"Omar": A-. There is an old saying, "He who is not with me is against me." If ever
there was a region on the third rock where that axiom is part of the
fabric of the culture, it is the West Bank. The indigenous Palestinians
are faced with Israeli occupation, and the ramifications of that status
never leave the consciousness. The title character in the movie Omar embodies shades of gray. Whose side is he on?
Omar (Adam Bakri), Tarek (Iyad Hoorani) and Amjad (Samer Bisharat)
are young Palestinian men who've grown up under the thumb of Israeli
occupiers. Tarek, the oldest of the trio by a few years, is the brother
of young Nadia (Leem Lubany), the object of Omar's affection. Tarek
oversees the men's preparations for the planned sniper assassination of
an Israeli military officer. The time will not be right until Tarek
determines that the marksmanship of Omar and Amjad is proficient enough
to carry out the mission. They do so with cool dispatch. A daytime
visitor to Omar's bakery would never suspect his Jekyll and Hyde
personality.
Following the murder, the Israelis, who seem to know everything that
is going on inside the Palestinian enclave, waste little time tracking
down the general whereabouts of the threesome, who for unexplained
reasons are deemed the primary murder suspects. Only Omar is captured
and tortured, but he won't rat out his two buddies. A short time later,
he is duped into saying to a wired fellow inmate, "I will never
confess." Aha! His Israeli captors, after hearing the recorded
boastful proclamation, deem this to be the equivalent of a confession,
and according to Omar's lawyer, the judge will concur. The only way for
Omar to avoid a ninety year prison term is to strike a deal with his
"handler," Agent Rami (Waleed F. Zuaiter). Rami gives Omar thirty days
outside the prison walls to covertly assist the military police in
bringing Tarek (and Amjad) to justice.
Once Omar is released from prison, his Palestinian friends aren't
sure if he can be trusted. How did he manage to gain his release on a
murder charge in just a couple of days? Omar tells them it was due to
lack of evidence. Eyebrows are raised. Can this be true, they wonder,
or is Omar now a collaborator with the enemy?
Meanwhile, as if walking the fine line between his people and their
arch enemy isn't enough, Omar struggles to keep his love affair alive
with Nadia. It is difficult for the young couple to spend any time
together, as the separation barriers, which are ugly concrete barricades
rising twenty-five feet from the ground, not only ring the border
between the West Bank and Israel proper, but also segregate one West
bank neighborhood from another. Every time Omar scales the wall to get
from his house to Nadia's, he risks being shot.
The plot thickens when Omar finds out that his buddy Amjad also has
the hots for Nadia. Since it was Amjad who actually fired the bullet
that killed the Israeli soldier, Omar has tough decisions to make.
Pressure mounts via Rami's periodic phone calls to remind Omar that his
thirty days are running out. Rami promises Omar that if he is returned
to prison, Rami will make his life a living hell.
It is easy to see why this movie was one of the five nominated for
the Best Foreign Film award at this month's Academy Awards. The movie
viewer comes away with a deeper appreciation of the distrust and
hostility between the two factions, each of which believing their
respective claims to the territory to be bona fide. The West Bank
residents have nowhere to go, and no voice in how their cities are
governed. The Israeli militia seems programmed to shoot first and ask
questions later.
The acting by all the principal players, especially Bakri, Lubany
and Zuaiter, is nearly perfect. Lubany, who has beautiful ebony eyes,
conveys coquettish charm as Nadia. On the other hand, her face is a
picture of concern that her fiance is a wanted man and possibly a
turncoat. Zuaiter, as Agent Rami, is Omar's counselor one moment, his
tormentor the next. Some of the middle scenes do tend to get
repetitive, one of the few shortcomings of the film.
Things have
not gotten better in the West Bank since the Six Day War of 1967. One
has to wonder if the situation will ever improve. The parties'
positions are entrenched. In order to establish peace, reasonable minds
have to come together. But are we working with reasonable minds here,
or is the level of mutual contempt too high?
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
The Old Boy Raises One In Honor Of Mike Smith
Today marks the sixth anniversary of the induction of the Dave Clark Five into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. To commemorate the occasion, I am posting an e-mail I wrote to my three kids and Momma Cuandito on March 8, 2008.
THE OLD BOY RAISES ONE IN HONOR OF MIKE SMITH
Hello Boys & Girls,
Imagine you are 16 years old, a high school junior. You grew up in the Chicago area. When you were a 13 year old eighth grader you had the rug pulled out from under you when your family moved from Chicago to Iowa four months before you were to have graduated from the school you had attended since the first day of first grade. Now, as a sixteen year old you are asked to move to North Dakota, a place your family used to ridicule when you lived in Chicago. You do not want to relocate again. You hated moving the first time. You are being asked to start all over again. You still miss Chicago. In North Dakota you will be even farther away. You think to yourself "Why not just shoot me now?"
When you get to North Dakota it is the third week of January, 1964. The temperature is fifteen below. Your new school has only four sports for boys, none of which is baseball or tennis, the only two sports you were pretty good at. You are not a recluse but you are shy. Your dream is Notre Dame, but you are only a junior. Can that dream sustain you for a year and a half? It seems like an eternity. You need something in your life besides studying.
Fast forward two weeks. There is a band from England that everyone is talking about. They call themselves the Beetles, or as you find out later, the Beatles. No one in North Dakota had ever heard of them before you arrived there. Now their music is all over the rock stations of Minot, Regina and Winnipeg. This is the one thing that you can experience with your new classmates on at least an even keel. They know nothing more about the Beatles than you do. In fact, as an avid listener to Chicago Top 40 radio since you were in fifth grade, you probably know a little more about music than most of them do. This is cool. Maybe living on the tundra won't be so bad after all.
You wonder what the Beatles look like every time you hear I Want To Hold Your Hand on the A.M. radio. It is on the air all the time! There is definitely a mysteriousness about them. You listen to their music, but there are no published pictures of them, at least not in the Minot Daily News. The fact that these guys are from England adds to the intrigue. On February 9, 1964, the Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, a Sunday night variety show. They open the show by singing All My Loving, Till There Was You and She Loves You. The girls in the audience are screaming and crying throughout. There are subtitles identifying each of the Beatles to the television audience because, in a way, they all resemble each other; it's hard to tell them apart. When John Lennon is identified the screen reads underneath his name, "Sorry girls, he's married." Ed Sullivan advises the audience that if they behave themselves, he will bring the Beatles back on later in the show. No one in the audience or in television land really cares about the other guests on Ed's show. They just want more Beatles. Finally at the end of the show, Ed keeps his promise (as if he were ever not going to bring the boys back on), and they close the show with I Saw Her Standing There and the number 1 song in the country, I Want To Hold Your Hand.
During the next week, there is absolutely no one in school or on the radio who isn't talking about the Sullivan show and the Beatles. Now more Beatles songs are being played, as people learn that the Beatles have been releasing records in the UK for the last two years. Until now, those songs never made it to the US airwaves. Industrious radio music programmers discover that, although the Beatles sound nothing like the Four Seasons or the Beach Boys, the two most popular American groups on the pop charts at that time, there were other British bands whose sound was akin to that of the Beatles. The American teens crave the British sound, and the programmers are only too happy to oblige.
The UK band which most people associate with the Beatles as being the leaders of the British Invasion is the Rolling Stones. That perception is certainly justifiable, as the Stones have stood the test of time and have been labeled by some as the "World's Greatest Rock And Roll Band." However, in February and March, 1964, at the dawning of the British Invasion, when American teens craved as much Brit music as possible, there were actually two other bands who were the Beatles' main competition in the US more so than the Stones. (The Rolling Stones did not have a Top 40 hit on the Billboard charts until July 1964, with Tell Me.) One of those two other bands was the Searchers, like the Beatles another Liverpool band, who allegedly (according to some DJs) claimed that they were the equal of, if not better than, the Fab Four. The Searchers' debut on the Billboard charts was in March 1964 with Needles And Pins. History has proven that any claim by the Searchers of equality with the Beatles was only in their dreams. For one thing, unlike the Beatles, the Searchers did not write their own material. (Interestingly, the late great Sonny Bono co-wrote Needles And Pins.) Also, the Searchers had only one top ten hit during their eight year existence, Love Potion Number Nine, which peaked at number 3 in early 1965.
Finally we get to the purpose of my little tribute... The other UK band which, for that crazy time of the initial stages of the British Invasion, gave the Beatles some competition, was the Dave Clark Five. The DC 5 was a five-man band from Tottenham, a London Suburb. Their sound was distinct from the Beatles for a couple of reasons. First, they featured an organ and a sax, neither of which was in the Beatles' format. Instead of guitar solos for the song breaks, the DC 5 songs' breaks would often have an organ or sax solo. Secondly, all four of the Beatles sang, but with respect to the DC 5 their lead vocals were handled almost exclusively by Mike Smith, the organist. There was no mistaking Smith's voice, whether on a rocker or a ballad; gruff, soulful and sincere. The DC 5 actually hit the Billboard charts with Glad All Over exactly one week after the famous Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. Although the DC 5 did cover some other artists' songs (as did the Beatles), most of their songs were written by members of the group, particularly drummer/founder Dave Clark and Mike Smith, thus putting them a cut above the Searchers. Besides Glad All Over, other big hits for the band included Bits And Pieces, Can't You See That She's Mine, Because and Over And Over. The number one thing which made these songs hits was not the members' musicianship. (They were not in the Beatles' league either as songwriters or as musicians.) It was Mike Smith's singing ability. Only a very small handful of singers at the time were better, in my view. Ed Sullivan thought enough of the DC 5 to invite them to be on his variety show approximately twenty-seven times, more than any other music act in the history of that show.
***
I found out on March 6 that Mike Smith died on February 28, 2008. He had been paralyzed as a result of a fall from a security fence on his property in southern Spain in September 2003, and except for a very few days, had lived his life in a hospital since his accident. Throughout his four and a half year ordeal, he remained upbeat beyond imagination. He had many friends throughout the world both in and out of the music business, including Peter Noone (the "Herman" of the sixties Brit band Herman's Hermits) and Bruce Springsteen. Mike Smith also kept a web page which you can find by Googling his name. One of the saddest things about Mike's pasing is that the DC 5 is scheduled to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame on March 10, and he had hoped to make the trip to NYC for the induction. It's hard to believe that someone who had such horrible luck in the last years of his life could not have at least survived another ten or eleven days.
When you get to be an old codger like me you take notice when some things that may have formed you in your youth all of a sudden disappear. Some examples. I still remember exactly where I was on December 8, 1980 when I found out that John Lennon had been killed. Last year when I was in Libertyville I took a walk down my old street, Cook Avenue, only to discover that the house in which I grew up was bulldozed so the new property owner could build a McMansion on the lot. My high school class, the Class of 1965, did not receive a yearbook, and according to sources I trust, we are the only class in the history of the school to have that ignominious distinction. The room I lived in junior year in Dillon Hall is no longer sleeping quarters, but instead is now part of a very large study lounge. MHT, where I taught for eleven years, is closing its doors at the end of the current school year. Now Mike Smith, a guy whose music I loved, is in that big concert hall in the sky.
If you read all of this you are a real trooper. Maybe some of this explains why I am a pack rat. In any event, I plan to hoist one in honor of Mike Smith the next time I quaff a cold one, and if some of what I wrote here made sense to you, I hope you'll do the same. Thank God for your good health, and while you're busy planning for the future, appreciate the present. Some day the present will become the past, and it 's not always easy to hold onto those memories you want to keep.
I love you all. The Old Boy
THE OLD BOY RAISES ONE IN HONOR OF MIKE SMITH
Hello Boys & Girls,
Imagine you are 16 years old, a high school junior. You grew up in the Chicago area. When you were a 13 year old eighth grader you had the rug pulled out from under you when your family moved from Chicago to Iowa four months before you were to have graduated from the school you had attended since the first day of first grade. Now, as a sixteen year old you are asked to move to North Dakota, a place your family used to ridicule when you lived in Chicago. You do not want to relocate again. You hated moving the first time. You are being asked to start all over again. You still miss Chicago. In North Dakota you will be even farther away. You think to yourself "Why not just shoot me now?"
When you get to North Dakota it is the third week of January, 1964. The temperature is fifteen below. Your new school has only four sports for boys, none of which is baseball or tennis, the only two sports you were pretty good at. You are not a recluse but you are shy. Your dream is Notre Dame, but you are only a junior. Can that dream sustain you for a year and a half? It seems like an eternity. You need something in your life besides studying.
Fast forward two weeks. There is a band from England that everyone is talking about. They call themselves the Beetles, or as you find out later, the Beatles. No one in North Dakota had ever heard of them before you arrived there. Now their music is all over the rock stations of Minot, Regina and Winnipeg. This is the one thing that you can experience with your new classmates on at least an even keel. They know nothing more about the Beatles than you do. In fact, as an avid listener to Chicago Top 40 radio since you were in fifth grade, you probably know a little more about music than most of them do. This is cool. Maybe living on the tundra won't be so bad after all.
You wonder what the Beatles look like every time you hear I Want To Hold Your Hand on the A.M. radio. It is on the air all the time! There is definitely a mysteriousness about them. You listen to their music, but there are no published pictures of them, at least not in the Minot Daily News. The fact that these guys are from England adds to the intrigue. On February 9, 1964, the Beatles appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, a Sunday night variety show. They open the show by singing All My Loving, Till There Was You and She Loves You. The girls in the audience are screaming and crying throughout. There are subtitles identifying each of the Beatles to the television audience because, in a way, they all resemble each other; it's hard to tell them apart. When John Lennon is identified the screen reads underneath his name, "Sorry girls, he's married." Ed Sullivan advises the audience that if they behave themselves, he will bring the Beatles back on later in the show. No one in the audience or in television land really cares about the other guests on Ed's show. They just want more Beatles. Finally at the end of the show, Ed keeps his promise (as if he were ever not going to bring the boys back on), and they close the show with I Saw Her Standing There and the number 1 song in the country, I Want To Hold Your Hand.
During the next week, there is absolutely no one in school or on the radio who isn't talking about the Sullivan show and the Beatles. Now more Beatles songs are being played, as people learn that the Beatles have been releasing records in the UK for the last two years. Until now, those songs never made it to the US airwaves. Industrious radio music programmers discover that, although the Beatles sound nothing like the Four Seasons or the Beach Boys, the two most popular American groups on the pop charts at that time, there were other British bands whose sound was akin to that of the Beatles. The American teens crave the British sound, and the programmers are only too happy to oblige.
The UK band which most people associate with the Beatles as being the leaders of the British Invasion is the Rolling Stones. That perception is certainly justifiable, as the Stones have stood the test of time and have been labeled by some as the "World's Greatest Rock And Roll Band." However, in February and March, 1964, at the dawning of the British Invasion, when American teens craved as much Brit music as possible, there were actually two other bands who were the Beatles' main competition in the US more so than the Stones. (The Rolling Stones did not have a Top 40 hit on the Billboard charts until July 1964, with Tell Me.) One of those two other bands was the Searchers, like the Beatles another Liverpool band, who allegedly (according to some DJs) claimed that they were the equal of, if not better than, the Fab Four. The Searchers' debut on the Billboard charts was in March 1964 with Needles And Pins. History has proven that any claim by the Searchers of equality with the Beatles was only in their dreams. For one thing, unlike the Beatles, the Searchers did not write their own material. (Interestingly, the late great Sonny Bono co-wrote Needles And Pins.) Also, the Searchers had only one top ten hit during their eight year existence, Love Potion Number Nine, which peaked at number 3 in early 1965.
Finally we get to the purpose of my little tribute... The other UK band which, for that crazy time of the initial stages of the British Invasion, gave the Beatles some competition, was the Dave Clark Five. The DC 5 was a five-man band from Tottenham, a London Suburb. Their sound was distinct from the Beatles for a couple of reasons. First, they featured an organ and a sax, neither of which was in the Beatles' format. Instead of guitar solos for the song breaks, the DC 5 songs' breaks would often have an organ or sax solo. Secondly, all four of the Beatles sang, but with respect to the DC 5 their lead vocals were handled almost exclusively by Mike Smith, the organist. There was no mistaking Smith's voice, whether on a rocker or a ballad; gruff, soulful and sincere. The DC 5 actually hit the Billboard charts with Glad All Over exactly one week after the famous Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. Although the DC 5 did cover some other artists' songs (as did the Beatles), most of their songs were written by members of the group, particularly drummer/founder Dave Clark and Mike Smith, thus putting them a cut above the Searchers. Besides Glad All Over, other big hits for the band included Bits And Pieces, Can't You See That She's Mine, Because and Over And Over. The number one thing which made these songs hits was not the members' musicianship. (They were not in the Beatles' league either as songwriters or as musicians.) It was Mike Smith's singing ability. Only a very small handful of singers at the time were better, in my view. Ed Sullivan thought enough of the DC 5 to invite them to be on his variety show approximately twenty-seven times, more than any other music act in the history of that show.
***
I found out on March 6 that Mike Smith died on February 28, 2008. He had been paralyzed as a result of a fall from a security fence on his property in southern Spain in September 2003, and except for a very few days, had lived his life in a hospital since his accident. Throughout his four and a half year ordeal, he remained upbeat beyond imagination. He had many friends throughout the world both in and out of the music business, including Peter Noone (the "Herman" of the sixties Brit band Herman's Hermits) and Bruce Springsteen. Mike Smith also kept a web page which you can find by Googling his name. One of the saddest things about Mike's pasing is that the DC 5 is scheduled to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame on March 10, and he had hoped to make the trip to NYC for the induction. It's hard to believe that someone who had such horrible luck in the last years of his life could not have at least survived another ten or eleven days.
When you get to be an old codger like me you take notice when some things that may have formed you in your youth all of a sudden disappear. Some examples. I still remember exactly where I was on December 8, 1980 when I found out that John Lennon had been killed. Last year when I was in Libertyville I took a walk down my old street, Cook Avenue, only to discover that the house in which I grew up was bulldozed so the new property owner could build a McMansion on the lot. My high school class, the Class of 1965, did not receive a yearbook, and according to sources I trust, we are the only class in the history of the school to have that ignominious distinction. The room I lived in junior year in Dillon Hall is no longer sleeping quarters, but instead is now part of a very large study lounge. MHT, where I taught for eleven years, is closing its doors at the end of the current school year. Now Mike Smith, a guy whose music I loved, is in that big concert hall in the sky.
If you read all of this you are a real trooper. Maybe some of this explains why I am a pack rat. In any event, I plan to hoist one in honor of Mike Smith the next time I quaff a cold one, and if some of what I wrote here made sense to you, I hope you'll do the same. Thank God for your good health, and while you're busy planning for the future, appreciate the present. Some day the present will become the past, and it 's not always easy to hold onto those memories you want to keep.
I love you all. The Old Boy
Monday, February 24, 2014
Movie Review: "Lone Survivor"
"Lone Survivor": B. Lone Survivor has been hyped as the most realistic war movie since 1998's Saving Private Ryan.
Although the new film comes nowhere near the full-scale, big picture
framework of the Tom Hanks classic, the similarities in story telling
are easily detected. There are no choreographed shooting victims like
you frequently see in a western movie or glamorized deaths common to
many action flicks. In both Lone Survivor and Saving Private Ryan, death at the hands of the enemy comes quickly, brutally and sometimes quietly. There is nothing pretty about it. In Ryan, the movie viewer feels like she's on one of the boats landing on the Normandy coast; in Survivor it's the mountainside bunkers of the Hindu Kush.
During the opening credits, Lone Survivor director J.A. Bayona cleverly and efficiently shows us film clips of the rigorous training to which US Special Ops forces are subjected. Thus, when the film's action is ready to unfold, we have already been briefed and have a feeling for the type of men we will be watching for the next two hours. Their dedication, ruggedness and fearlessness knows no bounds. This is not a movie about some guy sitting in a cubicle in McLean, Virginia with a joy stick in his hand, remotely controlling a weapons-laden drone half way around the globe. Rather, we are elbow-to elbow with four Navy Seals as they are dropped covertly by helicopter in the treacherous Hindu Kush range. Their mission, code named Operation Red Wings, is to kill a Taliban leader, Ahmad Shah, who has been responsible for the deaths of dozens of American troops. Killing Shah might be the easy part; the four GIs also need to escape through the mountains for later rescue by another chopper.
The foursome is lead by Lieutenant Michael Murphy (an unrecognizable Taylor Kitsch from TV's Friday Night Lights). Murphy is a living legend, a human fighting machine in whom the higher ranking officers at their home air base, Bagram, have every confidence. Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) is just as tough, cool under fire and determined to see the mission through to its completion. Matt "Axe" Axelson (Ben Foster) and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) are their brothers in arms. The four have little trouble locating Shah, whom they can see in a village through binoculars from their lofty perch. But before they can execute their sniper plans, mountain goats and their herdsmen arrive close by the Seals' hiding place, causing a disruption. Soon the men are faced not only with tactical decisions regarding their orders, but moral and ethical dilemmas as well. Even though "Murph" is the commanding officer, the other three voice their divergent opinions on what to do next. The sequence of events which comprises the final three-fourths of the movie is a direct result of Murph's decision.
In my June 7, 2013 review of The Sapphires (B+), I wrote the following:
During the opening credits, Lone Survivor director J.A. Bayona cleverly and efficiently shows us film clips of the rigorous training to which US Special Ops forces are subjected. Thus, when the film's action is ready to unfold, we have already been briefed and have a feeling for the type of men we will be watching for the next two hours. Their dedication, ruggedness and fearlessness knows no bounds. This is not a movie about some guy sitting in a cubicle in McLean, Virginia with a joy stick in his hand, remotely controlling a weapons-laden drone half way around the globe. Rather, we are elbow-to elbow with four Navy Seals as they are dropped covertly by helicopter in the treacherous Hindu Kush range. Their mission, code named Operation Red Wings, is to kill a Taliban leader, Ahmad Shah, who has been responsible for the deaths of dozens of American troops. Killing Shah might be the easy part; the four GIs also need to escape through the mountains for later rescue by another chopper.
The foursome is lead by Lieutenant Michael Murphy (an unrecognizable Taylor Kitsch from TV's Friday Night Lights). Murphy is a living legend, a human fighting machine in whom the higher ranking officers at their home air base, Bagram, have every confidence. Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) is just as tough, cool under fire and determined to see the mission through to its completion. Matt "Axe" Axelson (Ben Foster) and Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch) are their brothers in arms. The four have little trouble locating Shah, whom they can see in a village through binoculars from their lofty perch. But before they can execute their sniper plans, mountain goats and their herdsmen arrive close by the Seals' hiding place, causing a disruption. Soon the men are faced not only with tactical decisions regarding their orders, but moral and ethical dilemmas as well. Even though "Murph" is the commanding officer, the other three voice their divergent opinions on what to do next. The sequence of events which comprises the final three-fourths of the movie is a direct result of Murph's decision.
In my June 7, 2013 review of The Sapphires (B+), I wrote the following:
One
of the keys to success for any movie about a small group of people --
be they singers, soldiers, cowboys, roommates or office co-workers -- is
that the story must develop the characters at least to the point where
each is not merely a support player or a cardboard one-dimensional
stereotype.
The script needs to enable the viewer to be able to differentiate among characters. That desired -- I might even go so far as to write necessary -- aspect is missing from Lone Survivor, preventing it from being more than just another very good movie. Given the fact that the story is based on an autobiography of one of the combatants -- I won't tell you which one but you'll probably know it going in if you've done any pre-viewing research -- one would think it would have been easy to incorporate a fair amount of personal history. Such is not the case. We know little about the personal histories of the four protagonists. There is only one brief attempt to portray these men as something besides programmed warriors. That attempt takes place in the afternoon hours at Bagram immediately prior to the commencement of their nighttime mission, when we see the guys playing cards or otherwise just chillin'. There was a similar scene in Zero Dark Thirty (reviewed here January 17, 2013, B+), right before the Seals left for Bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad.
Lone Survivor brings back memories of reports from the Viet Nam war that our infantry was supplied with defective M-16 rifles which were known to jam in the middle of fire fights. In the Iraq war our government failed to provide armored vehicles that were sufficient to withstand IEDs. In Lone Survivor, the radios don't work and there is a shortage of Apache helicopters, to name two of the major shortcomings. It is sad that the young people risking their lives out of a sense of patriotic duty can't count on their government to provide them with the equipment they need to carry out their missions.
The script needs to enable the viewer to be able to differentiate among characters. That desired -- I might even go so far as to write necessary -- aspect is missing from Lone Survivor, preventing it from being more than just another very good movie. Given the fact that the story is based on an autobiography of one of the combatants -- I won't tell you which one but you'll probably know it going in if you've done any pre-viewing research -- one would think it would have been easy to incorporate a fair amount of personal history. Such is not the case. We know little about the personal histories of the four protagonists. There is only one brief attempt to portray these men as something besides programmed warriors. That attempt takes place in the afternoon hours at Bagram immediately prior to the commencement of their nighttime mission, when we see the guys playing cards or otherwise just chillin'. There was a similar scene in Zero Dark Thirty (reviewed here January 17, 2013, B+), right before the Seals left for Bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad.
Lone Survivor brings back memories of reports from the Viet Nam war that our infantry was supplied with defective M-16 rifles which were known to jam in the middle of fire fights. In the Iraq war our government failed to provide armored vehicles that were sufficient to withstand IEDs. In Lone Survivor, the radios don't work and there is a shortage of Apache helicopters, to name two of the major shortcomings. It is sad that the young people risking their lives out of a sense of patriotic duty can't count on their government to provide them with the equipment they need to carry out their missions.
Thursday, February 20, 2014
On Foot Behind Enemy Lines
In the very imperfect world of college basketball, your team is nothing
if you do not make it to the Big Dance. For the uninitiated, the term
"Big Dance" refers to the 68 team field comprising the NCAA men's
basketball single elimination tournament, which dominates this country's
sports scene for a span of three weeks. Thirty-two qualify for the
tournament by winning their conference championships. The other
thirty-six teams are invited by a selection committee to be "at large"
entrants. Teams that, as of this writing, are nationally ranked in the
top twenty are virtual locks to participate in the Big Dance, either
because there's a good chance they'll win their respective conference
championships, or, failing that, they'll be invited by the selection
committee as an at large entrant. Likewise, teams whose records are
currently well below .500 in their conference have almost no hope (or
expectation) of reaching the NCAA tournament, unless they pull off a
miracle and win their conference tourney. This year's Notre Dame team,
with an ACC conference record of 5-9, is in that second group.
The thirty or so teams which fall somewhere in between the two categories cited above, and which play in one of the so-called "power conferences," are commonly referred to as "bubble teams." The Big Ten is a power conference, and the Gophers are on the bubble. As of last Thursday the Gophs had a conference record of 5-6, tied for sixth in the twelve-team Big Ten with seven regular season conference games to go. Unfortunately, only three of those seven are in the beloved "Barn" (aka Williams Arena). According to my North Dakota high school math, that meant that the Gophers would have to win at least one of their four road games to finish with a .500 Big Ten record -- that is, if they won all three of their home games. The local hoops gurus have routinely stated, in matter-of fact fashion, that finishing with a regular conference record of 9-9 would be enough to get them into the Big Dance.
The four game road slate included Wisconsin on February 13, followed by Northwestern, Ohio State and Michigan. Momma Cuan and I decided that the Gophers desperately needed our help in Madison, former home of daughter Gina and future (tomorrow!) daughter-in-law Lindsey, and one of our favorite midwestern destinations. We figured even if the Maroon & Gold lost, there was a good chance we'd manage to have fun in Mad City. Both of those prospects proved to be true.
The 275 mile drive to Wisconsin's capital is an easy one along I-94. Wisconsin is one of the few states which do not require leaving the interstate highway to find beautiful landscapes. This is particularly true in winter, when the farm fields are blanketed with deep pristine snow, and one can see much deeper into the woods than is possible during the other three seasons. If it weren't for the omnipresent state troopers hiding out underneath bridges and on entrance ramps, medians and other invisible sneaky places, the journey would be near-perfect.
Not counting our requisite Norske Nook lunch stop in Osseo, we arrived in the capital city four hours after we left home. Upon our arrival it took us what seemed like almost another four hours first to find our hotel, and then to figure out how to navigate the convoluted Madison streets to reach the hotel's parking ramp. Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura once famously (infamously?) opined that St. Paul's street design must have been drawn up by a bunch of drunken Irishmen. Ventura was criticized for saying that, but after trying to make sense of Madison's endless array of one-ways, diagonals, inner and outer circles, blockades and indecipherable street signs, Ventura's quip could certainly apply to that city too; just substitute "German" for "Irish."
Our hotel, the Best Western Inn On The Park, was located right on the square --sometimes referred to by the locals as the "inner circle" -- which surrounds the capitol, on the corner of Carroll & Main. The ramp usage is free for the Inn's guests. The valet informed us that the Badgers' home arena, the Kohl Center, was at most a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. That was the first of many pleasant surprises regarding the walkability of downtown Madison. Prior to being schooled by the valet, I would have thought that the Kohl Center was three miles away.
Our fourth floor room was fairly large, with a view of The Tornado Room across the street. I had to snap a picture of that great steak house and send it to Michael, because the two of us dined there last September on our way to the Notre Dame-Oklahoma game.
Momma Cuan and I had almost three hours until tip-off at the Kohl, so we headed for The Great Dane for dinner. It was another easy walk, albeit in the opposite direction from campus. Every beer served at The Dane is brewed in-house. The Nitro Bock 4000 is so-named because it was the 4000th barrel brewed by the proprietor. Of the beers I've tasted so far this calendar year, it is my new favorite, displacing Northbound's Solstice Brown Wheat for that honor.
Our server told us the shortest way to walk to The Kohl from The Dane was to cut straight through the capitol, which he promised stayed open until 10:00 every night. I don't know if he was pimping us for wearing our Gopher garb, but in any event it turned out to be a bum steer. Nevertheless, the brisk walk to the game in the twelve degree weather was only twenty minutes.
The Kohl Center is very modern, the antithesis of The Barn. The place was crawling with red and white, but no one gave us any grief for obviously being from the wrong side of the St. Croix. Over the years I've found the Badger fans to be good natured, maybe due to the fact that Wisconsin teams usually have their way with Minnesota, regardless of the sport. (Okay, maybe hockey is an exception!) The students in the section right below our upper deck seats were a riot. When the band played "Tequila," the kids all bounced around like Mexican jumping beans. And whenever the Gophers' Latvian forward, Oto Oseniecks (Oceans Eleven), touched the ball, the young Badger fans would scream, "Yankees rule! Yankees rule!" Sure, that may have been poor sportsmanship, but I laughed anyway.
The less said about the game, the better. Final: Whiskey 78, Minny 70. Watching the Gophers' futility, it was hard to believe that they had beaten the Badgers by thirteen points in the Barn last month.
After our cold walk back from the game to The Inn, Momma Cuan and I decided that Jameson nightcaps were in order. As you know from my June 3, 2013 post (Sojourn In Sudsville), a key element for Momma Cuan and I in selecting an urban hotel is that it must have a good bar. Jerome's off The Inn's lobby filled that requisite nicely. Two of the four sides of the tavern's room had floor-to-ceiling windows, half of them with a view of the capitol. It just might be the best view in town. We enjoyed the scene so much that we reprised the visit before turning in the next night too. I did have to wonder, however, if the bartender was hosing me on that second visit, as the tab for two Jamesons then was $20, compared to $18 the night before. Maybe I look like a rube.
On Friday morning we got out of bed in time to have brunch at Capital Brewery, just off the square on fabled State Street. We each started out with a mug of coffee and a cup of clam chowder. After that, there was no sense pretending; we each ordered a beer to go with our fresh lake perch sandwiches. I decided at that point that if, in the late sixties, South Bend had a bar as close to the ND campus as Capital Brewery is to U Dub, it would have taken me six years to graduate.
The two non-drinking highlights of the afternoon were visiting the Madison Museum Of Contemporary Art, and a unique cheese store on the square called Fromagination. The museum's featured exhibit -- a traveling exhibit organized by New York's Whitney Museum Of American Art -- was Real Surreal, a display of (mostly) paintings in which common elements are depicted with strange juxtapositions or exaggerated features. The collection focused on works created during World War II and immediately thereafter. A companion exhibit titled The Mystery Beneath was more of the same, but concentrating on Wisconsin artists. Although I'm usually more attracted to classic European masterworks, I hereby readily and willingly admit that I was extremely impressed by what I saw at the MMOCA. One of my favorite paintings was Triangle Inn No. 1 by Wisconsin artist Santos Zingale, who until 1978 was an art professor at U Dub.
Momma Cuan and I went back to Capital Brewery for a quick happy hour pint in between cultural stops and then off to see more little shops, the best of which was Fromagination. When we first entered the small store, I was almost knocked over by the pungent aromas emanating from the shelves and display cases. Three minutes later I did not even notice. Fromagination has almost any kind of cheese you've ever heard of (except probably Velveeta!). The pamphlet offered to customers categorizes the Wisconsin cheese inventory into product made from sheep's milk, cow's milk, goat's milk and "mixed and various milk" (e.g., Casa Bolo Mellage, produced by Carr Valley Cheese from a mixture of sheep, goat and cow's milk). Momma Cuan decided to buy some Dunbarton Blue made by Roelli Cheese in Shullsburg, Wisconsin.
We must have browsed in every State Street store which sold infants' wear. With Rosie now nine months old and Hortence due in early April, it's amazing how my attitude about clothes shopping has done a one-eighty. A year ago, I would have found a watering hole and waited with a beer for Mary to come out of the shops. Now I only use that strategy if the sought-after clothing is not intended for a grandchild.
Dinner that Valentine's night was at one of our old Madison standbys, the Essen Haus. That German restaurant is another example of a destination which I would have guessed was well beyond walking distance from our hotel. To the contrary, we hoofed it in less than twenty minutes. Momma Cuan had the sauerbraten and I had the Bavarian Combo, a selection of German meats including jaeger schnitzel, weisswurst and wiener schnitzel. I should have ordered the sauerbraten.
A funny thing happened after dinner, as we made our way to the indoor beer garden to finish our drinks, listen to the Steve Meisner trio play German polkas and watch the customers dance. I still had almost a whole pint of my doppelbock left, and Momma Cuan had over half the complimentary bottle of Chilean merlot which had arrived earlier with dinner. Mary finally decided that she simply could not ignore the inferior quality of that wine, and furthermore, when in a German restaurant is it not a given that you should be drinking beer? But what to do with the half-full bottle? We offered it to the four older women sitting at the table next to us, and you would have thought we'd given them the keys to Haskell's wine cellar. They thanked us profusely. Something told us that they most likely were not wine connoisseurs. The fact that they actually enjoyed the Chilean vino was our first clue, but what removed all doubt was when the lady next to me dumped several ice cubes in her glass to chill the merlot.
Saturday morning was another beautiful sunny cold day in Madtown. The temps were in the low teens, perfect for the Winter Festival events happening on Capitol Square. The four streets were closed off, and huge trucks dumped piles of snow on them to create a wide track for snow shoe races and cross country ski competitions. We wondered if the thought ever occurred to the event organizers to use one of the two huge lakes on either side of the isthmus as the venue rather than going through the effort and expense of bringing in copious amount of snow via trucks.
We were smart enough to purchase hot coffee at the nearby Starbucks, and then stood outside across the street from the capitol to watch the competition. After awhile, we strolled around the square, "embracing winter" as Mary's mantra goes.
We stopped in a few more shops, including the Wisconsin War Veterans' Museum Store, watched the ice sculptors work their magic, and eventually made our way to the Overture Center For The Arts, Madison's impressive performing arts showpiece. There, we enjoyed a concert by Black Star, a drum squad organized by the Boys & Girls Club Of Madison. Those fifteen (or so) kids were skilled on the various types of drums incorporated into their show. For a few numbers they were joined by local rappers whose charisma and talent had everyone in the multi-age audience smiling.
After exiting the Overture Center we started to retrace our steps from Thursday night. We found Gorham Street and minutes later were belly-up to the bar at Brickhouse Bar-B-Que. We inhaled scrumptious brisket and local craft beer while we watched the Olympics on the flatscreen overhead. On the way back to Capitol Square I couldn't resist stopping for a look-see inside A Room Of One's Own, possibly the coolest book store I've ever been in. It reminded me of Majors & Quinn in Uptown Minneapolis, only a little nicer and more user-friendly. I was excited to find Graham Nash's autobiography, Wild Tales, which I purchased. He was a founder and rhythm guitarist for the Hollies, my favorite band of all time not from Liverpool. Most Americans probably know Nash more for his affiliation with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young.
We stopped to watch a little more of the cross country skiing competition, which was scheduled to run all day and into the early evening around Capitol Square, and then took an Olympics-viewing break (as if we deserved one) in our room. Although hardly hungry after the big Brickhouse lunch, we walked over to Francesca's a few blocks away for pizza. The place had a European feel to it, an interesting mixture of Italian cuisine with French ambiance.
We took the long way home, walking around the square one last time. I believe I have personally seen twenty-four state capitols -- yes, I am linear enough to have kept track! The Madison building, whether viewed at night or during the day, is number one on my list for beauty, elegance and setting. (An aside, based on previous Madison visits: The view of the capitol at night from John Nolen Drive, with the lights reflecting off Lake Monona, is stunning.)
Sunday was our getaway day. Until the valet retrieved our car for us that morning, we had not used it the whole time we were in Madison. We were pretty proud of ourselves for being hardy Minnesotans. Skyways? Who needs 'em? Besides, Mad City doesn't have them!
Just one noteworthy item regarding the Sunday trip home. We discovered a new restaurant along Interstate 94 called Timber Valley, which is in Hixton, Wisconsin. There is a short history behind our discovery. On the aforementioned drive to Notre Dame last September, Michael and I stopped for gas at a Clark station just off Exit 105 around 5:00 p.m. on a Thursday. Attached to the station was a restaurant, and the steady flow of customers streaming into the place caught our attention, causing us to make a mental note to check it out on some future trip. That opportunity presented itself to Momma Cuan and me on Sunday as we pulled off the road around lunch time. Mary had a half baked chicken dinner and I had a big ham steak. The food was very good and so was the price: $22.00, including a soft drink. My only regret is that we had no room left to try one of their homemade pies, of which there were a dozen or more to choose. I would love to compare Timber Valley's desserts to Norskie's, which is only seventeen miles up the road.
When we paid our bill, we noticed that, other than the gas station/restaurant and a small storage facility across the street, there was little else visible besides farm land. Mary asked the young cashier, "Where, exactly, is Hixton?"
"This is it," came the reply.
The thirty or so teams which fall somewhere in between the two categories cited above, and which play in one of the so-called "power conferences," are commonly referred to as "bubble teams." The Big Ten is a power conference, and the Gophers are on the bubble. As of last Thursday the Gophs had a conference record of 5-6, tied for sixth in the twelve-team Big Ten with seven regular season conference games to go. Unfortunately, only three of those seven are in the beloved "Barn" (aka Williams Arena). According to my North Dakota high school math, that meant that the Gophers would have to win at least one of their four road games to finish with a .500 Big Ten record -- that is, if they won all three of their home games. The local hoops gurus have routinely stated, in matter-of fact fashion, that finishing with a regular conference record of 9-9 would be enough to get them into the Big Dance.
The four game road slate included Wisconsin on February 13, followed by Northwestern, Ohio State and Michigan. Momma Cuan and I decided that the Gophers desperately needed our help in Madison, former home of daughter Gina and future (tomorrow!) daughter-in-law Lindsey, and one of our favorite midwestern destinations. We figured even if the Maroon & Gold lost, there was a good chance we'd manage to have fun in Mad City. Both of those prospects proved to be true.
The 275 mile drive to Wisconsin's capital is an easy one along I-94. Wisconsin is one of the few states which do not require leaving the interstate highway to find beautiful landscapes. This is particularly true in winter, when the farm fields are blanketed with deep pristine snow, and one can see much deeper into the woods than is possible during the other three seasons. If it weren't for the omnipresent state troopers hiding out underneath bridges and on entrance ramps, medians and other invisible sneaky places, the journey would be near-perfect.
Not counting our requisite Norske Nook lunch stop in Osseo, we arrived in the capital city four hours after we left home. Upon our arrival it took us what seemed like almost another four hours first to find our hotel, and then to figure out how to navigate the convoluted Madison streets to reach the hotel's parking ramp. Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura once famously (infamously?) opined that St. Paul's street design must have been drawn up by a bunch of drunken Irishmen. Ventura was criticized for saying that, but after trying to make sense of Madison's endless array of one-ways, diagonals, inner and outer circles, blockades and indecipherable street signs, Ventura's quip could certainly apply to that city too; just substitute "German" for "Irish."
Our hotel, the Best Western Inn On The Park, was located right on the square --sometimes referred to by the locals as the "inner circle" -- which surrounds the capitol, on the corner of Carroll & Main. The ramp usage is free for the Inn's guests. The valet informed us that the Badgers' home arena, the Kohl Center, was at most a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. That was the first of many pleasant surprises regarding the walkability of downtown Madison. Prior to being schooled by the valet, I would have thought that the Kohl Center was three miles away.
Our fourth floor room was fairly large, with a view of The Tornado Room across the street. I had to snap a picture of that great steak house and send it to Michael, because the two of us dined there last September on our way to the Notre Dame-Oklahoma game.
Momma Cuan and I had almost three hours until tip-off at the Kohl, so we headed for The Great Dane for dinner. It was another easy walk, albeit in the opposite direction from campus. Every beer served at The Dane is brewed in-house. The Nitro Bock 4000 is so-named because it was the 4000th barrel brewed by the proprietor. Of the beers I've tasted so far this calendar year, it is my new favorite, displacing Northbound's Solstice Brown Wheat for that honor.
Our server told us the shortest way to walk to The Kohl from The Dane was to cut straight through the capitol, which he promised stayed open until 10:00 every night. I don't know if he was pimping us for wearing our Gopher garb, but in any event it turned out to be a bum steer. Nevertheless, the brisk walk to the game in the twelve degree weather was only twenty minutes.
The Kohl Center is very modern, the antithesis of The Barn. The place was crawling with red and white, but no one gave us any grief for obviously being from the wrong side of the St. Croix. Over the years I've found the Badger fans to be good natured, maybe due to the fact that Wisconsin teams usually have their way with Minnesota, regardless of the sport. (Okay, maybe hockey is an exception!) The students in the section right below our upper deck seats were a riot. When the band played "Tequila," the kids all bounced around like Mexican jumping beans. And whenever the Gophers' Latvian forward, Oto Oseniecks (Oceans Eleven), touched the ball, the young Badger fans would scream, "Yankees rule! Yankees rule!" Sure, that may have been poor sportsmanship, but I laughed anyway.
The less said about the game, the better. Final: Whiskey 78, Minny 70. Watching the Gophers' futility, it was hard to believe that they had beaten the Badgers by thirteen points in the Barn last month.
After our cold walk back from the game to The Inn, Momma Cuan and I decided that Jameson nightcaps were in order. As you know from my June 3, 2013 post (Sojourn In Sudsville), a key element for Momma Cuan and I in selecting an urban hotel is that it must have a good bar. Jerome's off The Inn's lobby filled that requisite nicely. Two of the four sides of the tavern's room had floor-to-ceiling windows, half of them with a view of the capitol. It just might be the best view in town. We enjoyed the scene so much that we reprised the visit before turning in the next night too. I did have to wonder, however, if the bartender was hosing me on that second visit, as the tab for two Jamesons then was $20, compared to $18 the night before. Maybe I look like a rube.
On Friday morning we got out of bed in time to have brunch at Capital Brewery, just off the square on fabled State Street. We each started out with a mug of coffee and a cup of clam chowder. After that, there was no sense pretending; we each ordered a beer to go with our fresh lake perch sandwiches. I decided at that point that if, in the late sixties, South Bend had a bar as close to the ND campus as Capital Brewery is to U Dub, it would have taken me six years to graduate.
The two non-drinking highlights of the afternoon were visiting the Madison Museum Of Contemporary Art, and a unique cheese store on the square called Fromagination. The museum's featured exhibit -- a traveling exhibit organized by New York's Whitney Museum Of American Art -- was Real Surreal, a display of (mostly) paintings in which common elements are depicted with strange juxtapositions or exaggerated features. The collection focused on works created during World War II and immediately thereafter. A companion exhibit titled The Mystery Beneath was more of the same, but concentrating on Wisconsin artists. Although I'm usually more attracted to classic European masterworks, I hereby readily and willingly admit that I was extremely impressed by what I saw at the MMOCA. One of my favorite paintings was Triangle Inn No. 1 by Wisconsin artist Santos Zingale, who until 1978 was an art professor at U Dub.
Momma Cuan and I went back to Capital Brewery for a quick happy hour pint in between cultural stops and then off to see more little shops, the best of which was Fromagination. When we first entered the small store, I was almost knocked over by the pungent aromas emanating from the shelves and display cases. Three minutes later I did not even notice. Fromagination has almost any kind of cheese you've ever heard of (except probably Velveeta!). The pamphlet offered to customers categorizes the Wisconsin cheese inventory into product made from sheep's milk, cow's milk, goat's milk and "mixed and various milk" (e.g., Casa Bolo Mellage, produced by Carr Valley Cheese from a mixture of sheep, goat and cow's milk). Momma Cuan decided to buy some Dunbarton Blue made by Roelli Cheese in Shullsburg, Wisconsin.
We must have browsed in every State Street store which sold infants' wear. With Rosie now nine months old and Hortence due in early April, it's amazing how my attitude about clothes shopping has done a one-eighty. A year ago, I would have found a watering hole and waited with a beer for Mary to come out of the shops. Now I only use that strategy if the sought-after clothing is not intended for a grandchild.
Dinner that Valentine's night was at one of our old Madison standbys, the Essen Haus. That German restaurant is another example of a destination which I would have guessed was well beyond walking distance from our hotel. To the contrary, we hoofed it in less than twenty minutes. Momma Cuan had the sauerbraten and I had the Bavarian Combo, a selection of German meats including jaeger schnitzel, weisswurst and wiener schnitzel. I should have ordered the sauerbraten.
A funny thing happened after dinner, as we made our way to the indoor beer garden to finish our drinks, listen to the Steve Meisner trio play German polkas and watch the customers dance. I still had almost a whole pint of my doppelbock left, and Momma Cuan had over half the complimentary bottle of Chilean merlot which had arrived earlier with dinner. Mary finally decided that she simply could not ignore the inferior quality of that wine, and furthermore, when in a German restaurant is it not a given that you should be drinking beer? But what to do with the half-full bottle? We offered it to the four older women sitting at the table next to us, and you would have thought we'd given them the keys to Haskell's wine cellar. They thanked us profusely. Something told us that they most likely were not wine connoisseurs. The fact that they actually enjoyed the Chilean vino was our first clue, but what removed all doubt was when the lady next to me dumped several ice cubes in her glass to chill the merlot.
Saturday morning was another beautiful sunny cold day in Madtown. The temps were in the low teens, perfect for the Winter Festival events happening on Capitol Square. The four streets were closed off, and huge trucks dumped piles of snow on them to create a wide track for snow shoe races and cross country ski competitions. We wondered if the thought ever occurred to the event organizers to use one of the two huge lakes on either side of the isthmus as the venue rather than going through the effort and expense of bringing in copious amount of snow via trucks.
We were smart enough to purchase hot coffee at the nearby Starbucks, and then stood outside across the street from the capitol to watch the competition. After awhile, we strolled around the square, "embracing winter" as Mary's mantra goes.
We stopped in a few more shops, including the Wisconsin War Veterans' Museum Store, watched the ice sculptors work their magic, and eventually made our way to the Overture Center For The Arts, Madison's impressive performing arts showpiece. There, we enjoyed a concert by Black Star, a drum squad organized by the Boys & Girls Club Of Madison. Those fifteen (or so) kids were skilled on the various types of drums incorporated into their show. For a few numbers they were joined by local rappers whose charisma and talent had everyone in the multi-age audience smiling.
After exiting the Overture Center we started to retrace our steps from Thursday night. We found Gorham Street and minutes later were belly-up to the bar at Brickhouse Bar-B-Que. We inhaled scrumptious brisket and local craft beer while we watched the Olympics on the flatscreen overhead. On the way back to Capitol Square I couldn't resist stopping for a look-see inside A Room Of One's Own, possibly the coolest book store I've ever been in. It reminded me of Majors & Quinn in Uptown Minneapolis, only a little nicer and more user-friendly. I was excited to find Graham Nash's autobiography, Wild Tales, which I purchased. He was a founder and rhythm guitarist for the Hollies, my favorite band of all time not from Liverpool. Most Americans probably know Nash more for his affiliation with David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Neil Young.
We stopped to watch a little more of the cross country skiing competition, which was scheduled to run all day and into the early evening around Capitol Square, and then took an Olympics-viewing break (as if we deserved one) in our room. Although hardly hungry after the big Brickhouse lunch, we walked over to Francesca's a few blocks away for pizza. The place had a European feel to it, an interesting mixture of Italian cuisine with French ambiance.
We took the long way home, walking around the square one last time. I believe I have personally seen twenty-four state capitols -- yes, I am linear enough to have kept track! The Madison building, whether viewed at night or during the day, is number one on my list for beauty, elegance and setting. (An aside, based on previous Madison visits: The view of the capitol at night from John Nolen Drive, with the lights reflecting off Lake Monona, is stunning.)
Sunday was our getaway day. Until the valet retrieved our car for us that morning, we had not used it the whole time we were in Madison. We were pretty proud of ourselves for being hardy Minnesotans. Skyways? Who needs 'em? Besides, Mad City doesn't have them!
Just one noteworthy item regarding the Sunday trip home. We discovered a new restaurant along Interstate 94 called Timber Valley, which is in Hixton, Wisconsin. There is a short history behind our discovery. On the aforementioned drive to Notre Dame last September, Michael and I stopped for gas at a Clark station just off Exit 105 around 5:00 p.m. on a Thursday. Attached to the station was a restaurant, and the steady flow of customers streaming into the place caught our attention, causing us to make a mental note to check it out on some future trip. That opportunity presented itself to Momma Cuan and me on Sunday as we pulled off the road around lunch time. Mary had a half baked chicken dinner and I had a big ham steak. The food was very good and so was the price: $22.00, including a soft drink. My only regret is that we had no room left to try one of their homemade pies, of which there were a dozen or more to choose. I would love to compare Timber Valley's desserts to Norskie's, which is only seventeen miles up the road.
When we paid our bill, we noticed that, other than the gas station/restaurant and a small storage facility across the street, there was little else visible besides farm land. Mary asked the young cashier, "Where, exactly, is Hixton?"
"This is it," came the reply.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Movie Review: "The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty"
"The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty": B. Just like the Walter Mitty in James Thurber's famous short story, Walter
Mitty (Ben Stiller) of the movie is handicapped by a runaway
imagination which puts him into situations very distant from his real
present. These mental escapes usually set him up for unbelievable acts
of heroism. Sometimes this strange phenomenon functions as a liability,
such as when Walter is in the presence of his Life Magazine superior,
Ted Hendricks (Adam Scott), whose dismal purpose is to direct the
magazine's transition from a print publication to on-line only. This
means downsizing, which is corporate speak for job termination. Most of
Life's personnel, including the strangely behaving Walter and his
pretty colleague, Cheryl Melhoff (Kristen Wiig), are likely candidates
to get the axe.
As if this tense atmosphere didn't furnish enough pressure, Walter has misplaced the negative (# 25) entrusted to him by world famous photojournalist Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn), a frequent Life contributor. The image, described as the quintessential portrait of the human condition, was submitted by O'Connell with the clear expectation that Life would use it as the cover photo for its last-ever print issue. Every time Hendricks sees Walter in the office, he asks to see the prized photo, whereupon Walter concocts an excuse.
In an effort to locate the negative and thereby have a better chance of retaining his job, Walter needs to locate McConnell. The problem is two-fold: McConnell could be anywhere in the world, and he does not bother to use a cell phone. Walter's search takes him to Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan. This journey consumes a large part of the movie.
In keeping with the spirit of Thurber's craftsmanship, this is a silly movie. Walter doesn't really have to go to both Greenland and Iceland -- one would have done just as nicely, thank you very much -- but by extending his overseas sojourn there are more opportunities for not only laughs but preposterous sequences. One of the funniest scenes occurs when Walter arrives in Nuuk, Greenland, an icy oasis on the tundra wastelands. He walks into a bar called Tuugaalik, where a big bearded drunk (Icelandic actor Olafur Darri Olafsson) is singing karaoke (The Human League's 1981 hit, Dont You Want Me, to be precise). None of the other half dozen bar patrons are paying a bit of attention, and the poor galoot can barely stand up straight. About three minutes later Walter finds out that O'Connell might be on a boat sailing off Greenland's coast, but the only way to get to the vessel is by the postal service helicopter. Who do you think the pilot is? That's right, the drunken singer!
Walter's crush on the pleasant Cheryl is revisited from time to time, and Shirley MacLaine has a small part as Walter's mom who, being aware of her son's idiosyncrasies, looks out for his bests interests. A minor side-story involves Walter's attempts to hook up anonymously with Cheryl or another woman by using an on-line dating service. Just when you've forgotten about this sub-plot, it appears out of the blue toward the story's end.
I would be curious to know what kind of deal the film's producers and the studio worked out with the ownership of Life Magazine, which generally is not shown in a favorable light. As I mentioned before in my April 17, 2013 review of The Place Beyond The Pines (with reference to the city of Schenectady, New York), using a real entity like Life is much more effective than inventing a fictitious one.
Did this new Ben Stiller movie do justice to Thurber's 1939 classic short story? As you know from reading my December 26, 2013 post (The Book I've Read Five Times), I am very fond of Thurber's work. The new film is only the second time Hollywood has attempted to put the story on film. (The first was in 1947, and starred Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo). In a word, my answer is "yes." I was entertained and feel like Stiller and company put forth a solid worthy effort, easily deserving of a B.
As if this tense atmosphere didn't furnish enough pressure, Walter has misplaced the negative (# 25) entrusted to him by world famous photojournalist Sean O'Connell (Sean Penn), a frequent Life contributor. The image, described as the quintessential portrait of the human condition, was submitted by O'Connell with the clear expectation that Life would use it as the cover photo for its last-ever print issue. Every time Hendricks sees Walter in the office, he asks to see the prized photo, whereupon Walter concocts an excuse.
In an effort to locate the negative and thereby have a better chance of retaining his job, Walter needs to locate McConnell. The problem is two-fold: McConnell could be anywhere in the world, and he does not bother to use a cell phone. Walter's search takes him to Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan. This journey consumes a large part of the movie.
In keeping with the spirit of Thurber's craftsmanship, this is a silly movie. Walter doesn't really have to go to both Greenland and Iceland -- one would have done just as nicely, thank you very much -- but by extending his overseas sojourn there are more opportunities for not only laughs but preposterous sequences. One of the funniest scenes occurs when Walter arrives in Nuuk, Greenland, an icy oasis on the tundra wastelands. He walks into a bar called Tuugaalik, where a big bearded drunk (Icelandic actor Olafur Darri Olafsson) is singing karaoke (The Human League's 1981 hit, Dont You Want Me, to be precise). None of the other half dozen bar patrons are paying a bit of attention, and the poor galoot can barely stand up straight. About three minutes later Walter finds out that O'Connell might be on a boat sailing off Greenland's coast, but the only way to get to the vessel is by the postal service helicopter. Who do you think the pilot is? That's right, the drunken singer!
Walter's crush on the pleasant Cheryl is revisited from time to time, and Shirley MacLaine has a small part as Walter's mom who, being aware of her son's idiosyncrasies, looks out for his bests interests. A minor side-story involves Walter's attempts to hook up anonymously with Cheryl or another woman by using an on-line dating service. Just when you've forgotten about this sub-plot, it appears out of the blue toward the story's end.
I would be curious to know what kind of deal the film's producers and the studio worked out with the ownership of Life Magazine, which generally is not shown in a favorable light. As I mentioned before in my April 17, 2013 review of The Place Beyond The Pines (with reference to the city of Schenectady, New York), using a real entity like Life is much more effective than inventing a fictitious one.
Did this new Ben Stiller movie do justice to Thurber's 1939 classic short story? As you know from reading my December 26, 2013 post (The Book I've Read Five Times), I am very fond of Thurber's work. The new film is only the second time Hollywood has attempted to put the story on film. (The first was in 1947, and starred Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo). In a word, my answer is "yes." I was entertained and feel like Stiller and company put forth a solid worthy effort, easily deserving of a B.
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Sixth Annual Movie Ratings Recap
I have been out of the legal beagle business for six and a half years.
During that time I have tried to wean myself away from the arcane mumbo
jumbo which, by necessity, becomes a part of almost every lawyer's job.
However, once in awhile a drafting situation presents itself where
resorting to legalese works better than attempting to write around it.
Such is the case with my annual Movie Ratings Recap. The phrase which
comes in handy at these moments is "incorporate by reference." (The
usual lingo is, "Document X is hereby incorporated by reference as if
set out in full.") The term simply means that, rather than rewriting
something from an older document into the present document, the writer
(via incorporating by reference) advises the reader to read the new
document as if she (the writer) had rewritten the passage from
the older document. In other words, the reader is asked to pretend the
older language is in the new document.
What does all that have to do with movie reviews? The answer is as follows:
1. My blog post from January 12, 2012 (Prelude To 2011 Movie Ratings Recap) explains my grading system and briefly discusses how I select which movies to attend. You can disregard the last paragraph of the post, as it was rendered obsolete by # 3 below.
2. My blog post from January 15, 2012 (Fourth Annual Movie Ratings Recap) explains the order in which I list movies having the same grade. There is also a two-sentence history of my practice of putting together annual Movie Ratings Recaps.
3. The second paragraph of my blog post from December 31, 2012 (Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume X) describes my rationale for changing the last day of my annual review period from December 31 to January 31.
I hereby incorporate by reference the three items described above. Tah-dah! Did you see how efficient that was?
In preparation for this Sixth Annual Ratings Recap, I reread twenty-five of the twenty-nine reviews I wrote for the twelve-month period which ended on January 31, 2014, so that I could be as accurate as possible with the order of preference for movies having the same grade. (I already knew the order of my top three and bottom one without rereading those reviews.) I also did a little math to determine how this past year's movies stacked up against the previous five years' movies. For that exercise I calculated what percentage of the movies I attended merited a grade of B+ or higher. Here is what I came up with:
2008: 29 movies, to which I gave 0 an A, 3 an A-, and 10 a B+ = 44.8%.
2009: 21 movies, to which I gave 0 an A, 3 an A-, and 6 a B+ = 42.9%.
2010: 31 movies, to which I gave 1 an A, 4 an A-, and 8 a B+ = 41.9%.
2011: 28 movies, to which I gave 1 an A, 4 an A-, and 11 a B+ = 57.1%.
2012 (a 13 month period): 37 movies, to which I gave 2 an A, 8 an A-, and 10 a B+ = 54.1%.
2013: 29 movies, to which I gave 2 an A, 6 an A-, and 10 a B+ = 62.1%.
As the numbers indicate, this past year has been my favorite movie year out of the six years I've been writing reviews. Either the movies are getting better or I'm doing a better job of selecting what to see. I'd hate to think of the third possibility, viz., that I'm becoming a softer grader in my old age.
Okay, enough with the preliminaries! Here is how I graded the twenty-nine movies I attended in a theater during the twelve month period which ended nine days ago. The month of my review accompanies each title.
What does all that have to do with movie reviews? The answer is as follows:
1. My blog post from January 12, 2012 (Prelude To 2011 Movie Ratings Recap) explains my grading system and briefly discusses how I select which movies to attend. You can disregard the last paragraph of the post, as it was rendered obsolete by # 3 below.
2. My blog post from January 15, 2012 (Fourth Annual Movie Ratings Recap) explains the order in which I list movies having the same grade. There is also a two-sentence history of my practice of putting together annual Movie Ratings Recaps.
3. The second paragraph of my blog post from December 31, 2012 (Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume X) describes my rationale for changing the last day of my annual review period from December 31 to January 31.
I hereby incorporate by reference the three items described above. Tah-dah! Did you see how efficient that was?
In preparation for this Sixth Annual Ratings Recap, I reread twenty-five of the twenty-nine reviews I wrote for the twelve-month period which ended on January 31, 2014, so that I could be as accurate as possible with the order of preference for movies having the same grade. (I already knew the order of my top three and bottom one without rereading those reviews.) I also did a little math to determine how this past year's movies stacked up against the previous five years' movies. For that exercise I calculated what percentage of the movies I attended merited a grade of B+ or higher. Here is what I came up with:
2008: 29 movies, to which I gave 0 an A, 3 an A-, and 10 a B+ = 44.8%.
2009: 21 movies, to which I gave 0 an A, 3 an A-, and 6 a B+ = 42.9%.
2010: 31 movies, to which I gave 1 an A, 4 an A-, and 8 a B+ = 41.9%.
2011: 28 movies, to which I gave 1 an A, 4 an A-, and 11 a B+ = 57.1%.
2012 (a 13 month period): 37 movies, to which I gave 2 an A, 8 an A-, and 10 a B+ = 54.1%.
2013: 29 movies, to which I gave 2 an A, 6 an A-, and 10 a B+ = 62.1%.
As the numbers indicate, this past year has been my favorite movie year out of the six years I've been writing reviews. Either the movies are getting better or I'm doing a better job of selecting what to see. I'd hate to think of the third possibility, viz., that I'm becoming a softer grader in my old age.
Okay, enough with the preliminaries! Here is how I graded the twenty-nine movies I attended in a theater during the twelve month period which ended nine days ago. The month of my review accompanies each title.
A:
Blue Jasmine (August '13)
Captain Phillips (October '13)
A-:
Mud (June '13)
A-:
Mud (June '13)
Quartet (May '13)
The Place Beyond The Pines (April '13)
The Wolf Of Wall Street (January '14)
20 Feet From Stardom (July '13)
Fruitvale Station (August '13)
B+:
Enough Said (November '13)
B+:
Enough Said (November '13)
American Hustle (January '14)
Gravity (November '13)
This Is 40 (February '13)
Philomena (January '14)
Oz The Great And Powerful (March '13)
The Sapphires (June '13)
12 Years A Slave (December '13)
The Spectacular Now (September '13)
Safe Haven (April '13)
B:
The Way, Way Back (July '13)
B:
The Way, Way Back (July '13)
Ginger & Rosa (April '13)
Lee Daniels' The Butler (August '13)
Prisoners (September '13)
B-:
The Company You Keep (May '13)
B-:
The Company You Keep (May '13)
Before Midnight (June '13)
Trance (April '13)
The East (July '13)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (December '13)
Nebraska (January '14)
C+:
None
C:
Admission (April '13)
C+:
None
C:
Admission (April '13)
Sunday, February 2, 2014
The View From The Broadcast Booth
Today is Super Bowl Sunday, the one day of the year which is not a
national holiday but is celebrated as if it were. What better time could
there be to talk about my distinguished television career covering the
NFL on NBC? (On second thought, "distinguished" might actually be too
strong an adjective; "short-lived" is probably a wee bit more
accurate.) It is a chapter of my life unknown to all but a few people.
The set-up for my adventure began on September 12, 1983, my first day on the job as the fifth attorney in the Norwest Corporation Law Department. Soon thereafter I became friends with a veteran banker named Peter Spokes, whose office was right down the hall from mine. Peter, although probably in his mid-to-late sixties, was a ball of energy, always with a smile on his face even though lots of people constantly seemed to want a slice of his time. I'm not quite sure exactly what Peter's title was, but if I could have bestowed one it would have been Senior Vice President Of Fun. He would be the face of Norwest for many of the public relations functions around town, be they ribbon cuttings, ground breakings, sculpture unveilings, or any other similar photo op. He drafted speeches and press releases, managing to put a positive spin on things, sometimes in circumstances which probably required a fair amount of creative writing. He seemed to know everyone in Minneapolis, and not just members of the banking community. If you needed a couple of company tickets to a Twins or Vikings game, Peter was your man. He came through for me with a ticket to the 1985 MLB All Star Game in the Metrodome, a ticket that had most likely been earmarked for a corporate client. It is the only All Star game ever to have taken place in the twenty-eight year history of the Metrodome, and the only one I've ever attended.
The most common topic for our "water cooler conversations" was, as you might guess, sports. A couple of months after presenting me with the All Star ticket, Peter made me another offer I could not refuse. Unbeknownst to me, Peter had a longstanding gig as an NFL spotter, employed by the Minnesota Vikings. A spotter's job is to assist a play-by-play announcer in quickly identifying players involved in a play. This identification process is, ideally, performed seamlessly, so that the viewer or the listener does not realize that the announcer is receiving this aid. Every NFL team has a stadium crew which is responsible for the performance of specific functions during home games. Some of those jobs include the scoreboard operator, the official statistician (a position held by WCCO Radio personality Dave Mona), the chain gang, the closed circuit PA announcer (audible only to those in the press box), a replay operator, and various facilitators who serve as liaisons between the NFL officiating crew on the field and the broadcast media. Unlike most of the other Metrodome Stadium crew members, Peter's job was not always in effect for all ten home games (including two pre-season games), because some network play-by-play announcers brought their own spotters with them. Jay Randolph, the multi-sport NBC announcer who was assigned to the game pertaining to this post, was not among them. His M.O. was to use the spotter who was provided by the home team. For Viking home games, that was Peter.
The Vikings played the San Diego Chargers on Sunday afternoon, October 20, 1985. (About this time you might be asking yourself, "How could the Old Codger possibly remember the exact date of that Vikings game from so many years ago?" The answer is quite simple, and will come as no surprise to Momma Cuandito. Recently, while in the process of going through some of my hoarded junk at The Quentin Estates, I came across the Press Pass which I wore for that game.) Peter knew I was a big Queens fan, so he asked me several days beforehand if I would be interested in accompanying him to the game to watch him do his thing. Of course, I jumped at the chance.
We got to the game about two and a-half hours before kickoff. On the way to the Dome, Peter explained that I only had to comply with two rules in the booth: Don't talk during the live action, and stay out of the camera shots. Peter introduced me to Jay, with whom he'd worked several times in previous seasons. Jay was pleasant -- after all, he did not have to acquiesce to my being in the booth with Peter -- but very business-like. He was an old school broadcaster, kind of in the Ray Scott mold. He did not believe in histrionics, preferring a simpler, straightforward announcing style. He had been doing football play-by-play for years, and wasn't about to hyperventilate over this game.
I do not remember any "color man" partnering with Jay for the telecast. Nowadays that would be unheard of, but I believe Jay was a solo artist, in the same vein as the famed Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster, Vin Scully. One of the first things I learned is that the on-camera pre-game analysis by the broadcaster(s) is taped about an hour before the game, but when it's shown at the beginning of the telecast, it appears to viewers to be "live," just minutes before kick-off. (You might notice that during the pre-game analysis, there does not seem to be anybody in the background in the stadium seats.) Jay, the wily pro, required only one "take."
Jay had a large pre-printed notepad on the desk in front of him. The notepad listed the "two-deep" rosters (i.e., first and second strings) for each team, accompanied by their respective numbers. Each player's name and number was written inside a small box, about four inches by four inches, and below almost every player's name was a little informational nugget relevant to each one. Some examples: "X majored in criminal justice at UCLA"; "Y was drafted by the Braves to play baseball, but football was his first love"; "Z was cut by three teams before finding a permanent home with the Chargers." Each time Jay would insert the little tidbit about a particular player into his broadcast, he would draw a line through it so that he would not unintentionally repeat the same mini-story later in the game. It was interesting to see how he chose to intersperse the anecdotes throughout the four quarters. By the end of the game he had used most, but not all, of his prepared material.
Peter stood directly behind Jay's right shoulder, and I behind Jay's left. As a spotter, and someone who had obviously memorized the uniform number of every Viking and probably most of the Chargers, Peter's job was to immediately point on Jay's chart to the name of the player involved in the play, such as a ball carrier, a receiver or a tackler. This often required Peter to designate rapidly more than one player per play. It was hard to tell how much Jay relied on this assistance; my guess is probably more so for defensive players than offensive, and probably more in the first half than the second. One thing I wondered, as I watched the teamwork between Jay and Peter, was how much more difficult a spotter's job must be during a radio broadcast, for which the announcer can't rely on his audience seeing things for themselves.
There was one facet of supporting Jay that I found somewhat hilarious, although I did not share my opinion with Peter. If the spotter noticed an official throwing a penalty flag during a play, he made an up-and-down motion with his hand visible to the broadcaster so that the latter could immediately advise the viewing audience of such occurrence. In other words, "Don't get too excited about this play until we find out what the penalty is."
From the time the game started there were a just a couple of times during the telecast when the camera honed in on Jay. The only other people in the booth were a technician, whose responsibility I never figured out, and an engineer. Of course the four of us cleared out of the way, thereby complying with that second rule of which Peter had warned me.
The game seemed to go by quickly, and I don't remember any of the plays. I was more intent on watching Jay and Peter than I was The Purple and The Bolts. The Vikings won, 21 to 17. On the way home, Peter told me that this (1985) was probably going to be his last year working as a spotter. Fewer play-by-play guys were needing his services, as they had their own team which traveled with them to their NFL assignment each week. I told Peter that being on such a team sounded like a tremendous gig, and asked if he knew Don Criqui, a Notre Dame grad (Class of 1962) who by then had been an NFL play-by-play guy for almost twenty years. Peter said he did know Don, and that Don was not the easiest guy to work with; tightly wound, short fuse, very demanding. Didn't sound like any Domers I knew.
And so ended my television career, a tenure of one day. I keep reminding my good neighbor, Sharon Wilson, that due to my experience with Jay Randolph, I am highly qualified to join the broadcast team of her nephew, Brad Nessler, one of my favorite sports announcers. Sharon has told me many times that she'd put in a good word for me, but Brad must have lost my number.
The set-up for my adventure began on September 12, 1983, my first day on the job as the fifth attorney in the Norwest Corporation Law Department. Soon thereafter I became friends with a veteran banker named Peter Spokes, whose office was right down the hall from mine. Peter, although probably in his mid-to-late sixties, was a ball of energy, always with a smile on his face even though lots of people constantly seemed to want a slice of his time. I'm not quite sure exactly what Peter's title was, but if I could have bestowed one it would have been Senior Vice President Of Fun. He would be the face of Norwest for many of the public relations functions around town, be they ribbon cuttings, ground breakings, sculpture unveilings, or any other similar photo op. He drafted speeches and press releases, managing to put a positive spin on things, sometimes in circumstances which probably required a fair amount of creative writing. He seemed to know everyone in Minneapolis, and not just members of the banking community. If you needed a couple of company tickets to a Twins or Vikings game, Peter was your man. He came through for me with a ticket to the 1985 MLB All Star Game in the Metrodome, a ticket that had most likely been earmarked for a corporate client. It is the only All Star game ever to have taken place in the twenty-eight year history of the Metrodome, and the only one I've ever attended.
The most common topic for our "water cooler conversations" was, as you might guess, sports. A couple of months after presenting me with the All Star ticket, Peter made me another offer I could not refuse. Unbeknownst to me, Peter had a longstanding gig as an NFL spotter, employed by the Minnesota Vikings. A spotter's job is to assist a play-by-play announcer in quickly identifying players involved in a play. This identification process is, ideally, performed seamlessly, so that the viewer or the listener does not realize that the announcer is receiving this aid. Every NFL team has a stadium crew which is responsible for the performance of specific functions during home games. Some of those jobs include the scoreboard operator, the official statistician (a position held by WCCO Radio personality Dave Mona), the chain gang, the closed circuit PA announcer (audible only to those in the press box), a replay operator, and various facilitators who serve as liaisons between the NFL officiating crew on the field and the broadcast media. Unlike most of the other Metrodome Stadium crew members, Peter's job was not always in effect for all ten home games (including two pre-season games), because some network play-by-play announcers brought their own spotters with them. Jay Randolph, the multi-sport NBC announcer who was assigned to the game pertaining to this post, was not among them. His M.O. was to use the spotter who was provided by the home team. For Viking home games, that was Peter.
The Vikings played the San Diego Chargers on Sunday afternoon, October 20, 1985. (About this time you might be asking yourself, "How could the Old Codger possibly remember the exact date of that Vikings game from so many years ago?" The answer is quite simple, and will come as no surprise to Momma Cuandito. Recently, while in the process of going through some of my hoarded junk at The Quentin Estates, I came across the Press Pass which I wore for that game.) Peter knew I was a big Queens fan, so he asked me several days beforehand if I would be interested in accompanying him to the game to watch him do his thing. Of course, I jumped at the chance.
We got to the game about two and a-half hours before kickoff. On the way to the Dome, Peter explained that I only had to comply with two rules in the booth: Don't talk during the live action, and stay out of the camera shots. Peter introduced me to Jay, with whom he'd worked several times in previous seasons. Jay was pleasant -- after all, he did not have to acquiesce to my being in the booth with Peter -- but very business-like. He was an old school broadcaster, kind of in the Ray Scott mold. He did not believe in histrionics, preferring a simpler, straightforward announcing style. He had been doing football play-by-play for years, and wasn't about to hyperventilate over this game.
I do not remember any "color man" partnering with Jay for the telecast. Nowadays that would be unheard of, but I believe Jay was a solo artist, in the same vein as the famed Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster, Vin Scully. One of the first things I learned is that the on-camera pre-game analysis by the broadcaster(s) is taped about an hour before the game, but when it's shown at the beginning of the telecast, it appears to viewers to be "live," just minutes before kick-off. (You might notice that during the pre-game analysis, there does not seem to be anybody in the background in the stadium seats.) Jay, the wily pro, required only one "take."
Jay had a large pre-printed notepad on the desk in front of him. The notepad listed the "two-deep" rosters (i.e., first and second strings) for each team, accompanied by their respective numbers. Each player's name and number was written inside a small box, about four inches by four inches, and below almost every player's name was a little informational nugget relevant to each one. Some examples: "X majored in criminal justice at UCLA"; "Y was drafted by the Braves to play baseball, but football was his first love"; "Z was cut by three teams before finding a permanent home with the Chargers." Each time Jay would insert the little tidbit about a particular player into his broadcast, he would draw a line through it so that he would not unintentionally repeat the same mini-story later in the game. It was interesting to see how he chose to intersperse the anecdotes throughout the four quarters. By the end of the game he had used most, but not all, of his prepared material.
Peter stood directly behind Jay's right shoulder, and I behind Jay's left. As a spotter, and someone who had obviously memorized the uniform number of every Viking and probably most of the Chargers, Peter's job was to immediately point on Jay's chart to the name of the player involved in the play, such as a ball carrier, a receiver or a tackler. This often required Peter to designate rapidly more than one player per play. It was hard to tell how much Jay relied on this assistance; my guess is probably more so for defensive players than offensive, and probably more in the first half than the second. One thing I wondered, as I watched the teamwork between Jay and Peter, was how much more difficult a spotter's job must be during a radio broadcast, for which the announcer can't rely on his audience seeing things for themselves.
There was one facet of supporting Jay that I found somewhat hilarious, although I did not share my opinion with Peter. If the spotter noticed an official throwing a penalty flag during a play, he made an up-and-down motion with his hand visible to the broadcaster so that the latter could immediately advise the viewing audience of such occurrence. In other words, "Don't get too excited about this play until we find out what the penalty is."
From the time the game started there were a just a couple of times during the telecast when the camera honed in on Jay. The only other people in the booth were a technician, whose responsibility I never figured out, and an engineer. Of course the four of us cleared out of the way, thereby complying with that second rule of which Peter had warned me.
The game seemed to go by quickly, and I don't remember any of the plays. I was more intent on watching Jay and Peter than I was The Purple and The Bolts. The Vikings won, 21 to 17. On the way home, Peter told me that this (1985) was probably going to be his last year working as a spotter. Fewer play-by-play guys were needing his services, as they had their own team which traveled with them to their NFL assignment each week. I told Peter that being on such a team sounded like a tremendous gig, and asked if he knew Don Criqui, a Notre Dame grad (Class of 1962) who by then had been an NFL play-by-play guy for almost twenty years. Peter said he did know Don, and that Don was not the easiest guy to work with; tightly wound, short fuse, very demanding. Didn't sound like any Domers I knew.
And so ended my television career, a tenure of one day. I keep reminding my good neighbor, Sharon Wilson, that due to my experience with Jay Randolph, I am highly qualified to join the broadcast team of her nephew, Brad Nessler, one of my favorite sports announcers. Sharon has told me many times that she'd put in a good word for me, but Brad must have lost my number.
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