Golfer Phil Mickelson announced he will miss the US Open to attend his daughter, Amanda’s high school graduation. Tiger Woods will also miss the US Open to receive his Florida Driver of the Month award.
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Golfer Phil Mickelson announced he will miss the US Open to attend his daughter, Amanda’s high school graduation. Tiger Woods will also miss the US Open but that's because he is going to try and drive there.
The Golden State Warriors are cruising past the Cleveland Cavaliers in two easy home wins. At this point even the Cleveland Browns are saying to the Cavaliers, “Dudes, its over.”
Since you asked:
Before anyone starts feeling sorry for Tiger Woods, let’s remember this is a guy who cheated on the mother of his two children with 120 women and who is worth almost a billion dollars and has 14 major wins.
Having said that, I don’t care how famous someone is, they do not deserve to have their privacy invaded by having the police release his arrest videos. That was beyond sleazy. Yes, I watched them like everyone else. How could you not? But the person or persons who got paid to release those videos should be fired.
Where Nike and Tiger went wrong was in building into Tiger's image the Phil Mickelson/Jack Nicklaus ideal father facade. That fit Tiger about as well as it did nee Bruce Jenner, but for obviously different reasons.
Most people can spot a phony a mile away.
Sir Nick Faldo had the major-cajones to, on air, throw the blame on Phil Mickelson's daughter Amanda's school, Carlsbad's private Pacific Ridge, for not rescheduling graduation so Phil can play the Open.
Good for them for not rescheduling. As beloved as Phil is in the San Diego area - and he is deeply beloved because he is a genuinely a great guy - he still is just one dad of one kid.
Sir Nick Faldo's Sir Giant Ego aside, never has it been more important to teach children that being rich and famous does not make you more important than everyone else.
While I am a fan of Bill Maher, his enormous ego is constantly bouncing checks. And I sort-of-know a female writer who claims she got fired because she would not sleep with him, but she was also a foul-mouthed, bitter malcontent, so who knows if it was true? (It probably was)
Bill Maher is smart enough to know no white guy can use the N-word on TV. Period. Yes, Maher was sort of making a bad self-depricating joke about being too whimpy and dainty to be a field slave, but that is not what people heard.
They heard a rich white guy use the N-word.
Bill Maher is many things. He is smart, reportedly difficult, prickly, sensitive to the point of being touchy, funny, talented, quick-witted, shrewd, ambitious, egotistical, arrogant, a well-known drug-use advocate, snotty, pompous and highly well-educated and well-informed.
One thing I am sure Bill Maher is not is a racist.
Bill Maher is not merely smart for Hollywood. High school graduate, Ben Affleck, is smart for Hollywood and he argued on Bill's show in defense of ISIS, clearly demonstrating Ben did not know what ISIS is. Bill Maher is real life smart graduating from Cornell with a double degree in English and History.
Bill Maher has a devoted following of liberals, but his angry views against organized religion have offended people on both sides of the aisle. One of the most amazing things Bill Maher has done in his stellar comedy career is being able to deeply offend both Christians and Muslims. (Don't even ask how much Catholics hate him)
Yes Maher has a devoted cult of fans, but Bill Maher also has too many enemies out there to keep making stupid mistakes.
Nobody should lose their career over one stupid mistake no matter how big it is, especially the sweet-hearted and kind Kathy Griffin.
But just like the long-time sports writer for the "Denver Post" who tweeted out that he was not comfortable with a Japanese winner of the Indy 500, Terry Frei was not fired for a racist tweet, which it was, he was fired for being stupid enough to tweet it.
Bill Maher was fired from ABC for - and I paraphrase - saying terrorists were brave and the people who kill them with drones were cowards. That may have been his opinion, but it is incredibly stupid thing to say on the air pre or post 9/11. And it cost him the show “Politically Incorrect.” But the show’s ratings were way down, so he probably did ABC a favor.
Maher has found a home on HBO and a niche with his latest show, “Real Time with Bill Maher,” it is a smart and funny show and he will probably, hopefully, get to keep it. But Maher will get to keep it because of good ratings, not because what he said wasn’t colossally stupid. It was.
Although it bodes badly that the incredibly smart and funny senator, Al Franken, just cancelled on Maher. As a politician, Al could not look to be on the side of someone using the N-word. So maybe Bill is graveyard dead this time. Let's hope not. We need more funny voices of dissent, not less.
We’ve seen it in politicians and new we see it a talk show host. It is called ignorance through arrogance. Even though they may be smart, the more arrogant they are, the more they think they're above the rules, the stupider they appear.
One of the telling lines in “The History of the Eagles,” was when Glenn Frey was warned by their manager Irving Azoff, that, before signing him to replace Randy Meisner, Irving saw high-singing bass player, Timothy B. Schmit, drunk and gacked (coked-up) in a hotel bar. Frey responded, “Irving, if you had been playing in a band for $200 bucks a week for ten years, you’d be drunk and gacked up too.”
Poco, the band Randy belonged to, was a pretty big band. Not Eagles big, but they toured, had songs on the radio and they released albums. And yet Timothy B. Schmit was only making $200 a week?
And then he signs with the Eagles and he is a millionaire.
With the Eagles, Glenn Frey went from a $75-a-month closet of an apartment in then-shady Echo Park to sharing a house with Don Henley that used to be owned by Dorothy Lamour with a 360-view of LA on top of Laurel Canyon with a grand white piano that James Cagney came over to play.
When not touring, they woke up late, got a burger at the Rainbow bar on Sunset, wrote songs for a few hours songs and then drank all night at the Troubador. Rinse and repeat until rich and famous.
One tour the Eagles were flying coach and sharing cabs to Holiday Inns and playing college gyms. Their manager, Irving Azoff, would get the guys invited to a sorority party so they could spend the night and not have to pay for hotel rooms. The next tour they were in a private jet taking a limo to their four star hotel and playing in NFL stadiums.
Feast or famine doesn’t even begin to describe the music business.
Comedy is much the same way.
How rough is the comedy business? You know academy award winner and one of the funniest people on the planet, Jamie Foxx? His name was Eric Bishop. But, in 1989, the Comedy Store’s owner, the barking mad Mitzy Shore, was on a mission to only promote women comedians so he changed it to Jamie Foxx so they would think he was a woman and get stage time. He later amended the story to say it was in homage of Red Foxx.
As the hilarious Dave Attell put it so well, if your dream is to fly to from LA to Wichita, do two shows on Friday and Saturday and have enough cash left over to spend one hour in a strip club and then masturbate to porn in your dingy hotel room, then comedy is for you.
