Another Week: Number 90

Chicago Bears 24, Tennessee Titans 17

The Chicago Bears’ 2023 season was perhaps the most excruciating sports I have ever suffered through — and I was a 9-year-old kid when my beloved Cubbies blew it in ‘69.

The Bears have started more than 30 quarterbacks since their last Super Bowl win — but now they have snagged Caleb Williams, the most talented human to ever play the game, so Bears fans can finally lean back and laugh.

Or they can pretty soon, anyway, because he might need a few minutes to adjust to the speed and violence of the NFL.

Nevertheless, Sunday’s game was deeply enjoyable. While Williams sat in the driver’s seat figuring out how to turn the wipers on, the Tennessee Titans stacked up 17 first-half points.

But the second half was pure glee: A blocked punt returned for a touchdown by Simone Biles’ husband. Long field goals by Cairo Santos. A Tyrique Stevenson interception. Williams even got in on the scoring action by throwing a two-point conversion.

Some sports fans focus on stats and data. I look instead to mindset and emotion. Caleb Williams has a self-possession and a centeredness that should produce greatness — hopefully before too long.

Pablo Torre: Wright Thompson on Caitlin Clark

Pablo Torre often guests on Morning Joe to comment on sports. He’s got a fast, dry wit, so I decided to try his podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out while I watered the plants in my yard Monday morning.

I chose the August 30 episode about Caitlin Clark, because I have been watching Clark since she started playing for the Indiana Fever in May, but I didn’t know her previously and I’m not sure what I’m looking at.

Amy and I watched every game of all six Michael Jordan championship seasons and some Bucks games since then, but the only practical basketball knowledge I have is from gym class in middle school.

Torre’s guest was Wright Thompson, a writer for ESPN.com. There, back in March, he wrote “Caitlin Clark and Iowa find peace in the process,” a long profile of the young star that I read after listening to him and Torre discuss it on the podcast.

Thompson’s intricate piece goes in-depth with Clark’s coaches and family. It examines her development with the Hawkeyes and the delicate refinement of her powerful talent into an engine that could integrate with a team while she adjusts to her sudden and tremendous celebrity and tries to establish herself as a stable adult and a decent person.

Clark’s spiritual quest to become the best ever is being conducted in the eye of a media hurricane.

This is the aspect of sports that interests me most.

Donald Trump / Kamala Harris ABC debate

CNN and MSNBC spent all day Monday and Tuesday guessing what would happen Tuesday night when Donald Trump and Kamala Harris finally met face to face. Whatever else might be going on in the world went largely unreported as they guessed and guessed. Eventually, 8 p.m. arrived and the debate was everything I knew it could be and more.

Harris deflated Trump’s economic tires early on, with the analysis of Goldman Sachs and the Wharton School and his colossal deficit, and he was immediately reeling and spitting, calling her father a Marxist, and attempting to recycle Reagan’s “There you go again” zinger from 44 years ago.

Cornered on abortion — and corrected at last on his lie about Democrats executing babies born alive — he tried to pivot to … student loans? Then he refuted his own running mate’s claims about vetoing a national ban and proclaimed himself a “leader on fertilization.”

On and on it went. Harris had a solid answer for everything, then either led the sputtering ex-president around on a leash, or regarded his crumbling brain with genuine pity.

But what will America remember about this debate?

In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs! The people that came in. They’re eating the cats! They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there!

In any previous era, this would have been where Mr. Former President was humored away for psychiatric observation.

But no — like a burglar with pork chops in his pockets to save himself from guard dogs, Trump always has an outrageous distraction ready in case things go badly, and the media always goes crazy for his pork chops!

Cornered by Black journalists on July 31st, Trump tossed out his assertion that Harris ”happened to turn Black.”

This time, as his ship began sinking, it was “They’re eating the cats!”

And so — on TV, anyway — all attention since the debate has been spent examining that specific Trump-dropping in agonizing detail. Reporters have been dispatched to Springfield, Ohio. Urban legends have been traced to their Facebook sources.

But in the homes where people watched the debate, no pork chop can distract from the smell of that deranged old man’s panic as Kamala Harris humiliated him in front of 67 million people:

If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now.

And understand what that would mean. Because Putin’s agenda is not just about Ukraine. Understand why the European allies and our NATO allies are so thankful that you are no longer president and that we understand the importance of the greatest military alliance the world has ever known, which is NATO. And what we have done to preserve the ability of Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians to fight for their Independence.

Otherwise, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe. Starting with Poland. And why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor and what you think is a friendship with what is known to be a dictator who would eat you for lunch.

Like a pork chop.

So, every time someone mentions the cats and dogs of Springfield, Ohio, the underlying truth is that Kamala Harris mopped the floor with Donald Trump in that debate.

Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (2024)

This is a new documentary, now streaming on Max, about the creator of one of the greatest TV shows of all time. Director Alex Gibney sits down with David Chase in a replica psychiatrist’s office and interviews him about his life growing up in New Jersey, and then moving to California as an aspiring movie director, and of course the landmark television series for which he served as creator, showrunner, and head writer. Chase also directed the first and last of its 86 episodes.

At two hours, 37 minutes total — but split into two parts — it’s an outstanding, perfectly-paced documentary, with a zillion clips of casting auditions, other interviews, show excerpts, eulogy, behind-the-scenes footage, location visits, press coverage, and more, pieced together like a mosaic and moving in a generally chronological direction — but also slipping from theme to theme along the way. For example, at one point, Gibney gives us a wonderful montage of surreal Sopranos dream scenes.

The cornerstone of the whole project was Chase’s mother Norma who, in The Sopranos, became Tony’s mother Livia (played by Nancy Marchand). She’s the reason Tony needs a psychiatrist. In real life, Chase’s own uncles advised him to relocate across the country immediately after his wedding to save his marriage from his own mother’s toxicity.

Watching this with my mom, she took exception to the disparagement of maternal influence. I assured her it’s a universal predicament. Didn’t her own mother drive her a little nuts at times? Yes, she agreed.

This film was a thoroughly intriguing watch.