Weekly Mail August 11, 2019

Hey:

Thank so much for everyone who sent thoughts and prayers for birthday number 46 this past Monday. Had a great time celebrating with the fam.

Lots going on here so let's kick it off with some breaking news.



RIH-Jeffery Epstein

So Timmy and I were at the barber shop on Saturday morning waiting to get our hair cut. He was playing games on my phone and I was reading in the Post about Jeffery Epstein and the files they released on him. There were some big names on the list including Prince Andrew and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson.

When it was Tim's turn to get in the barber's chair, he handed me back my phone and my FB feed was filled with the news that Epstein had apparently off'ed himself.

Someone on my feed said "Cue the conspiracy theories", but you know what? Why not? Because this doesn't pass the smell test from where I'm sitting.

For starters, this is apparently the second time Epstein tried to take his own life,  so it stands to reason that he should have been on suicide watch. If he wasn't on suicide watch, as some have reported, shouldn't that alone raise a red flag?

But if this list was just the tip of the iceberg, than is it really a stretch to think that it was in someone or some people's  best interests that Epstein be knocked off? You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that, it's just common sense.

I really don't want to waste a ton of ink on this creep, I've avoided writing about him up until now because his crimes are so despicable. And the media didn't do him any favors because in almost every picture I saw of him, he had the same smirk on his face... the one that said "I bleeped your daughter and I got away with it because I'm a billionaire."

Part of me is sorry he won't get to face a judge. Part of me wishes he did so that we could see who else had sex arraigned for them by Epstein. Part of me is glad his victims won't have to testify against him in open court.

But most of me is happy he's gone.

Speaking of sexual deviants...


TV REVIEW: The Loudest Voice (SPOILER ALERT)

Starring Russell Crowe, Seth McFarlane, Naomi Watts, Sienna Miller, Annabelle Wallis

This 7 part Showtime series looked at the rise and fall of Roger Ailes at Fox News.

The show's creator said that his goal was for the viewer not to be repulsed by Roger Ailes right from the get-go. To that end, one of the first scenes in the show was Ailes' going away party from CNBC, where it seemed like the overwhelming majority of the staff was sorry to see him go. If you are not familiar with his story, you can even sort of root for him as he builds Fox News from the ground up.

Where you really begin to see his villainy is at the end of episode 3 and beginning of episode 4, when we see the Roger (Crowe) getting a heater from Fox booking agent Laurie Luhn (Wallis). You can thank me for spoiling this for you, because it looked and sounded as disgusting as it reads.

It gets worse from there. Ailes and his wife Beth (Miller) buy their towns local paper and turn in into a right wing trumpet that also takes down a respected town official. (And he makes it crystal clear that he doesn't consider the New York Post, or any of Rupert Murdoch's other newspapers, or even Fox Business Channel on the same team as FNC)

His ultimate downfall comes at the hands of Gretchen Carlson (Watts) who records much of his sexually inappropriate language on her cell phone. (Editor's Note-We haven't viewed the last episode as we went to press)

If you take the movie completely at face value, than Roger Ailes was an absolute creepazoid with delusions of grandeur and a wickedly bad temper.

But I don't take the movie at face value. Not completely.

I don't doubt that Ailes acted inappropriately towards women. Namely I have a hard time believing that he was able to dictate things to Rupert Murdoch as much as the series says he did. There were too many times over the course of the series where Ailes would remind Murdoch that he built the network, and Murdoch would stand down. I don't picture Rupert Murdoch being told off very often.

The folks who said get the Emmy's for this series are the ones who did the make-up and costumes. Getting a stud like Russell Crowe to look like a fat slob like Roger Ailes had to take hours of work and tons of creativity. Having met Rupert Murdoch a few times, it was scary how accurate he was portrayed by actor Simon McBurney. Annabelle Wallis, as Laurie Luhn, went from drop dead gorgeous, to wouldn't go near her with a 10 foot pole after she suffered a breakdown thanks to her role as Roger's sex slave. That was both fine acting and amazing costume and makeup.

Overall, it was a terrible story of a horrible person, but well written and beautifully acted. I'll leave it to your discretion if you want to watch it. Some of it is pretty hard on the good senses.

END SPOILER ALERT


OK, enough of this creepy stuff, let's go back to the summer of 69...


Jim Bouton passed away earlier this summer, and a few of my friends talked about what a great book Ball Four was. I had never read it. I figured I had heard all the most scandalous bits of it, and besides, I've read enough of the great Jeff Pearlman's books to know just how depraved some of these athletes can be. But something told me I should read it anyway, and so....


                        **BOOK REVIEW**BOOK REVIEW**BOOK REVIEW**

Title: Ball Four
By:Jim Bouton

Jim Bouton was a former pitching phenom for the Yankees toward the end of their 1949-1964 dynasty years. Ball Four is a chronicle of his 1969 season as he tries to make and stay on the Seattle Pilots, mainly by developing a knuckle ball.

Bouton's diary is not only filled with stories of the team he is on, but also of the great Yankee teams he was on. That is where he got himself into trouble, for daring to say that Mickey Mantle played hungover. We here in 2019, know that the Mick died of kidney failure due in part to alcoholism, but back in 1970 that was not common knowledge.

So that part didn't shock or offend me. He took some shots at Roger Maris I thought were gratuitous, (Even though their steroid use tainted the record, I always appreciated how gracious both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were to Maris' family during their 1998 home run chase)

But mostly, I found the stories hysterical, I mean laugh out loud funny. And I found myself at times having a hard time putting the book down. That hasn't happened lately. I was not disappointed at all, in fact I was pleasantly surprised. It just goes to show you, in 50 years the game has changed a lot, but it may ways, it still hasn't.

Auggies Wild


RIP- Woodstock 50.

Continuing with our theme of things that happened 50 years ago, the anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Festival is coming up next weekend. What won't be coming up is a 50th anniversary concert.

I've read a couple of articles trying to figure out how the hell this could have been FUBAR'ed so badly. I mean for the crying out loud, you had YEARS to plan this thing. You read these articles and you would think someone came up with this idea a few months ago.

The things that caused this project to fail, (Lack of money, lack of permits, lack of an environmental study) are all things that should have been secured years ago. Who wouldn't want to get behind a project like this? Why wouldn't a town upstate want to host, especially if they had all the time in the world to prepare? There were no shortage of acts who wanted to participate and you would have had no issues drawing people, whether you charged them money or not.

To me, this was a can't miss that did just that...miss.

One of the best books I've read in the past couple of years was Joel Selvin's book about the Rolling Stones and the Altamont Free Concert disaster (also coming up on it's 50th anniversary in December.) The main reason that was such a debacle (besides the cockamamie idea of hiring the Hell's Angel's as security and paying them with cases of beer) was that they started planning it a couple months in advance. Like this Woodstock 50 fiasco, they had to change venues and secure permits, but again, they didn't have time on their side (no pun intended), like the Woodstock people did.

It's a shame. Woodstock 94, the 25th anniversary show, was almost as iconic as the original one held in 1969. Maybe because I had just turned 21 when it happened (no I didn't go-I actually went to see the aforementioned Stones at the Meadowlands that weekend) but I recall that pretty much going off without a hitch..or at least no hitches worth mentioning, the point is it happened.

This one isn't going to happen. And that just sucks.



I posted a truckload of things on FB the other day commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles shooting the cover of their Abbey Road album.

(Editors note- I did that mostly so I wouldn't forget to write about it over the weekend-that's going to start happening a lot more as I close in on my own 50th)

A couple of people pointed out to me that Abbey Road has it's own webcam that you can actually sit there on your computer and watch folks try to walk across the famous crosswalk and take a picture while avoiding getting run over by some hot-headed London driver.

As I've said previous, I've made two trips across the pond in my life... you all read about the one last year to Italy, but in 1998 I did 8 days in Ireland and a weekend in London. I did a bunch of things in London, but I had one mission.. I was going to cross Abbey Road and get someone to take a picture of me doing it.

I arrived in London on a Friday night and took the underground to my hotel. After checking in, I went to the nearest bar and walked up to the first group of girls I saw and said "OK who here wants to dance?" (or something stupid like that)

They were all like "Hey you're American!" (Bullseye!)

I chatted them up, not realizing that last call was midnight. One of the girls asked where I was staying and they said "They've got a bar there! C'mon!" There was a sign there that said "Bar for Hotel Guests Only", which didn't deter my new friends. "You see you didn't get in any trouble atall". One of the girls said.."In fact I think the barman is quite impressed you walked out of here alone and brought back four birds with you." THAT might be my all time favorite quote.

So besides bragging (not really, the four birds had one drink and took off) the point was that they gave me some good intel, such as "I wouldn't go to Westminster Abbey! 5 pounds to see a bloody church!

And they told me how to get to Abbey Road.

The next evening I took the underground to St. John's Wood and proceeded to get lost. I walked around a neighborhood very similar to Rockville Centre, or Rye Brook with tree lined streets and huge houses. Not where one would think to find rock and roll's mecca.

But lo and behold, I found it after what should have been a 7 minute walk turned into about a 1/2 hour. I looked at a street sign and before it could register in my brain, a mom and two of her teenage kids came running over to me screaming in American Midwest accents, "You found it! You found it! Here give us your camera and we'll take your picture!" Keep in mind my camera was a disposable one I spent 8 pounds on, so there was no need to fear they were going to take off with it.

The picture they took had me coming towards the camera so it's hard to tell where I'm crossing, but it was good enough for me. The drivers there know where they are, so they don't have a big issue with people crossing the street. They'll stop and wave you across even though they have the right of way. But it's almost impossible to get your picture taken the way the Fab Four did that day 50 years ago. That's just asking to be British Roadkill

The mom told me she saw the Beatles in 1964 in Cincinnati. I told her my Mom saw them at Shea Stadium in 1965. (Editors Note: That was fake news-it just sounded good and she had no way of fact checking me)

The four of them stank of cigarettes, but still I was grateful for the pics they took (and for not making off with my disposable camera). I wrote a note on the wall outside of the actual studio (which wasn't considered vandalism) and after crossing a couple more times, made my way back to the train into town.

Those pictures are somewhere at my parents house. I'll find them and post them one of these days.

I know last year they did a lot to commemorate 1968, but for my money, 1969 had much more to remember. Almost all of 1968 was bad stuff (the assassinations of MLK and RFK, the riots at the DNC in Chicago, Vietnam etc). 1969 had it's share of strife. The war in Vietnam raged on, Charles Manson and his crazy family killing all those people in gruesome fashion, Ted Kennedy in Chappaquiddick amongst other things. But you also had the moon landing, Woodstock and of course the Jets and Mets winning their titles.

What crazy times they must have been!



SPORTS: Mets on fire

I would have loved the Mets to have swept the Nationals, for no other reason that they have had such a hard time with the Braves these past few seasons, but their taking two out of three this weekend such hopefully calm some of the fears that the Mets can only beat teams with losing records.

They have done it will solid starting pitching, clutch hitting and incredibly enough, a suddenly consistent bullpen. Even with the loss on Sunday, could you believe La Familia going in the 8th inning and striking out the side? Shoot I thought I was seeing things. Edwin Diaz on the other hand, needs to go. But I digress

The games on Friday night and Saturday night were classics, the type of never say die games that good teams are made of. To hear Citi Field rocking those nights was a treat. One I really hope keeps up. I don't expect any more big winning streaks, but if they concentrate on winning series, they can keep the good times rolling.




OK my friends this is it, our season finale. Thank all of you for reading, commenting and for your overall support.  In the fall, we'll have a special for our 200th edition. Something to look forward to.

Take care

and enjoy the rest of the summer.





Regular Weekly Mail Returns September 15, 2019