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Sports, movies




I think football is more of a rural sport, soccer more suburban, and basketball
more urban, as a direct result of property values and space constraints.  Since
suburbs tend to have money, they tend to be snobbish about their sport of
location.  Soccer is the only sport that requires an unprotected athlete to slam
his head repeatedly into fast moving objects.  Even bicyclists have helmets, and
they aren't REQUIRED to hit anything.  I have known intelligent, respectable
soccer players, particularly women, but I largely learned to hate the sport in
my college years because of the team members we had at our college, and their
jerk coach.  Old habits die hard.

I also have learned to appreciate football (the easiest to learn to appreciate,
for reasons already stated by others) and basketball.  The only flaws with
football are linemen with massive hairy beer guts hanging out of their uniforms
competing in the Superbowl.  I should think to be a true athlete, you shouldn't
look at home in a Blimpies "Before" picture.  But as also noted, that's only the
linemen.

Movies (short list)...  And yes, I don't see nearly as many movies as I'd like.
And I'm sure I'm forgetting most of the ones I do like.
Galaxy Quest, and Toy Story 2, if only because they were the first movies in a
LONG time where you felt better leaving the theater than when you came in.
Rocky & Bulwinkle - first movie since Police Squad where you were rewarded for
watching things in the background.
Blade Runner - dull in parts, violent in others, but the best ending lines of a
film I can recall.  The high water mark of miniature special effects.
Alien - where else could the camera spend 20 minutes walking down empty
hallways, as in the beginning of this film, and still leave the audience
spellbound?
As for classic film, A Guy Named Joe remains my favorite.  A "guy film" with a
lot of heart.  Maybe True Grit in there, but less so.
Also Strategic Air Command with Jimmy Stewart, because my dad flew the same
bombers back then.  There is nothing like seeing your father's role placed in a
heroic light on film.  Picture being a fireman's kid and watching Backdraft, or
whatever combination you prefer.

On other films, maybe Solaris.  If you wonder why Russia keeps its Mir space
station, watch this film.  There is something fundamentally Soviet about living
in a cramped space with other Russians, hurtling through the trackless void of
nothingness, looking at beauty from a distance.  A part of them will die with
it, they seem to fear.

Speaking of things Russian, has anyone heard of Anna Akhmatova?  I found a poem
of hers set to music, and eventually found a biography at
http://www.odessit.com/namegal/english/ahmatova.htm .  "...While exemplifying
the best kind of personal or even confessional poetry, they achieve a universal
appeal deriving from their artistic and emotional integrity. Akhmatova's
principal motif is love, mainly frustrated and tragic love, expressed with an
intensely feminine accent and inflection entirely her own. Later in her life she
added to her main theme some civic, patriotic, and religious motifs but without
sacrifice of personal intensity or artistic conscience. ... This amplification
of her range, however, did not prevent official Soviet critics from proclaiming
her "bourgeois and aristocratic," condemning her poetry for its narrow
preoccupation with love and God, and characterizing her as half nun and half
harlot...."  At any rate, the one poem I did find was quite touching, if a bit
cryptic (as it seems are all things Russian).  All the same, were she still
alive, I'm sure she, Linford, and Karin could have some interesting
conversations.

- Kent


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