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Sporty

Friday Feature, Movies, Sports

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the great good fortune to watch a few sports movies, again.  (I’ve seen them all at least twice before, but I hadn’t watched many of them for well over a decade.  It was like saying hello to old friends, it was.)  Here they are, in no specific order:

Bull Durham — Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins.  I know the last two are ‘orrible Commies, but that doesn’t take away from the movie’s excellence.  Best part is that it’s pure comedy, unlike the realism of the ones that follow.

Trouble With The Curve — Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams.  Somehow, within the overall frame of the movie, Clinty managed to fit in three little sub-plots:  his relationship with his daughter, her budding relationship with her admirer, and the eternal struggle between the job you love and the successful career (in this case, also hers).  The main plot, that of Clinty struggling to keep his job while persisting in the old ways, is of course brilliant because Eastwood.

Moneyball — Brad Pitt.  Like Draft Day, throw in an actual plot with real characters, drop Brad’s excellent take on Billy Beane’s career with Oakland, and you have it all — without the happy happy joy joy denouement for Billy, just as it actually happened.

Thus spurred on by baseball, I turned to (American) football.

Draft Day — Kevin Costner (again).  Take a suspenseful plot, sprinkle it with realism (real NFL teams and some actual characters, e.g. Jim Brown and Bernie Kosar), throw in an unforgiving timeline, and you have a lovely sports movie that looks behind the scenes instead of on the field.  I have no idea how realistic it was, but that’s not important.

North Dallas Forty — Nick Nolte, Mac Davis.  After watching all the above, I dug into my DVD collection to watch this old warhorse again, and surprise surprise!  this gritty NFL story was pretty much as relevant today as it was back in the early 70s.  (And who would have thought C&W star Mac Davis could turn in such a clever performance?)

Any Given Sunday — Al Pacino.  I really love this movie, because even though it’s highly dramatized — it’s a movie, duh — I like the realism of the characters, all of them.  And for once, Pacino doesn’t chew up the scenery but is actually quite a sympathetic character.

Rudy — Quite possibly one of the greatest true sports stories ever put on film.  Absolutely brilliant, all the way through.

Everybody’s All-American — Dennis Quaid, Jessica Lange.  What happens to the college superstar after the spotlight has moved on to the next generation.  Quaid is perfect in the role, that shit-eating grin and past glories powering him through life’s disappointments, with the ex-homecoming queen at his side.

The Blind Side — Amy Adams.  Another true story, only slightly dramatized for the movies.  Amy just steals this movie and takes it home with her.  Even better is that it’s all mostly true.  Of course, the critics hated it because of all the usual reasons: a gun-toting pretty Christian mom doing the right thing by a poor Black kid, and succeeding.

Of course, this is by no means a comprehensive list — and yes I know there are dozens of others out there.  I just happened to hit on this lot, got hooked into watching them all, and enjoyed every single one of them.

You will, too.

Stay In Your Lane

Big Brother, Government Thugs, Rights

Here’s a little suggestion to the folks at ICE:  keep deporting the illegals (a Good Thing, that we voted for), and don’t get too big for your fucking boots (which we didn’t).

Is that a little opaque?  This may clear it up:

A federal court on Tuesday ordered the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop violating the First Amendment by threatening a Rochester man over a January email in which he criticized the then-director of ICE.

Details, you want?

In January, federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a Minneapolis ICU nurse, during a tense encounter. Outraged, Streever wrote a stern email to Lyons, entitled “What’s next” and calling the official a “monstrous human being” who will “go down in history as America’s Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher,” a reference to the infamous Nazi official.

He never heard back. Then, five months later, Streever was in Finland with his 7-year-old daughter when his home’s front-door camera picked up the presence of two ICE agents on his porch. The Nest video shows the agents, arriving late in the afternoon on a sunny Tuesday, walking past children’s toys as they climb the steps and repeatedly ring the doorbell. But nobody was home yet. Soon, though, Streever’s wife, an Episcopal priest, still wearing her clergy collar, arrived to find the agents still present.

One of them handed her a “WARNING NOTICE” directed to Streever that claimed, “YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW” for sending his email to the ICE director. The notice insisted that he should “promptly … discontinue” his “behavior,” threatened criminal prosecution, and warned that the notice will be “taken into consideration” if he “continue[s] to be involved” in “criminal activities.”

Streever’s wife told the agents he was out of the country and would return to Rochester that Friday — but federal agents did not wait. While Streever and his daughter slept off some jet lag at a New York City hotel before the last leg of the trip back to Rochester, a federal agent showed up at the front desk looking for him. He left a clerk a business card to give to Streever, whom the clerk called to inform that an agent had been by. Also that night, two agents repeatedly called Streever’s phone, leaving anonymous voicemails identifying themselves only as “Homeland Security Investigations.”

If agents showing up at his home wasn’t unsettling enough, the hotel visit greatly alarmed Streever. His wife hadn’t told authorities where he was staying. Homeland Security found him anyway.

On their train ride home, Streever informed his daughter about the possibility that federal agents might confront him. The girl broke down in tears, worried about her father’s safety. Streever then resolved to fight this abuse of power.

Here’s the thing.  I may not agree with the Streever guy’s verbiage in his email, and I certainly don’t think his email was warranted, given the facts of that silly bitch’s abrupt termination in Minnesota.

But the last time I looked, calling anyone a Nazi — even one as bad as Heydrich — is not a “criminal activity” —  and ICE didn’t even attempt to defend their decision to call the slur criminal, although they did use it as a pretext to deliver their little warnings, the bastards.

In case this is still unclear, here’s the executive summary.

There is a huge divide between threatening someone’s life and calling someone a Nazi.  Had Streever done the first to the ICE Director in his email, I’d be happy to see him carted off in an orange jumpsuit and chains.  But just calling the guy a Nazi?  Forget about it.  That falls under the pesky First Amendment’s protection.

As for ICE:  stick to the deportations, step away from the fucking Nazi behavior — the threatening bullshit, I mean — and we’ll all be happy.

Otherwise, O ye of the ICE Persuasion, you risk losing the support of the people who are otherwise cheering you on.

People like me.  And you can’t afford that.

News Summary

Bad News


...whereas you want to impose socialism on everyone, you Trotskyist bitch.


...pass the popcorn, please.  Make it a BIG bucket, because this going to end so well.


...I never thought I’d see the day when I felt nostalgic for George McGovern.


...the real scandal was that all the (male Muslim) onlookers were masturbating during the event.  And speaking of events:


...now that’s what I call a spectator sport.  Next up:  Schü-mines in the long jump pit.


...”only”?  I’ve had relationships that didn’t yield that many shags.  And if you think that’s bad:

Man Checking CCTV For Burglars Catches Wife
Having Sex With Family Dog
...oops. At least it was the family dog and not just some stray off the street.


...as opposed to any of the fifty other reasons a Muslim scrote might have had.
#CastrationThenWhipping #OptionalHanging


...how will the poor thing ever get by with only the 180 million followers that remain?


...this would be even more newsworthy if there was anything there that we wanted to see.
#NoManShould

Top Luxury

Lists, Travels

The DM has posted this year’s list of “Top 50 Hotels” in the world — “top” being the prices you’ll pay to stay there, and the chances are that most of us are unlikely ever to judge the validity of said list.

I was amazed, however, to discover that I’d actually stayed at two of them (#13 Claridges in London and #34 Mount Nelson in Cape Town).  Of course, both stays were paid for by my long-suffering employers or clients at the time.  If you wanted to ditch the parvenu/nouveau riche atmosphere of almost all the others on the list, both of these hotels would be perfect.  “Class” is the word.

Needless to say, I am unlikely ever to stay at any of the others, mostly because of my parlous financial state but also because I’m highly unlikely ever to visit the shithole countries these “palaces” are located in.

All that said, there are a couple I’d stay at simply because of their location:

#42  Sacher Hotel (Vienna) — I might prefer the Bristol (just across the street, although I see it’s currently being renovated).  Note:  if you stay there, try to get a room which doesn’t overlook the Ringstrasse because the traffic noise is horrendous.  Related:  I would definitely stay at the Sacher’s sister hotel in Salzburg, simply because of its location on the Inn River and across the bridge from the Altstadt.

#5  Passalacqua (Lake Como) — Never been to Como — it’s very high on Ye Olde Bucquette Lystte — so this would be a natural.

#39  Portrait Milano (Milan) — ditto.  Can’t fathom how I never got round to Milan in all my European Vacations.

#40  Hôtel de Paris Monte-Carlo, Monaco — Drove past it with Former Drummer Knob, and it reeks class.  You want a sea-facing room and not one facing onto the Casino entrance, because of the traffic noise — all those assholes with their Lambos and Bugattis jostling to get a space near the entrance… ugh.  (For those who don’t know:  the concierges at the Casino always give parking preference to the $1 million-plus cars, and it’s considered a status symbol to be parked right outside.  Frankly, Monaco is one of the last places on Earth I’d want to drive a car, but hey.)

#44  Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc, Antibes — Antibes is one of my favorite towns in the world, and if you want to escape the hustle and bustle of Monaco but still enjoy the delights of the Midi, none compares.

And now the usual disclaimers.

There’s no denying that a stay at a luxury hotel is wonderful — an indulgence, if you will — but one thing that most of them miss is class.  (Mistaking “luxury” for class is a common mistake.)  Yes, you’re also likely to encounter a better type of person at, say, the Ritz-Carlton, although the emergence of the Arab/Russian/Tech Billionaire Set has made this far less of a feature because they want to flash the cash, and where better than on an overpriced hotel room.  (Ditto overpriced hypercars, but let’s stay on track, so to speak.)

I will never forget, though, the time I was staying at the Royal Hotel in Durban — at the time, one of the best hotels anywhere — and had the misfortune of tipping over a plate of exquisite lobster bisque into my lap.  Of course, it was only an overnight stay and I had a client meeting the next morning, so I didn’t have a spare.  The restaurant’s maître d’hotel took care of everything, hustling me off to my room for a change of clothes;  and upon my arrival there, I found the concierge waiting to take my suit (and shirt, and tie) off to the dry cleaners — at 11 o’clock at night.  It was all brought back to my room at 7 o’clock the next morning.  When I checked out, I searched for a dry cleaning charge on my bill, but there wasn’t one;  and nor was there a charge for my dinner, even though I’d gone back down to finish my meal.

For the rest of my business trips to Durban (and there were many), I never stayed anywhere else.  On one occasion, the hotel was fully booked, and I rescheduled my meeting for the following week just so I wouldn’t have to put up with another hotel.  (By the way, the Edward Hotel in Durban was also a five-star joint and equally luxurious, but I only ever stayed there once, put off by the traffic noise on the beachfront.  The Royal overlooked Durban Harbor, a much quieter location.)

So yeah, you’ll get service at a luxury hotel that you just won’t get at yer typical Holiday Inn Express or the Fleabagge Hotel in King’s Cross London (don’t ask), but you have to pay for it.  Of course.

Also, if you do have to travel to Shitholia where the ignorant savages don’t speak English, then a 5-star hotel is the best way to overcome that little hurdle.

Just my two cents.