To Two Absent Friends

Will these be the final Absent Friends posts of 2025?

Brigitte Bardot

1934-2025

French actress Brigitte Bardot died at the age of 91 this past week.  In the1950's Bardot was the epitome of the term "Sex Symbol".  Her 1956 feature film "And God Created Woman" created quite the stir when it was released in Europe, and was quite controversial when it was released on the United States because of the depiction of sexuality that Bardot presented.  I have never seen the movie, but I wonder just how "raw" and "sexual" it would seem if seen today. 

Bardot had 60 film credits in IMDB, almost all of them in France.  She retired from the screen in 1972 and went on to come an outspoken animal rights activist.  She also became somewhat of a right wing political crank in her native France.

I have never seen a Brigitte Bardot movie.   Perhaps I will seek out "And God Created Woman" and prepare myself to be scandalized.

Masashi "Jumbo" Ozaki

1947-2025

The greatest golfer to ever come from Japan, Jumbo Ozaki, died earlier this month at the age of 78.  Ozaki, who has been called the "Arnold Palmer of Japan", won 113 times on various professional golf tours, including the PGA Tour, but he chose to spend most of his career in Japan, bringing the game to the people there.  Ninety-four of his professional victories came on the Japanese Tour.   He was also known for his stylish appearance while playing, often wearing fancy silk golf shirts.

I remember Ozaki from his occasional American appearances back in the Eighties and Nineties, and to his being competitive in events such as the Masters and the US Open.  What really amazed me when reading his obituaries, though, was learning that his first love was baseball, and that he he had a three year career, 1965-67, as a professional baseball player, a pitcher, in Japan.

RIP Brigitte Bardot and Jumbo Ozaki.

The Debacle in Cleveland

Christian McCaffrey leads the 49'ers

 to 42-38 win over Bears

Why, you may ask, am I leading with a photo of Christian McCaffrey of San Francisco if I am going to be writing about the Steelers God-awful, and there is no other word for it, 13-6 loss to the Browns yesterday?

Well after watching that road apple that the Steelers dumped upon the field in Cleveland and then watching  the 49'ers and Bears stage that terrific game on Sunday night, sandwiched around  watching Josh Allen in his Superman cape (albeit in a losing effort), made me come to three conclusions:

• Despite the fact that they can still make the playoffs, the Steelers are just not a very good team.  If you watched Chicago and San Francisco last night, do you believe that this 2025 Steelers team is anywhere close to being able to compete with them?  If the Steelers played each of those teams ten times, they would be lucky to win twice against either of them.
• The Steelers desperately need a quarterback.  Brock Purdy and Caleb Williams were playing a different game than anything that I have seen from the Steelers since Ben Roethlisberger retired.  Maybe that guy is Will Howard, who was derailed in training camp this year by a hand injury, but it sure isn't Mason Rudolph or a 42 year old Aaron Rodgers, and I say that with all due respect to Rodgers, who has played heroically at times this season.  The team took a shot to go all in with Rodgers for the season, and at times it looked like it was going to work, but in the end, it just isn't going to work out as everybody had hoped.
• Again, watching that SF-Chicago game last night, it is obvious that the Steelers....game planning?...coaching?....just isn't cutting it.  Watching the offenses that are being produced by guys like Ben Johnson, Kyle Shanahan, John McVey and others makes you want to just scream at what Arthur Smith (and Matt Canada before him) are sending out there week after week.  I love Mike Tomlin, but if he and the Steelers decided to part ways after this season, I'm not sure how upset I would be about it.  Some hard decisions are going to need to be made at season's end.

For all that, the Steelers could still win the AFC North and make the playoffs, if they beat Baltmore on Sunday night.  This is the same Ravens team that beat Green Bay this weekend 41-24, with Derrick Henry rushing for 216 yards and 4 touchdowns.  If Henry has a game half as good as that on Sunday, I can't see the Steelers winning that one.  It could be a real ugly scene at Acrisure Stadium come around ten o'clock Sunday night.

Anything can happen when the Steelers and Ravens play each other, but I'm sure not feeling positive this morning about this meeting.

 

The GPR Is Back! - And Other Football Thoughts

 

I know that all of you have been clamoring with the question "Where have the Grandstander Power Rankings (GPR) been in 2025?"  Well, clamor no more.  Through fifteen weeks, and with only three games left to play for each team, here are The Grandstander Power Rankings.  I have come up with these after rigorously studying reams of analytical data and having spent countless hours watching game films for all 32 NFL teams.  You can take these to the bank!

1. Rams 11-3
2. Bills 10-4
3. Broncos 12-2
4. Seahawks 11-3
5. 49'ers 10-4
6. Patriots 11-3
7. Texans 9-5
8. Bears 10-4
9. Chargers 10-4
10. Eagles 9-5

In other football news....

The Steelers laid down a 28-15 beatdown on the Miami Dolphins last night, and no play exemplified the nature of said beatdown more than the Aaron Rodgers-to-DK Metcalf 28 yard touchdown pass.  Metcalf tossed Dolph's safety Minkah Fitzpatrick off of him in the same manner that you would  brush a mosquito off of your arm as he made his way to the end zone for the score that made it 21-3 and essentially pounded the nail into the Dolphins for the night.

Rodgers had his best game of the season: 23/27, 224 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT.  I am not sure how this season is going to go.  I have said in this space that the Steelers aren't an especially good team, but they are in first place in the AFC North at 8-6, hold the tie-breaker with the Ravens, and will probably make the playoffs.  Regardless of what happens and how it all ends up, the shot in the dark that the team took in signing Aaron Rodgers has proven to be a positive one.  At times this season, he has looked every bit the 42 year old guy with his best days behind him, but he has also showed, as he did last night, that he still has greatness in him, and that he can call upon it and put on a performance that shows just why he is one of the all-time greats. He will make the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, and no, it won't be because what he did as a Steeler, but as a Steelers fan, I will be glad to be able to say that we got to see Rodgers do his thing in Black and Gold for a season.

The College Football Playoffs for 2025-26  will begin in a little more that 48 hours with two games each on Friday and Saturday.  As I recall, the four opening round games in last season's CFP were all pretty much routs and had no suspense to them at all.  Two of those games this weekend, James Madison @ Oregon and Tulane @ Mississippi could fall into that same pattern, but the other two games look to be good match-ups that could produce exciting and competitive contests: Alabama @ Oklahoma and Miami @ Texas A&M.

I will go with the four home teams and predict wins for the Ducks, Sooners, Rebels, and Aggies.  Not sure how I will actually bet real money on any of these as yet.

There is a lot wrong with college athletics, football in particular, these days, but the advent of the twelve team playoff, the endless realignment of conferences, the transfer portal, and NIL has served to produce some great matchups on an almost weekly basis, and the Playoff last year was an exciting event and promises to be the same this year.  I look forward to following the bracket right up to the Championship Game on January 19.  

For what it's worth, my bracket has Georgia defeating Indiana for the title in Miami next month.

To Absent Friends - Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner

 

Rob Reiner, 78, and Michele Reiner, 75

What incredibly sad and tragic news from Los Angeles broke last night when we learned of the stabbing deaths of Rob Reiner, 78, and his wife, Michele, 75.   Rob was the son of comedy legend Carl Reiner and was a talented actor and director himself.  Michele was a professional photographer and a creative associate of her husband.  The Reiners had been married for 36 years and had three children.  This event is made doubly tragic with the news today that their son, Nick, has been arrested and booked (not "formally charged" as of this writing) in their deaths.

As the son of one of America's great comic talents, Rob Reiner spent his life in and around show business, but came to be known prominently in 1971 when he was cast as Mike Stivic, the liberal hippie-type son-in-law of the bigoted Archie Bunker on the landmark television sitcom, "All In The Family".  He won two Emmys for that role over the years.  As an actor, he accumulated 90 acting credits, but he will no doubt be best remembered for directing some of the very best movies of the Eighties, Nineties, and into the 21st century.  Here is just a partial list of those:

• This Is Spinal Tap, 1981
• Stand By Me, 1986
• The Princess Bride, 1987
• Misery, 1990
• A Few Good Men, 1992
• The American President, 1995
• The Ghosts of Mississippi, 1996
• The Bucket List, 2007

Left off of the list above is perhaps the greatest romantic comedy ever, "When Harry Met Sally" (1989) written by Nora Ehpron and directed by Rob Reiner.  I even used a line from that movie in my wedding vows when Linda and I got married in 2022, and, no, it was not the line from the scene in the delicatessen.

With  Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan

 on set for "When Harry Met Sally"

And in 2025, we are all anxiously awaiting the release of Reiner's latest movie, "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues", a sequel to that fabulous 1981 "mockumentary".

Tragic and untimely deaths are always sad, and the deaths of some people are especially sad.  Such is the case with Rob and Michele Reiner. 

RIP Rob and Michele.

Father and Son

Comic Legends

Rob Reiner

1947 - 2025

A Christmas Tree Story

As it happens, this post is the 100th post that I am writing for The Grandstander in calendar year 2025.  While I didn't plan it this way, it turns out that I will use this occasion to practice a little personal self-therapy.  Feel free to skip it if you so choose.

The year marks the fifth Christmas since Marilyn died, and her loss in my life seems to be particularly acute at this time of the year.  Five Christmases and it hasn't gotten any easier.  This year, the thing that seemed to really jump out at me were Christmas Tree ornaments.

Let me take a time out here to be very clear about one thing.  For these past three plus years, I have been moving on in my New Life with Linda.  We have been making our own Life Memories and Christmas Memories.  I am at a wonderful stage in my life, and I couldn't be happier.  That doesn't mean that my life before October, 2021 leaves my personal history, nor does it erase all of the memories that were made up until that date.  It is an example, maybe the best example, of "two things can be true at the same time."  

Okay, back to the ornaments.  For the first couple of years that we were together, Linda and I tried to mix-and-match each of our collections of Christmas Tree ornaments, and we came to the conclusion that that just didn't work.  Last year, 2024, we decided to start anew.  We bought a beautiful new tree, and went with a whole new theme with the ornaments.  This is our second year for this arrangement, and trust me, both the tree and house look festive and beautiful.  We love it.

Still, something stirred in me this year that made me think...What do you do with tree ornaments that you had accumulated through 47 years of marriage, many of them bought during memorable vacations or were gifted to you over the years or on some other meaningful occasion in your life?  Conversations between Linda and I, as well as a conversation with a good friend of mine who, like me, lost his wife some years ago, and a session with my own therapist led to an idea:  Have your own tree.  A smaller one and set it up in a different room of the house, and decorate it with those ornaments that were special to me in the First Chapter of my life.

I wasn't sure that this was something that I wanted to do, that I would be able to do.  Then Linda came home on Friday with a small table top tree.  A real tree, like Marilyn loved.  "If you don't feel you can do this, that's okay, and we can just put it out with the trash" she said.  Frankly, it took me by surprise, and my first inclination was to not do this, but then I decided that I would do it.  

On Friday night, Linda sat with me as I went through the box of "Bob and Marilyn ornaments", and listened to me tell stories about many of them.  I actually was able to separate some of them out of the collection and literally get rid of them.  That still left a box with a significant number of ornaments, and on Saturday, while I was home alone, I decorated this tree that now sits in our home office.

Decorating this tree certainly had its emotional moments.  I shed some tears, but mostly I smiled at all the memories associated with those ornaments, and memories of wonderful Christmases from 1974 through 2020 came flooding back to me.  

I will keep all of those Bob and Marilyn Ornaments going forward in a special box, and my plan now is to do this separate, special small tree in the Christmas seasons that lie ahead for me.  However, beginning next year, it won't be a real tree.  Marilyn won't approve, but I think she will understand.  I also think it likely that Linda will probably side with Marilyn and make me get a real one anyway.  Or maybe, having done it this year, I'll discover that I won't need to do it again.  We'll see.

I close by sending special thanks to Roger and Denise and Ronda, to Wendy, and especially to Linda, who is making this Second Chapter of my life so, so wonderful.

If you have read your way through all of this, I appreciate it.

Merry Christmas.

What A Sports Weekend It Was!

The lead photo of the post is, of course, the Steelers 27-22 win over the Ravens yesterday, and more on that a bit later, but first, let's take this past weekend's sports happenings in order.

Robert Morris Basketball

The RMU Colonials went on the road to open their Horizon League season and went 1-1.  A late 15-3 run to end the game earned RMU a 80-78 win against UW-Green Bay on Thursday, and an are-you-kidding-me buzzer beater by UW-Milwaukee resulted in a 74-72 loss.  Both were highly entertaining and competitive games.  The Colonials appear to have a pretty good team this season.  They play excellent defense, but are streaky when it comes to shooting from beyond the three point arc.  I think it's going to be a good season for the Colonial Cagers.  (And when was the last time you saw someone refer to basketball players as "cagers"?)

Inter Miami Wins MLS Cup

Miami defeated Vancouver 3-1 to win the Major League Soccer championship.  While he didn't score a goal, Lionel Messi assisted on two of the three goals (the other goal was an Own Goal that bounced off of a Vancouver player into the goal).  Ever since we saw Miami defeat Nashville and saw Messi score a hat trick that night, we have been following Messi and Miami as they have advanced through the MLS playoffs, right up to their ultimate victory on Saturday.

It has been an enjoyable ride.

College Football

It was Conference Championship Saturday, and I focused on two of those games.

Georgia defeated Alabama handily, 28-7, and the game was never really in doubt.  The Bulldogs are my pick to go all the way in the CFP.

Then there was the Big Ten Championship, Indiana 13 - Ohio State 10.

The game was as close and as hard fought as the score indicated, and it ended an amazing season for the Hoosiers, who finished 13-0 and won their first Big Ten Championship since Lyndon Johnson resided in the White House.  It probably secured the Heisman Trophy for their QB Fernando Mendoza, and it earned them the Number One seed in the College Football Playoff tournament that begins next week.

And in spite of all of this, no one was able to catch a glimpse of IU head coach Curt Cignetti cracking a smile.   I was cheering for Indiana, but like so many in his profession, Cignetti is a hard guy to like.

I was going to write about the machinations of the CFP committee, their selections and seedings, their selecting Miami over Notre Dame, and Notre Dame's subsequent decision to take their ball and go home, but in the end I decided that there has been more than enough navel gazing on that topic.  Instead, I decided that I am just going to enjoy all of the games as the CFP unfolds.

I will conclude, though, with this:  I have absolutely loved Fox's Gus Johnson on the play-by-play calls of these B1G games all season long.  He's the best.

Steelers 27 - Ravens 22

After back-to-back terrible losses to the Bears and the Bills, I came to the conclusion that the Steelers are a middling if not downright mediocre team, and that at this point, it would probably the best for the long term future of the team that they not make the playoffs; that they, in fact, would probably be better off losing games so as to better their position in the draft and begin reshaping the team for the long haul, especially at the quarterback position, and, possibly, in the position of the Head Coach.

Yes, intellectually, I can understand all of that, but when it comes to sitting down and watching a game, especially a game against the Ravens, well, you want your team to, you know, WIN THE DAMN GAME!

And that the Steelers did yesterday, and this version of this Rivalry lived up to all of the excitement of the games that have preceded it over the last 15 to 20 years.  We even got to see Aaron Rodgers, five days after his 42nd birthday, bootleg around left end and score  a touchdown, and even give it his "discount double check" schtick.

The whole thing was great to watch, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Oh, the Ravens' touchdown catch that wasn't a catch.  When I watched in real time my thought was "Aw shit, touchdown, there goes the game."  Then the ruling.  Later that night, I texted my friend Jerry who is a retired NFL official, and asked him what that was all about.  His reply:  "By rule, it was an incomplete pass, but it sure looked like a catch to me as I watched it."

Ravens fans are pissed, and rightfully so.  Steelers fans are invoking the phrase "Jesse James against the Patriots" and saying that Karma owed us one.  The Suits from the NFL offices are once again having to go into lengthy dissertations on what exactly is and is not a "catch".  The rule was correctly enforced, but it's a crummy rule.

So the Steelers are now in first place in the AFC North and "control their own destiny" in regard to the division and a path to the Playoffs.  I'm going to sit back and enjoy these last four weeks of the season, and will worry about the long range implications of them once they are all over.

The Pirates and The Password 

The Password

Even the Pirates were in the news this weekend when they made a trade that could actually be of significance for the team.  They sent pitcher Johan Oviedo to the Red Sox for outfielder Jhostynxon Garcia.  Garcia is 23 years old and a highly regarded prospect who was blocked in the Boston system (he had only 7 AB's for the Sox last year). If he can play like everyone says he has the potential to play, he will fill an immediate void that currently exists in left field for the Pirates.

Best of all, though, is his nickname.  Yes, JHOSTYNXON is his first name, and no, I have no idea how to pronounce it, but teammates in the Sox system christened him with the nickname of "Password", and while it isn't as good a nickname as "The Big Dumper", it's pretty good.  Or at least it will remain a cool nickname until Greg Brown thoroughly beats it to death.

Critical Commentary: A Movie and a Book

 "Wicked For Good"

We took ourselves out to the local cineplex two weeks ago to see the long awaited, much hyped conclusion to the film adaptation of the hit Broadway musical "Wicked".  I will state right off the bat that I liked the movie and will give it a high rating.  It is beautiful and colorful to look at, and the performances of the leads, Ariana Gande and Cynthia Erivo, are both terrific.  

Oh, and Jeff Goldblum plays the Wizard.  I love Goldblum, but he has reached the point in his career where he pretty much plays "Jeff Goldblum" in every movie, TV show, commercial, or talk show guest appearance that he makes, and he'll never top his performance as Michael in "The Big Chill".

To watch this one has two prerequisites.  One, you had to  see "Wicked Part One" when it came out last year, or stream it before you go see this one.  It is not a stand alone movie.  Two, you have to have seen, or at least know all about the 1939 classic movie, "The Wizard of Oz".  How "Wicked For Good" ties together the tale of Dorothy Gale from Kansas is a great part of the story of "Wicked".

So "Wicked For Good" gets Three Stars from The Grandstander, but....

There's always a "but", isn't there?

From the time the "Wicked Part One" was released last year, one question nagged at me:  Why take a musical play that lasts for about two-and-a-half hours and make a movie version that lasts over five hours, and then tell us that the movie will be in two parts that will be released a year apart from each other?  The fact that that audiences were only made aware of this fact about a week before the release of Part One in 2024 makes the burr under the saddle particularly irritating.  Or maybe it's just me, and no one else cares about something that just screams that "this is a shameless money grab".

Yet, here I was, at the theater box office two Novembers in a row getting sucked right into the whole deal:

"The Only One Left" by Riley Sager

In 1983, Kit McDeere, age 31 and a registered caregiver, takes a position at an isolated  cliffside mansion in Maine called Hope's End.  She will be in charge of seeing to the needs of Lenora Hope, a mute and paralyzed 71 year old woman who has been confined in this gloomy mansion for 54 years and has not been seen in public since 1929.   It was at that time, just a month before the great Stock Market Cash, that Lenora' parents and sister, Virginia, were brutally murdered.  Lenora was the chief suspect, "the only one left", but evidence was insufficient to ever bring her to trial, and she has been seen as "the killer" in the court of public opinion, and a Lizzie Borden-type legend has sprung up about her in the past fifty-four years among the local residents of the area.  The fact that she is confined to a gothic mansion only adds to her notorious legend.

Kit, who has some sketchy baggage of her own to lug around, enters a gloomy home that consists of Mrs. Baker, a stern woman who runs the household, Jessie, a young girl who serves as the cleaning woman of the house, Archie, the cook who has been at Hope's End since the before the murders took place, Carter, the hunk of a groundkeeper, and, of course, Lenora, who can only communicate by answering yes-and-no questions by tapping her left hand.  However, Kit discovers that Lenora CAN communicate if she, Kit, places Lenora's left  hand on the keyboard of an ancient typewriter, and she soon discovers that Lenora DOES want to tell her story.   Thus begins an odd and somewhat symbiotic relationship between Kit and Lenora.  Along the way, another murder takes place and soon the whole story unravels

I really liked this book.  I could sit down and and start reading and gobble up fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred pages at a time in a seeming blink of an eye.  I never saw the "twist" in the story that Sager springs upon us, and when putting any thought into it, it really is kind of implausible, but I guess this is why they call it "fiction", and he did give us a very satisfying coda to the book that takes place thirty years after the events in the story take place.

I give it Three Grandstander Stars, and I will be checking out some of Sager's other novels for my future reading pleasure.