IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 4 Comments

by John Walters

How YOU Doin’?

The Friends reunion is now streaming on HBO Max. We haven’t seen it. It’s not actually a scripted show, but apparently more than 90 minutes of chatter and replaying of scenes and even a game or two. Could I beeeeee any more disinterested?

The Friends sextet (pun intended) are essentially the MH staff’s age and the show was set in the city in which I was living at the time. So it was always fun to compare reality versus a Burbank or Studio City soundstage. It’s impossible to capture the oft-gray and windy and chilly life of New York City from a writer’s room no more than 45 minutes from Malibu. Not even Seinfeld did it.

Anyway, I remember hitting a very dimly lit bar on Columbus Ave. and 84th with two SI friends of mine after the first season of Friends aired. And there, sitting together that May (it must have been during upfronts week) were, I believe, Matthew Perry and Jennifer Aniston. They could still go out in public then without too much fanfare. The three of us should get together again and see how things have gone the past 28 years.

If you had to rank the Friends’ post-show careers, what would your order be? For instance, if we did Seinfeld it would be Julia Louis-Dreyfus clearly in first place, then Jerry, then a tie for last between Jason Alexander and Michael Richards (and Larry David, who never really appeared on the show, might be ranked ahead of all of them). But for Friends?

I dunno. I mean Matt LeBlanc, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow have all had their own TV series, but none of them were zeitgeist-type shows. Jennifer Aniston may have had the most prolific career. David Schwimmer was great as Robert Kardashian in the O.J. series and Matthew Perry gave it a go in Studio 60 (Aaron Sorkin’s biggest, if not only, bomb). We’re going to put them in a six-way tie unless you feel differently.

Ja Rules

The Grizzlies lost Game 2 in Utah last night, but second-year guard Ja Morant scored a franchise playoff-record 47 points. In only is second postseason game (if you want to quibble about his two previous play-in appearances last week, feel free). Coupled with his 24 points in Game 1, that puts the former Rookie of the Year at 71 points after two career playoff games. You know how many NBA players have outscored Morant after the first two playoff games of their careers?

Zero.

Not George Mikan, not Wilt Chamberlain, not Jerry West, not Oscar Robertson, not Larry Bird, not Kareem, not MJ, not LeBron, not Steph. This is not an argument to say Morant is better than any of them, or will be. Just a point to say, Keep an eye on the kid.

A Swing and An Ole Miss

Yesterday at the Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz., the University of Mississippi won its first NCAA championship (non-football where it was with votes) in school history. The Rebels’ women’s golf team prevailed over Oklahoma State. If you’re wondering, Wasn’t the women’s NCAA golf championship canceled a couple weeks back due to mansplaining?, you’re partially right.

An NCAA women’s regional was canceled in Baton Rouge due to an unplayable course (heavy rains), even though the LSU men’s team for some reason practiced on that very course that very day. Hmm.

https://twitter.com/AlexMcDaniel/status/1397748003998507009?s=20

Anyway, the top schools in that regional automatically advanced, one of which was Ole Miss. And yesterday the young misses from Ole Miss brought home the school’s first national title.

The Hardy Boy

The other night The Revenant aired on AMC (again), and I’ve seen it a few times, as have you. What strikes me on repeated airings is that Leo DiCaprio won an Oscar for his work in this but Tom Hardy did not. Hardy’s character and portrayal are less like acting than they are being possessed by an alien being. I’m not ripping on Leo for his not having to speak all that many lines—I know his actor was a make-good for all the worthy parts he’s played in the past… and when is Tom Cruise going to receive his long overdue statue?—but Hardy is simply fantastic in this film.

And I can’t even decipher half the sentences he speaks.

2015 was actually a very good year for films: The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road (Hardy starred in this), The Big Short (shoulda won Best Picture), The Martian and Brooklyn all released. And Spotlight, a good-but-not-great film, won Best Picture. Hardy was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Revenant, but lost out to Mark Rylance in Bridge Of Spies (I’ve never seen this so I’ll leave it up to you).

Also, next time you watch Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, that’s a younger Tom Hardy as Ricki Tarr. He’s terrific in that role, too.

San Jose: 9 Shot And Killed

and…

Please share with a wackadoo gun nut you know.

The Kid

…won again last night as Utah evened the series with the Grizz.

So he’s now 8-4 and has $1,240 in the bank.

We’re waiting for today’s wager, but right now he’s at 66.67%, which is good.

Tonight he likes LAKERS minus-270 versus Suns in Game 2 of their series from Staples. Wins $100, or loses $270. A money-line wager.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 3 Comments

by John Walters

TRUMP DUMP

Three items of news regarding Donald Trump, who has taken to cheap TV ads to raise money (exactly what for, he does not say) of late:

  1. A grand jury has been convened in New York City to decide whether to indict Trump on potential tax and bank-related fraud. The grand jury will convene three times a week for the next six months and hear other cases as well. Having served on a New York City grand jury myself, here’s what I learned: grand juries indict. If they don’t initially, the prosecutor comes back and repeats the argument until they “get it.”
(then there’s this guy… kicked off Duke’s golf team, kicked around low-level pro golf for 9 years, daddy got him a job in Trump administration, now he’s ready to be your GOVERNOR!)

ESPN’s Don Van Natta and Seth Wickersham are out with a report claiming that it was Trump who essentially bribed then-Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) to lay off the 2008 New England Patriots Spygate inquiry. Allegedly Trump, a friend of both Robert Kraft and the senator, phoned Specter and said, “If you lay off the NFL, there’ll be a lot of [campaign] money in Palm Beach.”

At the time I was covering Notre Dame football for NBC Sports and wondered aloud if Charlie Weis, who had earned that job three years earlier due to his “decided schematic advantage” as an offensive mind, was actually just the beneficiary of some cheating. That column drew a nasty rebuke both from the school and one of my bosses at NBC. I’m still of the mind that Charlie probably could share a lot of info about this. Also, curious how Robert Kraft’s rub-n-tug bust a dozen years later, when Trump was president, just mysteriously vanished.Then there’s this… Man, if ever a meteor could be well-timed and well-placed…

George Floyd, One Year Later

(George Floyd’s daughter…this was yesterday)

The one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by Officer Derek Chauvin was marked by the family’s visit to the Oval Office. Meanwhile, mass-murderer/white supremacist Dylann Roof is appealing his conviction. On what grounds? Probably on the grounds that he’s white and they were black. In South Carolina, it just might work.

(Mike Lindell…this was January…I feel better now, don’t you?)

Tokyo? To Go?

The Olympics are less than 60 days away and minor dailies such as The New York Times are still posing the question, Should the Olympics be canceled? I really don’t know how the GOP has missed this as an own-the-libs talking point thus far.

So we’re clear, and these back-to-back Asian Olympics within the span of six months may get confusing: cancel the Summer Olympics in Tokyo because of Covid and boycott the Winter Olympics in Beijing because of genocide of Uyrghrs (and because of the Wuhan lab and because of sweatshop labor and because “GI-nah”).

Male Bonding

Your name is Jennifer Grant. You’re one of the prettiest, most popular girls at your Los Angeles private school. One of your classmates has a crush on you and it just so happens that he’s just landed a role in an ABC “After School Special.” So your dad suggests that it’s okay for you to invite him over, that you and he can watch the special (“Schoolboy Father”) together in your bedroom. But dad will be in the room with the two of you (so that the boy does not become his character).

Your dad is Cary Grant.

The boy is Rob Lowe.

This actually happened, as told in Scott Eyman’s biography of Hollywood’s most comically refined leading man, Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise. By this time Grant was in his mid-70s. He took Lowe aside after the program and told him that he reminded him of a young Warren Beatty (who patterned himself after a young Cary Grant in many ways). And then, after Lowe departed, Grant chased after him. Grant, at the time a spokesman for Faberge products, handed him a gift basket of the fragrance and bath works company’s items.

That’s Hollywood.

William Least-Heat Super Flower Blood Moon

This morning, if you rose early enough, you saw the Super Flower Blood Moon… which I believed played the Yuma Tent at Coachella in 2017. Anyway, it’s SUPER because it’s the closest a full moon is to Earth in its elliptical orbit, it’s FLOWER as a reference to a full moon in May, and it’s BLOOD because it is a full lunar eclipse (our first since 2019…thanks yet again, Covid!).

If you missed it, well, you may not be into super-celestial events. Or you may be more into sleep. Or I should have posted this yesterday and given you some warning.

Seeing Red Over Greene

Listen: we all know that Marjorie Taylor-Greene (and Lauren Bobert) are total clown shows who, if you actually had to apply for the job instead of run for the office, would never have earned it. But that’s the great thing about being an elected member of the U.S. government: any dope can run and if there are enough other dopes who buy into your dogma rather than consider that you should actually be qualified, you can win.

So Greene is a U.S. congresswoman. And her entire tenure in office is performance art designed to get attention and trigger the libs. But this weeks she finally crossed a line, somewhere near Dachau and Auschwitz, by comparing the Holocaust with mask mandates. Greene’s exact quote is in this link.

Should anyone care that the crazy lady is barking at the moon? If you took her seriously before she said this a few days ago, I guess you should care. But if you took her seriously at all since you knew who she was, you’d better consult a physician. There’s Katie Porter at one end of the spectrum of intelligence and maturity, and then there’s Marjorie Taylor-Greene pushing tires across a parking lot.

Bee-yond Bee-lief?

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1397270263088271362?s=20

Fanta? They must be Mexican bees.

The Kid

…was sweating bullets as Carolina-Nashville went to OT last night, but the Hurricanes prevailed.

He’s now 7-4 and up to $1,140.

He also may be chomping at the bit to start trying a parlay here or there. Parlay vous?, I inquired.

Yes, he said.

Tonight he wants UTAH minus-360 over the suddenly hot Grizz in what’s a must-win game for the 1-seed. Apparently, seeing the Clippers lose the first two at home to Dallas hasn’t spooked him.

So that’s $360 to lose, $100 to win on Game 2 between UTAH-Memphis.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 5 Comments

by John Walters

Law A’ Biden Texans

The Texas legislature passes a law that says citizens may own handguns without having to undergo a background check, obtain a license or have training. It’s been less than two years since 23 people were gunned down in El Paso at a Wal-Mart. Of course, those in favor of this bill will note that the killer did not use a handgun and that if everyone in the store were armed, he might have been stopped earlier. On the other hand, if everyone in Texas is carrying a handgun devoid of background checks or a license, fender-benders are about to become that much more dramatic. And traumatic.

Texas just passed a “heartbeat bill” that in essence outlaws all abortions, even for rape. It’s putting draconian restrictions on a woman’s uterus while relaxing all restrictions on the 2nd Amendment.

Eurobash

The Eurovision Song Contest has been held annually since 1956 (with the exception of last year) but we Yanks seemed mostly oblivious to it until Will Ferrell made a film about it. The contest, which draws nearly 200 million viewers worldwide, was held this past weekend in Rotterdam. Thirty-nine nations participated. It’s like the EuroCup for songs.

The winner? Maneskin, from Italy, with “Zitti e buoni” (Either “good ziti” or “Quiet and Behave”). Here’s the tune:

Acceptable Nickname: Blackjack

That’s former Notre Dame possession receiver Robby Toma, the Chris Finke of his time.

Gamma Rays

On May 12 the Tampa Bay Rays, defending American League champs, were shut out 1-0 at home by Gerrit Cole and the Yankees. Their record fell to .500, 19-19.

Since? The Rays have won 11 in a row, sweeping 3-game series with the Mets and the Orioles and a 4-game series against the Blue Jays (it began with a defeat of the Yankees to avoid being swept in that series). They’re now 30-19 and have the best record in the American League. A lot can change in a fortnight.

Oddly enough, the Rays and Red Sox have the A.L.’s two top records but their combined home records are 24-24.

Scoring Cramps

The Golden State Warriors had the NBA’s scoring champ in Steph Curry (32.0 ppg) this season. The Dubs lost both of their play-in games in the postseason and were bounced.

The Edmonton Oilers had the NHL’s scoring champ in Connor McDavid (105 points on 33 goals and 72 assists). The Oilers were swept 4-0 in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs by Winnipeg.

Two scoring leaders, Curry and McDavid, finish a combined 0-6 in the 2021 postseason.

Omission Impossible

We noticed one glaring omission from our “Stars Over 80” item yesterday. And this one is bad, since the movie star just won an Oscar for Best Actor last month: Anthony Hopkins is 83. He’s a two-time Oscar winner who won his first after his 50th birthday. Hope for us all.

Anyone else? Yeah, the Corleone brothers, James Caan* and Al Pacino, both 81.

Sports By Brooks

Someone at the Golf Channel leaked this never-ran interview of Brooks Koepka being addled and rattled as Bryson DeChambeau sauntered past and upstaged him. I don’t think Brooks is at all annoyed that it was leaked.

Remember The Mayne!

Last night was Kenny Mayne’s final night hosting SportsCenter on ESPN. This was memorable.

The Kid

…is on Tilt. It all began when he took Gerrit Cole and the Yankees to beat a Rangers squad that had lost six in a row. Cole, arguably the top pitcher in the AL, lost and then the Yanks won their next six. But they lost the night he took them.

Last night Vegas, whom he took, outshot Minnesota 40-14 but still lost.

So tonight, even though Jacob deGrom is on the mound at Citi Field against a Rockies team that is 3-17 on the road, The Kid is so spooked that he won’t take the Mets. Or the Rockies.

Instead, he likes CAROLINA minus-200 against Nashville. That’s $200 down to win $100 (or lose $200).

For the record, he’s 6-4 and at $1,040. A net of $40 after 10 wagers, or $4 per wager.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Phil, Fifty, Fit, Filthy

At age 50, Phil Mickelson becomes the oldest man ever to win a major: the PGA Championship at the scenic and sublime Ocean Course in Kiawah, S.C. It’s his sixth major championship and his first in nearly eight years, when he won the British Open in 2013.

Jack Nicklaus won the Masters in 1986 at age 46. And while age 46 in ’86 is older than age 50 in ’21 as far as we are concerned—everyone’s Sally O’Malley these days—you could also contend that there’s a lot more young talent on the PGA Tour today than there was in ’86. For the record, Nicklaus was not the previous oldest winner of a major. That distinction belonged to Julius Boros, who was 48 in 1968 when he won the PGA Championship. Surely, you remember.

Extreme Race, Extreme Conditions

This one has Jon Krakauer’s name written all over it.

Twenty-one runners perished when wind, freezing rain and hail swept into a 62-mile ultra-marathon in China over the weekend. The extreme conditions in the Yellow River Stone Forest struck at high altitudes (6,500 feet and runners, clad in light running gear, had little protection against the extreme weather. Another 151 runners survived the race in Gansu Province.

A fatality total of 21 may be the largest for any single road- or trail-running event we know of.

Joke Swap

Cecily Strong’s send-up of Jeanine Pirro was, well, strong. However, this was our favorite moment from the finale “Weekend Update” of Saturday Night Live’s 46th season. When Colin Jost and Michael Che write racially charged jokes that the other must read, without having previously seen them (and we hope that set-up is legit), it leads for some funny stuff. Laughter is a palliative against racism.

Speaking of which, how prescient was this old Chappelle Show sketch?

Women Jocks Rock

Here’s Simone Biles, who people in the know are calling the greatest female gymnast ever, doing something on a vault that no one has ever done before. And, at a lower level, but no less impressive, a memorable catch at a high school state championship softball game in Utah.

The common thread among both feats? Focus.

Star, 80

An 80th birthday today? It ain’t me, babe. It’s Bob Dylan. The troubadour from Hibbing who started out playing West Village coffee houses and became the voice of a generation (while, some say, appropriating Woody Guthrie’s style). Three favorite Dylan tunes?

Visions Of Johanna, Girl From The North Country, Mr. Tambourine Man.

Here’s another opinion.

We own Bob Dylan Live 1966 (The Judas concert) and can listen to it over and over and over again. Like it’s a rolling stone.

Star 80? No, Stars Over 80

For no particular reason (okay, maybe from the above item), we’ve compiled a list of the greatest living movie stars over the age of 80 yeas old. Feel free to quibble with our rankings. A bold-type name means he or she is an Oscar winner. An asterisk means an Oscar nominee. We also include the ages of each.

  1. Jack Nicholson, 84
  2. Clint Eastwood, 90
  3. Sidney Poitier, 94
  4. Sophia Loren, 86
  5. Eva Marie Saint, 96
  6. Gene Hackman, 91
  7. Joanne Woodward, 91
  8. Mel Brooks, 94
  9. Angela Lansbury, 95*
  10. Dick Van Dyke, 95

Also worth noting: Eva Marie Saint is hardly the only Hitchcock blonde still with us. Tippi Hedren (91), Vera Miles (91) and Kim Novak (88) are all still breathing, too. Darth Vader (James Earl Jones, 90) and Harry Belafonte (94) are also still kicking.

UPDATE: A big name, an Oscar-winner, I forgot: Woody Allen, 85.

The Kid

An equalizer in the 87th minute prevented The Kid from a victory on Friday. That’s what you get for scrounging around in the English League One.

He’s moving back to frozen pond today:

VEGAS minus $180 to win $100 over Minnesota

The Kid’s record is not 6-3 and the bank is at $1,220.

IT’S ALL HAPPENING!

by John Walters | 1 Comment

by John Walters

Nobody Beats The Wiz (Twice In 3 Days)

Washington seals the 8th playoff spot in the East via a 142-115 beatdown of Indiana. Six different Wizards scored in double figures, from Bradley Beal (25) and Russell Westbrook (18) above to some dude named Daniel Gafford (15). The Wiz will face the Nets, who landed the top seed in the East. If your first-round playoff series contains five surefire Hall of Famers (six?), consult your nearest physician.

Say What?

Two big mistakes here. The first is from Republican congressman Carlos Gimenez of Florida stating, on air, on camera, that he had people in his hotel room at 9 a.m. on January 6th stating they were “going to do something” that afternoon. The second is from Erin Burnett, who is not paying close enough attention to call him on it. Who were these people? Why did you not warn anyone? What specifically did they say they were planning?

Now, the moment has passed. Gimenez will either say he misspoke or that he did not hear anything specifically as to what they were planning or that he has no idea who they were.

Going forward, the most sinister thing the GOP is doing is attempting to normalize the capacity for state legislatures (ruled by Republicans in key states) to overrule the will of the people. To simply say that they don’t care what the popular vote was, they’re going to figure out a way to say that the election was tainted and that they’ll refuse to ratify the vote. They’re attempting to make this the new normal.

This is why we need to eliminate electors and make it a pure popular vote. Even if it’s a popular vote by state, with each state having a certain number of electoral votes. You can’t just rewrite the rules when you don’t like who wins (even if the NBA does it all the time where the Lakers are concerned).

Friends In Their Fifties

A Cup Of Grammar

The Kid

…triumphed again last night as Montreal thwarted Toronto, 2-1.

That pushes his record to 6-2 and his bank to $1,320.

Today The Kid goes arcane, to the third tier of English football, English League One (not to be confused with The English League, I confess). He likes…

BLACKPOOL +125 over Oxford United.

Betting $100 to win $125 should Blackpool prevail.

I’m fairly certain Blackpool was one of the seven kingdoms in Game Of Thrones.