Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Answers In Search of Questions

The Schloss-Blog has a lot of answers today. Now, if we only had a question for each...

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For instance, did you know that "...France would not put up a fight if Russia invaded, as it did in Ukraine. 

“A lot of other places around the world, they just fold the minute there’s any type of adversity.” 

The question is, why did Florida Governor Ron DeSantis say that last month about France in the first place.

This man wants to be president.

He can't even keep buildings upright in his state and in the ones he can, he can't keep COVID out of.

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Did you know that in a world of media "plusses" (Paramount+, Disney +, ESPN+, Discovery+...), there is also CNN+?

Media-obsessed retired journalism professor that I am, I checked it out. They want $6 a month for it.

It's full of "after hours-type" reporting from Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper, Dr.  Sanjay Gupta and nattily, off the set-attired network anchors Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon.

Plus reruns of the well-done historical documentaries they've produced over the years.

And they want $6 a month for them.

Really? I formerly got them all for free on demand, before there was a CNN+. There's even Kate Bolduan waking you up at some ungodly hour to tell you the "5 Things You Need to Know" to start your day.

First of all, there are not 5 things I need to know from CNN or CNN+ to start my day. I need to know my blood pressure. I need to know the weather and how to dress for my 3-mile hike every morning and my afternoon round of golf. I already get the five things in my email every morning, with relevant links in each item (about Ukraine, about Ketanji Brown Jackson, about #COVIDiot Republicans and about a mass shooting in my native Brooklyn).

And if Kate Bolduan is going to start my day with "5 Things I need..." at some ungodly hour, it better be because she nudged me. 

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Postscript: CNN+ is off to a slow start, with just 10,000 subscriptions since inception at the end of March. Maybe it'll pick up, maybe it won't. But I'm thinking that America is thinking the same thing I'm thinking: Why pay CNN for something you already pretty much get on CNN and/or cnn.com - for free.

Some of these "plus" channels are worthwhile, but I get all the reruns of my favorites already, courtesy of "ion TV," USA Network, Peacock and HBOMAX, which comes with my HBO subscription, or just plain old on-demand.

CNN is already talking about cutting back promotion, pricing and budgeting.

Me, I prefer a nice evening watching the FBI shows on CBS, the Chicago "Med, Fire and P.D." shows on NBC and/or whatever sporting event catches my eye. There's always Guy Fieri and "Triple D."

And doing the NY Times seven-letter word puzzle, snuggled on the couch with my sweetheart.

Don't tell Kate Bolduan.

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Guys, do you cook breakfast in your trunk underwear?

Y'know like in the Jimmy Dean Sausage commercial, where Jimmy's voice is magically (technologically) retrofitted to ask, "Yknow those mornings when it takes just a little bit extra to get ya' out of bed?"

I don't make breakfast that way. My dad never made breakfast that way. I think my Uncle Moe might have, but that's another story.

Anyway, if you know someone who makes - or made - breakfast attired that way, please let me know. 

Well, actually, I used to do that.

But only for Kate Bolduan. (OK, OK, enough with the Kate Bolduan references.)

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More seriously, did you know CBS is reporting that Everytown for Gun Safety, whose mission is their name, says that road-rage incidents resulted in 131 deaths last year and 728 incidents involving a gun, or phrased a little more realistically, 62 percent of all road-rage injuries or deaths.

In other words, next time you consider flipping the bird to that guy who cut you off or moved in front of you without signaling, think again.

He just might flip back. With a .22 caliber.

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The Dodgers pulled Clayton Kershaw after 80 pitches and 7 innings of a PERFECT GAME. Only 23 in baseball history. Pulled him. World Series concerns, says Manager Dave Roberts. 

Pull him in a no-hitter, maybe. But a perfecto! Kershaw has an injury history, "soreness." He's been on Injured Reserve four times: twice with lower back strains and twice with left bicep tendinitis.  

In other words, he was sore. Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux always said get accustomed to soreness if you're a starting pitcher in Major League Baseball. But today's starters get babied. 

To just short of perfect.

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The 3-point after-touchdown conversion. The first down-measuring chip in the football.  Convert 4th-and-12 at the 33-yard line instead kicking onside. 

These are just some of the innovations of the Fox-owned USFL which debuted this weekend. On both Fox and NBC, at the same time (first time since the first Super Bowl a game was on two major networks simultaneously - Curt Gowdy just rolled over). 

Did you watch? Will you watch? It's the best of college players who never got drafted and the worst of NFL players who never got to play, with some Arena Leaguers thrown in.

Plus, it'll conflict with SNL time in Pacific time zones. 

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COVID isn't done with us. Philadelphia is reinstating its indoor mask policy, as have Georgetown and Johns Hopkins universities with the positivity rates ticking up. The U,.S. Government is also extending mask mandates on public transportation.

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Real quick:

  • Schools aren't teaching cursive anymore. If you had to ask, "What's cursive?" that proves the point.
  • That's OK though; Brooklyn Tech grads, like me, only print in block caps, eighth-inch high. It also takes us 3 weeks to print a 1-page memo, but is it the most-legible, hand-written, 1-page memo ever.
  • Bagdad (Arizona) High's Connor Watson pitched four consecutive no-hitters this spring. This is not a belated April Fool's prank. The streak was broken by a scholarship-to-be shortstop from Benjamin Franklin High in Queen Creek, who is headed to Arizona State.
  • Too bizarre to be true: the Arizona Diamondbacks Seth Beer hit a walk-off home run to win the team's season-opener on - believe it - National Beer Day. Can't make this up.
  • Of the top 50 most-watched TV shows this calendar year through March, 48 were sporting events. FORTY-EIGHT. Live sports ain't going away anytime soon, no matter how much of it migrates to streaming.
  • And finally, 20-year-old Roki Sasaki struck out 19 and threw a perfect game in Japan's Nippon Baseball League (he didn't get pulled). Sasaki hurls for the Chiba Lotte Marines, but will likely be an Angel soon, I'm thinking.

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Happy Easter, Mrs. Calabash. Happy Passover, Mrs. Robinson.

More Sunday night on my Radio Free Phoenix rock 'n' roll show, and Sunday morning, when I sit in for Joe Catanzaro.

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 A lot of other places around the world, they just fold the minute there’s any type of adversity” 

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