by John Walters

Starting Five

Portly Authority

We don’t watch the Trump Pressers (The T.P. America doesn’t need), first of all, because we have two real jobs taking our time (humblebrag #NeitherPaysAllThatWell) and second, because we’d rather die of Covid-19 than from high blood pressure.

But apparently, Monday’s Fourth Reich briefing was a real doozy with Trump claiming that he had “total authority” (like a fuhrer) and then becoming furious when a “really nasty” female reporter kept pressing him on how much fiddling he was doing as America began to burn in February.

Trump also showed a propaganda video — enjoy it, America, you paid for it—showing how he did “everything right” even as the U.S. death totals surged to more than 23,600, some 3,000 ahead of Italy. If Trump were running the coronavirus response the way he did his businesses, he would have already filed for bankruptcy.

Saul’in’ For Time

The penultimate episode of the best season thus far of Better Call Saul was one for us viewers to catch our breaths and cleanse that piss from our palates. Last week was epic and next week’s season finale may offer a human sacrifice— it’s not looking good for Nacho, who only does everything a loyal soldier and son should… maybe he should’ve taken out Lalo when he had the chance near the well?

The theme of this week’s episode, if not the entire series, and they repeated it in case anyone wasn’t paying attention, is that we all make choices and that those choices lead us down a road… a road we cannot ever fully turn back from. We’ve long subscribed to this ethos? Good people, bad people? Not so much, although there are a few on either side. Most of us are just decent people who in the thrill of the moment make a choice, sometimes not wisely, sometimes without a clear head, sometimes taking more risk than we know we ought. Is that how we always are? Maybe, maybe not.

We are all — Jimmy McGill, Mike Ehrmentraut, Kim Wexler, you, me— a product of the decisions we’ve made. Some matter more than others. We seldom realize how impactful some of them are at the moment we make them. I’ll think about that while I’m at work tomorrow. 🙂

RIP XFL

Also killed by the coronavirus: The XFL. Little did we know when we spent the first weekend of March tuning into four XFL contests for a Sports Illustrated story that we’d be watching the final weekend of the league’s existence. Six weeks. Not a bad run, but the XFL simply couldn’t stay afloat financially because of the virus. It filed for bankruptcy today, owing an awful lot of people an awful lot of money.

Here again is where you have to give Donald Trump credit. Some 35 or so years ago he helped kill off the first spring football league, the USFL. Now he helped destroy another.

The Clean Air Virus

We went for a bike ride on Easter Sunday. We climbed to the top of a nearby promontory which put us about 50 to 100 foot above most of this area of the southeast Valley. We looked around. And what we saw blew us away.

Sometimes in the Valley of the Sun, after a particularly rollicking rain storm or monsoon, the skies will clear here and locals will see mountains at the northern edge of the Superstitions or north of Carefree, or even south beyond the San Tans, that they don’t ordinarily see. But it hasn’t rained in Phoenix, really rained, in more than two weeks.

So what was it? A Resurrection glow? We think it was two to three weeks of very little traffic and we have to say, It looks MAH-velous. Hate what the coronavirus is doing to individuals and how it is taxing health-care workers. Love what it is doing for the environment. We don’t need Big Oil. And the virus is illuminating how much better of a planet this will be without it.

Of course there is something ironic about a disease that robs its victims of the ability to breathe being responsible for such clean air, now isn’t there?

Sports Year 1873

At a hotel on 5th Avenue, representatives of the four major football schools (sorry, Stevens Tech) meet on October 19 and codify college football rules for the first time.

For the first time ever, the British Open is contested at St. Andrews. And the Claret Jug is bequeathed to the winner who, for the first time in four years, is not Young Tom Morris, but rather Tom Kidd. So, still a Tom and still implying youth, but different.

The Toronto Argonauts football club is formed for reasons that are not entirely clear. This is like inventing the space suit right after the Wright Brothers arrived home from Kitty Hawk.

The two big heavyweights, Mike McCoole and Tom Allen, meet outside of St. Louis on Chateau Island. Allen prevails in 7 rounds in a bare-knuckle bout.

The year only goes downhill from there for McCoole, who arrested for the shooting and murder of another pugilist, Patsy Manley. McCoole is acquitted when none of the witnesses show up to testify, but his career is over, his saloon soon closes, and while he avoids being sent up the river, he does move down the river to New Orleans, where he will work until his death in 1886.