After
a long fall and winter break, we are ready to open our track season this
weekend!
Track and Field
Yes,
it’s finally here – the 2015 track and field season! We’re opening our season Friday at the
University of Kansas in the Bill Easton Classic.
Most
of our team will compete at KU although we will hold out a few athletes for one
reason or another. Usually we wouldn’t begin
our season until a week later but last year we felt the long winter break was
just a bit too long and decided to come back a week earlier this year. Also in two weeks we’re competing in a more
significant meet than normal (WSU-KU-KSU Triangular) and didn’t want that to be
our season opening meet.
The
odd thing is that we haven’t even been back for practice yet but we are doing
entries and getting ready for a meet.
Starting Monday, we’ll be able to see how our kids have done on their
own over the holiday break. I imagine
for the most part we should be ok, but you never know until you get back for
practice.
We’ve
never gone to this meet at KU before so we don’t know what to expect in terms
of the quality. Obviously KU has a nice
team and they will have quality athletes in some events but in these early
season openers many teams don’t compete their top people in many events (and we
are doing the same). I assume there will
be around 6-8 teams ranging from DI to smaller colleges. It’s a scored meet but I don’t imagine any of
the teams will be going hard to try and win the meet since it’s so early in the
year. I think we’ll have good athletes
in most events so in the team scoring we should do well.
For
my group we are trying to enter one or two events this week, basically just
shaking off the rust and getting back into the competition mode. We’ll run several 4x4 teams as a sort of “high
quality workout” at the end of the meet.
Also we are trying to figure out our 26 person roster for the WSU-KU-KSU
Triangular on January 17 and this meet will go a long way in seeing who is
ready for that meet.
It’s
been a long time coming but now that the season is here it’ll fly right
by. Here we go!
“T” Movies
This
is the 19th of a 24 part series (we’re almost done!) where I list movies I own
by letter (I don’t have any movies that begin with Q, X or Z but I do have some
that start with numbers). I currently
own a small collection of 179 movies (and growing most weeks) on DVD.
Most
of the movies I own I had previously seen and enjoyed immensely. Some are movies that I had not seen but was
curious about. Some were gifts from
people with bad tastes in movies.
I
own 7 “T” movies. Here’s the list from
best to worst …..
Movie Name (year
made, length, MPAA rating, IMDB rating, Worldwide box office)
Tin Cup (1996, 135 min, R,
6.3, $53m) – Kevin Costner has made a lot of sports movies and in this one he
teamed up with the same director (Ron Shelton) he had in Bull Durham. Once again these two made a great movie. Costner plays Roy McAvoy, who was a legendary
striker of the golf ball but eventually messed up his life and is a lonely
driving range pro. He eventually makes
it back to the US Open in an effort to exorcise his demons and win the girl. This is one of the most quoted movies around
our track office and it has many, many classic scenes. I also really appreciate the fact that it
doesn’t have a predictable ending, which is so common in sports movies. “When a defining moment comes along, you have
to define the moment, or the moment will define you.”
Trading Places (1983, 116 min, R,
7.5, $90m) – Saturday Night Live stars Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd team up in
this comedy about a con artist (Murphy) who switches places with an elite
businessman (Aykroyd) as part of an unknowing bet by two devious millionaires. Directed by John Landis (Animal House, Blues
Brothers), this was only Murphy’s second movie (the first being 48 Hrs). Murphy’s popularity was starting to soar as
he was one of the biggest comedic actors of the 80’s. This effort was a very good one as Murphy
displays the ability to be a street thug as well as an elitist within minutes. It’s not the most believable movie ever but
that’s not the point. It’s full of jokes
and funny scenes and probably one of Murphy’s best movies of all time.
Tommy Boy (1995, 97 min,
PG-13, 7.0, $32m) – This was probably the best movie Chris Farley did in his short
film career. Coming out at the tail end
of his Saturday Night Live days, Farley was in great form with his non-stop energetic
and physical comedy. The difference this
movie had was that it also showed a great acting side of Farley that his other
movies never quite captured. One of the
better road trip movies out there as David Spade plays his normal snarky,
sarcastic character. I especially love
the scenes of them singing in the car together at the top of their lungs. “A lot of people go to college for 7 years.” “Yeah, they’re called doctors.”
Talladega Nights (2006, 108 min,
PG-13, 6.5, $162m) – There haven’t been a lot of NASCAR movies, and since I’m a fan
of the sport I was excited to hear Will Ferrell was going to make this
movie. Ricky Bobby (played by Ferrell)
is part of the pit crew for a bottom tier NASCAR team and gets his chance to
race – when he does he becomes an instant star and has to battle several opponents
(mostly Sacha Baren Cohen and his own personal demons). In the realm of Ferrell movies I would rank
it about in the middle. I laughed a lot
throughout and loved the NASCAR stuff (as well as his teammate played by John
C. Reilly who forms the team “Shake and Bake”) but the parts with Cohen kind of
lagged. Overall I would say I liked it
but it could’ve been better. The dinner
table scene is a classic!
Three Amigos! (1986, 104 min, PG,
6.4, $39m) – This is a movie that didn’t get a lot of love when it came out because
most people were disappointed it wasn’t better, but I found it to be pretty
good and underrated. It stars Steve
Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short who play silent film actors at the end of
their career. They take a gig in Mexico
and don’t realize instead of acting against bandits they are in an actual
fight. All three actors were at the
height of their popularity in the 80’s and for that reason the expectations of
it being the best comedy of all time was probably unrealistic. It’s still very funny though with some
original laughs and goofy scenes. ”Do you have anything else here besides
Mexican food?”
That’s My Boy (2012, 116 min, R,
5.6, $57m) – The latter half of Adam Sandler’s career has been up and down
(mostly down) but I think this was one of his better efforts and, unfortunately,
it went largely unnoticed and thrown in with his other box office bombs. The plot is Sandler plays an idiot (go
figure) who fathers a child (Andy Sandberg) as a teenager and then later in
life ends up trying to be part of his life.
A lot of the humor is juvenile but a lot of it is also funny like back
in the Billy Madison days of Sandler’s career.
I wouldn’t say it’s as good as The Wedding Singer or Happy Gilmore but
it’s way better than Grown Ups 2!
Teeth (2007, 94 min, R,
5.5, $2.3m) – This is a very strange movie.
IMDB describes this movie as, “A high school girl teenager discovers
that she has a physical advantage when she becomes the object of male violence.” SPOILER ALERT – the physical advantage they
are talking about is her private parts have teeth and whenever a guy tries to
rape her then, well, they’re in trouble.
Yes I agree like you are probably thinking “what the heck?” but the
movie isn’t too bad. It becomes a dark
comedy about midway through the movie and it kind of works. Just imagine it as a different kind of horror
movie and the concept doesn’t seem to far fetched.
Wow
I didn’t realize until I was done that all of these movies are comedies. It’s a good list!
Next week
I
will be recapping how our season opening meet at KU went as well as looking
ahead to a big weekend on Jan 16-17.
I
only own one “U” movie but it’s my favorite movie of all-time! If you know me very well then you already
know what movie it is.
Until
then, thanks for reading and Go Shocks!
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