Indy 500 Quiz: In honor of the 100th running of the 500 this weekend, a little different quiz. In 1920, the average winning speed was 88.62 mph. 1) What was the average winning speed in 1950? 2) 1970? 3) 1990? [Hint: This is the track record to this day.] 4) Who am I? I won the race in 1966, initials G.H. Answers below.
Fred Wilpon…what a guy
It was kind of funny how just about a week ago, as the Mets prepared to take on the Yankees in the subway series, regular season version, talk in the area was how quiet it had been around the Mets compared to the Yankees this season. The Mets were just going about their business, overachieving to hit the .500 mark after Friday’s win over the Yanks, a nice accomplishment given their 5-13 start, and doing so with a bunch of guys from Triple-A carrying the load.
That was then…this is now. After losing the next two games against the Yanks, the Mets had an off-day and then prepared to play the Cubs in Chicago on Tuesday, but now the focus was on Mets owner Fred Wilpon and two stories that came out Monday and Tuesday. Of his financial situation, Wilpon admitted to Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci that his team was “bleeding cash” to the tune of $70 million this year, and that he was forced to sell as much as 49% of the team rather than the preferred 20% because of the possibility the trustee in the Bernie Madoff case could take anywhere from $300 million to $1 billion of Wilpon’s money, the latter having an extensive array of accounts with the all-time leader in Ponzi schemes.
The Mets also have a payroll of $142 million this year, including $22 million going to players no longer on the team, and Wilpon admitted to Verducci that when $64 million comes off the payroll at season’s end, the team is highly unlikely to spend it, meaning the Mets could be considerably below $100 million on the payroll front in 2012.
Of course no one has ever accused the Mets of not spending money. The only problem, as Verducci points out, is that “Spending money elaborately hasn’t worked well for the Mets. Over the previous four seasons, the Mets spent more money ($537 million) than any team in baseball except the Yankees and Red Sox and had no playoff appearances, a 326-322 record and 1.5 million fewer paid customers to show for it.”
But I wouldn’t be leading with the story if Fred Wilpon hadn’t also commented on some of his players in a profile in The New Yorker. During a loss to Houston on April 20, a defeat that dropped the team to a season-worst 5-13, Wilpon made some of the following comments to reporter Jeffrey Toobin, though to cut him a little slack in a time of great frustration.
During the 4-3 loss to the Astros, Wilpon described his team as “lousy” (and “sh—y”) and soon-to-be free agent shortstop Jose Reyes’ contract situation thusly:
“He thinks he’s going to get Carl Crawford money. He’s had everything wrong with him [referring to Reyes’ many recent injuries]. He won’t get it.” [Crawford signed over the winter with Boston for seven years, $142 million.]
Of Carlos Beltran, finishing up a $119 million, seven-year deal with the Mets, signed after his monster postseason with Houston in 2004: “We had some schmuck in New York who paid him based on that one series,” Wilpon said, referring to himself. “He’s 65 to 70 percent of what he was.”
And about David Wright, the face of the franchise, Wilpon said his third-sacker is “a really good kid. A very good player. Not a superstar.”
So the above created a stir. For his part, Wright said: “Fred is a good man and is obviously going through some difficult times. There is nothing more productive that I can say at this time.” The media chimed in.
“On behalf of all sports-media members in the New York metropolitan area, let us be the first to say two words to Mets owner Fred Wilpon.
“Thank you for telling a reporter from the New Yorker some things that many Mets fans think and that a more careful Mets owner wouldn’t say: that David Wright, while a very nice guy, is not a superstar; that you might not have gotten your money’s worth out of that $119 million contract you gave to Carlos Beltran; that it wouldn’t be prudent to overpay Jose Reyes when he becomes a free agent; and that your team isn’t all that good….
“Best of all, this wasn’t a team official leaking information for the sake of swinging a contract negotiation in the franchise’s favor. There were no tea leaves to read here. In the world of 24-hour media, it’s impossible for an owner to remain in a cocoon of ambiguous silence anyway. No one can hide, and you have to admire that in this instance, Wilpon didn’t bother to try.
“Will Wilpon’s words bother that trio of players: Wright, Beltran, Reyes? Perhaps, but so what?”
“It was only a few nights ago that Carlos Beltran stood by his locker and talked about how things had changed with the Mets.
“The team had just beaten the Yankees on Friday to get back to .500. But what struck Beltran about this season was the absence of the off-field baseball drama that was a constant of the past.
“ ‘There’s no controversy,’ Beltran said. ‘There’s no, ‘This guy said this, this guy said that.’’
“This wasn’t the same as firing a manager at 3 a.m. It wasn’t the same as a general manager holding a news conference to announce the firing of a top executive, only to turn it into a verbal sparring match with a reporter.
“But there is a common theme here, one that transcends GMs and managers.
“To borrow a famous line from Strother Martin in the 1967 film ‘Cool Hand Luke’: ‘What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.’
“But this wasn’t Fred from Roslyn calling into WFAN. This was the owner of a team that is losing money and trying to sell tickets, not to mention a minority stake. This was a man, knowingly or not, devaluing his own product.
“If the Mets intend to re-sign Jose Reyes, who has said nothing about any contract demands, it makes no sense to antagonize him. If they intend to trade him, it makes no sense to play down his value.
“And if the team intends to trade Beltran, as they almost certainly will, why say publicly that he is a shell of his former self?….
“Look, we’re all for accountability. And if anything, the Mets haven’t had enough of it in recent years. But this was no time for bluster.
“Things were actually going relatively well lately for the Mets…Only now they are back in familiar territory, trying to clean up another mess of their own making.”
“We can easily envision Fred Wilpon in the lavish confines of his Citi Field box, munching on his Shake Shack burger and complaining to Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker about the performance of his marquee players in relation to their reputations and remuneration.
“From one suffering Mets fan to another (Toobin discloses his rooting interest in a newly published article), Wilpon’s comments come across like barfly banter….
“The comments were obviously not conveyed in the madcap manner of a George Steinbrenner, whose player critiques – ‘Dave Winfield is Mr. May!’ – were often delivered as angry, outrageous smears.
“Mets fans would agree with Wilpon that Jose Reyes is not worth ‘Carl Crawford money;’ that David Wright is ‘a really good kid,’ but ‘not a superstar;’ and that Carlos Beltran is ‘65 to 70 percent of what he was.’
“But although Wilpon is no mean-spirited autocrat, he reveals himself to be a why-me whiner and a first-rate revisionist. He may have fingered himself as the dummy who gave Beltran $119 million in 2004 based on one productive postseason, but that is about all the accountability he serves Toobin along with the burgers….
“Forget how Beltran and the others of a now-shamed era took just two seasons to turn what had been Wilpon’s 71-vicotry embarrassment of a team into a 97-victory division champion that fought into the ninth inning of Game 7 of the [2006] N.L.C.S. with just one experienced and reliable starting pitcher.
“Forget how Beltran, Reyes and Wright spearheaded the three highest season’s attendance records in Mets history – 3.37 million in 2006, 3.85 million in 2007 and 4.04 million in 2008, the last go-round at Shea Stadium….
“As bitterly as those seasons ended, how much were they worth to a franchise whose desperate financial straits have far more to do with its owners than its players?….
“When life and profits are good, everyone is Fred Wilpon’s friend, part of a big, happy family. When caught in a downpour of misfortune, he seems to feel victimized and betrayed by everyone who failed to remind him to carry an umbrella….
“Many flawed performers have contributed to the Mets’ recent miseries, including Beltran, Reyes and Wright. But to publicly diminish them (while perhaps damaging their trade value) without acknowledging ownership’s role in the organizational dysfunction that engulfed the Mets after the 2006 postseason borders on deceit….
“Wilpon has been steadfast in his legal entanglements…It is a complicated case, and maybe Wilpon, who had more than $500 million invested with Madoff when the scheme was exposed, has a right to feel like a victim, no matter what the outcome is.
“But the collapse of the Mets is more on his house than it is on Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes or even Oliver Perez. Yes, Wilpon’s comments were made in the context of a game, in the mind-set of a fan. But he is no ordinary fan. He is the owner. He, above all, is accountable.
“If he wants to find fault, look first in the mirror.”
“Wilpon essentially found the worst time in his personal and franchise history to give you this message: My players are not very good. Thus, he is telling a fan base with diminishing interest in going to Citi Field that it is actually a good idea to stay away. Which, considering the Mets’ plight, would be like burning $100 bills in the parking lot for the rest of the season. He also just made general manager Sandy Alderson’s job more difficult by devaluing what should be strong trade assets; unless there is a team out there that wants to overpay for 70 percent of Carlos Beltran….
“The most damning passages [of Toobin’s piece] occur while an agonized Wilpon watches a game against the Astros. Wilpon decries that Beltran is inferior from what the Mets thought they bought; that Wright is a good kid, but no superstar; that the oft-injured Reyes is not going to be worth top-of-the-market dollars in free agency.
“It would have sounded right from a talk-radio diehard. But from Fred Wilpon it was undignified, rude and – worst of all – counterproductive. He underscored the incompetence of a franchise that built around stars this flawed while subliminally telling both fans and teams interested in trading for these players to stay away….
“Anything good that has come out of this season now is soiled, including how well Reyes has been performing and how hard manager Terry Collins has the team playing. Reyes has roots here and badly has wanted to stay. Now before a first negotiating session, the Mets owner has told the shortstop the bucks will definitely stop here….
“Fred Wilpon had done so much for so long to limit his availability to the media. And then either he had this bright idea or his inept public relations strategists did it to make him available for weeks and weeks, to give a talented magazine writer this: Fred Wilpon, unplugged. The result, familiarly, has blown up on the Mets; cue the clown music.”
“One of the constants about Fred Wilpon’s stewardship with the Mets is this: Somewhere along the line, as if by civic decree, everything ever said or written about him, no matter how negative, always contains a disclaimer that looks something like this: ‘Fred Wilpon is a good man, a decent man, but…’…
“Would a good man treat his own fans as human spittoons? That’s even more egregious in a lot of ways than knee-capping his millionaire employees, two of whom were classy yesterday in the visiting clubhouse at Wrigley Field, one of whom, Reyes, shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and said, ‘He’s the boss. He can say whatever he wants to say.’
“No. When Wilpon described the Mets as, um, ‘sh—y,’ what he did was admit what we’ve long suspected: that he plays his own fans for suckers, chumps, rubes, that he believes they drive to work on the same turnip truck he so vehemently wants us to believe he rides in on (or else how could poor Fred – a good man – have been so relentlessly duped by so many).”
Vaccaro, who in his initial column on this topic called for Wilpon to sell the team, relayed an email from a season-ticket holder shelling out $27,000 to upgrade his seats this year.
“I was appalled at the comments. [Fred] not only insulted the team’s best players, but he implied that he has swindled me and my family. Does Fred think $27,337.50 is a fair price for five season tickets to a lousy team? Well, I no longer do. Until I hear Fred Wilpon apologize to Mets fans, and directly, by name, to [the players], you can consider my season-ticket account closed.”
“This has long been the sledgehammer Mets fans have wielded and been reluctant to use. Look: Mets fans are too often portrayed as bipolar freaks who love to hate their team and that has always been unfair. Most of them are devotees, addicted to the daily pleasure of baseball, who happened to pick the Mets over the Yankees (many of them making this choice in the ‘70s, when the Mets’ fortunes were far more dismal than they are now). They may kill their team; if you kill them?
“They don’t want to stay away. They don’t want to boycott the games. The team means that much to them. Reyes and Beltran getting a call from Wilpon yesterday was a reluctant first stab at decency. But where’s the fans’ apology? How are they supposed to feel when their owner treats them this way?
“Well, maybe they don’t see Fred Wilpon as such a good guy.
Mario Andretti
Bill Dwyre had a piece in the Los Angeles Times that summed up Mario’s run at Indy.
“He made 29 starts, eight from the front row. He led in 11 of those 29 races and also has led the third-most laps in history, 556.
“In 1985, Danny Sullivan spun dramatically in front of him near the end of the race and Andretti took the lead. But Sullivan, in a savvy bit of driving, avoided the wall and came back to pass Andretti and win.
“In 1981, Andretti was second, but was moved to first when officials said winner Bobby Unser had passed under the caution flag. Four months later, the officials changed their mind and gave the title back to Unser.
“The cars with which he and his teammates were setting track records in practice started to fall apart.
“Andretti had to get into a spare Ford they hadn’t planned to race, qualified it in the middle of the first row and won with it….
“Andretti was 29 when he won at Indy. He was in the middle of a career that easily puts him in the conversation about the greatest drivers of all time. His resume needs an entire bookshelf. Most significant, he is the only driver to have won an Indy 500, a Daytona 500 (1967) and a Formula One title (1978). Since Andretti’s run on the prestigious European circuit in ’78, no United States driver has even won a Formula One race, much less a points title.”
Picture that as part of Indy’s 100th anniversary, the 71-year-old has been taking people (celebrities) out on the track and getting it up to 180, 190 mph. The twin-seater used is the one you may have seen in the commercials. Mario told Dwyre:
“They sit right behind me and there is a little red button, a panic button, if they get too scared. It lights up on my dashboard. I had a lady out awhile back and I see the light go on, but I figured she was all right, and so I kept going.
“When we got back in, we saw that she had passed out. But she came around pretty soon.”
–The Toronto Blue Jays are in New York this week playing the Yankees and that means the media capital of the world gets a shot at analyzing the Blue Jays’ Jose Bautista.
“One thing is for sure: As he backs up his 54-home run season in 2010 with another stunning show of power in 2011, Bautista has become the must-see slugger in the game at the moment.
“For that matter, with power pitching dominating baseball again, Bautista is the power-hitting sensation the sport desperately needs these days.
“Sorry, but even in this drug-testing era, it’s impossible not to be suspicious when someone suddenly starts hitting the ball to the moon in his late 20s. Unfortunately, steroids forever hardened us to the romance of a late-bloomer like Bautista, especially when baseball still has no test for human growth hormone….
“ ‘It’s gratifying knowing that people were skeptical about last year,’ Bautista said Monday [when he hit No. 19]. ‘I guess I’m proving them wrong.’”
I forgot Bautista hit 10 homers in the month of September 2009 after he got his hitting approach worked on. So that means since Sept. 1, 2009, Bautista has hit 83 home runs, 29 more than Albert Pujols’ next highest 55. But a lot of us still have our doubts.
–As I go to post, Wednesday afternoon, the Yankees are leading the Blue Jays and it’s going to be impossible for Toronto starter Jo-Jo Reyes to win as he is long out of the game. The significance of this is that Reyes now joins Cliff Curtis (1910-11) and Matt Keough (1978-79) as the only pitchers in major league history to make 28 consecutive starts without a victory, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
[Curtis finished 28-61 for his career, 1909-1913; Keough ended up 58-84, 1977-86. And as noted by the New York Times’ Tyler Kepner, the last pitcher with a 27-game streak until now was Anthony Young of the Mets and Cubs, from 1992-94. Young finished 15-48 for his career, though he had a more than respectable 3.89 ERA.]
—Joe DiMaggio’s 1941 hitting streak, continued…
Game 10…May 24…Boston…1 for 4…2 RBI
Game 11…May 25…Boston…1 for 4
Game 12…May 27…Washington…4 for 5…1 HR 3 RBI
Game 13…May 28…Washington…1 for 4
Game 14…May 29…Washington…1 for 3
Game 15…May 30 (1) …Boston…1 for 2
Game 16…May 30 (2)…Boston…1 for 3
–Dammit, the Bulls played like crap down the stretch Tuesday night and lost to the Heat in overtime. I even watched the 4th quarter in the hope Miami would lose. Derrick Rose took some horrible shots at the end of regulation and was 8 of 27 from the field for the game. [Miami leads the series 3-1.]
–Experts say Lance Armstrong faces indictment as the legal process that helped lead to Tyler Hamilton’s confession the other night on 60 Minutes is similar to that which nailed Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and her coach Trevor Graham, Dana Stubblefield (an NFL veteran) and others.
“Every believer to pull an elastic, canary-yellow rubber band imprinted with the word ‘LIVESTRONG’ on their hand and around their wrist – everyone who ever pledged a dollar toward cancer research so they could symbolically overcome as their inspiration overcame – is confronting some hard questions today.
“Lance Armstrong’s decade-long insistence he is a clean champion feels so forced and hollow now; heck, after watching Sunday’s 60 Minutes piece, even the most devoted bracelet people must be saying, ‘Uncle, I give.’
“In the most credible assault to date on Armstrong’s legacy, former teammate Tyler Hamilton said what he said to federal investigators about Armstrong last summer: He saw Armstrong use.
“Armstrong distributed, too, Hamilton said, once FedExing the banned substance EPO to him, after Hamilton said he called and asked Armstrong for the blood booster.
“Most damning, though, was the hole finally punctured in Armstrong’s long-held ‘I’ve Never Tested Positive’ defense. Hamilton said Armstrong told him he had tested positive in 2001 during a race in Switzerland, but that Armstrong and his people ‘made’ the test result ‘go away.’
“George Hincapie, one of Armstrong’s closest friends in cycling, also testified under oath to Armstrong’s use of performance-enhancing drugs, the CBS report said.
“These aren’t bitter soldiers from Lance’s army now craving publicity; these are subpoenaed, former world-class cyclists who grudgingly gave up the greatest champion in their sport because they did not want to go to jail themselves….
“In the seven years Armstrong won the Tour de France, just one cyclist on the podium beside him from 1999 through 2005 was never connected to performance-enhancers. That means every rider, save one, who placed second or third was dirty. So in a cycling culture that employed synthetic chemists like masseuses, the only other rider who didn’t use was the guy who won all the time?
“Consider the revelation that Armstrong donated $25,000 to the International Cycling Union at about the same time he reportedly met with a lab manager to allegedly discuss his suspicious EPO test in Switzerland. Three years later, he donated another $100,000 to the organization to promote ‘clean testing.’
“Think about that. Imagine generously giving to the company responsible for your employment drug test. Now imagine trying to explain the charitable contribution to your tax guy. You know, Dave, I really thought about Habitat for Humanity, earthquake relief and of course the Homeless Animal Shelter this year. But when it came down to it, those swell folks doing the urinalysis over at Qwest – now that’s a cause I want to get behind.
“This isn’t meant to crater the entire Lance legend. I know, the size of the heart chambers, his oxygenated-blood numbers, they’re all off the charts. He is truly a unique physical specimen. We have known for a while he is the Secretariat of his sport. We just didn’t know he could also be its Marion Jones….
“If I am Armstrong today, and I have seen the public tide change after Sunday’s report, I hold my first authentic news conference in more than 10 years. I talk about fending off that deadly disease, how many millions were inspired to overcome their own battle….
“In my money-shot moment, I would look in the camera, a la Tiger Woods, and say I lied because I didn’t want to let down the people who believed in me, or the people who would give generously when they heard my story….
“After such an apology, people could make their own decisions about Armstrong and his legacy. But until it happens, he looks like someone who needs to preserve his own fable – that indeed this was never about the bike, his fellow cancer-battlers or the others who needed that strip of yellow around their wrists to help them stand up to whatever demons they’re confronting.
“Instead, it will appear that it was about Lance. It was always about Lance.”
“BYU’s Jimmer Fredette was a hot topic at the camp. He didn’t really stand out in the drills on Thursday or Friday, but he was a major hit in interviews. A number of teams told me Fredette was the best interview they had and came away convinced that all of his celebrity had not gone to his head. ‘He’s a humble, hard-working kid. You can’t help but like him,’ one NBA executive said. ‘After the interview, I wanted to go up and hug him,’ another scout said. While nothing in Chicago helped quell the furious debate about what sort of NBA player he’ll be, he made an impression. Fredette’s first workout will be with the Knicks in early June.”
San Diego State’s Kawhi Leonard apparently wowed some with his outside shooting which he has been working hard on. Many still think he is too small to be an impact power forward. I say the guy is starring in his second season, and the last prospective draft list had him going as high as 6th!
Kyrie Irving is still looking like the No. 1 overall.
–What a shocker, at least for a sports junkie. Penn State basketball coach Ed DeChellis resigned Monday to take over at Navy; this after DeChellis took the Nittany Lions to their first NCAA bid in a decade (as well as the 2009 NIT title). He was under contract at Happy Valley until 2014. I mean Ed DeChellis isn’t Brad Stevens, but Navy isn’t exactly the Big Ten either. Maybe he was afraid of failure and getting fired in a few years.
Maryland vs. Duke
Virginia vs. Denver (first ever appearance…actually first program from Mountain Time Zone to reach semis)
—Tiger Woods said he will be “ready to go” for the U.S. Open despite his injuries. Woods has been using a crutch and wearing a protective boot, which would be kind of dramatic were he to show up at the Open in such gear. All he’d need is a bloody headband and a piccolo, know what I’m sayin’?
–I’ve written in the past about a local high school athlete out of Morristown High School, senior Nick Vena, the great shot-putter. Now the Wall Street Journal’s Ben Cohen has discovered him. But here are some stats I didn’t know as Vena wraps up his high school career and prepares to head to the Univ. of Virginia, and possible Olympic glory in 2016, if not before.
“Before Vena, no one in New Jersey had thrown the shot more than 70 feet in competition. He’s done it 81 times himself….
“Two weeks ago during a meet at Morris Hills High School, where the shot-put circle is behind the football field’s end zone, Vena learned he was in the first flight of throwers and started warming up immediately with light cardio and full-body stretching.”
His first throw “crashed to the ground closer to the yellow caution tape fencing the area than to the farthest reaches of the shot-put sector.
“The official distance was 75 feet and nine inches, the longest Vena had ever thrown it in competition.”
He had shattered his state record of 73-3 from the week before, and it also was the third-longest outdoors throw in U.S. high-school history!
–Don Johnson, 49, of Bensalem, Pennsylvania, has been identified as the gambler who has taken about $15 million from three Atlantic City casinos playing blackjack. Johnson told The Press of Atlantic City that’s he’s thankful for his run of good luck but emphasized he doesn’t consider himself a professional gambler and emphatically denied he was cheating or part of some organized ring.
Casino officials had previously confirmed one man had recently won millions playing high-stakes blackjack but declined to identify the guy.
Johnson said he won $4.23 million at Caesars Atlantic City in December alone and took in about $5 million at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa over a five-month stretch. But his biggest success came during a 12-hour run at Tropicana Casino and Resort in April, a record loss for the casino.
Johnson is CEO of Heritage Development LLC, which employs computer-assisted wagering programs for horse racing. He started gambling 15 years ago, placing $25 bets at blackjack tables. Then he transitioned into high-stakes wagering – including at the Tropicana, which last month allowed him to bet up to $100,000 a hand.
“Johnson said he’s been banned from the Caesars and Harrah’s casinos in Nevada and was turned down by Resorts and Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City….
“ ‘I don’t think they will let me play anymore,’ he said of the Atlantic City casinos. ‘But it’s not going to change my life. If I don’t play blackjack, I’ll just go to the horse races.’”
–The Wall Street Journal had a story on the battle between the California sea lion and the Chinook salmon in the waters of the Columbia River.
“The burning issue: should anything be done to keep the enormous beasts from turning Bonneville Dam into a buffet? And, if so, should lethal removal be one of the options?”
Damn right it should be. Your editor has always been a big fan of the Omega-3 rich salmon, while the sea lion will never sniff the top 100 on the All-Species List. Basically, sea lions are total a-holes, and you can tell ‘em I said so (from behind the confines of my Dunkin’ Donuts anchored building).
I mean consider that sea lions are now taking 8,000 fish a year, out of 300,000 Chinook making the run to the Pacific.
Alas, the feds can’t just blow the sea lions away. It has to be a documented repeat offender to get on a “kill list.” Since 2008, 27 have been euthanized and 10 were moved to zoos, where they proceeded to terrorize patrons and keepers alike.
But one sea lion, branded C287, took 198 salmon in 2010 and in 32 days this season claimed another 115, though the bastard has alluded capture. Once endangered, the California sea lion is now an estimated 265,000 strong and threatens our very way of life.
—President Obama’s appearance in a pub in the Irish town of Moneygall, where his great, great grandfather hailed from, was staged perfectly but to give our leader credit he pulled it all off as well as possible. Having been to Ireland many a time myself, I can picture how gobsmacked the locals would have been. And as described in the London Times, when the president and Michelle got out of their limo, one of those who greeted them was Henry Healy, “lean and bony like the President and certifiably his eighth cousin. The President shook Mr. Healy’s hand, then hugged him. ‘I believe you’re my cousin,’ he said. ‘Henry the Eighth.’ Mrs. Obama looked at them and said: ‘It’s about right, you’re the same height.’
“Flushed and delighted a few pints later, Mr. Healy said the whole thing had felt quite natural.
“ ‘It was fantastic,’ he told The Times. ‘It’s not every day you get to throw protocol out the window and get a hug from the President and the First Lady.’”
Meanwhile, inside Ollie’s Bar, Ollie Hayes pulled the Guinness for the president and was asked later if he was nervous? “F—ing right I was,” he said. “It was unbelievable. The man ordered a pint from way back across the room. He tendered a 50 (euro) note, and actually I didn’t give him any change.”
According to Men’s Health magazine, you can “Turn Sunscreen into Massage Oil.”
“Step 1: Pick a sunscreen that contains grape-seed extract. Its emollient qualities make it a common choice for massage oils.
“Step 2: Have her sit on the sand, and kneel behind her. This way she’s grounded and won’t squirm when you start applying pressure.
“Step 3: Squirt a dollop into your hand. Rub your palms together to warm it up. With wrists together, wrap your hands around the back of her neck….
[WARNING: Guys, before you get this far, make sure you know the girl beforehand…just sayin’….continuing…]
“….apply slow, even pressure, and slide back and forth to spread the lotion. Ease your way onto the top of her shoulders, and repeat.”
Good lord! Steps 4, 5 and 6 get even steamier and my censors just informed me that I risk losing my International Web Site Association* license if I continue so I need to stop here.
[Pssst…let’s see if I can slip in Step 5. “With sunscreen on your open palms, graze your hands down her rib cage on both sides. Move slowly so it doesn’t tickle.” Uh oh…here come the censors….]
Separately, Men’s Health polled 125 Women’s Health readers on the kinds of texts they like to receive after a first date – and when they want you to send them, guys.
87% would be happy “with a sweet, charming text” later that night. 97% the next day. But then it drops precipitously to 24% a few days later and 3% next week.
*Just a reminder…always look for the IWSA label for your assurance of Web quality.
–USA TODAY gave a new Brad Paisley album 4-stars out of four. I only mention this because Paisley titled it This is Country Music. As USA TODAY’s Brian Mansfield put it, with a title like that “you not only set a high standard for yourself, but you better not give anybody a reason to disagree. Paisley delivers.”
Top 3 songs for the week 5/31/80: #1 “Funkytown” (Lipps, Inc.) #2 “Call Me” (Blondie…ughh) #3 “Coming Up (Live At Glasgow)” (Paul McCartney & Wings)…and…#4 “Don’t Fall In Love With A Dreamer” (Kenny Rogers with Kim Carnes…or a man who a few years later decides to get a new face) #5 “Sexy Eyes” (Dr. Hook…eh, not bad) #6 “Biggest Part Of Me” (Ambrosia…good and bad memories of this one…it was the week before graduation, partying down at Myrtle Beach one last time with my friends, and I…err, err…well, sorry, I really can’t tell you why this brings back both good and bad memories…carry on…) #7 “Stomp!” (The Brothers Johnson) #8 “Hurt So Bad” (Linda Ronstadt) #9 “Against The Wind” (Bob Seger) #10 “Cars” (Gary Numan)
Indy 500 Quiz Answers: 1) 1950 – Johnnie Parsons won at an avg. speed of 124 mph. 2) 1970 – Al Unser won at an avg. speed of 155. 3) 1990 – Arie Luyendyk won at an avg. speed of 185.98 mph, still the track record and a little too hot for officials’ liking. 4) 1966 – Englishman Graham Hill won it in a Lola-Ford; Hill, like 1965’s winner Jim Clark, better known for his Formula One career.
