Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 226
August 18, 2013
Photo of the Day
In latest protest: two members of the Russian track team that just won in an international meet in Moscow kiss on the medal stand to protest the anti-propaganda laws. Getty photo.
Braun: No Brains
If you think A-Roid is bad, consider this, from Buster Olney tonight at ESPN. Rumor has it that Braun may apologize to collector this week, maybe Monday.
When Ryan Braun accepted his 65-game suspension in an agreement under the drug-testing agreement, there was a strong, angry reaction from other players.
Some of that may be because of phone calls that Braun made in the days leading up the decision of his appeal, in February of 2012.Braun
According to sources, Braun called veteran players around baseball privately at that time to lobby for their support. In the calls -- confirmed by three sources -- Braun told other players that in the preparation for his appeal, some information had become known about the collector of his urine sample, Dino Laurenzi Jr. -- that he was a Cubs fan, with the implication that he might work against Braun, who played for a division rival of the Cubs.
Braun, who is Jewish, also told the players that he had been told the collector was an anti-Semite.
Defending 'Taking Out' Assange
If you've missed outrage over Time magazine's Michael Grunwald tweet last night here's a report along with the deleted message: "I can't wait to write a defense of the drone strike that takes out Julian Assange." He defended for awhile, then said it was "dumb." When he deleted it he seem to convinced by someone saying he was only helping Assange supporters. It came on a day when Julian Assange was also hit by those critical of his remarks hailing Rand and Ron Paul.
August 17, 2013
Willie and #660, 40 Years Ago Today
What were the odds? From the age of 8, Willie Mays was my favorite player. I lived and died with him, from the move to San Francisco to the very late return to New York with the Mets. And the Mets were my team, so I saw Willie play a handful of games in 1972 and 1973. Still what were the odds I'd be sitting out there in leftfield, over the bullpen, forty years ago today, and watch a ball hit by Willie vs. the Reds sail right past me into the pen, since he hardly ever hit HRs anymore? And not only that, it turned out to be his final dinger, #660.That number has added significance these days, as it's frequently cited, with Alex"A-Roid' Rodriquez closing in on it, being allowed to play despite his nearly career-long PED use. And when he ties Willie's mark he gets another $6 million or something from his contract...So let A-Roid hit .300 this year, but with only a few HRs, then get suspended and maybe never play again....
BTW, I was also at Shea for Willie's tribute night that September when he tearfully said "goodbye to Amercia." And then his final playoff game, when his swinging bunt drove in the winning run over the Reds that put the Mets into the '73 World Series.
Ballad of the One-Legged Kid Catcher
As a longtime Little League coach (even wrote a book, Joy in Mudville), I can appreciate this even more, but it ought to blow your mind as well: Kid with one leg plays just like regular kid in Kentucky--hits, run bases, slides, and get this, even plays catcher and blocks the plate. And see how other kids treat him as "normal."
Woodstock Tribute, Part II
Since my earlier posting of videos of folks who played at Woodstock 44 years ago this weekend proved so popular (The Who, Jimi, Janis, Creedence, CSNY, Tim Hardin) here are some more! Again, these are all live from that era but not necessarily from Woodstock.
First up, the Airplane, with the wildly optimistic "Revolution." A few months later Marty leaped off the stage at Altamont, as "volunteer of America." when the bikers were beating up fans, and got clocked himself. Next: I suppose we can't do a Woodstock thing without Joe Cocker, even though, about seven years, he snotted on my leg in a NYC studio while I was trying to watch Lee Dorsey and Ronnie Spector sing with Southside Johnny. (Yes, the memoir of my Crawdaddy days will be out soon.) Then, off live TV, Sly gets everyone to dance to the music, but not half a million this time. Then, to mix things up, the most famous cancelled act, Joni Mitchell, did response with a little song about it a few weeks later.
First up, the Airplane, with the wildly optimistic "Revolution." A few months later Marty leaped off the stage at Altamont, as "volunteer of America." when the bikers were beating up fans, and got clocked himself. Next: I suppose we can't do a Woodstock thing without Joe Cocker, even though, about seven years, he snotted on my leg in a NYC studio while I was trying to watch Lee Dorsey and Ronnie Spector sing with Southside Johnny. (Yes, the memoir of my Crawdaddy days will be out soon.) Then, off live TV, Sly gets everyone to dance to the music, but not half a million this time. Then, to mix things up, the most famous cancelled act, Joni Mitchell, did response with a little song about it a few weeks later.
A Bigger 'Turning Point' Than Woodstock
I've been marking the 44th anniversary of the Woodstock festival this weekend in word and in video (cool live things from six acts who played there). Also see my e-book, just published this week, about '6os hero Kurt Vonnegut.
But almost exactly a year before Woodstock, what you might call the flip side of the '60s: the police riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the antiwar forces of Sen. Eugene McCarthy were also turned back. Here's a piece I wrote not long along ago about how I witnessed that.
***
Forty-five years ago I was planning my trip to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. It would culminate in the crushing of Sen. Eugene McCarthy's anti-Vietnam crusade inside the convention hall and the cracking of peacenik skulls by Mayor Richard Daley's police in the streets. Together, this doomed Hubert Humphrey to defeat in November at the hands of Richard Nixon.
I'd been a political-campaign junkie all my life. At the age of 8, I paraded in front of my boyhood home in Niagara Falls, N.Y., waving an "I Like Ike" sign. In 1968 I got to cover my first presidential campaign when one of Sen. McCarthy's nephews came to town, before the state primary, and I interviewed him for the Niagara Falls Gazette, where I worked as a summer reporter during college. I had been chair of the McCarthy campaign at my college. So much for non-biased reporting!
My mentor at the Gazette was a young, irreverent City Hall reporter named John Hanchette. He went on to an illustrious career at other papers, and as a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent for Gannett News Service. Hanchette was in Chicago that week to cover party politics as a Gazette reporter and contributor to the Gannett News Service (GNS). I was to hang out with the young McCarthyites and the anti-war protesters. To get to Chicago I took my first ride on a jetliner.
To make a long story short: On the climactic night of Aug. 28, 1968, Hanchette and I ended up just floors apart in the same building: the Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago. I was in McCarthy headquarters and Hanchette was in one of Gannett's makeshift newsrooms. Probably at about the same time, we pulled back the curtains and looked out our separate windows to see police savagely attacking protesters with nightsticks at the intersection directly below.
Like me, Hanchette headed for the streets. By that time, the peak violence had passed, but cops were still pushing reporters and other innocent bystanders through plate glass windows at the front of the hotel. I held back in the lobby, where someone had set off a stink bomb. Some Democrats started returning from the convention hall -- after giving Humphrey the nomination even though McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy won most of the primaries -- as protesters inside the Hilton chanted, "You killed the party! You killed the party!" And: "You killed the country." And, of course, "Dump the Hump!"
Finally, I screwed up my courage and crossed to Grant Park where the angry protest crowd gathered. And there I stayed all night, as the crowd and chants of "pig" directed at the cops increased. Many in the crowd wore bandages of had fresh blood on their faces. Phil Ochs (later a friend) arrived and sang, along with other notables, including some of the peacenik delegates. Cops lined the park -- back up by jeeps with machines guns pointed at us.
When I returned to Niagara Falls that Friday, I wrote a column for that Sunday's paper. I described the eerie feeling of sitting in Grant Park, and thousands around me yelling at the soldiers and the media, "The whole world is watching!" -- and knowing that, for once, it was true.
More than 35 years later, after I had written two books on other infamous political campaigns, I returned to Chicago for a staged performance of a musical based on one of them. As I got out of a cab to make my way to the theater, I had an eerie feeling and, sure enough, looking up the street I noticed Grant Park a block away -- and the very intersection in front of the Hilton where skulls were cracked that night in 1968.
P.S. Norman Mailer's terrific book, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, is still in print.
But almost exactly a year before Woodstock, what you might call the flip side of the '60s: the police riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the antiwar forces of Sen. Eugene McCarthy were also turned back. Here's a piece I wrote not long along ago about how I witnessed that.
***
Forty-five years ago I was planning my trip to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. It would culminate in the crushing of Sen. Eugene McCarthy's anti-Vietnam crusade inside the convention hall and the cracking of peacenik skulls by Mayor Richard Daley's police in the streets. Together, this doomed Hubert Humphrey to defeat in November at the hands of Richard Nixon.
I'd been a political-campaign junkie all my life. At the age of 8, I paraded in front of my boyhood home in Niagara Falls, N.Y., waving an "I Like Ike" sign. In 1968 I got to cover my first presidential campaign when one of Sen. McCarthy's nephews came to town, before the state primary, and I interviewed him for the Niagara Falls Gazette, where I worked as a summer reporter during college. I had been chair of the McCarthy campaign at my college. So much for non-biased reporting!
My mentor at the Gazette was a young, irreverent City Hall reporter named John Hanchette. He went on to an illustrious career at other papers, and as a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent for Gannett News Service. Hanchette was in Chicago that week to cover party politics as a Gazette reporter and contributor to the Gannett News Service (GNS). I was to hang out with the young McCarthyites and the anti-war protesters. To get to Chicago I took my first ride on a jetliner.To make a long story short: On the climactic night of Aug. 28, 1968, Hanchette and I ended up just floors apart in the same building: the Conrad Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago. I was in McCarthy headquarters and Hanchette was in one of Gannett's makeshift newsrooms. Probably at about the same time, we pulled back the curtains and looked out our separate windows to see police savagely attacking protesters with nightsticks at the intersection directly below.
Like me, Hanchette headed for the streets. By that time, the peak violence had passed, but cops were still pushing reporters and other innocent bystanders through plate glass windows at the front of the hotel. I held back in the lobby, where someone had set off a stink bomb. Some Democrats started returning from the convention hall -- after giving Humphrey the nomination even though McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy won most of the primaries -- as protesters inside the Hilton chanted, "You killed the party! You killed the party!" And: "You killed the country." And, of course, "Dump the Hump!"
Finally, I screwed up my courage and crossed to Grant Park where the angry protest crowd gathered. And there I stayed all night, as the crowd and chants of "pig" directed at the cops increased. Many in the crowd wore bandages of had fresh blood on their faces. Phil Ochs (later a friend) arrived and sang, along with other notables, including some of the peacenik delegates. Cops lined the park -- back up by jeeps with machines guns pointed at us.
When I returned to Niagara Falls that Friday, I wrote a column for that Sunday's paper. I described the eerie feeling of sitting in Grant Park, and thousands around me yelling at the soldiers and the media, "The whole world is watching!" -- and knowing that, for once, it was true.
More than 35 years later, after I had written two books on other infamous political campaigns, I returned to Chicago for a staged performance of a musical based on one of them. As I got out of a cab to make my way to the theater, I had an eerie feeling and, sure enough, looking up the street I noticed Grant Park a block away -- and the very intersection in front of the Hilton where skulls were cracked that night in 1968.
P.S. Norman Mailer's terrific book, Miami and the Siege of Chicago, is still in print.
New 'Portrait'
New mini-doc to go with Dylan's upcoming official "bootleg" release of much-mocked Self-Portrait era cuts and outtakes, with Al Kooper, David Bromberg, etc.
August 16, 2013
Saturday Music Picks, Special Woodstock Edition
Special Woodstock edition, marking 44th anniversary of the famous fest. So, below, all from performers who performed, and all live, though not necessarily from Woodstock. (See, earlier today, my two cuts from The Band.) First up, Jimi, with "Hey Joe," about six years before Patti Smith recorded it as her first single. Then The Who, talking bout their/our/my generation. Next, Creedence (like The Band and Janis Joplin, they were cut of the film version) visit the bayou.
Then, Neil Young with three other guys goes "Down By the River" at Big Sur. Next, Janis at Monterey on the night that made her career. Many forget the opening day Woodstock was folkie-oriented, including the great Tim Hardin. Here he is a few years later in a live duet with...Twiggy.
Then, Neil Young with three other guys goes "Down By the River" at Big Sur. Next, Janis at Monterey on the night that made her career. Many forget the opening day Woodstock was folkie-oriented, including the great Tim Hardin. Here he is a few years later in a live duet with...Twiggy.
Friday Night Music Picks, Special Woodstock Edition
Special Woodstock edition, marking 44th anniversary of the famous fest. So, below, all from performers who performed, and all live, though not necessarily from Woodstock. (See, earlier today, my two cuts from The Band.) First up, Jimi, with "Hey Joe," about six years before Patti Smith recorded it as her first single. Then The Who, talking bout their/our/my generation. Next, Creedence (like The Band and Janis Joplin, they were cut of the film version) visit the bayou.
Then, Neil Young with three other guys goes "Down By the River" at Big Sur. Next, Janis at Monterey on the night that made her career. Many forget the opening day Woodstock was folkie-oriented, including the great Tim Hardin. Here he is a few years later in a live duet with...Twiggy.
Then, Neil Young with three other guys goes "Down By the River" at Big Sur. Next, Janis at Monterey on the night that made her career. Many forget the opening day Woodstock was folkie-oriented, including the great Tim Hardin. Here he is a few years later in a live duet with...Twiggy.
