Sunday Morning Coffee — November 3, 2024 — Sunday Morning Scramble
Good morning. Hopefully by now, unless Arizona is your calling, your clocks are an hour earlier than this time yesterday. Let’s scramble a bunch of leftover items with our eggs, everything bagel and Sunday Morning Coffee:
Like any good politician, the betting odds for the presidential election in two days have flip-flopped. Donald Trump, after the convention bump that Kamala Harris received, is now the favorite to win on Tuesday. An extremely large wager, $30 million by an unidentified French national from his handsome cookie jar, has propelled Mr. Trump to the favorite in the off-shore betting markets. In American wagering parlance he is -$130 which means to win $100 you must lay $130. Conversely, if you bet $100 on Ms. Harris and she wins you’d cash for $100 or even money. Trump’s odds, in a two-horse race, are pretty strong. In both sports and horse racing, late money on a team or contestant is normally indicative of what might happen. However, don’t forget the gamblers’ graveyard is littered with beaten favorites.
I miss Alexander Shunnarah, Paul Powell and Morgan & Morgan. Even Vegas goofballs Adam S. Kutner and ‘Your Boy’ Eric Roy. I never thought I would long for the return of the personal injury lawyer commercials, but I do. Thank goodness, they’ll all be back Wednesday morning. Nevada is a presidential toss-up state and this constant barrage of political television advertising for national elections mercifully ends in 72 hours. There is nothing positive; just non-stop berating of opponents. And it doesn’t end with TV, radio or the incredibly ineffective lawn signs. At the gym last week I was verbally accosted by a woman, a neighbor down the street whom I know casually at best, for being ‘nasty’ to her husband when he rang our doorbell to pitch a slate of candidates. First of all I don’t remember it; secondly if it did happen I’m not sure how I was in the wrong. It’s a violation of our HOA bylaws to solicit for anything, never mind giving me your political opinion about which I can give a hoot. More importantly the last thing I want to do is answer the door when I’m engrossed in an episode of Leave It To Beaver on MeTV, the one where the Beav was stuck on a billboard. The good news is now I can knock this woman off the be-nice-to-list. Or as nice as I can possibly be. Come Wednesday the messaging will stop, and the personal injury ads will cycle again. Actually that’s a good thing. The bad news, the sad news, is no matter who wins our country will be as divided as it’s ever been.
Sunday Morning Coffee, after consulting with the editorial boards of the LA Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, has decided not to endorse a candidate for president. We expect severe backlash.
Lack of an endorsement aside, we will be huddled in front of the television on Tuesday evening for the most important results of the day — the first reveal of the rankings for the college football playoffs.
The Vegas Sphere illuminates on Wednesday night with a salute to the Dodgers.
Congratulations are in order to Dodgers and Mets fans on their World Series victories. The Dodgers were clearly the best team in every facet of the game, while Mets fans rejoiced as the Yankees committed suicide in Game 5.
How about those two buffoons who tried to wrestle the baseball out of Dodgers Mookie Betts’ glove in Game 4 at Yankee Stadium. Then New York turning them into cult heroes once again defies social norms. Leave it to the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay, my favorite writer, to come up with the proper punishment for the pair. “Bar them for life from Yankee Stadium.” Gay wrote on Friday and added, “Better yet, give them Jets season tickets.”
Watching the Yankees implode in Games 1 & 5 was tough. However I did smile listening to Shohei Ohtani address Dodger fans at their parade on Friday in almost perfect English. Time to drop the interpreter. The clip is on You Tube.
By sales, the top grossing stand-alone restaurant in the United States is Joe’s Stone Crab at the tip of Miami Beach where it’s been since 1913. According to Restaurant Business, a trade publication for the industry, Joe’s sales for 2023 was $45.3 million. That’s a lot of stone crab claws, hash browns and key lime pie.
This suprised me: The highest grossing restaurant on the Vegas Strip is probably not what you’d expect. Alexxa’s in Paris Las Vegas rang up $28.8 million on 600,000 meals and their trademark potent mega-cocktails last year.
Our SMC music trivia this week asks in which decade- the 50s, 60s or 70s, how many instrumental-only records made it to number one on the Billboard Top 100? There were nine each in the 1960s and 70s. But the 1950s saw 13 instrumentals hit the top spot. The top selling instrumental of all-time, and the only one to go Platinum with over two million imprints sold, was the 1977 hit Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band by Medco that topped the charts for two weeks. The best-selling instrumental group ever were the Ventures who charted 32 Top 100 songs and sold over 100 million records. Among the ones we may still be humming are Walk Don’t Run; Let’s Go; Rebel-‘Rouser; Apache; Peter Gunn; Tequila; Green Onions and Hawaii Five O.
And from that Boomer era let’s wish a couple of happy birthdays: Ernest Evans, aka Chubby Checker, turned 83rd on October 3. When we were teens, Chubby, named as an answer to Fats Domino, released The Twist, Pony Time, Let’s Twist Again and Limbo Rock. And from the Happy Days set Marion Ross, Mrs. C, celebrated number 96 while Henry Winkler is 79 and still very cool.
A bit of a British typo if you were looking for a Browns hat.
We commented a couple of Sundays ago about our trip to London to see the Jets and Vikings and how popular the NFL is in the UK. Apparently they have a long way to go. At a souvenir stand outside of Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, team hats were on sale including Buff-alo, Mi-ami and Cleve-land.
And while visiting London, you do what all good British sports fans do and take in a Premier League match. I see your eyes rolling. Actually their football, our soccer, is a fun experience for an American to watch live. It was my second Premier League- the English major league of the sport—experience having gone to see a Chelsea match back in 2016. Last month son Scott got us two midfield tickets for West Ham United against Ipswich Town at London Stadium which was built for the 2012 Olympics. The teams were 14th and 15th in the league standings, or table as they call it, out of 20. On paper it resembled the White Sox and Marlins. However, English soccer is incredibly entertaining listening to the constant chanting of the fans from each side. All 60,000 seats were occupied including about 5,000 Ipswich supporters, who sat in a section by themselves guarded by security. You cannot wear visiting team colors in any other area except those designated for the visitors. Security is very prevalent — in the 2023-24 Premier League season there were 2,584 arrests at matches, up 14% from the year before. West Ham has led the league in arrests for the past three seasons. Additionally, no alcohol is allowed in any seating area. Drink as much as you please out on the concourse but when you take your seat it’s water only. Thus, the stands are virtually empty until the final verse of God Save The King when the blokes take their final chugs and head into the stadium for the match. West Ham, enroute to a 4-1 win, scored 55 seconds into the contest when just about the only ones in the stadium bowl were the tee-totalers and a couple of Americans. English soccer, oops footie, is fun. I’ll be back in the UK over the holidays and hope to go again.
The ladies of the WNBA got a big victory last off-season when they successfully campaigned for all travel to be via charter flights instead of being crammed into coach on a commercial aircraft. Now some of the players are complaining— by traveling privately they no longer get frequent flier mile credits they used for personal flights.
Speaking of the WNBA, when the New York Knicks won the NBA championship 51 years ago in 1973, no Willis Reed-loving-Knicks fan figured it would be the last parade in the Canyon of Heroes for over a half century. That was until last Thursday. Making matters worse for Knicks hoops junkies, the parade wasn’t for the Knicks but instead the WNBA champion New York Liberty.
When Mr. & Mrs. Marek Ivan gave birth to a healthy baby boy on August 20, 2002, in Ostrava, Czech Republic, they didn’t seem too interested in selecting a first name for their son. These days, Ivan Ivan wears #82 and skates for the NHL’s Colorado Avalanche.
Mentioning the Czech Republic, which frankly is something we don’t do very often, the Wall Street Journal tells us the highest per capita of beer consumption in the world is in the Republic. This might account for the naming of Ivan Ivan.
Back in the mid-1950s it took two years and $15 million to build the Tropicana Hotel, making its Vegas Strip debut on April 4, 1957. Three weeks ago, on October 9 at 2:30 am, preceded by an eight minute drone show, it took 22 seconds for both remaining towers to be imploded to dust, just like your money on a bad run at the dice table. Next up for the site on the corner of Tropicana and Las Vegas Blvd. is a baseball stadium for the to-be Las Vegas A’s that will open in 2028. Bally’s also plans a hotel-casino resort on the grounds.
Did you ever watch a television show that was so bad, but you couldn’t stop watching until you knew what happened? Mercifully, I got through both seasons of Gangs Of London on Netflix. Conversely an enjoyable, easy, mindless watch also on Netflix is Nobody Likes This, about a rabbi dating a shiksa. If you have to ask what a shiksa is, it’s probably not for you.
Over the past three decades I’m really proud of the advancement in academics of my alma mater, the University of Miami. Admissions at The U really became competitive during the mid-1990s and 2000s due to the exposure the school received from the success of its football program. And now, absent from football excellence for over two decades, the Hurricanes have returned, are unbeaten, ranked in the top four in the country and number one in scoring. That brings more attention to the U. College football excellence and upgraded admission standards go hand in hand.
And finally, don’t believe everything you see on television. I’ve taken the Cologuard test twice. Not once did I feel like singing I Did It My Way.