Deleted Scenes
Deleted Scenes
Some stuff I wrote but never posted...until now.
A sign that things are very gradually getting back to normal after COVID-19: in-person court appearances are a thing once again.
Also a thing once again: wearing pants.
Because it's been an insanely busy week that hasn't left me as much time to write as I would have liked, here are some segments I prepared but left on the cutting room floor:
This is a good piece from Charles Cooke, but I'm baffled by that title, which treats Trump completely losing his mind as breaking news.
There was a point in time at which Trump’s unusual verbal affect and singular nose for underutilized wedge issues gave him a competitive edge. Now? Now, he’s morphing into one of the three witches from Macbeth. To peruse Trump’s account on Truth Social is to meet a cast of characters about whom nobody who lives beyond the Trump Extended Universe could possibly care one whit. Here in the real world, the border is a catastrophe, inflation is as bad as it’s been in four decades, interest rates have risen to their highest level in 15 years, crime is on the up, and the debt continues to mushroom. And yet, safely ensconced within his own macrocosm, Trump is busy mainlining Edward Lear. Day in, day out, he rambles about the adventures of Coco Chow and the Old Broken Crow; the dastardly Unselect Committee; the (presumably tasty) Stollen Presidential Election; the travails of that famous law-enforcement agency, the Gestopo; Joe Scarborough’s wife “Mike”; and other unusual characters from Coromandel. “Where the early pumpkins blow / In the middle of the woods / Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò / Who STOLLE THE ELECTION / Don’t you know?”
These characters come and go as the world passes indifferently by. But Trump’s heroism remains the one constant. It is the dream of any artist to play both performer and critic, and, on Truth Social, Trump is living the dream. At times, his penchant for self-elevation makes God’s declaration in Genesis “that it was good” look positively bashful. Apropos of nothing, he will declare to himself: “‘TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING’ One of [sic] most often used current phrases or statements. Wow, such a magnificent compliment. Thank you!” Other evaluations are equally gushing. His appraisal of the social-media company of which he is the sole potentate: “TRUTH SOCIAL IS SOOO GREAT!” His review of his golfing abilities in a competition that, astonishingly enough, he managed to win despite missing its first day: “Competed against many fine golfers, and was hitting the ball long and straight,” which “in a very real way . . . serves as a physical exam, only MUCH tougher.” His assessment of his presidency, and of the 2020 election that he lost by millions of votes: “I did a GREAT job as President, maybe the best.” And then: “I Ran twice, did much better the second time (Rigged Election!)” I tell ya, Charley, I coulda been a contender.
You know which ones I kind of love? His tweets (sorry, truths) which are just one-sentence or even two-or-three-word non sequiturs, like "rigged election!" and "witch hunt!"
I was going to post this universally-dunked-upon tweet with the comment, "Me as a Toronto Maple Leafs fan during the Harold Ballard years."
Before I got around to it, in a remarkable coincidence, The Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno got out her poison pen for this reminiscence of the late, unlamented, Leafs owner:
Sittler, along with Dave Keon — the linchpin on four Cup triumphs, so brutally mistreated by the miserly Ballard that he bolted to the upstart WHA — was the archetypical Leaf, loyal to the crest, whilst straining to relay his teammates’ frustrations, particularly with the tyrannical fiendishness of Punch Imlach, who’d returned to Toronto as coach and GM, second time around an utter disaster. At a meeting, Imlach sputtered at Sittler: “Just who do you think you are? My captains have always been management and they do what management says.”
Sittler had a no-trade contract, so Ballard couldn’t punish him for the audacity. Instead, he traded away Sittler’s closest friend, McDonald, who’d scored the Game 7 overtime goal that eliminated the dynastic New York Islanders in the 1978 quarterfinals — Toronto’s last hurrah with a team that had all the elements to continue pushing for a Cup. Dispatching McDonald was pure vengeance by Ballard. Crushed and angry, Sittler tore the “C” off his jersey. As the Star’s late hockey writer Frank Orr so brilliantly wrote of Sittler: “He was caught between the devil and the deep blue “C”.
Eventually, Sittler would authorize a trade, just to get away from “the fat guy upstairs”.
That ’78 squad was dismantled, dipping the Leafs into a decade of futility. “Everything just went to s-t after that,” said Vaive, another beleaguered captain.
Tiger on Ballard: “He was just a bad person. He was just that snake that lived in the sewer hole.”
Also from Orr: “Waiting for the Leafs to win at this time is like leaving the porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa.”
A “miserable sonovabitch,” as Ballard called himself, quite proudly.
Too many deplorable utterings to recite here. But among the most notorious: Telling esteemed broadcaster Barbara Frum that women didn’t belong on radio and “You know where they’re at their best, don’t you? On their back.” He’d said it many times before.
No way would “broads” ever step foot in the Leafs dressing room Ballard vowed, unless they took their clothes off too. When the league-mandated equal access, Ballard was present for the first woman to cross that threshold, warning the players: “Look out boys. We’ve got a lizard watcher in here.” There to do her job but, in Ballard’s crude estimation: “Cause we’ve got guys in here with c-ks as long as your forearm.”
If Ballard had lived to 2023, he would have had his own podcast, but he went on to his eternal, um, reward in 1990. Why is DiManno writing him now? Because of a new documentary about Ballard, directed by Jason Priestly, and now I've fulfilled by Canadian content quota for this week.
To be fair, Ballard did have his moments:
I remember the international furor he created after ordering a message flashed on the scoreboard during a game between the Canadian Olympic team and Moscow Dynamo: “Remember Korean Airlines flight 007 shot down by the Russians. Don’t cheer, just boo — Harold”. Although that was actually a moment of moral clarity. The passenger plane had been blown out of the sky by a Soviet fighter jet on Sept. 1, 1983, killing everyone aboard, including eight Canadians.
I remember the firing and unfiring, within days, of Roger Neilson, the cerebral coach, Captain Video for his then groundbreaking use of videotape to analyze games. Ballard pressed for Neilson to make his reappearance behind the bench with a paper bag over his head, then pulling it off for the ta-da! moment, because fans weren’t aware he’d been reinstalled. Neilson, to his credit, refused.
Also he didn't force anyone to listen to him sing, so that's one up on James Dolan. That's about the best you can say for the guy, though. You might be able to get away with being an all-around horrible person if it gets results on the ice, but the Leafs' reputation as perennial losers was cemented when he was running the team into the ground.
Was he the worst sports team owner of all time, though? No, but only because the East German Stasi used to have its own soccer team.
Though it's worth noting that Dynamo Berlin actually won a lot, assisted in no small part by its competitors falling over themselves to trade them their best players, and referees making many controversial calls that just happened to go its way, for no particular reason but blind luck, I'm sure.
Roger Waters, veteran purveyor of /r/im14andthisisdeep in musical form, reminds us that maybe he intended the marching hammers in The Wall to be the good guys all along.
The most important reason for arms deliveries is the following: to support Ukraine, to win the war and to stop Russian aggression. You seem to see it differently.
Yes. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I’m more open now to what Putin is actually saying. According to independent voices, he rules gently and takes decisions based on a consensus prevailing within the government of the Russian Federation. In Russia, too, there are critical intellectuals who have been arguing against American imperialism since the 1950s. And a central sentence was always: Ukraine is a red line. Ukraine must remain a neutral buffer state. If it doesn’t stay that way, we don’t know where it will lead. We still don’t know, but it could end in a third world war.
In February 2022, it was Putin who decided to attack.
He launched what he still calls a “military special operation.” He initiated it on a basis of reasons which, if I understand them correctly, are as follows: First, he wants to prevent the potential genocide of the Russian-speaking population in Donbass. Secondly, he wants to fight fascism in Ukraine. There is a young Ukrainian girl, Alina, with whom I exchanged long letters: “I hear you. I understand your pain.” She answered me, thanked me, but emphasized: “I’m sure you’re wrong about one thing: I’m 200 percent sure that there are no Nazis in Ukraine.” I answered : “I’m sorry, Alina, but you’re wrong. How can you live in Ukraine and not know that?”
I now imagine Waters drunkenly reading through The Diary of Anne Frank and complaining that her description of the hiding place isn’t completely accurate.
Meanwhile, I’d say keep your kids away from this man, but we were already doing that.
As long as there has been car racing (specifically, when the second ever automobile was built) there have been “field fillers” who race week after week, knowing full well they have no chance of winning unless something truly crazy happens.
In NASCAR, sometimes truly crazy things do indeed happen, and that’s how you got Justin Haley and his bargain-basement team winning at Daytona a few years back.
It wasn’t that long ago that “start and park” racing was a thing. They did the math and realized it cost more in gas and tires and parts to stay on the track than what the team would receive in prize money, so drivers would race five or six laps and then withdraw because of a broken headlight or something. (Hopefully the cheque cleared before anyone realized these cars don’t have headlights.) That was taken to its ultimate extreme in the sixties, when one car was entered into a NASCAR race without an engine.
Hey, that’s stock car racing for you. In a real sport, I hear you saying, you’d never see people embarrassing themselves by competing despite being hopelessly outclassed and just going through the motions to earn a paycheque without any chance of win-
