by John Walters
Oh, It’s All Happening, Babe
What isn’t happening? Particularly in sports.
The Stanley Cup finals ended last night. Tampa Bay won.
Today: four MLB playoff games, all American League (best of three, all three games from the team with the better record’s home field, but they will alternate who bats last and again, no fans). The four games—Astros-Twins, White Sox-A’s, Jays-Rays, and Yanks-Indians—will be telecast on ABC, ESPN and TBS and by 3 p.m. EST at least two games will be taking place for the next five hours.
Tomorrow: Game 1 of the NBA Finals, Heat-Lakers. Did you see Goran Drajic starting in the NBA Finals five years ago?
Also: Le French Open et Le Tour de France simultane!
Later this week: The Preakness Stakes, college and NFL football.
Jimmy Chin’s Grand Experiment
A phenomenal piece in The New York Times that you must make time for. Climber Jimmy Chin (who won an Oscar for producing/directing Free Solo) found himself quarantined, at least from traveling abroad, this summer in his home of Wilson, Wyo. So he turned the Grand Tetons into his personal workout space, traversing an 18-mile crest ridge known as The Grand Traverse.
This piece demonstrates the potential of what on-line journalism is able to do that old print can just never come close to approaching.
Well, That IS Scary
How to make the top-rated haunted house in the U.S.A. even scarier? How about, MURDER?!?
At Erebus Haunted House in Detroit, a popular shriek palace, a dispute broke out between two men when one thought the other had cut in line. Both men (the victim was with his girlfriend) went back to their cars, apparently to retrieve sidearms. The suspect went all Kyle Rittenhouse on the victim (note to self: a haunted house named Rittenhouse), who was struck three times and, being the victim, died. He was 29.
I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all been cut in line (no backsies!) and we’ve all wanted to murder the person who perpetrated this crime. Just that most of us never do so. But I can feel the sentiment.
How’s This For a Haunted House?
Two fires, each 0% contained, raging in northern California. One of them, the Glass Fire (I don’t know who names fires; why isn’t it like hurricanes?) has destroyed wineries in Napa and Sonoma Counties, including the Chateau Boswell. Maybe they should call it the Wine Glass Fire?
Once again, it’s a good idea to opt out of 2020. Now even wine is going to be more expensive.
Trump Tax Travails
We have not waded far into the New York Times’ reporting of President Trump evading (not avoiding) income tax beyond the obvious bullet points of 1) did not pay income tax in 10 of the past 15 years, 2) paid only $750 in 2016 and 2017 and 3) earned $427 million from The Apprentice, directly and indirectly (and somehow squandered all of it).
And here’s the thing: Team Trump is betting that his sheep won’t read much of it, either. You wonder if Fox News has even acknowledged it.
I’m sorry, Ann, weren’t the latest tax revisions muscled through by a GOP-controlled House and Senate?
For us, the true crime is the tax code and the legislators who help create it. Taxes should be simple. The more complicated they get, it only enables those who have the means to have complicated forms of income and the accountants they can afford to hire. We’ll be mulling this as we head to one of our three jobs this morning, knowing that we’ll be paying more in taxes in 2020 than our “billionaire” president.
Why do Trumpers spend all day and night wheezing about being “Pay-tree-OTS” but then in the next breath say it’s cool to not pay your fair share of taxes? Hmm.