To Absent Friends - Ron Popeil

 

Ron Popeil

1935-2021

Inventor of Gadgets That We Didn't Know We Needed Ron Popeil died this past week at the age of 86.  You can see some of those items in the picture above.  Who doesn't need an in the shell egg scrambler?  Oh, and you might also say that in addition to all of these gadgets, he also invented television infomercials.  If he didn't, he certainly perfected the model.

His death brought to mind a personal story.  

Back in 1987, I found myself unemployed for a four month period.  Naturally, it was an upsetting time, and many nights I found that I was unable to sleep because of it.  So I would toddle on downstairs to watch television.  Now back in 1987, there were no streaming services on which to watch movies and limited series, and all ESPN was showing was week old college football games.  What was on television in the wee smalls, though, were infomercials, many of them featuring Ron "Set It and Forget It" Popeil.  I was fascinated by them and always said that it was a good thing that my wallet with the credit cards in it was upstairs and out of my reach.

One item with which I became particularly obsessed was a food storage "system" called Popeet.

Popeet consisted of accordion-type plastic containers.  Easy to store when not in use, but expandable to accommodate ANY KIND OF LEFTOVERS.  Soup, vegetables, desserts.  You could store candy, snacks, and cereal in them.  They were leak proof.  They were unbelievably amazing, and, as I said, I obsessed over them.  And if you called within the next twenty minutes, you could get a second set of Popeets for free, paying only the additional shipping and handling!

My "obsession" became a bit of schtick that I would talk about with friends, and it was good for a laugh or two.  Finally, when I did find employment, friends of ours celebrated the occasion by giving me.....a set of Popeets!!!!!

The story doesn't have a happy ending.  Popeet was not all that Mr. Popeil claimed it to be, and they were probably consigned to the trash bin within a year.

RIP Ron Popeil.

"Jungle Cruise"

The reviews that I have read from the professional critics for Disney's new "Jungle Cruise" can best be described as "tepid."  And not without reason.  However, as we left the theater yesterday after seeing it, Marilyn, aka, Mrs. Grandstander, offered the best review of all:

"Is there anyone" she asked "cooler than The Rock?"

Throw in the wonderful Emily Blunt, who has proven that she can play "spunky heroine" better than anyone since, perhaps, Katherine Hepburn, and there you have the reasons that make "Jungle Cruise" worth seeing.

The movie is based on the Disneyland/Disney World ride of the same name.  A cruise ride on a jungle river that is loaded with dangerous animatronic animals.  The plot of this one concerns a tree that has magic petals capable of curing any illness, a native curse upon Spanish conquistadors from the 16th century, the undead, an evil son of Kaiser Wilhelm - oh, yeah, the movie takes place during World War I - and sexism among the stuffy British Historical/Science/Exploration Society.  There are plot angles - and plot holes - and MacGuffins all over the place in this movie, but so what.  You don't go to a movie like this to see "Citizen Kane" or a Hitchcock classic, and it is upon that curve that a movie like this should be judged.  You  go to a movie like this to relax and have fun, and to that end, "Jungle Cruise" delivers.

Blunt, Johnson, and Whitehall

She looked GREAT in that hat!

To expand upon my wife's take on this one, Dwayne Johnson can match anybody when it comes to screen charisma.  Blunt has proven herself to to be both a terrific dramatic actress (A Quiet Place, Girl on the Train) and an equally charming comic actress (Mary Poppins Returns), and she handle herself nicely as the Don't-You-Dare-Take-Me-Lightly action adventuress in this one.  Johnson and Blunt may not be the next William Powell and Myrna Loy, but if they teamed up for another movie (but, please, not a sequel to this one), I'd buy a ticket to see it.

Oh, and Jack Whitehall does a great turn as Blunt's stiff upper lipped brother. He has packed more clothes and gear on Johnson's jungle cruise boat than Thurston Howell III packed for his three hour tour on the Minnow.

Like I said, when you rate a movie like this, you have to realize that a Star for this one is different than a Star for, say, "Some Like It Hot", so with that in mind, The Grandstander bestows Two and One-Half Stars on "Jungle Cruise."

Shifting Paradigms: Cutting the Cord

 Yep, as you can see from the title and the picture above, we made the decision this week to "cord cut", i.e., abandon cable television which we have been getting through Verizon FIOS for over 15 years, and go to a streaming service.  We had been contemplating this move for awhile.  No beef with the quality of the product that Verizon provided, it was a cost cutting measure, pure and simple.

Our monthly bill for our Verizon Bundle - phone, internet, TV - was coming in at $198 and change per month.  A few weeks back, I called Verizon and asked what it would cost if I just kept the phone service and the internet.  The answer, about $65/month, plus taxes and "fees."  So I then went looking for a streaming service TV provider.

My first choice was YouTube TV.  Cost: $64.99/month.  It provided local channels and all the other services that I had been using - CNN, TNT, ESPN, ACC Network, HGTV, you get the idea.  However, it DIDN'T provide one important one:  AT&T Sports Net Pittsburgh. That meant no ability to watch the Pirates or the Penguins games.  That was a deal breaker for me.

I then explored FuboTV.

With some exceptions, Fubo offered everything that YouTube did for the same price, $64.99, and, for an additional $5.00, AT&T Sports Net.  So I signed on for a seven day free trial, liked it, and yesterday, I called Verizon, cut off the TV service, and today I returned my two cable boxes and one digital converter to them.  So now, instead of paying $199/ month to Verizon, I am now paying $67/month to Verizon and $70/month to FuboTV, a savings of $62 per month, close to $750 ($744 to be exact) a year.

So far, I've been happy with the service.  The quality of the picture on my TV's has not suffered.  I am still learning the navigation of the system with the TV remote, but that is certainly no big deal.  And yes, you can now  use your TV remote for this; no separate remote control gadget.

Any down side?  Well, those exceptions I mentioned above....FuboTV does not carry any of the Turner Network stations.  No CNN, TNT, TBS, or TCM.  Losing TCM could have been a dealbreaker, but if you have HBO Max, which we do, you have access to the full TCM library.  Also, FuboTV provides all the broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox.  This gives us access to our local affiliates as well with one exception:  there is no local broadcasting from WTAE-TV Channel 4, which now means I can only see the local newscasts from Channels 2,11, and 53.  Also, no PBS on FuboTV either.

(UPDATE, July 31:  Soon after I wrote this post, I discovered that I do indeed receive the local programming from WTAE-TV, Channel 4.)

Those are the negatives, and the loss of TBS and TNT will come into play when the NCAA basketball tournament is telecast in March and April, but here's something that I could do.  Sign up for YouTube TV for a month and then cancel it.  There are no contracts, not yet, anyway, with these services, so you can play the system with a bit of effort.  Will it be worth sixty-five bucks for me next spring to be able to watch three weekends of college hoops?  I don't know, but at least I know that I have options.

Another option, if things don't work out, would be to call Verizon and ask to be taken back into the FIOS TV fold.  I am sure that they will welcome me with open arms, and probably with an "introductory offer" that will be less than the $199 that I was currently paying.

So with that, I leave you with this.....

Lydia Jacoby's Olympic Moment

Did anything ever define an "Olympic Moment" more than the Gold Medal victory of seventeen year old Seward, Alaska native Lydia Jacoby in the 100 Meter Breast Stroke event last night?  She lives in a city of fewer than 4,000 residents, in a state with one (1!) Olympic sized swimming pool, and no Alasakan has ever won a medal for the USA in the Summer Games.  And the cherry was put atop this delightful swimming sundae when you watched her Seward High School classmates watching and celebrating in real time.

No screenwriter would write a script like this.  It was yet another moment that tells you that THIS is why you follow sports.

"Glory Days" by L. Jon Werthem

Hey there, sports fans, have I got a book for you!

"Glory Days, The Summer of 1984 and the 90 Days That Changed Sports and Culture Forever."

Yeah the title is ponderous, and perhaps a bit overblown, but it is still terrific book.  L. Jon Werthem is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, and he examines a specific point in time, in this case, the Summer of 1984, and crafts a book that makes the case that events in that period "changed sports and culture forever."

Did they?  Maybe, maybe not, but Werthem details a whole bunch of stuff from that period that, if you were around then, stirs up a lot of fun and provocative memories.  Here are some of them.....

• David Stern had just become Commissioner of the NBA.  At the time, the league was clear fourth in popularity among the four major North American sports leagues, and was only a few years removed from having its Championship series telecast on tape delay.  Stern would change that.
•  Part of that change was ignited by an epic seven game Finals series between the Lakers (Kareem, Magic) and Celtics (Bird).
• The 1984 Olympic Games were staged in Los Angeles
• The US Olympic basketball team was led by a young guy who was about to leave the University of North Carolina a year early and enter the NBA Draft.   While he certainly wasn't unknown at the time, Michael Jordan used that Olympics stage to truly announce himself to the world.  Certainly, personal brand marketing in the world of sports would never be the same again.
• ESPN, a fledgling money losing all sports cable network was purchased by ABC, thus assuring its survival.
• An obscure US Supreme Court ruling that went against the NCAA was about to bring about a huge change in college sports, changes that are still being felt in 2021.
• The Michael Jackson "Victory Tour" took place and a cause-and-effect line between that Tour and the New England Patriots dynasty that would dominate the first two decades of the 21st century can be drawn.
• A bombastic young New York City real estate developer bought into the United States Football League.  Through hubris, lies, betrayals of his fellow owners, and sheer narcissism, that guy managed to put the  USFL out of business, but it sure ensured his brand recognition.  That owner?  Donald J. Trump. 
• Vince McMahon Jr. consolidated the provincial fiefdoms of professional wrestling, and planted the roots of what would become a billion dollar empire, the WWE.  He did so in large part with some assistance from a crazily coiffed and dressed female pop singer and another fledging cable television network, MTV.
• Apple introduced the Macintosh personal computer, and all Olympians in Los Angeles were given a password that they could use to communicate "electronic messages" among each other throughout the Olympic Village.  The numbers show that fewer than twenty percent of them availed themselves of this pioneering technology.
• These were the Olympics that were boycotted by the USSR and a whole bunch of Soviet satellite nations.  I knew that, but I did not know about an attempt by the USSR to undermine the Games by sending racially tinged (to put it mildly) letters to the Olympic Committees of many African nations in an effort to have those nations boycott the Games in America as well.  Yes, it was a Russian hack.  By 2020, the Russians got a bit more sophisticated in their methods of trying to undermine American institutions.

Where Werthem reaches a bit is when he tries to bring other areas of pop culture into his narrative.   The details of the Jackson Victory Tour can be related to sports, but "The Karate Kid?"  Maybe not so much.  That aside, I highly recommend this book to the sports fans among you.  I gobbled it down in two days.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

 

Gone Goes Frazier

 Adam, we barely knew ye...

In what has become a depressingly familiar scenario, the Pirates yesterday traded a popular and quite good player for, say it with me now, prospects!

Like many of the deals that have sent popular players packing in recent years....Neil Walker, Andrew McCutchen, Gerrit Cole....the trade of Adam Frazier can be defended in a pure baseball sense, to wit:

• He will turn 30 years old this coming off season, an age when, or so the data tells us, players begin to decline
• The Pirates are a rebuilding team, targeting a window of contention that should begin to open in 2023 or so, by which time Frazier's skills really will be in decline, or so the data tells us
• Ding-ding-ding....He will be eligible for free agency after the 2022 season, he will no doubt test those waters at that time, so trade him now and get something for him 

We Pirates fans can recite this kind of shit in our sleep, and like I said, in a pure baseball sense, it is all true and defensible.  However, rooting interest in a team is an emotional thing.  Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is, and when you are rooting for a lousy team, a guy like Adam Frazier, a solid and good ball player, is someone for whom fans (aka, paying customers) can latch onto and cheer, and now....gone!

This is Adam Frazier in 2021:  125 hits (leads the league), .324 BA (second in NL), .836 OPS, Gold Glove caliber second baseman, a starter on this year's NL All Star team.  

Here is what the Pirates are getting in return:

• Infielder Tucupita Marcano (fifth best prospect in the Padres organization!!!)
• Outfielder Jack Suwinski
• Relief pitcher Michell Miliano

Are any of these guys any good?  Is this a good trade?  As a Pirates fan, I sure hope so, but we really won't know the answer to that for years.  Let's just hope that the plan of GM Ben Cherington works.

Hey, in the end, we're all just rooting for the laundry anyway.

Old Movie Time - "Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990)

 

What, you may well ask, would prompt me to watch this thirty-one year old movie?  A movie that was pretty much panned - it was nominated for Razzie Awards in multiple categories - when it came out, that co-starred an actor for whom I don't especially care, and is generally swept under the carpet when the film oeuvre  of the great Tom Hanks is discussed?  Well, it was a podcast that did it.  Specifically Season 2 of TCM's "The Plot Thickens" podcast.  This one is called "The Devil's Candy", and it is based upon a book of the same name by critic Julie Salamon, who had daily access to the set of "Bonfire of the Vanities" when it was being filmed by director Brian DePalma.

The podcast is a fascinating look into how the sausage gets made on a major motion picture, and back in 1989 when this was being filmed, it was quite a controversial story.  "Bonfire of the Vanities" was a major literary event in the 1980's, a best selling novel by Tom Wolfe (Full disclosure: I have never read it), and Warner Bros. was banking on it being their BIG Oscar bait movie for 1990.  The novel skewered Wall Street, White Priviledge (before that was an actual term), and cast an especially bad light on crime and racism in New York City at the time.  The backlash was immediate from the powers that be in NYC, and it ranged from the producers not being able to gain access to locations in the city, protests and picketing when filming took place, and even the cast and crew being pelted with eggs by residents of the Bronx when some scenes were being filmed.

The podcast also confirmed that (a) Bruce Willis was, and probably still is, an jerk, (b) Melanie Griffith was, and probably still is, foul mouthed, and (c) that Tom Hanks REALLY is the nice guy that we all know him to be.  He's about the only person in the whole shebang who comes off as a decent human being.  Oh, and Morgan Freeman, who has a juicy role as a judge, has a great quote in the podcast.  Remember, this was 1989, and Freeman wasn't nearly as ubiquitous then as he is now.  He was appearing in Shakespeare in the Park in New York when this was being filmed, and much of his background was on the stage.  In an interview with Salamon he said that unlike the other principals in the film, he wasn't a "movie star", and he wasn't sure he wanted to be one because "when you get to be a movie star, you don't have to worry about having to act anymore."

The Podcast is really good stuff, and I highly recommend it if you love movies.

So, all of the above is a long way of saying that I became curious to actually watch this movie, which Mrs. Grandstander and I did yesterday.  The opening scene is a five minute single take tracking shot that, from a pure movie-making standpoint, is outstanding.  The rest of the film? Meh.  

Actually, I went into the movie expecting to revel in the sheer awfulness of it all, but that didn't happen.  A contemporary review of the movie by Roger Ebert, which I read afterwards, was semi-complimentary but said that if you read and liked the Wolfe novel, you would no doubt hate the movie, and that appears to be the consensus of other reviews that I found on line.  DePalma apparently took some bones from the book and crafted a very different movie.  Not the first time that's been done, and it surely hasn't been the last time, either.

I thought the movie was somewhat overdone, and the performances were over the top by just about everybody (e.g., F. Murray Abraham as a conniving and politically ambitious District Attorney).  It was a bit jarring to see Hanks as a Heel in this one, but he was, well, Tom Hanks, and this movie was a break away for him from the comedy roles that he had been playing up to that time.  Griffith chewed scenery as Hanks' southern bell malaproping mistress, although she looked amazing in not one but two separate scenes where she wore nothing but a bra-and-panties set.  Both Willis and his character were unlikable.  About the only decent character in the whole movie was Freeman's judge.

Oh, and if you like seeing actors who were no big deal then but who went on to other things later....Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) played Hanks' wife, a then seven year old Kirsten Dunst played their daughter, and Rita Wilson (Mrs. Tom Hanks, although I'm not sure if she was at the time) played a P.R. aide early in the movie. Also, in that opening tracking shot I mentioned, Brian DePalma himself appeared as a security guard.  It was the only way he could actually direct the scene as it was being filmed.  Learned that fact from the podcast.

So, if I were to watch "Bonfire of the Vanities" cold, having no idea of all of it's historical baggage and having not read the book, what would I say?

Not great, somewhat entertaining, and it did hold my interest.  Two Stars from The Grandstander.

To Absent Friends - Ricki Wertz

Ricki Wertz with Copper

Another pioneer in the history of Pittsburgh television left us earlier this week when Ricki Wertz died at the age of 86.

What Pittsburgh area Baby Boomer does not have memories of her children's show, "Ricki and Copper" from the 1950's and '60's?  No, I was never one of those kids who appeared on her show on my birthday, but I watched it quite a bit, and even at a young age, I wondered how Ricki Wertz was always able to endure yet another retelling of the "Why did the guy throw the butter out the window?" joke and act like she had never heard it before.  From "Ricki and Copper" she went on to host WTAE's "Junior High School Quiz" for twelve years (no, I was never on THAT one either), before leaving that show and moving into public television where a show that she produced, "The Chemical People", was a groundbreaking look into drug abuse and chemical dependency.

In reading her obituaries, I got a kick in seeing that in her retirement, she would meet friends for lunch at Eat 'n Park, and that she would invariably be approached by people who were fans of hers from way back when.  Thirty and forty years after the show went off the air, people would still ask her "How's Copper?" to which she would reply "Dead!"

In recent years, Wertz and her husband of 66 years, Tom Bordenkircher (the puppy Copper was his wedding gift to her) moved to the Chicago area to live near their children.  He died in 2020.  By all accounts, she was as sweet and charming a person in real life as she always came across on the air.

RIP Ricki Wertz.

 

"Cruella"

 

We took ourselves down to the local Cinemark yesterday and caught up with "Cruella" from the folks at Disney.  This is the "origin story" for one of Disney's all-time odious villains, Cruella De Vil of the 1961 animated feature, "101 Dalmatians."  This live action feature tells the story about how young orphan girl Estella, while serving as a worker drone in the 1970's era London fashion salon of fashionista  Baroness von Hellman came to become the evil Cruella De Vil.    It was a fun and entertaining romp of a movie, and Marilyn and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

The costumes were amazing and I imagine the budget for these alone exceeded the GNP of many Third World countries.  I also loved the music soundtrack that was used throughout, mostly 1970's era rock and pop numbers.  The best part of the movie, though, was the performances of the two Emmas  - Stone as Estella/Cruella and Thompson as the Baroness, two Oscar winners who seemed to take great joy in playing off of each other.    Emma Stone  (who defines the word "cute", in my opinion) was delightful as the spunky Estella-turned-Cruella, and Emma Thompson chewed scenery with a gusto that was a joy to watch.

"The Emmas"

Thompson and Stone

I'm not going to spend anymore time on this one other to say that it was entertaining, pretty to look at, and two cool performances by the leads, and you should enjoy it.  

I will elaborate a bit further, though, with a bit of a conundrum that was rolling around in my mind as I watched.  Full disclosure:  I have never seen the original animated movie "101 Dalmatians", so I can claim only a rudimentary knowledge of the story line.  What I did know, however, was that Cruella De Vil was the "bad guy" in it.  So here we have a movie where the heroine is the downtrodden Estella, and the Baroness is the evil one.  So in "Cruella", we are actually rooting for a person who will one day become a villain.  Huh?

I did a little research on this when I got home from the movies yesterday, and I came across a review on rogerebert.com wherein the critic, Matt Zoller Seitz, brought up this very point.  Seitz went on and on....and on....about this point, and became very critical of Disney for even considering it.  After reading his unending paragraphs dissecting this point, I wanted to scream at Mr. Seitz...."Hey, it's only a movie." (A quote attributed to Alfred Hitchcock when one of his actors was disputing points of one of his films with him.)  I mean, really, sometimes critics can take themselves way too seriously.

"Cruella" is only a movie, but a pretty entertaining and fun one at that.  The Grandstander gives it Three Stars.

Stone as "Estella"

Welcome to the Pirates, Henry Davis

Back in the Fall of 2020, when it became a fait accompli  that the Pirates would have the Number One overall pick in the 2021 Entry Draft, it was lead pipe lock that the pick would be spent on Vanderbilt University pitcher Kumar Rocker.  Best pitcher in college and a cinch to be an Ace #1 starter for any team.  Then it was well, maybe it'll be pitcher Jack Leiter, also from Vanderbilt and the  son of a former major league pitcher.  Either way, the Bucs would have pitcher around whom they could build a pennant winning pitching staff.

As months went on, other names began to surface.  This high school shortstop or that college outfielder and on and on.  Somehow, Pirates fans began to condition themselves that somehow, someway, the Pirates would screw up the whole deal.

Tonight they made the pick, and it was catcher Henry Davis from the University of Louisville.

Did, in fact, the Pirates screw it up?  I don't know, and neither does anyone else at this point.  Davis' college credentials are certainly solid, and God knows that the Pirates have lacked depth throughout their organization at the catcher position (among many other positions), so perhaps he'll be the goods.  The next Johnny Bench or Buster Posey or, and I'll settle for this, Jason Kendall.   Or maybe he'll fizzle like Brian Bullington or Tony Sanchez.  Judging a college or high school baseball player and projecting how he'll be three or four years later when he gets to the Majors is the biggest crapshoot in professional sports.

As a Pirates fan, I hope, I mean, I REALLY hope that this is the right pick and that Davis will be  star for the five or six years he'll be a Pirate before he becomes unaffordable to the Suits in the front office.  Let's also hope that among the couple of dozen players the Pirates draft over the next two days there will be five or six or seven players who can surround Davis and form a nucleus of teams that will contend for division titles, pennants, and reach the World Series.  Always remember, the Pirates didn't draft Dave Parker until the 14th round way back in 1970.

It will also be interesting to track the careers of Rocker and Leiter over the next decade or so.

********

The name Henry Davis stirred a memory for me, as I am sure it did for others, of a former linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Davis played 56 games for the Steelers from 1970-73 as Chuck Noll was transitioning the Steelers from the worst team in the NFL to a team that would fashion a Super Bowl Dynasty.  He passed away in 2000 at the age of 57.

Book Review - "The Plot" by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Jacob Finch Bonner was a once promising novelist.  His debut novel, The Invention of Wonder, was a hit among the literati, and it even got him included in the "New and Noteworthy" column of the New York Times Book Review.  Trouble is, Jake has had a hard time coming up with a follow up.  His second book, a collection of short stories, bombed, a third book couldn't get published, and another novel has been gestating on his laptop for years.

So this is why Jake now finds himself teaching a three week writers-in-residence MFA course at a third tier college in Vermont.  He's been doing it for four years now, and every year he cringes at the vapidity of the work that these would be writers turn into him every year.  He hates what he's doing, but, hey, a guy has to eat, right?

Then an obnoxious jerk of a student named Evan Parker shows up in the program.  He's not sure why he's there, because he has a story in mind with a Plot that no one has ever come up with before, a story so great, that it is sure to be a best seller, an Oprah Book Club selection, and a Hollywood blockbuster.  "Yeah, right", Jake thinks to himself, "just who does this blowhard think he is?"  Then in a one-on-one session with Jake, Evan tells him The Story, and Jake is astonished.  If this horse's ass of a student can ever get around to actually writing this tale, it might just become everything he says is will, so terrific is this Story, this Plot.

Flash forward a couple of years, Jake is still struggling.  His MFA Writers in Residence Program has been reduced to an online course, and his struggles to write anything, anything at all, are worse than ever.  Quite by accident, he discovers that Evan Parker is dead, that he actually died shortly after the class that Jake taught concluded, and that he never had the chance to write the book that would tell that amazing story that he spoke of to Jake.  It would be a sin to let that terrific Plot just die with Evan, so, after some internal struggle, Jake takes the idea and runs with it.  He changes the names and the locales, but The Plot remains, and he, Jake, then writes the novel, Crib, that will change his life.

Crib  is a sensation.  Millions of copies sold, #1 on all best seller lists, paperback sales will only add to the sales figures, talk show appearances, speaking gigs, and, oh, yeah, Steven Spielberg is going to make the movie version of it. Everything that Evan Parker said would happen to his Story, has happened, only it is happening to Jake Bonner.

Then, one day out of nowhere, Jake receives an email that simply says.....You are a thief.

Who owns an idea? is a central thread of this novel that author Jean Hanff Korelitz explores.  Jake didn't steal Parker's work, nor did he plagiarize it, since Parker never actually had the chance to write it.  If someone else takes the skeleton of an idea and fleshes it out, is that wrong or immoral?  Somebody thinks so, and what is Jacob Finch Bonner going to do about it?

I am not going to say anymore about the plot of "The Plot" because it would be hard to do so without spoiling it for the reader, but let me tell you, the format that Korelitz uses - she intersperses pages from Crib within "The Plot" to advance the story - is ingenious and it sets up a twist that you will never see coming.  Well, actually, I did see it coming - on page 296 of this 320 page book!  It was only then that I "got" it.

It was a review of this book that I read in the Washington Post that made me seek this one out at the library, and I am glad that I did.  I have to tell you that this first 70 or so pages of this book move a bit slowly and are filled with a lot of Jake's literary claptrap of ideas, but that is what sets up the thrilling ride that Korelitz then takes us on.

Don't miss this one.  Four Stars from The Grandstander.

Post Script - Jean Hanff Korelitz wrote a novel "You Should Have Known" which was turned into the terrific HBO series of last year, "The Undoing."  That was another factor that caused me to seek out "The Plot."  She has written several other novels that sound like they, too, would be worth reading.

The Pirates and MLB at the Halfway Mark

On Friday, the Pirates played their 81st game of 2021.  It was, literally, the halfway point of the season for them.  Yesterday, was the 4th of July, a traditional halfway mark of the season, and in another week or so we will contest the All-Star Game, another traditional halfway point of the season. 

So, where are we?

Before delving into that, let us first salute the Pirates' two representatives on the National League All-Star team, seciond baseman Adam Frazier, who was voted into the starting lineup, and outfielder Brian Reynolds.

This is a not case of "even the crummy teams need to have someone on the team."  Both of these guys are absolutely deserving of being on the teams, so good for them.  Shadowing over this bit of good news is the assumption that Frazier is likely to be traded for prospects by the end of the month, and tells us more about the state of MLB and the Pirates than it does of Frazier, who has been nothing but a good guy during his time with the Bucs.   His All-Star selection will serve as a fitting coda to his Pirates career.

Back to the original question, where are we?

In 2020's shortened season, the Pirates had the worst record in MLB, 19-41. After sixty games this year, the Pirates were 23-37, a four game improvement over last year.  And Frazier and Reynolds are All-Stars.  And Ke'Bryan Hayes seems to be the real deal at third base and at the plate.  You want good stuff...that's it, that's the list.

The Pirates today sit at 30-53, on pace to go 58-104.  They are what we thought they would be - terrible.  Amazingly, they are NOT the worst team in baseball, Arizona and Baltimore have worse records.  How bad must they be?  All that we Pirates fans can do is place our trust in GM Ben Cherrington as he rebuilds the Pirates following the "Astros Model" and hope for the good times to start rolling in 2023 or 2024.

As for the rest of the Majors...

• The Mets have a 3.5 game lead in the NL East, a surprise to me.   The Braves, whom I thought would win that division, are in second place and one game under .500.
• The NL Central is proving to be a one team division as the Brewers have a seven game lead, seventeen games over .500.  Only the Reds are over .500 and the Cardinals, always a contender it seems, are in fourth place, ten games behind the Brewers.
• In the NL West, I was under the impression that the Giants weren't going to be any good, but they sit in first place in what has to be the biggest surprise in the NL so far this season.  However, the Dodgers are .5 game behind and the Padres are 4.5 behind, 22 and 14 games over .500 respectively.  The West could be the best race in baseball in the second half of the season, and my money says the the Dodgers are still the team to beat.
• The biggest surprise in the American League has to be the New York Yankees: 42-41, fourth place in the East, ten games behind the Red Sox.  "Stink" is a relative term when describing bad baseball teams, and using the same word to describe the Pirates and a 42-41 Yankees team is absurd on the face of it, but I wonder how many fans up in the Bronx are using that tern to describe the Yankees these days?
• The White Sox with a six game lead appear to be the goods in the AL Central.  Only Cleveland is over .500 behind them.
• The Astros hold a 3.5 game lead in the West over the always competitive Athletics, and the Mariners are in third only 7 games back.  As it is in the NL West, the race in the AL West could be a fun one to watch down the stretch.

The most amazing story of this season is being written by the Angels' Shohei Ohtani.

In twelve starts as a pitcher, he is 3-1 with a 3.60 ERA and 83 strike outs in 60 innings pitched.  As an outfielder/DH, he is batting 2.78 with 31 home runs and 67 RBI.  He has made the AL All-Star team as both a DH and a pitcher.  The last time anyone did anything like this playing both positions on a full time basis was in the 1919 when a guy named George Ruth did it for the Red Sox.

Yes, we are writing Ohtani's name in the same sentence with that of Babe Ruth.  BABE RUTH!!!

Here's to the second half of the season.

Visitors From Milwaukee

Okay, we all know about the evils and the pitfalls of Social Media.  That's been well documented.  However, Social Media can also be the vehicle for good stuff, so let me share this Feel Good Story with you.

A couple of months ago, I received a Message on Facebook from pal Steve Ozbolt who lives in Milwaukee.  It was a screenshot from a Milwaukee Brewers Fan Group Facebook page.  A guy had made a post to the effect of "I am thinking of making a road trip with my son to see the Brewers play in Pittsburgh over 4th of July weekend.  Has anyone here done that, and could you give me some tips or advice?"

Steve's message to me was "Can you help this guy?"  

"Can you give me his email address?" I replied.  Steve did, and that is how I came to know Tim Zeilstra of Milwaukee and, eventually, his seven year old son, Owen.

I emailed Tim with all kinds of info on hotels around PNC Park, other visitor attractions, restaurants and the like.  At that time, it was unknown how many or even if tickets would be available for Pirates games at PNC Park this weekend.   Long story short - Tim booked a flight and made reservations for the Renaissance Hotel, PNC Park was opened to full capacity just this weekend, and he had no trouble getting tickets.   He gave me his seat location, and about a month ago, I bought tickets for today's game in the same vicinity.

Tim and Owen were scheduled to arrive in Pittsburgh at around Noon on Friday, but screwed up flights totally messed that up and delayed their arrival until after midnight Friday night/Saturday morning.  Because of that, Tim extended their stay one more night, and snagged tickets to Sunday afternoon's game as well.  And when they finally got to the Renaissance, they discovered that their room was on the right side of the hotel, as evidenced by this pic that Tim texted me early this morning.

Later in the morning, I received another text from Tim telling me that he and Owen walked to Market Square for breakfast, and how nice it was and how friendly everyone was.  I asked if anyone had referred to them as "yinz" yet, and he told me that the cab driver from the airport did the night before.  They even got a cabbie straight from Central Casting.

Then I received a text around lunchtime saying "This is really a cool place."  The place:

Well, I said, you can't get more Pittsburgh than the Oyster House!

Then it was game time.  Marilyn and I headed down to PNC Park, and this meeting took place:

We had a couple of gifts for Owen - some Penguins decals, a Pirates tee shirt, and, of course, the Ultimate Pittsburgh sports talisman, a Terrible Towel.  Something from all three teams!  Tomorrow, they will be visiting the Carnegie Science Center on some freebie passes that our pal Barb Vancheri, a volunteer there, arranged for them, see another Pirates game, and will be able to see the City's spectacular 4th of July fireworks show over the Point.

The Brewers also treated them to an 11-2 win over the Pirates, so I was glad for them on that front.  Prior to the game, a Pirates pitcher threw Owen a ball, and he was able to get it autographed by a couple of Brewers players.  Tim also texted me that he had heard from home that the Brewers television broadcast picked up Owen in the stands so he was even on TV back home!

Tim was super nice guy, and I told him what a wonderful thing he was doing for his son with this trip.  And it certainly made MY day to be a small part of it.