)
Indians at Red Sox (6 p.m. TBS, 2-0)
Cubs at Giants (9:30 p.m., FS1 2-0)
Maybe not in sheer numbers, but in terms of awe and a sense of being larger than life at the plate, Big Papi is the closest thing to Babe Ruth we’ll see in our lifetimes
Nat-Dodgers: Will Vin Scully show up in person? Tribe-BoSox: Is this the last call for David “Milk of The Papi” Ortiz? Cubs-Giants: MadBum pitching in an elimination game. SF has Chicago right where it wants them.
A few things:
1) You nailed it with the callback to The West Wing and the dawn of internet trolls. I once “met” Bradley Whitford while on assignment at Warner Bros. Studios as a young ad man. When I say “met,” I mostly mean I saw them shooting an outside scene and later saw him with his wife and 2 little kids eating lunch. The W.B. staff was very serious that nobody was to speak to the “talent” unless first spoken to, so I said nothing. I also go to walk through the “White House” set. I walked through the West entrance and after turning a corner just past the foyer was transported into the Santos for President offices.
2) When you say “No one gets to yell at you,” I take it that you mean in person. I was raised watching ND football with a mother who would routinely yell loud enough for me and my friends to hear her in the back yard as we were recreating any given long pass from Ron Paulus to Derrick Mayes. Thus, I was yelling throughout the game (as I do most ND games), mostly about why are they trying to throw the rain-drenched football through near-hurricane level winds? Why?! … or something like that.
3) I also don’t know why Kizer holds on to the ball for so long. Seems like he’s trying to find the “perfect” option and his WR to get open, but sometimes he’s got to know that the rush is on to him and to just run for it. That clock (from snap to deciding to run) should have been even shorter on Saturday, in my humble opinion.
A friend of mine opted for the artisanal, farm-to-table experience at Coachella. Even amidst all the creature comforts she had to admit: “A little Dylan goes a long way.”
(co-sign)
Her favorite performers? Neil Young and Pete Townshend. You better you better you bet.
Lyman was absolutely prescient with the insanity of online groupthink. If I had to spend extended time existing in the realm of a TV show, I could do a lot worse than Sorkinland.
Whitford is the Dad in Jordan Peele’s new movie “Get Out.” I think it’s a decidedly different role than Lyman.