Movies 2007

It was a great year for movies in 2007.  Here is my ten best list for ‘07 in order of preference.   I haven’t seen everything yet that I wanted to see but this is the best of what I have seen.

1. Juno

2. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

3. Michael Clayton

4. The Savages

5. Zodiac

6. In The Valley of Elah

7. Waitress

8. Away From Her

9. Knocked Up

10. Alpha Dog 

Shut Up Already!

Memo to Roger Clemens:

Please shut up with your repeated denials of steroid use. Nobody wants to hear your defiance as you make statements and videos about your innocence. You are guilty in the court of public opinion. You know why? Because no one believes that your friend Andy Pettitte took steroids (which he was man enough to admit) from Brian McNamee and you didn’t. Everyone with a brain knows that Pettitte probably wouldn’t have gone near steroids without your blessing and advice. You were the one who was pals with McNamee and you introduced Pettitte to him. If you think people are gullible enough to believe Andy did steroids and you are just a poor victim of circumstance then you really are delusional. Like it or not you are the steroid poster boy along with Barry Bonds. How do we know? Because you were 40-39 your last four years with the Red Sox and Dan Duquette thought you were washed up. Well, guess what? A decade later Duquette looks like he was right. Without steroids you were nothing after 1996 and you knew it. It’s OK. None of us really mind. Just be man enough to admit your sin. Because these daily denials make you look ridiculous. So what if you weren’t in the Jason Grimsley report? You think America now believes you were totally clean? Guess again. It’s too late for that. America thinks you are just an arrogant prick (like Bonds) and this attitude of defiance to the end only enhances that image. Remember, you are not being judged in a court of law where you must be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt with indisputable evidence. You are being judged in the court of public opinion where hearsay, rumor and circumstantial evidence are all that’s needed to convict. It’s a battle you’ve already lost because George Mitchell invited you to refute his findings but you hid behind your union and said no thanks. People read that and that’s all they needed to convict you. That’s why everyone thinks you used steroids. Remember that fact the next time you want issue another of your stupid denials. It makes you look like a bigger jerk than you already are if that is still possible. Take a lesson from your friend Andy- act like a man, admit what you did and move on. That’s what real men do. By the way, if you are so innocent how come that libel suit against Mitchell that you threatened has yet to be filed? It seems there are certain questions you still can’t answer. Oh, one last thing. Please retire for good this time. No one wants to see a 46-year-old pitcher pitch half a season at .500 and then break down physically in October. That’s part of your “legacy” too, you know.

Sincerely- Baseball Fans Across America.

Not Much to See Here

Mitchell Report Count me as underwhelmed by the Mitchell Report on steroid use in baseball. I’ve read part of it and as I suspected there isn’t really much “there” there. Yes, the list named Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte but beyond them and a few others this dreaded “list” has a bunch of has-been or journeyman players on it. I expected as much. You have to figure the big stars that could have been on this list switched over from steroids to HGH (human growth hormone, for which baseball does not test) when baseball began testing for performance enhancing substances in 2003. Some of the players are clean but it’s important to remember that just because a player does not appear on the list it doesn’t necessarily mean he is not using banned substances. In some cases he probably just hasn’t been caught. The fact of the matter is that Mitchell did a thorough job with his investigation but in the end this is really just a ho-hum affair. He had no subpoena power in conducting the investigation so what he was able to find out was limited. Add to that the fact that the baseball players association gave him zero cooperation and this report is about the best you can expect. Considering what was available to Mitchell he did OK. In fact, the strongest part of the report is the recommendations Mitchell makes to clean up the sport. They really make a lot of sense. But OK is not what baseball envisioned when they asked him to delve into this issue. It all goes back to one thing for me when discussing performance enhancers in baseball- without the ability to administer blood tests, which test HGH levels, the major league drug program has little credibility. Like Mitchell’s report, the testing program isn’t all it could be. As I’ve said time and again, until baseball brokers a deal with this god-forsaken players union to allow blood tests, don’t expect me or thousands of others fans to lose sleep over whether baseball is legit or not. I just don’t care because the players union, and to some degree, the owners don’t care. Let me just watch the game. As far as I’m concerned everyone in baseball is still under suspicion because of the spector of HGH but I just don’t care. It’s not going to make me stop watching a sport that I love. If these players want to jeopardize their future health in order to cash in on their career earning power, go right ahead. Just don’t expect me to care. If the union allowed their players to be blood tested it would show they care about their members and the sport. Short of that I’m not interested in hearing the rhetoric that comes out of the mouths of Don Fehr and Gene Orza. Baseball should be no different than any other business- if you want to work there you should be subject to full drug testing just like many of us in the workforce. All we hear from guys like Fehr and Orza all day long is how baseball is a business. Well, if it is, its employees should be subject to drug testing if they want to work there, like many of us in the “business” world. If not, don’t play. The union wants a double standard only when it is convenient for them and drug testing certainly fits their bill. In that case, baseball is a sport, not a business. You can’t have it both ways. The whole thing is just a big dog and pony show and never was that more clearly proven than by the release of this much-anticipated report which turned out to tell us little more than we already knew.

Cut and Run

Nick Saban. Steve Spurrier. Butch Davis. Al Groh. And now Bobby Petrino. What do all these coaching names have in common? They are all college football coaches who made the jump to the NFL, failed miserably and had to slink back to the college ranks. Petrino is the latest to join this list after he abruptly resigned last night to go back to college to become head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks. He didn’t even last one full season. He leaves after a 3-10 record and enduring the Michael Vick disaster. In Petrino’s defense, he never was able to coach the team he was promised because the biggest part of that team, Vick, is currently in federal prison for the next 23 months on dogfighting charges. So in that sense, you can understand why Petrino would choose to leave when he never had a full arsenal of weapons to turn the Falcons around. But not finishing out the season? That’s rough. Petrino is getting killed this morning in the Atlanta papers and rightly so. He simply looks like a quitter who couldn’t handle the pressure of the NFL, joining a list of names that includes the people at the beginning of this story. The lesson that should be learned by Falcons owner Arthur Blank and the rest of the NFL owners? Stop looking to the college ranks for head coaches. It’s a practice that doesn’t work and it has been proven over the years. Yes, there are a few exceptions such as Jimmy Johnson, John Robinson and Steve Mariucci that did win consistently but those guys are from a different time when instant gratification wasn’t the only thing. It’s a different world now and it is obvious that commitment means less to these college coaches than correcting their mistake of leaving college. If I was an NFL owner I wouldn’t go near a college coach to run my team. College coaches are used to being the kings of their programs. They are the focal point and to some degree the fans come to watch them coach because the players change so often. Obviously, that is not the case in the player focused NFL. The stars have the power in the NFL and guys like Petrino always think they can rise above it when the promise of total control is dangled in front of them by an NFL owner. But the personality of these coaches is to be in control of their team which, with the egos in NFL locker rooms, is easier said than done. Once the coach realizes the job isn’t what he thought it was he gets second thoughts and then you end up with situations like Petrino’s. It just looks bad and it’s time NFL owners start to see the trend here and stop embarrasing their franchises by giving these coaches a chance. I don’t feel sorry for Arthur Blank, but he should have known better.

Sour Grapes and Bonehead Moves

Can the Baltimore Ravens please just shut up? They had their chances last night in an oh-so-close 27-24 loss to everybody’s NFL darlings, (except mine) the New England Patriots. The Ravens controlled this game for 56 plus minutes and certainly should have hung the Patriots with their first loss to spoil the possible undefeated season. But in the end they couldn’t get it done and instead of admitting it like men they take the cowardly way out and blame the officials for their misery at the end of the game. Are you kidding me? These guys are an absolute joke. Now, look, I dislike the Patriots as much as anybody alive. In my opinion, they are not gracious winners which is a reflection of their diabolical head coach Bill Belichick who truly believes winning is life or death. This is a guy who was caught cheating by the NFL and as a result now has a vendetta against the rest of the league and wants to pound it into submission. It makes for a very unlikable team unless you are a fan. However, the Ravens should shut their trash talking mouths and deal with the incredible choke job they authored last night. After the game, I have to listen to Ravens defensive players tell the world how they were wronged by the officials and penalties? Gimme a break. The Ravens blew this game in so many ways. It was truly a team effort. Forget the penalties the Ravens felt were unfairly called against them in the last 3 minutes. I don’t want to hear it. The bottom line is the Ravens stopped the Patriots on 4th and 1 with about 1:48 left in the game and should have won the game, except for one thing: before the ball was snapped Ravens defensive coordinator Rex Ryan CALLED A TIMEOUT FROM THE SIDELINE! That’s why the Ravens lost. Forget anything else that happens after that. That was the game right there and Ryan had a complete brainlock. From there I have to hear the Ravens tell me how they were being trashed talked by the refs the whole game and that it was a disgrace. Forget that. What was a disgrace is Ryan calling a timeout while his defense is in the middle of a drive with all the momentum and making plays. That’s what killed the Ravens and allowed the Patriots to escape, nothing else. The fact that Ravens linebacker Bart Scott had a complete meltdown and cost his team 30 yards in penalties after New England scored the winning touchdown does not matter to me. Scott justifies his actions by saying one of the officials was calling teammate Samari Rolle, who is black, “boy” the entire game. I don’t know whether that will turn out to be true or not but it had no bearing on the game. It was all right there for the taking for the Ravens on 4th and 1 and Ryan blew it. Case closed. (And by the way, the winning TD was called correctly on the field. Jabar Gaffney caught the ball clean and in bounds) So now, because the Ravens couldn’t close the deal the sports world is faced with the prospect of this unlikable Patriots team going 19-0 and becoming the first team to go undefeated since the 1972 Miami Dolphins. The prospect of that nauseates me and many others but it looks like it might really happen. The only hope is that my team, the Dallas Cowboys, with Tony Romo and company, can make it to the Super Bowl and try to stick the dagger in themselves. We’ll see.