July 18, 2021
Not that anyone is actively following the CBS Sunday Morning Power Rankings, but I know I'm behind. Look, it's officially summertime. This past Sunday was probably the nicest day of the summer, low 80's, sunshine. I spent most of my time outside. I rode a bike. I grilled out. I even cooled off in the pool while I could enjoy the outdoors without it being oppressively hot and muggy. Also, I had a home improvement project I needed to knock out. Not that I did that on my own. Shout out to my pops (I never previously referred to him as such.) for helping me out with said HI project.
Anyway, I've been saying these things since May, right? I don't get paid to do this, so I could just stop and move on with my life, but my goal is to stick with it for at least a year. Hopefully, I'll continue on, but I also hope to have other another writing project off the ground by then and I don't know if I'll have time for both. There. I wrote it down on the internet, which never forgets. So no I have to do it.
My favorite sportswriter, Joe Posnanski, is winding down his time at The Athletic. As he does so, he has whittled down his voluminous output into a weekly blog of quick hits. (Although I have appreciated his longer posts about tennis on his personal blog. The Athletic really does have a lot of quality writers worth reading, but they do not cover niche sports like the tennis. So my subscription is probably leaving with Joe...) Anyway, this is just my way way of saying in a paragraph what I could have said in a sentence: I am going to continue on, but with shorter, quick hit posts for the foreseeable future... unless the spirit moves to do otherwise...
I know I'm a week behind, but in the words of Charles Van Doren, I'd like to take the second part first.
A highly underrated piece of cinema.
The first post of the week is for July 18, 2021.
The CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKING
Please, please, please watch the Erin Moriarty segment. It's so good, I'd rather you watch than to write about it.
But since this is a written medium:
The segment highlights the plight of two men in prison in Missouri serving life sentences for murders. Both men are innocent. The state acknowledges they are innocent. In one of the cases, if I understand the story correctly, another person was even convicted for the same crime. However they remain in jail on a technicality - they have run out of appeals. For God knows what reason, the state attorney general actively opposes their release. The governor of Missouri has so far refused to pardon them. I guess they have some sort of slippery slope law and order argument for keeping them in jail to uphold some legal principle.
To paraphrase John Mulaney, think about that for five minutes a tell me it doesn't make you want to walk into the ocean and die.
Erin Moriarty is a lawyer and her incredulity at this situation is palpable.
Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History, went on a jag about Jesuit casuistry a couple years ago. Gladwell pithily summarizes the practice as descending into the particular. While the episodes drew pushback/backlash (Gladwell's brand of intellectualism revels in pushback.) for misrepresenting a historical practice that has been used to justify anything and everything, including rebellion and murder, the law is seemingly built upon examining the particulars of a given case, hence the term "case study". This is the opposite of that. This is the side of the law that seeks to preserve the status quo above all else. This is the side of law that relies on tenuously relevant precedent to decide that innocent men should remain in jail. You'd think there'd be something in the constitution about these sorts of things.
This is Sunday Morning's best criminal justice segment since Ted Koppel's San Quentin segment.
2) Ben Tracy
Serious subjects seem to be leading the way this week, so (the royal) we have decided to go with the overlooked Ben Tracy at #2 for his segment on the Megadrought. Remember, the good old days before we really started paying attention to climate change, when our biggest worry about the Pacific Northwest was the Cascadia Subduction Zone? Good times....
In case you haven't heard, water is a publicly traded commodity now. We're running out of it. We always were going to run out of it in the West, but climate change has sped that up that timeline by quite a bit. As we run out of water, we're going to lose access to certain crops that used to thrive in places like California's central valley. As a bit of a fruitivore, this makes me kind of sad. I think we need to start bracing for increases in the cost of food as it become harder to grow.
The most essential resource to sustaining life is water and it has become commodified. Welcome to the beginning stages of societal collapse.
I need something to lift my spirits...
3) Lee Cowan
Thank you for your service Lee Cowan! For being both host and present a story about synchronous fireflies - most Sundays this would be a clear cut #1. Tony Kornheiser calls them glow bugs, which is just incorrect.
People gather in the Smoky Mountains to watch the lightning bug (the common vernacular in my area) show. It's hard for television to fully capture the natural wonder on display, but some of the overexposed photographs shown are breathtaking. Someone should make them into a book or something.
The segment reminds me of my childhood. Once upon a time, I recall there being dozens of lightning bugs putting on a nightly show in my back yard in the peak of summer. These days, I may sew a few a night at the peak. Where did they go? I suspect it has something to do with changing ecosystems. I hope it's not something catastrophic like colony collapse disorder in bees or white nose syndrome in bats. It just seems like lightning bugs, like big winter snows, could someday just be a fading memory.
Jeeze, I even managed to turn lightning bugs into something depressing. Let me find my bottle of Xanax and I'll be right back.
I learned something - UNESCO stands for United Nations Educational, Scienctific, and Cultural Organization. Connor gets the #4 spot for obliquely referring to UNESCO World Heritage Site Mammoth Cave, KY - or a cave in Kentucky as he put it. I'm sure he visited as he made he way through National Parks a few years ago. I've been to Mammoth Cave at least 4 times. When I make back for #5, I'd like to think that I am up for the strenuous "Wild Cave Tour" if it is up and running. I'm not a spelunker and The Descent movies sufficiently terrified me, but you know you only live once, so give it a shot, right?
The segment mentions the destruction of Palmyra, Syria because it is a World Heritage Site that ISIS tried to wipe off the map for whatever twisted reason, but I'd like to give a shout out the Old City of Sana'a which is under threat due to Yemen's ongoing catastrophic civil war. I don't know when I first saw a picture of it, but it is one of the most visually arresting man made places I've ever seen. If Yemen ever became a safe place to visit, I want to go to there.
5) Caddo Lake, Biz Markie and Charlie Robinson, Frank Sinatra (tie)
Some people think the borderland between Louisiana and Texas near Shreveport are a wasteland. (I'm looking at you Mike.) This footage from Caddo Lake begs to differ. Also I think there were shots of water fowl, so this nature segment is provided courtesy of Florida Audubon.
I mostly knew about Biz Markie because I am a Beastie Boys fan. RIP sir. 57 years was not enough time to enjoy your fun loving spirit.
Charlie Robinson was best known for Nightcourt. Truth is I was too young to know much about that show. I caught the show in reruns because I thought Bull was funny. Charlie Robinson too. In his later career, he did a many guest spots on popular shows. But one of his final roles was one of his best, as Von Miller's coach in Old Spice Commercials. I am not saying this ironically:
The end credits were set to Frank Sinatra's "Summer Wind". Was it an hommage to the Simpsons? Behold the Martin Prince version:
6) Josh Seftel (and Josh Seftel's Mom)
I really wanted to bump Josh Seftel's mom into the top half. Meeting her grandchild for the first time was endearingly sweet payoff to following Seftel's mother through quarantine for the last 15 months. Watch it and try to keep a dry eye even if you don't know the backstory. It also reinforces that a lot of people went through lonely times during the pandemic. Please get vaccinated. In case you haven't noticed or have chosen to ignore it, the numbers are going backwards thanks to the anti-vaxxers. Don't keep Seftel's Mom away from her granddaughter.
I go on runs, but have never come across a smartly dressed man in a fedora, white jacket, and palm tree T-Shirt. Would that I could.
Buck O'Neil told Joe Posnanski never to walk by a woman in a red dress.
Steve Hartman is telling us never run by a man in a fedora and white jacket sitting on a park bench.
8) Seth Doane
I guess Tracy Smith can't make it to the South of France to interview Matt Damon, but seriously consider lobbying for that next time. If you can swing it, take me with you. Since Seth is already nearby, he gets to interview Matt Damon.
Matt Damon seems like a chill guy. The Kimmel bit was always funny and later stolen by Kenan Thompson and Bill Hader in the "What's Up With That?" sketches.
Stillwater seems like I'm interested in seeing. I may even pay money to see it in a theater. You know support a movie that's not just things blowing up, not that there's anything wrong with those movies. I know that the segment is about Damon, but I'm also happy to see the eminently likable Abigail Breslin in a movie. For some reason, I thought she had stopped acting or gone on hiatus for a bit. I think she just wasn't getting big roles in movies I was interested in. I feel like I've missed out.
9) Mo Rocca
Marylin Maye is 93, looks and sounds great and is a hoot. A cabaret singer that goes all the way back to the Golden Age of Hollywood is the sort of thing Mo lives for. The segment should have been ranked higher, but I initially the segment was rerun. In fact it is a follow up to an interview from a few years ago. Seems just like yesterday. I just watch Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar, so I had Richard Cheese in my head the whole time - an added bonus.
10) Martha Teichner
Nobody got Teichnerized this week. So enjoy (?) some New Yorker cartoons.
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