by John Walters

Tweet Me Right

This is what it looks like after you’ve fought a fire in -50° wind chill.

Cameron, Wisconsin’s Fire Chief Mitch Hansen poses for a photo after battling a fire Wednesday. The overspray from the hoses froze before hitting the firefighters as ice pellets. https://t.co/veCDPXL8KB pic.twitter.com/hh41dxWUT7

— ABC News (@ABC) January 31, 2019

Starting Five

1. Chiberia

We didn’t coin the above term, but we wish we had. It looks brutally cold in the Second City this week and it was 23-below yesterday. The last time anyone saw a U.S. city this frigid, Jake Gyllenhaal was searching for his dad.

When it’s THIS cold in the Midwest and it’s THAT hot in Australia, it makes us wonder if Snow Miser and Heat Miser are feuding again.

Because Pulitzers don’t win themselves, @MorGreene and I braved to elements to prove it’s cold enough to freeze an egg on a Chicago sidewalk today. https://t.co/YxjMqzBXYS

— Stacy St. Clair (@StacyStClair) January 31, 2019

Why isn’t he wearing gloves?!?!

Also, the Minnesota Timberwolves actually played last night, at home, despite temperatures dipping to 29-below. The game against the Grizzlies went into overtime. The crowd was announced at 13,000-plus. I don’t think so.

2. “BP” Stands For

1. Best Picture?
2. Black Panther?

The question is, At next month’s Oscars will those two be interchangeable? The MH Cinema Snobbery Crew believe they will. Yes, we believe Black Panther will win Best Picture.

Should it? We don’t know and we don’t care. We just think it will.

Why? Because Roma is the closest thing to a legitimate Best Picture, but few people saw it and almost as many had the same reaction while watching it as the deadbeat boyfriend did during the movie date scene in Roma.

Bohemian Rhapsody? Won Bet Picture at the Golden Globes and even its producer looked as if he was about to apologize. BlacKKKLansman? Not close. A Star Is Born? The GGs and SAGs showed it little love; we don’t see Oscar reversing that course. The Favourite? An English period piece that doesn’t know if it’s a comedy or tragedy and is whiter than the avalanche scene from Force Majeure? Nope. Vice? Everyone is sick of politics. Green Book? Possible, but if you’re going down the kumbaya-racial-harmony road, why not just go all the way and give THE MOST FINANCIALLY SUCCESSFUL ALMOST-ALL BLACK CAST OF ALL TIME FILM THE OSCAR?

#OscarsSoWhite? You can’t say that now. Oscar doesn’t like super hero films or blockbusters? Shut up! With one decision the Academy can shut up most of its detractors and still give Roma the Best Foreign Picture statuette.

We saw Black Panther and we thought it was okay. Not great, but okay. The actors were extremely good-looking. There was that. But we think it will win. For one Academy Awards at least, Oscar will be made of Vibranium and the last words you may hear are “Wakanda Forever!”*

*Our nasty wish is that Warren Beatty or whoever reads the card wrong and early into the acceptance speech the producers of Black Panther see that their award was meant for BlacKKKlansman.

3. Bahamian Rhapsody

If you’ve seen the Netflix Fyre Festival doc (not sure if he shares this anecdote in the Hulu doc), you won’t forget Andy King. He’s the well-heeled, creamy-lipped (?) pal of Billy McFarland who was told by the doomed festival promoter that he might have to “take one for the team” and then was only too happy to be a team player.

In the past week or so, King has become the web’s favorite meme, a flirtation with infamy that has brought him to his knees. Still, the events promoter/entrepeneur warned, and he actually used these words, that while he was “blown away” by the attention, he does not “want to be known as the blow job king of the world.”

Doesn’t he look like someone who should be in Congress?

4. What To Do With Amazon?

Tech/retail/and-soon-to-be-healthcare? giant Amazon reports its earnings after the bell today. As you know, musing on where Amazon stock is headed is almost as popular on this site as is hating on the Super Villains at Susie B.’s gated estate in Maryland.

Last Friday Amazon stock hit $1,680 per share.

On Tuesday it dipped to $1,592.

Yesterday, after AAPL and FB announced solid earnings and when Fed Chair Jeremy Powell announced he’d be holding his horses on rate hikes, AMZN shares shot up to $1,670. And then to $1,691 after the bell. (UPDATE: And now $1,702).

Is the rally on? Or has the price jump already been baked in with Tuesday’s leap? Guess what: We have no idea. But maybe you do?

5.  God-Forsaken

We don’t know what else to put in this space today, so why not include America’s most misplaced Cracker Barrel server, White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders, telling two evangelist interviewers that “I think God wanted Donald Trump to be president?”

Meanwhile, this piece in Salon is outstanding is it walks readers through the final moves of Robert Mueller’s chess game.

Music 101

Don’t Cry Out Loud

No era did sappy melodramatic AM radio tunes quite like the Seventies, and Melissa Manchester was riding in the first-class car on the tear train. Maybe punk rock was born out of necessity. Anyway, this song was written by Peter Allen (an ex-husband of Liza Minnelli’s) and Carole Bayer Sager, who also wrote Arthur’s Theme. That’s a lot of schmaltz for two people to produce. This video, by the way. I mean…

The song peaked at No. 10 in 1979.

Remote Patrol

Letterkenny

Hulu

Our friends to the north who are snowbound and housebound recommended this to us. It’s Canadian and it’s funny, but maybe NSFP (Not Safe For Phyllis). Enjoy.