Hail to The RMU Colonials

The Robert Morris Colonials are Champions of the Horizon League!

If you have talked with me lately, or have been seeing my Facebook posts, you know that I have been caught up this winter following the fortunes of the men's basketball team of my Alma Mater, Robert Morris University.  At some point in mid-January, after starting with an 8-4 non-conference record and a blah 2-4 record in Horizon League play, the Colonials clicked as a team and caught fire.  They then proceeded to win 13 of their final 14 games, win the regular season Horizon League championship with a 15-1 record.  They concluded the regular season with an overall record of 23-8 and on a streak where they won seven straight games and thirteen of their final fourteen games.

We were able to see their HL Quarter-final game over Wright State 83-62 as part of a sellout crowd at the RMU Events Center last week. The atmosphere on campus that night was electric, and the game was as an exciting a sporting event as I have ever attended. Through the magic of ESPN, we then saw them defeat Oakland 79-76 in overtime in their semi-final game, and last night they put the cherry atop the sundae with an 89-78 win over Youngstown State.

It was the culmination of a season that saw Coach Andy Toole, and players Alvaro Folgueiras and Amarion Dickerson be named, respectively, Horizon League Coach, Player, and Defensive Player of the Year.

Before going any further, let me take you back five years, to March 10, 2020.  This was the night that RMU defeated St. Francis to win the Northeast conference Championship and secure a trip to the NCAA tournament. In THIS POST I said that that game that night was one of the reasons why you follow sports.  Later that same week, sports, the nation, and the world shut down due to the COVID pandemic, and the NCAA tournament was canceled.  Andy Toole has since said that this team being denied the chance to see their name on Selection Sunday and not being able to compete in the big Tournament, was the hardest thing he has had to experience as a coach.

That 2019-20 season was also RMU's last year in the NEC.  They began competing in the Horizon League the following year, and it has been hard sledding for the Colonials the first four years, but it all came together, unexpectedly so (they were picked to finish ninth at the beginning of the season), for the Colonials this year.  And it all culminated last night with the team cutting down the nets in Indianapolis. 

Winning the championship tournament in a mid-major conference is what schools like Robert Morris play for.  They will probably draw a seed in the area of 12th to 14th, and will probably play a power five school in Round One and will no doubt be a double digit underdog, but no matter.  They will have achieved the goal that every team sets for themselves at the beginning of the season: Win their conference and go to the Big Dance.  Whomever they play in that first round, will not be getting a cupcake.

In the universe that is college basketball in Pittsburgh, Robert Morris will always be the ignored little brother to Pitt and Duquesne, we all get that, but in a year where Pitt finished below .500 and got knocked out in the first round of the ACC Tourney, and where the Dukes haven't been able to follow up on the A-10 successes of last year, it was the Colonials who were the story, even if it did take the local sports media awhile to figure that out.  Also, as the Steelers suffered a flameout in round one of the NFL playoffs and currently don't know who their quarterback will be this coming season, where the Penguins are in the beginning stages of a rebuild and are in last place in their division, and where the Pirates are, well, the Pirates, you can definitively state, I believe, that the RMU Colonials Men's Basketball team has been the best Pittsburgh sports story so far in calendar year 2025.

#proudtobeaColonial #letsgoBobbyMo

POY Alvaro Folgueiras hoists the 

HL Championship Trophy

To Absent Friends - Craig Wolfley

Craig Wolfley

1958-2025

Craig Wolfley, who played on the Steelers offensive line for ten seasons through the 1980's and '90's, and who has been a member of the team's radio broadcasting team since 2022, died yesterday at the age of 66.  He was also a prominent member of the Steelers Alumni Organization and was active in local community charitable organizations, most notably the Salvation Army.

As a broadcaster, Wolfley was not my particular cup of tea with his penchant for making up words like "gription" (?) and "trickertion".  In fact, "Trickeration" became a sort of trademark for him and the word has actually become almost acceptable usage, at least around Pittsburgh, in describing certain aspects of a football game.  He also liked to say that an apparently injured player appeared "to have a hitch in his giddy-up", a phrase that made my teeth grind.

But what the hell, Wolf was a maybe-not-great-but-still-pretty-damned-good-Steeler from the Chuck Noll Era, and by all accounts a really good guy.  He also became an authentic local character within the Pittsburgh sports scene, and there's nothing wrong with that.

RIP Craig Wolfley

2025 (but really 2024) Oscars Recap

So the Academy Awards for this year are now two days in our rearview mirror, and much of what I say here will not be "news" per se, but what the hell, time for my bloviation on what happened on Sunday night anyway.

"Anora" was the big winner with five awards overall including Best Picture, Best Actress for Mikey Madison, and Producer/Director/Writer/Editor Sean Baker taking home four Oscars in each if these categories.  I guess that this wasn't a surprise, but - and this is just me - I don't get it.  We saw "Anora" back in December, thought it was somewhat entertaining, especially in its second act, but it just didn't say "this is the Best Movie of the year" to us.  I gave it only Two Stars when I wrote about it in January. Ten years from now, will we all look back and say "just what were they thinking when they awarded Best Picture to this one?".  Hope I'll still be in The Grandstand to actually answer that question.

What follows are my stream of consciousness thoughts from the notes I took as I was watching the show.  Yes, I actually did take notes.

*****

I've never been all that big a fan of Conan O'Brien, but I thought that he did a good job as host.  His monologue ran 20 minutes and was for the most part pretty funny.  However, he should have kept it to 17 minutes and eliminated that "I Won't Waste Time" song-and-dance bit.  That was bad.

Speaking of bits, the interchange between O'Brien and Adam Sandler was funny. I was surprised to see on social media (an always reliable source) that people thought that this was for real, that O'Brien was having Sandler kicked out of the ceremony for being improperly dressed.  It was a "bit", people.  And it was also a bit of satire in light of what happened at the White House two days earlier, but we'll save that discussion for another time and forum.

*****

In my Preview Piece  on the Oscars, I only made four actual predictions:

And Some Out of My Butt Predictions

• Best Director - Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
• Best Adapted Screenplay - Peter Straughan, Conclave
• Best Original Screenplay - Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain
• Also, each year, one movie comes to Oscars night with a shitload of nominations, and goes home getting shut out, or with some minor technical award.  This year, I predict that this dubious distinction will go to Wicked.

I can say "I believe I had that" for only one of the four, Peter Straughan for Adapted Screenplay. I also sort of missed on saying the "Wicked" would get shut out.  It did win two technical awards.  The one big movie that did get shut out, I'm sorry to say, was "A Complete Unknown", which was my personal favorite of 2024.

*****

Mick Jagger presenting the Award for Best Original Song!  THAT was fantastic.  Mick will turn 82 this year, and you'd never guess it to look at him.  He was great in the few minutes that he was on stage.

And speaking of the Best Original Song, the Academy did something that I have been advocating for years.  They did not stage a performance of each original song, which reduced the running time of the show by probably twenty minutes, give or take a few.  Bravo.

*****

Why the James Bond Tribute?  Didn't they do one of those a few years back, so why again?  And if you are going to do such a tribute by singing Bond theme songs, how could you NOT include "Goldfinger"?

And speaking of tributes, the one to Quincy Jones was meh, nothing against Queen Latifah.  The tribute to Jones that was staged at the Grammy Awards was so good, that anything else was bound to suffer in comparison.

*****

Now for the Acting Awards.

As predicted, Kieran Culkin was a complete tool in delivering his acceptance speech.  He probably deserved the award, but jeez, what a jackass.

I didn't see "Emelia  Perez" so I can't comment on Zoe Saldana's performance, but I like her, so good for her!

Biggest surprise of the night was Mikey Madison winning for Best Actress, and the best part of THAT was seeing how pissed off Demi Moore, the odds on favorite, was when the award was announced.  Wonder how that meet-up between Madison and her went at the Governor's Ball following the ceremony?

The best part of Moore not winning is that now I do not have to go see "The Substance", which sounds dreadful, but I would have forced myself to see it had she won, so I dodged a bullet there.

Then there was Adrian Brody.  The fact that he won was not a surprise, and I do look forward to seeing "The Brutalist" sooner rather than later, but, Good Lord, that acceptance speech.  It was clocked in at over five minutes, and it was awful.  I guess he figured that if his movie was long enough to need an intermission, then, by God, he would give a speech that needed to have one too.

And one final word on acceptance speeches.  The one that Sean Baker gave for Best Director urging that we all return making movies to be seen in movie theaters and to seeing movies in movie theaters was, I thought, one of the best of the night.   Streaming movies on your sixty-five inch HD flatscreens in the comfort of your home is great, but in my mind the theater going experience is still the best way to see a movie.

*****

Finally, as promised, my awards for best and worst gowns of the night, plus these additional fashion comments: What was up with Emma Stone's hair style...

...and Timothee Chalamet's suit?

The Best Gown for the evening was worn by Selena Gomez.  Simply elegant.

The Worst Gown, or maybe I should just say the Most Ridiculous Gown of the night, and there were a lot from which to choose, was worn by Ariana Grande.  I mean, what did she do when she had to go to the bathroom?

And finally, as I always do, I give you a photo of the four winning Actors of the evening.

Brody, Madison, Saldana, and Culkin

See you all at the movies!

 

The 2025 (but actually the 2024) Academy Awards

 

I know that there are many of you out there asking the question: "Hey, Grandstander, how come we haven't heard any of your thoughts on this years Oscar nomination, not to mention your always insightful Oscars predictions?"

Well.  We have not been able to see all of the nominated films this year, due to circumstances that have involved us being out of town at an Undisclosed Location for an extended period of time (more on that in a future post).  So allow me some scattershot comments.

Best Picture

Have seen five of the nominated movies.  Anora, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Nickel Boys, and Wicked.  Of these, I would be delighted if either A Complete Unknown or Conclave won.  Both good movies, both movies that I would willingly watch regularly (ie, at least once a year).  Anora has won Best Picture awards from some Critics Associations, and the Producers Guild.  Sorry, it was an entertaining movie, but not even close to being the Best Picture of the Year.

Of the other five nominees, the only one remaining that I have any interest in seeing is The Brutalist, which I understand to be a good movie, but it ain't gonna be a barrel of laughs.  Based on what I've heard, I have no interest in Dune: Part Two, Emilia Perez, I'm Still Here.   I understand that The Substance is just a hodge-podge of shit, but I might see it just to see Demi Moore's Oscar nominated (and probably winning) performance.

SAG-AFTRA gave its Best Ensemble award to Conclave. That is sometimes a precursor for the Oscars, and as I said above, I'd be fine with that.

Best Actor

I've seen Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown) and Ralph Fiennes (Conclave).  SAG-AFTRA gave its Best Actor award to Chalamet, so it wouldn't be surprising if he follows that up with an Oscar.  I'd have no problem if either Chalamet or Fiennes won, and Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) seemed to be a heavy favorite headed into awards season.  I believe he won a Golden Globe for this part.  So none of these guys would be a surprise if they won.

Best Actress

I've seen Cynthia Erivo (Wicked) and Mikey Madison (Anora).  Erivo was favored going into Awards Season, but both the Golden Globe and SAG Award went to Demi Moore, so it looks like she may take home the statuette this year.  Brat-Packers, rejoice!

Best Supporting Actor

Have seen three of the performances: Yuri Borisov (Anora), Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain), and Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown).  Culkin has won both the Golden Globe and the SAG Award, so no surprise if he wins on Sunday night.  In his acceptance speeches for those awards, he came across to me as real tool, so who wants to hear him talk again?  My vote, if I had one, would go to Norton.

Best Supporting Actress

Have seen Monica Barbara (A Complete Unknown), Ariana Grande (Wicked), and Isabella Rossellini (Conclave).  I'm gonna predict a win for Barbaro for this one, and that would make me happy.  Although, a part of me would like to see Rossellini win it simply because she is Ingrid Bergman's daughter.

And Some Out of My Butt Predictions

• Best Director - Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
• Best Adapted Screenplay - Peter Straughan, Conclave
• Best Original Screenplay - Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain
• Also, each year, one movie comes to Oscars night with a shitload of nominations, and goes home getting shut out, or with some minor technical award.  This year, I predict that this dubious distinction will go to Wicked.

So there you have it:  The Grandstander's thoughts on this year's Academy Awards.  Like millions of others, I will be tuned in on Sunday night to watch how it all turns out.  Also, as I have done in the past, I will be giving Grandstander Awards for the Most Spectacular Gown and the Ugliest Gown of the evening.

Hoo-ray for Hollywood.

To Absent Friends - Gene Hackman

 

It can't be said that the news that actor Gene Hackman died yesterday at the age of 95 was a surprise.  The circumstances of his death - he was found dead in his home along with his 65 year old wife of thirty-one years and their dog - may raise some eyebrows, but that is not what is of concern in this space.  Rather it is the loss of an actor of extraordinary ability who was terrific in everything he ever did.  He was a two time Oscar winner and a five time nominee, and when he was on screen, he dominated just about every scene he was in.

IMDB lists 101 acting credits dating back to 1961 for a movie called "Mad Dog Coll", and, no, I've never heard of it either.  His last credit came in a 2004 movie "Welcome to Mooseport", a comedy that I vaguely remember seeing.  In between those two gems was a career that would make Hackman, were he a baseball player, a first ballot Hall of Famer.

The first time that I remember seeing Hackman came when he played Buck Barrow, Clyde's brother, in "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967).

Then there was, of course, his Oscar winning role as Popeye Doyle in "The French Connection" (1971).

In 1986, he appeared as high school basketball coach Norman Dale in "Hoosiers", which just may be the greatest sports movie ever.

Twenty-one years later, he won Oscar number two in Clint Eastwood's western "Unforgiven" (1992).

He could do comedy, too, as he showed when he played the blind hermit in Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein" (1974).

Just last week I saw an ad for Netflix announcing that on March 1, they would add the movie "Runaway Jury" (2003) to their streaming library.  This was Hackman's second to last film.  It is a legal thriller based on a John Grisham novel wherein Hackman plays a high powered NYC attorney defending an Evil Corporation in a civil suit.  The attorney for the plaintiff is a folksy country bumpkin attorney played by Dustin Hoffman.  It is not an all-time great movie, but it is an above average thriller worth seeing if only to watch two heavyweights like Hackman and Hoffman go up against each other.

(Fun Fact:  when the filming of this movie was completed, the filmmakers realized that there was not one scene where Hackman and Hoffman were together in a one-on-one situation.  So, a scene was quickly written wherein the two would confront each other alone in a courthouse washroom, and the two actors were called back to work to film the scene pictured above, and it turned to to be the best scene in the entire movie.  You can watch that scene HERE.)

Of course, when you look at the list of Gene Hackman's entire filmography, you see so many movies that are absolute classics.  I won't try to list them all.  I'd run out of space, and I would probably leave out one of YOUR favorite Hackman movies. Looking for something to while away the evenings as winter turns not spring?  Check out you DVD library or go to your various streaming services and have yourself a "Gene Hackman Film Festival" right there in your living room.  It will be time well spent.  

RIP Gene Hackman, a true giant.

To Absent Friends - Clinton Hill

No doubt many of you reading this are asking "Just who is Clinton Hill?"  If you are in your late sixtes or older, you might be saying "The name rings a distant bell, but I just can't place it."

Clint Hill, who died this week at the age of 93, is pictured below in two of the most iconic news photographs of the 1960's, specifically, from November 22, 1963:

Hill was the Secret Service Agent, whose main assignment was to provide protection the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, who leapt upon the back of the Presidential limousine seconds after the shots were fired at President Kennedy that day in an effort to save and protect the President and the First Lady.

Hill's obituary in the Washington Post outlines how Hill spent most of the rest of his life racked by guilt over his "failure" on that day.  He retired from the Secret Service in 1975 at age 43, serving through the Ford Administration.  He remained friends with Mrs. Kennedy, but his experiences from that day in Dallas drove him to a suicide attempt and psychiatric care.  He became reclusive for much of the rest of his life.

It wasn't until 1990 that Hill came to some sense of closure.  He revisited Dallas for the first time since the assassination, walked through Dealey Plaza, and visited the Texas School Book Depository, now a museum, and stood in the spot where Lee Harvey Oswald fired his deadly shots.  

From the Post's obituary:

"That really helped me understand that I had done everything that day that I could have done," he said. "There wasn't anything else that I could have done.  And so that gave me some sense of relief.  Even so, I still had that sense of guilt for failing to fulfill my responsibility."

RIP Agent Clinton Hill.

Book Review - "Bluff" by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

 

"Bluff" was one of the books that pop up in my emails from either Book Bub or Amazon's "Kindle Recommendations for You", can't remember which one, that you can download not your Kindle for $1.99. This one seemed interesting, so I let the moths fly out of my wallet and spent the buck ninety-nine.

The story begins when a woman walks into a swanky New York City restaurant, one frequented by NYC power brokers and the high society Ladies Who Lunch crowd, proceeds to shoot a guy, walks out of the restaurant, and goes on the lam.

What follows is a story about high society mores in NYC, and high-level swindling scheme, and how three ladies plot to gain revenge upon the swindler.  One of the protagonists - part of the book is told in her first person viewpoint - is a high level poker player, and she tells the story using the analogy of a high stakes poker game.  Don't worry, though, you don't have to be a poker player to follow along.

After finishing the book, I went to the Google Machine to learn a little more about the author.  Jane Stanton Hitchcock comes from the high society milieu that she writes about in "Bluff", and her family was bilked out of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme run by a guy named Ken Starr (not the Ken Starr who headed the investigation that went after Bill Clinton in the 1990's; this guy eventually went to prison for his deeds) whose victims included celebrities like Sly Stallone, Carly Simon, Al Pacino, Martin Scorsese, and others, and she is a serious poker player.  So, as Stanton has been quoted, the story of "Bluff" is very much like her own story, minus the murder, of course.  I kind of wish that I had known all of this before I read the book.

Jane Stanton Hitchcock

In 2019, Santon and "Bluff" were named winner of the Dashiell Hammett Award by the International Association of Crime Writers. I enjoyed this book, and will be looking to read some of the other mystery novels that she has written.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

To Absent Friends - Mike Lange

 

Legendary Pittsburgh Penguins play-by-play guy Mike Lange died yesterday at the of 76.  Yes, I said "legendary" and for once this is not an exaggeration.   A case can be made that the popularity of the Penguins as a sports franchise in Pittsburgh can be attributed to Lange every bit as much s it can be assigned to Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby. 

As my friend Fred put it on a text last night, "Lange was the last of a dying breed of announcers, in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, who's allowed to be as much of an attraction to the fans as the team was. It is why people organized a parade for Bob Prince when he was fired.  Today the teams and the media outlets will not allow that - they want guys (and they are pretty much all the same guys)who will just say what the producers whisper in their earpieces."

Lange's was famous for his catchphrases, such as.....

• "It's a hockey night in Pittsburgh".  Said at the beginning of each broadcast and still played over the PA system just before face-offs at PPG Paints Arena.
• "Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has just left the building."  Said as the final buzzer sounded after a Pens win.
• And, of course, all of the ones after a notable play or a Penguins goal: "Oh scratch my back with a hacksaw", "You'd have to be here to believe it". "He beat him like a rented mule", "He's smiling like a butcher's dog", "Oh, he wants to sell my monkey", "Get in the fast lane, Grandma, the bingo game is about to begin", "Shave my face with a rusty razor."

I could go on, but it would be selling Mike Lange short to say that he was guy with nothing but funny taglines.  He was as good a play-by-play guy as we have ever seen in The Burgh, and he did it describing the most difficult game of all to broadcast.

I myself never had an encounter with Mike Lange, but well before I knew Linda - who we all know is a Hockey Fan Supreme and a former season ticket holder - she would often see Lange at the Civic Arena's Igloo Club during post games, and had this encounter with him at Monte Cello's Restaurant on Babcock Boulevard, sometime in the mid-2010's, which she noted on her Instagram page yesterday:

As she noted, there will never be another like him, and for Pens fans everywhere Elvis has now truly left the building.

RIP Mike Lange.

Super Bow; LIX - Eagles XL - Chiefs XXII

Let me begin my commentary on this past Sunday's Super Bowl by flashing back to what I wrote two years ago in this space, February 15, 2023 to be exact, after the Kansas City defeated Philadelphia 39-35:

• Equally magnificent in defeat was Eagles QB Jalen Hurts.  Three rushing TD's and a bomb of a TD pass.  He led the Eagles on a drive in the fourth quarter to tie the game after KayCee took a 35-27 lead, by making an "octopus" (more on that later).  It was gutty performance, and perhaps the best and most heroic performance in defeat in Super Bowl history.  Hurts has proven himself beyond all doubt, and Philly is set at QB for the next decade or so.

As the old saying goes, I believe I had that.

The highly anticipated matchup between the  two Number 1 and Number 2 seeds in their respective conferences turned into pretty much a non-game.  The Eagles led 24-0 at half time and extended that lead to 34-0 in the third quarter before KayCee finally got on the board.  Patrick Mahomes had perhaps the worst game of his career with two interceptions, one of which was returned for an Eagles TD and the other was deep inside Chiefs territory that led to another Philly score.  He was also pressured relentlessly by the Philly defense and was sacked 6 times.

Hurts, on the other hand was terrific.   He went 17 for 22 passing for 221 yards and two TD, and rushed for 72 yards on 11 carries and scored a TD of his own.  He fully deserved that MVP Award and those trips to Disney World.

A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith 

each caught a TD pass from Hurts

It sure wasn't the thrilling game that America's football fans wanted to see, and Mahomes and the Chiefs sure picked a bad day to have a Bad Day, but it happens.  As I often say, no sporting event comes with a guarantee.

Halftime Show

I am going to take the position of my favorite podcaster, Tony Kornheiser, on this one.  I am certain that Kendrick Lamar is very good, and perhaps among the very best at what he does (the guy has actually won a Pulitzer Prize for his work), but what he does is not aimed at me, although I truly did enjoy the choreography and dancing of the seeming hundreds of people on stage with Mr. Lamar..  I am not going to rage and criticize.  If you enjoyed it, great.  If you didn't, I hope that you used your time to go to the bathroom and get something to eat, and didn't give yourself an ulcer by griping and moaning about the performance.

Commercials

What we liked:

• Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal
• David Beckham and Dave Beckham.  "Are you like Matt Damon-famous?"
• Harrison Ford for Jeep "even though my last name is Ford."
• Ben and Casey Affleck for Dunkin' featuring Bill Belichick and his girlfriend.
• Anything with the Manning Brothers.

Didn't like:

• Those Tubi commercials with the people with the cowboy hat heads.  THAT was totally creepy.
• Seal as a seal.  Also kind of creepy.

To Absent Friends - Tony Roberts

Tony Roberts

1939-2025

The news arrived yesterday that actor Tony Roberts had died at the age of 85.  As his New York Times obituary pointed out, Roberts is best known for his roles in six Woody Allen films, usually playing Allen's best friend who tries to keep all of Woody's characters' various neuroses in check.  He also had an accomplished career on stage in New York, which is how he met Allen in the first place.  The two became fast friends well beyond their professional relationship.  Roberts' IMDB profile lists 68 acting credits in both feature films and television.

Perhaps his most notable role came in "Annie Hall" when he played the best friend of Allen's Alvy Singer.  He played an actor who moved on to Hollywood and was constantly trying to get Alvy to abandon New York City and come to California.  Alvy, of course, resisted, and it led to this great piece of dialog:

ALVY:  You're an actor.  You should be doing Shakespeare in the Park.

ROB: I did Shakespeare in the Park, Max.  I got mugged.  I was playing Richard the Second and two guys in leather jackets stole my leotard.

( I tried to find a clip of that scene on YouTube, but was unsuccessful.)

And it was Roberts' character in that movie who also introduced the acronym "VPL" when observing certain facets of how women were dressed at at Hollywood party.

I can also remember Roberts playing the Deputy Mayor of New York City in the original version of "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three".  He was terrific in the part.

I always hate to it see when someone like this leaves us.

RIP Tony Roberts

Roberts, Allen, and Diane Keaton

"Annie Hall"

"The Sequel" by Jean Hanff Korelitz

 

Back in July, 2021 (was it really that one ago?) I wrote THIS REVIEW of Jean Hanff Korelitz' novel "The Plot".  As you may remember, or will see if you click on the link, I thought it was terrific book, and I gave it a full Four Star Grandstander rating.  Three years later, Ms Korelitz has cranked out a follow-up to that great book, and it is called, fittingly, "The Sequel".

This in indeed a sequel, although it includes a whole new cast of characters. It takes place several years after the time setting of "The Plot", and the main character from that novel, Jake Bonner, is now dead, a suicide victim, and the protagonist in this one is his widow, Anna Williams-Bonner.   

Living the good life off of the earnings from Jake's blockbuster best-seller, Anna decides to write a novel of her own, and THAT novel becomes a best-seller, but not just a best-seller.  It is a literary best-seller.  And guess what happens, Anna starts receiving threatening anonymous messages just like Jake did.  Could it involve something about the story Jake used to pen his best-seller, and could Anna herself have played a part in the events surrounding that story?  How could she?  She didn't even know Jake back then, right?

I wish that I could say that I liked "The Sequel" as much as I did "The Plot", but, alas, I cannot.  I thought this one was a bit too convoluted as Korelitz wound through the stories within the stories of this particular Story.   The notes on the dust jacket of the book tells us that Korelitz "gives the readers an antihero to root for while illuminating and satirizing the world of publishing."  As to the first part of that, I am not sure that Anna is someone that you want to "root for"; you can draw your own conclusions if you read this.

As to the second part, as I read this, I wondered of the main point of the novel was to skewer the world of book publishing, and taking shots at the snobbery among writers and publishers concerning works of so-called "literary fiction" versus "genre fiction", and I'm still not totally sure upon which side Korelitz sits.

A disappointing Two Stars from The Grandstander.

Chiefs and Eagles and Pirates, Oh My!

Nobody asked me but.....

Super Bowl LIX (59) will be played in ten days, and it will feature, in case you hadn't heard, a rematch of Super Bowl LVII (57): Eagles vs. Chiefs.  I heard scuttlebutt on the talk shows earlier this week that this is a boring match-up, that people are tired of the Chiefs, tired of them benefiting from crooked referees, and that they are going to boycott the game and not watch it.  

Okay, I get it that the football world outside of Missouri is afflicted with a case of "Chiefs Fatigue", and I will never presume to tell you what you should or should not watch on television, but if you tell me that a football game that will feature these two guys....

....playing in it will be "boring", well, I do feel confident in saying that you either just don't know or don't like football as it is played in the NFL.

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As for the officiating, yes, that call of a completed Chiefs pass was probably incorrect, and Josh Allen probably did make a first down on that sneak at midfield (I thought that he did), and no doubt this calls benefited the Chiefs.  What also benefited the Chiefs was the Bills inability to gain two yards not once but twice on two point conversion attempts. That probably  benefited the Chiefs just as much if not more than those disputed calls.

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Not much was made of Sean McDermott's decision, early in the game, to take a successful PAT conversion off of the board after a KC penalty and go for a two point conversion, which failed.  I thought that was dumb at that point in the game.  Isn't is one of football's hoariest old maxims "never take points off of the board"?

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After watching tight ends like Travis Kelce, Zach Ertz, Dallas Goedert, and, yes, Mark Andrews, I found myself wondering if perhaps Pat Freiermuth just might not the elite tight end that Steelers fans think he is.

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As of this afternoon, the Chiefs remain a 1.5 point favorite over the Eagles.      I am kinda sorta leaning towards betting on the Eagles with the 1.5, but have we all not learned how foolish it is to bet against Patrick Mahomes?  Back in November, I dd place a $5 wager on the Eagles to win the Super Bowl and that will pay me $37.50 if they win, so I will be rooting for them from that selfish standpoint.  Two weeks ago, I also put $5 on the Chiefs, and that will pay back $15.50, so I'm covered either way.  (Never mind those other wagers made on the Bills, Commandeers, and even the Steelers when they were sitting at 10-3.)

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Let's shift to baseball and our Pittsburgh Pirates before I close out.

Let's say we are back in the first week of November and the World Series had just concluded.  If someone told you that the Pirates, facing a challenging off-season and in a desperate effort to improve the team, would seek out and then eventually sign Adam Frazier, a former Pirates All-Star, but now a journeyman jabronie.  (If you doubt that statement, Frazier hit .204 with an OPS of .576 in 104 games with the Royals in 2024.)  What would you have said to that?

I would have said that, no, not even the Pirates would be that cheap and/or stupid and/or tone-deaf to their fan base to do something like that.  I would have been wrong, because this week, that is exactly what the Pirates did.  They have added yet another utility player (he can play all infield positions and both corner outfield spots!!!) to a team that is filled with utility players.

He's back!!!

I'm figuring that Frazier probably told them that he would be willing to embarrass himself any number of times and be willing to have Sheltie use him a pitcher in blow out games.

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I would dearly love to ask any member of the Pirates Brain (?) Trust to tell me why we should have any reason, any reason at all, to expect this team to be better and be able to compete for spot in MLB's watered down post season in 2025.  I would bet that the first thing they would tell you would be "Well, we'll have Paul Skenes for he entire season this year."  

Okay, but what would that mean exactly?  Maybe six to eight additional starts for Skenes and maybe six more wins for the team?  If so, that will jump them from 76 wins to 82.  Just above .500, aka mediocrity.

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In case you are wondering, the Over/Under for Pirates wins in 2025 is set at 76.5 (per Fan Duel).  Last year the number was 75.5, which the Bucs went over, barely, with 76 wins.  The oddsmakers aren't thinking too much pf the team's prospects for the coming season, and they are usually pretty sharp in setting this O/U numbers.

Movie Review - "September 5"

History lesson, kids.

The events surrounding the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich took place fifty-three years ago, and if you are under the age of 60, there is a good chance that you have no first hand memory of the event.  I was 21 at the time and vividly remember watching all of it unfold on live television as Jim McKay earned a spot in broadcasting history as he reported from ABC Sports Olympic Studios from the time the story broke, until he uttered those terrible words "They're all gone."

The movie "September 5" looks at this even from the point of view of the ABC producers, directors, cameramen, and other technicians as they scrambled to cover what was then a simply unbelievable story.  The heroes of the story prove to be ABC Sports Executive Producer Roone Arledge (Peter Skaarsgard) and second line director Geoff Mason (John Magaro) who was manning the graveyard shift in the ABC control room when all hell broke loose in the Olympic Village.

Someone who has come of age while watching news stories on network television and all cable news channels in the 21st century will wonder at how primitive, relative to 2025, broadcast television was back in 1972.  Networks had to schedule time to use communications satellites (something that became a critical factor for ABC during the crisis; the work-around on that was ingenious), and there was even a question within ABC as to whether the "news people" should take over the coverage, rather than all the guys who "only covered sports".  Arledge settled that question, according to this movie, by simply hanging up the phone on the Suits in New York.

This is a taut (95 minutes long) thriller of a movie, and I found myself literally biting my fingernails as I watched, and I knew how the story ended.

As a note to some of my pals:  there is no on screen violence in this movie.  There is no depiction of the conclusion of this event.

I can't recommend this movie highly enough, especially if you are among those who don't remember or even know about this tragic event.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.