by John Walters

For news on the Humboldt hockey crash, read this report by Moose from yesterday.

Tweet du Jour

 

A brief history of the Dow Jones:

1929: 381
1959: 587 (+1.54x)
1987: 1938 (+3.3x)
2018: 25,075 (+12.9x!!!!)

This is not normal, not sustainable and not good. It’s at workers’ expense.

It’s frustrating that people don’t realize how radically corrupt the last 30 years have been.

— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) April 7, 2018

It may just be a coincidence, but the film Wall Street was released in 1987. They all became Gordon Gekko.

Starting Five

The Champion Nobody Likes

Yesterday, Pat Reed, 27, won his first major, The Masters. His parents, who live in Augusta, watched from home with his sister. He has not spoken to them in years and in fact, the last time they attended a major and attempted to follow him, they were escorted from the grounds. SI’s/Golf.com’s Alan Shipnuck details the family rift.

Reed, who was expelled from Georgia and the led Augusta State to a pair of national championships, finished at 15-under. Rickie Fowler finished -14 under. Jordan Spieth shot  an 8-under in the final round and almost made up the entire 9-shot deficit when Sunday began, but finished at 13-under. Rory McIlroy, who began the day three shots back but shot a 2-over on Sunday to finish 9-under, is still seeking his first Masters.

2. Chappaquiddick

We haven’t seen Black Panther yet (Wakanda fools you think we are?!?), so the best film of 2018 that we have seen is Chappaquiddick. Better, in our opinion, than any Oscar-nominated film from 2017.

If you’ve seen Zodiac, there are a few similarities you should recognize: based on actual events; it opens on a fateful evening in the summer of 1969; a guy and a girl go for a drive; she ends up dead. Director John Curran must be a fan of David Fincher’s, as there’s a memorable ground-up shot of Senator Ted Kennedy’s car, as the youngest Kennedy brother and the ill-fated Mary Jo Kopechne sit on the front hood, that is eerily reminiscent of Zodiac.

If you are like us, you probably are vaguely familiar with the events surrounding Kopechne’s death but are no scholar. Curran’s film fills in the details and portrays Kennedy, who passed away in 2009, as a somewhat sympathetic but ultimately craven figure. As Owen Glieberman calls him in this excellent review in Variety, a “weasel.”

Jason Clarke, who is Australian and was born one day before this event took place (July 18, 1969) is Oscar-worthy here. It helps that he’s not so famous that you think of the actor instead of the character (one of many reasons we never bought Woody Harrelson as LBJ). Bruce Dern, as stroke-addled octogenarian patriarch Joe Kennedy, is chilling. What stands out, though, is how authentic it all feels: it’s the summer of ’69 in Martha’s Vineyard and a carefree beach party, a salve on the still-fresh wound of RFK’s assassination 13 months earlier, becomes yet another Kennedy-associated tragedy (Note: almost 30 years to the day later, John F. Kennedy, Jr. would perish in a plane crash a few miles west of Martha’s Vineyard).

This Op-Ed that ran in The New York Times last Thursday, refuting the validity of the film, is pathetic. First, the author, Neil Gabler, is working on a biography of Senator Kennedy, who passed away in 2009. Worse, his essay never does what he claims that it will do: illustrate that the film “distorts” the tragedy. In fact, the film never sensationalizes it and is extremely meticulous in terms of telling the story. What it never does, what no one has ever adequately explained, is how Kennedy was able to extricate himself from the vehicle once it went off the bridge and yet Kopechne was trapped (with an air pocket, which suggests that all the windows were closed; that detail died with the senator, who always claimed that he had no idea how he came to find himself outside the car).

Ultimately, Chappaquiddick is not only the big-screen portrayal of a tragic and unnecessary death—Kennedy left the scene of the accident and there is compelling evidence that Kopechne was alive in that car for hours, that she did not drown but did in fact suffocate—but of how men in power will break every possible rule they are sworn to enforce in order to remain in power.

By the way, Ed Helms is fantastic as Teddy’s ethically ill-at-ease fixer, Joe Gargan. And pay attention to the one line in the entire film that is given to Kennedy’s wife, Joan (Andria Blackman). It pretty much sums up the way we felt about Teddy by the end of the movie.

3. SNL Hits

Saturday night’s episode with guest host Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther) took the well-worn Black Jeopardy sketch and made it fresh. Stick around for Kenan Thompson’s final line, which is a great commentary on gentrification (have you been to central Harlem lately?).

And this parody commercial on a DACA-inspired version of the game of Life was obviously written by someone born before 1980 but was giggles aplenty. Why did they bury it in the show’s final 15 minutes?

p.s. We’re old and white so we don’t get what all the Cardi B. fuss is about.

4. A Noble Project

The young man on the right is Rishi Sharma, 20. When he was still in high school in southern California he began interviewing World War II veterans. “It’s amazing how much history and knowledge is encased in each one of these individuals and how much is lost when one of them dies without sharing their story,” Sharma has said. “The fact is I wake up every day to obituaries, guys who I wanted to interview and I have to find out they died.”

Two years later Sharma is still interviewing World War II vets, traveling all over the country doing so. He has interviewed 870 or so of them, making a video of their talk and giving a copy to each vet or his family. This is a priceless undertaking and Sharma, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from India, appears to be doing it all out of sincere gratitude.

This will be a movie some day. Count on it.

5. Towering Inferno

A Saturday fire at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue between 57th-56th Streets leaves one older male resident (don’t get your hopes up) dead. While the president tweeted that it is a “well built building” the Fake Liberal News media are reporting that Trump actively lobbied against sprinklers being installed in his high-rises (this one didn’t have one). Trump’s logic was that iIf you look at the fire deaths in New York, almost all of them are in one-or two-family houses,” which conveniently ignores that more people live in such structures than in high rises and, secondly, may not even be true.

Reserves

Baseball!

—Shohei Ohtani, in his second Major League start, becomes the only other pitcher in Angels franchise history besides Nolan Ryan to allow one hit while garnering 12 strikeouts in at least seven innings of work.

—Giancarlo Stanton goes 0-for-7 with another Fun Run (5 Ks). The 2017 NL MVP becomes the first player in the modern era to strike out five times in a game TWICE in one season and it’s only April 9th. Stanton either needs an optometrist, a psychiatrist or temps above 50 degrees. The Yanks, down 8-7 to the Orioles in the bottom of the 12th, had bases loaded and no outs with Aaron Judge and Stanton coming to the plate. They lost.

I CAN’T BELIEVE THE ASTROS JUST WON LIKE THIS. WOWWWWWWW pic.twitter.com/ypzjjl98YO

— Andrew Tashian (@Tashville401) April 8, 2018

–The Padres lose to the Astros on a walk-off infield fly right in front of home plate (Rule No. 7)

Awaken The Misogynist Within

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74YILhy4RgE

Tony oh no! The words, they’re coming right out of your mouth, and you’re speaking them, in public, like a complete and total idiot. Men.

Watch the very beginning as she begins to speak and then he interrupts her immediately. Mansplaining 101.

At the end of this March 15 exchange, Robbins tells the woman who dared to challenge him, Nanine McCool, “”I’m not gonna be inauthentic and say I’m sorry about something I’m not sorry about.”

So today, of course, he’s apologizing. No one’s buying it, Tony. Including the founder of the #MeToo movement, Tarana Burke, who claims that Robbins’ reps reached out to her this past weekend: “They wanted to ‘give me context’ apparently,” she said. “I don’t need any. I have eyes.”

Florida Woman

She was arrested and her name is Crystal Metheny…

Music 101

Feel Like Makin’ Love

The British supergroup Bad Company was formed from the entrails of Free, King Crimson and Mott the Hoople. Their manager, Peter Grant, also managed Led Zeppelin and you can see a brotherhood in their affinity for tasty power chords. This tune shot to No. 10 in 1975 and will survive as long as classic rock FM radio stations do.

Remote Patrol

TCM Fest

8 p.m. Sunset Boulevard

10 p.m. Stalag 17

12:15 a.m. The Bridge On The River Kwai

What do these three films that won a combined 11 Oscars have in common? William Holden in the leading man role. Holden won a Best Actor Oscar for the German POW film role, which is the only film of the three in which his character survives (in the other two, he dies in water).