The short videos at the end of this are a bit unexpected and uncommon from what I generally post here, but somewhat fun, I think.

But first some background.

It's been quite a week for women's sports at the beloved Northwestern.  The other day, the women's golf team won their first-ever national championship.  And yesterday, the remarkable women's lacrosse team qualified for tomorrow's national championship finals by winning their semi-final match against Boston College -- coming back from an 11-6 deficit to win 12-11.

This was a big deal, since Boston College beat Northwestern last year in the finals -- after Northwestern had beaten Boston College in the finals the year before.

And the reason I call them "the remarkable women's lacrosse team" is because that win in 2023 was the Northwestern women's team eighth national championship in 18 years under coach Kelly Amonte Hiller. 

The finals this year, to be played on Sunday at 9 AM Pacific Coast time, will be broadcast on ESPN.  It'll be a tough contest, against #1 ranked North Carolina.  Northwestern is ranked #4.

As it happens, when I was back in Chicago last month, I was staying in Evanston and went to the campus and wandered around.  And at one point, I came across a practice field by Lake Michigan.  And there was the women's lacrosse team practicing.  I took some short videos and thought this would be a proper time to post them.  One in particular is offbeat and amusing.

If the "start" icon isn't showing, just tap on the image, and it should show up.

This first is a 35-second video of the players in a sort of "shoot-out" scrimmage, practicing their one-on-one moves against the goalie.  (You can see Lake Michigan in the background.)

And this second video is...well, I'm not exactly sure what the point of it is.  They team was at the far end of the field, so the details are a bit far, though I tried to zoom the lens as much as possible.  But what they're doing -- other than having great fun -- was sort of bewildering to him, though a treat to watch.

Basically, they seem to have split the team into two sides and appear to be playing a sort of dodgeball game, but with more than one ball and with what might be a small lacrosse ball.  Though it looks a touch bigger and softer.

Why they are doing this...I don't have a clue.  Perhaps it's to develop hand-eye coordination. Or to develop teamwork or camaraderie.  Or maybe it's just something the women love playing, and it's a treat the coaches give them as a break during practice. 

Whatever it was, it went on for maybe 10-15 minutes.  And they were having a really wonderful time.  (You'll hear the cheers at the end.)  And considering they've won eight national championships in 18 years and are in the finals tomorrow, it seems to work.  Here are 25 seconds of it.

On this “The Weekly Show” podcast with Jon Stewart, his guest is Pete Buttigieg.  As the show writes, “As the economy reels from Trump's sweeping tariffs, Jon is joined by former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to examine the fallout. Together, they explore what Trump's levies mean for everyday Americans, discuss how to bridge the divide between politicians and the people they serve, and consider how a new generation of leadership might rebuild in the years ahead.”
 
Here is the show’s "breakdown" of when specific topics are covered during the conversation, so you can jump to the sections that most interest you.  Those time codes are hyperlinked to the video on YouTube and will jump you automatically to the right spot.  But for those who watch it here, this is the schedule.
 
0:00 - Intro
3:45 - Former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg Joins
8:48 - Pete Buttigieg on Trump's Tariffs Policy & Effect on People's Lives
12:58 - The Mechanics of MAGA Thinking
17:27 - Is There Any Logic Behind the Trump Administration's Decisions?
24:37 - Increasing Efficiency & Effectiveness in the Bureaucratic Process
32:35 - Finding Common Ground Through Government Regulation
36:58 - Providing Higher Margin of Error for U.S. Citizens
42:51 - What's Needed for Growth in Democratic Party & Washington?
52:39 - Listening to & Actioning on Public Criticism
54:41 - Laying Groundwork for a Modern Democratic Vision
1:02:19 - Who Will Lead the Charge of Progress?
1:04:23 - Breaking Down the Discussion
 

​Randy Rainbow has a new song parody, and it's wonderful.  It's got fun and funny lyrics, and the song choice to parody is spot-on perfect.  And the production is a lot of fun, too.

If you want to skip the embedded, interminably-long ad he has built into the video, it starts around the :50-second mark and ends around 2:25, so you can jump past it there.

Just a bonus video that I suspect very few people here will be interested in watching.  But that's okay, it's only a bonus.

However, when I posted the breath-of-fresh-air video of the final putt which clinched the first-ever NCAA National Championship for the beloved Northwestern's women's golf team, it was buried at the end of an article about Trump hell.  And the championship deserved better.  It deserved it's own posting.  It deserved it's own headline.

So, here's an an eight-minute video on the final round.  (It's posted by NU Athletics, so it will not come as a shock that the only shots they include are by Northwestern players.)  I'll give away the ending -- the Northwestern women's golf team wins the National Championship.  Its first ever.
​

​What a day it was in the hell known as TrumpLand.  So, difficult to know what to write about.
 
It’s one thing that the House passed the budget bill.  What gets me most about that, though, are all the “I draw the red line here” MAGOP deficit hawks who always cave and pass whatever budget bill Trump wants, even when it adds $3 TRILLION to the debt!!  They never fail.  Their empty soullessness is craven.
 
I take a certain among of comfort, though, in the likelihood that this will never pass the Senate, and there will be a lot of cutbacks from things that will add even more to the debt, putting these deficit hawks in even worse position.  And it has to be passed by July 4 – which the news reports members of Congress say that’s very unlikely.  (We’ll see.  These are MAGOPs, after all, and the depth to which they can sink is almost unmeasurable.)  But also, importantly, regardless of what they do, there are now all these MAGOPs in tight, purple districts who are on the record voting to cut Medicare and cut Medicaid and supporting all the rest of many things that the public HATES.  While raising the debt $3 trillion to give billionaires tax cuts -- as prices will have risen from the tariffs when election day rolls around.  What on earth did they think that message to voters would be?? Let them dance on the head of that pin, as they recognize that they inexplicably threw away their careers.
 
(And yes, I’m sure Trump and Mike Johnson put pressure on them with the threat of a primary challenge.  And with Trump’s endorsement, the challenger might likely win.  But -- if it’s a purple district, a MAGOP on the general election ballot would get swamped, especially this election cycle.  And that’s what any purple district representative should have said to Trump or Mike Johnson.  “You guys may get your candidate to run, but you’ll lose the seat.  So, back off and let me do my job and try to save a vote for you in the next term.”  But I guess that doesn’t work in a cult.)
 
Then there was the administration telling Harvard that it couldn’t enroll any foreign students.  It seems ethereally weird to simply just type that sentence.  Even with this Supreme Court, I have a very hard time imagining that a private university can be barred from admitting whoever it wants.  So, in the end, the message this says to all voting Americans who came to the country as foreign students and became citizens is just ghastly for the party.  What is the Trump administration thinking??? If “thinking” is an appropriate word.
 
And one can only imagine how many ketchup bottles were thrown when Trump found out that a federal judge blocked him from shutting down the Department of Education, since it was created by Congress.  That should have been a no-brainer decision, so I’m not surprised by it – but very pleased.  However, I don’t know exactly what the ruling means – since there would seem to be ways he can weaken it to near-inoperable without shutting it down.  Perhaps the ruling had protections against that built in.
 
Still, though the court system has held very strong the past months, all was not great with Supreme Court.  It ruled that Trump does not have to reinstate two federal officials who were in charge of agencies that enforced labor protections.  (One was an agency whose mission was to make certain that federal employment decisions are not influenced by politics.  The other was the National Labor Relations Board.  So, gee, what could go wrong there?  But hey, great message to working men and women -- especially with the Mid-Terms coming two months after Labor Day.)
 
On the hopeful side, those weren’t final terminations.  The high court only ruled that while Trump had the authority to fire the official, the litigations in lower court over the firing could continue.  So, they could be reinstated, if the lower court rules in their favor. 
 
Still, one other story from yesterday leaped near the top of the eye-rolling list.  "Secretary of State" (Trump division) Marco Rubio said in a Senate hearing that he knows nothing about Trump's dinner tonight with foreign winners of the Trump crypto grift, since today is first time Rubio said he had heard of it.  Okay, so if this is actually, really, truly the first he's heard of it, he should resign for utter incompetence, along with his staff. Because I knew about it weeks ago.  And did millions of others because it was widely covered on the news.  Of course, the alternative is that Rubio is lying…
 
So…what to write about today?  What to write about??
 
Okay, I’m going with this.
 
Over the weekend, the beloved Northwestern women’s golf team won the NCAA National Championship for the first time in the school’s history.  They beat #1 ranked Stanford.  And Northwestern went into the tournament ranked #10.
 
So, to end with something positive and wonderful, here’s the final putt that won the national championship for Northwestern.  Dianna Lee had to make a 4-1/2 foot putt, and as you’ll see, the pressure was on her and she checked it out from every angle.  And then – well, here ‘tis...

Don't worry.  If you'd don't like golf, it's just one putt.
​

George Wendt passed away this week at the age of 76.  I can't say I knew him -- but I did have a memorable tale about crossing paths with him.

First a little backstory.

The Second City comedy troupe in Chicago has a range of especially-classic sketches in their repertoire that they periodically include in their revues of new material.  One of the most famous has to do with a funeral and #10 tin can of Van Camp's pork-and-beans, which originally starred a young John Belushi.  One of my favorites is the "PTA Meeting", a very clever (and funny) piece where all members of the cast -- but one -- go out into the audience and take an empty seat.  The one remaining stays on stage as the moderator of the meeting, which the other scattered members play parents.  My very favorite was "A Short Talk on the Universe" with the legendary Severn Darden -- though that one was unique to Darden and really couldn't be repeated by anyone else.

Anyway, back to the tale.  One evening, several decades ago, I was at the Second City, when they did "The PTA Meeting."  And as it happened, there was an empty seat next to me.  And when I looked over, I saw that one of the cast members had taken the seat.  And it was George Wendt.  He hadn't been in Cheers yet (as I said, it was several decades ago), but I obviously recognized him from the evening's cast -- and always remembered him because he was so good and funny.

What I remember from the sketch and sitting next to George Wendt was how totally committed to the scene he was.  (I would imagine all the actors were, as well.)  But there was no nodding a "Hello" as he sat.  And throughout the sketch, it wasn't that he stayed in character quietly until it was his turn to speak, rather -- even though the only person who could hear him was me -- he kept muttering and mumbling to himself, reacting to all that was going on around him in the scene. 

It wasn't much of an occasion for meeting him.  But it was memorable.  Noted for remembering it for all these many decades.

George Wendt is not in this recording -- in fact, I think this may be the original version of the sketch.  The cast includes some people who are well-known today, along with several you'd recognize by sight -- Jim Fisher, Joe Flaherty, Harold Ramis, David Rasche, Ann Ryerson, Eugenie Ross-Leming, and Jim Staahl.  So here, in George Wendt's memory, is "The PTA Meeting."