by John Walters
Starting Five
Beg, Burrow Or Deal: 2020 NFL Draft
Only 47 NFL mock drafts to be compiled between now and tomorrow’s actual NFL draft. At our new job earlier this week we spoke to the mom of an Oregon offensive lineman who’s believed to be a 2nd- or 3rd-round talent. She ordered him a tomahawk steak (it’s just a ribeye with the rib still attached) to celebrate. That’s our NFL Insider report.
Players we LOVE: Auburn DT Derrick Brown, Clemson LB/SS Isaiah Simmons, Texas WR Devin Duvernay (he’s in nobody’s first round and few people’s second rounds; catches everything but the coronavirus). Prefer Jerry Jeudy to CeeDee Lamb as we wonder about the respective defensive talent both men faced (and recall that Lamb missed the first OU game versus Baylor) and while we like Tua, he’s a sub-6′ QB who’s already suffered two major “lower body” injuries before his 22nd birthday. No thanks.
Still a little surprised by the plethora of wideouts slated higher than 6’4″-plus Chase Claypool. There’s a lot of talent in this year’s class (Lamb, Jeudy, Ruggs, Reagor, Higgins, Pittman, Aiyuk, etc.) but Claypool is too big, too fast and has too good a set of hands not to go in the first two rounds. Maybe our blue-and-gold tinted glasses are showing.
Gronk Buc Bonk
Me Gronk. Me like Tom. Tom is Buc. Me play with Tom. Me play for Bucs. Bonk!
What The Fox Says
Last Sunday on his weekly HBO program, Last Week Tonight, now broadcasting as he says from “a blank white void,” John Oliver devoted the entire 21-plus minutes to Fox News’ misinformation campaign. As CNN’s Chri Cillizza, who wrote about the episode said, there are 11 words about Fox New that stood out in Oliver’s presentation:
“They only pretend to believe these things on television for money.”
Eggs-actly.
Watch the episode if you have the time. And you have the time.
Harold and Lillian
We came home from the salt-and-pepper mines last Friday and our roommate was gushing about this film she’d just seen on TCM. It was a documentary from 2015 titled Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story.
Harold and Lillian Michelson, the titular subjects of the doc, were a much in-demand couple who were, respectively, a storyboard artist and a researcher. Their work is all over some of the most iconic scenes and films of the past 60 years, which is also how long they were married.
You can rent the entire doc on YouTube for $3.99. The trailer is above. It’s supposed to be very good and how many Marvel movies can you millennials watch, anyway?
Sports Year 1878
Employees of the Lancaster & Yorkshire Railway found the Newton Heath Cricket & Football Club, which is known today as Manchester United… Phillips Andover and Phillips Exeter meet on the football field for the first time. It will become the nation’s oldest high school football rivalry… The Wright Brothers lead the Red Caps to their sixth championship in the past seven years, across two leagues and a pair of cities (Cincy, Boston)… The Harvard-Yale regatta is moved to its permanent location, the Thames River (mispronounced by Yanks) in New London, Conn… At an international exposition in Paris, the Norwegian delegation presents a self-propulsion tool that is well-known in Scandinavia but not so much in the center of culture: a pair of skis. A number of attendees purchase sets. Mountaineer and author Henry Duhamel is one such buyer and he soon becomes the first known person to experiment with them in the Alps. The apres ski lodge is invented 5 hours later.
Are you ever going to give us more than a crumb here, a hint there, about your new jobs? I’ve been wracking my brain over the “it’s outside, wear a smock & knives are involved” job since you wrote that! Landscaping/lawn work? Barbecue/ribs grillmaster assistant at one of those places that have a massive outdoor grill/barbecue pit? (My mouth is watering just writing the words). And now the job you mention above – who/what is your new employer? A website? Is there a paywall? Come on, give us something! 🙂
I’m very happy you have income, but worried about you too. I’ve been keeping written track of the “official” COVID numbers for certain states from the JHU website the past 3 weeks but never looked at AZ stats until just now – looks like you’re in the lower third of states & that’s good but these are just the “official” tested cases & I believe the USA total of infected is at LEAST 5 times the official count of roughly 831k. Possibly 10-15 times. That the NAZIs are now swaying various IMBECILIC so-called “governors” to
“start opening up their states” in some of the MOST incomprehensible human-contact businesses at THIS TIME means this nightmare will not just be extended but possibly explode. The dire situation in NYC 3 weeks ago may be repeated in state after state, where there are a TENTH the number of health care workers & hospitals. Back in the Flu epidemic of 1918-20, some of the dead were just boarded up in their houses for weeks/months until there was finally the time & workers available to remove & bury them. We could see a repeat of that too. I am not just scared & angry, I am ENRAGED that our country has fallen to this level; to be non-led by an INCOMPETENT SOCIOPATH whose followers have already agreed with the unstated decision that the DEATH of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS is acceptable to keep a corrupt & failing administration in power over a failing federal government & even failing country. America…Great? What a f*cking joke. The ENTIRE world is laughing & profiting at our demise. “Look at the orange, obese buffoon ‘leading’ his country into ruin, hahaha, hohoho”.
What SHOULD be happening right now is a COVID version of the Manhattan project! EVERY single drug company & all chemists & scientists that work in this area should DROP EVERYTHING ELSE & dedicate every minute to discovering both a drug to cure & a vaccine to prevent COVID-19. NOTHING can “go back to normal” until these are achieved.
Meanwhile, STILL think our healthcare “system” is fine as is? With scores of hospitals closing or laying off thousands because there’s just ‘no profit’ in a pandemic?!
Hopefully, you & mamadubs don’t live in area where they just closed down the only hospital in a 75-mile radius.
LIVE LONG, jdubs!
Susie B.
No one here knows what you do or where you work. Quid pro quo, Clarice.
I currently (& for the past 5 weeks) work at my KITCHEN TABLE. Complete with a company loaner laptop & MIFI for internet. Why didn’t I have my own home internet & a PC or laptop? Because UNLIKE MILLIONS OF OTHER IDIOTS in this country, *I* recognized & learned from the 2008 “Financial Armageddon” & have been SAVING & INVESTING EVERY PENNY SINCE IN THE ATTEMPT TO SAVE MY FUTURE RETIREMENT & NOT BE FORCED TO LIVE IN A BOX UNDER A BRIDGE when in my ‘golden years’. Up until last month, my fixation on this ONE GOAL had actually exceeded my expectations. That has now dramatically changed. But the ONE GOAL remains.
I pinch myself every damn day over my good fortune in still being able to work & have an income during this global pandemic.
You have usually mentioned your various workplaces in the past but then abruptly stopped. I won’t ask again.
This answer, Susie B, is what the kids used to refer to as “Weak Sauce.” 🙂
Re: TB/Gronk —- excellent players on their own, but the obvious omission on any opinion I see is this: NE had the most impenetrable offense line that provided TB12 time to find receivers; he was rarely touched, let alone sacked. That OL remains in NE. Every team knows that! TB OL coaching staff will be pressed to duplicate that and I don’t think they have the talent….