Selachimorpha. That’s a name I had never heard or seen until I looked it up a few minutes ago, but it describes an animal species made famous in the 1970s by filmmaker Stephen Spielberg. An animal, in fact, that almost seems to be overwhelming our culture now. Sharks. I was 25 when “Jaws” came out …
“What’s the matter with Kansas?” Apparently not as much as we may have thought. When Thomas Frank published his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” in 2004, the Sunflower State was used as an example of how Republicans used so-called cultural issues to get working class people to vote against their own economic interests. Kansas …
“For all the hard times, when you can say ‘why me’?… I have to remember the great moments in my life…and say why me?, too”. Vin Scully buried two wives, on of whom took her own life. He buried a son who died in a helicopter crash. He never complained, though, and when he died …
In 1920, the man who owned the Boston Red Sox needed money for a non-baseball purpose, so he sold budding superstar Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. It was 2004 before the Red Sox won another World Series. In 1945, Chicago Cubs wouldn’t allow tavern owner William Sianis to bring his pet goat into …
BAMBINOS, BILLY GOATS AND THE CURSE OF JUAN SOTO Read More »
“I don’t want to be buried in a pet sematary …” “Oh bury me not on the lone prairie …” Silly me. I didn’t even know Ivana Trump liked golf …or why someone who divorced her more than 30 years ago would play any role in where she was buried. After all, Donald Trump was …
Forget LeBron James. Forget Michael Jordan. Forget Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson. The best basketball player ever to play in the National Basketball Association never averaged 20 points a game, although he did average an amazing 22.5 rebounds a game. The best basketball player ever won 11 championships, eight of them in a row and …
I remember a conversation I had with my grandmother in the last year or so before she died. She was born in 1895 and lived until 1990, and amazing changes took place during her life. When she was born, the telephone and the electric light were still relatively new; most folks in small towns didn’t …
I have been to a lot of wonderful places and done a lot of wonderful things in my life. I’ve walked on the Great Wall of China, I swam on the beaches of French Polynesia and I stood on the sidelines of Mile High Stadium after dark on a November Sunday afternoon. I’ve spent hundreds …
My rental car was stuck in a snowdrift. It was the middle of the afternoon on January 15th, 1989, and I had skidded on a patch of ice on SR-195 on my way to Spokane, Washington. I had covered a basketball game at the University of Idaho the night before and was on my way …
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” JOSEPH GOEBBELS It’s fascinating that Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda officer, understood Donald Trump so well. After all, Trump hadn’t even been born during the 12 years of the Thousand Year Reich. But Trump makes Goebbels look like …
