What I Learned from the Knicks

CNN Sports

I’ve never been much of a basketball fan. But like millions of other New Yorkers and people with their hearts in this great city, I got caught up in the NBA finals and was thrilled with the Knicks victory. And I learned something, confirmed something I already knew. Deadlines are real and often immutable. But until you reach them, anything is possible. Even if there are just split seconds left. 

As a Yankees fan since I was a little kid, I already knew this. One of the best things about the Yankees is the way they win games in which they’re trailing in the ninth inning. (Yogi Berra: "It ain’t over till it’s over.") But baseball, wonderful as it is, is a chess game, slow motion most of the time,  slow motion compared to the high-octane rush of basketball, and the Knicks demonstrated that point incandescently in the last two games of the NBA playoffs. 

The Spurs were leading by sizeable margins at halftime and beyond. The Knicks didn't start their juggernaut until well into the 4th quarter. And the Spurs didn’t know what hit them — twice. In the fourth and fifth games, once the Knicks started scoring, it was almost as if the Spurs were playing a different game, a different kind of basketball, or the same game in a different dimension. 

But the truth is that what the Knicks did is closer to the lives we all live. Deadlines have meaning. We ignore them at our peril, small and large. But until we reach them, anything is possible. While there’s life in a game, there’s hope. While there’s life, there’s hope. That’s a very important lesson, I think, for everyone.

 

Law & Order: SVU 27.1: Olivia Benson vs. ICE

Just caught up with the season 27 debut of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on NBC this past Thursday evening. It was excellent in all kinds of ways, but none as ethically important and politically relevant as Olivia Benson standing up to the American Gestapo aka ICE as they do their utmost to impede Captain Benson and the NYPD from bringing a rapist to justice.

ICE is bent on taking Benson's witness into custody and having him deported to El Salvador or who knows where.  Never mind that the witness is here legally.  He looks like a foreigner and that's all Trump's racist goons need to haul him off.  When Benson attempts to stop them, she's taken into custody.

Benson's arrest is actually the least of what these Federal criminals have been doing in real life to fair-minded, hardworking people in government who try to do their job and stand up to ICE when necessary, which is all too often.  Alex Padilla, US Senator from California, was thrown to the ground, when he tried to ask Homeland Security Kristi Noem a question, by another branch of Trump's Storm Troopers a few months ago.  But it was good and important to see a fictional character, wonderfully played by Mariska Hargitay all these years, do the right thing in New York.  Hats off to NBC.

Would a real captain of the NYPD do what Benson did?  I would certainly hope so, but I don't know that I would bet on it.   I don't know that other networks and streaming services would have characters in their dramas do what Benson did, either.  I'm a lifelong devoted Yankee fan, and it's always great seeing them play baseball on YES.   But I was very disappointed to see ads for ICE more than once in between innings on YES in the past few months.

Baseball is about American as you can get.  ICE is about as un-American.  Good to see NBC and Olivia Benson on the right side of this battle for our democracy.

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Killing Eve Season 3 Finale: Cold Turkey

In a show like Killing Eve, cold turkey could mean a lot of things.  But especially in this third season, it's meant two things: leaving the killing/spying business; Eve and Villanelle leaving the fatal attraction they have for each other.

Obviously, for the show to go on, at least in the way it's been going, neither can happen.  So, what keeps the show attractive and provocative, is the way in which neither kind of cold turkey happens.

Villanelle has been saying all season she wants to stop doing the hands-on killing.  As good as she still is, this is like Mickey Mantle or Whitey Ford hanging it up in the middle of their incandescent careers (right, I'm a New York Yankees fan).  But no one, no one wants to accommodate her.  Not Dasha, never Konstantin. and, tonight, apparently not even Carolyn, either, who refuses to hire Villanelle as a spy for MI6, after she offered her that job, unless Villanelle were willing to kill for Carolyn.

As for Eve, it's not entirely clear what exactly she wants.  She already effectively left MI6, and came back only to find Kenny's killer.   Given the beyond complex feelings that Carolyn has about her son's death, finding his killer and working for Carolyn was bound to be an impossible combination.   And, indeed, Carolyn's feelings are so complex that even I can't completely understand them.  Yeah, the 12 were responsible for Kenny's death, but Carolyn's attitude about them is even more inscrutable than her feelings for Kenny.

But clearly, Eve and Villanelle do very much want each other.  The very existence of each has come to give the other's existence meaning.   So when, at Villannelle's suggestion, they turned their backs on each and started walking away, we all of course knew they wouldn't get very far at all on that bridge, which they didn't.

Hey, I have a suggestion for the ending of the series: Eve and Villanelle both die at the same time.  That would be a happy ending for their affair, since neither would have to go cold turkey and leave the other.

See you back here, I guess next year, when the next season is on.

See also Killing Eve 3.1: Whew! ... Killing Eve 3.2: Bringing It Into Focus ... Killing Eve 3.3: The Third Time's the Charm ... Killing Eve 3.4: Tip Toe Through the Tulips ... Killing Eve 3.5: The Darkness ... Killing Eve 3.6: Wounded ... Killing Eve 3.7: The Omelet

And see also Killing Eve 2.1: Libido and Thanatos ... Killing Eve 2.2: Villanelle as Victim ... Killing Eve 2.3 Lipstick ... Killing Eve 2.6: Billie ... Killing Eve 2.7: Death and Sex ... Killing Eve Season 2 Finale: Possibilities After the End

And see also Killing Eve: Highly Recommended (Season 1)

George Steinbrenner, 1930-2010, the Winner

George Steinbrenner, 1930-2010, was far more than a major baseball team owner.  As owner of the New York Yankees, he captured the public's attention with his larger than life deal making and voluble speech.   More than any other person in baseball in the past half century, Steinbrenner epitomized the love of winning - it was not enough just to be in the game, his team had to win, and when it didn't, the managers and players felt his disapproval.  He hired and fired Billy Martin almost on a yearly basis - because, however much Billy and his hot temper irritated him, Steinbrenner valued Billy's ability to make the Yankees winners.   He pulled the notion of hands-on manager to new heights, commenting on a plays, pitches, hits, and strikes to the press as much as an announcer.   It was all about winning - for the Yankees, for New York, for the ages.   When his players won, they could expect praise to the hilt.   When they lost, they might well see a sarcastic appraisal from Steinbrenner about their performance - in the press and the media.   And it worked - the Yanks won seven World Series titles and eleven pennants since 1973.

George Steinbrenner will be remembered as one of the great sportsman in history, who changed not only the playing of baseball but our popular culture.

Yankees, Travelers, and Langhorne Win

Great Yankees win, in the face of blind umping, and biased Fox sportscasting.

But the Yankees were great. Girardi has really settled into his managing. A-Rod is playing like a full-fledged superstar. Teixeira got back his magical swing, Cano is in the game, and Mariano is invincible.

Even the commercials were great. Especially the Travelers Insurance spot with Langhorne Slim - which didn't make it to Game Six tonight. But it's always satisfying to see your team win and discover a new singer at the same time. Langhorne reminds me of John Sebastian and the Lovin' Spoonful - I expect he'll soon be a superstar himself.

On the World Series. I'm picking the Yankees and Langhorne.

Here's a video of that commercial...

Drunk FlashForwarding in 1.5

Well, the Yankees lost tonight, after coming back and gaining the lead, and that was frustrating, but FlashForward 1.5 came on strong after a talky middle and posted one of its best endings since the premiere, and that was good to see indeed.

The crux of this episode is the reliability of Mark's flashforward vision. Why does he recall only a part of the 2 minutes and 17 seconds, when others seem to recall the full course of their flashforward? The answer is that Mark, off booze for seven years, was drunk in his flashforward.

Courtney Vance puts in his best performance so far as Mark's boss Stan Wedeck. He at first is furious that he's risking his career on a drunk flashforward, but he doesn't pull back the investigation, and in fact just tells Mark to keep his mouth shut as Stan takes the project funding he has pressured the President to provide.

There's a sharp 24-ish flavor to this (likely from Brannon Braga), as we see a President wheeling and dealing with dangerous political adversaries, and a Chinese team of assassins who almost take out Mark, Demetri, Vreede, and Stan, and in a parallel attack badly wound Janis. She looks as if she could be dying in the street - but given the truth of the flashforwards so far, someone is bound to come and save her.

She has a provocative story, too - a lesbian lover, Numb3r's Amita (Navi Rawat), in Washington, DC. It looks as if not only Heroes but FlashForward is picking up on The L Word this year, which risks making this theme a little trite, especially when brought in out of left field. But in Janis's case, it has the benefit of making the pregnancy she saw in her flashforward even more interesting.

Janis also discovers some strange towers in the area of the 1990s blackout ... Lloyd Simcoe will likely know more about ...



6-min podcast review of FlashForward

See also FlashForward Debuts and Oceanic Airlines as a Portal Between FlashForward and Lost and 1.2: Proofs and Defiance of Inevitability and 1.3: Conficting Visions and Futures and 1.4: FlashForward Meets Shaft and House

Listen to 40-minute interview with Robert J. Sawyer

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

more about The Plot to Save Socrates...





Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!

Why One Strike Against the First Amendment Should Rule Sotomayor Out of the Supreme Court

As many of you know, I was disappointed by President Obama's nomination today of Appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. As a lifelong advocate of the First Amendment and its protections of freedom of speech and press, and a critic therefore, of judges who do anything to dilute and undermine its protections, I wrote back at the beginning of this month that Sotomayor's Anti-First Amendment Decision Should Disqualify Her for Supreme Court. The decision in question was the one that Sotomayor's 3-judge Federal Second Court of Appeals made in New York last May, when it failed to uphold Avery Doninger's claim that her First Amendment rights had been violated when her high school prohibited her from running for Senior Secretary, after she had posted on her off-campus Live Journal blog that school officials were "douchebags" for canceling an event.

I recognize that there are some who think Avery was justly punished, and/or the school did not violate her First Amendment rights when it punished her.

But I'd like to now address a different objection to the problem I have with Sotomayor - one which in fact has been the most frequently raised on my blogs and status reports on Facebook, etc.

The objection is as follows: Should we let just one mistake count against a Supreme Court appointment and confirmation of a judge who has otherwise been excellent in all of her opinions? This certainly seems like a reasonable point, given that we require three strikes to be out when at bat in baseball, and we give people all kinds of second chances in life.

But I think that one strike against the First Amendment should indeed disqualify Judge Sotomayor's appointment to the Supreme Court.

First, before I explain why, let me just stipulate, for the purpose of this explanation, that Sotomayor's decision in Doninger was wrong, and all of her other decisions right. I understand that people may disagree with both parts of that stipulation, but let's proceed here as if they were right.

I maintain that Sotomayor would still be a dangerous appointment to the Supreme Court.

She made a decision on the Appellate Court that did not strongly support the First Amendment. The Appellate is itself a higher court, just one level below the U.S. Supreme Court. Why appoint someone who made even one mistake there, in a position that in this situation is in effect an audition, a farm league, for the big time? Isn't performance on the Appellate Court the best possible gauge of performance on the Supreme Court? Are not the stakes on the Supreme Court just too high, too lasting, to take a chance on an Appellate judge with even just one bad decision?

If that is the case, then the only reason we could excuse a bad decision on the First Amendment would be if we don't hold the First Amendment to be what it is - not the Tenth, the Fourth, or even the Second Amendment, but the First or most primary amendment for protection of our freedoms. An amendment, moreover, whose protections for us are eroding daily, with the FCC levying millions of dollars of fines, and Congress calling out for FCC regulation of cable, etc. All of that can hang in the balance with this appointment.

I have used baseball metaphors several times here, and let me say that it grieves me not to support Sotomayor, given that she is such as fervent Yankee fan. (Hey, I was born in the Bronx, too, proudly teach there at Fordham University, and am a lifelong Yankees fan.) Just as it grieves me not to support a woman and Latina for the Supreme Court.

But that's just not enough.

This does not make Sotomayor a bad person, or, even a bad judge across the board. But it does make her not the best person to appoint for the rest of her life to one of nine positions on a Supreme Court already dominated by Justices who don't care much about the First Amendment and the rights of kids.

Shoutout for Joe Torre

So, the Yanks lost tonight - the third straight year they didn't go on to the World Series after making it into the playoffs, and everyone's disappointed, and George said the other day that if the Yankees didn't progress then Joe Torre might be finished as Yankee skipper...

But let me say the obvious: Third straight year that the Yankees didn't make it to the series after getting into the playoffs? For any other manager, that would be cause for the owner offering a hefty long term contract. How many other teams make it in the playoffs year after year - in the case of the Yankees and Joe Torre, 12 years, to be exact, with World Series wins and all.

But that's not the most important reason that Joe Torre deserves credit and continuation, in my book.

In the end, baseball is just a game. What lasting value it has comes from the humanity and lessons its players give to the world.

And when it comes to that, no one holds a candle to Joe Torre. He has brought to baseball a whole new level of decency, rationality, and humanity. I'm old enough to remember Casey and of course Billy, and they had their moments, but they were a different species of manager compared to Joe.

He has taught the world not only how to win - but how to lose, if it happens, with dignity. Since no one, no team, can possibly win all the time, that's a crucially important lesson.

I hope George Steinbrenner thinks a moment about this, before he announces the future for the Yankees.