Thursday, November 25, 2010

TWO NOTES AND ANOTHER TEAM

*********HAPPY THANKSGIVING*********
Again there isn't much new going on, so I'm making things up (not really).

***JOE PATERNO IS COACHING AGAIN NEXT YEAR***
It's been so long, no one even remembers how many years he's been at Penn State. At a recent press conference, he was asked if he was retiring after this year. He stumbled through an answer that sounded like no. He did say he thought they would have a better team this year, but he had hopes that next year would be better because he was working on a new offense: The Single Wing.

***SCOTT BORAS IN TROUBLE AGAIN?***
Never happen. Apparently, he's been accused of 'lending' money to potential clients from the Dominican Republic, in direct violation of MLB and The Players Association rules. Boras has countered by saying, "Everything we've done has been on the up and up." And he's right: it's been UP yours MLB and UP yours Player's Association.

***THE ALL-THUMBS TEAM***
I've mentioned the actors who have surprised us with their athletic abilities. Now, how about the ones who shouldn't be on the field.

Sylvester Stallone: Not too bad in the fight movies, but everything is choreographed and every movement is rehearsed. In "Victory," however, a soccer movie, he wasn't so good. I especially liked his celebration after stopping a goal: he jumped into the air. Well, let's call it jumping. His feet left the ground but his body went nowhere. But he does do a good stare-down.

Anthony Perkins: In "Fear Strikes Out," he plays Jimmy Piersall, a baseball player. He didn't do badly with the bat, but they never showed him in the field. His worse performance was in the movie "Tall Story" where he played a basketball player. They showed one sequence where he dribbled the ball in front of a defender, "faked him out," and scored. Pretty pathetic. I think Helen Keller could have guarded him successfully.

Fabian Forte: He also attempted to play a basketball player in the movie "High Time," with a 57 year-old Bing Crosby and a 17 year-old Tuesday Weld. Fabian looked like he thought the ball was diseased and his attempt at shooting the ball was downright laughable. I think Bing could have played better and while maybe Tuesday Weld would have been as inept, she would have looked sweet in the very brief uniforms of the day.
One other note, in the Movie "Ride The Wild Surf," Fabian, Peter Brown and Tab Hunter play surfers. While the movie was filmed in Hawaii, I think the surfing scenes were shot in Director Don Taylor's bathtub. Even with the fake backdrop and never showing their feet, all three of these guys looked petrified. Probably were afraid their careers were going to be 'wiped out.'

Gary Cooper: Ah, now we come to the epitome of ineptitude. Cooper played Yankee legend Lou Gehrig in the movie "Pride of the Yankees." I assure you that I am not making these things up. Cooper was right-handed while Gehrig was left-handed. Cooper was so inept at baseball, they filmed him hitting right-handed and then running to third. Then they reversed the film to make it appear that he was hitting left-handed. He still looked awkward. Not only did Cooper know nothing, and I mean nothing, about baseball, he had never even SEEN a game before filming the movie. Why use Cooper you ask? The story is that the bigwigs at Samuel Goldwyn didn't think Gehrig's name was big enough to draw viewers, so they used their biggest star - Gary Cooper. Probably the worst casting choice ever. Gehrig was noted for being taciturn and showing almost no emotion. At least Cooper got that part right.

CP-

No comments: