Jeff Wells

HE Likes San Francisco QB Brock Purdy More Than Travis Kelce

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I’m sorry but San Francisco 49er QB Brock Purdy, 24, is playing a brilliant game, hasn’t lost his temper, and is better looking than Travis Kelce.

Kelce’s meltdown wasn’t cool. His temper could eventually contribute to the end of the Taylor thing…who knows?

It’s halftime and the Chiefs are seven points behind the 49ers, 10 to 3. The Chiefs are going to lose…I can feel it. Update: The score is now 10 to 4, 49ers still in the lead.

Taylor Swift is too old for Purdy, of course. Plus he has a girlfriend, Jenna Brandt.

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HE Will Actually Watch Superbowl — First Time Since Late ’90s

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Because I’ve never watched Travis Kelce on the field and because of the presence of Taylor Swift and the likely halftime wedding ceremony, HE has decided to actually sit down and watch Super Bowl LVIII — the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers meeting at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas — CBS, 6:30 pm eastern.

I haven’t watched any pro football game this century, although I think I watched a game sometime in the late ’90s.

I’m kidding about the halftime wedding, of course. I don’t expect Swift and Kelce to stay together for too many months longer. They might last until the late summer or early fall, but that’s all.

Citizens Revolt Against Driverless Cars

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HE doesn’t approve of torching cars in the middle of San Francisco, but I understand the sentiment. Fuck those Waymo self-driving vehicles! Rowdy and dangerous, but I get it.

No, It’s Not Mark Robson’s “Earthquake”

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Yesterday Dakota Johnson was doing an interview in Los Angeles for the doomed Madame Web (Sony, 2.14) when a mild (4.6) earthquake hit. No biggie if you’re a Californian but some freak out anyway. An interviewer or a publicist in the room went “hah-hah-hah-hah-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!!” The louder the cackling, the more jolted a person feels.

Calm off-camera dude: “There was one reported hours ago that happened in Hawaii.”

Johnson: “Oh, that’s what it is. That makes sense. Yeah. For sure.”

Off-camera interviewer / publicist: “Huh-huh-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH-HAH!”

HE to Johnson: “Uhm…not really. Hawaii is roughly 2500 miles from Los Angeles.”

A 4.6 earthquake is nothing. Barely an eyebrow-raiser. A quake needs to be at least a 5.5 to write home about it. I vividly recall the Northridge earthquake of January 17, 1994, which happened in the wee hours (4:31 am) and registered as a 6​.7. I remember looking out the window toward the street and seeing the blue-white flare of telephone pole juncture boxes lighting up the immediate area. Johnson was a little more than four years old at the time.

Stabbing Violins

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In Paul McCartney‘s “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present“, there’s a passage on the writing of “Eleanor Rigby.” But the last paragraph is about the string quartet accompaniment, and he mentions that the idea for the stabbing staccato strings came from George Martin, who wanted to imitate Bernard Herrmann‘s Psycho score. I’d never read this until today.

“Rigby” was created in April ’66, which was slightly less than six years after Psycho‘s release. There was no real Bernard Herrmann cult of soundtrack album collectors back then so Martin was purely working from his memory of the film.