Saints Pre-Season Forecast

Antonio Brown’s 62 yard touchdown reception with 1:35 on the clock brings the Pittsburgh Steelers from behind in a 25-21 victory over the Washington Redskins and (Drew Brees clone) Kirk Cousins (NFL MVP) to win the Super Bowl.  That’s how it will end.  How will this football season begin?

With fantasy football of course.

Because you’re a Saints Fan, and we specialize in fantasy.

We think the Saints have improved their team through the draft and free agency, and we are right.

But every other team believes the same thing.  I think the word is delusional.  But what would life be without a little delusional optimism?

As I write this the rumor is that the Saints, after assessing their Quarterback through a pre-season in which the team performed like they were unsynchronized swimmers, liked what they saw of Drew Brees enough to discuss what may be a 4 year $100 million contract on the 37 year old.  Brees has elected to play hardball, rather than offer a Brady-like home team discount, which is certainly his right.  The problem is that when you look up “dead money” in the dictionary you see a picture of Mickey Loomis, the Saints GM.  Loomis makes mistakes, like everyone else who is alive, but has the unfortunate distinction of making mistakes that are gargantuan in zero’s and crippling in impact.  His latest scheme of building a wall around Drew Brees and making Atlanta pay for it, is unlikely to gain any traction, so Brees, by taking such a large percentage of the payroll may in fact be signing his own decapitation warrant.  It's like sending Hillary Clinton out without body guards.  One thing is for sure in the Brees negotiation, the longer the Saints wait, the more the price goes up, as lesser but younger QB’s sign lucrative contracts.

But we soldier on.  We have Mark Ingram to not take any pressure off.  We have a new wide receiver named Mike Thomas who better be a Colston/Moore combo if he’s going to help, and we have an offensive line that needs to jell yesterday.  We’re betting on a bunch of rookie cornerbacks to help Delvin Breaux, and we’ll try to forget the two bungled draft choices of Peat and Grayson that could have been defensive help, like a pass rush to protect the kiddie squad that will be chasing receivers.  Just for fun, google the two drafts and take a gander at the players that were available when we pulled these two out of the hat.  I’m not saying they can’t be serviceable pros.  I’m just saying it’s a time-worn Saints tradition to dwell on what could’ve been.  It keeps us insane.

New defensive coordinator Dennis Allen seems to have advanced the defense over that guy with my profile.  The offense actually ran the ball on first down throughout the preseason, so we probably didn’t get a good look at what they can do.  After weeks of pre-season and training camp, the Saints decided they didn’t like either kicker and booted them both in favor of a rookie who had been cut elsewhere, in case you’re wondering what desperation smells like.

So, after all of that, it’s time for my prediction.  I won’t get fooled again.  I’m well aware that some teams improve steadily throughout the year, and while that hasn’t been the Saints M.O. it’s a possibility given the youth and talent on board. Still, the best I can muster up, with a healthy Brees throwing for 5K, is a 9-7 record, barely missing the playoffs.  I reserve the right to amend that prediction at about 1:30 on Sunday.  See you in the dome.

At the Cinema - August 2016

Gleason – 10

One after another they come – outstanding documentaries that tell us “You think you know, but you really don’t.”

Gleason is the latest.  It’s the astoundingly candid story of the journey of Steve Gleason.  I’m guessing most people don’t know who he is, especially if they are not part of the rabid group we call “sports fans.” 

So let me start here.  The New Orleans Saints are now in their 50^th year and only one player has a statue outside their stadium.  It’s Steve Gleason.

In 2005, there was Hurricane Katrina.  Previously known as the home of the Saints as well as several Super Bowls, the Louisiana Superdome become a refuge for thousands of displaced New Orleans residents, and it wasn’t a good host – it certainly wasn’t meant for this.  It became a symbol for everything that went wrong in the city during the flooding that followed that hurricane.  The Saints became nomads, playing in Baton Rouge and San Antonio, and for a while it seemed that the city would lose one of its most precious commodities, a football team that had never amounted to much; never really earned the zeal it generated.

It took a year to bring the dome and the Saints back, and they started the season 2-0 on the road behind an unknown new coach that was suspected to be the latest in a long line of dubious hires, and a cast-off quarterback who was recovering from a devastating injury.  They came home to their dome.  They beat the hated Atlanta Falcons that night.  That’s where Steve Gleason comes in.  In a scoreless game, Gleason stormed through and blocked a punt, and Curtis Deloach recovered in the end zone.  It was the first Saints score in the dome in over a year and that roar is the loudest, most emotional sound I’ve ever heard.  Everyone there that night would tell you the same thing.  The punt block is what is depicted in that statue.  It will be the first of many iconic moments that would be piloted by that coach, that quarterback, and that team that first made it to an NFC Championship game, then 3 years later won a Super Bowl.

But Steve Gleason wasn’t done affecting the world.  First he had to get real unlucky.  He retired, and was stricken with ALS – Lou Gehrig’s disease, and he began a health descent that he would chronicle on film for his unborn son Rivers.  It is from those videos that a most compelling story is compiled..  

I’m going not going to tell you what happens but I will tell you how it’s going to make you feel.

INADEQUATE – Steve Gleason has accomplished more since he lost his ability to speak, which he now does via computer, than most of us will do in a lifetime.  It has provided him an opportunity to substantially change health care and benefits for ALS victims.  He formed the Gleason foundation and it has been relentless.

ENAMORED – With Michelle, his wife.  Watching what she goes through and how she handles it, from a visit to a faith healer, to a devastatingly frank bedroom scene, to the day to day commitment, makes her a bigger star than any actress.  She is winning at real life. 

SYMPATHETIC – The no-holds barred approach to this documentary extends to Steve’s uneven relationship with his father who questions Steve’s faith, while questioning God on why this is happening. We’ve all had moments with our family that are tough, but they aren’t on film.

ASTOUNDED – At what they are willing to show.  The disease is graphically depicted.  There are times you just can’t watch, and there are times when you won’t believe what you are seeing.

THANKFUL – for what you have.  We live in a world where everyone complains constantly and social media allows us to bitch, bitch, bitch, but we have so much that we do so little with.

Steve Gleason does so much with so little that if you’re not moved by this movie, check your pulse.

You may have been dead for years.  As for Steve Gleason, he's got more to do. 

 

I Don't Want to Thank the Academy

The odds are that I’m never going to stand on the Oscar stage and give an acceptance speech, so I thought I would go ahead and give one today.

I want to thank all of those people who worked on the project with me.  But I’m not going to name you now because I’ve already thanked each and every one of you in person.

I want to thank my wonderful wife.  I want to thank all my friends and family, and there are too many to name now, but they know how much they mean to me.

No, tonight I have others to thank.  Tonight I especially want to thank the unsung heroes of my life.  No, not Drew Brees or Roberto Clemente.  Tonight I want to thank my teachers and coaches, who influenced me so much as I was trying to gather together my particular toolbox to go out and repair the world.  I’m thinking of one in particular.  His name was Royce Ladner and he taught Senior English and Literature at Long Beach High School in Long Beach, Mississippi. 

What a fun year that Senior Year was.  I remember that first discussion test which shocked us, in that only 4 of us passed.  Some of my classmates had never failed a test before and I remember their dismay, but it was like a college level exam, and we were instantly better prepared for college. 

I remember that we broke up into groups of four to reenact a Shakespearean play.  Steve Woodfield, Jerry McCullough, Jeff Jenkins and I did Hamlet, and we were great, if I do say so.  We decided to have a little fun, and we got the class to vote for some awards.  We had a ceremony and gave out our awards for acting.  We called them "the Roycie’s."  We crafted the awards out of a block of wood, and put a red pen on it, because Mr. Ladner was deadly with a red pen as we had already found out on that test and many others.  I’m pretty sure Jeff got best actor in the class, Hamlet got best play, and we gave Mr. Ladner a special merit award for his reading of Beowulf, which was a thing of grossness unlike anything we had ever heard before.  But once you heard him read it, you never forgot it.  Can’t even tell you how many correct Jeopardy answers I’ve gotten from it.

He made us memorize a sonnet, and I can still remember most of it.  I can’t find my keys half the time, I can’t remember who won last year’s World Series, but I can still compare thee to a summer’s day.

Royce Ladner died Tuesday. 

I’m not sure I ever even saw him after I graduated, so this is an inadequate thank you.  I know little about him except that he was a great teacher.  I certainly never forgot his class, nor its impact on me.  Teachers and coaches are underappreciated in our society, but we all know that.  They bring varying degrees of passion and dedication, and on every payday they are reminded that we undervalue them.  But they all make a difference, some big and some small. They can’t all be as effective and memorable as Mr. Ladner was at English and Literature during the 1970-71 school year, but that’s perfectly fine.  The fact that they choose a life of teaching is pretty amazing.

I’m not good at clichés so I’m not going to say “Rest in Peace Mr. Ladner” because I’m not sure what that means, and I’m not going to say “You will be missed” because I think that’s a given.  So here’s the thing I most want to say to Mr. Ladner.  “You made a difference.”  Your life meant something, you impacted a lot of people, many never forgot you, and I know I think of your standards often - mostly when I see what passes for grammar on the internet.  

It would turn you into Beowulf. 

Goodbye and Thanks.

At the Cinema - July 2016

Star Trek:  Beyond – 9

Since 1966 Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and the crew of the USS Enterprise have been a presence in my life, intermittently popping in and out, much like the moles that seem to show up in the backyard every couple of years, just much more welcome.  I can’t think of anyone else with that staying power.  That’s 50 of my 63 years, 80% of my life.  No other group approaches that.   It’s only when you have that type of investment – that you watched the show with your dad when you were 13 – that you want it to all fit together like a good jigsaw puzzle.  Be careful with the details and Star Trek will live long and prosper.

We’ve seen classics (Khan), several spin-offs (including an upcoming TV series,) alternative realities that cheapened the past, terrific recasting of parts, and now 13 films.

So, when a new movie comes out, I’m there.  For better (2009) or worse (2013).  What’s the verdict on the 2016 release?  Better.

Here, with a minimum of spoilers, is what you need to know about Star Trek:  Beyond. 

1. Forget about the Enterprise’s vaunted shields.  It’s time to talk about the shields around the main crew.  Despite all the incredible battles, they maintain their perfect half century record of not being so much as grazed by a phaser, laser, or bullet.  It must be said that Spock suffers an injury, and Kirk is again a punching bag, but personal shields are up, as usual.
2. If you were looking forward to the romance between Kirk and Dr. Carol Marcus, it either happened between movies and you’re never going to see it, or you’re going to have to wait.  The five-year mission is a definite inhibitor of love lives….
3. Unless you are Sulu who is either gay, or he’s got a family on every space station.  Even Gene Roddenberry couldn’t have seen this coming.
4. The action is almost non-stop in the hands of Fast and Furious director Justin Lin, who has taken the controls from JJ Abrams.  Character development is at a minimum, but let’s face it.  If we don’t know these people by now…..
5. As you would expect in a Justin Lin movie, there is so much going on that’s it’s a CGI visual overload.  Between the sometime too-up-close blurry action and the immense size of the ships and space stations, it’s sometimes more than the eye can process, especially if you’re a non-video-gamer.
6. Nevertheless, see it in 3D.  This may be the best 3D movie yet.  Nobody even moved when the credits rolled because even they are eye-popping.  I sprung the extra bucks for the IMAX 3D and it was worth it.
7. The classics are timeless.  Shakespeare, Mozart, and apparently The Beastie Boys.
8. The villain is played by Idris Elba, who while he’ll always be Stringer Bell to me, is poised for superstardom.  He’s terrific, especially when they finally let him, well, “emerge.”
9. There’s another new character, named Jayla, and she’s a welcome addition.
10. This installment was co-written by Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty and had the good sense to include a beautifully poignant scene towards the end.  Wait for it.
11. If there's ever been better casting of a movie series, I don't know what it would be.
12. All in all, and despite the over-adrenalinized action, if that’s a word, it’s worthy.  That’s all us Trekkie’s want.

The Free State of Jones – 8

Living in Mississippi and knowing a little bit about the fanatically conservative Jones County makes this movie all the more shocking in its revelations.  Turns out there was a band of Confederate deserters who didn’t like the way the war was going.  Led by Newton Knight, who had deserted first when he decided to take a dead relative home to his mother, they holed up in a swamp and eventually played very effective swamp foxes, controlling a nice swatch of southern Mississippi.  It’s all news to me.  The wonderful girl I once went out with from Ellisville (prominent location in the movie) never mentioned it.  The awesome girl from Laurel I once went out with never mentioned it.  Maybe they would have eventually told me had they not dumped me, joining a long list of dumpers.  Hey ladies – look at me now – I’m blogging.

Back to the movie.  Matthew McConaghey plays Knight with the proper intensity.  He has a couple of families along the way, and the movie goes on too long.  There is a flash forward sub plot that takes place in a courtroom that lengthens the movie.  At first I didn’t like it, but by the end of the movie it had grown on me.  They were trying for an epic, and some of the action fits the bill.  The director eventually has to start overlaying explanations because he’s trying to cover so much historical ground (voting, reconstruction) but somehow he gets the whole story told.

Here’s a note to Hollywood – if you really want to make close to 3 hour epics – give us an intermission.  Gone With The Wind, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady – they all had intermissions.  I had to make a quick trip in the middle of this one and I came back and the war had abruptly ended.  I’ll never know how.  But Newt was off to Soso, Mississippi to settle down after the war, and I actually know someone from Soso, so it was all very interesting.  So, while the movie may have been more fascinating to us Mississippi residents, I would think anyone who likes history is going to find this compelling.  Good stuff.  Well worth seeing.

Jason Bourne – 5

Oops they did it again.  They just had to do another one.  Four in the series, three with Matt Damon, and enough box office money printed to buy one of those countries they inevitably begin in. 

In this one, Jason Bourne is fighting (literally) for money when his old compadre Nicki Parsons (Julia Stiles) comes calling with some totally unnecessary information to hang a movie on, but there are chases to be filmed, carnage to be carned and a body count in the hundreds ahead. 

Paul Greengrass, who is one of my favorite action directors, just overdoes the action.  Yes, all movie action is ridiculous, but the wreckage they make of the Las Vegas strip in the last of three superchases, while not entirely a bad idea, is so ludicrous that its cartoonish.  The hand to hand combat is filmed too closely to see exactly what is going on, but that’s standard in these movies.  The plot centers around privacy, hacking, and social media, but some of the acting, especially by Tommy Lee Jones, is corny with a Capital C.  Here’s hoping Jason can retire soon, but it’s not a spoiler to tell you he probably won’t.  As I was watching, I just couldn’t help but think how much water Matt Damon could have distributed to one of those third world countries with the budget used on this movie.

Scanning the Satellite

The Night of – 10 (after 4 parts)

HBO throws us a summer bone with this limited series which so far has been a riveting murder mystery that goes where mysteries don’t usually go – deep into the jailhouse.

If you haven’t been watching, make like a bottle and ketchup. 

Roadies – 10

But my favorite show of the summer comes from Showtime and the rock n roll creativity of Cameron Crowe.  It focuses on the Roadies who set up the tour of a fictional rock band.  The story is great, and the music’s terrific, especially the Song of the Day, which is pretty much the way some of us roll through life – one day at a time, one song at a time.

Cyberwars – 9

Viceland is a channel that has been added to my Directv.  It’s almost all documentary reports and so far, so good.  Cyberwars focuses on hackers, and it’s way scarier than Jason Bourne.

Lastly there are the two political party conventions and the Olympics which share the fact that they are now largely made-for-tv events.  A great time to have a remote, but that’s just me.

At the Cinema - June 2016

Independence Day:  Resurgence – 2

The original Independence Day in 1996 was a crowd pleaser and has held up as a guilty pleasure.

Unfortunately, the sequel is just plain guilty.

As the movie starts, it’s a completely different 2016, as the world has successfully used the alien technology from the previous invasion to great benefit, making for a peaceful and efficient world.  And that is easily the most interesting part of the movie.  After that it is downhill so fast and so far that the movie is often laughable. 

You see, the Aliens are coming back, and they’re not happy, and that’s before they read the script. 

Apparently the alternate version of 2016 is also totally cliché-ridden, with the female President, played by Sela Ward as the Offender in Chief.  She will probably want to leave this role off her IMDB database, although I'm sure she's cashed the check.

In television it’s known as “jumping the shark” and I don’t know what that moment is called when a movie series goes completely off the rails, but in this one it’s the moment when former President Whitmore, played by Bill Pullman has to fire up a motivational speech to rival his one in the first movie, but this time he barely has an audience, and I could barely contain myself.  Once again the odds are long as the heroes must try their one-in-a-million-chance to defeat the aliens.  Let’s hope the odds are as long for a third installment. 

Scanning the Satellite

TV was much better than the movies this month, so let's take a look:

O J Simpson – Made in America – 10

ESPN, under it’s 30 for 30 documentary banner, commissioned this massive five-parter from director Ezra Edelman.  How good is it?  It’s riveting and enthralling for every single minute.

It changes the documentary landscape and it will be taught in film schools for years to come.  It’s a stunning work.  I've been saying we are in a golden age of documentaries and this is exhibit A.

I remember being mildly bewildered by the O J Simpson trial, the television spectacle, the outcome, and the reaction to the verdict.  Starting with O J’s childhood this documentary takes a look at his stardom on the field, his family relationships, his friendships, his post-football career, and his rejection of his own heritage.

Then there’s the trial which is reviewed in detail.  Almost all the major players consented to an interview.  This includes two of the jurors who basically explain that the Dream team successfully put the LAPD on trial and this was a payback for Rodney King.  Then it goes into the aftermath, including OJ’s ostracization and descent until he ends up in jail, with a little payback sentence for armed robbery.

The documentary may pass itself off as an examination of a single crime, but in doing so it examines a multitude of offenses and race in America in a unique and comprehensive way.  It pries open each layer and it’s not any prettier than I am

I am no longer bewildered, but I remain mesmerized.  

Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel – 10

I rarely mention this show because it’s been on HBO  for over 20 years.  But, it has won Emmys and Peabodys for a reason.  It’s in-depth reporting is impeccable.  Just in the last two months there have been extraordinary reports on the AR -15 rifle right before it was used in the Orlando nightclub massacre, an amazing horse program in the inner city of Philadelphia called Work to Ride, and terrific profiles of Arizona Head coach Bruce Arians and Golf Commentator David Feherty,  But the climax of 2 terrific months of shows is the re-visited profile of an amazing gymnast name Jennifer Bricker – who had the unfortunate obstacle of being born with no legs.  She didn’t let that stop her, and her story is one of the most fascinating things you’ll ever see.  If you have the chance to watch this, don't look her up before hand.  Just let it happen.