Desipio Message Board

The Washington Football Team re-named itself.  I think that the Chicago Cubs should be re-branded with something that better describes them.  The Chicago Tax Shelters is a reasonably accurate description.  Please post your suggestions.

I am a Warrior fan and took great delight in the disrespect shown by the Warriors to Rodney McGruder.  Klay Thompson is recovering from a series of injuries so the Warriors made him a part time commentator.  He had a classic about McGruder who was trying to be menacing.  But it was Draymond Green in an after the game interview who really had some choice words for McGruder.
https://deadspin.com/do-you-want-to-see-a-dead-body-klay-and-draymond-unlea-1846169074

The front office is doing its damndest to convince me to be a White Sox fan.

Happy birthday, Andy.

They are having difficulties coming up with a non-racist, neutral name for the former R-dskins  team that plays in Washington D.C.  Since that is the capitol of the United States  how about  "The Capitolists".   It has no political or economic connotation, since that would be "The Capitalists".  Although that may be a more accurate name.

According to my daily newspaper (actually it is the San Francisco Chronicle so that description is subject to challenge) baseball starts tomorrow.  At least a facsimile of baseball starts tomorrow.  The stands will be empty, unless you count the cardboard cutouts of facsimile fans and piped in crowd noise to be fans.  The record books for the 2020 season will be loaded with asterisks and footnotes.  But I give the owners their due.  Their need to continue to stuff their wallets gives the rest of us some diversion from this horrible year.

Every so often a song invades my brain and stays there until another one drives it out.  Recently it was "Ain't We Got Fun".  That was ironic during this lockdown pandemic.  But it has been replaced by "You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby".  I have come to the conclusion that song was written by a very ill pedophile.  "You must have been a beautiful baby...You must have been a beautiful child...Because baby, look at you now."  Who else could look at an attractive adult and wonder what that person looked like as an infant?

Why don't you share your earworms with us?

Is baseball really coming back?  Are they going to play in parks where the only observers are the ground crew and the radio announcers?
If you want me I will be in the backyard playing catch with my grandson.

I hope folks are watching this series.  Michael Jordan comes off as a first class jerk.  Arrogant.  Self-satisfied. Pompous.  And a bad teammate who insulted his teammates.  I had no idea what a schmuck he was/is.

https://deadspin.com/30-years-later-michael-jordan-still-cant-admit-he-was-1843247001

Number one...Ernie Banks.

Bryant lost his grievance.  He contended that he was entitled to a full year as his rookie season but the arbitrator disagreed, holding that he was one day short.  Thus he is Cubs' property until the end of the 2021 season.  As a Cub fan I should be happy.  But Bryant has only one career and he should be entitled to earn market value. 
On second thought, what am I thinking?  He is, and will always be, a millionaire.  How much money can one person spend in a lifetime?  If he has heirs what did they do to inherit millions, other than to be fortunate enough to be fathered by a great athlete?
Screw capitalism!

Although there are a number of well qualified candidates, the popular and sentimental choice in my opinion, is David Ross.  On the basis of experience he is the least qualified of the announced candidates, although a veteran catcher does do a lot of coaching when the opposing team is batting.  I am ok with anyone who has no ties to St. Louis. 

No, this is not about the John Reed book about the Russian Revolution.  The Cubs have ten games left in this season, seven against the first place team from somewhere in the Ozarks.  To say that the Cubs are not at full strength is an understatement of the first order.  Some players who are not on the injured list would be there under normal circumstances.  But this is crunch time (forgive the clich?).  It's now or never (oh no, another clich?).  Please fill in with your favorite clich?, I have run dry.  As for me, I will always have 2016.  (Believe it or not I wasn't here for 1908)

If I should ever let slip that I am going to go to see a Quentin Tarantino movie, please stop me.  Please remind me about this movie and Django Unchained and that disaster about killing Adolph Hitler and all of the other Nazi leaders (I have suppressed the title).  This stinker had some very entertaining moments, but like all Tarentino movies it rewrites history to a very offensive degree. 

SPOILER ALERT!


This is about the Sharon Tate murder by Charles Manson's goons.  Guess what?  It didn't happen.  At least according to Tarentino.  Nope.  A very heroic Brad Pitt and a portly Leonardo DeCaprio step in and save the day.  Pitt provides some comic relief to an overly long and mostly boring movie.  The movie spends a lot of time showing them driving around Los Angeles and Hollywood in 1970's cars, including a 4 door Cadillac that probably required three parking spaces when at rest.  In addition to enjoying Pitt's performance I mostly enjoyed seeing the sites of the L.A. and Hollywood streets, which haven't changed all that much since the 1970s.  Although the movie has a terrific climax it doesn't depict what happened, and if you know what happened, and the majority of the millennials in the theater I attended obviously did not know, you may have a confused vacant stare on you face when you watch the closing credits.

I am forced to say that there aren't a lot of household names in the Cubs' bullpen.

If you don't know that G.O.T. stands for  Game of Thrones I want to know what planet you call home.  But, honestly, it has been on an hiatus so long that I forget who is doing whom, who has killed whom, who the good guys are (if any), and, in general what the point is.

I recently posted about "The Green Book".  It got me to thinking about movies that have made a lasting impression on me.  Here, in no particular order, are over a dozen movies that fall into that category:
Schindler's List
Chariots of Fire
My Darling Clementine  (The best Western ever made)
Le Ronde
Cyranno do Bergerac
Boomerang (The 1947 Dana Andrews movie that influenced me, at the age of 11 to become a lawyer)
Stagecoach (the 1939 movie with John Wayne)
Gone With the Wind
Singing in the Rain
Some Like It Hot
Zulu
The Duelists
Sahara (The Humphrey Bogart version)
Beau Geste (1939 version)
Four Feathers (1939 version.  Are you seeing a pattern here?)
Memento
A Man For All Seasons
Fantasia  (Walt Disney's finest movie, and my introduction to serious symphonic music)
Incident at Owl Creek Bridge

Possibly the best movie that I have ever seen.

I am feeling nostalgic today.  Back in the 1940s my parents could offer me no better treats than to take me to the College Inn in the Sherman Hotel for Chicken ala King on toast, or to Wimpy's for a hamburger.  During the summer, before air conditioning, we would bring a blanket and spread it on the lawn and watch the colored lights changing on Buckingham fountain.  Then television and wrestling came along. 

Philip Roth
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/22/obituaries/philip-roth-dead.html