In a matinee getaway game in Seattle, Baltimore southpaw John Means throws the first no-hitter the Orioles have had since Jim Palmer’s in 1969. He also tosses the third no-hitter (yes, we know) of this young season. Means’ came a wild pitch away from a perfect game, as he struck out the Mariners’ Sam Haggerty in the bottom of the 3rd inning but strike three bounced in the dirt and eluded the catcher. Haggerty was thrown out attempting to steal second base, so Means faced the minimum 27 batters.
On Twitter, the illustrious and very smart Tim Burke (@bubbaprog) argued that this should be a perfect game, but we disagree. How can a pitcher be credited with a perfect game when he has an error, which is what a wild pitch is scored as?
By the way, here’s another thing I love about baseball. Look at that photo. It could be from 1969. The uniforms, the infield, the daylight, it’s quite nostalgic, no?
India
Covid-19 related deaths in India the past five days, or in the month of May:
Saturday: 3,688
Sunday: 3,422
Monday: 3,438
Tuesday: 3,786
Wednesday: 3,982
That’s more than 18,000 deaths in the past five days. Granted, it’s the world’s 2nd-most populous country and the ‘rona sorta bypassed India the first time around. The nation’s now bypassed 230,000 deaths, which puts it in third place. Behind Brazil and… you guessed it.
We’re still No. 1, America! And we should be eclipsing 600,000 deaths, or a city proper the size of Denver, by this time next week.
Mitchin’
Here’s Sen. Mitch McConnell (R, for Reptile-Kentucky), speaking at a press conference in his home state yesterday: “One hundred percent of my focus is standing up to this administration.”
So I guess that whole “unify the country” schpiel back in mid-January was merely a smokescreen?
And Moanin’
Caitlyn Jenner to Hannity: "My friends are leaving California. My hangar, the guy right across, he was packing up his hangar and I said, where are you going? And he says, 'I'm moving to Sedona, Arizona, I can't take it anymore. I can't walk down the streets and see the homeless'" pic.twitter.com/Z1WbBBQXq7
Facebook’s oversight board just announced that the ban on The Former Guy will not be rescinded. In the ruling, “the Board found that, in maintaining an unfounded narrative of electoral fraud and persistent calls to action, Mr. Trump created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible.”
Facebook (FB) was going to be criticized by nearly half the country no matter what it ruled. Of course, Facebook itself did not make the ruling. The “oversight board” was constructed as a fall guy to take the heat for a decision that is really Facebook’s own to make. But now Zuckerberg is able to say, Well, it wasn’t my call. As various pundits have noted, FB once again (shocker!) shirked its responsibility here. The board responded by telling FB that this is not a permanent ban. You punt it to us, we’ll punt it back to you.
It’s not a lifetime ban. It’s just the board kicking the can down the road until 2022. Meanwhile, the chances of MAGA types fleeing Facebook in support of Trump are nil. Too many pics of grandchildren to view.
Twitter and now Facebook. Maybe he should try TikTok. After all, that’s where all the kids are.
A Bucket Of Blood
The MH staff wakes up, alights from its chamber, turns on the TCM, and this 1959 flick (title above), a satire on the Beatnik generation, is playing. Here’s the TV guide synopsis: “A waiter, who is jealous of the beatnik crowd hanging out at his cafe, becomes an art sensation after he inadvertently kills his landlady’s cat and covers the corpse with clay.”
The film is layered (as is the feline). There’s a line where a patron requests “a papaya cheesecake and a bottle of Yugoslavian white wine.”
We’re only a little into it, but it seems that our protagonist recognizes the only way to maintain his fame is to continue creating art the way he made his original piece… but moves on to humans as his models.
Someone greenlit this script. God bless ’em.
Bronx Cheer
The Yankees met the Astros last night for the first time since the infamous Game 7, trash can-abetted defeat in the 2019 ALCS. Yanks win, 7-3, and the fans let Houston and Jose Altuve what they thought of them.* However, the Astros have not been stripped of their World Series championship. Maybe the Facebook oversight board needs to turn its attention to baseball?
Both the Yankees, winners of nine of their last 12, and the Astros are now 15-14.
*As Wally comments below, the trash can ploy is not what the Astros deployed versus the Yankees (apparently). Though I do believe it’s fair to call Altus’s blast baseball’s first “buzzer-beater.”
Cap ‘n Goon Ceremony
The Astros were not the only villains to visit NYC this week. Here’s Cap Tom Wilson inciting a riot with an unprovoked punch to the face of a Ranger skater who was flat on his stomach at the time. The Rangers social media web site responded vociferously.
Today is Cinco de Mayo, but it feels like Dia de los Muertos in Mexico City. At least two dozen people perished when this subway platform collapsed a few nights ago. Not much to add here, but you just never know when it’s going to be your time.
Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced after 27 years of marriage. The couple who started a namesake foundation find themselves unable to maintain their own. It happens.
Gates, one of the world’s five wealthiest men at $124 billion, joins fellow world’s wealthiest clubbers Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos in the Billionaire Bachelors Club. Elon Musk is divorced, but he’s since either remarried or re-hooked-up, we ain’t sure. Your hopes of a single-sex partnership between the two, which the pundits would dub ElonGates, just is not happening.
All the money in the world cannot alone protect a relationship. So what can? Trust and soft lighting.
Liz vs Lies
Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) is up against it: she’s the lone high-ranking Republican publicly calling out The Former Guy for continuing to propagate The Big Lie. For doing so, Cheney has become a pariah in her own party (and something of a heroine to those folks who think of themselves as objective). She has chosen truth over tribe, and that may cost her her seat in the House (although she could always cross the aisle some day).
Here’s what David Gerson wrote in The Washington Postabout the current state of Republican fealty to Donald Trump, Orwellian fever dreams, Roy Cohn and the like:
“Nothing about this is normal. The GOP is increasingly defined not by its shared beliefs, but by its shared delusions. To be a loyal Republican, one must be either a sucker or a liar. And because this defining falsehood [that Trump actually won the election] is so laughably false, we can safely assume that most Republican leaders fall into the second category. Knowingly repeating a lie—an act of immorality—is now the evidence of Republican fidelity.”
Rising sophomore wide receiver Jordan Johnson is entering the transfer portal. This announcement from the Notre Dame wide receiver comes two days after the annual Blue-Gold intra-squad scrimmage.
Worth noting: in its assessment of Notre Dame’s 2020 recruiting class, Rivals.com awarded the coveted 5-star rating to just one recruit: Johnson, the 6’2″ wideout out of St. Louis. Classmates such as tight end Michael “Baby Gronk” Mayer (a future first-round pick), Tosh Baker (who will start at OT this fall) and Chris Tyree (second on the team in rushing as a frosh last season) all garnered only four stars.
But Johnson failed to make an imprint last season. He finished with zero catches. Johnson was listed as a starter on the Blue team in Saturday’s game, but again finished with zero catches. This is a five-star recruit at a position where the Irish are sorely hurting for a five-star talent: wide receiver.
Worth noting: Javon McKinley entered the Irish program as a highly-touted recruit in 2016 (far more hyped than classmate Chase Claypool) but had trouble seeing the field his first three seasons due to injury. It was only last season, as a fifth-year senior that he was able to remain healthy all autumn. McKinley wound up leading the Irish, tied with Mayer, in receptions at 42. Over the weekend McKinley signed with the Detroit Lions as an underrated free agent and was given a $100,000 guarantee.
Johnson can arrive at any school in August and suit up and play this September for them. The NCAA now allows a one-time transfer waiver, meaning that a player may transfer once without having to sit out a year. It’ll be interesting to see where Johnson heads. He’s a 5-star wideout with no mileage on his tires after a season of college football during a pandemic. The mystery will remain why he couldn’t make an impact in South Bend and why he did not have the patience to see where this season would take him.
Don’t Bring Me Down*
*The judges will also accept “Non-Government Bale Out,” “Garish Bale,” “Hay, Now” and “Hay, Hay, Hay”
This isn’t exactly news, but we’d never head of this weirdest of rock star deaths. If Spinal Tap hadn’t already been made, this story would have fit nicely.
Mike Edwards was a cellist who was part of the original lineup of ELO, the Electric Light Orchestra. He took the stage with Jeff Lynne and the others in their debut performance in 1972 and remained in the group for a few years. In September of 2010 Edwards met an untimely demise in a most English manner, and perhaps near an English manor. He was driving a lorry that was struck by a runaway bale of hay, weighing 1,300 pounds, that was rolling down the hillside.
Never knew about this one.
Matinee Idle
A simple request: every day of the Major League Baseball season, from early April to late September, should feature at least one day game. Every one.
If you checked the schedule yesterday, there was not a single matinee contest. Today and the rest of the week, including Friday, there will be. There’s as many as seven scheduled for Thursday. But yesterday, zero.
The Matinee Game would appeal to 1) bettors 2) television 3) deadbeat stimulus cash-checkers who’ve gotten rich off GME, AMC and dogecoin and wanna have something to do when they wake up at noon besides just another bong hit. Let’s make it happen, commish!
If you spent any time at all the past decade watching The Walking Dead, especially when it was good in its first four or five seasons, you know that it is an allegory. A parable. Zombies are real. Okay, maybe not flesh-eating zombies who walk as if they have palsy, but the zombie ideal: a soulless mob devoid of intelligent thought whose only real mission is to destroy mankind.
If you spend any time on Twitter (sorry), time and again you will see examples of “libs” owning conservatives or MAGA types by pointing out their idiocy or hypocrisy. Fine. But what troubles me about this is the fleeting satisfaction that libs feel over being intellectually or morally superior misses the point. Zombies are impervious to logic or even to arguments showing them that they’re actually for people who are charlatans. Zombies only have one goal: destroy the enemy (and in so doing, although this is not their purpose, create more zombies).
And now, Green Bay.
I am going to re-post this video every time I hear about a mass shooting. If you're tired of seeing this video, I hope you understand that I am much more tired of hearing about mass shootings. pic.twitter.com/wSox0zc0Q3
So this video about gun regulation from comic Steve Hofstetter is outstanding. Sure. Will it cause even one NRA member to reconsider his stance on gun proliferation?
Michael Flynn this afternoon was called up to lead the Pledge of Allegiance at Lin Wood’s rally AND HE FORGOT THE WORDS!!! What kind of “Patriot” General doesn’t know the Pledge! pic.twitter.com/1jNQFxdsL8
And here’s Michael Flynn, avowed The Former Guy ride-or-die dude, former National Security Advisor, architect of the Jan. 6 insurrection, etc., standing up in a crowd and insisting that folks pay homage by reciting the national anthem. Then not knowing the words. Does this type of hypocrisy compel even one Fox News or NewsMax viewer to reconsider their fealty?
There’s the Matt Gaetz pedophilia thing (while supporting family values). There’s Ted Cruz’s jaunt to Cancun during Texas’ worst crisis in more than a decade (while supporting working-class values). And on and on and QAnon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Y38Vu2svM
So, yes. Over and over and over again libs will dunk on conservatives for being hypocrites or lemmings or just plain ignorant. For pointing out that a Fox News lie (Kamala Harris’ children book was never “issued” to immigrant children) travels halfway to a Dakota and back before the truth can get out of its Upper West Side studio apartment.
Alas, that’s not where the war is going to be won. Because there’s really only one way to deal with zombies. And it isn’t via a coffeehouse roundtable debate.
It divides into two camps: those who seek truth and those who cling to fairy tales. A poll taken over the weekend shows that 70% of Republicans still believe that Joe Biden did not legitimately win the presidency (as a recount takes place in Arizona, one that Arizona taxpayers are paying for, with the sole purpose not of overturning the election but in keeping the distrust and paranoia alive). Meanwhile, MAGA’s latest cause celebre is canceling the 1619 Project, even though it is the truth. But that’s not what’s important to them.
Hard-core conservatives, the same people who take stories such as The Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve as the truth (it’s a myth, kids; first question you should ask: who is the author?), prefer fairy tales to facts. They’d rather believe what makes them feel good about themselves (and about white patriarchy) than they would accept facts.
Donald Trump won the 2016 election (despite losing the popular vote). Donald Trump lost the 2020 election (and lost the popular vote). Your first clue that The Former Guy was not to be trusted in terms of election integrity was that he said if he won, it would be a fair election and that if he lost, it would not be. The fact that tens of millions of MAGA types go along with this “Heads I win, Tails You Lose” credo speaks to their ability to suspend disbelief if it promotes their cause.
The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.
Zombies. Liz Cheney, whose father was a Republican vice president, for chrissake, is now being canceled because she has the temerity to speak the truth. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee just three elections ago, was booed onstage this past weekend simply because he has stood up to Trump.
Romney’s retort to the crowd is one that we’d like to propose to every MAGA dolt who remains a Former Guy fan: “Aren’t you embarrassed?”
Musk-See TV?
Zeitgeist figure and world’s 2nd-wealthiest man Elon Musk will be the host for the season finale of Saturday Night Live. This has many tweeps angrier than if they’d invited that QAnon shaman dude to host.
Granted, Musk seems a little (a little?) arrogant and he’s not in show business (per se). The choice is bizarre although it has generated plenty of buzz for SNL. But he’s not exactly Jeffrey Epstein. Or Caitlyn Jenner. Still, it’s gotten so toxic inside 30 Rock that the show issued a release stating that repertory players will not have to appear in a sketch with Musk if they do not wish to do so. They say they don’t want to, but what happens when he gifts each of them a new Tesla?
Here’s our short list of the WORST hosts in SNL history:
Donald Trump (NYC narcissist)
Steven Seagal (sexual-harrassment douchebag)
Lance Armstrong (cycling enthusiast)
O.J. Simpson (former Buffalo Bill)
Robert Blake (“Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time...”)
Jimmy Fallon
Steve Forbes
Rudy Giuliani (see: Donald Trump)
Jerry Hall (current wife of Rupert Murdoch)
Hugh Hefner
Paris Hilton
George McGovern
Ed Koch (see: Rudy Giuliani)
Al Gore (inspiration for Debbie Downer)
Al Sharpton (see: Ed Koch)
Kevin Spacey (see: Stephen Seagal)
George Steinbrenner (see: Al Sharpton)
Stranglers On A Train
It’s been a good week for the MH staff in terms of catching classic films we’d never before seen. First-ever viewings of Red River (the film that is showing inside the theater near the end of The Last Picture Show, another classic), with John Wayne and a young Montgomery Clift; of Victor/Victoria, which is an absolute delight and you can see where Blake Edwards piled in a bunch of gags that he never got around to including in a Pink Panther film; and of Shadow Of A Doubt, a Hitchcock film from the early 1940s starring Joseph Cotten and the ultimate girl-next-doo, Teresa Wright.
Watching Shadow Of A Doubt made me realize that almost every Hitchcock film (and by now I’ve seen almost every last one) includes the following:
–an ominous stairwell (Shadow Of A Doubt, Vertigo, Psycho, Notorious, The Man Who Knew Too Much)
–a choo-choo that acts as a confined space for all types of nefarious acts (Shadow Of A Doubt, North By Northwest,The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes and, of course, Strangers On A Train)
–gravity causing a precipitous fall that is fatal or nearly so (Shadow Of A Doubt, North By Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window, Psycho, To Catch A Thief)
–Strangulation or nearly so (Shadow Of A Doubt, Dial “M” For Murder, Rope, Rear Window, Strangers On A Train)
–A protagonist coming within an inch of death in the final scene or just about (Shadow Of A Doubt, Psycho, Rear Window, North By Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dial ‘M’ For Murder, The Birds, Notorious)
You’ll also notice a preponderance of younger sisters who are never romantically involved, though who often swoon over the leading man (Shadow Of A Doubt, Strangers On A Train, Psycho). You’ll also notice that almost never does a character die by gunshot (The Man Who Knew Too Much). Hitchcock considered guns lacking in suspense. He was right.
There May Be A Problem With The Server
Freaking Incredible: Agassi knew where Boris Becker was going to serve based on his tongue movements, but didn’t want to use it all the time because then Becker would find out
We didn’t actually watch President Biden’s speech, but it sounds as if it he was channeling the spirit of Ted Lasso. Hope and belief and positivity.
“I believe in hope. I believe in believe!”
Ted Lasso or Joe Biden? The thing is, could be either, right? And those of you who’ve been paying attention already know: who played Joe Biden when he was the vice president and still remains the best J.B. impersonator on Saturday Night Live? Jason Sudeikis…who now plays Ted Lasso.
The speech got an 85% approval rating. I think, with the adjustment in rankings this week, it’s almost eclipsed Citizen Kane.
Rotunda Wunda Land
How It Started (Jan. 6)
How It’s Going (April 28)
Soldier Fields
With the 10th pick in the draft, the Chicago Bears selected a new QB1: Justin Fields of Ohio State. He was the fourth quarterback taken after Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson and Trey Lance went 1, 2, 3. And the Patriots never even had to budge from No. 15 to get purported Tom Brady clone Mac Jones of Alabama… who has not lost a game since high school.
Najee Harris threw a draft party for the kids at the homeless shelter where he lived for several years growing up 🙏
We were already stoked for yinz selecting Jones’ backfield mate, Najee Harris, and then we saw this and it made the choice that much better. Go, Steelers… and they’ve already had good success with that surname at running back.
Radiation Vibe
Fascinating story here via ABC News about how, 35 years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, nature has made a stunning comeback in the area. It’s amazing what God’s other creatures are able to do when man exits.
From the story:
“To the surprise of many who expected the area might be a dead zone for centuries, wildlife is thriving: bears, bison, wolves, lynx, wild horses and dozens of bird species live in the people-free territory. According to scientists, animals were much more resistant to radiation than expected.
I’ll never forget what Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park says when he is assured the dinosaurs will not procreate because they are all females: “Nature finds a way.”
Yes, it does.
It’s good to know that when man eventually devises his own destruction, that the animals will have the joint back to themselves. At least they know how not to ruin it.
/https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/sports/baseball/2021/05/05/john-means-throws-no-hitter-orioles-beat-mariners-6-0/WATW136-55_2021_220445.jpg)
