by John Walters
Starting Five
No one balls quite like the Beard…
Harden My Heart
At halftime the score was 90-65. No, it wasn’t an All-Star Game, it was the Rockets at Suns. James Harden finished with 48 points, the highest total in the NBA this season, we believe. The Suns were led in scoring by someone named Troy Daniels. There’s no there there with this team….Rockets win, 142-116 (the third time Phx has lost by 25 or more and the season’s just one month old).
2. C’s The Day
We don’t know how they’re doing it, either. With only a single starter who is a legit All-Star, Kyrie Irving, and without their No. 2 player (Gordon Hayward) since early in the season-opening game, the Celtics just won their 14th in a row last night, taking down the NBA champion-Golden State Warriors in Boston, 92-88.
Stephen Curry was held to 9 points while ALL FIVE Celtic starters finished in double figures. Brad Stevens, you are a magician.
3. Al-abama? Franken-stein? Mr. Groper? Help Us
Assault or a dumb joke captured on camera? Or both?
Him, too? Yep. Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) is the latest male harasser to be outed, this time by former Fox Sports personality and current LA deejay Leeann Tweeden. We’re not sure about the gravity of the allegations, but we do know that Franken has already apologized and Tweeden has already accepted his mea culpa. Will Franken’s career go down the tubes, or will he survive in the Senate because he’s “good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like him?”
The incident above took place on a USO Tour in 2006, before Franken became a senator. Creepily, Franken wrote a skit in which Tweeden would have to kiss him.
4. Ooze Control
Yesterday was another Terrible Day For planet Earth under the Worst Wing.
In South Dakota, just five days before the Public Service Commission in Nebraska will decide whether to grant a permit for a new, long-delayed sister pipeline called Keystone XL, the Keystone Pipelie (no “n”) spills more than 210,000 gallons of oil. Read this in Esquire by Charles Pierce.
Meanwhile, for some reason, the Trump administration is reversing a ban on bringing elephant trophies from Africa into the U.S.
These are the WORST people. My heart is honestly breaking.
5. Musk-Have Vehicle?
Elon Musk makes the cover of the Rolling Stone. The Velvet Underground is still waiting….
Let’s face it: Elon Musk is the kind of name you give to a super villain in an Avengers film (please note: The only superhero film I’ve watched in the past 25 years is Deadpool; no lie). Now, as you await your new Model 3 Tesla, the South African native has unveiled a $250,000 Roadster and an electric semi-truck.
Laugh at Musk (and Bitcoin) all you want, and we know they’re unrelated, but they’re the future. You cannot stop it (please note, people who think pipelines of oil crossing the country north to south are what we should be doing; talk about a continental divide).
Music 101
Lovefool
Give the Swedes this: they know how to write a hook. First, Abba, and now here, in the mid-Nineties, the Cardigans. The song rose to No. 2 for Nina Persson and her bandmates, whose album was titled First Band On The Moon. They would never find this level of success again, though they had another song featured at the end of an episode in Season 1 of Mad Men.
Remote Patrol
Saturday
Michigan at Wisconsin
Noon Fox
UCLA at USC
8 p.m. ABC
Taylor: swift
One game really matters and is a terrific way to begin your day, the other is one of the more glamorous annual rivalries in college football. Watch Jonathan Taylor-Not-Thomas, a finalist for the Herschel Award, take on Rashan Gary of Michigan. Then it’s Sam Darnold versus Josh RosenRosen in the nightcap. It’s a bad, bad day in college football pairings, but these two are decent.
RS actually put the following headline on their mag – “ANATOMY OF A FAKE NEWS SCANDAL” & it was NOT about their very own UVA FAKE GANG RAPE TRAVESTY? There is still a lot to like about ‘Rolling Stone’, (we AARP-eligibles have to stick together…) but I would have chosen a different title for that piece! BTW, WHY is that UVA female accuser still protected from being publicly named? Those that LIE about assault should be penalized to the same degree. That fraternity, the entire school, her then-friends, the Dean of Students, & even the RS writer (granted, she failed at her job) were ALL dragged through the mud because of her LIES & SHE gets off scot-free? HUMBUG!
$250K Tesla roadster? Guess all those GOP assholes (sorry jdubs, but I am ENRAGED) who will get the TAXCONJOB “break” will have the money. As for the rest of us, we’ll just have to hope we all DIE before age 65 since there will be NO MEDICARE & not even your NVDA moola will be enough to pay for health insurance for more than a year for a 65+ without it. (BTW, does it kill you to think if ONLY you’d put your chunk into NVDA a mere 2.5 years ago when it was $22/share? You’d have had quite the tidy sum now. That could have been YOU zooming down the road in the TSLA roadster (well, you’d have had to finance half) ). 🙂
I’m STILL waiting to read & hear the sports media SCREECHING that the UCLA THREE be BARRED FOR LIFE FROM BASKETBALL… Yep, fingers drumming on the table, STIIIILLLLL waiting…
Finally, you’ve let me down today jdubs. WHERE is the mention of the 67 year-old Floriduh woman who dressed up in a full TURKEY costume & went into a Belk department store & proceeded to, er, “stuff” herself with over $1500 of pilfered merchandise? She was caught & I assume given a (ahem) “dressing” down by the store’s security folks while being arrested. Here’s my question – did she leave the giblets IN or OUT? 😉
One more thing- Al Franken should NOT resign from the Senate until Groper-in-Chief Trump RESIGNS! Actually, unless something worse is revealed, I’d say Al should stay & continue the absolutely necessary fight against the Congressional Neo-Nazi GOP. Heck, there are FAR worse sexual offenders in Congress & the WHITE HOUSE. And then of course, there’s the Bama PEDOPHILE attempting to join.
You forgot to mention the worst part of the Suns’ loss last night. Houston had 90 at halftime. 90! Horrible.
Are you reading, Susie B.?!
“James Harden finished with 48 points, the highest total in the NBA this season, we believe.”
Your guy had 57 earlier this year. I thought there would be a 5 paragraph diatribe on how “Sweet Pea” performed magnificent that night, detailing each and every point scored. I’m disappointed.
My deepest apologies, Susie B. I’ll withhold this week’s pay of the MH NBA researcher who missed that.
Even better, image #2 displayed “villain” #1. How are these things not correlated?
I skipped (for now) the sections on Harden & the now-hated Celtics because I can only handle so much rage &/or despair in the morning & the gdamn NAZI GOP got there 1st. 🙁
But yes, Sweet Pea was MAGNIFICENT against the Wizards. On a Friday night. Here in the DMV. And this time he didn’t wear a mask (as he did when he scored his ALL-TIME HIGH 61 pts against the Hornets when with the Heat. Thunder player Serge Ibaka had broken LeBron’s nose in a previous game for which I MAY forgive in a mere 20 more years or so).
Also, the SUPERVILLAINS lost the ONE GAME I wanted them to win this season! Just one MORE reason to curse them! But then I got to thinking – did the Villains lose on purpose to mess with LeBron – to ‘show’ how the King of the East has been overthrown? Man, I HATE that team!
To make it even more 80’s, it’s worth noting who wrote “Jump” : Bryan Adams.