Seeking the Soul

You see there the most moving moment in the extraordinary meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean president Moon Jae-in on the grounds of Peace House today. A man can literally step across the border there and what you are seeing is Kim taking Moon by the hand crossing the threshold into North Korea. The throng of gathered witnesses uttered a collective, audible "Ahh."

The soul is a mutable thing and the soul of Korea mutated from war to peace with that one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Bill Cosby Found Guilty of 3 Counts of Sexual Assault

What a series. The "Lances" blew out the "Cavs" in game one by 18 but after that the games have been decided by 3, 2, 4, and 3 points. Jeez.

Oh, I see. First he blocked Indy's game-winning LAYUP on one end and THEN won the game at the 🚨with his 3 at the other end. Oh, I see.

Blow Lance Blow

Somehow Lance Stephenson's Indiana "Pacers" lost "full control" of their series with LeBron James' Cleveland "Cavaliers." Wonder how that happened? Could it be LBJ hit a game-winning 3 at the buzzer? It could. Cleve wins 98-95 to put Lance one loss from elimination.

"Golden State Killer"/"East Area Rapist" Arrested

Got to be full 100 here, I had never heard of this case until now. But what an extraordinary case it is.

Between 1976 and 1986 one man committed 12 murders, 45 rapes and over 100 house burglaries in the "East Area" between Sacramento and San Francisco, California. He was good. Wore a mask, struck at night, preyed on women who lived alone with a child (to make them more compliant I hypothesize), placed a plate and cup on the backs of his bound victims as his alert when he was ransacking their homes, moved around. When the law seemed to be getting close he'd up and move. Never got caught until today.

72 year-old Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer, Argh, why didn't we think of that before!, was arrested today at his trim middle class house outside Sacramento. The arrest was based on a match of his DNA to that found on the crime scenes, a forensic technology unknown to him in 1986. DeAngelo's wave of terror began when he became a police officer in Auburn in 1976. He was fired in 1979 when he did not contest administrative action to terminate him following his arrest for shoplifting. "Just left. Didn't want them to look deeper."

10 DEAD IN TORONTO VAN ATTACK ON PEDESTRIANS

No motive. Driver in custody.

Tough one

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron was put on the spot this year in front of a room full of journalists when one asked, provocatively: Which man is more dangerous, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un; or Donald J. Trump?

“You know, I have always refrained from making sweeping judgments,” Mr. Macron answered slowly, weighing his words.https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/world/europe/donald-trump-emmanuel-macron.html

Oh my God. Indy timeout, 14 left, Cleve +6. Night!

What the hell time is it...What am I doing...

Cleve +4 15.2 left. Cleve on Timeout, Will Have Ball.

Blow harder, Lance.

The Land is going to escape. They lead 101-95 with 1:18 left. Since LeBron's T he has scored 6 and Kyle Korver has scored 6 (on two 3's). Lance hasn't scored. Lance blows, he does not score.

Cleveland led 60-50 at half time but now, with 8:05 left in the game, it's tied at 87.

Here, perhaps, is a coming refutation of axiom #1 from yesterday. LBJ leads the field with 26 points and has played 39 minutes. He is the only "Cavalier" who has more than 20 and only three others are in double figures with 12, 12, and 10.

For Indiana, who now lead by the way 91-89 with 6:12 left, seven players are in double figures, the highest with 19...LeBron just got a technical. Maybe Lance blew in his face again.

In the car on the way to a hockey game a couple of years ago I recounted to my issue the astonishment of a local writer covering the new hockey club in Miami in 1996. It was during the playoffs as I recall. A Florida "Panther" player had taken a puck to the mouth. Between periods the press box was given the customary player availability update for the next period. "Bill Lindsay [just picked a name], puck to face, lost three teeth, 12 stitches. Will return." "Hockey players are just tougher than basketball players," the kids said, and I agreed.

Just now I saw this headline:

Sean Couturier plays through torn MCL, posts hat trick in Flyers' loss

(ESPN)

There is right now a professional basketball player, a damned good one too, Kawhi Leonard,who is out of action with "right thigh tendinopathy" which is "inflammation of the tendon of the large muscle on the front of the thigh (quadriceps) just before it attaches to the kneecap (patella)." Kawhi Leonard is out for the season with inflammation of the tendon. He has missed 77 games.

"Philadelphia Flyers center Sean Couturier added another chapter to the book on hockey player toughness, scoring three goals and assisting on two others -- while playing on a torn MCL."

Couturier tore the MCL on Thursday. He missed that night's game, Game 4.

 "But with his team down 3-1 in the series, he returned and scored the game winner in Game 5 on Friday..." 

He played on it the day after he tore it. Then played today, scoring a hat trick.

There is right now another player in professional basketball, used to be an MVP too, Derrick Rose, who missed 99 games for a tear of his ACL in 2012. Derrick missed 257 games while with the Chicago "Bulls" from 2009-2016. Some of the injuries that kept Derrick out those 257 games are:

sprained left wrist 2010, 4 games.

stiff neck 2010, 1 game.

sprained big toe 2012, 1 game.

sprained big toe again 2012, 4 games.

"lower back issues" 2012, 5 games.

"groin injury" 2012, 12 games. [Bad year for Derrick, 2012.]

sprained right ankle 2012, 1 game.

right foot injury (unspecified) 2012, 3 games.

"rest," 2012, 1 game.

torn ACL 2012, 99 games.

sore right hamstring 2013, 1 game.

torn right meniscus 2013, 76 games.

sprained both ankles 2014, 2 games.

sprained both ankles again 2014, 2 games.

torn right meniscus 2015, 20 games.

"overall body soreness 2016, 1 game.

Alright, enough. Hockey players are just tougher than basketball players.

The Devil in LeBron James

LeBron James will never be considered the greatest basketball player of all time because he deliberately sabotage's teammates and his team both on the court and off. And because he quits on his teams and on his teammates. The last is the Jurgen Klopp corollary, don't compete. Deliberate sabotage though is a different animal altogether, a goat; it is close to throwing the game. Goat. Not. G.O.A.T. 

The 29-year-old hero from Waffle House shooting: 'I saw the opportunity and I took it'

(The Tennessean)

Tennessee Waffle House shooting suspect may be armed, police say

(CNN)

"Manhunt underway for naked shooter who killed four at Waffle House in Tennessee"-New York Daily News

Oh yeah, we're normal.

I cannot write of Barnesboro and Cambria County.

When a jet takes off, if you were standing a football field and one-third away, the noise would be eight times "annoyingly loud," 100 decibels.

When the Winnipeg "Jets" took off Friday night (and 32 seconds into the game they did) the noise inside Bell MTS Place was 114.3 decibels, a new record for the arena considered the loudest in the NHL and over 16 times annoying, above the average human pain threshold, greater than an automobile horn at one yard, and half way to a chain saw, which the "Jets" took to Minnesota in a 5-0 massacre.

This iteration of the "Jets" won their first playoff series four games to one and there were 15,321 witnesses cum noise makers in the arena and another 36,000 outside at the corner of Portage and Main downtown.

Winnipeg now awaits Colorado or Nashville in the second round in the chase for the Stanley Cup.

Lessons from Today

Here's a basketball axiom that I believe in: "the team with the best player wins in the playoffs." (Note: this axiom does not apply to soccer, in league games, in England, to Liverpool, at The Hawthorns. Then you need to bring your own groundskeeper and referees. Note.) That axiom was proved true again today in the playoff basketball game between Philadelphia and Miami in America 2.0. The "Heat's" best starter is probably Goran Dragic. Goran Dragic would be at most the third-best player on the "7'6"ers." Dwyane Wade was the "Heat's" best player today and indeed the highest scorer on either team with 25 points but at 36 years of age Wade does not qualify as best player. He cannot start, he cannot go all game, he only went 26 minutes today (Phila had six players who played more minutes than did Wade), and so he cannot be impactful enough to disprove the axiom. As impactful as, say, LeBron James still is.

Which permits us segue into another lesson from today and another axiom: "Do not tug on Superman's cape." This is a lesson that the individual homo sapiens denominated "Lance" "Stephenson" has never learned.

For Lance asserted today that his Indiana "Pacers" have "full control right now" over the man whose face he is blowing into in that iconically Lance photo, and over his team. I wish Lance hadn't said that. Lance the LeBron Blower fancies himself uniquely able to tug on LeBron James' cape, to "get under his skin," to needle him, to distract him into doing...stupid things on the court. On what precedential authority Lance relies for his minority-of-one opinion court scholars are mystified. "We get another win in our building, and that's when I think they're going to start panicking." (Another win would put Indiana up three games to one.) As they panicked when they won their first NBA championship by coming back from 3-1 down to Golden State in the Finals? Eh, Justice Stephenson? I wish somebody had stuffed something in Lance's pie hole. I wish he hadn't said that for I was wishing for an Indiana win. But they didn't and he did and me thinks both of today's axioms will be proved anew tomorrow, for me thinks LeBron James, the best player on these or any other teams, will take his "Cavaliers," put them across his broad shoulders and carry them to victory, the while sticking one of his signature sneakers in Lance Stevenson's big, fat mouth. Too late for Indy's sake.

Jurgen Klopp Is An Asshole

This warrants another post. Klopp is an asshole. Klopp did not field a weakened team so he could not put the blame on that. In fact, he said he played such a strong lineup precisely to keep them in fighting trim for Roma on Tuesday. So, he blamed the pitch ("too dry). He blamed the refs. Weather and officials are the usual scapegoats the world of sport over. They teach those in coach school. So what Klopp is saying is that mighty Liverpool could not beat 20th West Brom on a dry pitch with these referees. Could not hold a 2-0 lead at 20th West Brom on a dry pitch with these referees. But Klopp was on a different world, Planet Asshole, when he also blamed West Brom for trying. He bitterly and mean-spiritedly dismissed them as a Championship side who had "wasted" points, his points.

"If you made a ‘set-piece Premier League’ where only set-pieces are allowed then West Brom would, for sure, not go to the Championship...We scored the first one. Then the pitch got drier and drier, that’s not an advantage for the football-playing side...It makes life a little bit more difficult.

“What do you think? Was it a penalty? Yes, I think the same. We agree.

“Hegazi on Ings? It’s a red card. But you see it, I see it, that’s not important. It matters only what the three or four gentlemen with the whistle say. We can’t change that.

“But if you have these situations, it’s different. I think if you are the better team you should win, we are the better team but we don’t win.

“We let the home team decide if they water the pitch or not. It’s not only about football, it’s dangerous for injuries too if the pitch is really dry. It’s difficult.

“I would have said nothing about that if we had won, though! We didn’t play a brilliant game, but good enough to win here.

""Useless comeback. I don't think that point will help West Brom massively, it is a complete waste of points: they don't need it, we would have needed it. They are happy, we are not happy, we stay in the league, they do not. It makes for a strange situation!

"The whole game was a plot on the goalkeeper, everyone loves it in this country, but it makes life difficult for the goalie.

"It was a difficult game as the pitch got drier and drier. West Brom decided not to water the pitch at half-time and that makes it difficult.

"It makes a massive difference. A team like West Brom do not need a wet pitch, they can do it next year playing on a dry pitch in the Championship."

ASS. HOLE.

Final

3 :( 58.2

1!

3

4. 1:45

6. 4:09 left.

Phila 17 MIA 7 in 4Q.

10

7

Phila has outscored MIA 13-2 in 4Q.