Take It Easy

 

Well, I'm running down the road tryin' to loosen my load

I've got so many things on my mind

The national election, COVID-19, the fires and climate change

And don’t forget reply all email, where is that bottle of wine (bad rhyme, sorry)

 

[Chorus 1]

Take It easy, take it easy

Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy

Lighten up while you still can

Don't even try to understand

Just find a place to make your stand and take it easy

 

[Verse 2]

Well, I'm a standing on the eighteenth tee,

And such a fine sight to see

It’s a beautiful, green fairway,

But as usual I hook my drive, left, behind a tree

 

[Chorus 2]

Come on, baby, don't say maybe

I gotta know if 2020 is gonna save me

We may lose, and we may win

Though we will never be here again

So open up, I'm climbin' in

So take it easy

 

[Verse 3]

Well I'm running down the road trying to loosen my load

Got a world of trouble on my mind

Lookin' for the truth in 2020

It is so hard to find

 

[Chorus 3]

Take it easy, take it easy

Don't let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy

Come on baby, don't say maybe

I gotta know if 2020 is gonna save me, oh oh oh

Oh we got it easy

We oughta take it easy

 

A thank you to Glenn Frey and Jackson Browne’s lyrics of May 1972.

 

It is about time we “take it easy” with Rink Rats and relax for at least one installment.

Time to laugh at myself and ourselves.

Wish me luck.

 

“I’m not talking to myself; I’m having a parent-teacher conference.”

 

“I finished Netflix today.”

 

This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her cat. It was obvious she thought her cat understood her. I came into my house, told my dog–we laughed a lot.

 

I’ll tell you a coronavirus joke now, but you’ll have to wait two weeks to see if you got it.

What did the man say to the bartender? I’ll have a corona, hold the virus.

 

Ran out of toilet paper and started using lettuce leaves. Today was just the tip of the iceberg, tomorrow romaines to be seen.

 

Finland just closed its borders. You know what that means. No one will be crossing the finish line.

 

What types of jokes are allowed during quarantine? Inside jokes!

 

President Trump is a member at Winged Foot Golf Club (site of this past week United States Golf Championship) ,where he kicks his ball so often the caddies call him "Pele."

Okay, enough of my stand-up act, now some serious news.

 

2020 - Just when you thought 2020 could not get any worse.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 1933-2020

I hope we can all appreciate the legacy of someone so incredibly brave and courageous as RBG and put politics aside for a moment and just honor her. She deserves that.

John Lewis, who we also lost to this unforgiving year, liked to tell young people to get into Good Trouble. RBG did something even more rare. She went Good Viral. A law student, Shana Knizhnik, anointed her the Notorious R.B.G., a play on the name of the Notorious B.I.G., a famous rapper who was Brooklyn-born, like the justice. Soon the name, and Justice Ginsburg's image — her expression serene yet severe, a frilly lace collar adorning her black judicial robe, her eyes framed by oversize glasses and a gold crown perched at a rakish angle on her head — became an internet sensation.

I said it before, and I am sad to say it again. This has got to be the loneliest year.

The next fifty days are going to be gross.

CHUCK BROILED - Chuck E. Cheese wants to spend more than $2 million to destroy more than seven billion prize tickets, which it says is enough tickets to fill approximately 65 forty-foot cargo shipping containers ... Chuck E. Cheese wants them destroyed because the money it would cost to destroy the tickets is far cheaper than the $9 million that it would cost the pizza chain if the tickets ended up in the hands of the general public and were redeemed for prizes. (I'm sure the Trump administration has a ballot shredder that could beat that price.)

THE SKY IS FALLING – 213 class-action lawsuits filed by students to receive free tuition or refunds. 204% increase in number of coronavirus cases in a single week at the University of California at Berkeley. 264 non-faculty furloughed at $2.3 billion endowment Pomona College.

It has been a rough summer in the college and university business. The coronavirus pandemic has reduced budgets, leading to hiring freezes, furloughs, layoffs, and uncertainty about the future of higher education in America.

The result, a heightened distrust between administrators and faculty and staff. Even in the best of times these relationships are strained. In the view of some faculty, anti-intellectual administrative bean counters are using the pandemic as an excuse to enact changes faculty and staff have long resisted. Some administrators, on the other hand, feel that they are in survival mode, scrambling to keep their institutions afloat. In their view, faculty are clueless when it comes to the economic realities of managing an institution of higher learning, while staff members hold no decision-making power, so who cares about them. Meanwhile Boards of Trustees only care about two things: when can we cash the ESPN checks or how many lawsuits do we have.

Change is coming at so my levels, for those to survive, a new way of thinking and managing must be initiated. We shall see. Perhaps a place to start; ban reply all emails. :)

COLLEGE CHRONICLES - The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor has seen weeks of upheaval lately, including a graduate-assistant strike — a rare move for the storied Graduate Employees’ Organization — that has roiled the campus. Graduate assistants stopped teaching and walked a socially distanced picket line to demand improved coronavirus testing, better representation in pandemic-related decisions, and time-to-degree extensions. A group of resident advisers joined them, and undergraduates who had tested positive for Covid-19 took to social media to file bleak dispatches from quarantine apartments provided by the university.

Tensions came to a head during a virtual meeting attended by more than 2,000 faculty members at Michigan. Nine hundred and fifty-seven faculty members voted no confidence in President Mark S. Schlissel for his handling of the university’s reopening, narrowly edging out the 953 who voted against the resolution; there were 184 abstentions. A no-confidence vote in the university’s reopening plan, meanwhile, narrowly failed, 915 to 991, with 198 abstentions.

TIKTOC FOR SALE – President Trump has blessed the sale of the Tick-Tock Restaurant (1973-2017). The iconic restaurant in Canton, New York has been vacant for many years since its owner Rick Cassara put up the property for sale. President Trump intervened when it became apparent the Chinese government was involved as a potential buyer. Stay tuned. BTW – number 25’s picture is still on the wall in the back room.

TV WATCH - The Emmy Awards went on as scheduled Sunday, with Jimmy Kimmel noting at the outset that while an awards show might "seem frivolous and unnecessary" in the middle of a pandemic, "Right now, we need fun."

The winners, however, offered what came across as a collective message -- preaching unity while urging viewers to vote in the upcoming election, a point echoed by Regina King (a winner for "Watchmen"), Mark Ruffalo ("I Know This Much is True") and others. The show also repeatedly cited the need for togetherness and inclusion, showcasing the industry's diversity as well as the breadth of offerings available, at a time when TV has become a lifeline to viewers spending more time at home.

The awards themselves were a story of sweeps and near-sweeps. HBO's "Succession" snagged four of the seven drama prizes, "Watchmen" dominated the limited-series voting -- amassing 11 awards overall, including seven claimed during earlier ceremonies in technical areas -- and the final season of "Schitt's Creek" swept the comedy categories.

MARKET WEEK - Buzzy tech startup Snowflake went public on the NYSE last week under the ticker SNOW. It’s expected to pop like *NSYNC.

The backstory: The eight-year-old startup provides cloud-based data management for businesses (stop snoring, it’s rude). Bloomberg describes its product as “a vacuum sucking up data strewn across in different systems, so that businesses can analyze it all together.” MA please take note.

Investors have that surprise snow day feeling: Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and Salesforce have each thrown $250 million in the pot. And while Snowflake initially targeted a share price between $75 and $85, it’s opening day IPO price was $235/share.

Worth $33.3 billion, it would be the most valuable software startup ever to go public.

Why the hype? The enterprise cloud biz is torrential—lots of businesses need lots of data stored and analyzed. Snowflake is competing with mammoth incumbents Oracle and Amazon Web Services’s Redshift, but some analysts say Snowflake’s product is stronger and more flexible than the legacy players'.

Snowflake hauled in a Minneapolis-in-December drift of revenue in its most recent fiscal year, growing 174% annually to $265 million.

But the company, which embarked on a pricey expansion last year following a CEO shakeup, is not profitable.

You know what they say about IPOs: When it snows, it blizzards

As of the end of last week, U.S.-listed companies had raised over $78 billion in 2020...though many of them are doing it the new-fashioned way: blank-check companies, also known as SPACs.

Looking ahead...with 12 entrants, this is the busiest week for IPOs since Uber went public in May 2019. Videogame engine maker Unity joined Snowflake on the NYSE last week, looking to raise up to $1.2 billion.

RETAIL HOLIDAY PREVIEW – Fall begins tomorrow September 22, but temperatures dipped below 70 this weekend back east so we’re already slipping peppermint creamer into our coffee. To kick off this holiday preview, let's first check in with Captain Obvious. Captain?

Celebrations will look different:

Nearly three-quarters of adults expect smaller holiday gatherings with friends and family because of Covid-19, according to a Morning Consult survey. About half expect virtual celebrations.

First up, Halloween. If grocery aisles could talk, they’d say 1) Halloween is already in full swing, and 2) there’s still a contingent of you who willingly buy Butterfingers.

With 10% of annual sales at risk, Hershey is working with public health experts on a trick-or-treating website showing county-level coronavirus risks. Lawmakers have asked the CDC to release Halloween guidance, including alternatives like drive-through trick-or-treating. And LA County advised residents to move costume parties to Zoom.

To play Devil’s advocate (ha), Halloween is literally built around masks and individually packaged treats…

Next stop, Thanksgiving. Marching band parents exhaled a sigh of relief after Macy’s announced a TV-only parade yesterday. It'll pre-record segments with fewer participants and sub in specialty vehicles to lug the balloons.

Retailers are adapting: Holiday spending accounts for ~20% of U.S. retail sales and has increased every year since 2002...except 2008.

With the pandemic, 2020 spending could take a dip, especially without additional stimulus checks or padded unemployment benefits. But, with less travel and dining out, it could also go up.

Either way, retailers aren't waiting until Black Friday to find out. On October 10, more than two dozen are reportedly participating in a new holiday discount event mirroring Alibaba's Singles' Day in China. Home Depot, Macy’s, Walmart, Target, and American Eagle are moving their holiday seasons up. And Amazon Prime Day, typically held in the summer, is reportedly rescheduled for Oct. 26.

Starting early helps spread out crowds and process orders before holiday shipping surcharges take effect in November. But companies are still bulking up for the busy season: UPS and FedEx are hiring a combined 170,000 seasonal workers; Amazon said yesterday its hiring 100,000 full and part-time employees.

POTUS WEEK - MONDAY: The president will travel to Ohio and give speeches in Dayton and Swanton. TUESDAY: Trump will travel to Pittsburgh to give a speech. WEDNESDAY: Trump will deliver remarks in honor of veterans who fought at the Bay of Pigs. Trump will participate in a discussion with state attorneys general on “protecting consumers from social media abuses. THURSDAY: Trump will travel to Jacksonville, Fla. and give a speech.

ON THESE DATES – September 20, 1968, CBS premiered the pilot episode of the crime drama series Hawaii FiveO starring Jack Lord as Detective Steve McGarrett. Tim O'Kelly played the role of Danny Williams in the pilot - producers replaced him with James MacArthur in the regular series episodes. “Book him Danno.”

September 19, 1970,  fifty years ago, CBS premiered the Mary Tyler Moore Show, a classic.

 

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this week to Brian Ferry (75), Cheryl Hines (55), Sophia Loren (86), Bill Murray (70), Ava Suffredini …famous soccer playing niece, Cheryl Walker ….famous multi-tasker, Matthew Witt ….famous Professor of public administration.

 

PERRY MASON – One of my pandemic rituals has been watching the Perry Mason CBS series of 1957 – 1966. 271 shows (one in color), Perry won 268 cases and lost only three. My favorite season was season two; September 20, 1958 – June 27, 1959, great fifties television. In season two my three favorites are: “The Case of the Buried Clock”, “The Case of the Jilted Jockey”, and “The case of the Dangerous Dowager”. You can view on Amazon Video, Sundance and FETV networks.

CONGRATS – To RR reader Myra Garcia for her new position as Vice President for Institutional Advancement for the San Diego Symphony.

CONGRATS II – To Bill Fox ‘75, President of The St. Lawrence University on his retirement announcement effective June 30, 2021 after twelve years as POSLU. One word: irreplaceable.

CONGRATS III - Congrats to Dodgers fans on your team being the first to clinch a playoff spot in this bizarro MLB season. With the Detroit Tigers out of it (what a shock) but the A’s and Padres looking good, we here at California are hoping for an all-California World Series. To bad the World Series will be played in Texas.

I WAS JUST KIDDING - “I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."

SIGN OF THE TIMES – Tony Romo, CBS Football NFL lead analyst has an annual salary of $18 million. And this writer should win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. The world is out of its mind!

DETROIT PROFESSIONAL SPORTS – It seems that nothing is like it was. I cannot get a haircut. There is no going out for dinner and eating inside. I am unable to visit our gym (it closed). Movie theaters are closed. But in this crazy, topsy-turvy time we are living in, one thing remains the same: Detroit professional sport teams still stink.

FINALE de la COUPE STANLEY - The NHL returned to play on Aug. 1 with 24 teams. Seven weeks later, only two remain.

Three days after the Stars punched their ticket to the 2020 Stanley Cup Final, the Lightning did the same with a 2-1 (OT) win over the Islanders.

Tampa Bay is seeking its first Stanley Cup since 2004, while Dallas is seeking its first since 1999.

The favorite: The Lightning (-180) fell in the first round last year after a record-tying 62-win season. They were one of the NHL's best teams again this season, led by a high-powered offense and the world's best goalie in Andrei Vasilevskiy.

The underdog: The Stars (+160) were far from a great team this season, scoring fewer goals per game than all but five other teams. Bookmakers didn't give Dallas much of a chance to win the Cup, yet here they are.

By the numbers: The Stars have conceded more goals than they've scored this postseason, something no Stanley Cup winner has done since the 2004-05 lockout. Meanwhile, the Lightning — who have led the NHL in goals scored for three straight seasons — have continued racking up goals in the playoffs.

Goals per game: Stars: 2.95 | Lightning: 3.17

Goals against: Stars: 3.05 | Lightning: 2.28

Schedule: The NHL staged both conference finals series in the Edmonton bubble, and that will continue through the Stanley Cup Final.

Game 1: Sept. 19

Game 2: Sept. 21

Game 3: Sept. 23

Game 4: Sept. 25

Game 5: Sept. 26

Game 6: Sept. 28

Game 7: Sept. 30

For the record: The Swami predicted a Washington v. St. Louis Final. Oops.

Second chance: Dallas in six.

STAT OF THE DAY - Did you know this year’s Stanley Cup final is played in the Northern most NHL city featuring the two Southern most cities ever to play in the final.

BIG TEN (14) SELL OUT - We are witnessing an egregious preference for profit over public health and a disregard for morality and common sense, not to mention the health of young athletes.

The Pac-12 will fall into the trap, U.S.C., Oregon, Stanford, Washington State, Colorado, Utah. … will also announce soon they will play.

The Big Ten reversed itself and decided to play college football this season, joining the big colleges in the South and Southwest. That just leaves the Pac-12, on the West Coast, holding out. The temptation to return and cash in may be too great.

 

College players, many of them teenagers still learning how to make smart decisions, don’t get paid for risking themselves or their loved ones. They do not have health and safety protections afforded to professional players through their labor unions.

“I want to recommend that the Pac-12 get going,” Pac-12 Commissioner Donald Trump said. “There is no reason they should not be playing.”

 

SWAMI’S WEEK TOP PICKS –

NFL Football Pick of the Week – Sunday 9/27, 4:05 PM (PT), Fox: Dallas Cowboys (1-1) at Seattle Seahawks (2-0). Dallas is coming off a sloppy, lucky win over Atlanta, not in Seattle, Seahawks win 38 - 28. (Season to Date 2-0)

College Football Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/26, 9:00 AM (PT), ESPNSEC:  #27 Kentucky Wildcats (0-0) at #8 Auburn Tigers (0-0). Opening weekend in the mask-less Jordan-Hare Stadium. Tigers win big, 42 - 20. (Season to Date 1-1)

Stanley Cup Final – “You are never going to stop a hockey player by hitting him over the head, you have got to take the body!” Howie Meeker.  Dallas Stars will take the body over the Tampa Bay Lightning in six games.

MLB Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/26, 4:00 PM (PT) Fox: Chicago Cubs (31-21) at Chicago White Sox (34-19), last weekend of the COVID-19 season. The south side is better than the north side, Sox win  6 – 3. (Season to Date (2-1)

English Premier League Pick of the Week – Saturday 9/26, 9:30 AM (PT) NBCSN; West Bromwich (0-2) at Chelsea (1-0). Stamford Bridge will see the Blues dominate the Albion, Chelsea wins 3 - 0.  (Season to Date 1-1)

2020 Season to Date (18 - 13)

DRIVING THE WEEK — Welcome to a week that will be dominated by a SCOTUS fight that has further blown up an already crazy election season. The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seized Washington over the weekend and will dominate the political debate over the next six weeks until Election Day and perhaps beyond into a lame duck session.

That means that while Congress will (probably) figure out a way to avoid a shutdown at the end of this month, the chances that there will be any extra bandwidth for a deal on a large stimulus package that pumps more cash to individuals and small businesses seem even smaller than they were. And they were pretty small.

And while the SCOTUS fight could potentially boost President Donald Trump, the lack of any new economic support out of Congress is likely to hurt him.

Congress is fully back this week and leaders in both parties will try and put together a deal to to keep the government open past Sept. 30. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated Sunday that she would not try to use a potential shutdown as a way to try and block a Trump SCOTUS nominee … Trump visits Ohio on Monday, Pittsburgh on Tuesday and Florida on Friday …

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Fed Chair Jerome Powell will talk about the Covid-19 response before House Financial Services on Tuesday … Powell will appear before the House Select Subcommittee on Covid-19 on Wednesday and both Mnuchin and Powell will appear before Senate Banking on Thursday. 

 

Next Blog: Jack Ass and word of the month.

Until Thursday October 1, 2020 Adios.

Claremont, California

September 21, 2020

#XI-11-417

3,392 words, eight minute read

 

CARTOON OF THE WEEK – Campus Times

 

 

RINK RATS POLL – Mail or in-person vote this election?

___ Mail

___ In Person

___ I am not voting

 

QUOTE OF THE MONTH – "Forget it’s five o’clock somewhere. It’s 2020 everywhere, drink when you want." – Danica Patrick

 

Rink Rats is a blog of weekly observations, predictions and commentary. We welcome your comments and questions. Also participate in our monthly poll. Rink Rats is now viewed in Europe, Canada, South America and the United States.

Posted at Rink Rats The Blog: First Published – May 3, 2010

Our Eleventh Year.

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