81/2090. The Sandlot (1993)
I'd seen this in bits and pieces over the years, but I decided to make myself sit down and watch it all the way through before the Little League World Series this year (because the kids there always list it as their favorite movie). It's heavily influenced by Stand By Me (with a pinch of Field of Dreams), but it's no crime to borrow from great movies.

baseball and apple pie

82/2091. How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life (1968)
Ah, 1960s sex comedies. They always make the repressed sexual politics of the 1950s seem reasonable by comparison. Dean Martin tries to make his friend give up his mistress, but picks on the wrong girl. Somehow, everyone has a happy ending... except the wife. *shrug*

83/2092. Orlando (1992)
Yes, this is weird, but I like weird. The narrative is really several episodes in the life of a 400-year-old gender-fluid English noble. I'm sure there's a lesson in here somewhere about discovering one's true self. It's certainly a counterpoint to that last movie.

84/2093. Johnny Guitar (1954)
This is no comedy, but it does showcase the typical 1950's viewpoint of how every strong woman amounts to nothing without a strong man backing her up. While the lead villain(ess) is a female Snidely Whiplash sans mustache who hates Joan Crawford's protagonist because they both want the same man, the mob of men that support her are motivated by a very sympathetic cause: maintaining their land and lifestyle against the coming railroad. Sometimes I forgot who I was supposed to be cheering for.

85/2094. Thomasine & Bushrod (1974)
Blaxplotation Bonnie and Clyde. I think this is marginally superior to Bonnie and Clyde, but that's mostly because I really don't like either Bonnie or Clyde. The moral here is that neither love nor insanity is more powerful than the law, by which I mean crazy white racists with guns.

86/2095. Magic Mike (2012)
Everyone talks about all the beefcake, but this is mostly a coming-of-age movie for the two dynamic male leads on opposite sides of the same journey. It's pretty good shlock entertainment, mostly on the strength of Channing Tatum's' screen charisma.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke movies

Earlier this week, General Mills issued a press release promoting Simone Biles appearing on Wheaties boxes. In March, they announced new Sonic the Hedgehog fruit snacks, and in January, they alerted fans that Ice-T loved Honey Nut Cheerios. Cleary, they love telling us about their marketing synergy.

Yet somehow they failed to notify the public that this was coming:

The packaging tells us "Strong Berry" cereal is really Cap'n Crunch. I suppose this tastes the same as Crunch Berries, just with all of the pieces shaped like little diamonds. In other words, you're going to need a Mouth of Steel to survive eating this.

Amusingly, in keeping with the comic book theme, there is also a variant of this cereal with Supergirl on the cover box, all the better to sell the same cereal to little boys and little girls. Sorta makes you wonder why there isn't a female Cap'N Crunch, doesn't it.

We're currently living in a dystopia of infinite inflation, but you can get this at Target for a measly $3.49. Superman is all about helping the little people!

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: food superman

51/2060. Five Minutes to Live (1961)
The sensationalist title is a very good indicator of the style of this low-budget thriller, but it's a poor description of the plot itself. What you need to know is that Johnny Cash plays a psychopathic killer during a bank robbery gone sideways. You will believe that he shot a man in Reno just to watch him die! While Cash has the starring role, the kid in the movie is played by none other than li'l Ronnie Howard! What a weird pairing.

52/2061. Siren of the Tropics (1927)
This silent movie starring Josephine Baker careens madly through genres: adventure, slapstick comedy, topless sexploitation, murder thriller, romantic melodrama, you name it. Obviously, it has its moments, but its mad mood swings really irritated me.

53/2062. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
Another Marvel movie with insultingly stupid plotting. But you're supposed to watch these things for the character interactions, and I won't deny that it is a lot of fun when there are multiple Spider-Men on screen at the same time. But that's the only nice thing I'll say about it.

54/2063. On Golden Pond (1981)
I'm old enough that I can now relate to Fonda's existential dilemma, which could make this movie a real slog. Fortunately, I like Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn. It'll never be a favorite, but it was worth a watch.

Drink fast, old man!

55/2064. Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story (2015)
The life story of a husband (storyboarder, art director) and wife (researcher) who worked behind the scenes on many a Hollywood movie. It's told largely through home movies and on-camera interviews, so it's essentially an autobiography with plenty of anecdotes and famous faces.

56/2065. 15 Things You Didn't Know About Bigfoot (#1 Will Blow Your Mind) (2019)
This movie was released at the wrong time and has had a hard time finding distribution, so you may encounter it with a different title. I watched it because it was set in Georgia, and my mind was indeed blown. It is without a doubt the best lampoon of VICE-style clickbait journalism, social media influencers, and Bigfoot hunters you'll ever see.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke movies

After years of lackluster commentating on Monday Night Football, ESPN has giddily hired an all new 2022 crew, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman (stolen from Fox Sports for something in the neighborhood of $100 million), thereby ensuring another year of lackluster commentating.

The labor of calling a football broadcast is divided into two roles: the play-by-play announcer who tells the fans who weren't looking what just happened on the field, and the color commentator who explains why what just happened was a good/bad thing. Good crews inform you about what you might not have noticed and teach you about football. Really good crews get you excited to see more. Then there's the Buck-Aikman combo.

Competent play-by-play announcing is an art, and each sport is a different discipline. I'll give Joe Buck credit for being far above average at calling baseball games, but after years and years of trying, he comes across as disinterested and generally ignorant of the football games he calls. If the announcer doesn't care about the game, why should anyone listen?

As for the other side of the booth, I might have been the only person in the world who didn't enjoy John Madden's broadcasts because he reduced his commentary to idiot-level "BAM"s and "YAK"s to reach the average television-watching moron, but Aikman appears to have the actual vocabulary of the average television-watching moron. As a teacher, he's more a substitute than tenured professor; he's proven completely unable to elevate the game. At least he's really grumpy.

So did ESPN buy themselves a good crew or a great crew? The Buck-Aikman combo certainly has me excited... to see what's on a different channel.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: football football joe buck john madden nfl television toy aikman

Walt Duncan has been an out-of-touch orthodontist since Zits debuted in 1997. At the time, "Walter" had fallen to 273rd in popularity among U.S. baby boy names, according to the Social Security Administration. So, yeah, "old guy" names.

The peak for "Walter" in the United States was 1914, when it cracked the top ten for the only time in the 20th century. (Per ssa.gov: "In that year, the number of births is 8962, which represents 1.312 percent of total male births in 1914.") Perhaps not coincidentally, the most famous Walter in newspaper comics is Walt Wallet of Gasoline Alley, who debuted in 1918.

The lowest point for "Walter" babies was 393rd (0.035%) in 2008, but has rebounded since. I would presume that's the influence of Breaking Bad's Walter White, who debuted that year, but the name "Louis" has followed a very similar trend, also peaking in 1914 (at 20th, 0.8%) before dead-cat bouncing in 2009 (0.042%). Is there a mid-aughts Louis I've forgotten about?

For the record, there were 2,358 "Walter"s born in 1975, representing 0.145% of all children that year, ranking 112th overall. On a personal note, there were 39,588 "James," or 2.439%, 4th overall. "James" has never fallen out of the top 20 since the SSA started keeping records. If there was a Venn diagram of such things, "James Walter" would represent the popular kid being forced to hang out with a four-eyed comic book nerd.

I would definitely read a comic strip about that.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: comic strip statistics walter zits

As someone who has long observed the Miami Dolphins NFL franchise from the outside, let me say that I have no idea how accurate former head coach Brian Flores' game-fixing allegations against team owner Stephen Ross are. And while it is obvious to even the casual observer that the racial composition of the player base is not reflected in management, I don't know if Flores was actively discriminated against by the league owners.

But between Flores, Ross, and the NFL, I'm inclined to believe Flores.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: dolphins football nfl

Walter Watched Movies, 2022 edition!

1/2010. Cruella (2021)
Yeah, it looks good, and yeah, it's got a good soundtrack, but this became the first Emma Stone movie I could not make it all the way through. It's not her fault, exactly. She does manage to marginally soften an inherently vile character, but Cruella's character arc is about embracing the evil within. After the end-of-third-act twist making bad people even worse, I decided I just didn't want to spend any more time with any of the awful, awful characters that apparently populated 1970s London. Burn it all to the ground.

2/2011. The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (1996)
Technically, this documentary of the famous Broadway caricaturist was not really new to me. I had forgotten that I originally saw it in college as one of the films the late lamented Bill Marriott showed aspiring artists in his drawing classes. Hirschfield was a master artist who lived an interesting life, and I heartily recommend this to any art (or Broadway) fans out there.

3/2012. The Great Dictator (1940)
I started watching this in 2021, but couldn't get into it. I forced myself to finish it here, and I can understand its historic (and political) significance, but I wouldn't want to watch it again. What can I say? I just don't enjoy watching Chaplin mugging for the camera as the Tramp or as Hitler.

4/2013. Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
Unlike The Line King, I thought I had seen this, but apparently I had it confused with its contemporary, Spice World. My mistake. There's no way I would have forgotten some of this content if I had seen it before. ("I still don't understand why you're here." "Because I was in the comic book.") Spice World is a parody of the music business, but Josie is satire, an unflinching social-commentary satire masquerading as fluff. It's maybe even more relevant to life in 2021 than it was to 2001.

The over-the-top overt product placement in this film about subliminal influencing is very, very much the point of this spear. It's become well publicized that the producers received no extra funding from placing the corporate intellectual products in the film, but that sort of misses the point that brands like Target, Revlon, and, yes, Coca-Cola *still* benefited from putting their logos before the eyes of movie audiences, even as a punchline. The beast knows that the only bad press is no press.

You know you want to drink a Coca-Cola right now.

More to come.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: coke comic books movies

I vowed that if the 1-4 Dolphins lost to the 0-5 Jaguars today in London, I wasn't going to watch another Dolphins game all season.

Final score: Dolphins 20, Jaguars 23.

So long NFL. And thanks for all the fish.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: dolphins football nfl

I have neglected to mention the Miami Dolphins so far this Football Month, and it was an intentional oversight.

They're not very good.

The offensive line is living down to their name, and as a result, second-year starting quarterback Tua "If He's Not Injury Prone, He's At Least Injury Familiar" Tagovailoa has hurt his ribs and is on Injured Reserve until at least week 6. After a feel-good win against the Patriots, a weak offense has resulted in a shutout defeat by the rising Buffalo Bills and an overtime loss to the Las Vegas Raiders (which despite being nationally televised, I barely saw because, you know, hospital stuff).

If the Bills keep winning to claim the NFL AFC East division, and there's plenty of reason to think they might, the Dolphins are already all-but-eliminated from the playoffs after just three games. Only 7 AFC teams will make the playoffs: 4 division winners and the next best three. Will the Dolphins fare better than the Chargers, Ravens, or Browns, all of whom are off to better starts? If so, they'll also have to be better than the Patriots, Chiefs, Steelers, and Texans, all of whom also have 1 win in 3 games.

I'd say the Fins look less Top Seven and more Deep Six. But that's Dolphins football for you.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: dolphins football nfl tua tagovailoa

A poll earlier this week showed former UGA running back and current U.S. Senate candidate for the state of Georgia Herschel Walker leading all other Republican primary candidates with an estimated 75% support of voters surveyed. That's a lot, especially for a guy who has never held public office, hasn't made any public statements about what he plans to do if he held public office, and hasn't even lived in Georgia for the past decade.

Hershel is a legend in this state, and rightly so, for carrying the University of Georgia to its (most recent) national title in 1980. He was truly a great running back and deserves all possible accolades for his performance on the field. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I don't think that alone qualifies anyone for political office, at least not until Congress decides that the only way though its political gridlock is physical violence on the gridiron.

Seventy-five percent of one party is a lot, but I wonder if Hershel's support might not be even higher if he wasn't personal friends with Donald Trump. The two go way back to Hershel's time in the United States Football League. Hershel was the star player on the team that Trump bought then promptly ran out of business. What a way to earn a guy's eternal loyalty!

(Immediately after buying the team, Trump tried to hire coach Don Shula, the only coach with a perfect NFL season, away from the Miami Dolphins. As a negotiating tactic, Trump made the mistake of trying to pressure Shula via the press. A resentful Shula stayed with the Dolphins to become the winningest coach in NFL history; America elected the bad negotiator to the presidency.)

As a Bulldogs fan, it bothers me to say that I would vote against Hershel. I think, aside from his misguided allegiance to a disgraced former president, he's probably a decent enough fellow. But I don't think "decent enough" qualifies anyone for political office either, even if you couple it with great athleticism.

Comments (0) | Leave a Comment | Tags: football herschel walker politics trumps america