However, I’d love to get the other side of the story on this one. Is this really the first time the New York Knicks have asked him not to use the employee entrance? Has he never had a conversation before with owner James Dolan about this arrangement?
Again, if everything Spike is saying here is accurate, then yes, he has a right to be angry.
But I’d love to know more.
In the immediate aftermath of this kerfuffle, the media of course took Spike’s side and there was talk of “not alienating your No. 1 fan.” I’m less concerned with how they treat him, or how he feels, than I am about how poorly the roster has been put together for a quarter century now.
I’m old enough to remember the DeBusschere-Bradley-Reed-Frazier-Monroe Knicks, with sixth man Phil Jackson. That’s six Hall of Famers right there and if you ever want to see the living definition of team chemistry, that was it. As a Knicks fan, that matters far more to me than Spike Lee’s feels. Sure, if he was treated poorly, then he’s got a point. But if this is a matter of the media looking to care about something that in no way affects anyone’s life or really, the Knicks’ interests, then this is no better than 7th graders on the playground trying to gin up a fight between two parties because they’re bored.
Maybe the Knicks mistreated Lee poorly. Maybe there’s more to the story. I dunno. I’m just not going to a Knicks game because Spike Lee is sitting in the front row calling as much attention to himself as possible. In fact, I’m not going to a Knicks game because the product hasn’t come close to matching the price tag in decades.
As her husband owned Super Tuesday, so too did Dr. Jill Biden own this protester in Los Angeles. Talk about having your running mate’s back. In other news, Michael Bloomberg can now be elected tribal chieftain of American Samoa while our favorite candidate, Liz Warren, the person you’d most likely put in charge of your junior high science project or senior prom decorating committee, finishes a distant third.
Still, considering the two candidates ahead of her are past their 76th birthday, four out of five actuaries are recommending she remain in the race.
We don’t own Inovio Pharmaceuticals (INO), but if you own the biotech stock you’ve had a good week thus far. It closed at $4 per share on Monday. Today it will open at $8.69 per share. Why?
The company announced that it will accelerate its trials for a coronavirus vaccine to early April, as opposed to June/July, which is accepted. Of course there’s nothing in that statement that says the vaccine has a chance to be any more viable than anyone else’s, but that’s the crazy stock market we live in.
The Dow: Down 3,000 points last week. Up 1,295 on Monday. Down 800 yesterday. Scheduled to open up 700 this morning. Enjoy the ride. Here’s your air sickness bag.
Jack and Jake
One more reason to love Jack Nicholson, from Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye, which is all about the making of Chinatown and the Hollywood scene in the early Seventies. Nicholson returns to L.A. from shooting another film in Spain on October 13, 1973. The next day he’s in wardrobe for Chinatown. The day after that he’s in an orange grove an hour or so east of Los Angeles for the first day of shooting on Roman Polanski’s film.
It’s literally the first morning of shooting. The scene calls for the farmer to knock Nicholson’s character, Jake Gittes, out with his crutch. “Hit him over the head as hard as you can,” Polanski directs the other actor.
The next shot calls for Gittes to be laying in the dirt, knocked out. “Keep your eyes closed,” Polanski tells Nicholson as he sets up the shot. Polanski spots an ant and places it on Nicholson’s face in hopes of capturing it crawling up his cheek. All the time he reminds Nicholson to keep his eyes closed.
“Roll camera,” Polanski orders but the ant changes direction.
“Cut,” Polanski says, and places the ant back on Nicholson’s cheek.
“So let me get this straight—” Nicholson drawls.
“Eyes closed,” Polanski reminds his star.
“When the ant gets this right, we’ve got a take?”
“Correct.”
Loving Cup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-atuvoMXVw
While we’d never pretend to be an expert on the Rolling Stones (direct all your queries to our good friend, college classmate, former SI colleague and now attorney-at-law Martin J. Burns), we will say this: If there’s one Stones song we’ve come across in our later years that we don’t understand why it didn’t get more air play in the Seventies (and beyond), that tune would be “Loving Cup.” From the 1972 classic album Exile On Main Street.
It’s so bluesy and jangly, you know it’s them before you even have to ask.
Last week I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with Philly hoops legend Bill Mlkvy, who owns the best nickname in college hoops and DI’s oldest extant record. Here’s my story on Bill at SI.com.
We were watching when the MSNBC host, Chris Matthews, aged 74, interviewed (interrogated) Elizabeth Warren last week and yes, we cringed. We cringed four years ago when, during a lighthearted interview with the hosts of Weekend Update, he said to Michael Che, “You’re a funny guy. Funniest guy, who do you think? Funniest black guy?”
As Jost cackled, Che shrewdly said, “Bill Cosby. That way the headline won’t be about you.”
So we weren’t surprised when Matthews called it quits (was fired) last night. Surprised by the abruptness of it all? Sure. He came on, said his piece, they went to commercial, and there was Steve Kornacki sitting in the chair. But after a few notable miscues last week, plus Laura Bassett’s essay in GQ, the straw had finally broken the political camel’s back.
Go to about 5:22
Matthews, who came of age in the Sixties and Seventies, is a product of his era. His sexism and prejudice was so ingrained that I don’t think he really ever understood that he was offending people. It’s a little (a lot) like the Archie Bunker character: Archie always had a good heart, he just didn’t know how to speak to anyone who wasn’t a white male.
And here's the shot when the commercial break ended and the camera cut to a stunned Steve Kornacki, who was obviously not prepared for Chris Matthews' announcement, nor to fill in the hour of airtime when #Hardball would usually run. pic.twitter.com/idqhwvi3rl
Also, this was an unscripted walk-off by Matthews. Maybe his NBC bosses told him he’d have until the end of the week. Or more likely, until the end of the show. Likely they figured he’d save this speech until the episode’s end. Instead, Matthews led with it and then walked out of the studio, leaving Steve Kornacki to pick up the pieces.
Ants Marching *
Say this about Nacho and the cartel: their affinity for Seventies muscle cars is admirable
*The judges will also accept Ant-astic Voyage, though it messes up our DMB conceit
Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan, the co-creators of Better Call Saul, have never been more confident. They know they have the best show on regular cable and they’ve already created one of the best series, if not the best series, from the Peak TV era. They are allowing themselves and their writers as much creative freedom as possible while still sticking to the story and that creativity has best been exemplified throughout the show’s five-year run via the pre-credits intro.
Hank’s for the memories: DEA Schrader (and Gomez, behind) is back
Last night’s was one of their best, a veritable Planet Earth sequence, as one ant and then plenty ascend the mountain that is Saul Goodman’s upended mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. The chef’s kiss? A soundtrack of yodeling mountain climber music.
The symbolism: that cone is the last vestige of Jimmy/Saul’s purity. The ants are the dedicated criminals who have come to devour and infest what, if any, chance he ever has to be a lawyer on the up and up. As Nacho later tells him, “When you’re in, you’re in.”
Eight Is Enough
The Spartans are almost always a tough out in the tourney and will be led by an experienced guard, Cassius Winston, who’s 38, this month
Remember yesterday’s item about the Big Ten? You don’t? Well, go find it, I”ll wait. Anyway, after the latest rankings were released, there are now two more Big Ten schools (Illinois and Wisconsin) in the Top 25 for a total of eight. Eight Top 25 schools, still none above ninth (Maryland). And Indiana, which once upon a time held the same lofty status as Duke and Kentucky and Kansas do now, is not among them. Color us a little dubious on the Big Ten. Seven of those eight schools occupy the final 10 spots in the AP poll. Plenty of good teams beating up on one another? Or just no one who’s particularly great? And the largest concentration of college hoops writers living in the Midwest, perhaps.
I’m Running Out of Coronavirus Puns
Latest milestones: More than 3,000 dead. Approaching 100,000 infected worldwide and at least 100 (known) in the United States. Although Wall Street already seems to have developed an immunity to it, as the Dow Jones climbed more than 5% yesterday.
Tuesday
It’s a Mann, baby! It’s a Mann!
Since it’s Super Tuesday, let’s pay tribute to all the other Tuesdays out there:
Til Tuesday
Tuesday Weld
Fat Tuesday
Ruby Tuesday
Taco Tuesday
Tuesday Afternoon
Tuesdays With Morrie
Thing I just learned: Tuesday is taken from the Olde English “Tiwesdaeg” , which is an homage to the day of the Norse god Tiw (or Tyr), who is an adaptation of the Roman god of war, Mars, as Latin for Tuesday was “Martis” or “the day of Mars.” And in French as you know it’s “mardi.” It’s all about war, folks.
Hell’s Angels: Not only did it provide branding inspiration for the most bad ass motorcycle gang ever, but at $3.8 million, this film, produced and directed, by Howard Hughes, cost four crew members (three of them pilots) their lives. Hughes himself performed the most dangerous aerial stunt himself, crashed, and suffered a skull fracture. I remember happening upon this on TCM a winter or two ago, during the zeppelin lightening scene (the less said, the better), and I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. And then I thought, they’re actually doing this, it’s not special effects, ‘cuz it’s 1930. Also, the film that launched the career of Jean Harlow, here 18 and asking, “Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?” If you ever get the chance to see this WW I flying ace film, do so. It’s magnificent. The action sequences are insane.
Animal Crackers: Early Marx Brothers with Groucho as big-game hunter Capt. Spaulding (“One morning, I shot an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas I don’t know“). Poor Margaret Dumont. She had to play the straight man/wealthy dowager/butt of all jokes in every one of these films.
Never Saw But Maybe, Some Day:
3. Little Caesar: Starring Edward G. Robinson as an Al Capone-like figure, this is said to be the film that launched all future gangster films. Robinson would reprise this type of character most famously in Key Largo more than a decade later. No pizzas were harmed in the making of this film.
4. The Big House: The first prison melodrama, bloody and realistic. No mention of Zihuatanejo, though.
Most of the other films had to do with either gold-digging women or loose divorcees or both. It was a popular theme at the time.
