Schlemeel, schlemazel
LOS ANGELES – Schlemeel? Schlemazel? Hasenfeffer incorporated?
It’s all Greek to Big Turk Mehmet Okur, who was spotted at Sunday’s Game 1 talking to actress/director/producer/Los Angeles Lakers and Clippers season-ticket holder Penny Marshall (no worries, at 65 she’s about old enough to be his Grandma) on the Staples Center floor.
Asked this morning if he was friends with Marshall, a somewhat-uncertain-on-the-name Okur hesitantly said, “I know who she is. She’s a director, right?”
Well, yes – and a good one, with credits including Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Big, Awakenings, A League of Their Own and Renaissance Man. Noted producer, too, working, among other projects, with Ron Howard on Cinderella Man, the rather unappreciated boxing movie starring Russell Crowe.
But we digress.
Asked if he was a big LaVerne DeFazio fan, Okur didn’t have much of a clue.
Shirley Feeney?
Uh, no.
Lenny?
What?
Surely he’s at least heard of Squiggy, huh?
Who?
The Jazz center wasn’t even born when Laverne and Shirley got its – their? – start in 1976, and evidently the Milwaukee brewery bunch wasn’t hot TV in Yalova, Turkey, where Abdullah and Nimet were rearing Lil’ Turk toddler Memo.
“Never even seen it,” Okur said.
All of which pretty much negated the need for a follow-up question about Marshall lending her voice to Bart and Lisa Simpson’s evil nanny bandit, Ms. Botz.
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Back to basketball, sort of but not really …
Just how unencumbered are things looking for the Lakers in their first-round NBA playoff series with the Jazz?
If this is any indication:
The usually smog-clogged skies here were clear enough today to easily see 20-plus miles, all the way from Los Angeles International Airport (okay, through the really dirty windows on the 16th floor of the LAX Marriott) to downtown L.A. and the mountains beyond.
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By way of follow-up …
The front page of today’s Los Angeles Times including an above-the-fold photo of Kobe Byrant and Carlos Boozer – below one of Ashley Judd hubby Dario Franchitti, who won Sunday’s Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach by driving very fast, and next to a much-bigger one of the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s outgoing musical director, Esa-Pekka Salonen.
The sports front featured a deep, four-column shot of Bryant’s late-game, posterizing Game 1 dunk as three Jazz defenders (Boozer, Andrei Kirilenko and Paul Millsap) watched in awe while standing on the floor – under the huge headline “EVER SO HUMBLE.”
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Something may smell fishy about this final note, but here goes anyway …
Bouncing back from salmon at dinner Saturday night that was so bad it kept him from attending Sunday’s game, Jazz TV announcer Craig Bolerjack worked practice this morning and is expected to be fine for calling Tuesday night’s Game 2 on KJZZ.
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