by John Walters
Starting Five
Knickers: Big If True
Who has time to worry about gene-edited babies with Knickers the steer roaming the prairies of western Australia? His owner, Geoff Pearson, says that Knickers is 6’4″, 3,000 pounds and is a Holstein Friesian. He’s also too large for the processor but why would you ever turn Knickers over to the butcher? Geoff, Geoff: start charging tourists a fee to see him. That’s how we do it here in the States.
Holy Cow! We look at Knickers and we’re reminded of what Crocodile Dundee said about knives. “You call that a knife? THIS is a knife!”
2 Hang On Glider
“I looked down once and I thought to myself, ‘This is it.'” An American tourist in Switzerland held on for his life when his instructor failed to attach his harness before their hang gliding flight. The man said he had to have surgery for a broken wrist. https://t.co/JKfdcxdRHc pic.twitter.com/7SOQ6uo9Bv
— ABC News (@ABC) November 27, 2018
Hang gliding in Switzerland, and the instructor failed to harness in his American passenger before they embarked on the flight. Or maybe he just realized it was an American. Either way, crazy. Keep your eyes on the passenger’s right hand.
3. Bad, Bad Man
This is Samuel Little (current photo below), who is 78 and incarcerated in Texas. Recently Little has confessed to authorities that he killed upwards of 90 people in a number of states, which may make him the nation’s most prolific serial killer this side of Marlboro Lights.
Little supplied a chilling answer to one official who wondered aloud how he had gotten away with so many hideous crimes for so long:
“I can go into my world and do what I want to do,” Mr. Little said, according to Sergeant Mongeluzzo, describing neighborhoods around the nation where poverty, drug addiction and unsolved murders are common. “I won’t go into your world.”
4. Haley Stays Home
The nation’s top-ranked women’s basketball recruit is headed east for college. Just not that far east. Haley Jones, a 6’1″ wing from Santa Cruz, California, is headed 40 or so miles east to Stanford. She was courted by UConn and Notre Dame, among others.
While heading all the way back east sure worked wonders for another Californian (Diana Taurasi) once, it’s hard to fault Jones for remaining close to home while attending the top academic institution west of Chicago. Also, there’s the weather. And, hey, UConn hasn’t won a national championship since 2016!
5. Chairman of the Board
From The New York Times…
After three weeks, 12 straight draws and a day of tiebreakers, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen finally retained the world chess championship in London on Wednesday with a victory against Fabiano Caruana, his American challenger.
Reading on, we learn that officials got tired of this deal going nowhere to they basically pivoted to speed chess: Carlson and Caruana were given only 25 minutes to make a move. I’ll stop complaining about the video reviews in college football games now.
Music 101
Sweet Thing
Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of Van Morrison‘s Astral Weeks,—so why don’t you feature this tomorrow, MH??? Because we’re not smart and we’re also forgetful and just shut up okay geez!—which is the cool kids’ favorite VM studio album though we prefer Moondance.
Remote Patrol
The Outlaw
8 p.m. TCM
Russell: Hay now!
A cornball Western, released in 1943, but starring a young, buxom Jane Russell. Westerns weren’t sexy before this one. Russell, whom people my age recognize from our youths as the middle-aged woman doing bra commercials on TV and touting herself as “a full-figured gal,” is at one vertex of a love triangle also featuring Doc Holliday and Billy the Kid.
Ha, ha. As with all NBA games thus far this season (ESPECIALLY that “team out west”) , I DID NOT WATCH. However, I did see LBJ’s stats post-game & 1) it appears his biochemistry does not yet like FLYING EAST for games & 2) ummm, maybe he’s trying to drag out passing Jordan on the All-Time Scoring List (not to be confused with the Wilt “scoring” list) to right before the All-Star game? I’m assuming he’ll be voted onto the Western team, although since *I* won’t be voting this year, his votes will be, ahem, substantially lower. 😉
Anyhoo, I’m waiting for your assessment of the current CFP ranking. I didn’t watch any of the show, nor the pre-show or the post-show, only saw the Top 10 scrawl by after midnight & my only comment is : You get HUMILIATED & DESTROYED by your biggest/longest rival in a game YOU were expected to easily win & you end up JUST ONE SPOT below the team that blew your doors off? Give me a freakin BREAK! !$@*% Michigan should have FALLEN OUT OF THE TOP 10!
Susie B.,
It’ll be a late afternoon, pre-dusk blog today. But, to answer your question, I’m not so interested who gets ranked where after the top 6 right now. I agree Michigan should be lower, but I’m more upset right now about the cabbie who told me this morning he made $98K last year working for the MTA. What the WTF?!?
Do ALL NYC cabbies make that kind of money?
Anyhoo, did ya’ll see the piece online today about the “giant Australian steer”? Well, I have a story! Let’s see, more than 35 years ago, one of the “inhabitants” on my family farm was what I called a “mutant cow” & as with the Aussie, it was a Holstein. (Of the various cow breeds I was around back then, the Holsteins were the breed that had the most “2-tailed” or “5-legged” animals. Honestly, almost every year one of our neighbor dairy farms (all Holsteins) had a cow with an extra “SOMETHING”. My dad had mostly Hereford beef cattle & they didn’t “mutate”.) Well, one year when I was in college & came home for Thanksgiving, my Dad said I had to come down to the barnyard right away because he had something to show me. It was around 6PM, so it was dark & all the animals were in the barnyard munching away their evening meal. I’m thinking maybe we have a new calf or a brand new litter of piggies. I get down there & I’m on one side of the enclosure & my dad tells me to “look!” I peer over & about 2/3 of the way over, I see my younger sister’s horse & then… “OH! You got a new horse?!” My dad says “nope, it’s a cow! NO WAY! We then proceed over & I swear that cow’s withers (the part where the neck meets the torso) was as equal to the top of my head & I’m a little over 5’6! The top of this cow’s head was ALMOST 7 FEET! He was GIGANTIC! My dad had been given him as a calf as payment for corn or hay or something & he just kept growing & growing & growing. I asked how he got along with the other animals & my dad said the pigs just ignored him (typical) but the other cows were scared of him & stayed away. I said, “wait, you’re telling me the other cows WON’T PLAY WITH HIM?” When my dad confirmed, I said “that’s it, his name is RUDOLF!” 🙂 Too bad the internet & smartphones were still a few decades away as apparently, he coulda been a STAR!
What do you mean “if true”? Did you not read my own anecdote above? I’m tellin’ ya, Holsteins are the “X-Cows” of the bovine world; they have MUTANTS!
I’ve seen multiple 2-tailed cows (Holsteins), 3 or 4 5-legged cows (Holsteins, & the “extra” leg is usually jutting our from the shoulder area & yes, it looks WEIRD), & two instances of 2-HEADED calves (both of course, Holsteins). The latter didn’t live that long & yes, you can’t really believe what you are seeing for the 1st 10 minutes or so!
And then of course, there was our “Rudolf”, a mutant GIANT. I was chewing gum at the time & swallowed it whole when I really realized my dad wasn’t pulling my leg & that GIGANTIC creature standing next to my sister’s horse & munching on some corn was actually a cow. He hung around my sister’s horse for most of his life on the farm & maybe he even thought he WAS a horse since the other cows gave him a wide berth (which he, um, needed 😉 ) .
My dad never owned a computer or a smartphone & didn’t really understand the internet but he would have bust a gut seeing that a giant steer like our Rudolf became a worldwide MEGASTAR, at least for one day. They even talked about him on the sports radio station I listen to on my drive home! 🙂