by John Walters

Starting Fire

Is 2017 already up in flames? Not yet, but this apartment fire in Holyoke, Massachusetts, was not a terrific harbinger. One woman died and two people are missing.

Starting Five

Ronda, Drowsy*

*The judges will also accept “Friday Night Lights Out”

In her first bout since losing to Holly Holm in Australia in November of 2015, Ronda Rousey was quick meat against Amanda Nunes, losing in just :48 seconds. The once invincible princess of the octagon is now 29, has lost two straight bouts, and is badly in need of a pep talk on the beach from Adrian Balboa. There was no eye of the tiger on Friday night.

Rousey did pocket $3 million for the effort, while Nunes earned $100,000 for the purse and an extra $200,000 for the victory. Have we seen Rousey’s final bout?

A Super Bowl

You won’t see a more entertaining bowl game this season than Friday night’s Orange Bowl in which Florida State beat Michigan,33-32. It gave us: a punt fumbled away at the one-yard line, a Mackey Award winner and probably 2nd-round pick, Jake Butt, suffering a torn ACL while Steve Levy and Brian Griese spent half the game praising the “toughness” of FSU’s Dalvin Cook for playing and assessing us that Jabrill Peppers wasn’t wussing out as Christian McCaffrey and Leonard Fournette had.

(Let’s explore that for a moment: Michigan’s highest rated draft pick, Peppers, strains a hammy in mysterious fashion this week and no one knows about it until literally minutes before the game, and so he sits out. And almost as if the Gods of Irony want to expose someone, Butt, a likely 2nd-round pick, suffers an injury that should keep him out until at least the middle of the next NFL season. All the while the commentators are extolling the virtues of Cook’s decision to play the game.

Injuries happen, sure, and you can’t play football obsessing over them. But Butt’s injury underscores from a pragmatic perspective why sitting out a non-playoff bowl game isn’t a stupid idea for a player who is a sure first- or second-rounder. How much will Butt’s injury—it’s his second torn ACL— potentially cost him?)

As we were saying, it also had a Pick-6, a 71-yard run by Cook (145 rushing yards), a PAT block return, a 14-points-from-behind second half comeback by UM without its top two players, an awkward booth handshake between Bob Griese and his son, some Gordita-level hits from Taco Charlton of the Wolverines, a 66-yard KO return by FSU frosh Keith Gavin as his teammate stomped the turf in anger because he took it out of the end zone, and a go-ahead score on a fade route thrown over arguably the nation’s top cornerback, Michigan’s Jourdan Lewis.

3. Musicalifornia

Saw La La Land last week. People will quibble about the fact that it isn’t quite as perfect as it might have been, or of opportunities missed to do numbers around iconic L.A. sites (I was hoping for a very dark LaBrea Tar Pits number, or at least something beneath the peristyle at the L.A. Coliseum), but I did love it. A lot like Hamilton, the film knocks you off your feet with its first three numbers and then finds it impossible to maintain that pace. But still, even with you off your feet, you still find a way to tap your toes.

The opening scene takes place in bumper-to-bumper traffic at what I believe is the Judge Harry Pregerson Interchange (110 and 105 intersection) and acts as the explanation of what you’re about to see before segueing into an interchange of a different sort, a mutual bird-flipping between two commuters who happen to be our two stars, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone), who don’t know each other yet but will soon be swooning.

And yes, this is from 31 year-old writer-director Damien Chazelle, who gave us Whiplash. He wrote this first, but couldn’t get Hollywood to bankroll it, so he wrote Whiplash to build up some cred for himself in the industry. The plan worked.

Decide for yourself. Me, I loved it.

4. Jerry Riffs on Sir Paul, Prizes and Marriage

This is five years old, but I’d never seen it before. Five minutes of time-capsule level Seinfeld. And, as an extra bonus to you here, at no extra charge, are Jon Hamm and Tina Fey at an awards ceremony last month.

5. Michael Lewis Can’t Lose

Here’s a terrific piece in The Washington Post on author Michael Lewis from fellow author and Cardinal Isidore Newman alum (and fellow extremely wealthy man) Walter Isaacson. Also, if you read just one link from today’s post, read this piece by WaPo reporter extraordinaire David Fahrenthold on his year reporting on Donald Trump (it’s funny, too).

Music 101

Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End

While Let It Be was the last album The Beatles released, Abbey Road is the final one the band recorded, in 1969. This suite of songs closes the album. That’s Sir Paul McCartney on vocals.

Remote Patrol

The Rose Bowl

Penn State vs USC

5 p.m. ESPN

Two blue bloods meet in the Arroyo Seco in what is always the best venue for a college football game during holiday season, bar none. Alas, the forecast calls for cloudy skies so that view of the San Gabriels won’t be as sublime as usual.