Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 6
Chasing an international arms dealer and playboy, inside the NBA Bubble, Beef of the Week, summer tomato recipes, John Thompson, & shouts to America's (new) favorite meteorologist
Hello, and welcome to Micah’s Read of the Week. Happy Labor Day.
You may be asking, what is this newsletter? Glad you asked. This is a newsletter filled with things Micah Wiener finds interesting.
Check out the introduction post here, and the entire archive of previous newsletters here.
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Micah’s Read of the Week
The Wildest Insurance Fraud Scheme Texas Has Ever Seen
Ok fam, this is a wild one. And it’s about a lot more than insurance fraud. This is the story about how a Texas ATF Agent took down a jet-setting character who by his late twenties had parlayed an online car parts business into a life with a yacht, a fleet of luxury cars, and several jets. Then, things took a turn. A turn towards international arms dealing.
He was living the dream, but he was also restless. In 2012, a year after purchasing the yacht, he bought a training jet for fighter pilots that required MiG parts from overseas.
“There’s a guy smoking a cigarette,” said T. R. of the purchase overseas, “and he comes in real shady. You hand him your briefcase full of cash and you hope to God that six weeks later your containers and MiG parts arrive in California—which they did. So now I have, by my math, two hundred years’ worth of [parts] for my L-39. Well, what am I going to do with that? I’m going to do the same thing that I did with my junkyard business in 2005: I start putting them online.”
And that, T. R. said, is when his business took an unexpected turn.
The MiG parts gave T. R. the calling card he needed to gain a foothold in a high-stakes international game. He learned that countries, just like individuals, look for deals when buying the parts required to maintain their archaic fleets. “I became known as a guy who could deliver anything, anywhere in the world,” he said. If someone required plane parts, he was their guy. Occasionally he sold entire aircraft. Sometimes the planes and helicopters he delivered were demilitarized, with their weapons removed, he said—other times they weren’t.
Things get even more wild from there. We learn about T.R.’s dating life. It’s fun:
I never had so much fun with anybody I barely knew,” said one ex-girlfriend, a Swedish pilot whom I reached in Belgium. “He could suggest something like: ‘Can we go to Iceland?’ Or ‘Do you want to join [me in] the Bahamas on Monday?’ ‘I have to fly this private jet; would you care to join?’ . . . You know, he’s so impulsive.” He seemed incapable of banality. A woman who once went out on a date with him to Houston said, “He picked me up in a limo on our date to the freakin’ piano bar.”
To burnish his image as a James Bond–type character, he once posted a photo of himself flying a jet while wearing a tuxedo. “He hated being called lucky,” said the woman who went on one date with T. R. He would say, “This has nothing to do with luck.”
It gets better. If you don’t have an hour to read it, you can enjoy it in several chapters in podcast form, (read in my soothing voice) this week on Mind of Micah. Episode 1 is live now.
Last Week’s Read of the Week
What’s the deal with America’s coin shortage? We’ve all seen the signs at the grocery store and drive thru asking us to pay with a card or exact change. So what happened? I explored this issue on last Thursday’s Mind of Micah.
A penny pinch: How America fell into a great coin shortage
In yet another 2020 plot twist, coins aren’t making their way through the economy, with the repercussions rippling from the upper echelons of the federal government down to ice cream shops and bank teller windows. With more people staying home, buying less and shifting their spending online, the natural flow of pocket change through banks, restaurants and retail stores has dried up.
“This is not a coin supply problem,” White said. “It’s a circulation problem, and we need the public’s help to solve this. … Every little bit helps.”
An interesting read. But, as noted on the podcast, this entire conversation seems to be missing the fact that people under 40 don’t use cash. Ever. And many places are requiring card or online transactions as a way to minimize viral load via cash changing hands.
Anyway, check out the discussion on Mind of Micah, and subscribe wherever you listen to pods.
NBA Bubble Tweet of the Week
Players (and staff members) of NBA teams have now been in the NBA Bubble at Disney for about two months. In addition to the glory that comes with winning in the playoffs, some players had additional incentive to get to the second round: the opportunity to see their families in person. To minimize exposure risk, no guests had been allowed inside the bubble until this past week.
Sorry, it’s a little dusty in here.
Perspective of the Week
After being eliminated in a heartbreaking game 7 loss Tuesday, Utah Jazz star Donovan Mitchell could have spit some sports cliches, taken a shower, and left the bubble. Instead, he said this.
A star-making postseason for Mitchell ends with grace.
What it’s like to virtually appear inside the NBA Bubble
I Was a Floating Head at an NBA Game. It Gets Weirder
As anyone watching the NBA during the Covid-19 pandemic can observe, the games being played in the league’s “bubble” in Orlando are played without flesh-and-blood fans present. Instead, 17-foot LED screens project the pixelated faces of around 300 basketball lovers from across the country along three sides of the court each game.
The night of the Sixers-Celtics game, my husband Charlie and I downloaded Microsoft Teams onto separate laptops, logged on, and watched the game from its digital courtside along with the dozen or so other people in our section. Charlie flickered out of his front-row seat and re-appeared in the fourth row. Our laptops were open side-by-side, and we were sitting next to each other in real life, but on screen, we were separated.
If I leaned far enough, my head left the first row and entered the fourth row. If I stuck out a leg just so, it looked like Charlie had a leg for an arm!
As a social experience, it was a lot more like attending a game in real life than I’d guessed it would be. For example, we were cajoled into doing the wave, and you could tell some people didn’t really want to do it, but felt socially obligated.
So the question is, do I want to participate in this?
But after the final buzzer, I felt tired, even though I’d been sitting on my couch eating pizza in sweatpants. The experience had actually felt like a new kind of public gathering, complete with awkward banter and seating issues.
Probably not.
Last Week’s Beef of the Week
Also on Mind of Micah last week, I interview John Veatch and Cam, the co-founders of Nomad Grills. They are a Dallas company that creates unique, portable, and ultra-durable charcoal grills. Seriously, check out how badass this thing is.
Listen to the conversation here. And check out their product offering here.
The lads also got a coveted write up from Texas Monthly’s BBQ editor Daniel Vaughn this week. Order now, because they are about to go viral like that photo of me from two weeks ago.
Tomato Corner
If you’ve been following along with the newsletter, you know I’m quite keen on eating summer tomatoes while they are in the peak of their season.
Here’s a couple more ways to surprise and delight.
Tomato Salad With Yogurt and Pita Chips
This looks like something that would be lovely at a BBQ. Or just really good with a boring-ass piece of grilled chicken on a Monday night. I made this Sunday night. It was quite good. A keeper for sure.
2 pounds mixed tomatoes, cut into quarters or halves depending on their size
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup full-fat, plain Greek yogurt
1 lemon
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups pita chips
1 cup fresh mint leaves, halved if large
Place the tomatoes on a serving plate and season generously with salt and pepper. Place the yogurt in a small bowl. Zest the lemon into the bowl and season to taste with salt and pepper. Use right away or set aside until needed (refrigerate the yogurt until ready to use). Set the lemon aside until ready to serve.
When ready to serve, cut the reserved lemon in half and squeeze the juice into a medium bowl, then add the oil. Stir to combine and season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the pita chips, crumbling them into bite-size pieces in your hands as you add them. Stir until the chips are shiny. Add the mint and stir gently.
Dollop the yogurt on top of the tomatoes, then spoon the pita chip-mint salad on top.
And here’s something to do with the leftover tomatoes and the leftover tub of Greek yogurt you bought for the previous recipe.
Savory Yogurt Bowl With Roasted Tomatoes
A savory breakfast? A surprising and cooling side to a late-summer BBQ? Hell, looks like a nice lunch with last night’s boring-ass chicken breast sliced on top.
2 pints (about 22 ounces) cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons olive oil, divided
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons aged balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons pine nuts
Water, as needed
3 cups plain Greek yogurt (low-fat or whole)
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, cut into chiffonade right before serving
Position a baking rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 425 degrees.
Place the tomatoes on a 9-inch-by-13-inch rimmed baking dish, drizzle with 2 tablespoons of the oil, season with the salt and pepper and toss to coat. Roast for about 20 minutes, until the tomatoes have softened and begin to burst. Add the balsamic vinegar, toss to coat, and return to the oven for 5 additional minutes.
While the tomatoes are roasting, spread the pine nuts over a small rimmed baking sheet and toast in the oven for about 5 minutes, until lightly browned and fragrant.
Let the tomatoes cool to room temperature. There should be a couple of tablespoons of liquid from the tomatoes in the pan. If the pan seems dry, add 1 or 2 tablespoons water to loosen.
To serve, spread about 2/3 cup of the yogurt on the bottom of each serving bowl. Spoon about 2/3 cup of the tomatoes on top with some of their liquid, drizzle each with 1/2 teaspoon of the oil, then sprinkle with the pine nuts and basil, and season with more salt to taste, if desired.
R.I.P. John Thompson
Legendary Georgetown coach John Thompson died last week at 78. For my generation, he’s best known as the coach of Allen Iverson. For those older, it’s Pat Ewing and Hoya Paranoia. He also won two NBA championships as a player as Bill Russell’s backup. He was a tough guy. A real tough guy. As evidenced by this amazing story about Thompson confronting a ruthless and powerful D.C. drug dealer: The legend of Georgetown’s John Thompson begins with unflinching toughness
During the late 1980s, Rayful Edmond operated a violent and highly profitable drug trafficking operation in Washington D.C.
Edmond was a drug dealer. A major one. An intimidating one. It was estimated he controlled 60 percent of the D.C. drug trade and grossed $300 million annually before he was arrested, at age 24, in 1989.
His ensuing trial is notorious. It included one potential witness getting shot in the leg pretrial and thus refusing to testify. Another had his mother’s house firebombed.
Thompson put out word on the street that he wanted Rayful Edmond to come pay him a visit. John Thompson, technically just a college coach, knew who to reach to demand a one-on-one meeting with one of the most intimidating drug kingpins in the country, a man who was aware he was under federal investigation and, as evidence revealed at trial showed, was cautious about every interaction he had and every place he walked into.
Yet a couple days later, Rayful Edmond showed up at John Thompson’s office.
He was so respected and so trusted that he served as a middle man between the DEA and a drug kingpin, and made everyone come to his office to do it.
I also highly recommend last Monday’s episode of the Tony Kornheiser Show. Tony talked about his experiences covering Big John for the Washington Post, and talked with Mike Wilbon who also covered and got to know Thompson.
Shouts to my friend Albert Ramon
I used to work with meteorologist Albert Ramon at KVUE, Austin’s ABC affiliate. In fact, I produced his first show there. His first weather hit was a disastrous Weekend Daybreak segment in which everything broke. I never saw a technical failure like this before or after.
Albert, as always, kept his cool. He pulled off the segment, his first in a new city and a new job like it was nothing. Wow, I thought, this guy is good. After the show, I apologized to Albert and told him how well I thought he’d handled the whole thing. He replied, “no problem, this stuff happened all the time at my last job in the Rio Grande Valley.”
He was also kind enough to stop by my going-away party when I left the station. It was lit.
He is extremely affable on-air and off, and is a genuine person. I am thrilled for his success and his opportunity to be the lead meteorologist on a national platform.
WGN America’s ‘NewsNation’ looks for viewers who want their news served up opinion-free
“NewsNation,” a nightly three-hour national prime time newscast (8 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. Pacific) promises a neutral, opinion-free presentation of the day’s events, on WGN America.
If successful, Nexstar could expand the format into additional hours and over time turn WGN America, which now airs sitcom and drama reruns, into a serious cable news competitor.
Sean Compton, executive vice president for WGN America, said the company has done extensive research that determined there is an appetite for straight-ahead TV news in the evening as an alternative to opinion hosts such as Fox News star Sean Hannity and CNN’s Don Lemon.
Nexstar executives insist their promise of a politically neutral newscast is more than a marketing gimmick. Among the 150 people hired for the Chicago-based program are two producers dedicated to scrutinizing every story for language that could be construed as biased.
Straight news in the evenings. It might just be crazy enough to work.
Where else can I find Micah content?
Podcasts: Mind of Micah, Back Door Cover, Too Much Dip
Twitter: @micahwiener & @producermicah (Why two twitters? It’s a long story)
Instagram: @micahwiener
LinkedIn: @micahwiener
Peloton: #badboysofpelly
Another great Micah week.