There’s a video on YouTube of a very young Sammy fronting Montrose. It’s a TV show, IIRC, but I do know they’re doing “Bad Motor Scooter” and it’s fantastic. Sammy sounds great.
Of larger concern to me is that Trea Turner injured his finger yesterday diving into 3rd at the end of his triple. Davey says he just jammed it, but given his history I'll remain worried.
I saw someone mention that Schwarber's 16 HR in June ties him for the 2nd-most in a month by a lefty. (A couple of fellas by the names of Ruth and Bonds each had a 17-HR month.)
So I got curious and wondered about the right-handed record. Sammy Sooser's 20-HR June 1998 was no surprise, but then I saw that Rudy York hit 18 HR in a month back in 1937, and then he had a 17-HR month in 1943.
It’s impossible to read this story and not come away believing that Bauer is a violent and dangerous person with a disturbing lack of concern for boundaries or the well being of others.
**confirming suspicions of Cleveland fans who tolerated his antics for most of a decade**
I saw a number of men defending Bauer with the "she agreed to rough sex" argument (with a few "we've all been there" sentiments which, I'm like, what?). Then the details emerged and I continued to see those thoughts expressed and I genuinely am wondering that - short of having it in writing - can a person actually consent to unconscious sex?
I'm big on "allegations need to be sorted out" before criminal punishment, but the Dodgers could just DFA him at any time and basically dare another team to pick him up, couldn't they? I can't remember how his contract is structured but I know he wanted the freedom to choose year by year who he plays for.
Also: Cubs are swooning just in time to turn into sellers rather than buyers. The Ricketts must be downright giddy about it.
There is a line beyond which a person can not legally consent. It isn't a nice neat clean line, but sorta fuzzy and depends on a lot of facts. At one end, a person is conclusively assumed to lack the ability to consent to be killed. (With very narrow exceptions for end of life medical care - see Jack Kevorkian.) With massive caveats about details, I suspect that Bauer's victim could (not necessarily did, but could) consent to being choked or slapped during sex play but could not consent to being beaten while unconscious.
Can the LA cops please tell him not to leave town? (Or is that only on TV?) But seriously, that whole Athletic article was horrific, including the details of his contacts with the victim afterwards
I saw Van Halen during the Obama administration at Capital One Arena (or whatever it was called). Only time I ever saw them live, DLR was the singer, and I came away thinking he'd lost his fastball, his curve, and his slider, because he was basically late career Sinatra with forgetting and making up lyrics.
Then I watched today's video, and I guess he was always like that?
Fair Warning is the best Van Halen album. Change my mind.
No arguments on Fair Warning. But yeah, it’s WELL known that Roth wasn’t exactly on point every night he was on stage. It’s always driven me crazy, because there are some wonderful bootlegs and videos like Craig shared here showing the band in all their glory. But DLR—love him as I do (as a performer)—often makes it an annoying experience. He was actually pretty decent, for him, in that video.
If we acknowledge that Fair Warning is indeed the best Van Halen album, here’s a tougher question: what’s your *second* favorite VH album? I find this is where things get interesting.
Women and Children First is probably my second favorite, although sometimes it's Van Halen I.
1984 was fun and accessible for non-traditional fans (i.e., girls) which mattered to high school grad/early college me, but I divide Van Halen Time into "First four albums" and "Everything after Fair Warning".
5150 was maybe the biggest letdown ever. I thought Eddie plus Sammy was going to melt my face, but the sound I was hoping for wasn't there.
It didn't help that Crystal Pepsi used "Right Now" for their Super Bowl ad. Made Van Hagar seem a little less bad boy, a little more sellout ...
What do you VH fans think of Wolfgang's new album? The musicianship is amazing but it feels a little to perfect and overproduced - even if I am rooting for him.
He’s obviously a very talented musician. The sound of that record is too “frat boy modern rock” for my taste, but I doubt Wolfie cares much what the nearly-50 crowd thinks about his record.
5150…it’s a hard record for me to approach without my 1986 bias. I actually really liked it when it came out. But it sounds SO dated these days. Alex’s electronic Simmons drums, and Ed’s odd guitar tones make it sound very out of place to me, and very much not like a VH record. I wish they’d issue a remix.
It could have been a much better album if they'd just embraced what they were doing and made it a covers album. Especially with some more obscure choices along the lines of "Big Bad Bill." Or they could have pared it down and released it as an EP. But I guess neither EPs nor cover records were really a thing in 1982. Alas.
Fun fact: Marshall Berle, mentioned in that article, is Milton Berle's nephew. He also discovered RATT, which is why Uncle Milty agreed to appear in the "Round and Round" video.
File under: stuff I learned while reading that hair metal book last week.
It definitely wasn’t a *feature*! It was a bug—a big gaping bug, as Templeman clearly relates, and is evident in many live performances—but it was a bug that DLR, to his credit, acknowledged and worked through. It appears he was willing to take advice, and willing to spend hour and hours in the studio recording and re-recording to get it right. And I admire that kind of tenacity.
Now, even though he wasn’t a great singer, I will usually come to DLR’s defense because of his other talents. He had a way with turning a phrase that was perfect for a California hard rock band that also carried a brighter, more pop-leaning, image (even where they were melting faces, as Craig notes). DLR also came up with some very good melodies, and he definitely infused the band with a level of energy that aligned with Ed, Al, and Mike.
In the Bauer section when Craig talks about the ‘allegation’ it says 2 incidents. Were they during one encounter ? Or did it happen on 2 different occasions ?
Two different occasions. After the first one the woman came back after Bauer apologized and offered to use a safe word for consensual rough sex. It was on the second occasion when she was punched repeatedly and had to seek medical attention.
I spent 6th-12th grade, that coincides with the DLR era, living in places that a band like Van Halen would never visit. So I never saw the classic line up, but I did see Van Hagar twice, and Sammy holds his own as a frontman.
Sammy's book is excellent. He's a smart guy for a high school dropout, or maybe just smart enough to take good advice. He started diversifying his income stream early and at one point owned the 2nd largest fire alarm company in CA - long before he got into the tequila game. Dave's book is a stream of consciousness disaster. Or totally on brand, depending on your point of view.
Yeah, the relief singer who parlayed his tenure with the band into a mediocre tequila label and an untold amount of fellatio is all about "enlightening and elevating people." That's a little too rich for my tastes.
Yeah, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a big tequila drinker, just margaritas and shots at parties back in the day. I just recall having the beer lined up to chase it down, then doing the shot and putting the beer aside.
At owner Steve Cohen's suggestion, they actually will be having a Bobby Bonilla Day later this month....and look to be doing the same thing in the future.
The Montgomery County DA who promised Cosby immunity and said there wasn't enough to prosecute him back in 2004 was the same jabroni who defended Trump in his second impeachment, and is a deeply, deeply unpopular dude locally who only got to where he was because of his name. He has gotten smoked in local election after local election for years, and there were whispers that the reason he took the Trump case was because he had visions of running for PA governor in a few years and wanted to get the Trump rub.
Very unlikely. For a prosecutor to lose their license, they've got to do something really bad. Even a prosecutor in here Texas who got an innocent man executed fought the state bar and was able to keep his license.
I lived in Montgomery County for 20 yrs. Bruce Castor's name was *always* in the news. That guy is seriously connected in local politics. He's not going anywhere even though he never seems to be any good at his job.
He was mostly connected through his name. Once Montco started shifting blue, he turned into a bumbling mess and has been passed over time and again by the local Republican party, which is why he hasn't won an election in almost a decade. The only reason he's still talked about now is because of the Cosby case and he's desperate to keep his name out there. The moment he lost to Steele, his political career was done.
And on a personal note, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person
Yeah, I have a friend who is licensed in PA. When the subject came up this morning on Zoom, she just shook her head incoherently. Another friend on the Zoom call had a HS friend who had her own close encounter of the wrong kind with Cosby back in the 60s (She never *did* know exactly how wrong, just that it was skeevy as fuck.)
Before I made the move to WI, I lived in a basic house with a fenced yard in a basic neighborhood in S Minneapolis with a wife and two big rescue dogs, which we named Rumsfeld and Cheney.
We didn't have much for money, but we had the luxury of screaming out the back door "Get out of the fucking compost, Rumsfeld, you bastard!"
I don’t think most of the mockery of Bonilla’s deal is the deferred comp, pretty sure it is the structure. Like, the 8% fixed rate and the Wilpon’s belief that an obvious Ponzi scheme would never stop *are* why people mock the deal. Scherzer’s deal takes his $30MM AAV and pays it out at $15MM/year over 14 years, which is basically half his salary deferred interest-free, 325 basis points below the prime rate in January 2015. Had the Wilpons gotten 325 bp under prime and had the same deferral and payout periods, they’d be paying him around $550k/year and nobody would really care about the deferrals either.
As for Cosby, the problem I have seen people raise here is there is no contemporaneous evidence that there was an immunization given in exchange for testimony, and when it first was alleged ten years later, both Bruce Castor and Cosby’s team had reason to claim an agreement existed after the fact. The PA Supreme Court appears to have taken Castor at his word despite having reason to believe he was an unreliable narrator.
Satan was so pleased with my work on Earth that he allowed me to post comments online from the grave, like my pal Herman Cain. He actually walked me (over hot coals with a pitch fork poking me in the ass) through the process to get me started.
Anyway, I must say that I am tickled and delighted to see so many MAGA/GQP folks celebrating my life and honoring my work ever since I descended into the fiery pits yesterday. It really hurt my feelings when Trump came along and those folks suddenly pretended they were against my crowning achievements - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - all along. I have many fond memories of these folks telling anyone who didn't fully embrace sending our troops to die, or killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, that they "hate America" and "hate the troops".
So it really pleases me that the MAGA/GQP world came around on me and decided I was good and honorable after all. It really makes me appreciate their ability to have contradictory beliefs on any single topic, depending on what suits them best at the moment.
There’s a video on YouTube of a very young Sammy fronting Montrose. It’s a TV show, IIRC, but I do know they’re doing “Bad Motor Scooter” and it’s fantastic. Sammy sounds great.
Kyle Schwarber went hitless yesterday. Might be time for the Nats to cut their losses and move on.
Of larger concern to me is that Trea Turner injured his finger yesterday diving into 3rd at the end of his triple. Davey says he just jammed it, but given his history I'll remain worried.
Me too. Want some of my Maalox?
I saw someone mention that Schwarber's 16 HR in June ties him for the 2nd-most in a month by a lefty. (A couple of fellas by the names of Ruth and Bonds each had a 17-HR month.)
So I got curious and wondered about the right-handed record. Sammy Sooser's 20-HR June 1998 was no surprise, but then I saw that Rudy York hit 18 HR in a month back in 1937, and then he had a 17-HR month in 1943.
York hit 35 total HR in 1937, 18 in August.
York hit 34 total HR in 1943, 17 in August.
That's bizarre!
Here's the full list:
https://stathead.com/tiny/Q8lWv
It’s impossible to read this story and not come away believing that Bauer is a violent and dangerous person with a disturbing lack of concern for boundaries or the well being of others.
**confirming suspicions of Cleveland fans who tolerated his antics for most of a decade**
McNamara & Rumsfeld, the Sons of Bitches Reunion Tour.
Now we need to add Kissinger to the band.
Rumsfeld passing away a free man at 88 makes me wish the Tesselecta from Dr. Who was a real thing. 😕
Yes. When will Kissinger go to his just, very warm reward?
I've always loved how Yo La Tengo turned the summer of 2001 into a love song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq4h_q4jFdk
I saw a number of men defending Bauer with the "she agreed to rough sex" argument (with a few "we've all been there" sentiments which, I'm like, what?). Then the details emerged and I continued to see those thoughts expressed and I genuinely am wondering that - short of having it in writing - can a person actually consent to unconscious sex?
I'm big on "allegations need to be sorted out" before criminal punishment, but the Dodgers could just DFA him at any time and basically dare another team to pick him up, couldn't they? I can't remember how his contract is structured but I know he wanted the freedom to choose year by year who he plays for.
Also: Cubs are swooning just in time to turn into sellers rather than buyers. The Ricketts must be downright giddy about it.
There is a line beyond which a person can not legally consent. It isn't a nice neat clean line, but sorta fuzzy and depends on a lot of facts. At one end, a person is conclusively assumed to lack the ability to consent to be killed. (With very narrow exceptions for end of life medical care - see Jack Kevorkian.) With massive caveats about details, I suspect that Bauer's victim could (not necessarily did, but could) consent to being choked or slapped during sex play but could not consent to being beaten while unconscious.
Can the LA cops please tell him not to leave town? (Or is that only on TV?) But seriously, that whole Athletic article was horrific, including the details of his contacts with the victim afterwards
Until there are criminal charges, he is free to go as he pleases.
I saw Van Halen during the Obama administration at Capital One Arena (or whatever it was called). Only time I ever saw them live, DLR was the singer, and I came away thinking he'd lost his fastball, his curve, and his slider, because he was basically late career Sinatra with forgetting and making up lyrics.
Then I watched today's video, and I guess he was always like that?
Fair Warning is the best Van Halen album. Change my mind.
No arguments on Fair Warning. But yeah, it’s WELL known that Roth wasn’t exactly on point every night he was on stage. It’s always driven me crazy, because there are some wonderful bootlegs and videos like Craig shared here showing the band in all their glory. But DLR—love him as I do (as a performer)—often makes it an annoying experience. He was actually pretty decent, for him, in that video.
If we acknowledge that Fair Warning is indeed the best Van Halen album, here’s a tougher question: what’s your *second* favorite VH album? I find this is where things get interesting.
Women and Children First is probably my second favorite, although sometimes it's Van Halen I.
1984 was fun and accessible for non-traditional fans (i.e., girls) which mattered to high school grad/early college me, but I divide Van Halen Time into "First four albums" and "Everything after Fair Warning".
5150 was maybe the biggest letdown ever. I thought Eddie plus Sammy was going to melt my face, but the sound I was hoping for wasn't there.
It didn't help that Crystal Pepsi used "Right Now" for their Super Bowl ad. Made Van Hagar seem a little less bad boy, a little more sellout ...
What do you VH fans think of Wolfgang's new album? The musicianship is amazing but it feels a little to perfect and overproduced - even if I am rooting for him.
He’s obviously a very talented musician. The sound of that record is too “frat boy modern rock” for my taste, but I doubt Wolfie cares much what the nearly-50 crowd thinks about his record.
5150…it’s a hard record for me to approach without my 1986 bias. I actually really liked it when it came out. But it sounds SO dated these days. Alex’s electronic Simmons drums, and Ed’s odd guitar tones make it sound very out of place to me, and very much not like a VH record. I wish they’d issue a remix.
Fair Warning
(small gap)
VH1
MCMLXXXIV
Women and Children First
(slightly larger gap)
VH2
Diver Down
I'll always remember this from the Rolling Stone review of "Diver Down":
"There’s a little Van Halen in everybody, these guys are fond of saying, but there’s too little on Diver Down."
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/diver-down-186849/
It could have been a much better album if they'd just embraced what they were doing and made it a covers album. Especially with some more obscure choices along the lines of "Big Bad Bill." Or they could have pared it down and released it as an EP. But I guess neither EPs nor cover records were really a thing in 1982. Alas.
That’s hilarious!
Van Halen was my first concert. Diver Down in, about, 1982-3ish. Tremendous fun. DLR even came out and played guitar on Ice Cream Man.
He did the same when I saw them in 2012ish, but it was preceded by a ten minute film interlude dedicated to his dog raising.
On the lighter side … I stumbled across this somewhat self-congratulatory article yesterday that gets into Ted Templeton’s efforts to sign and promote Van Halen, along with his concerns about DLR’s shortcomings as a singer. Spoiler: His singing ability (or lack thereof, depending on your point of view) wasn’t a bug, it was a feature. https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/van-halen-ted-templeman/?fbclid=IwAR2m_BLl7Y1A-1o1WLv48X4LOSZw5Iriy-on2hl_43UbCH6RH88GHhiW0GQ
Fun fact: Marshall Berle, mentioned in that article, is Milton Berle's nephew. He also discovered RATT, which is why Uncle Milty agreed to appear in the "Round and Round" video.
File under: stuff I learned while reading that hair metal book last week.
What’s this “hair metal” book you guys speak of?
I’m, uh, asking for a friend.
https://www.amazon.com/N%C3%B6thin-But-Good-Time-Uncensored/dp/1250195756
Oh my.
My friend is quite excited.
Thanks Craig!
It definitely wasn’t a *feature*! It was a bug—a big gaping bug, as Templeman clearly relates, and is evident in many live performances—but it was a bug that DLR, to his credit, acknowledged and worked through. It appears he was willing to take advice, and willing to spend hour and hours in the studio recording and re-recording to get it right. And I admire that kind of tenacity.
Now, even though he wasn’t a great singer, I will usually come to DLR’s defense because of his other talents. He had a way with turning a phrase that was perfect for a California hard rock band that also carried a brighter, more pop-leaning, image (even where they were melting faces, as Craig notes). DLR also came up with some very good melodies, and he definitely infused the band with a level of energy that aligned with Ed, Al, and Mike.
DLR must have hoovered up all the coke in California before hitting the stage there.
“Hoovering schneef” — things I learned from watching Letterkenny.
In the Bauer section when Craig talks about the ‘allegation’ it says 2 incidents. Were they during one encounter ? Or did it happen on 2 different occasions ?
Bauer and the woman hooked up twice. Don't think I need allegedly there because I think they both admit to that.
Two different occasions. After the first one the woman came back after Bauer apologized and offered to use a safe word for consensual rough sex. It was on the second occasion when she was punched repeatedly and had to seek medical attention.
So he’s basically a liar and a piece of $hit. Thoughts on Syndergaard calling him out when the story first came out ?
I mentioned it yesterday: I think it's bad form to use this as a means of settling a beef. This really is not a joking matter at all.
I missed yesterday, similar to your situation was having traveling issues and didn’t get to read the article yet.
Trevor Bauer ignoring a safe word seems like the most Trevor Bauer-est thing imaginable.
He didn’t ignore the safe word, he rendered her unable to give it. Probably thought that took him off the hook, too.
I spent 6th-12th grade, that coincides with the DLR era, living in places that a band like Van Halen would never visit. So I never saw the classic line up, but I did see Van Hagar twice, and Sammy holds his own as a frontman.
Sammy's book is excellent. He's a smart guy for a high school dropout, or maybe just smart enough to take good advice. He started diversifying his income stream early and at one point owned the 2nd largest fire alarm company in CA - long before he got into the tequila game. Dave's book is a stream of consciousness disaster. Or totally on brand, depending on your point of view.
Yeah, the relief singer who parlayed his tenure with the band into a mediocre tequila label and an untold amount of fellatio is all about "enlightening and elevating people." That's a little too rich for my tastes.
Man, “I Can’t Drive 55” is *not* the song you need coming on the radio while flying down the GSP late for a meeting.
Hey, Cabo Wabo is better than mediocre! First tequila I remember having that didn’t require a chaser.
Fair enough. I'm not a tequila drinker myself. Was relying on word of mouth from friends who are.
Yeah, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a big tequila drinker, just margaritas and shots at parties back in the day. I just recall having the beer lined up to chase it down, then doing the shot and putting the beer aside.
Agreed. Cabo is pretty good. I prefer Milagro, and Casa Noble.
Mets be Mets but I'm always happy for Bobby Bonilla on his payday! Good call by his agent!
It'd be cool if they had him throw out the 1st pitch tomorrow and gave him his check on the way off the field!
At owner Steve Cohen's suggestion, they actually will be having a Bobby Bonilla Day later this month....and look to be doing the same thing in the future.
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2021/07/01/bobby-bonilla-day-mets-celebrate/7823541002/
The Montgomery County DA who promised Cosby immunity and said there wasn't enough to prosecute him back in 2004 was the same jabroni who defended Trump in his second impeachment, and is a deeply, deeply unpopular dude locally who only got to where he was because of his name. He has gotten smoked in local election after local election for years, and there were whispers that the reason he took the Trump case was because he had visions of running for PA governor in a few years and wanted to get the Trump rub.
I hope he loses his law license. Can he lose his license over something like this?
Very unlikely. For a prosecutor to lose their license, they've got to do something really bad. Even a prosecutor in here Texas who got an innocent man executed fought the state bar and was able to keep his license.
I lived in Montgomery County for 20 yrs. Bruce Castor's name was *always* in the news. That guy is seriously connected in local politics. He's not going anywhere even though he never seems to be any good at his job.
The good news is his bungling of the Trump hearings ended any state or national aspirations
He was mostly connected through his name. Once Montco started shifting blue, he turned into a bumbling mess and has been passed over time and again by the local Republican party, which is why he hasn't won an election in almost a decade. The only reason he's still talked about now is because of the Cosby case and he's desperate to keep his name out there. The moment he lost to Steele, his political career was done.
And on a personal note, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving person
Yeah, I have a friend who is licensed in PA. When the subject came up this morning on Zoom, she just shook her head incoherently. Another friend on the Zoom call had a HS friend who had her own close encounter of the wrong kind with Cosby back in the 60s (She never *did* know exactly how wrong, just that it was skeevy as fuck.)
Before I made the move to WI, I lived in a basic house with a fenced yard in a basic neighborhood in S Minneapolis with a wife and two big rescue dogs, which we named Rumsfeld and Cheney.
We didn't have much for money, but we had the luxury of screaming out the back door "Get out of the fucking compost, Rumsfeld, you bastard!"
(Yes, they were neutered.)
I don’t think most of the mockery of Bonilla’s deal is the deferred comp, pretty sure it is the structure. Like, the 8% fixed rate and the Wilpon’s belief that an obvious Ponzi scheme would never stop *are* why people mock the deal. Scherzer’s deal takes his $30MM AAV and pays it out at $15MM/year over 14 years, which is basically half his salary deferred interest-free, 325 basis points below the prime rate in January 2015. Had the Wilpons gotten 325 bp under prime and had the same deferral and payout periods, they’d be paying him around $550k/year and nobody would really care about the deferrals either.
As for Cosby, the problem I have seen people raise here is there is no contemporaneous evidence that there was an immunization given in exchange for testimony, and when it first was alleged ten years later, both Bruce Castor and Cosby’s team had reason to claim an agreement existed after the fact. The PA Supreme Court appears to have taken Castor at his word despite having reason to believe he was an unreliable narrator.
Hello, folks, and greetings from hell!
Satan was so pleased with my work on Earth that he allowed me to post comments online from the grave, like my pal Herman Cain. He actually walked me (over hot coals with a pitch fork poking me in the ass) through the process to get me started.
Anyway, I must say that I am tickled and delighted to see so many MAGA/GQP folks celebrating my life and honoring my work ever since I descended into the fiery pits yesterday. It really hurt my feelings when Trump came along and those folks suddenly pretended they were against my crowning achievements - the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - all along. I have many fond memories of these folks telling anyone who didn't fully embrace sending our troops to die, or killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people, that they "hate America" and "hate the troops".
So it really pleases me that the MAGA/GQP world came around on me and decided I was good and honorable after all. It really makes me appreciate their ability to have contradictory beliefs on any single topic, depending on what suits them best at the moment.
Peace!
"Peace!" is just ... chef's kiss!