The staff is a tad busy of late but will return soon with thoughts on Michael K. Williams, Presbyterian College and John Mulaney’s latest career twist. See you soon.
IT’S ALL HAPPENING!
by John Walters
Remember The Amnio!*
*The judges will also accept “The Elephant In The Womb” and “Fetal Positions”
The abortion issue is a simple question of the lesser of two evils. Is it right to abort a pregnancy and put a fetus to death unnaturally? No. Is it good to saddle a woman with a pregnancy and a total overhaul of her life because of an unwanted pregnancy, particularly if the sex was non-consensual? Given that choice, you decide what the lesser of two evils is.
Of course, the Texas legislature and the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, decided that the latter is the lesser of the two evils. But let’s be frank here: Keeping women in the kitchen and at home raising babies and out of positions of economic power much less government is the real goal here. Particularly poor and middle-class ones.
That SCOTUS allowed a law to stand that encourages other Texans to snitch on anyone remotely associated with an abortion and make money off it ($10,000!) is straight-up Dark Ages behavior. Even if someone is innocent, they’re going to have to pay a lawyer to defend them and they won’t be able to recover that court cost.
Will abortions in Texas (and other red states soon to feel emboldened on this reversal of Roe V. Wade) cease? No, they’ll just happen clandestinely and in unsafe fashion. Anyone ever see In The Heat Of The Night? Yup, that.
The staff here at MH encourages all women of child-bearing age to flee Texas forthwith. And what, then, will the men of Texas do for, um, satisfaction? Well, they can do what many of us have been telling Texas to do for years now: Go f*ck themselves.*
*And before one of my most loyal readers lectures me on Christianity and how wrong it is to take a life, I’ll remind him that pro-lifers seem to care a lot more about the lives of unborn babies than they do of children and adults. When they begin to show me that they give the slightest sh*t about those who are already born and poor and hungry and homeless, I’ll begin to feel their sincerity about cute unborn babies.
Stupid Human Tricks
This?
Or this?
The MH staff thinks trickster No. 1 is much further down the Darwinian ladder….
IT’S ALL HAPPENING!
by John Walters
Are You Sycamore High School Football?
You have to love that this still can happen in 2021, in a world of online research and Google-mapping, etc. Last Sunday ESPN aired a high school football game between IMG Academy of Bradenton, Fla., and Bishop Sycamore of….where, exactly?
Forget for a moment that Bishop Sycamore had actually played a game on Friday night before being waxed 58-0 on national TV. Or that the players that the school’s coaching staff promised had D-1 offers don’t. The biggest deal is that the school does not actually exist as a school. It’s an “on-line charter school” and really, particularly in the Covid age, who knows how much any of these football players attend class? In high school, not college.
IMG is barely better. It’s a super-sports academy (I’ve spent time there) where the classes are an afterthought. IMG produces great college talent in football, basketball and tennis. It’s a sports academy. Period. Where students do the minimum amount of academic work to get by (of course, you can say that about plenty of high school students). But at least IMG is an actual place.
Newton’s Fourth Law Of Thermodynamics
A veteran quarterback at rest during August training camp will soon be displaced by a talented rookie.
The Patriots cut former NFL MVP Cam Newton and name rookie Mac Jones as the starting quarterback. Jones becomes the third Alabama starting quarterback from the past five years who will be a Week One starter in the NFL in 2021.
If you’re wondering, the last Alabama quarterback to start a game who is not currently an NFL starter is Blake Barnett.
IT’S ALL HAPPENING!
by John Walters
Ida Evacuated Sooner
Well, blow me down. Hurricane Ida, a category-4 hurricane with winds approaching 155 m.p.h. strikes landfall almost squarely in New Orleans.
Hope everyone’s safe, but nature really does put on the best show.
Frost Bites
Nebraska at Illinois felt a little wrong more than one full week before Labor Day and in 96-degree heat… particularly if you’re a Cornhusker fan. Down 9-2 early, the Illini and backup quarterback Art Sitkowski reeled off four consecutive touchdowns and held on to win 30-22.
How poorly is Scott Frost doing in his return to his home state and alma mater after leading UCF to a 13-0 season? I didn’t quite believe this when I read on the Twitters, so I checked it out and it’s true: Frost would need to go 37-1 over his next 38 games simply to match the record Jim Harbaugh has had at Michigan, a record that by most accounts has been very disappointing for that former college QB who returned to coach his alma mater in the same conference.
Dunno if Frost can right the harvester in Lincoln, a school that has been synonymous with college football success for an entire century. But the Huskers have a pretty big game versus Oklahoma on Sept. 18. And that one’s in Norman. Good luck. Norman, or Waterloo (No, not the Iowa one)?
Oh, Mr. Graaaaant
Actor Ed Asner passed away Sunday at the age of 91. He had many roles in life, but none so career-defining as the gruff but lovable Lou Grant, head man of the WJM news team on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. There may have been a sitcom or two as good as MTM, but there’s never been a better ensemble cast on a sitcom. And Asner was the captain of that ship.
The line I remember, and it may have been from the premiere episode. Lou says to Mary, “You’ve got spunk… I hate spunk.”
That’s So Raven
The Baltimore Ravens defeated the Washington Football Team 37-3 in both teams’ final preseason game of the weekend. Here’s what’s nutty: it was Baltimore’s 20th consecutive victory… in preseason football games. That’s a streak that extends back five years. Has any NFL club ever been so dominant in so meaningless a facet of the sport?
And what, if anything, can we extrapolate from this? I don’t know. The NFL record for consecutive regular season wins is 23, held by the 2008-2009 Indianapolis Colts… who used to be the Baltimore Colts, I think.
During this same period, in case you were wondering, the Ravens are 52-28 with no Super Bowl appearances, all under John Harbaugh. A very good record. Just something less than 20-0.
The China Syndrome
China has issued an edict BANNING the playing of video games between Monday and Thursday and allowing just one hour per day on Friday through Sunday. Sometimes, repressive authoritarian regimes have their upside.
Now, sure, you may cry, “But my free-dumb!” and you’re correct, but China, the world’s second-largest economy and first-largest country by population, has smartly deduced that having so many of its children spend so much of their times with their faces in screens is not beneficial long-term (we’ll see on that… stay tuned). Of course, the irony in all of this is that China leads the world in companies that manufacture the games and the hardware that makes these games possible.
So, yes, let’s profit off it. But let’s not do it. Sure, I’ll own a whorehouse, but none of my daughters are going into that business….
IT’S ALL HAPPENING!
by John Walters
From Beirut To Kabul
From History.com
October 23, 1983
A suicide bomber drives a truck packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. That same morning, 58 French soldiers were killed in their barracks two miles away in a separate suicide terrorist attack. The U.S. Marines were part of a multinational force sent to Lebanon in August 1982 to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. From its inception, the mission was plagued with problems–and a mounting body count.
I remember that day well. I believe it was a Sunday morning when the news broke, my senior year of high school. I remember it being tragic, the worst loss of U.S. military life in one day since at least Vietnam. And I remember no one calling for President Reagan to resign, but then, he had been so damn good in Knute Rockne: All American and Kings Row (films in which, respectively, he had lost his life and legs).
It wasn’t really Reagan’s fault, after all. The mission was next-to-impossible, and whenever you have an opponent willing to commit suicide as part of their attack, it presents problems (ask any Naval commander in the Pacific from World War II).
Yesterday a dozen or so U.S. military personnel were killed in Kabul (a dozen, not 243) while executing a near-impossible task: evacuating Americans and Afghans from Kabul via the airport. For those citizens to not flock to the airport means they risk being kidnapped or killed by the Taliban or ISIS in their homes or wherever they are hiding. Their best escape route is via the airport, of course, where more than 80,000 have been evacuated the past week or so, but that means bunching up in crowds outside the airport gates, which, of course, makes them an inviting and vulnerable target.
And yet here are plenty of disingenuous Republican “leaders” calling for President Biden to resign. It was not President Biden who released 5,000 Taliban prisoners nor was it Biden who brokered a deal with the Taliban last year (it was President Trump and Mike Pompeo). These Republicans know that, but they also know that so many of their cult are sheep who don’t care to possess the ability for critical thought.
Beirut was a terrible day. But we were one country then. Kabul was, from a body-count perspective, far less significant. But we have awful people on one side of the aisle in 2021. And useful idiots supporting them.
Ten Turns 30
Happy 30th birthday to one of the very best debut albums in the history of rock and roll.
I remember the moment. Labor Day, 1991. Walking into an appliance store on 72nd just west of Broadway, in search of a stereo. You know, it’s the early ’90s so I need a CD player that also plays cassettes. So sad that I abandoned my turntable (what were we thinking?).
Then I hear it. This BELLOWING guitar that sounds like a battle cry. The opening chords of “Alive.” It was a beautiful late summer afternoon in Manhattan, the kind where the humidity has departed and you can feel the early strains of autumn. The golden late afternoon sun outside. And inside, this sound I’d never before experienced.
Make no mistake, Pearl Jam came out of the gates early that fall, before Nirvana. The other Seattle-based grunge band would soon take the lead. By Christmas holidays they’d be sharing a stage together, both serving as warm-up acts for RHCP.
Our favorite songs from Ten, in order: 1) Alive 2) Release 3) Jeremy 4) Oceans 5) Black 6) Once 7) Evenflow
Won’t See You In September
Not appearing at the U.S. Open that begins next week: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams, Venus Williams. That foursome represents 17 U.S. Open singles titles since 1999. Or nearly half.
The door is wide open for Novak Djokovic to become the first man with 21 career singles titles (and he should celebrate at the iconic 21 in midtown Manhattan). And as far as we know, Naomi Osaka is coming to Flushing Meadows. Naomi versus the New York media. Should be a fun show.
Death Valley Daze
Two male hikers have died in separate incidents at Death Valley National Park this week. Why? Because it’s really, really, really hot there and they were really, really, really unprepared. The men were 52 and 60 years old (man, is that old!) and to be honest, it wasn’t even that hot in Death Valley. Only about 109 degrees.
You have to love a national park that lives up to its name. And the hype.