Well, we started with some frisbee (although we didn't have enough people for ultimate frisbee). I hadn't played in 6 months, and before that it had been close to 3 years. I want to get back into playing regularly like I did at Cornell, so now that it's starting to get dark later, hopefully that will happen.
Then we watched three movies at Jorian's place. (What kind of threesome did you think I meant? I have trouble enough getting a date, so I'm just going to go for a walk or something. On base percentage is a more important statistic than slugging percentage anyway...)
First off Bull Durham, which right a very important wrong in my life. That was the clear #1 among movies I should have seen but hadn't yet. I can safely pronounce that this movie is fucking awesome. It goes very high on my list and will be on my 80s list of movies when it comes time to discuss that. There are so many one-liners in there! The movie was hilarious! I had heard many of the movie's lines before, including important parts of certain scenes (like the version of the "lollygagging" scene that ESPN used in a Sportscenter commercial). Manager (loudly) : "You know what you are?" (Pitching coach, calmly: "Lollygaggers.") Manager (loudly): "Lollygaggers!"
I saw a headline in the movie about "Whiten" tearing up the minors and wondered if they meant (then-)prospect Mark Whiten, who had an 11-year major league career. As you can see on IMDB, they did indeed mean him. Also, the Costner line about think Oswald acted alone is in direct contradiction to the opinions of the person he played in JFK. (The lines in question here are also ones I have seen several times.)
The movie gets the whole minor league thing really well, and I had been known to occasionally make references to things in the movie even though I hadn't seen it. That wrong has now been righted. The big question now is which movie is now #1 among ones I should have seen but haven't yet seen. In the case of Bull Durham, it was obvious because we had a movie that was a classic, a comedy, and about baseball (and on the short short list of the classic baseball movies [actually, of the classic sports movies]). I haven't seen Field of Dreams and while that too is a crime, it's not obviously #1 on the list. Any ideas of which movie it might be? Suggestions should come from things you think are part of my paradigm.
The second mvoie we saw was Sneakers, which it turns out I have seen before but wasn't sure before we watched it. It was good but not great. This entry is already long and I'm talking about older movies, so I'll stop here.
The third movie we saw was Clerks, which was often very funny but also pretty disturbing at times (which is what one would expect from Kevin Smith). I see from IMDB that there will be a sequel this year; it has the working subtitle of "Passion of the Clerks", which I find highly amusing... hopefully it will have less unintentional necrophilia (or any other kind of necrophilia). I enjoyed the film quite a bit---it's somewhere between good and very good.
Anyway, frisbee + three solid films is a nice way to spend a Saturday. I did less work than I should have (and I feel guilty about that, although that's my own OCD issue), but I had fun. And one of the films was truly genius---an artistic masterpiece.
No lollygagging tomorrow!
Very glad that Bull Durham met your high standards. That's one of those movies I feel like I need to watch at least once a year minimum. So many great lines...
ReplyDeleteIncluding, "After 12 years in the minor leagues, I don't try out."
And: "Your shower shoes have fungus on them. You'll never make it to the bigs with fungus on your shower shoes. Think classy, you'll be classy. If you win 20 in the show, you can let the fungus grow back and the press'll think you're colorful. Until you win 20 in the show, however, it means you are a slob."
I'm glad you think my standards are high. :)
ReplyDeleteOne think I forgot to mention in the blog entry is the line "I hear you couldn't hit water if you fell out of a fucking boat." comes directly from a tirade from Tommy Lasorda.
Dodger pitcher Tom Niedenfuer hit the Padres Kurt Bevacqua and Ron Lefebvre (pronounced "Lu-fay", as opposed to Jim Lefebvre, whose last name is pronounced "Lu-feaver") with a pitch. Padres manager Dick Williams had his own tirade in which he stated he felt Lasorda had ordered the plunkings. ("Niedenfuer my fucking ass! It was the fat little Italian!") [something like that was the snippet I've heard a lot]
Lasorda was asked about this, and he had one of his classic explosions. He was saying why would he ever hit those guys because they suck so much. He went off for a couple minutes, saying about how he would have those guys brought up to the plate "in a fucking limosine" just so his pitchers could face them. This included a comment "...like a Lefebvre or a Bevacqua, who couldn't hit water if he fell out of a fucking boat!"
I've heard Lasorda's whole tirade a few times. It's one of his best. It's not as good as his "Opinion of Kingman's Performance", but it's still one of the classic baseball blow-ups of all time. (Lasorda appears on that list so many times.)