Starting Five

1. Have yourself Avery Johnson Christmas/Let your heart be light/From now on our troubles will be out of—– Screeeeeeeech! The Brooklynettes fire their coach, whom you may remember was named the NBA’ s Coach of the Month way back in, when was it, November? His son, Avery Johnson, Jr., tweets, “I’m sorry are best players couldn’t make open shots…” and “The expectation were way to high…”

Straight outta Brooklyn…

2. It’s hard to dispute this logic: Congress gave itself an extra, what, 18 or so months to solve the fiscal cliff crisis and here we are three days from fiscapocalypse (while Jon Stewart is on hiatus, it is left to us to create newphemisms to describe the political landscape) and they are no closer to a resolution. If we gave them more time and they squandered it, you can understand why so many Americans are loathe to give them more money, i.e., taxes. Congress: Clowns to the left of me/Jokers to the right/Stuck in middle with you (and a $12 billion difference in settling).

3. The Los Angeles Police Dept. stages a gun buy-back in which 2,037 firearms are taken “off the streets” (or out of Phil Spector’s garage). The weapons cache-for-cash event yielded 40 assault weapons and, yes, someone even turned in a rocket launcher (never knew that Homer Hickam lived in LA). LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on the assault weapons (and we assume, rocket launcher, which the LA Times, regrettably, references only once: “Those are weapons of war, weapons of death. These are not hunting guns. These are not target guns.”
All of the weapons will be melted down.

4. San Jose State wins a bowl game in front of an announced crowd of 17,835 at RFK Stadium (“The Military Bowl was filmed before a live studio audience.”). This was the smallest bowl game attendance in seven years. If a bowl game — or any event — has more empty than filled seats, it’s a terrific argument for not re-staging the event. Kudos to SJSU, though, its long-suffering fans and long-suffering Fan (sports info director Lawrence Fan). The Spartans should end the season ranked for the first time since 1975 and finish with 11 wins for the first time since 1940.

The Military Bowl plays out before a Yawning Room Only crowd

5. Retired five-star general Norman Schwarzkopf dies fades away in Tampa at the age of 78. Schwarzkopf dies of natural causes — as do we all.  The ursine commander of Operation Desert Storm was a West Point graduate who volunteered for two terms in Vietnam. His father, who had the same name but only rose to the rank of colonel (as if that’s peanuts), once

Reserves

Would anyone have a problem is Suzy Favor Hamilton simply said, “Why’d I do it? Boredom. Why the hell not?” Sure, being the spokesperson for the Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers Association is cool beans (literally), but maybe she just got tired of being everything that she was expected to be. I guess our question is this: Does she have to be “suffering from depression” to pull an Elisabeth Shue or, more closely, a Diane Lane in Unfaithful? Why does she have to have a condition? And who are we to judge? Illegal. Yes. Ill? You decide.

As Hamilton, she gained fame for excelling at the world’s oldest sport. As Lundy, she gained infamy for excelling at the world’s oldest profession.

The Los Angeles Clippers have won 15 in a row. Yes, Vinny Del Negro is still the coach.

The Alabama quarterback, A.J. McCarron, is dating Miss Alabama, Katherine Webb. Of course he is. Except that Webb graduated from Auburn. She loves him for his efficiency. He loves her for her Webb gems.

Fiscal cliff. Gun debate. It’s not that this nation has never argued among itself before, it’s just that we cannot recall the last time everyone was so implacable. The Polarized States of America, anybody?

So wait a minute? You’re telling us that jumbo pretzel dogs are not healthy???

Midwestern mom, wife, runner and early forties blonde who is also a $600-per-hour escort. That’s Katie McCollow, who–wait, that’s Suzy Favor Hamilton, but they’re awfully similar except for the escort part. Oh, and Katie is gobs funnier and is hopelessly addicted to movies and television, which we love. So Katie and her sister (one of eight siblings) went to see THAT movie yesterday. Here’s her review..

Before I begin, I’d like to throw a quick thank you  for the kind introduction, though whether or not I’m “gobs funnier” than Suzy Favor Hamilton, I’ll leave for the clients to decide.  That’s a picture of me there, on the right. I don’t know why.

So my sister and I snuck away from our lives for 16 hours yesterday to see Les Miserables, The Movie. Let me say right off, I loved it. She hated it. Everything she hated about it, I agreed with. Who can explain love? Fools would try.

Pretty much everyone knows the story, right? I mean I even knew the story, and I never saw the stage musical. Anyway, Hugh Jackman plays Jean Valjean, a guy who spent 19 years in prison for stealing bread. He’s on parole for life, and he’s like “That s*** be cray, I’m tearing up my papers and starting fresh with the help of this nice priest. He was so nice that I promise God to always be nice too.” He changes his identity and becomes successful. Hugh is great. He sings great, he acts great, I totally bought everything he was selling. Russell Crowe plays a mean cop who chases after him and basically catches him about 16 different times, but for one reason or another, Hugh always escapes. Russell Crowe sings much the way I imagine a potato would sing, if a potato could sing. Which they cannot, and neither can he.

Anne Hathway plays Fantine, a girl who works in Hugh’s factory. Her co-workers find out she has a kid out of wedlock, so after an angry sing-along, they get her fired. Hugh is not around when this happens. That’s not even close to the end of Anne’s Bad Day, kids…within about 3 minutes, she gets fired, sells her hair, sells her teeth, becomes a prostitute, sings a show-stopper and dies. Remember that the next time your car won’t start. I plan to put in my living will that no one let me die before I get my show-stopper out. If tragic musicals have taught me anything, it’s that warbling a deathbed ballad can turn the memory of even the most useless sad sack’s life into something heroic. Her showstopper is fierce, people. She kills it. The extreme close-up of her screeching out that song totally worked…so much so, the director does that with everyone in the movie. Everyone sings with the camera basically pointing right at their tonsils, tears streaming down their uncomfortably close, blotchy faces.

Hugh vows to care for Anne’s daughter, once he finds out the injustice of what happened to her. But first, Russell Crowe finds out he’s Jean Valjean, parole-breaker, and Hugh has to make himself scarce. He finds the daughter, Cossette, who lives with Sascha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, who is playing the same part she plays in every movie. I think she has one wig, and just brings it to every set she’s on. Hugh pays them money and he and Cosette live an idyllic (but secret) life in a convent together. Russell Crowe sings a song and I see that he has 3 fillings, a surprisingly small amount for a man with such an obvious love of sugary foods.

Meanwhile, unrest abounds. A bunch of handsome teenagers have had enough, and to show how disgruntled they are, they block off a road with a large pile of furniture and sing a bunch of songs in extreme close-up. They are lead by Marius, who has lots of freckles and is secretly rich, but pretends to be poor so his unrest-y friends won’t hate him. Eponine, who is also the daughter of HBC and SBC, loves Marius but Marius loves Cossette, who he has seen once and never actually spoken to. Eponine is sad about this, but after mulling it over through an extreme close-up song and a cleansing rainstorm, comes to realize she might as well pretend to be a boy and join the furniture-fort-making rebels. She is killed, but not before telling Marius where Cosette and her foster father are hiding. Russell Crowe sings again. It was at this point my sister began letting out audible yawns and looking around grumpily at the other movie goers, before settling her angry glare on me, as if it were my fault she had shelled out 7 dollars to have her senses raped for three hours. This gave me the church-giggles, which kept hold of me pretty much for the rest of the movie, yet in no way diminished my enjoyment of it.

Back to the story: All hell breaks lose, as the handsome teenagers unsuccessfully try to defend their furniture pile but wind up dead instead; all except Marius, who is saved by Jean Valjean because JVJ knows Cossette loves him. The way he saves Marius is by dragging him through a disgusting, excrement-filled sewer. Jean Valjean’s work is done, and he disappears again. We endure another song from Russell Crowe and he jumps to his death, defeated by Hugh Jackman’s goodness.

Marius goes back to being rich (presumably because all his poor but idealistic friends are dead and the furniture-fort thing didn’t work out) and he and Cossette get married. Cut to Jean Valjean, who is now dying, though he was in perfectly robust health just one scene previous–clearly that jaunt through the sewer is to blame. Cossette and Marius find him just in time to say their tearful, grateful, goodbyes, and Jean Valjean is escorted into heaven by Fantine’s happy ghost. I bawl. A large crowd of French peasants sing a rousing song of freedom, joined by the ghosts of everyone in the movie, and I bawl some more.

I’m getting more heat for loving this movie than I am for wanting to take everyone’s assault rifles away. Some samples:

From MJ: I dreamed a dream I saw The Hobbit. The beginning of the dream coincided  with the beginning of hour 23 of Les Mis. I almost offered to play with the fussy baby the guy in front of us was holding just for something to do. Close up close up close up of:

From Fran: Just saw Les Miserables, or as I like to call it, “Russell Crowe And His Friends Try To Kill Me With Song.”

Starting

1. Let’s begin with, in the words of Chris Kattan, “A pop quiz…a little quiz!” Who was Christmas Snow ( answer below… do resist the temptation to Google)?

2. “To face unafraid/The plans that we’ve made/Walking in a winter wonderland…” The word “unafraid” always freaks us out. Why do we need to introduce the element of fear into a Christmas carol? While we’re on the topic of Christmas tunes, it is “Heat Miser” and “Snow Miser” not “Heat Meister” as I’ve heard some say or “Cold Miser”. The Year Without a Santa Claus made its debut in 1974. I was eight years old and was quite certain I had never seen a Christmas special anything like it.

“I’m Mr. Green Christmas/I’m Mr. Sun/I’m Mr. Heat Blister/I’m Mr. Hundred and one…”

“I’m Mr. White Christmas/I’m Mr. Snow/I’m Mr. Icicle/I’m Mr. Ten below…”

3.  Seattle 42, San Francisco 13, or as we are calling it, “What’s Your Deal? II: NFL Boogaloo”. In 2009 Harbaugh’s Cardinal defeated Carroll’s USC Trojans 55-21, easily the most emphatic defeat in Carroll’s legendary SoCal tenure.  The post-game handshake was a classic. The following year Carroll was off to Seattle, and the year after that Harbaugh joined him in the NFC West as the coach of the 49ers. In their three meetings as NFL coaches, Harbaugh’s Niners had won each game.

Last night, however, in the NFL’s loudest stadium, Carroll exacted revenge with a 29-point win. And he did it on Harbaugh’s 49th birthday. If you think about it, Harbaugh had owned Carroll since arriving on The Farm in 2007. There was the upset that year at the Coliseum, when USC entered as 40-point favorites. The following season USC won in Palo Alto, but what I’ll always remember is Harbaugh having the Card air it out, down 29 points in the final seconds, simply so that Stanford could beat the 23-point spread (the Cardinal did, scoring a TD on the game’s final play to make the final margin 45-23… even funnier, the announcer — I believe it was Brent; it had to be Brent — slyly noted that Harbaugh had just made a few folks in Nevada very unhappy.

Last night, Carroll finally struck a blow and made this a rivalry. And what a perfect rivalry for a league that sorely needs one. Seattle vs. San Francisco. Starbucks vs. Peet’s. Microsoft vs. Apple. Rain vs. Fog.

4. As Robert Palmer might say, “She’s so fine/There’s no telling where the money went…”

5. Christmas Snow? Jack Tripper’s roomie… hung out at the Regal Beagle… never realized Mr. Roper had installed a hidden camera in the shower: Chrissy Snow. Her father, the Rev. Snow, had named her Christmas.

xx

Starting Five

1. Como se dice, “Epic fail” in Mayan?

2. Kelly Lundy? Nine-time NCAA champion and three-time Olympic middle-distance runner Suzy Favor Hamilton is a hooker. Hamilton charged up to $600 an hour under the nom de concubine Kelly Lundy as an employee of Haley Heston’s Private Collection. In the story broken by The Smoking Gun, Favor Hamilton lamented that one of her johns broke the “code of silence” between “providers” (escorts) and “hobbyists” (clients) while failing to mention that he also broke the time-honored bro code of “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” SI senior writer and “personal demons” beat reporter Gary Smith is already checking the batteries in his tape recorder, we have to think. Honestly, we admire Favor Hamilton for owning up to this as candidly as she did, though the quote “My husband wasn’t supportive of this at all” was a little bit odd.

Just a wholesome Midwest mom…

3. Speaker of the House/Nothing up his sleeve/Gonna keep us Cliff’in’/Up to New Year’s Eve…Congressman John Boehner (R-Ohio) cancels the Plan B vote in the House due to lack of support, which is rather curious since the House is a majority Republican body.

 4. The National Rifle Association stepped up to the podium on Friday morning and suggested that we need to have armed guards at schools. More guns — and more training — whether or not you agree with the solution, would likely to translate to more income for people who manufacture arms and weapons-related training, many of whom, we assume, are some of the most ardent supporters of the NRA.

5. ESPN serves Rob Parker with a one-month suspension. But it fails to answer the question of why it allows such an assclown to pollute its air in the first place. Bob Ley, speak to us. What’s going on here?

Starting Five

1. A female from Rhode Island, Olivia Culpo, wins Miss Universe and the University of Notre Dame has the top-ranked football team in the nation. We’re taking the Mayans minus the points.

Mathazar and the rest of the Thermians will protest the “Universe” part of the title, reminding all that Rhode Island is “not an island, either.”

2. The Oklahoma City Thunder Snow win their 12th straight while the Los Angeles Clappers win their 11th straight. Fine, but when will Steve Nash return to the Lakers?

3. We are entering the “Twelve Days of Cliffmas”, as Washington has just a dozen more days to negotiate a deal to spare us from the Fiscal Cliff. Did you know, by the way, that House Speaker John Boehner 1) is five-foot-six and 2) was a linebacker at Moeller High School whose coach was Gerry Faust?

Speaker of the House/ Workin’ on Plan B/ Dedicated servant/ Of aris-to-cra-cy

4. The University of Connecticut’s No. 2-ranked Huskies held a pre-game ceremony to honor the 26 victims of the Newtown massacre, then went out and allowed just 25 points to Oakland University in a 97-25… massa victory.

5. The New York Jest will release Tim Tebow, a man of profound religious faith who spent the past four months gaining a true appreciation of the term “purgatory.” If there are any teams out there looking for a dedicated punt protector, we got a guy for you. Also, the Jest are shopping Mark Sanchize. All we have to say is this: If the Jest draft USC quarterback Matt Barkley, we will laugh and laugh and laugh.

No, I do not want a copy of “Bright Lights, Big City” as a Christmas present, thank you very much.

Reserves

The bodies of the two killers who framed Truman Capote’s classic work, “In Cold Blood”, are being exhumed. It turns out that Richard Hickok and Perry Smith may have committed a second series of murders during thier 1959 rampage. Capote’s book has long been considered the apotheosis of true crime reportage –if not the seminal work on such –but it turns out he may not have been as thorough as we all thought.

LSU’s aussome Aussie punter, Brad Wing, has been suspended for the Tigers’ Chick-Fil-A Bowl against Clemson, a game that will determine who really plays in Death Valley (and is the best Tigers). If we are Les Miles, we comfort ourselves by remembering that Clemson allowed 70 points in its previous bowl game, so there’s a chance that Wing would never have gotten on the field, anyway.

For Domers, from Dennis Dodd, this is just eerie. Kudos to Ted Mandell for all the research but it still doesn’t excuse him from being the executive produder of the Freekbass video. One last nugget for you, Dennis: 1988 was the last year in which I didn’t professionally cover a college football game…until this year.

A tiny French village, Bugarach, may be your best hope for salvation when the world ends tomorrow. Our advice: book  round-trip fare to Paris, just in case they’re wrong.

Pic de Bugarach, which many believe houses an extraterrestrial spaceship. As Al Roker noted, “Didn’t the Coneheads come from France?”

This study asserts that, the 12.12.12 gig notwithstanding, rock stars die earlier than the general population. As the always insightful Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal tweeted in response to this story, “Still totally worth it, no?”

Richard Deitsch provides his year-end media awards at SI.com. Solid, no big surprises. Too many honorable mentions. Also, we’re sorry, but we just cannot get behind any awards list that includes Rachel Nichols. The woman has a perpetual smirk on her face.

By the way, only when we researched that photo did we learn that there is ANOTHER Rachel Nichols, an actress who unlike the ESPN personality graduated from an Ivy League school (ESPN’s RN attended Northwestern). We feel obliged to also provide a pic of the thespian Rachel Nichols, whose credits include both the sequels to Dumb and Dumber (“Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd”) and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. 

Ironically, this pic was snapped at the ESPY Awards (where she was named “Best Rachel Nichols?”)

In the best battle of father-son Ricks since “I Love Lucy”, the elder Pitino led Louisville to a 24-point win against his son’s Florida International squad last night. We can picture Mrs. Pitino welcoming home her husband today with a “You got some ‘splainin’ to do.” (although, fans of Lexington restaurant after-hours shenanigans will note she has done this before)

It’s without a doubt one of the most influential works ever written and it rings as true as ever for Christmas 2012. “A Christmas Carol” was published today in 1843. Written by Charles Dickens at the age of 31, it tells of the the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge from cold-hearted, wretched miser to that of a man who embraces the light, joy and warmth of life. Scrooge is visited on a “cold, black, biting Christmas Eve” by the ghost of his old business partner and then by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come.

Dickens’ theme was simply that love and charity conquer all and that our time spent on this earth is best used in the fellowship of one another. This year, more than any in some time, we are all faced with the somber prospect of not just Christmas Yet to Be, but life in general. Like Scrooge, we are challenged to change our ways, or as Marley tells him, be left to deal with the “shadows of what may be.”

The 18th Amendment was repealed after 17 years because it proved to be stupid. There’s another amendment on the books that was written for a world that was 223 years ago. It may not be stupid, but it needs to be fixed because it continues to fail us. It’s a far too simple decree for an awfully complex issue. Laws will always be broken but it’s incumbent on our leaders to make them as hard as possible to break. We all know what happened in Connecticut last week, laws were broken. A week before that in Minneapolis, a 4-year old shot and killed his 2-year old brother. No laws were broken. The story came and went in a flash. It happens all the time, all over the place. I know, stupid parents, I get it. You have to pass a drivers test to get a license, you should have to pass a gun safety class every two years. Too much? The picture below is too much. Perhaps all those classes would have kept guns away from a clearly troubled son. Of course they might not have, but an effort needs to be made.

“the means to exercise the natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and the capacity to regulate its competitive actions to avoid depriving others of those rights and to sacrifice itself for the greater good of the polity as a whole or for their common posterity”

It’s your right to own a gun. The greater good demands that those guns should be limited and that safety be paramount.

I understand the dialogue, but I’m really tired of hearing how things are in England, Japan or Switzerland pertaining to gun laws and murder rates. If I lived in Switzerland I’d probably be a great skier, but I don’t live there. With greater freedom comes greater responsibility.

“Titanic” and “Platoon” were both released on December 19th as well, and although the analogies abound, you just can’t do better than “A Christmas Carol.”

The opponent is strong and powerful and might be too big to fail. This is not to say that a single soul on the opposing side doesn’t want the exact same thing everyone else wants, but they’ll fight on how to get there. It doesn’t need to be repealed, but it needs to be fixed. The setting is clearly different, and I’m cheating because the movie came out on December 22, not December 19, but the message applies, especially the last line.

Merry Christmas to all and, “as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”

— Bill Hubbell