Weekend Whats

Weekend Edition

What to Rock: Anyone who tells you rock is dead doesn't listen to Royal Blood. The dynamic duo is back with a new album, a hint of disco added to their sound, and a must listen. Check out Typhoons. This is the rock band that old school rockers love.

What to Book: I got an advance copy of The End of the Golden Gate, a collection of essays from writers on loving and (sometimes) leaving San Francisco. It's an excellent book and it couldn't be more timely. It features 25 acclaimed writers taking on the Bay Area-dweller's eternal conflict: Should I stay or should I go? (To paraphrase the Clash: If I go, there will be trouble, And if I stay it will cost me double.)

What to Carb: Unlike most Americans, I didn't rediscover carbs during the pandemic. I have remained true to pasta. And I'm pretty sure I just started boiling the best pasta brand I've tried. It's called Mancini, and my pot runneth over.

What to Promote: The promise of life not doing it for you? How about a donut? Free beer, pot and doughnuts. Savings bonds. A chance to win an all-terrain vehicle. Places around the U.S. are offering incentives to try to energize the nation's slowing vaccination drive and get Americans to roll up their sleeves. These relatively small corporate promotion efforts have been accompanied by more serious and far-reaching attempts by officials in cities such as Detroit, where they're offering $50 to people who give others a ride to vaccination sites. Chicago is sending specially equipped buses into neighborhoods to deliver vaccines. Public health officials say the efforts are crucial to reach people who haven't been immunized yet.

What to Spend: Counting the coronavirus stimulus plan approved earlier this year, President Biden has now proposed more than $5 trillion in new spending initiatives over the next decade—far more than Clinton or Obama ever offered—to be partially paid for by tax increases on corporations and affluent families. On cultural and social issues, Democrats are likewise pursuing a much more ambitious lineup than Clinton or Obama did. Should be an interesting 2022 election year. The Thing is lurking.

What to Read: John Grisham has spent the past 30 years churning out legal thrillers and courtroom dramas. His next act: A basketball novel.

 "Sooley" (available now) tells the story of 17-year-old Samuel Sooleymon, who leaves his family behind in a Sudanese refugee camp to chase his dreams of playing college basketball.

This is book No. 46 for Grisham, who hasn't gone a year without publishing a book since first releasing "The Firm" in 1991. Wild.

On the Rink Rats Book List.

What to Eat: Live in the Claremont, California area, crave a Chicago Dog or Wisconsin Brat, perhaps a Labatt Blue to wash it down? Well, “Windy C’s” 353 W. Bonita Avenue in Claremont is your place.

It is nice to visit a restaurant again (after fourteen months). The menu is decent Chicago Dogs, chili dogs, brats, onion rings and the usual. All worth a try. The service, not so good. The owner never smiles (must be a Chicago Bear fan) and no thank you for coming or giving them some business. Clean up the consumer relations and this place is a go.

Finally, after a year and a half: Rink Rats rating from 1 to 10 with 10 being Hoot Owl like: We give “Windy C’s” a six. Good food, ambiance is like visiting Mar-a-Lago with a “I love Joe” hat.

 

BOOK EM’ DANNO - Federal investigators in Manhattan executed a search warrant on Wednesday at the Upper East Side apartment of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who became President Donald J. Trump's personal lawyer, stepping up a criminal investigation into Mr. Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine, three people with knowledge of the matter said. One of the people said the investigators had seized Mr. Giuliani's electronic devices. Rudy Giuliani's Apartment Searched in Federal Investigation. Hmm. This is odd. Rudy never struck me as a guy who might be up to something unsavory.

 

FEEL GOOD FRIDAY - There was a time I needed a helping hand. They gave us an opportunity to get back on our feet. So it is my job to give back." Steelers Draft Pick Najee Harris Hosts Draft Party at Homeless Shelter Where He Used to Live.

Number of Americans fully vaccinated tops 100 million.

CVS to offer in-store mental health counseling.

Arab towns offer food, drink to Meron survivors; hundreds give blood in Tel Aviv.

Number of children held in Border Patrol facilities drops 84% since peak last month.

Crazy odds: Minneapolis mom gives birth to three kids, each two years apart, all on the same day. (I'm guessing the dad's birthday is exactly nine months before this date.)

 

PANDEMIC UPDATE - More Brazilians have died from the virus in the first four months of this year than in all of 2020, with the death toll having jumped from 300,000 to 400,000 in the past five weeks alone. Brazil's COVID-19 Deaths Top 400,000 Amid Fears Of Worsening Crisis.

As cases in India surge faster than anywhere in the world, Indians struggle to care for their family members who have COVID and mourn lost loved ones." Photos Show How Dire The Coronavirus Surge In India Is. (The numbers in India are likely being undercounted, but when you look at the disasters in India and Brazil, keep in mind that America had worse numbers under a president who called the virus a hoax.)

HEAD FOR THE LINKS - Watching the Masters on television usually makes golfers itchy to get on the course themselves. That may be especially true this year. The pandemic created a boom in golf participation, with about a half a million more players hitting the links last year as a safe escape from the drudgery of lockdown. But what happens when things get back to normal?

The industry has a lot of ideas for how to capitalize on the game's revival over the past year. Maybe golf becomes less formal and more social. Maybe it loosens the rules or even shortens the game by creating courses with fewer than 18, or even nine, holes.  We also talk to outgoing USGA chief executive Mike Davis about the biggest issues facing the game, such as how to make golf courses sustainable both financially and environmentally.

Golf is also angling for new ways to engage you on and off the course. All sorts of new tech is available that generates data to help you analyze—or, more likely, overanalyze—every aspect of your own game. We test-drove AI apps that aim to teach you to swing the club better, and found some workouts that will help you prepare physically for your round.

If you're at home, new technology is being rolled out to personalize the viewing experience, enabling fans to follow any player they choose through all four rounds of a tournament if they like. And then there's the gambling. The game used to scold players for wagering. Now the PGA Tour is aiming to capitalize on the legalization of sports betting that has swept across the U.S.

 

CENSUS - The U.S. population over the last decade grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s, the Census Bureau said.

With immigration leveling off and a birthrate on the decline, the nation may be entering an era of substantially lower growth, demographers said.

The total population was 331,449,281 in 2020, up by just 7.4 percent over the previous decade. The South and the West drew Americans away from struggling small communities in high-cost, cold-weather states in the East and the Midwest. The newly released data also underscores America's slowed growth and aging population, according to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey.

Stagnating population growth, in small part due to the pandemic, means the U.S. should take "a serious look at our immigration policy going forward," he said.

Utah was the fastest-growing state. Three states lost populations, with West Virginia's population declining at the fastest rate.

The Census Bureau data is used to reapportion seats in Congress, based on new state population counts. Six states gained congressional seats: Colorado, Florida, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina and Texas gained two seats (ugh). California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and West Virginia lost seats.

MARKET WEEK - The average used vehicle is now worth $17,609, but trade-ins are becoming very difficult.

Normally, dealers buy an old vehicle at a discount to what it's worth and hope to sell it at a profit.

Now, they need to worry that the whole market will crash from its current frothy highs.

Three huge shortages as we come out of the pandemic: (1) Microchips; causing havoc in the automobile industry. (2) Ketchup packets; home takeout dining over the pandemic has made the supply of ketchup packets exceptionally low. (3)  Toilet paper; early in the pandemic, toilet paper inexplicably became the hottest product in America overnight. Some stores went weeks without TP on the shelves. Eventually, the situation sorted itself out.

But now, toilet paper is on the brink of becoming scarce again.

The culprit this time is the shortage of shipping containers. Wood pulp is used to make bath tissue, but the lack of containers means there could soon be supply issues, according to Suzano SA, the biggest producer of wood pulp.

Big Tech crushed earnings reports this week, and shows no sign of slowing down:

Facebook stock hit an all-time high Wednesday after reporting a whopping 48% revenue growth over the previous year.

Apple earnings blew past Wall Street estimates, as sales of the iPhone, Mac and iPad all came in far ahead of expectations.

Amazon eclipsed analyst expectations for both earnings and revenue on Thursday, as sales surged 44% year-over-year.

Microsoft crushed Wall Street expectations and posted its highest revenue growth since 2018.

Google's parent, Alphabet, reported a record profit last quarter. Its video arm, YouTube, brought in a whopping $6 billion in revenue last quarter — more than Snapchat, LinkedIn and Pinterest combined.

Snapchat beat Wall Street expectations on subscriber growth, earnings and revenue, while also reporting that usage of its AR products hit an all-time high.

Recovery: Consumer and govt. spending fueled 6.4% GDP growth last quarter, the second-fastest pace for economic growth since 2003.

Control: China ordered 13 companies, including TikTok-owner ByteDance and Tencent, to follow much tighter regulation.

Crypto: Ether, the world’s second-largest digital currency, surged to a record high yesterday as Bitcoin's dominance declined.

IPO: UFC's parent company Endeavor saw its shares pop on its first day of trading (fun fact: Ari Gold from Entourage was based on Endeavor's CEO).

 

LA LA LAND - Californians hoping to remove Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office have met the state's minimum number of valid signatures to push a recall election forward this fall.

County officials have verified 1,626,042 signatures, according to the California secretary of state's website. Recall backers needed at least 1,495,709 valid signatures to qualify, which represents 12% of the votes cast in the state's last gubernatorial election.

Newsom has already formed a political offensive to fight the recall, saying the effort is a partisan attempt by Republicans aligned with former President Donald Trump to wrest power from his majority-Democratic state.

 

100 DAYS - President Biden spent his first 100 days trying to engineer the end of the coronavirus and the start of a job boom. The next 100 are more audacious and risky: Try to re-engineer the very fundamentals of America — inequality, voting rights and government's role in directing economic growth.

So look for Biden to court Republicans, but not yield to them, as he pushes a $2.3 trillion infrastructure package, to be followed by $1.5 trillion for his American Families Plan — including child care, paid family leave, universal pre-K and free community college.

It's the unspoken Biden formula: Talk like a rosy bipartisan; act like a ruthless partisan.

The Biden next-100-day agenda is more activist than most expected. But, three data-backed trends have encouraged his team to push the envelope:

(1). His poll numbers are strong.

(2). The economy is growing — and many think it's poised for an historic boom. In Biden's address to Congress on Wednesday night, look for him to point to the recovery as a vindication of his strategy so far.

(3). Corporations are cutting off, or cutting down, money to the GOP, which has been forced to find other sources of cash. And CEOs are taking public stands that sound a lot more like Biden than Trump.

 

OUCH - For the film industry, which was already fighting to hold its place at the center of American culture, the Nielsen ratings for Sunday night’s 93rd Academy Awards came as a body blow: About 9.85 million people watched the telecast, a 58 percent plunge from last year’s record low.

Among adults 18 to 49, the demographic that many advertisers pay a premium to reach, the Oscars suffered an even steeper 64 percent decline, according to preliminary data from Nielsen released on Monday. Nielsen’s final numbers are expected on Tuesday and will include out-of-home viewing and some streaming statistics.

Many factors have been undercutting the ratings, starting with the delivery route. Old broadcast networks like ABC are no longer that relevant, especially to young people. (One awards show that is actually growing is the Game Awards, which celebrates the best video games of the year and is streamed on platforms like YouTube, Twitch and Twitter.)

Increasingly, the ceremonies are less about entertainment honors and more about civic issues and progressive politics, which inevitably annoys half the audience.

Like every Academy Awards show, this one brought out a variety of opinions from viewers and reviewers. It was a year when small films took the big awards, so it makes sense that the awards show was more intimate as well. Overall, I liked most of the changes and thought the show seemed more real and personal, which makes perfect sense following year that was all too real and personal. Among the highlights: Yuh-Jung Youn's acceptance speech for best supporting actress for her role as the grandmother in Minari. The moving speech by director Thomas Vinterberg who lost his daughter during the filming of the best International Feature Film, Denmark's Another Round. And, of course, Glenn Close dancing to Da Butt, which moved this exchange down to her second greatest television moment. Meanwhile, Frances McDormand howled like a wolf (which made my beagles howl back), and the show switched around the awards to present best actor last, to create an emotional Chadwick Boseman win, only to find that Anthony Hopkins won the award. He wasn't there, so Joaquin Phoenix had to accept on his behalf. But really, there's no better way to mark a return to normal than Joaquin Phoenix being weird.

 

BIRTHDAYS THIS WEEK – Birthday wishes and thoughts this weekend to Megan Granquist …famous long-distance runner, Dave Keon (81), Jerry Seinfeld (67), William Shatner (91), Kathryn Tappen (40), Julie Wright …famous educator, Robin Wright (55), Joe Zanetta …the Mayor of Palm Springs.

 

CHRONICLES OF HIGHER EDUCATION - The California State University System and University of California System will require vaccinations for all constituents at the start of the fall semester or upon the full approval of one or more vaccine, whichever occurs later.

More than 240,000 cases of Covid-19 have been linked to American colleges since January 1, and more than 660,000 cases have been reported since the beginning of the pandemic.

The American College Health Association is recommending that Covid-19 vaccinations be required for all on-campus students, and more than 180 colleges have set such a mandate.

PLAYOFFS - The Pittsburgh Penguins clinched a playoff berth for the 15th consecutive season, the longest active streak in the five major North American sports leagues.

Longest active playoff streaks:

🏒 NHL: Penguins (15)

⚽️ MLS: Sounders (12)

⚾️ MLB: Dodgers (8)

🏀 NBA: Raptors, Trail Blazers (7)

🏈 NFL: Chiefs (6)

Longest active playoff droughts:

⚾️ MLB: Mariners (19)

🏀 NBA: Kings (14)

🏈 NFL: Jets (10)

🏒 NHL: Sabres (9)

⚽️ MLS: Fire, Dynamo, Whitecaps (3)

 

DETROIT SPORTS – Depressing times in Deeeetroit:

As of today – April 30

Detroit Tigers (MLB) the worst record in the league (8-18)

Detroit Pistons (NBA) the second worst record in the league (19-44). Thank you, Houston (16-47),

Detroit Red Wings (NHL) eighth worst record in the league (17-26-9), though a better record than the two L.A. teams.

Michigan Wolverine Football – still Jim Harbaugh is coach.

Michigan State Athletics – still haunted by the Larry Nassar sex-abuse scandal.

Time to head to the Anchor Bar (450 W. Fort Street, Detroit) and yes, they are serving!

 

CONGRATS TO THE SAINTS – Let us not get too excited since there were only three teams out of twelve playing at the end of the season. The St. Lawrence men's hockey team won the ECAC Hockey title and the Whitelaw Cup (their seventh conference crown) with a pair of thrilling overtime victories in the conference playoffs, defeating Colgate 5-4 in the semifinals at Appleton Arena before toppling top-seeded Quinnipiac, 3-2, in the finals. The championship comes in Charles W. Appleton II Head Men's Hockey Coach Brent Brekke's second season at St. Lawrence.

Good job boys but do not get big heads over this one. BTW what happened to Clarkson?

 

 SWAMI’S WEEKEND TOP PICKS –

147th Kentucky Derby – Saturday 5/1, 6:57 PM (EDT), NBC:

1). Known Agenda: 6/1, Todd Pletcher, Iran Ortiz, Jr.

2). Hot Rod Charlie: 8/1, Doug O’Neil, Flavin Prat

3). Sainthood: 50/1, Todd Pletcher, Corey Lanerie

4). Essential Quality, 2/1, Brad Cox, Luis Saez

SCIAC Game of the Week – Saturday 5/1, 11:00 AM (PDT), LVTV-3: It is okay now to play some baseball in the SCIAC (D-III). #2 Chapman University Argyros (2-1) vs. University of LA Verne Leopards (0-0). The Leopards led by Drew Reddick, Brandon Shiota, Tanner Siffert, Matthew Diaz, Sean Holt, Nicolas Skardutos, and Aaron Fong – all with outstanding business skills begin the 2021 season against nationally ranked Chapman University. Too bad we cannot take in the game at Ben Hines Field. The Swami likes La Verne to upset the Argyros, 6 – 5.

Season to Date (21-10)

 

Next Blog:  Who Cares?

 

Until Monday May 10, 2021 Adios.

Claremont, California

April 30, 2021

#XI-31-437

 

3,152 words, six-minute read

CARTOON OF THE WEEKEND – Mallard Fillmore

 

RINK RATS WEEKEND POLL – This first weekend of May, what is on the grill?

____ burgers

____ hot dogs and brats

____ fish

____ steak

____ veggies

 

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND: “Climate change kills jobs. Clean energy saves and creates them. Climate deniers who say otherwise are as dumb as doo-doo.” – Jerry Brown

 

 

 

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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