Football 10/25

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Roughriders took their first loss last weekend in a WILD game at WL-S. Thet’s par for the course. ALL of our games the last decade or so have been wild. This one involved a 98 yard fumble return for a TD, 19 unanaswered points to start the second half, an intereception thowin in the final two minutes by the team with the lead, and a game winning TD on the final play. WJ drops to second in the region and still controll out own destiny. WL-S is solidly in the top 8 and likely to make the playoffs as well. Rematch? 2-6 Triad at home this weekend. Roughriders by as much as they want.

Buckeyes over the NU last week in another laugher. Get’s a little more serious this week against a recently beaten Wisconsin Togh game at home. OSU 21, Wisconsin 7. Final four? OSU, Alabama, Oklahoma and Clemason. LSU loses to Bama. PSU loses to OSU. Baylor barely playing a D I schedule. And has anyone else noticed the Minnie Ha Ha is undefeated?!

Saints continue to roll, although beating the Bears isn’t really brag-worthy. They’ll beat the Cards handily. Maybe 31-17? Pats and Chiefs still running the AFC. Texans better turn it on soon. I’m thinking the NFC is 49ers and Packers territoy. Saints are knocking on the door and when #9 comes back they’ll kick it in.

Halloween IV

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16. Suspiria. 1977. The original, with music by Goblin. An American newcomer to a prestigious German ballet academy comes to realize that the school is a front for something sinister amid a series of grisly murders. The remake is more sexual, and good. But not the original. Jessica Harper et al are cute. Joan Bennet is over-officious. 9.4 and should continue to make this cut.

17. The Conjuring. 2013. The one that started it all. Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse. Curiously much higher on my list than the overall users list. I dropped it a little but it should stay on the list for another decade. 9.8

18. The Haunted House. 1921. A little simple fun from Buster Keaton, with some nice special effects. A bank clerk ends up in a seemingly haunted house that is actually a thieves’ hideout. PErhaps the 1906 animated short makes NEXT years unwatched list. Not much haunting. NO scares. Maybe a 7.

19. A Ghost Story. 2017. Shouldn’t have been on the list. In this singular exploration of legacy, love, loss, and the enormity of existence, a recently deceased, white-sheeted ghost returns to his suburban home to try to reconnect with his bereft wife. Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara. An interesting, watchable movie, but NOT an October movie. 5/10.

20. Wizard of Oz. 1925. Last of the unseens. Shouldn’t be on the list, but there’s a witch! And Oliver Hardy, with a very Stan Laurel like Larry Semon. A but long but watchable for fans. Nice special effects. Lot’s of “tower” shots! Three airplanes! Bad puns for character names. Dorothy, heir to the Oz throne, must take it back from the wicked Prime Minister Kruel with the help of three farmhands. 4.6/10

1949 Movies

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Flickchart’ article

34 The Third Man1949Carol Reed NR 48 Was my #1 for quite a while but repeated viewing dropped it a bit.

8340 Little Rural Riding Hood1949Tex Avery NR 583 Glad this makes the critics list. Avery at his BEST.

5612 In the Good Old Summertime1949Robert Z. Leonard NR 924 12521 It Happens Every Spring1949Lloyd Bacon NR 1042 1370 On the Town1949Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly NR 1356 Makes my list due to Vera Ellen

358 Kind Hearts and Coronets1949Robert Hamer NR 1587 1774 All the King’s Men1949Robert Rossen NR 1626 BARELY misses. 2313 Sands of Iwo Jima1949Allan Dwan NR 1654. John Wayne dies. 9741 The Fighting Kentuckian1949George Waggner NR 1709 John Wayne LIVES.

16519 Neptune’s Daughter1949Edward Buzzell NR 1717 How could this musical classic NOT make the list??? Travesty.

3778 The Legend of Sleepy Hollow1949Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney NR 1837 Added this as #11 since it’s October. Rewatched a few years back. Not as good as it was in my childhood.

Need to find Cukor’s Letter to Three Wives next.

Halloween III

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11. Tales of Terror. 1962. Three tales of terror involve a grieving widower and the daughter he abandoned; a drunkard and his wife’s black cat; and a hypnotist who prolongs the moment of a man’s death. What’s Halloween without a little Vincent Price? Throw in Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone and three SYT’s, mangle some Poe and ya gotcherself a movie. Actually pretty pedestrian American International fare. Still earns a respectable 7.5 but probably won’t make the list on its own.

12. Heart and Souls. 1993. The perils of using this scattershot approach. This is a rom-com involving ghosts. An unhappy businessman finds a new sense of purpose after he’s tasked with helping a quartet of ghosts fulfill their last wishes before moving on to the afterlife. It writes itself. Nothing original. Very good cast does what it can. Earns its 5.1

13. An American Werewolf in London. 1981. John Landis directs. David Naughton before he was a Pepper. Jenny Agutter is cute as a button. Transformation scene was state of the art. Awesome soundtrack. And Griffin Dunne. Dropped a little to 9.4 but don’t expect it to vanish anytime soon.

14. Predator 2. 1992. Amidst a territorial gang war in 1997, a sophisticated alien hunter stalks the citizens of Los Angeles and the only man between him and his prey is a veteran L.A.P.D. officer. Lots of 80’s actors chewing the scenery. 3.9 and I never have to see it again.

15. Shaun of the Dead. 2004. A man’s uneventful life is disrupted by the zombie apocalypse. Anti-consumerist. Predictable. But Pegg manages to find some funny moments. But I just don’t care. 8.9 but I’m picky about my horror/comedy stuff.

Football 10/16

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Roughriders stay undefeated by kicking butt. And taking names. Nice trap game win. There are three great programs in our league and two good ones. We play the second great one this weekend. We have three common opponents. WLS beat all of them by more than us but all margins of victory were more than 35! Should be a hell of a game, either way. And we could lose.

Buckeyes come off the open date and face Northwestern. 30-7. Top four? With Georgia’s loss it’s a little cleaner. OSU and Alabama are the top two. Wisconsin is third but won’t stay there so we’ll give it to Oklahoma. The final spot is tough. LSU if they make it past Alabama in the SEC title game. Clemson of course. And my dark horse …. still … Oregon.

Saints holding on until the get #9 back. STILL nt a Bridgewater fan. Close game wit’ ‘da Bears this weekend. Saints 21, Bears 18. Niners and Saints look to be the class of the NFC, what with the Rams dropping off. Patriots almost alone atop the AFC with KC hanging around. Saints 36% against the Niners is the worst against ANY NFC team.

Early Autumn running update

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Haven’t updated the running thing in a while, so lets. Weight down to 207-212 range. In the last month I’ve done my first three mile run since September ’15 and my fastest since July of that year. That was also the last year I raced. Fastest everything else since August ’16. Running fell apart for a while then. Haven’t been able to hit my Astrand tempo runs so I’ll spend the rest of October doing 2-3 mile runs and an occasional tempo workout. Maybe after Halloween I can start hitting the track more often. If NOT it’s goona be a long winter of distance slogs with some core work mixed in on the off days. And in reality, that would be the best way to prep the organism for my first spring of speed work in years.

Halloween Movies II

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6. Twilight Zone: The Movie. 1983. A slew of great directors. Good music. Fun. With John Lithgow doing a star-turn as William Shatner. Dropped this year but still recommended. 8.7/10

7. Raw. 2016. French. Finally a new movie worthy of the list. Coming of Age, Ginger Snaps, a whole bunch of avant garde new wave French movies. Definitely worth a look and MAY make the list NEXT year. 8.8/10

8. The Wolf Man. 1941. First of the classics on our list. Lon Chaney Jr. Claude Rains, Ralph Bellamy, Bela Lugosi, Maria Ouspenskaya, and Evelyn Ankers. 9.8/10

9. The Revenge of Frankenstein. 1958. Peter Cushing as Baron Frankenstein who escapes from the guillotine and goes to Germany. There, he names himself Dr. Stein and plans to restart his experiments by using parts of dead bodies. Previously unseen. Coulda stayed that way. Nothing new. 1.2/10. Side note: Fritz the grave digger in the opening scene is none other than Lionel Jeffries who, ten years later, would play Grandpa (Caracticus) “Crack” Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

10. The Others. 2001. A woman (Nicole Kidman) who lives in her darkened old family house with her two photosensitive children becomes convinced that the home is haunted. One of my better contributions. Stands up to rewatches, even as a precourser to M. Night Ramalamadingdong. 9.9/10

The Office, The Man, and the 48 Hour Rule

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About five years ago I adopted my 48 hour rule. Whenever some big media bombshell hit I withheld comment for 48 hours. I didn’t text, I didn’t email, I didn’t blog and I didn’t discuss in public and often not in private. I waited. Because a HUGE percentage of the time the story as it broke would completely change in 48 hours. Some previously over-looked (?) fact would come to light. Some misquote would be revealed as such. The sloppy reporting that has become the norm would fall apart, and we would move on.

This approached helped. I was involved in a lot fewer current events discussions. It saved time and aggravation. And I’ve added another filter to my quiver. When I read an article/headline/tweet, text or email about current affairs I substitute “The President” for “Trump.” And this was brought about by several observation of the last several years.

Leftists, it seems to me, conflate the man with the office. As a result they’ve given us celebrity presidents. Young, handsome Kennedy. Clinton who didn’t inhale but DID play sax on a late night talk show and discussed his underwear on M-TV. Obama, the Light Worker. “We are the ones you’ve been waiting for.” The rest of us tend towards administrators. People who have run businesses (albeit not always well.) As a result we tend to view the office of the presidency differently. The left sees the person occupying the office, the rest of us see the office itself. So the left is willing to overlook over-reach committed by “their” occupants while deriding the exact same actions taken by “the others.” The rest of us, on the other hand, are often confused and trying to keep up with the revolving door. Just because Obama used power X does NOT mean Trump may use the same power. And if Trump used authority Y it is the worst thing EVER, even if Obama used Authority Y with alarming regularity.

The Congress has been relinquishing authority to the Administration for a couple generations now. The growth of the administrative state is only one product of this abdication. Presidential over-reach is another. Bush II used the unitary executive a LOT after 9/11. The left kept relatively quiet because, GWOT. But then Obama took office and realized he could use those same techniques BETTER. To do MORE. To bend history in the direction HE wanted it to curve. And then Trump wandered in. How many times during the Obama administration did I ask my left-leaning friends (who have reduced themselves to acquaintances at this point) “what if Nixon (or, if they were younger, Bush) had done this”? The response was often stunned silence. And now that Trump has taken things further they are still unresponsive. It’s OK to over-reach if it’s in the direction they want.

And this is just wrong. So I continue to try to maintain the dichotomy of the Person and the Office. And I continue to not engage in person.

Football 10/11

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The Roughriders roughed up the Indians (I would say scalped but that’s no longer allowed) last week 30-22. Good game. Two point conversions. WJ RB broke shattered his own single game rushing record set earlier this season – by 60 yards – against a previously undefeated team. He had more rushing yards than they’d given up in the previous four games combined. This week it’s 2-4 Division 6 Northwestern before undefeated West Liberty Salem. Classic trap game. No common games but WJ continues to ride – by 21.

Buckeyes took a while to warm up but rolled over Sparty. I predicted 30-7. Final was 34-10. Close enough. Off this week.

Patriots and Chiefs still on top of the AFC. 49Ers and Packers in the NFC. Rams and Saints knocking on the door. #9 has been seen throwing passes. Saints at the Jaguars. Saints 25, Jags 21.