Bouquets, Brickbats, and Other Observations

Cleaning out the Mental In-Box.....

Saw the current Pittsburgh Public Theater's production of "Daddy Long Legs" on Sunday evening.  It might have been one of the very best shows we have ever seen at the PPT, and we have been attending productions there since the 1980's.

The show starred Danielle Bowen and Allan Snyder, both of whom were making their first appearance at the PPT.  One can only hope that they will be appearing there in many future productions.

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Speaking of the PPT, it was announced a few weeks back that Managing Director Ted Pappas would be leaving that position at the end of the 2018 season.  Apparently, it was Pappas' decision to move on, and one can only wish him the best.  In his eighteen years in that position, he has made the PPT one of the true gems in the Pittsburgh cultural scene.  Good luck to the person that the PPT brings in to replace him.  He or she will have some HUGE shoes to fill.

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"Feud: Bette and Jane" continues to be one of the most entertaining series on TV.  The scene on last Sunday's show wherein Joan Crawford, played by Jessica Lange, fires her William Morris Agency agents in one of the great scenes with one of the best lines ever delivered on series television, was an absolute classic.  

If you missed it, go to FX Network On Demand and click on Episode 4 of the series.  The scene I am talking about takes place in the first five minutes of the show - you'll know it when you hear it, believe me - so you won't have to invest a lot of time into it if you are not so inclined.

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And while we are talking about TV series on FX, we are now three episodes into Season Four of "The Americans".  So far, I'm disappointed, and I fear that unless things pick up quickly, we could be talking shark-jumping for what has been a really good series for the first three seasons.

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What was becoming a major embarrassment came to end last night when Duquesne University announced that Kevin Dambrot, late of Akron University, had accepted the position of Head Basketball Coach for the Dukes.  Apparently, Dambrot had originally turned down the job, and then so did everyone else the University approached about the job.  So, they went back to Dambrot and upped the ante considerably (seven years / $7 million), and he said yes.

For those of us who came of age when Duquesne was THE college basketball team in the city, and those of us who did are now all in our sixties and older now, we can only hope that, finally, things may turn around on The Bluff, and that Dukes basketball can be relevant once again.

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So, the NFL lodge brothers approve the relocation of the Raiders from Oakland to Las Vegas by a note of 31-1. The Raiders then say that the actual move won't take place until 2019 or 2020, and that, by the way, the lame duck team will be raising ticket prices for the chumps in Oakland to attend their games.

(Oakland and the State of California would not cough up any public funds for a new stadium for the Raiders.  Vegas and Nevada is forking over $750 million of their residents' tax payments.  Just the way the NFL and other pro leagues like it.)

Mike Wilbon is right: the arrogance and greed of the NFL owners knows no bounds, and the sad part is that those suckers in Oakland will no doubt continue to pony up for tickets when it would serve the Raiders right to play in front of empty houses for their remaining years in the Bay area.

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Has anything been more annoying than the  prominent role being sought out and granted to Lavar Ball, the father of UCLA basketball player Alonzo Ball, and two other hoops' prodigies.  The fact that the Bruins went down to Kentucky in the regional semis last week may have ruined a lot of peoples' bracket pools, but it spared the nation - for now, anyway - any further exposure to Lavar Ball.  By the way, Ball may well be the #1 pick in the NBA draft this summer, but in that game against Kentucky, he wasn't even the second best guard on the floor. Both of those kids from Kentucky were better, for that night at least.

I missed the Kentucky - North Carolina game on Sunday, but was somewhat surprised at the outcome.  I thought that Kentucky was the best team that I had seen play throughout the tournament up to that point.  Not completely surprised, though, because, after all, North Carolina IS North Carolina.

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For what it's worth, I'm calling North Carolina to beat Gonzaga for the Championship come Monday night.  As always, watch but don't bet.  And for the record, the bracket pool that I submitted at the outset of the tournament had UCLA over Arizona in that game.  

Shows you what I know.

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As for the movie scene, last week I pulled to favorites out of the DVD basket here at home, both from director and screenwriter Lawrence Kasden.  From 1981...

and from 1983...

I hadn't watched either one in several years, and both hold up well after all these years and are still terrific movies to watch.

Selected Short Subjects

Lots of odds and ends to deal with this Sunday morning, but before getting to the fun-and-games that are the usual topics here, I must comment on the events that took place in Boston this past week.  Like most of you, we were spellbound while watching the horrific events unfold.  Salutes all around to the people of Greater Boston, all of the first responders, and for all of the law enforcement agencies who tracked down the perpetrators so quickly.   Against that background, I hope that certain members of the United States Senate are able to sleep well this week in the knowledge that the Tsarneav brothers were apparently able to obtain such massive amounts of weaponry without having to undergo those pesky background checks that they, the Senators, and their benefactors, the NRA, so adamantly oppose in their defense of the Second Amendment.

Okay, no one comes to The Grandstander for political commentary, so back to the usual topics.....

We attended the Montour High School production of "Legally Blonde, the Musical" this past Friday evening.   We attended with our friends, Dan and Susan Bonk, whose daughter, Emily, had a role in the show.

This was the third high school musical that we have attended this spring, and, as with the others, we come away in awe of the talent and energy of the kids who perform and work in the crew of these productions.  I've said it before and will say it again, there are few things in life that make you feel better than attending a high school musical.

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 I finally got around to reading the book "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn this week.  As this book has appeared on the fiction best seller list for well over a year, I figure that there is a good chance that you have already read it yourself.

(No spoilers will follow.)

In the book, Amy, the beautiful and semi-wealthy wife of Nick, has disappeared, and it looks like foul play was involved.   Nick becomes a suspect, a media circus ensues, but did Nick do it?  Where exactly IS Amy, and why can't authorities find either her or her body?

As thrillers go, this is a pretty good book, a real page-turner (has anyone ever used that phrase in describing a book before?), and I would recommend that you read it, but I will say this, the two main characters of the novel, in my opinion, are two of the most unlikable people I have ever come across in fiction.  If you've read this one, do you agree with me?

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In the sports world this week, Duquesne had a double dose of bad news, and, really, is there any other kind at The Bluff?

First off, women's basketball coach Susan McConnell-Serio left Duquesne, where she had been very, very successful, to take the same position at Pitt.  Pitt will be playing in the much higher level Atlantic Coast conference, and her salary reportedly doubled to about a half-million dollars a year, so how can you blame her?  Duquesne AD Greg Ammodio said all the right things about the fact that Susie elevated the Lady Dukes' program to a degree that this becomes an attractive position to another talented young coach to come in and pick up where McConnell-Serio left off.  We'll see.

Then came the news that five players from the men's team are leaving, four seeking to transfer, and one moving over to play on the Dukes' soccer team.  At first blush, this was seen as yet another disaster for the basketball program.  On further thought, when you realize that the Dukes won exactly one (1) conference game this past year, it's not exactly the UCLA Bruins of Lew Alcindor that are being broken up here.  Also, later in the week, Coach Jim Ferry announced his recruiting class for next year, so maybe it will all turn out for the best.

Still, one gets the impression that the Administration at Duquesne is not fully committed to do what it takes to play and compete on the highest levels of college basketball, even in the city of Pittsburgh, Robert Morris has clearly moved ahead of them in the local college hoops pecking order.  Some have suggested that perhaps Duquesne should de-emphasize to the point of perhaps leaving the Atlantic10 and moving to join Robert Morris in the Northeast Conference. 

An interesting thought.

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The National Hockey League hit pay dirt a few years back when they came up with the Winter Classic, an outdoor hockey game, played in an enormous football or baseball stadium, and nationally televised on New Year's Day.  Played when it's only televised competition were a bunch of now mostly irrelevant college football bowl games.  The Winter Classic pretty much had the national TV stage to itself, and the game has been a ratings bonanza.  

So, if one outdoor hockey game is terrific, the NHL punjabs said to themselves, wouldn't six of them a season be six times better?  Disregarding the fable of the goose and the golden eggs, that is what the NHL is proposing to do.  So what was once unique and wonderful, will now be just another gimmick, and that New Year's Day "special" game, will be special no more.  It will go the way of dunk contests, home run derbies, and college football bowl games.

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I had told myself that I was not going to get into any serious analysis of the Pirates season until they had played about 25 or 30 games, or about fifteen to twenty percent of the season, and I am going to pretty much stick to that.  However, when it began, much was made of the ten game home stand against the Reds, Cardinals, and Braves that started on April 12.  Be honest with me now, when that home stand began, if someone had set the over/under on Pirates wins at 5 and 1/2, how many of you would have voted the "Over"?  I sure wouldn't have, but the Bucs now sport a 6-2 record with one game left against the Braves this afternoon (one game was rained out).  Pretty good, regardless of what happens this afternoon.  

Tomorrow they will begin a ten game road trip against the Phillies, Cardinals, and the Hated Brewers, and they will do so with no worse than a .500 record.  If they can win five, six, or, dare I say it, even seven games on that trip, that weekend series with the Nationals that begins on May 3rd could be a mad house at PNC Park.

Let's hope the Grilled Cheese keeps on coming!

Hello, Good-bye

Lots of Good-Byes, and some Hellos, in the news these last few days.

Of course, the most newsworthy one in Pittsburgh was Hines Ward saying Good-bye and announcing his retirement. I had already commented on that one, but I had to include it here once again, just to go along with the theme.

A day or so later, Duquesne's best basketball player, T.J. McConnell, announced that he was leaving The Bluff in order to be able to compete at a "higher level." Not good, and just to stir the pot even further, two other Dukes players said that they would also be transferring. Today, the University one-upped the players by saying Good-bye, and by that I mean firing, coach Ron Everhart. Everhart is the first Duquesne coach with a winning record in a couple of generations.

As a wise friend of mine tweeted earlier this evening, Duquesne basketball is in "disarray." I am 60 years old, and you have to be pretty much my age to remember when Duquesne basketball was the #1 program here in Pittsburgh and relevant on the national stage. With parents and an older brother who are Duquesne alums, I grew up in a Duquesne family, and rooted for the Dukes, with my own memories stretching back to the days of the Willie Somerset era. There are people who have lived in Pittsburgh for 30 years and can't imagine that the Dukes were once the Kings of Hoops in Pittsburgh, while basketball was almost an afterthought at Pitt. Hell, you can make the case today that even Robert Morris, although they play in an inferior conference to the Atlantic 10, is a stronger program than Duquesne. Chick Davies and Red Manning, not to mention Frank Miniotas(!), are rolling over in their graves.

It's kind of sad, really, and you can't have a whole lot of hope that whomever Duquesne brings in to succeed Everhart will have much of a chance to bring the program back to glory. Hope I'm wrong on that.

A possible Good-bye, for the short term, for Pedro Alvarez? News reports surfaced today that Pedro now has a "balky" left knee. The cynical among us see this as a chance to put Pedro on the DL to start the season, which would then be the conduit to send him to Indianapolis to start the season under the guise of a "rehab assignment."

Hello to Eric Bedard as the Pirates Opening Day starting pitcher. With A.J. Burnett on the shelf, I suppose that there was some sentiment for Jeff Karstens, based upon his season in 2011, to get the nod, but what the heck. I'm too lazy to look it up, but when was the last time that the Pirates had a pitcher get the Opening Day assignment two years in a row?

A possible Hello to 49 year old Jamie Moyer in Denver. I have to tell you that I, for one, am pulling for him to make the Rockies squad. He is 49 years old, coming off of Tommy John Surgery, and in recent years appeared to have trouble throwing a baseball through a wet paper bag, but he was still an effective pitcher. I would love to see him pitching again in 2012.

Finally, Good-bye to Chipper Jones who announced that he will be retiring after this upcoming season at age 40 and with 21 seasons in the big leagues, all with the Braves. It is sometimes easy to develop a dislike for players on the "other team", particularly when that team beats your team, but I never felt that way about Jones (nor, for that matter, the Braves in general in the Bobby Cox era, notwithstanding the 1991 and 1992 NLCS). He always seemed to be a classy guy and good guy. And what a ballplayer! Through 2011, he sports a .304 BA with over 2,600 hits, 454 HR, 1,561 RBIs and an OPS of .935. I hope he goes out in 2012 with a nice year and maintains those lifetime .300 and .900 numbers. Next stop: Cooperstown, NY.