G-DAY

 G-day mate. Ready for some football down under? 🐨 <---- (Koala Bear emoji, a blog first)

We limped away from the Wednesday night snoozer hitting the under and wiffing on Price over 65 yards rushing (he had 45 at the half, wtf? With a backup QB in the game they couldn't feed the big, fast rookie the rock more?); pushed on Seattle -3, and took a step towards our NE under 9 wins for the season as the Cheaters choked. Their QB is overrated, and while their coach maybe a star in affairs of the heart, he won't make anyone in Bahsthan forget their last coach...ol' wazz'shisname? 

Tonight we have the second kick-off (bad pun) game of the season. And while the Rams are our pick for rep'ing the NFC in the SB, we are going with the 49'ers +4 and the under 48. San Fran has been down under for a week; the Rams just arrived, and we think that is the wrong way to play this- flying across seven time zones and then playing a football game. If anything, it makes the under a juicy goose here.  (No goose emoji on the blogger app; we looked). 

We are also running (another bad pun) with CMC over 60 yards as the 49'ers do not want a shootout with LA. 

Two professional football games and it's not even Friday. Is living in America 2026 great or what? 

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME...

 Shakespeare in the Park? Opera? Manovani? To pick 6 /12 before your favourite DeSantis Drone? To have a blistering oral argument before the 3rd DCA (motto: "We used to have oral arguments but no more...") 

FOOTBALL!🏈

Here we go. First up, a repeat of a snoozer of a Super Bowl- your Super Bowl champs Seattle Seahawks play the NE Cheaters (who is our best bet for under 9 wins this season- they had the fourth easiest schedule in the history of the NFL last year), and if you're like us you have a bunch of losing bets on the NY Mets this year that we need to get even on. 

The Cheaters are +3.5 against the champs, who are not getting much respect. So lay the 3.5 and take Seattle at home. 

O/U 44 is more difficult. Out general position is that defenses dominate early in the season. But NE is not going to have a great offense, so the number is difficult. 

What we are watching- Seattle rookie RB Jadarian Price is one of our FF draft picks in our blog league, proving once again the skill of Rumpole in drafting rooking running backs who break out.  He is at over/under 65 yards and we are going with Seattle pounding the rock and trying our their new rookie to see what he's got. That's our second bet. Also, Price is our pick for offensive rookie of the year. 

Our final bet will be Super Bowl Sam Darnold throwing over 1.5 TDs for the game. 

So here we are, the very first Wednesday night opening of the NFL, and a Rumpole itching to get even. 

Chicken wings? ✅ Miami Slice Pie ✅  (we have an in, we do not wait in line); Hop water (our new thing) ✅ The new 75-inch TV up and running? ✅  Hard Rock and Draft Kings and Bet Rivers Apps fully funded ? ✅ 

We are ready for some football!

The MNF Opening with Howard Cosell- it didn't get any better than that. 

GENE ZENOBI HAS PASSED AWAY

 We lost one of our greats this weekend; Gene Zenobi passed away. 

A dapper Gene circa late 1970s doing what he did best 

Gene was old school. He was from a time when a man's word mattered. He was a deep thinker who approached a trial the way a grandmaster approaches a chess match. He had many theories about jury selection developed over a lifetime of trying cases in Miami Courtrooms. He understood before most of the rest of us that jurors form alliances and he crafted his jury selection to pick jurors who would form alliances for not guilty. He lectured generations of lawyers about jury selection, and his number one maxim- that jury selection starts from the moment you park your car and walk towards the courthouse, is a rule all of us should follow every time we show up for voir dire- we never forget it or Gene when we walk into the REGJB to pick 6 or 12 to start a case. 

Gene had a successful private practice; he was there at the start of the cocaine cowboy era in the 70s-80s. A simple kid from an Italian family in Pennsylvania, he rose through hard work, study and skill to the top of his profession both in the Dade Public Defenders Office, and in private practice.  In his later years Gene took a struggling and rudderless Regional Counsel Office and turned it into a powerhouse of lawyers who tried and won cases. The foundation of lawyers he recruited and kept remains today, providing world-class legal services to indigent clients. 

Gene defended over thirty death penalty cases; argued before the US Supreme Court in Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Power, 419 US 345 (!974); had a vast amount of knowledge about history and literature- (we agreed William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich was the most significant historical work of the 20th Century); loved jazz; and was the single best horse-handicapper I ever met- and I've met many. He could also be found at many a lawyers-home-poker-game in Miami from the 1980s through the 2010s and beyond. He scooped his fair share of pots. 

His, my friends, was a life very well lived. And if you never had a chance to sit at a big Italian dinner and drink great wine and listen to his war stories, well, you missed out on a once in a life-time type of experience. He was a soft-spoken raconteur. 

Gene was a colleague and a friend, and in the end, perhaps the best thing we can say about him, from the hundreds of things that come to mind, was that when he was your friend, you could never have a better one; and if he was your lawyer- you had the best. 

Rest in peace my friend.   

SURVIVOR POOL

 Hop in, the Survivor pool, which only opens in the fall, is open!  (La piscina esta abierta for those of you logging on from Hialeah). 

 As always, the pool has some rules. 

1. You must email your pick to fbpool12@gmail.com  This is the only email that picks will be accepted at. 

2. You must email before the game you pick starts. 

3. You get one life and one pass. Use the pass wisely. 

4. You may earn a second life by doing this- before the start of the Dolphins first game, next Sunday, email your pick when the Fins will win their first game, e.g., the Fins first game will be week nine, etc.  It's going to be a long season in Davie. 

That's it. 

Remember to be nice to Fake Alex Michaels. He has never won and blames everyone else for his mishaps. 

Have fun. 

This is an effort no doubt, but people do seem to like it. 

COOL

 Longtime and careful readers know that we have frequently said that the coolest guys of the 1970's were, in no particular order, 

Muhammed Ali, 

Bruce Lee, 

and 

Steve McQueen. 

But lately we think we should add to that list. Before we get to the person we had in mind, we realize that cool is not gender exclusive. So we were thinking who is a cool woman from the 1970's we could add to our list?  And the name we kept coming up with was Ali McGraw. 

And that makes sense, because she and Steve McQueen were a couple in the 1970s. 

So she is on our list. 

But the guy we were thinking about was the lead singer in Harold Melvin and The Bluenotes. And that man, who just oozed cool was Teddy Pendergrass. So here is Teddy just oozing cool singing The Love I lost. 

Who would you add to the list of the coolest of the 1970s? 

Just tell us, when Teddy starts singing at 1:18, have you ever seen anyone cooler? He was just the essence of cool. What a talent!

LIGHT MY FIRE

 The failing New York Times has a scoop on the internal workings of the Supreme Court and how the justices plan and do not plan for how their papers will be handled after they are elevated to the final court of appeals (no, not the 3RD DCA, the court in the next step in our journey through the universe). 

The article is here. 

Which got us wondering. What do Miami Judges do with their papers? Is there some sort of official archive for the collected works of a DeSantis Drone writing over and over "The motion is respectfully denied..."?  

Where are the papers of the late, great Gerry Klein?  In a serious vein, who wouldn't want to review the drafts of the order the great Ed Cowart wrote in sentencing Ted Bundy to death?  Is there any entity other than the Miami Dade Clerk's Office (Motto: "Take a number, we will call you shortly, hehehehehe...") that keeps the documents in such historical cases like the prosecution of Jim Morrison of the Doors for lewd and lascivious behavior after a concert on March 1, 1969 when he allegedly exposed himself and simulated oral sex on his guitarist. 

Yes, your Miami Dade State Attorneys Office bowed to public pressure and prosecuted a legendry rock artist. The more things change...

Morrison was found guilty at trial although over 100 photos entered into evidence did not show him exposing himself. He was sentenced to six months of hard labor- really! That was the sentence back then, which we hope is not giving current robed readers any ideas. 

Morrrison appealed the conviction, moved to Paris, and died in 1971 before the appeal was resolved.  He was posthumously pardoned in 2010 with a paucity of evidence cited as the reason, although the file was marked "victim wants max!"

For those of you born after the internet and cell phones came about, here are some clips of Jim Morrison. 

 

 Light My Fire...

 

CHARACTER

 This was a time when character counted.

 Case in point- George Herbert Walker Bush, born into a wealthy family, he enrolled in the Navy right after the attack on Pearl Harbor and turning eighteen- skipping college. He became the youngest fighter pilot in the Pacific Theater. He did not dodge service by (falsely) claiming bone spurs like the current president. 

Today September 2, 1944, piloting a torpedo bomber and attacking radio towers on the Japanese held island of Chi Chi Jima, Lieutenant Bush's plane- second in the attack on a facility heavily defended with anti-aircraft guns, was hit. Bush continued the attack, released his weapons and turned the plane out to sea. He yelled "hit the silk" to his two crewmembers. Neither survived. Bush was rescued by the Submarine USS Finback and his first words were "happy to be aboard." He spent a month on the sub as it continued its patrol. 

Reflecting on his experience decades later, Bush simply stated that there was not a day that went by that he didn't think of his friends and crewmembers who did not make it. 

But this was a man cut from a different cloth, and from a time when character counted. 

Before the world ever heard of him, George Herbert Walker Bush was a hero and a great American.