Cup of Coffee: May 10, 2024

Good morning!

I spent all day moving my daughter out of her haunted dorm at the University of Vermont:

That place gives me the creeps and I only had to be inside it one day last August and one day yesterday. How Anna lived in it all school year is beyond me. I can only assume she burnt a lot of sage.

Anyway, an entire Subaru Forester’s worth of stuff went to a storage unit until the fall and another Subaru Forester’s stuff is, as you are reading this, en route back to Ohio. So too is Anna, of course. I’m mad at her though because she is not letting me listen to the final eight hours of that lecture series about the rise and fall of the British Empire. Nobody spoil it for me. I think I have a good idea how it ends, though. I mean, really: do they expect me to believe that some meek lawyer with a practice in South Africa is gonna topple the largest and most powerful empire in world history? Please.

As far as the world goes, here is another day’s worth of quick hits:

• Aaron Judge hit a 473-foot home run last night. I know Judge started the season terribly but for the past couple of weeks the dude has been on absolute fire. Of course part of me looks at that homer, a couple of super-smoked balls by Jon Singleton and Yordan Álvarez, and Giancarlo Stanton’s 119+ mph shot from the other night, and wonders if MLB isn’t juicing the balls again;

• The Reds lost again yesterday. That’s eight in a row, which is the longest losing streak going by far. They’ve been outscored 17-43 over that stretch too. The longest winning streak going right now belongs to the Dodgers at seven;

• Ken Rosenthal says the A’s haven’t ruled out trading Mason Miller. Because, hey, when you have a guy whose fastball averages over 100 mph, has amazing secondary stuff, averages more than two strikeouts per inning, and is under team control through 2029 you totally gotta get rid of him;

• Lionsgate Entertainment is planning a scripted TV series about Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara. Tony Award-winning producer Scott Delman and former Sports Illustrated reporter Albert Chen, who wrote the sports gambling book "Billion Dollar Fantasy," are behind the project. The funniest part of this is that if someone pitched it as pure fiction no one would ever buy it because the idea of Ippei being able to just take control of Ohtani’s accounts like he did would seem far too implausible. We’re talking about Tom Ripley being able to pretend to be Dickie Greenleaf but in the age of cell phones and computers and stuff. Would never happen!

• There’s an ongoing lawsuit in which a bunch of former MLB scouts have sued the league for age discrimination. The case is pending in Colorado for some reason. Yesterday there was a hearing about venue, with MLB’s attorneys saying Colorado is not the proper place for the case. I can’t tell from this story if there is some actual reason why the plaintiffs filed there, but I am assuming it’s for some plaintiff-friendly reason. Where my labor lawyers at? Am I right to assume that Colorado has some gnarly rule or law or whatever that would help screw MLB?

• I’m not following the Trump criminal case too closely, but I laughed out loud reading about what sounds like a pretty pathetic cross-examination of Stormy Daniels yesterday by Trump’s lawyers: “Later, after Ms. Necheles implied that Ms. Daniels had made up her story of a liaison with Trump, Ms. Daniels said that had she invented it, ‘I would have written it to be a lot better.’ Several people in the courtroom laughed. Mr. Trump glowered.” Mercy;

• The first invasive brain chip embedded into a human brain by Elon Musk’s Neuralink company has malfunctioned. I feel like I owe Musk an apology. I had loudly accused him of simply making this all up and never having actually implanted anything into anyone. I should’ve given him more credit and predicted that he’d do so but that it’d be a horrendous failure. In hindsight, if I’m being honest, the balance of probabilities favored that;

• Some of you have asked me if I got tickets to that Johnny Marr/James tour. Yes, indeed. Allison — who is a master of both concert ticket-buying and travel logistics — secured our tickets to Washington D.C., Detroit, and Chicago. If anyone is going to those and if you see me there, come say hello. I’ll be the middle aged white guy there, so I’m sure I’ll stick out.

Finally, a former law firm coworker of mine tagged me on Twitter last night in response to this tweet, and said “I feel like this would 100% be a Craig Calcaterra move”

Chris has me totally pegged. As I’ve written before, I’m no one’e idea of a rebel, but I definitely chafe in response to authority I don’t respect and it sometimes comes out in weird ways.

What Chris does not know, however, is how honestly I come by this. The best example: in the 1950s my grandfather, tired of maintaining his yard to the standards of the city in which he lived, paved the damn thing over with asphalt and painted it green. I am 100% not making that up. My family has had no real glory to speak of in something like 200 years, but we produce a great number of people who are often referred to as “a real piece of work” or “a pain the ass.” Indeed, I may translate something to that effect into Latin and commission a new family crest.

All of which is to say: I’m on your side, boat dude. Keep on fighting The Man in the most sideways, passive-aggressive ways you can think of. That’s what true winning really is.

Have a great weekend everyone. Back to normal newsletters on Monday.