Unbelievable

LeinartsLongestYard, originally uploaded by MertWindu.

It's not very often that big games match the hype that led up to them. Usually, they end up blowouts, or just plain ugly. Yesterday's game between Notre Dame and USC was different. Everyone knew this would be the marquee matchup of the day. Nobody knew that it would become the greatest game, in any sport, of the year, and perhaps this century. I'll be telling my grandkids about this game someday. Bill Plaschke has more.

Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown, originally uploaded by MertWindu.

Elizabethtown
Directed by Cameron Crowe
Starring Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon, and Judy Greer
123 minutes
Rated PG-13

There are two parts to Elizabethtown. There is the first movie, which stands as an average story about a man who is cast adrift by life, and finds a handhold in the places which seem the least likely, but make sense by the end. Then there is the second movie, a 20-minute short that put a smile on my face, and a better grade at the bottom of this review.

Drew Baylor (Bloom) is a designer at a shoe company whose resemblances to Nike are enough to make me want to just call it Nike in this review. We open the movie with Drew returning to the Nike home base, with a nervous, sullen look on his face. He passes his coworkers, who all have the look of prison inmates watching a man who is walking his last walk on death row. Though he tells them all that he's "fine," we know from Bloom's voice over that something terrible has happened. A shoe that Drew designed, which was upposed to be a revolutionary product that would launch notNike into stratospheres previously unheard of in the business world, is a complete and utter flop. Though we don't really know why (Ebert reports in his review of the movie that an original cut had a more fleshed-out storyline for the shoe), but from the brief glimpses of the devil ray-inspired shoe, we get enough of an idea of why it was a bust.

With his career in utter ruin, and his girlfriend Ellen (played by Esquire's newly-crowned Sexiest Woman Alive Jessica Biel) probably getting ready to end things, Drew takes to a suicidal course of action with such nonchalance that we're wondering just how far he'll get before the inevitable second thought. What actually stops Drew from killing himself via a darkly hilarious contraption is a phone call from his sister, letting him know that his father, Mitchell, has just died.

I try, whenever I think about music and movies, not to judge them based on a previous incarnation. But it's pretty tough to avoid mentioning Garden State here. Similar plotline, and even moreso, a very similar disposition on the part of the protagonist, at least at the start of the movie. I say this, because Drew's reaction to his sister's call is not one of shock or pain, but rather frustration that the trip he must make to Kentucky to collect his father's remains will delay his "dark date with destiny." It's more than a little reminiscent of Andrew Largeman's reaction to his father's phone call at the start of Garden State, and I think the director's of the two movies were trying to make the same point about their main characters.

Anyway, Drew flies to Kentucky, and as anyone who has set foot inside a movie theater in the last month knows, he meets a pretty, but very perky flight attendant, Claire (Dunst). She is insistent on meeting Drew, on striking up a conversation with him, and on giving him ultimately false directions from the Louisville (that's Loo-uh-vuhl) airport to Elizabethtown, where Mitchell was visiting with relatives at the time of his death. Claire is a "student of names," and can divine the personality of any person based on their first name. She has never met a nice Ellen, won't trust any Phils, and has never disliked a Mitchell she's ever met. She's quirky, got it?

For the sake of expediency, and also because I'm not trying to ruin the movie for you, let's skip ahead a little. Drew meets up with relatives, finds out the good and bad about each of them, and begins to open up a little. He also has a night-long phone conversation with Claire, which ends in a very real scene where they meet up to see the sunrise, but realize that they were better conversation partners on the phone. Never fear, we're not quite done with Claire. She helps Drew to find some beauty in the life he feels has become worthless because of his catastrophic failure.

Sarandon and Judy Greer, as Drew's mother and sister, are constant presences in the film, though they don't really have any impact until their final apperances, at a huge memorial service for Mitchell attended by friends and family. There, sister Heather is a complete blubbering mess, and mother Hollie is a beautiful, graceful tap dancer whose tribute to her late husband is heart-breaking and heart-mending. IF there is a moral to the first story, it is about the importance of love in life. Love of all kinds. It's a Cameron Crowe movie, so you're going to be able to taste the saccharine on some of the scenes, but it's worth it.

Then, there's the second movie. After the memorial service, Drew fulfills a promise to Claire to drive his way back home in Oregon (she explains why). She gives him the world's most elaborate map and travel guide, and we are in the car with him for a 20-minute journey across the country, where we can finally see what Crowe was driving at. It's a wonderful, happy ending, which would be expected in a movie like this. Look, Lloyd Dobler gets on the plane with Diane Court, William Miller gets a real interview with Russell Hammond, and Jerry Maguire comes home to tell Dorothy she completes him. We know how this one's going to end. How it gets there, though, is fun, a little unexpected, and far deeper than I ever hoped for.

It wouldn't be wholly inaccurate to call Crowe's writing in Elizabethtown a little heavy-handed at times. There are some real groaners in the script. Tame stuff like, "I'm impossible to forget, but I'm hard to remember," spoken by Claire, though it makes sense at the time for her character. But it's Cameron Crowe, so you kind of expect it, and in the world created in Elizabethtown, gritty, subtle dialogue would feel out of place. There are a lot of interesting messages to be had in Elizabethtown, and the most powerful ones come in a cross-country road trip taken by an interesting pair of people. It's a sweet, smart love story, and it's also a good journey movie. But I'll reiterate, the last 20 minutes, the road trip, are what make it a great flick. The movie needs the road trip, but the road trip doesn't need the rest of the movie. Enjoy.

Three stars.

Fear and Loathing behind the mask

ErstadEddings, originally uploaded by MertWindu.

Nearly every sports fan, from Bangor to Bakersfield, has been talking about Wednesday night's Angels-White Sox game, or more specifically, the finish to that game. I'll just say this quick, and then mention a few links: It doesn't matter whether or not the ball hit the dirt. All that matters is Doug Eddings' reaction and very, VERY adamant out call, and his lack of verbal confirmation to cement that call. Watching Eddings backtrack in last night's presser was pathetic almost to the point of sad, until I realized that so much of this debacle has to do with umpires and their ego, which they spin as merely the way they must conduct themselves to be fair.

In this Yahoo report, Eddings makes for the first time a reasonable comment on last night's circus, though he does so in such a way that makes it seem as though he's being humble and apologetic, when in reality, I'm betting someone from MLB got to him and pointed out how much of an idiot he was Wednesday night.

Dan Wetzel pretty accurately explains how just about everyone not wearing pinstripes or an umpire shirt feels about the call, while Ryne Sandberg takes the tack a lot of apologists have, blaming the play on Angels catcher Josh Paul. Look, Paul SHOULD have tagged Pierzynski, but didn't because he was so certain that the pitch reached his glove cleanly. So yeah, maybe he should have tagged pierzynski just to be sure, but to blame him for what happened would be like blaming the operators of the Titanic for selling boarding passes.

A History of Violence

A History of Violence
Directed by David Cronenberg
Starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, and Ed Harris
Rated R
Running Time: 96 minutes

As with any movie made with a modicum of intelligence, there is a plot to Cronenberg's "A History of Violence," and then there is its meaning, what the movie is about. The plot revolves around the lives of five people: All-American father and husband Tom Stall (Mortensen), his wife (Bello), mobster Carl Fogarty (Harris), and two apparent low-level mobsters on a cross-country journey. The film opens with an initial, horrifying act that sets our minds not only about the two killers, but also about the tone of the film, which lingers throughout every scene. From there, we meet Stall, who owns a diner in the middle of an affluent Indiana suburb. It's the typical townie diner, with glass-encased pies, white ceramic coffee mugs, and a bar where the regulars sit and shoot the bull.

It also closes early in the evening. On the opening night of the film, the two mobsters enter Stall's diner just as the staff is closing up shop. Tired from the road, and cold to begin with, they demand service, and after getting particularly nasty, they get Stall to relent and serve them. It's far from over, though, because the pair are killers, after all. They attack a waitress, and become more threatening by the second. Finally, Stall reacts, and his life changes. After he swiftly and professionally eliminates the mobster's threat, the local media takes notice of his story, and plays it up as a "real American hero" angle (WARNING: MEDIA AS ENEMY ALERT! MEDIA AS ENEMY ALERT!). Stall is a humble man, and doesn't like the attention. The rest of the movie shows us whether or not there may have been another reason he shied away.

Here is where Harris comes in. Playing an unbelievably un-Ed Harris character, though we see some echoes of Parcher from A Beautiful Mind early on, he is disturbing and magnetic as scarred, weathered Carl Fogarty (that's Fogarty
like a low-lying cloud, not Fogarty like the former lead singer of Creedence Clearwater Revival). He arrives, with lackeys in tow, because he swears that he recognizes Stall's face on the television reports as the face of disappeared mobster Joey Cusack. Despite Stall's denials, Fogarty stays on the trail, and begins to terrorize Stall and his family. Throughout, we are kept in plenty of suspense about whether or not Stall really is Joey Cusack, which is one of the best parts of the film.

Now, here's what the movie is about: What makes a good man good? Is it his devotion to his family, or to God, or to the community, or his work? Is it his honesty? His genuineness? How does that develop, and can it be rehabilitated, created, reformed? The audience's belief in that is the point upon which the film turns. Tom Stall has, from everything that we see, done everything right (more or less) in his life. He works hard, and honestly. He loves his wife and children. He respects others, treats them as human beings. So when Fogarty and his henchmen stroll into town, trying to paint Stall as a cold-hearted, evil man, we are faced with a choice as the audience and jury: is it possible that this straight-laced, hard-working man with a good family and a good life, is really all the creation of a criminal who needed to get away from trouble? If we can believe it, Stall is Joey Cusack. If we can't, Stall is still in a lot of trouble, made clear by Fogarty's threat. That it is such a hard decision to make is to the credit of Mortensen, who plays Stall perfectly, allowing no tip-off despite being a very inward, mysterious character.

Outside of Mortensen, there are some flaws, though I don't think they detract from the overall product too much. Maria Bello is poorly used as a wife who alternates between wet blanket and hyper-aggressive mama bear. There's no in between, and I feel like that's because of the writing, though I've never been a huge Bello fan. There are some leaps made in the plot, but I'm not sure they're actual faults, because I think Cronenberg (as in Se7en and his other works) wasn't as concerned with spinning a good yarn, as he was about putting something in front of the viewer to make him/her think and emote. The character of Jack Stall, Tom's son, is played well by Ashton Holmes (who decided to make "Ashton" a good baby's name in the mid-eighties? Seriously?), but his subplot is a little cliche. However, it does bring a little strength to the story, as we see Jack evolve from a whimpering, wise-cracking weakling into a vengeance-extracting wild card after his father's incident.

I love the poster for this movie, shown above, and one of my favorite things about the film is that its tone matches that picture - spare, with an intense focus on the inner workings of the characters. Mortensen is again a big part of this, and we're hooked as much by what he doesn't say and do as what he does. This is a true masterwork for him, though I'm not sure it's not overshadowed by some of the film's drawbacks.

Three stars.

A dispatch from the far reaches of the Commonwealth

Hello.

It's been a very, very long time. Again.

But this time, I have a good reason. If you haven't been keeping up with Jim or Matt's blog, then you don't know that I just started working at the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass. Also, until about 12 hours before this post was written, I had no internet whatsoever. It was like a week without the web. Imagine that. Like going camping in a four-room apartment. Now, I have 24-hour internet, and enough cable to make me question the virtues of fresh air and sunlight (not to mention being social). So I'll be a little more frequent in my posting, I'd think. Anyway, check out the Eagle, it's a great paper, and even if you don't read my stuff, you'll get to hear stories of huge floods and - I'm absolutely NOT kidding - a controversy involving a gunfight with turkeys.

Tommy Dreamer

Nick Cafardo's writing might not have much to do with it, but his story on Tom Brady from Wednesday is still pretty cool to read. I'd be willing to bet that there'll be a bust of Tom Brady in Canton, and a statue of him in Foxborough. It's time to start building some shelf space for him next to Bird and Orr in the Boston Sports Pantheon.

Six days and counting...

On the SportsJournalists.com forum, an interesting question was raised. All reporters are taught from the beginning about the importance of objectivity. For sportswriters, it's pretty clear: you don't root for, or against, the teams you cover. This creates a certain psychological change for us, because while we get to spend our working hours observing sports, we're not to get attached the way fans do. So, we tend to get very blasé about exciting moments in sports, because they generally mean it's time for us to work. So someone on SJ started a thread, asking what still got the writers at the site excited? I mentioned a few events that made me legitimately fired up despite my need for objectivity, but I missed one, and it actually didn't occur to me until a scene in a subway station in "Flightplan," which I reviewed below. So, here goes.


It starts with the drive to Woodland station. Pay the 2.50 to park, and walk to the platform. It's getting dark earlier now, so by the time you're staring down the tracks toward Riverside in the distance, the sky is a painting in pastel. The jersey you decided to wear doesn't really keep you warm, but you don't care - the chill is part of the whole thing. The train comes, you throw your quarters in the little fishtank machine, and head for open space. There's usually a lot, so you can grab a seat or some good overhead rail space. The ride always takes a little longer than you remember, but the breath of the city surrounds you as you get closer, and the early-evening lights are the marquee heralding your arrival. The train stops at Haymarket, but not a whole lot of people are getting off or on now. After a few more minutes underground, the train emerges, and makes the slow curve over Causeway Street. The building glows in the night air, lit up like a movie screen by spotlights. You're there. Get off the train, the cold air in the city is different than it was at the station. It buzzes under your skin, it's sweet and sour to breathe, and it's always moving. Your nose, and then your cheeks, begin to ache just a little, but you can barely feel it past the adrenaline. Hawkers on the sidewalk want to sell you tickets, sausages, knock-off caps and T-shirts, or to give you salvation in a pamphlet. You pass them by, and head inside, bear right at the Commuter Rail for the long escalators that take you out of the regular world and up to the turnstiles. Down there, there are jobs to do and trains to catch, but up here, it is only the game. An old man with a bright blue blazer points his little laser at your ticket, it beeps once, and you're in.

Circle around the concourse until you get to your section, and walk down the short tunnel that opens into the biggest room you've ever seen, a black and gold ballroom with a brilliant white oval at the center of the floor. There is noise all around, from the PA system blaring rock music, from the ice where the cracks of sticks against pucks are the staccato drumbeat of the pregame warmup, and from everyone around you, who is chattering about the day, the world, and the game about to take place. Find your seat, and you're already on the edge of it. You won't leave the edge all night, except to get up for food or to cheer after a goal. Eventually, the last few skaters, right now mere mortals, trickle off the ice, and the lights go dim. For a few minutes, it's quiet, just another group of people in another big room. Then the pregame light/laser show starts, the introductions are made, and the stillness of the National Anthem washes over. Soon, 40 are reduced to 12, and the center is swarmed by large, rough men, ready to play the greatest game on Earth. The striped arbiter puts his left hand up, and with his right hand at his hip, he fires the disk down at to the ice. It has begun.


(THAT still gets me excited, EVERY time.)

Quick review of "Flightplan"

Flightplan
Rated PG-13 for Violence and intense situations
Directed by Robert Schwentke
Starring Jodie Foster, Peter Sarsgaard, and Sean Bean

"Flightplan" asks several questions to start off. The first is the tagline, "How could someone disappear into thin air?" Kyle (Foster) is a propulsion engineer for an aircraft manufacturer, and we join her the night before she and her daughter, Julia, are to get on a brand-new plane (which she helped design) to move to the United States. They are also escorting Kyle's dead husband back to Long Island. His casket is a constant, and ghostly character throughout. Once the flight gets airborne, Foster and her daughter move to the last few rows of the plane so that they can stretch out and sleep. When Kyle wakes up, Julia is gone. A frantic search of the plane returns nothing but more questions, because the crew discovers that Julia was never checked in for the flight, isn't on any passenger manifests, and was never seen by any crew or passengers. This is one of the spots where the movie succeeds in overcoming the horribly expository previews, because the idea that nobody noticed a little girl on a flight is plausible enough for us to stick with Kyle's assertion that her daughter WAS on the plane, but the mountains of evidence against her create enough doubt that we're just not really sure.

So the next question is, "could Kyle, a grieving wife, ALSO be a grieving mother of a child who died tragically, and now she can't accept the reality in which she's placed?" Again, the evidence is very pursuasive. The answer comes late in the movie, but the entire lead-up, which couldn't have lasted more than an hour (the flick clocks in at 93 minutes) feels like it takes forever, because you pretty much know everything if you saw any trailers. There's a whole lot of Jodie Foster looking nervous and scared, and a whole lot of Jodie Foster taking off running down the aisles of the plane (seriously, had to have been like a dozen of those scenes, sometimes for absolutely no reason). After about 45 minutes, we get it, she can't find her daughter. The crew doesn't believe her, and she's got a little bit of self-doubt as well. But not enough to not notice something that TOTALLY convinces her that Julia is alive, well, and on the plane. But there's still more running, still more confusion and red herrings. Finally, we get an answer to everything, and it's a tad more pedestrian than I was hoping for.

All in all, Flightplan is a passable suspense flick, and some of the questions raised are interesting enough to make you want to stick around. How strong is a mother's intuition? Strong enough to overcome overwhelming contrary evidence? Strong enough to create a fictional reality? That's the real puzzler, and fortunately we don't get the answers until right before everyone else does, in a reveal that was very slickly done, and (I thought) not too too obvious. Still, there was no new ground covered.

Part of the reason the suspense in Flightplan works is that we've all been on airplanes. We've all experienced the numbed senses, the heightened stress, and the microcosmical community in the fuselage. So we sit there, and we can feel how helpless you are as a passenger at times, how limited your space and options are. There's some good psychology here, but it gets nullified a bit by the flaws in the film. For instance, there's a brief Arab terrorist angle, which at first is handled quite well, but upon further review is just an extra 10 minutes of interplay that have nothing to do with the plot. The only way to possibly resolve the film's most glaring error* is to subscribe to the idea that the first 15 minutes of the movie are actually Kyle's dream -- but we're never really given any reason to believe that.

The finish is well-paced, and not too long (I was really nervous that the filmmakers were going to make me sit through a 20-minute chase on an airplane). It does leave a little to be desired, but I'm trying to keep this spoiler-free except for the note below, so I'm going to just leave it at that. Foster is good, if a little over the top, and Sarsgaard is once again excellent, and believable at every turn. Sean Bean is also very good as the captain (and maybe the only character in the entire film that we can trust). Overall, there's some interesting psycho-drama, moreso than I expected, but I'm not sure it makes up for some serious reaches in logic.

Rating: 2 1/2 stars (out of 4)












(*-SPOILER: The entire Arab angle is just insulting, but not for the reasons I expected. Actually, I thought the use of our own post-9/11 fears was a good sidebar to the plot. However, why in the HELL did we think we saw those two guys in the window across the way before Kyle and Julia left the apartment? That was just silly, and as I mentioned, the only way it could work is if Kyle was dreaming everything leading up to Julia's disappearance. But we shouldn't have to deduct something like that. Again, 10 minutes of action that didn't need to happen.)

The power of sports

Just one link for now. You might need a few tissues to get through this Associated Press piece on the promise Charlie Weis made to a young Notre Dame fan. Good stuff.

Welcome back

Well, now that Jim has once again brought attention to my blog, I thought I'd pop in and say hello. Don't have a whole lot to talk about right now, but I'll prepare something for early this week. If you know me, and you want to know about the Berkshire Eagle reference Jim made, get in touch with me (it's not too hard). I just don't want to broadcast any of it here. Moving along...

Wow, so at this point, you can pretty much sit down in front of the tube at 1 p.m. on Sunday, and not really get up to do anything for almost 10 straight hours. Football, football, and more football, as well as West Wing on NBC, Desperate Housewives (if you're into that sort of thing), and then Grey's Anatomy, which is a fantastic show that I hope doesn't get lost in the mix this season. Sheesh.

Brief, my-battery-is-about-to-die thoughts on the West Wing Season 7 premiere: Some interesting looks at the future to start the ep, and the best of those was definitely the CJ-Danny Concannon angle. That brought a fist pump from yours truly. Also, it seems obvious that Josh's announcement of the current president's arrival to Bartlet would mean that Josh's guy won the race, but I think there are a lot of ways that this might not be so. Either way, the math puts us right around late July/early August in the WW world, so hopefully we'll have the election and a new pres sometime around christmas, or at least in time for Feb. sweeps. Could be a very interesting race to watch, since Santos is, y'know, not a WASP or Irish Catholic, and Vinick isn't exactly your prototypical tax-cuttin' defense-spendin' welfare-hatin' Repub. I'm a little torn on whether I want the show to continue beyond this season, because I think Martin Sheen as president is so ingrained now, but I'm starting to think that Smits and Alda would both do a fine job as the head cheese. And you just KNOW that a Vinick presidency would include some Bartlet staffers in the White House.

As for Desperate Housewives, OK everyone, I've given the ladies of Wisteria Lane a shot, and they almost entirely disappointed me. Marcia Cross is fantastic, and I'd probably watch a show that was all about her, and Teri Hatcher is OK, but I just don't understand America's fascination with characters that have no moral fiber and no care for their fellow man/woman. That's why I'm perfectly fine with admitting that I watch Gilmore Girls. Esquire's latest issue will back me up on this one.

I had more, but it got erased. Probably just as well. I'll hopefully have some more for the blog this week. Thanks for stopping by.

Yes, I know, infrequent posting, blah blah blah. That should all change sometime in the next few weeks, when I move back to civilization and get a 24/7 wireless connection. Cripes, then I'll be posting as much as Matty. Ok, maybe not that much. Either way, sporadic stuff for now.

In a fit of absolute plagiaristic glee, I grabbed today's IMDB poll for this site, because I think it's pretty interesting (and you have to register at iMDB in order to vote over there, so here you can have your say, Household Income-questions-free.
Here it is:
Premiere magazine just released their list of the "Top 20 Most Overrated Movies of All Time" -- which of them is the most overrated?
2001: A Space Odyssey
A Beautiful Mind
American Beauty
An American in Paris
Chariots of Fire
Chicago
Clerks
Easy Rider
Fantasia
Field of Dreams
Forrest Gump
Gone with the Wind
Good Will Hunting
Jules & Jim
Moonstruck
Monster's Ball
Mystic River
Nashville
The Red Shoes
The Wizard of Oz
They're all overrated!

Share your thoughts in the comments section if you like. My vote was for Gone With the Wind, which I admittedly didn't see until I was forced to for an assignment in high school. Pretty shocked to find that "Titanic" wasn't on the list, but blame Premiere (and feel free to make your write-in votes here.)

I haven't read Moneyball

I said it. Now leave me alone. I'll get to it. I'm in the middle of "Da Vinci Code" right now, and my quest to catch up to all the ridiculously huge trends in pop culture is continuing past that. However, I have at least some kind of grasp on what's going on in the book, and the arguments for/against it.

I'm not so sure Joe Morgan does. This piece shows just how anti-Moneyball Morgan is, and also alludes rather forcefully to his inability to STFU and analyze the game. I love Jon Miller, and his voice is definitely a favorite sound of summer. But I don't watch much "Sunday Night Baseball" because of Morgan. Still, the writer of this article could have toned down his own cattiness a little and probably gotten the same quality story. Either way, worth a read if you're a baseball nut.

I was going to do a big link-bonanza for this, but I'm having trouble finding photos of any offending uniforms. Regardless, I think this is a good and bold move by the NCAA in spirit, though I also think that the blanket of "offensive nicknames" is a little too large. For instance, take the case at Quinnipiac University (nee College), where the administration decided, essentially on its own, that the Braves moniker was too offensive. This is, for the record, a school whose name is taken from Native American language.

So they had one of those goofy debates and votes for the new mascot, which turned out to be the Bobcat. Not a terrible selection, but also unoriginal, and unnecessary. In my 22 years of living, the following things have seemed to infuriate the Native American community: the Atlanta/Seminole chop and chant, the "Redskin" nickname, and Chief Wahoo and his ilk. Whereas I believe there is a great honor in naming your team the Warriors or the Braves, the Seminoles, or the Illini. It's a measure of respect, I feel, to use powerful symbolism from our neighbors' culture in our sporting garb.

Instead, we have this silly sense that any reference to Native American culture is offensive. The Providence College mascot is the Friar. Should we change it to avoid upsetting priests and christians in general? No, because it isn't an offensive term. If I had my way, I'd certainly eliminate some mascots and nicknames. "Indians?" gone. "Redskins?" Double gone, with an extra 15 yard penalty for excessive ignorance. Chief Wahoo, see ya. Tomahawk Chop, buh-bye, until a member of the Seminole tribe comes to Turner Field and Doak Campbell Stadium and teaches the crowds a real war chant to take your place. But one of my favorite nicknames, in ALL sports (and remember, I'm a fan of English soccer), is the Wamps of Braintree High in Massachusetts. Seriously, the "Wamps"? How great is that name? It's short for the Wampanoag Tribe, which inhabited parts of this area before my ancestors introduced them to the concept of relocation by force, AND it's an awesomely forceful word. It's so onomatopoeic, too. WAMP!

Either way, it's good to see the NCAA taking a stand, but this is like using a shotgun to make selections on the baseball all-star ballot. There are a lot of perfectly fine nicknames that will get the hatchet in a few years because of this.


1st ADD -- By the way, Jim just set up a ridiculously comprehensive Fantasy Football page, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it. You can reach it by going to his blog, which is Swine Lair, and is listed on the right side of THIS page. Go. Go now. And tell all your friends.

Pottermania

OK, I missed the boat, pretty much entirely, on the whole Harry Potter phenomenon. Never been a big fantasy reader anyway, and it all seemed a little too. kids-y for me. However, after seeing the movies, I may find myself lugging around one of the 5,000,000-page tomes someday. I promise you now, though, that I will never reach the level of obsession reached by this guy. Far be it from me to make fun of the dead, but this is just pathetic. Oh, and I'm absolutely burning in hell for it, but you have to love the last line in the story, the quote from the guy's friend. I won't spoil it for you, but don't feel bad about laughing out loud.

By the way, the story mentions what many already know about the newest Potter book: one of the more recognizable characters dies. But it doesn't say who (I know! I know!), so don't worry about ruining the surprise for yourself.

See ya, Jay

Holy crap, two posts in one day! I think, until I get a reliable internet connection at home, and am thus stuck with only posting from work or occasional visits back to civilization, that this blog will feature a lot of shorter, one-link posts, sometimes from the same day. This would be one of those times.

Jackpot Jay Lovinger says goodbye to his ESPN Page 2 readers. This brings the number of must-read columns on Page 2 down to ZERO for me. I haven't mentioned a lot of poker on here, because of several reasons. One, I'm not full-on into poker enough to research links about it. B, I really do enjoy poker, but I get very sick of the attention it's getting very rapidly, on TV, the internet, in newspapers, and from people who have no business talking about the game until they understand it. Thirdly, poker writing has its own lingo and rhythm, and I don't know that it really fits in on this blog. However, Jackpot Jay was always interesting to read, and realized that sometimes, stories about how he learned cards from his father are just as fun and just as telling as lingo- and technical detail-filled stories abotu good and bad hands. Poker (as a mainstream pop culture phenomenon) may not have jumped the shark, but I think we can all see the ramp somewhere up in the distance. Jay got out just in time.

The Knights of the Keyboard

To paraphrase a profoundly horrid song by Savage Garden, I knew I'd link this before I read it. David Ropeik, formerly a very good reporter for WCVB-TV in Boston (the ABC affiliate), takes a look at what it's like to cover the Boston Red Sox on a day-to-day basis. I generally think that the "how the press does its job" stories can be boring, but this one was pretty good, and it's about the Red Sox beat writers. So, as a hopeful future aspiring (sprinkle in a few more trepidatious adjectives) Sox/Bruins beat writer, I enjoyed reading this one. Here's the lede and nut graf, which say pretty much all I've ever wanted to say about being a reporter.

"Imagine attending every Red Sox game, home and away, for free. You have a front-row seat, and it's free. The airfare to the away games, and the nice hotels when you get there ... all paid for by your newspaper or television station. You get to be around the players, talk with manager Terry Francona every day, hang out in the dugout and the clubhouse. Sounds pretty good, huh?

"Now imagine that starting with spring training in February, and running into October if the Sox make the postseason, you are rarely home. You don't get to see your friends, your spouse, your kids, or sleep in your own bed very much. You work 12-hour days, sometimes 18- and 20-hour days, with no overtime. Some of the people you work with are friendly, but a lot of them are competitive and constantly looking to outdo you. Oh, and the players? Yeah, you get to be around them a lot. But many of them are kind of wary of being around you.

"Welcome to the life of a reporter covering the Boston Red Sox."

What did you do on Saturdays when you were 12?

Tom Hadfield was creating arguably the most comprehensive soccer site on the web. I personally dislike a lot of what ESPN does, both on TV and the web, but Soccernet is always reliable, and chock full of information on a sport for which the network seems to care only slightly. This story, written as part of the 10-year anniversary of Soccernet, traces the websites roots to a one-man-band of soccer knowledge in southern England.

The stars are out tonight...

Here's a few excellent reads

Red Sox profiles in Boston are tough, because except for recent acquisitions, Boston fans seem to already know everything about everyone on the team. Even kids who haven't made it to the majors yet are household names (Hello, Messrs. Garciaparra, Nixon, and Vaughn). So Gordon Edes had a pretty good challenge in trying to paint a picture of Sox Skipper Terry Francona that hadn't already been painted, re-painted, photographed, and made into a mass-market print. This story, though, is a fine look at how Francona manages a clubhouse like the one in Boston.

Bill Plaschke gets you about as close to The Royal and Ancient as you can be without buying a plane ticket.

Gold Cup Stuff:
Mike Biglin of the MetroWest Daily News has a good preview of Tuesday night's U.S. - Costa Rica CONCACAF Gold Cup match in Foxboro.
Also, John Powers looks at Landon Donovan's role in the future of the U.S. side, especially now that he's become a marked man for other squads' best clutchers.

Quick non-sports stuff

Just wanted to mention a link real quick, though I may have some more stuff later on.

Sally Ride said she heard "echoes" of the Challenger problems when she was on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. As NASA prepares to go back into space, a shuttle mission that, for its parameters, would otherwise be ignored profusely by most of America is getting tons of publicity and attention, and will probably lead most newscasts over the next week or so. It's far too early to predict that this level of attention will continue for future shuttle missions (though I doubt it), but perhaps one of the small bits of benefit that have come out of the disaster in Feb. 2003 is that now people have at least a little interest in one of the country's finest and most important endeavors.

The space program has always been battling for front pages and government dollars, even when it reached out to goals we thought weren't possible. It will likely always have to fight this battle in a country more concerned with oil prices and red state/blue state skirmishes. However, as NASA tries to get back on its feet in a truly remarkable way - let's remember, there really is very little that is routine about shooting people into space - perhaps the resultant curiosity, whether it is highway rubbernecking or true, intelligent interest, will last a little longer, and honor some of the bravest and most ambitious people that the United States have ever produced. I'm certainly not insisting that we stay glued to our television sets for pre-arranged orbit corrective burns, the way we did for every step of the moon race in the late 1960s. But perhaps, with a little good timing, some quality marketing, and a very successful mission this week and next, we can finally begin to realize the true value of NASA and its admirable personnel.

Pucks, Baseball, and Bikes...

Just a few links I wanted to mention...

Kevin Paul Dupont had a pretty good story about the state of the NHL. I like how Dupont can put together a long story about a situation that has been marked by little other than stagnancy, and make it informative. I'll generally read anything KPD writes at this point.

Sticking with the Globe...
Jackie Mac's got a good piece on the plight of Keith Foulke, and really delves into how tough it is to be a Sox closer with quotes from Eck and Bob Stanley. Foulke's getting a bad rap, despite his idiotic statements from a few days ago, and I'm hoping he comes back after the injury to prove why he was so important to the 2004 championship team.

Predictably, the Austin American-Statesman has good in-depth coverage of the Tour de France. So, to help you get there, I'm linking to a fun (if silly) thing: Lance Armstrong's Bike, yes, his BIKE, is blogging about the Tour, answering questions and such. Enjoy.

London Calling...

I had hoped to return to work on this blog with something cheerful, an account or two of my best friend's wedding. But with the incidents in London that took place early Thursday morning, I can't really focus on anything that happy at the moment.

One link, for now.

Barry Lorge provides a gripping, insightful account of one tourist/reporter's experience just outside London as all hell broke loose.

The world is not fair, and the easy, common, and understandable reaction to this will be hatred. Not only for those responsible for the heartless, gutless killings in downtown London, but also for anyone who comes anywhere near such a person, whether it is in race, political leanings, or religious beliefs. However, hatred is precisely what the terrorists who commit such crimes are trying to incite, and to become irrationally infuriated only rewards the deeds of cowardice committed by such people. Here's hoping that we can find a way to gain better knowledge and acceptance of those around us, and perhaps one day give such radical extremists no reason to terrorize. God bless and save you, London, and may the whole world see a true testament to your courage, resilience, and splendor when you put on the greatest show on earth in 2012.