Southern Bookman

Watching the NFL, while waiting for the apocalypse

I confess; I watched the NFL.

It was worth it to see the Saints' Drew Brees win the battle of the ancient quarterbacks. Who dat? It was the befuddled Tom Brady, wearing a Bucs uniform whose helmet didn't seem to fit right.

The empty Superdome was spooky, although I didn't miss the guys wearing bishops' hats and those dressed like Elvis.

It was also strange to see Jameis Winston in a Saints uniform on the sidelines, looking like he'd eaten some bad crab legs.

At the same time, I switched to watch rookie Joe Burrow, 20 years younger than Brees and Brady, deliver a sterling debut, giving the woeful Bengals a shot of energy despite a couple of bonehead plays. 

After LSU's national champion quaarterback and Heisman Trophy winner led a thrilling last-minute drive, the Bungling Bengals' bad karma bit them again.

I've never seen a kicker get hurt kicking until the Bengals' Randy Bullock came up lame in missing a game-tying field goal with seconds left. Maybe he was rattled by the silence of the stadium.The Chargers escaped with a 16-13 win.

Along with getting rid of the ball sooner, Joe can work on his beard.

Meanwhile, the Falcons again didn't seem to understand that the point of football is to win. Matt Ryan threw for mega yards, Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley made catches, and Todd Gurley was OK, but it was like watching meaningless maneuvers.

Leading the Seahawks to victory, Russell Wilson showed that only Patrick Mahomes is a better quarterback.

As the afternoon progressed, I found myself seeking the results from around the league. Hey, I've loved NFL opening day since the days of Vince Lombardi and when the Colts were still in Baltimore.

The Washington team with no name upset the Eagles. The heat was hot and the ground was dry, and the air had no sound.

Cam Newton took to Belichick. The early leader for comeback player of the year. Looks like the Pats will survive without Brady.

Gardner Minshew's Jags beat Philip Rivers' Colts. And I thought Rivers was still with the Chargers.

The Arizona Cardinals knocked off the 49ers, as smoke filled the air.

Mike McCarthy continued the Cowboys coaches' tradition like no other.

Jon Gruden's Las Vegas Raiders edged Christian McCaffrey and the Panthers.

And I'd wanted Teddy Bridgewater to lead the Saints and for Brees to retire. Hope they like football in 100-degree heat.

The Packers' Aaron Rodgers also made a bid for the best quarterback sweepstakes, but I didn't notice any Allstate commercials.

The Vikings are one of those NFL teams that always seem spinning around. The curse of Fran Tarkenton? Ask your grandfather, kids.

Speaking of spinning, the Jets fell to the Buffalo Bills, whom I thought had joined the Canadian Football League. 

The Rams' futuristic stadium looked like something from a sci-fi movie as wildfires burned throughout the West. Jared Goff showed he's better than Carson Wentz, who again made Eagles fans wince.

The Browns and Baker Mayfield bombed again as Lamar Jackson excelled with passing more than the run.

The Bears kept the Lions' tradition of futility going. Trubisky! Where have you gone Dick "Night Train" Lane? Not to mention Alex Karras.

Perhaps this is what the NFL has wanted all along: games without fans, as if played in a TV studio.

Is there a 12-step program for the NFL?

Farewell, Diana Rigg

British culture was the epitome of cool in the 1960s.

The Beatles, the Stones and other groups. Monty Python. James Bond, books and movies. Roger Moore's "The Saint."

No British import was cooler than "The Avengers," the TV show starring Patrick Macnee as the dapper spy John Steed and Diana Rigg as  his partner, the gorgeous, acrobatic Emma Peel.

With its gray English scenes, self-referential humor and campy plots, the show possessed a subtle British irony.

Among all of Britain's pop icons who dazzled its long lost colony, no one personified the swinging London panache more than Rigg's portrayal of the daring Mrs. Peel, although the show played a relatively minor role in the British invasion and she appeared for only a couple of seasons.

Rigg, who had a long and distinguished stage, film and TV career, died at age 82 Thursday of cancer, according to media reports.

The super-heroic Mrs. Peel (who was her husband?), the first TV crush of millions, carried out her incredible feats wearing a skin-tight jumpsuit.

Her insouciant wit, golden smile and winsome gaze were welcoming, not intimidating. She was a cool Mom who happened to be expert at martial arts and leaping from high walls.

While Sean Connery's Bond exuded glamour with his clothing, automobiles and ease with women, Macnee exemplified understated class with his bowler, three-piece suits and umbrella. His Steed was a droll, understated partner to Rigg's flamboyant Emma.

Rigg was a classical actress acclaimed for her roles in British theater and on Broadway. She also starred in a number of TV shows and films, including a James Bond movie in which she was the only Bond girl to ever marry the spy.

It was fitting that one of her last triumphs was portraying Oleana Tyrell in "Game of Thrones."

Her Emma Peel set the standard for the HBO hit's fearless women played by Emilia Clarke, Maisie Williams, Sophie Turner, Lena Headey and Gwendoline Christie.

Epix's "Laurel Canyon" looks back at creative music scene of late 1960s

The rock musicians who wrote songs, smoked dope and had sex with other in Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon lived in a bubble during the late 1960s and early '70s, photographer Nurit Wilde says in the Epix's "Laurel Canyon"

The two-part, three and a-half hour documentary looks back on the rock idols' gilded hippie lifestyle, which flourished from 1966 through 1972.

Directed by Alison Ellwood, the film uses home movies, interviews, vintage concert film and photos to evoke the era in which guitars rang from the hills in a continuous party.

Along with Wilde, photographer and musician Henry Diltz is the primary storyteller, the keeper of the flame. Their photos of the young stars 50 years ago drip with baby-boomer nostalgia.

As Vietnam War protests raged and the civil rights movement progressed, the musicians turned their attention to the outside world, with songs like Stephen Stills' "For What It's Worth." But the documentary depicts a group of self-entitled, hedonistic young people adored by fans and despised by "the Silent Majority."

Revered Mothers of Invention leader Frank Zappa began the rock musicians' migration to Laurel Canyon.

The easy-going rustic scene close to Los Angeles' entertainment district attracted David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman, Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, John Phillips, Cass Elliot, John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Jim Morrison, Peter York, Micky  Dolenz, and Arthur Lee. A second wave brought Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Glenn Frey, J.D. Souther, Lowell George, Bonnie Raitt and Don Henley.

The documentary traces the changing fortunes of the Byrds, the Buffalo Springfield, the Doors, Love, the Mamas and Papas, Little Feat, the Monkees and the Eagles. Moving freely among each other's houses, the doors never locked, the young stars wrote songs and performed together.

Clubs like the Troubadour launched the performers' careers. As the musicians' success grew, they pursued more opulent lifestyles. Professional and personal jealousies rose.

Prominent stories include the formation of Crosby, Stills and Nash, later joined by Young, and the creatively fertile relationship of Nash and Mitchell. The good vibes are belied by conflicts roiling the Mamas and the Papas, especially the volatile marriage of Michelle and John Phillips.

After John Phillips discovers Michelle's affair with the Byrds' Gene Clark, he kicks her out of the band.

To rejoin the group, Michelle has to humiliate herself before Phillips, bringing a tortured reconciliation. As she reflects, male rock stars didn't believe free love encompassed women.

While Stills, Young and Furay's Buffalo Springfield fall apart, the Byrds survive the exit of Crosby by turning toward country, led by Gram Parsons. While the addition of Clarence White is not mentioned, the virtuouso guitarist also fueled the success of the Byrds' "Sweetheart of the Rodeo."

The documentary details Parsons' later success with Hillman in the Flying Burrito Brothers, but ignores his solo albums with Emmylou Harris.

Nor is Parsons' death by a drug overdose mentioned, although Morrison and Elliot's deaths are fully examined.

Elliot is remembered as the prime den mother of the Laurel Canyon bacchanal. Morrison's rise and fall as the leader of the Doors is the documentary's most tragic story.

In the second segment, the young Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt take center stage, along with the rise of the Eagles. The band's founders, Glenn Frey and Don Henley, got their start playing in Ronstadt's band, and she encouraged them to form the group. Browne and Frey co-wrote one of the band's early hits, "Take It Easy."

The popularity of the Eagles, who along with Crosby, Stills and Nash and Ronstadt began playing in stadiums, marks the end of Laurel Canyon's cozy scene.

A facile marketing scheme for the band’s “Desperadoes” album in which they pose as Old West gunfighters reflects the rise of contrived self-indulgence and decline of spontaneity.

Manager David Geffen and his partner Elliot Roberts are shown at the start of their careers, which brought them immense wealth. When established companies refuse to give their clients contracts, they form Asylum Records.

"Laurel Canyon" strikingly contrasts with Epix's other summer documentary, the six-part "Helter Skelter: An American Myth," which revisits the Charles Manson Family's murderous rampage in the summer of 1969.

Manson failed to achieve the rock star lifestyle carried out in Laurel Canyon, and the ebullient musicians fostered the family spirit that he defiled.

The Manson Family makes an appearance in "Laurel Canyon," with Love's Arthur Lee describing a visit from Manson follower Bobby Beausoleil, a  former bandmate.

Beausoleil, given a life sentence for the murder of Gary Hinman under Manson's direction, tells Lee about living at the Spahn Ranch. When Lee expresses an interest in visiting, Beausoleil warns him not to because of Manson's racism.

The murders ended Laurel Canyon's free-spirited way of life, putting a pin into the bubble, one resident recalls. Crosby remembers buying a shotgun after hearing about the crimes.

Other pressures closed in. The music's soaring popularity and big money made groups unwilling to share their songs. Cocaine was a destructive force after marijuana and LSD, which the film sees as benign. Soon after Woodstock, the peace and love ethos crashed with the violence at Altramont inflicted by the Hells Angels, hired by the Rolling Stones to provide "security" for the rock festival.

Plus, the scene got old. In the film, Michelle Phillips recalls how happy she was to leave Laurel Canyon for Bel Air with her husband, John Phillips, despite their volatile marriage. Michelle says they were still hippies, but rich hippies. She adds they were now part of the establishment.

 

 

Epix series "Helter Skelter" revisits Charles Manson Family murders

Did Charles Manson's murders presage today's racial turmoil?

The six-episode "Helter Skelter: An American Myth," which ended Sunday on Epix, avoids drawing parallels between the Manson Family's killing spree in the summer of 1969 and today's conflicts.

But Manson's racist theories, white supremacist views, conspiracy fantasies and total psychological control over his followers, predominantly young women, eerily echo in the age of QAnon and Donald Trump's racially divided America.

Manson planned the murders of nine people, including the pregnant young actress Sharon Tate, to incite a race war, according to prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who won convictions against Manson and several members of his family in a 10-month trial. 

The song "Helter Skelter" on the Beatles' White Album sent messages to Manson, Bugliosi claimed, as outlined in his best-seller, "Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders."

Lesley Chilcott, the director of the revealing series, challenges the "Helter Skelter" thesis. The Academy Award-winning producer of "An Inconvenient Truth" disputes the idea of Manson as a criminal mastermind, seeing him as an impaired conman who ordered the murders to assuage his ego, crushed by his failed dreams of rock stardom.

The series doesn't fully make its case that the "Helter Skelter" theory was a myth. But it does puncture any notions of Manson as a romantic revolutionary criminal genius. He comes off as a grubby, pathological grifter.

At times meandering, confusing and repetitive, the series presents an in-depth account of the Manson Family saga. Interviews with journalists and former family members, audiotapes of Bugliosi and others, archival film and staged re-creations bring fascinating new information to well-covered ground.

Chilcott gives new attention to the murder of  Gary Hinman, which preceded those of Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Steven Parent on Aug. 9, 1969 at 10050 Cielo Drive. She also gives an in-depth examination of the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca the night after the Tate killings.

Bugliosi convicted Manson of the murders, although the cult leader didn't actually carry out the killings. Along with the murders, Manson was convicted of conspiracy. The Tate slayings were committed by Charles “Tex” Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Linda Kasabian

The series gives a sympathetic portrait of Tate's grief-stricken husband, Roman Polanski, who strangely wondered if Bruce Lee or Mamas and Papas leader John Phillips could be involved, out of revenge for Polanski carrying out a one-night stand with Phillips' wife, Mama Michelle Phillips. We also get glimpses of Polanski and Tate's glittery wedding.

Another strange vignette is how Manson ingratiated himself with the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson. After Wilson picked up two of the Manson women hitchhiking, the family invited themselves to move into Wilson's home, which he eventually abandoned.

Charles Manson also sought a recording contract from producer Terry Melcher, Doris Day's son. Melcher once lived at the home where Tate and the others were slaughtered. The series doesn't adequately explore the theory that Manson believed Melcher still lived at the house and sought retribution for not receiving a deal.

The last episode gives amazing footage from the trial that began July 15, 1970. The trial turned into a carnival, with reporters interviewing Manson as he walked to the courtroom, and his supporters, led by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, carrying out demonstrations and threatening witnesses and reporters. Manson also made an effort to attack the judge.

A major mystery is why young women found the scrawny, 5-foot-2 Manson so attractive. He had an uncanny ability to manipulate their deepest insecurities, with some techniques taken from Dale Carnegie.

The series' second episode details Manson's tortured childhood, most of which he spent in juvenile detention before graduating to prison. At times intriguing, the biographical episode grows tedious.

More compelling is the story of the Manson Family's beginnings in San Francisco during the Summer of Love. In pursuit of his musical career, Manson uprooted the family to Los Angeles, where they lived on the Spahn Ranch movie set. As Manson's mental state deteriorated, he led the family to an abandoned ranch in Death Valley, where their living situation worsened.

Journalist Steve Oney, who wrote an exhaustive oral history of the Manson murders for Los Angeles magazine on the 40th anniversary of the killings, gives insightful commentary in the last two episodes of the series. Audiotapes of his interviews with the late Bugliosi and others are used frequently.

The Atlanta native and author of "And the Dead Shall Rise," the definitive book on the Leo Frank lynching, expresses a key theme of the series, that the Manson family was not a glamorous revolutionary band, as some believed, but a shabby group of destitute criminals.

Oney also points out that the Manson killings brought an end to Los Angeles' spirit of openness and "good vibrations," as the Beach Boys song said. The murders also marked a change in America.

When the slayings occurred, Richard Nixon had already been elected on a "law and order" theme. While Woodstock took place a week after the Tate murders, the peace and love era was over.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Southern football takes its stand

The coronavirus is breaking up college football.

After the Pac-12 and Big 10 decided to delay fall sports - the Pac-12 postponed all sports including basketball until the first of the year - the SEC, ACC and Big 12 vowed to play football this autumn, coronavirus be damned.

The split reveals that the NCAA doesn't control football, as AJC columnist Mark Bradley keeps pointing out. The power football programs rule the sport. Now, their greedy alliance for TV money and gridiron glory is falling apart.

Outside of the Big 10's Ohio St., the conferences going ahead with fall football have dominated the championship playoffs with perennial powers like Clemson, Oklahoma, Alabama, and last year's champion, LSU.

If the ACC, SEC and Big 12 manage to get through their seasons, perhaps they'll cobble together a playoffs among them. But the validity of that championship would be disputed, with the Big 10 and Pac 12 out. Perhaps we'll have a fall champion and a spring champion.

Nebraska, a once first-tier power in decline for years, was the most upset Big 10 member over the conference's decision to punt. The Cornhuskers said they might break away and play outside the conference. But with the ACC, SEC and Big 12 all deciding to cancel out-of-conference games, Nebraska would have no one to play. Maybe a semipro team in Omaha would schedule the Big Red.

ACC, SEC and Big 12 schools are also opening classrooms to students. Sportswriter Will Leitch, who lives in Athens, Ga., warned in his fine weekly newsletter that students are packing the college town's notorious bars, left open by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. The famous drinking schools around the South are holding frat parties, going on binges and hooking up.

Spectators won't be allowed into the mammoth stadiums that dominate Southern campuses, but the bars will be full on game day, and nothing will stop tailgating.

Covid-19 likely will  spread even if the ACC, SEC and Big 12 decide to cancel football. But the games will be an extra incentive for students to party on, as the virus lurks.

HBO's "Perry Mason" finishes strong after bleak start

After a cumbersome beginning, I grew to like HBO's version of "Perry Mason."

HBO's Perry is not the suave, self-assured defense attorney memorably portrayed by Raymond Burr in the long-running CBS series. Rather, he's a sad-sack World War I veteran suffering from PTSD who begins the series as a deadbeat private investigator in Depression-era Los Angeles.

While acknowledging author Erle Stanley Gardner's creation of the character, the new Perry Mason is more like a damaged Philip Marlowe, or Jake Gittes.

Hearkening back to the CBS show's courtroom dramas in the final episodes, the HBO version overall is more of a crime procedural in which Mason investigates the kidnapping and murder of an infant. The child's mother is eventually accused of the crime, and Mason and associates prove her innocent and find the true murderer, a corrupt LA detective.

In a dual storyline that converges with the crime investigation, a fraudulent megachurch gains immense popularity through a messianic young evangelist's claims of performing miracles. 

Despite the show's gorgeous period details, Matthew Rhys' glum performance as Mason and the dense script made viewing at the beginning an ordeal. I wondered where HBO had lost the humor that gave counterpoint to the the dark stories of "The Sopranos" and "The Wire."

As the series progresses, and Mason grows more like Burr's Perry, Rhys lightens the mood, and the excellent cast achieves dramatic symmetry in exploring characters' personalities and relationships.

The show depicts Mason advancing from private investigator to increasingly assured defense attorney. As Mason gains confidence, realizing that he's found his role in life, Rhys softens his performance, raising Mason's personal appeal. 

In another shift from the TV show, Juliet Rylance portrays Della Street as an ambitious, savvy striver, adding new dimensions to Barbara Hale's  performance as the character in the CBS serial.

When the accused young mother's aging attorney kills himself, Rylance's Street encourages Mason to study law under another familiar character, Hamilton Berger, and take the bar exam. Mason, as was possible in that era, is admitted to the bar, and takes over the woman's defense, with the assured assistance of Street.

The blossoming relationship of Mason and Street, delicately portrayed by Rhys and Rylance, is one of the show's highpoints. In another HBO twist, Street is a lesbian in a passionate affair with a younger woman flamboyantly portrayed by Molly Ephraim. But there's a smoldering sexual tension between Rhys and Rylance that drives the show, without ever igniting.

Gayle Rankin delivers the show's most mesmerizing performance as Emily Dotson, the mother accused of murdering her son. With her expressive eyes, Rankin registers a range of emotions. An adulterous relationship before the child's death is used to fan suspicions of her guilt, but Mason raises doubts about the prosecution's case, bringing a mistrial.

Rankin shows the anguish of a grieving mother, a woman's yearning for love leading to adultery, a gentle innocence, and the desperation of a woman fearing execution. As with other women on the show, her interactions with Rhys' Mason are an emotional force.

An excellent cast raises the show's narrative tenor from episode to episode. John Lithgow gives a melancholy portrayal as attorney E.B. Jonathan, Mason's mentor, who tragically kills himself when overwhelmed by financial problems and declining abilities. HBO everyman Shia Whigman plays a street-wise private investigator with his usual flair. HBO familiars Lili Taylor and Stephen Root also display the cable channel's pedigree.

Tatiana Maslany blends the charismatic evangelist's exuberance with an endearing underlying vulnerability. She also has a smoldering relationship with Mason, whose denouement provides a bittersweet ending.

Chris Chalk achieves a thrilling emergence as Mason's investigator Paul Drake. In another innovation from the old show, Drake's a black Los Angeles police officer whose investigative brilliance is crushed by the department's virulent racism. Chalk sensitively illustrates Drake's complexities. He's a family man whose wife is expecting a child. Paralleling Mason, Chalk's Drake also grows more assured during the series, ending up as Mason's investigator.

At first blush, I thought HBO's "Perry Mason" a gorgeous misfire. The show doesn't rank among "The Sopranos" and "The Wire," but is a worthy addition to the cable channel's canon. With elements of "True Detective" and "Boardwalk Empire," HBO's "Perry Mason" holds a similar place to those shows in the HBO oeuvre.

 

SEC football goes to 10-game conference schedule

The SEC always drew complaints for playing fewer conference opponents than other leagues.

While other conferences played at least nine in-conference games, the SEC stayed with eight, claiming another tough conference foe would be too daunting.

Instead, SEC powers were notorious for scheduling a couple of cupcakes from outside the league, along with one opponent from one of the other "power" conferences.

For years, the eight-game conference schedule was ironclad dogma for SEC coaches, although Alabama's Nick Saban espoused adding another conference game.

But the coronavirus pandemic has ended that era. The league announced Thursday that because of the coronavirus surge, each SEC team will play 10 conference opponents in the 2020 season. Anticipated regional matchups like LSU-Texas, Alabama-USC and Virginia-Georgia were cancelled.

Even SEC-ACC rivalry games like Georgia-Georgia Tech, Florida-Florida State and South Carolilna-Clemson will be scrapped. The ACC in announcing its Covid-19 plans this week offered a play-in game so that those in-state games could be preserved, but the SEC the next day slammed the door.

The SEC also announced its 10-game inter-conference season would begin Sept. 26.

Old-timers like me remember when football season always began on the last weekend in September, and teams played 10 games. Before ESPN pushed the sport to Labor Day, football was a fall sport, and "student athletes" weren't as burdened.

Playing a full conference schedule will be new for the SEC. Now the Big 10, Big 12, ACC and Pac 12 can't say the SEC plays a lesser conference schedule.

The pandemic doesn't care about those plans, and there's a high probability that college football will be curtailed, or not played at all. The New York Times reported Friday that American universities are already reporting a surge in Covid-19 cases, even before students return to campuses for fall classes.

A major outbreak on a college team similar to that of major league baseball's Miami Marlins will lead a team to forfeit one or two games, affecting league standings. The SEC moved its annual championship game to Dec. 19, meaning it would have a week or two at the end of the regular season for rescheduling games.

With players crashing into each other on each play, and sharing locker-rooms, college football looks like the perfect environment for Covid-19's spread.

 

 

 

 

Covid-19 baseball strains game's traditions

Even baseball enthusiast Bob Costas thinks the covid-19 season is crazy.

Costas, appearing on Chris Cuomo's CNN show Monday night, questioned whether the makeshift 60-game season can continue after 17 Miami Marlins tested positive for the disease.

The Marlins outbreak has led to the cancellation of the team's home opener against Baltimore, and the postponement of the Yankees series against the Phillies, who played the Marlins over the weekend although one Miami player had already tested positive to the disease.

Despite his misgivings, Costas expressed hope that the season can be salvaged. He characterized the season as someone walking across a tightrope with fingers crossed.

While the games are strange, I couldn't resist watching our fine Braves club against the Mets and now Tampa Bay, where the seats are empty even without a pandemic.

Chip Caray and Tom Glavine, social distanced in a booth at local Truist Stadium while the Braves were on the road, gave entertaining commentary from watching play on TV monitors. In the old days, radio announcers called games from telegraph reports. Now they call the action from digital feeds.

I was glad to see the return of players like Ronald Acuna Jr., Charley Culberson, Ozzie Albies and Covid-19 survivor Freddie Freeman. Some players wore masks, others didn't. Manager Brian Snitker kept his mask on, even when coming out to the mound to change pitchers. A runner on first base had no way to social distance from the first baseman. The outfielders of course generally social distance, but Ronald still wore his mask.

The absence of fans wasn't that strange. The cardboard cutouts representing spectators reminded me of the electronic baseball game I had as a kid, with its fans painted onto aluminum stands.

The screwy schedule would have old-time baseball writers like Red Smith shaking their heads. The Braves remain in the National League, but their 60 games don't include any longtime senior circuit rivals like the Cubs, the Dodgers, the Giants and the Reds.

The Braves play a number of games against American League East teams the Yankees, the Red Sox, Tampa Bay and Toronto, now in Buffalo after Canada booted the Blue Jays out over coronavirus fears.

Unless they make the playoffs, the Braves won't compete against National League teams outside their division. The standards of a balanced regular season schedule and league teams competing against each other has been tossed out. This was a necessity because of the reduced schedule, but it still takes away from the ideal of fair competition.

After the Braves won an extra-inning game against the Mets, everyone was talking about how much they loved the new rule to place a player on second base when a tie game goes to the 10th inning. I suppose the rule shortened the game somewhat, but it still seems a violation of the game's spirit.

While the games were fine, I won't be heart-broken if this contrived season is scrapped.

 

 

Covid-19 surge makes college football season unlikely

College football this autumn looks increasingly doubtful.

The Big 10 announced Thursday that only conference games will be played, and the Ivy League scrapped its season. Big 10 Commissioner Kevin Warren admitted that football is endangered.

Other power conferences are expected to follow the Big 10, which left open the possibility of canceling its entire season.

The benefits of the Big 10's move are puzzling. Within the conference, teams still have to make long road trips, increasing their risk of Covid-19 exposure. Ohio St. now won't travel to Eugene to play Oregon, but will go to East Lansing, Mich., Champaign, Ill., and State College, Pa.

All of the major conferences span huge geographical areas. If the aim is to protect players' health, rather than save money, a national rush to inter-conference play won't reduce the travel danger.

For example, an ACC move to inter-league play would scrap Georgia Tech's annual game with Georgia, 80 miles away. But the Yellow Jackets would still take long trips to play ACC foes Pittsburgh and Syracuse.

If the major conferences follow the Big 10, athletes and coaches will still risk their health traveling long distances.

With the Covid-19 pandemic worsening, the college football season should be postponed, as the Ivy League has done.

 

 

 

"Hamilton" close up

We found ourselves by good fortune watching "Hamilton" streaming on the Disney + channel on Independence Day.

The "Hamilton" film shows the orignal cast in an edited version of three live performances of the musical recorded in June 2016. We'd seen the production at New York's Richard Rodgers Theater at about that time, so it was thrilling to see close-up stage views of what we'd witnessed from distant seats.

For the first time, we saw the show's creator Lin-Manuel Miranda playing Alexander Hamilton; he'd been ably replaced by understudy Jon Rua for our performance, with the rest of the cast present.

While Miranda's acting is superb, his singing falls short of the other cast members. But the emotional depths he reaches overcomes the deficiencies of his voice.

Miranda's music is amazing, especially his ability to translate complex historical material into jaunty song lyrics. I'd forgotten that the play's narrative is almost totally conveyed by songs. The frequent rap numbers take the place of spoken dialogue, but many of the pop-oriented songs also progress the story, reminiscent of Rodgers' own "Oklahoma."

As New Yorker writer Lauren Michele Jackson pointed out, "Hamilton" succeeds as a musical, with even politically oriented songs like "In the Room Where It Happened" and "It Must Be Nice to Have Washington on Your Side" as infectious as pop romantic ballads.

The love song "Helpless" recalls the confections of 1960s girl groups, and Jonathan Goff's "You'll Be Back" sounds like a 1950s hit from Dion or Neil Sedaka.

Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography blends with the show, with an admirable absence of ostentation.

Seeing the faces of  the dynamic performers Leslie Odom Jr., Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson, Phillip Soo, Renee Elise Goldsberry and Okieriete "Oak" Onaodowan was overpowering.

The closeup camera revealed the inner workings of stagecraft, yet the theatrical magic remained.