To Absent Friends - Tina Turner and Joe Kapp

Yeah, I know.  Tina Turner and Joe Kapp.  What a juxtaposition. 

Tina Turner

1939 - 2023

The death of Tina Turner at the age of 83 last week probably shouldn't have come as a shock, but it was nonetheless, especially since we had just seen her remarkably portrayed at the Benedum Theater earlier this month in the Broadway in Pittsburgh production of "TINA: The Tina Turner Musical."  It brought to life the memories of seeing Ms Turner perform so many times over the years on television, and did anybody embody the glory days of MTV more than Tina Turner?

I can think of no better tribute than sharing this compilation video of Tina Turner doing one of her signature numbers, CCR's "Proud Mary."

Her death also brought to mind memories of a Halloween party that Marilyn and I attended in 1985.   I was Bruce Springsteen in all of his Born in the USA glory, and Marilyn was Tina Turner.  

Get a load of those 

gams on "Tina"

********

Back in the early days of what has come to be known as "The Super Bowl Era" in the NFL, the Minnesota Vikings hired Canadian Football League coach Bud Grant to be their head coach, and he brought CFL quarterback Joe Kapp with him.  Grant and Kapp soon had the Vikings playing in the Super Bowl, the IVth one to be exact.  It was a Super Bowl that they would lose to the Kansas City Chiefs, but it marked the beginning of a period where Grant would take the Vikings to four Super Bowls.

Kapp and Grant

Those Vikings were known for tough and hard hitting play - remember the Purple People Eaters defense? - and Kapp was the perfect QB for those teams.  He was hardly a stylish quarterback, even circa 1970, and he probably wouldn't make it in the NFL today.  His long passes resembled a guy throwing a shot put, but he was as tough as they come, challenging defenders when he took off running, hitting them head on rather than running out of bounds.  The Sports Illustrated cover depicts him perfectly.  

Kapp was 85 when he died earlier this month.  In addition to my memories of him that came back to me, I learned a couple of interesting things about him when reading his obits.   One, he became one of the leading advocates for the Chicano/Latinx community throughout his life.  Two, he is the only quarterback to lead his teams to a Rose Bowl, a Super Bowl, and a Gray Cup Championship game. Three, he had a so-so career as a head coach at his alma mater, California at Berkeley (20-34-1 over five seasons) and was the Cal head coach when the Bears defeated Stanford on this game ending kickoff return that ended with the Cal runner plowing into the Stanford band in the end zone.  It is perhaps the most famous play in College Football history, and Joe Kapp was a part of it.  He also fashioned a modest acting career (27 IMDB credits), most notably as a prison guard in Burt Reynolds' 1974 movie, "The Longest Yard."

RIP Tina Turner and Joe Kapp

In The Area of Critical Commentary.....

 BABYLON

We were slated to see "Babylon" as our New Year's Eve movie, but for reasons that I have since forgotten, we never made it to the theater that day.  Well, we finally got around to seeing it last night, and it was, in may opinion, well worth the wait.  The movie is from Oscar winning director Damien Chazelle ("La La Land") and over its three hour length it weaves together four separate stories of Hollywood in the late 1920's and early 1930's when talking pictures were introduced and silent pictures were headed to extinction. Yeah, it is a story that has been told many times (Singin' in the Rain, Sunset Boulevard, The Artist), and the story as told by Chazelle, who also wrote the screenplay, is BIG and BOLD and BRASH.

It follows the stories of four people: Jack Conrad (Brad Pitt) a big, big star of the silent era, who is failing to make the transition to talkies, Nellie LaRoy (Margot Robbie), a girl from the wrong side of the tracks in New Jersey who comes to California to make it in the movies, makes it and then loses it,  Manny Torres (Diego Calva), a Mexican American working as a gopher on movies sets who longs for bigger and better things in the movie industry, and Sidney Palmer (Jovan Adepo), a Black jazz musician playing on the sets of silent films who suddenly makes it in the movies, but then wonders if it's worth the price he has to pay.  Chronicling  it all is Elinor St. John (Jean Smart), a Hedda Hopper-like gossip columnist.

Did I say that it was BIG and BRASH?  The first thirty minutes of the movie, before the title card of the movie itself appeared on screen, took place at the home of a major studio mogul, and it showed a Hollywood Babylon Era party in full swing.  Unlimited booze, drugs, and sex.  People dancing in various states of dress and undress.  An elephant - an elephant! - as a featured part of the party.  Thirty minutes of full sensory overload.  Amazing stuff.

There were no happy endings in this one, and I'll give no spoilers here.  A scene late in the movie between Brad Pitt and Jean Smart summed up wonderfully just what Pitt, and those like him, have accomplished with their careers was a great one. The entire movie was pure Oscar-bait stuff, but it didn't receive a lot of love from either critics or the Motion Picture Academy.  In our house, it was a split decision.  I liked it a lot; Linda, not so much.

It was one heck of a lot better than Best Picture of the Year "Everything Everywhere All At Once", I can tell you.

Two and Three-Quarters Stars from The Grandstander.

TED LASSO

One episode remains in Season Three of this Emmy Award winning series, and while neither the producers of the show nor Apple TV have said so, all signs are pointing to the fact that this will be the final season for this one.   To me, the series has continued to be a terrific one, funny and moving, and great performances from all the actors involved.  However, it appears that there is not much of a story left to be told.  AFC Richmond has come back into the Premier League after a year of relegation, they have played in fits and starts, but they have rallied in the final weeks of the season, and with one game remaining in the season, a victory will give them the EPL Championship.  Whether they win or lose that game match is almost immaterial.  Coach Lasso has done his job, and appears that he needs to move on.  We'll find out this coming Wednesday evening.

What has surprised me, however, is the critical backlash that seems to have come upon this show.  If you read any number of critics online, they are almost unanimous in their derision of Season Three of the show. These same critics who praised "Ted Lasso" to the high heavens are now ruthless in savagely attacking it.   Maybe it hasn't cleared to bar it set in its first two seasons, but to read some of these critics, you'd think that it has turned into a 21st century version of "Gilligan's Island."  I mean.....

PERRY MASON

We are only three episodes into Season Two of the HBO Max series, "Perry Mason", but we are really enjoying it.

This is not the Raymond Burr's Perry Mason. It is, instead, a grittier, more noir-ish origin story for Mason, one that is more in line with author Erle Stanley Gardner's original vision of him.

Set in the 1930's, this is a beautifully done period production.  I have heard critics who have lived in Los Angeles all of their lives praise how the show evokes their city of another era.  And both Matthew Rhys and Juliet Rylance are quite good in the roles of Mason and his partner (no longer secretary) Della Street.

If you haven't seen this one, you should take a crack at it.  You don't have to have seen Season One to enjoy Season Two, but it might help fill in some background for you. 

To Absent Friends - Jim Brown

Jim Brown

1936 - 2023

Okay, ever since the news came down last Friday of Jim Brown's death at the age of 87, I began to wonder about what I would write about him in an Absent Friends post.  I soon realized that there is nothing that I could write that would capture the true greatness of Jim Brown.  Maybe Red Smith or Frank Deford could have done so.  Or Hemingway.  But The Grandstander?  Not a chance.

Brown played in the NFL for only nine seasons, 1957 through 1965.  I saw him play only on black and white television, but his impact was immediate on this then young boy's consciousness as a football player, no one I have seen since lug the football has surpassed Brown as a ball carrier and as an all around bad-ass tough guy football player.  He is conceded by many to be the greatest football player in NFL history.

Here are just some of his accomplishments:

• NFL Rookie of the Year, 1957
• Three Time NFL MVP
• Nine time Pro Bowler
• Eight time NFL Rushing leader
• Five time NFL Rushing TD leader
• Best player on the 1964 NFL Champion Cleveland Browns
• Member of the 1960's All-Decade Team
• Member of each of the NFL's 50th, 75th, and 100th Anniversary teams
• 12,312 rushing yards at the time of his retirement was the all time record and it stood for nineteen years
• 126 total touchdowns (106 of them rushing)
• Averaged 104.3 yards per game rushing over nine seasons. It remains the leading average yards per game in NFL history
• Member of the Pro Football, College Football, and Lacrosse Halls of Fame
• In 2020, upon the 150th anniversary of College Football, he was named the greatest College Football player ever

He quit football prior to the 1966 season to concentrate on making movies, and after Art Modell threatened to fine him every day he was late to training camp because filming of "The Dirty Dozen" was running over time.  Nice move, Art.  He did fashion a modestly successful acting career (58 IMDB acting credits).

Perhaps the perfect football player, he was far from a perfect human, and his obits have not shied away from his numerous arrests, often for domestic violence incidents.  He was never convicted of a felony, but he did spend a few months on jail later in life on some sort of rap involving a broken windshield (??).

He also fashioned a career as a social  activist, and a foundation that he started, Amer-I-Can, to work to rehabilitate gang members and incarcerated individuals still is doing good work in those areas.

"The Cleveland Summit"

He also convened what came to be known as "The Cleveland Summit" in 1967.  It involved influential Black leaders and athletes at the time, including Bill Russell and a 20 year old Lew Alcindor, and its purpose was to listen and offer counsel to Muhammad Ali at the time he was refusing to accept induction into US Military service. In his Substack column today, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes of what took place in that summit.  If you don't feel like reading the entire thing, I will leave you with Abdul-Jabbar's final words that ended his piece on Brown:

The great thing about great men is that long after their light has dimmed, their deeds still light our way.

RIP Jim Brown

 

A Really Bad Stretch for the Pirates

Back on April 26, I wrote THIS ARTICLE about the then 16-7 Pittsburgh Pirates that highlighted the fact that they were about to enter a critical eighteen game stretch wherein twelve of those games would be against upper echelon, by record at least, MLB teams: three each against the Dodgers, Rays, Blue Jays, and Orioles.  

Here is what followed:

• Won 2 of three from Los Angeles.  Good.
• Won the first two games of a three game series with the Nationals.  The score of that second game was 16-1, and it pushed the Pirates' record to 20-9, second only the the Rays in all of MLB.
• They lost the third game of that series to the Nats and then the slide began.
• 0-3 against the Rays.
• 0-3 against the Blue Jays.
• 1-2 against the Rockies.
• 1-2 against the Orioles

Not only did they go 2-11 over the course of this streak, but it wasn't until the eleventh game after that 16-1 win over the Nats that the Pirates scored their 17th run of that streak.  Eleven games to score more runs than they did in that blowout of Washington.

In the only games that they won, 2-0 over the Rockies and 2-0 over the Orioles, were behind a complete game shutout and seven shutout innings pitched by Mitch Keller.  In the entire month of May, Keller has been the only, and I mean THE ONLY bright spot on the team.  The team has been exposed to be very weak offensively, and while they are still stealing bases at a high clip, they are still prone to jaw dropping gaffes on the base paths.  In one of the games, the Bucs had three runners thrown out at third base.  Not something you see every day in the big leagues.

Earlier this week, the Pirates split a two game series with Detroit and the hitters showed some signs of coming back to life with an 8-0 win on Wednesday.  They are now 23-20 and one game out of first place in the NL Central, and would you have signed on for that at the beginning of the season?  Sure you would have, but the Jekyll and Hyde performances of the April Pirates vs. the May Pirates certainly gives one cause for concern. 

Tonight begins a six game home stand against the Diamondbacks and Rangers.  Let's see where they stand relative to .500 at the conclusion of those six games.

And how long before we start seeing some of these prized prospects like Henry Davis, Endy Rodriguez, Nick Gonzales, and Quinn Priester in Pittsburgh instead of retreads like Mike Mathias and Chris Owings, to name two?