Mark Evanier's Blog, page 114

Today's Bonus Bonus Video Link

And watch this…

Today's Bonus Video Link

In case you haven't guessed, I'm busy meeting a deadline so that's why all the video links. I'll be back writing more for this blog before long. Meanwhile, here's the latest installment of Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live. We're up to Season 14, another really good one. I will not be saying that when we reach some higher-numbered episodes…

Today's Political Comment

Yesterday as you know, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan released a slightly-redacted version of Special Counsel Jack Smith's blueprint for prosecuting the January 6th case against Donald J. Trump. It's pretty devastating — a portrait of a man who said, in effect, "I don't care if I lost the election, I'm going to be President anyway." Kim Wehle explains some of what's in it.

Steve Benen takes apart some of Trump's more insane claims about how good he was for our economy.

Here are some interesting thoughts about political candidates debating from Olufemi Taiwo.

And the best reporting on the debate we just had was done (as usual) by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog…

Today's Video Link

Here's another movie for you. It's The Three Stooges in Orbit, which is pretty much where they belonged. It was produced and partially written by an old pal of mine, the late Norman Maurer. He was the Stooges' manager and Moe's son-in-law and a very fine comic book artist. I think that's mostly his artwork in the opening titles. The narrator, by the way, was Don Lamond, who was the host of the show on Channel 11 here in Los Angeles that showed Three Stooges shorts when I was growing up. He was also Larry Fine's son-in-law. The Stooges believed in keeping things in the family.

This movie was a 1962 release and was one of the better Stooge vehicles with "Curly Joe" DeRita as the third member of the group. Or at least it was when I was ten. If you're that age chronologically or emotionally, you might enjoy it…

My Last Post About Pete Rose

I read a number of e-mails and linked articles today about Pete Rose, mostly but not exclusively about good things he did on the field and bad things he did off the field and I came to a conclusion. My conclusion is that I really don't care if Pete Rose is in the Hall of Fame. A lot of folks pointed out players who are in the Hall of Fame who did bad things while out of uniform and maybe Rose was no worse than some of them but I had a brief moment of caring about this kind of thing and I got over it.

I do care about forgiveness which I think can be an important thing in this world. But to properly forgive someone, you have to know more about them than I did about Pete Rose. So just forget I said anything…or at least try to forgive me for it.

Today's Video Link

Seth Meyers does some (not all) of the kind of fact-checking that folks who are paid to report the news on CBS barely did last night…

Or Maybe I Don’t…

People are sending me a lot of links to articles about reprehensible things Pete Rose did apart from wagering on baseball. I hereby withdraw my forgiveness of the man until I learn more about him. I shoulda known I might have been on the wrong side of this issue when I typed the subject line in the previous post.

I Agree With Donald Trump On Something

I know very little about baseball. The last time I went to a Dodgers game, Sandy Koufax was on the mound. But I do know that Pete Rose had an incredible career that came to an unseemly halt in 1989 when he was found to have been wagering on games — a big no-no for professional athletes. Then two years later, he received a lifetime suspension from being considered for the Hall of Fame. (To be honest, I had to go look up the exact years but I knew the rest of what I just typed.)

I also know that he spent his remaining years apologizing and begging and doing everything he could to get into the Hall of Fame and he was repeatedly turned down. In case you're wondering, Rod Carew — whose record was such that he shared the above baseball card with Rose — was inducted in 1991.

And I know one little thing that Mr. Rose did in his later years beyond petitioning to get into the Hall of Fame.  In Las Vegas, there is or was a sports memorabilia shop located along a walkway of stores between the Luxor hotel and the Mandalay Bay hotel.  One year, a decade or three ago, I spent a lot of time in Vegas and often had to walk down that row of shops and Pete Rose always seemed to be there signing autographs for what I suspect was a substantial fee.

One day, I had some time to kill so I browsed that shop finding absolutely nothing I would ever buy but I was fascinated to eavesdrop for a while on conversations Mr. Rose was having with a rather steady line of people who came by to meet him and buy something on which he would write his name. He was very nice to those folks and why wouldn't he be? They were telling him what a great ball player he'd been and how unfair it was that he was not in the Hall of Fame. Oh — and they were paying him an awful lot of money. Godzilla would be all buddy-buddy with you if you were forking over that kind of dough for his autograph.

I'm sure there are folks in and around baseball who think he did something against the rules and needed to pay the price for that. Okay, fine. But I couldn't listen to those chats for more than a few minutes without thinking, as Mssrs. Gilbert and Sullivan put it, that the punishment did not fit the crime.

Pete Rose was found dead at his home in Clark County, Nevada last Monday. He served out his "lifetime sentence" and now that that lifetime is over, it's time to give him whatever honor he deserved. We've had the public example of paying the price for doing wrong. It might be nice to now see a public example of the power of forgiveness.

Today's Video Link

As regular followers of this blog know, I really like a cappella singing groups and one of my favorites is a pack of vocalists called Voctave. In this video, they team up with another group — The Swingles — to bring us a Jerry Herman classic from the show, La Cage Aux Folles. This is a song that really should be sung by one person but I'll forgive them the dramatic lapse in this case…

Today's Political Comment

Do vice-presidential debates even matter?  I dunno.  In '88, Lloyd Bentsen slapped the shit out of Dan Quayle in theirs and Bush/Quayle still won.  Then again, the current election is not behaving much like past ones. I thought JD Vance scored some points in tonight's veep debate by not coming off as quite the crazed maniac that he's seemed like recently. Of course, he's not the one on that ticket who's running out of time to temper his image. No one who thinks Trump is a lying looney is going to think, "Hey, I'm going to vote for that guy. His running mate isn't quite as bad as I thought."

But Vance didn't do a good job back-pedaling from "They're eating the dogs! They're eating the cats!" and he looked like the biggest weasel on the planet dodging the question of whether Trump lost the last election.

And I'm probably as amazed as you are that after years and years of doing everything possible to declare Obamacare a disaster and get rid of it, Trump has now decided to claim credit for it working as well as it has. His fervent supporters — and all those red states that have never fully embraced it — have got to be pretty confused over that.

Walz wasn't as great a debater as some of us hoped he'd be. He managed to make a strong case that what Vance is wrong about Abortion but if that issue matters to you in the slightest, I think you already know what side you're on. He also came off as avuncular and honest and he had an answer to the question about Iran and Vance didn't. It wasn't a rout like Harris v. Trump but I think Vance seemed more like a human being and the folks who make up Kamala's campaign commercials got a number of juicy quotes they can use in next week's ads.

That may be the only thing that matters in a vice-presidential debate: Did someone say something that can be used against them and their ticket? Other tn that, it'll all be forgotten in 48 hours.