IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 2 Comments

by John Walters

Ballooney Tunes

One nation, in dirigible, under God…

Any time the day’s weirdest news story allows us to invoke F Troop, that’s a good day. A suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, hovering at roughly 100,000 feet is sailing over United States airspace and perhaps the craziest thing is that I type this neither Bill Pullman, Morgan Freeman nor Samuel L. Jackson is president. This story has already entered the fifth dimension in terms of cable news coverage.

One nation, in dirigible, under God…

We don’t understand what any of this means other than that it allows Sean, Tucker and Laura the avenue to avoid mentioning the AWESOME jobs report that also came out today. The headline: “America’s unemployment rate fell to 3.4% in January, the lowest since before the 1969 moon landing.” The U.S. added 517,000 jobs in January and not all of them were taken by illegal aliens.

The next time a MAGA cries to you about “they’re taking our jobs,” it may be good to note that 1) the MAGA whining to you is likely retired or 2) someone is hiring those people and you never seem to be upset with the “job dealers” and 3) actually, there are more than enough jobs to go around (even if too many pay poorly), which is why the immigration influx is happening, legal or not.

AR-You Kidding Me?

The healthier the economy and overall outlook of the country becomes, the nuttier the Republicans in Congress become. It’s purely tactical. Distract from the at-worst better-than-average 46 is doing in order to keep ’em playing defense. So you have Matt Gaetz proposing the pledge of allegiance become mandatory before every session of Congress (the author of the pledge, Francis Bellamy, did not have the words “under God” in his 1892 version; that was added 62 years later by President Eisenhower at the height of the Red Scare). Or the above Congresspeople wearing AR-15 pins where their U.S. flags used to be. Or Kevin McCarthy kicking Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee.

They do all of this to avoid having to acknowledge that Biden is doing a good job or that their party has no ideas for the betterment of American life. They just want to yank at the chains of liberals and continue feeding their base casual racism and GOD GOD GOD. There was a video yesterday where a man interviewed a MAGA who said all he knew was that he was against CRT but when pushed repeatedly to cite a single thing that he abhorred about CRT, admitted that he didn’t know much of anything about it. “I don’t really know what it’s about,” the MAGA said, “other than that I don’t like it.” Is there a better slogan for the GOP in 2023?

I Know What You Did Last Summer

Chevron, Conoco, Shell Oil and Exxon all just reported the highest profits in their company histories for the year 2022. Together, they did more than $1 trillion in sales. Trillion. Meanwhile, we all suffered at the pump last summer. So the war in Ukraine was just a false flag all along. You know where a lot of that oil money winds up? In the pockets of some of your least favorite legislators. It’s all a racket. If we weren’t all so used to it, this would be a major scandal. But who has time to revolt and protest what with the Super Bowl merely 10 days away?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: sports are the greatest way to subdue and mollify the masses this country’s power brokers have. If you do not believe me, return to the spring and summer of ’20 when the absence of sports led to mass rioting on other issues. Don’t believe it’s connected? I do.

Tommy Boy

It appears former Notre Dame quarterback and current Irish offensive coordinator Tommy Rees is headed to Tuscaloosa… in case you wondered if Nick Saban sees Brian Kelly as a legitimate threat. As tweep @ndsixstring noted…

You have to wonder if new Irish quarterback Sam Hartman feels as if he just had the rug pulled out from under him. Sure, he’ll still wear a gold helmet but you have to think Rees was part of the reason he chose South Bend. There’s no loyalty among plunderers, Sam.

Dollar Quiz

  1. What is ground-breaking, or extraordinary, about George Kucor’s 1939 film The Women?
  2. What is the deepest river in the world?
  3. Who holds the MLB record for most wins by a left-handed pitcher?
  4. Who wrote Catch-22?
  5. Cinematically, what do Matt Damon, Ryan Gosling, Ed Harris, Tom Hanks and Jack Nicholson all have in common?

THE CONVERSATION

by John Walters | 6 Comments

by John Walters

On Tuesday, January 31st, Gene Hackman celebrated his 93rd birthday while Cindy Williams passed away at the age of 75. Birth and death. Yin and yang. Abbott and Costello. Okay, maybe not all of those metaphors apply.

Anyway, Hackman and Williams (the latter best-known for her work in Laverne & Shirley) both appeared in the 1974 film mystery thriller The Conversation. I’ve never seen it but am pledging to change that by week’s end. It’s one of those under-the-radar classics, or so I’ve read.

The film was written, directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, who by this time was feeling prit-tee, prit-tee good about his cinematic powers after producing The Godfather and The Godfather II (both, deservedly, Best Picture Oscar winners). Those two films accounted for six Oscars—five of which are directly attributed to FFC—and that’s on top of the Oscar he won for co-writing Patton in 1970.

Then there’s the cast: besides Hackman, who’d won a Best Actor Oscar a few years earlier as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, and Williams, who’d co-starred in American Graffiti, you have a pair of Godfather I & II veterans in Robert Duvall and John Cazale. Also, a young Harrison Ford as well as Terri Garr, who had either just shot or was about to shoot Young Frankenstein.

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The Conversation fits into that conspiracy thriller/paranoia genre that sprang up in the early to mid-Seventies, probably not coincidentally, in the wake of Watergate and also as Vietnam was winding down: Three Days Of The Condor, Marathon Man, All The President’s Men and this come immediately to mind. You can even throw Chinatown in there if you like. I’m sure there are others that do not immediately come to mind.

In the film Hackman plays Harry Caul, a San Francisco-based surveillance expert who, ironically, is obsessed with his own privacy. Three of the people he has listened in on have ended up dead. You never hear anyone quote The Conversation or much discuss it. I’ve never seen it come up on TCM. And yet it has that legendary cast and also was nominated for a trio of Oscars, including Best Picture. It did not win any, but FFC did not help himself by having it also go up against his own Godfather II.

If you’ve seen The Conversation and want to share a comment, please do. We’ll try to check it off our bucket list this week.

Also, if you get a chance, check out Hackman’s next film, 1975’s Night Moves, which is sort of like a dark, dark episode of The Rockford Files with a splash of Miami Vice. A hidden gem.

Finally, another example of an extraordinary cast in a film no one ever mentions: The Chase, from 1966. It has Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Robert Duvall (again… he was in EVERYTHING for awhile), Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson, and the legendary Miriam Hopkins, arguably the greatest American-born female screen star of the silent film era and better-known as William Randolph Hearst’s longtime girlfriend.

Guest Column

by John Walters | Leave a comment

Russian Doll

by Wendell Barnhouse

Last week’s news that Charles McGonigal, a high-ranking FBI agent, has been indicted on charges he was taking payments from a Russian oligarch is not getting much attention. And that’s just fine with the puppeteers who want us treated like mushrooms – kept in the dark and fed shit.

Trump’s “election” in 2016 was a finely crafted Russian op that had an influential insider (McGonigal) helping pull the strings. Take some time and read this. https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-specter-of-2016?r=f9j4c&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Charles McGonigal

The writer, Timothy Snyder, is an American historian who specializes in Europe and Russia. The spiderweb spun over the last decade is intricate. Some of the information – Clinton’s emails, Trump’s Russia connections, the Mueller Report, Trump’s first impeachment (involving Ukraine, a country that is involved in much of this story) – has been reported and analyzed. However, those stories have often been stand-alone headlines that miss the over-arching plot.

It’s worth watching (and praying and hoping) that McGonigal’s arrest blasts open the vault. Russia’s plan to influence the 2016 election was largely built on cyber intelligence and social media influencing. As you might recall, FBI director James Comey announced 10 days before the election that the FBI was reopening an investigation into Clinton’s emails that it had closed (“nothing to see here”) five months earlier. Two days before the election, Comey announced the new probe had found nothing nefarious, but the damage had been done.

Comey has now said that he made the announcement – which went against FBI policy to not influence an election so close to Election Day – because he believed if that if he did not, news of the investigation would be leaked. Rudy Giuliani was bragging about an “October surprise” that would benefit Trump. The New York FBI office had several agents who hated Clinton and Rudy had plenty of friends in that office.

While Merrick Garland and the DoJ wrestle with pursuing Trump and prosecuting the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, it now has another huge case on its hands with McGonigal.

McGonigal is charged with accepting money from Oleg Deripaska, a sanctioned Russian oligarch. Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager for a short time in 2016, was connected (and owed money) to Deripaska. (Memory refresher: Manafort was found guilty of conspiracy and tax charges, was charged with conspiracy, was jailed… and pardoned by Trump in December 2020).

Before muddying this missive with any more character arcs, here’s why the McGonigal arrest is a big deal. Not only was a high-ranking FBI agent accepting money from a major foreign influencer, he happened to be in perfect position of information and influence. In 2016, McGonigal was section chief of the FBI’s Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section.  That October, he was put in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI’s New York office.

If you want to brush off those two nuggets as “coincidences,” then apologies for wasting your time. But McGonigal was in position, and possessed the ability and the motive (money) to put his thumb on the scale.

Snyder’s story explains with supporting information the who, what, when and why – the “tik tock” – of what occurred. Vladimir Putin has been at war with Ukraine for a year, but he has waged an ongoing shadow war with the United States during the last 10 years. If you don’t believe that, pay attention to the MAGA influence in the House.

Wendell Barnhouse is a retired sportswriter from the golden age of the craft who still quaintly believes in holding truth to power. May his torch continue to burn.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

The Bridges Of Maricopa Country

If NBA commissioner Adam Silver really wants to make a statement about the load management scourge currently plaguing the NBA—both LeBron James and Anthony Davis sat out the Lakers’ game in Brooklyn—New York City!—last night—the Phoenix Suns forward Mikal Bridges should be named an All-Star this season.

Bridges, a silky 6’7″ lefty, has not missed a game this season. The fifth-year pro has never missed a game. Not in the NBA nor while he was at Villanova, where he he won two national championships. Quick: name an NBA starter who won two NCAA titles in college. I believe I just named all of them.*

*Wrong, JW. Also, Jalen Brunson.

Bridges has started all 52 of the Suns’ games this season. Here are the other four starters’ numbers: Deandre Ayton, 43. Devin Booker, 31. Chris Paul, 29. Cam Johnson, 14. But at least most of those are injury-related. Name a great NBA player who has not sat out a game this season. Even two-time reigning MVP Nikola Jokic has missed eight or nine games.

But it’s not only Bridges’ reliability that makes him extraordinary. He is arguably the league’s top defender. And, in any situation where Devin Booker is not on the court, he is the Suns’ go-to scorer (just narrowly edging out Chris Paul). His mid-range jumper is pure cashmere. Bridges is averaging a career-high 16.8 points per game this season. He’s not a head case. He plays the game right. And he’s always on the court. Woody Allen once aid, correctly, that “80% of success is just showing up.” And that’s Mikal Bridges.

Make him an All-Star, commish.

Mahomes Court Advantage

We missed most of both NFL games this weekend, but we will note that Pat Mahomes just played in his fifth AFC Championship Game in as many NFL seasons. And all five have been played at Arrowhead. That’s credit to the Chiefs and Mahomes for winning as many regular-season games as they do. As you may or may not recall, the 17-0 Miami Dolphins of 1972 actually had to play their AFC Championship Game in Pittsburgh that season because the NFL rotated home sites by division back then.

Here’s a note from SportsBrain: in the Super Bowl era, no quarterback has led the league in passing yardage AND won the Super Bowl in the same year. This season Mahomes led the NFL in passing yards with 5,250. The next closest QB, Justin Herbert, was nearly 500 yards south of him. Oh, and Tom Brady finished third in case you’re wondering whether or not he’s going to retire.

Never Change, Pat Beverley

Laker guard Pat Beverley may be the most irritating player in the NBA, but it’s good to know that it’s not only opposing guards that he annoys. If you missed it, PatBev earned a technical late in Saturday night’s Lakers-Celtics game when he approached a referee with stop-action proof that the call on the court was wrong. We admire this chutzpah. Funniest moment of the season, no?

Also, if this does not become the most common GIF on social media to show someone that his claim is false, we’re failing as a species.

R.I.P., Angela

We’re not into ripping SNL as often as most on social media, or into claiming that we haven’t watched it since (YOUR FAVORITE MOVIE OR STREAMING STAR’S NAME HERE) left the show. People were proudly claiming they don’t watch SNL any more back when Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, Will Forte and Ralph Armisen were in the cast. So, no, just don’t.

That said, this season with the influx of newbies has been…bad. And it’s not the cast. It’s the sketch ideas. So we look for “Weekend Update” as our safe harbor. At least Jost and Che are always reliable. And then there’s Heidi Gardner, who owns the two most reliable characters for WU in awhile: Angela, the girlfriend of the fighter (“I’m takin’ the kids to my sister’s…”) and teen influencer Bailey Gismert.

Last Saturday, it feels, SNL bid adieu to the former character by contriving a way to pair her with Michael B. Jordan (eponymous star of Creed) in a bit that you really cannot come back from. So that just leaves us Bailey. Gardner is the current cast member most likely to hit it big in Hollywood, as she already has leading lady looks and she’s shown her acting chops on many an occasion. When I watch SNL it always surprises me that they cannot find at least four other humans, male or female, with comparable talent. Should it really be that difficult?

Who else stands out in this cast? Chloe Fineman, Kenan Thompson (of course), Mikey Day and Bowen Yang. Sarah Sherman has potential. But the writing needs to improve.

Dollar Quiz

  1. The Canadian province due west of Ontario is… (this was on Jeopardy! last night and no one got it).
  2. Name one team from the inaugural 1967-68 ABA season that is not a current NBA franchise.
  3. Napoleon famously lost at Waterloo, which is located in what country currently?
  4. What does a diamond and a piece of coal have in common (best answer only)?
  5. True/False: “Arby’s” name comes from the acronym R.B., for “roast beef.”

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 8 Comments

by John Walters

Novax Is Bax

Another match, this time a semi, another straight sets win for Novak Djokovic at the Australian Open. The oft-surly Serbian is into the final after a 7-5, 6-1, 6-2 washing of Yank Tommy Paul earlier today. In six matches thus far the Djoker has lost all of one set—he’s won 18 of 19— and that was a 7-5 (7-6) tug-of-war versus unheralded Enzo Couacaud (I’d like to buy vowel). He’s doing all of this at age 35 with a strained hammy.

You could’ve gotten +180 odds on the Djoker to win the tourney a week ago after he strained his hammy during a match. At the time it seemed 50/50 if he’d bow out of the tourney. But Djoker knows that the Aussie is for him tantamount to Rafael Nadal’s ownership of the French: he’s won eight of the past 12 tourneys there and it might be nine if he had not been sent out back from Down Under last January for refusing to be vaxxed.

So here he is, just a championship match against Stefan Tsitsipas from tying Rafael Nadal with 22 men’s singles grand slam wins. We are witnessing history here, tennis fans. A trio such as Roger Federer, Nadal and the Djoker will not be seen again in our lifetimes. I feel pretty confident saying that. The idea that the three winningest men in tennis history were each other’s contemporaries speaks volumes as to just how far ahead of everyone else they have been.

Extreme Stupidity From Opposite Extremes

Here’s first-ballot Batshit Crazy Hall of Famer/ex-Major Leaguer Aubrey Huff intimating that there’s something scandalous about the fact that Buffalo Bill defensive back Damar Hamlin (the Immaculate Resuscitation!) has made no public appearances since his brush with death three weeks ago. We already knew that Huff was a birther; turns out that he’s also a deather.

But the stupidity is not limited to the far right. Here’s the AP Stylebook ruling from on high (it’s not quite Pope Francis proclaiming that homosexuality is not a crime, but it’s up there) that using “the” before a group of people (e.g., “the French”, “the Russians”) is offensive. Last we checked, their organization is referred to as “the Associated Press.” Did they just cancel themselves?

Oh, and by the way, Nikki Haley, “you must be a citizen to vote” is not a bold or polarizing stance. Everyone I know agrees. To put it out this way as if only the GOP owns this belief is ridiculous.

My Levito/A Mosquito

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwTh1i-LPZE

America’s new “It” girl in figure skating is 15 year-old Isabeau Levito from Mount Holly, N.J. Levito, who has never failed to reach the podium in any event in the past six years, was not in Beijing last winter, but look for her to be a medal favorite in Italy in 2026. The 2022 Junior World Champion is currently competing in the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in San Jose this weekend.

Duel vs Jaws

Two nights ago TCM aired the 1971 film, Duel, which was released as a TV movie on ABC back when that was a big deal. It is noteworthy and I stayed up to watch it because it was Steven Spielberg’s first feature-length film. Widely praised and ahead of its time, Duel is basically Mad Max: Fury Road without ever supplying a valid reason as to why our protagonist is on a road-rage fight for his life almost throughout.

As I watched it, though, what hit me is how often Spielberg would later plagiarize from his debut while shooting his magnum opus, the similarly four-lettered movie Jaws, only four years later. The tanker truck becomes the shark, and Dennis Weaver’s mid-level businessman becomes Chief Brody. There’s an early scene, shot from the passenger seat of Weaver’s red Plymouth Dart, looking toward the driver. It’s a tight shot and suddenly we see the truck whiz past. It’s like that scene in Jaws when Brody is shoveling chum and the shark makes its grand entrance.

The climactic scene involves Weaver going for broke, driving his car directly at the truck, a life-or-death jousting match. The ensuing collision will result in an explosion and a slo-mo shot of all the carnage that ensues as our hero narrowly survives. Sounds like any movie you know?

I was a little surprised that our host, Ben Mankiewicz, never mentioned this. Also, having not seen The Fabelmans, is that how this film ends as well?

And Finally…

Pardon me for being coy here. This is, admittedly, not the paragon of professionalism but I have another full-time job these days totally unrelated to journalism, so I’m just posting this for the receipt at a later date.

Last fall I wrote a story for SI titled “Open Season” that was universally ignored by my pals in the media on Twitter. That’s okay. I may have whined about it then. I definitely did.

So why am I back on this topic? Folks in the Phoenix area may soon be hearing about a murder that took place this month in which a player from that Chaparral freshman football team is one of four teens charged. It’s obviously a tragedy: the victim was a completely innocent teenage girl. But, it’s also the first dent in the plan of Chaparral’s athletic department, its booster club and a few Chaparral dads to rule the Open Division for the next three years. Which was possible and may still be.

The legendary golf writer Dan Jenkins once opined, like 20 years ago, that the only thing that could prevent Tiger Woods from obliterating Jack Nicklaus’ record was women. It was a flippant comment (and obviously the fairer sex is not to blame; Tiger is) but accurate. Those who follow Chaparral, myself included, have always thought that the only thing that could beat the Firebirds was life away from football.

Finally, I don’t want to paint with a broad brush. First, details of the incident are still forthcoming (the young man in question was most likely simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and not the shooter). Second, the young men I know best on that team are good students with their heads and hearts firmly in the right place. They’re dedicated and motivated.

You should be hearing more soon.

DOLLAR QUIZ

  1. What NFL franchise has the highest regular-season winning percentage?
  2. Name the previous two cities that the Los Angeles Clippers called home.
  3. In what present-day U.S. state did the Meadows Massacre take place?
  4. What was the Wright Brothers’ primary job before their interest in flight took over?
  5. Provide one factual item about the longest MLB game, in terms of innings, ever played: number of innings, who won, who played, year it took place, etc.