The Sports (Movie) Fan

I Miss Brian Boitano

 I don’t play sports and rarely watch them, but I’m a huge sports movie junkie. If my sports don’t come with drama, romance and a cool soundtrack, I don’t care about them. Before you point your finger and accuse me of being a total barbarian, I’ll mention that I’ve seen Schlinder’s List more than once and I’ve heard of Ingmar Bergman.

I’ll admit that when it comes to NBA basketball, I am a genuine sports fan. I love the San Antonio Spurs. The only thing I don’t like about them is their idiotic slogan Go Spurs Go. Their public relations department should have come to me for a slogan.  Just Because We Can Boast Several Players With Intelligence Quotients Higher Than 83, Doesn’t Mean We’re Pussies is unique and completely defines this championship team.

While I love NBA basketball, I can’t watch the college games because at the end of the Final Four, there are always players sprawled on the court sobbing their eyes out. That’s too heart wrenching for me. When professional basketball players don’t get their championship rings, I see no reason to give a shit. Not when twenty-two-year-old LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers made $5,828,089.00 for the 2006-07 season. Perhaps he’d like to donate that $89 dollars to my favorite charity – the Kat Nove Relief Fund. I have gray hairs older than him and I’d have to work approximately 388 years to make that much money. So fuck him if he never wins the championship.

There have been some excellent movies made about basketball. My favorite is Hoosiers. . It contains the classic formula for a sports movie – a team of underdogs led by a tantrum-throwing coach, who win against all odds.

Memorable quote:

“Look, mister, there’s two kinds of dumb. Uh, guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and, uh, guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don’t matter, the second one you’re kinda forced to deal with.”
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A not-so-excellent basketball movie was Celtic Pride.   It was so bad I don’t even remember the plot. I do vaguely remember hearing about the Boston Celtics though. Does anyone know if they’re still a team in the NBA?

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I’ll also admit to being an Olympic junkie. Watching the Olympics is even better than watching a sports movie. I sit mesmerized in front of my TV for days trying to guess which athletes will be stripped of their gold medals for steroid use, which judges will be accused of collusion, or which gay figure skaters will set fire to their rivals’ frilly little costumes.

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There’s one comment I’d like to make about professional football. The Dallas Cowboys suck. I’m a Texan and I don’t care one whit about any team in the National Football League, but I hope they all beat the Cowboys. I have a logical reason for loathing them. Their cheerleaders dress like 70’s hookers. As for the Super Bowl, I only watch it for the commercials. It’s a championship where a team can lose several games during the regular season and still win. That’s stupid.

There are some great football movies though. Remember the Titans contains important messages about acceptance, courage and determination. It also stars Denzel Washington and a couple of cute actors who I’m sure were in their thirties portraying teens, so I can’t be accused of anything perverted because I happened to notice them.

Memorable quote:

“You make sure they remember forever the night they played the Titans.”

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I know The Replacements  is a stupid movie loosely based on the 1987 NFL strike, but the pigeon-toed Keanu Reeves has a fascinating and sexy mouth as long as he doesn’t open it. Welsh actor, Rhys Ifans plays Nigel ‘the Leg’ Gruff and steals the entire movie as he kicks the football with a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth.

Memorable quotes:

“Gimme a cigarette.”

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“I quit.”

“Nobody likes a quitter, Jimmy.”

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Here’s my summation of baseball. It’s boring and the players have fat butts. It’s amazing how many wonderful baseball movies have been made considering its drawbacks.

Bull Durham is one of my favorites. What conservative neocon can watch it without remembering the left-wing political activists Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins met on the set and fell in love? I bet that takes all the fun out of the movie for them. I challenge any man out there to find a woman who didn’t love the sex scene montage between Crash Davis and Annie. Crash can tie me up and paint my toenails anytime he wants.

Memorable quote:

“Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.”

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Hooray for the women who were the inspiration for A League of Their Own and hooray for Tom Hanks and his brilliant characterization of the boozing coach. From his Guinness Book of World Records piss in the women’s locker room, to his drunken fits and sulks, he became that character.

Memorable quotes:

“Uh, Lord, hallowed be Thy name. May our feet be swift; may our bats be mighty; may our balls…be plentiful. Lord, I’d just like to thank You for that waitress in South Bend. You know who she is – she kept calling Your name.. And God, these are good girls, and they work hard. Just help them see it all the way through. Okay, that’s it.”

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“Great game, Jimmy. I especially liked that move in the seventh inning when you scratched your balls for an hour.”

“Well, anything worth doing is worth doing right.”

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“There’s no crying in baseball.”

The Bad News Bears is the ultimate sports movie about kids. My dad coached Little League and no power on earth will get me back in the stands with parents screaming obscenities at the umpire. I’m hoping my grandson goes the ballet route.

Memorable quotes:

“Well, we committed 24 errors, and their pitcher threw a no hitter against us, but there is some good news. Two of our runners almost managed to get to first base, and we did hit 17 foul balls.”

“That’s the spirit! Cokes and hot dogs on me!”

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Stock car racing is a sport geared towards those bloodthirsty individuals who don’t mind the coma-inducing track circling of cars plastered with advertising while waiting for their heroes to hit a wall.

Was Days of Thunder the beginning of Tom Cruise’s slide into that adorable little cult founded by L. Ron Hubbard? I’m not sure and it doesn’t matter. It’s as difficult to make a good movie about this pointless sport as it is to understand why Tom Cruise is such a loon.

Memorable quote:

“Control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac. Nobody knows what’s gonna happen next; not on a freeway, not in an airplane, not inside our own bodies and certainly not on a racetrack with forty other infantile egomaniacs.”

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I confess to watching Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby because Will Ferrell seems to revel in the fact he has the most repulsive body since Winston Churchill went skinnydipping in the Thames, and he doesn’t mind showing it off as he runs around in his underwear. He’s an inspiration to those of us who might be a wee bit flabby.

Memorable quotes:

“So when you say psychosomatic, you mean like he could start a fire with his thoughts?”

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“I like to picture Jesus as a figure skater. He wears like a white outfit, and He does interpretive ice dances of my life’s journey.”

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“Holding hands with a man makes me terribly uncomfortable.”

“It’s a sign of affection in many countries.”

“Well, not here.”

“It is not sexual in any way. My erection has nothing to do with you.”

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My recollection of dodge ball comes from so many years in the past, I’m sure memories of always being picked last must be wrong. The movie Dodge Ball is funny for one reason. Men get hit in the balls with balls. Go to any movie theater where that happens in the film and you’ll hear women laughing and men audibly wincing. Their reaction cracks me up so I get two laughs for the price of one.

Memorable quotes:

“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

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“Dodge ball is a sport of violence, exclusion, and degradation.”

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“It’s time to separate the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, the awkwardly feminine from the possibly Canadian.”

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In real life, if I want to watch people hitting each other in the face, I’ll go hang out at the local country and western bar. The only way I can be persuaded to watch a boxing match is if Oscar de la Hoya is picking up the tab for the pay-for-view and is also sitting naked on my lap.

I can still remember the first time I saw Rocky and how it inspired me. Who can forget that great scene when he finally gets into shape and runs up the stairs with the theme song blaring in the background.  It sounded good at the time, but now the music makes me wince. You know what else makes me wince? Five sequels. Give it up, Sly. Accept that your career is over.

Memorable quotes:

“You’re gonna eat lightnin’ and you’re gonna crap thunder.”

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“Yo, Adrien!”

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Guess what? The phrase – it’s like riding a bike, you never forget – is just a sick ploy to encourage out-of-shape people to exercise. The last time I got on a bike was ten years ago. I rode about a block, said, “Fuck this” and unless my white trash Toyota breaks down, I’ll never get on another one. My aversion to riding bikes and watching the Tour de France didn’t keep me from loving the movie Breaking Away.

Memorable quotes:

“I sure miss playing basketball. I got depressed as hell when my athlete’s foot and jock itch went away.”

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“Did you ever go to confession?”

“Twice.”

“Did it make you feel better?”

“Once.”

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I quit watching horse racing after I saw a horse break his neck in the Grand National a few years back. There have been some wonderful movies on the subject, even though the horses all seem to break their legs or die.

Growing up, Walter Farley provided me with hours of entertainment with his Black Stallion series. The beautiful Arabian Cass Ole starred in the movie and years later I met one of Cass Ole’s progeny. Stroking his muzzle connected me with my childhood in a way I can’t began to explain. The film contained some of the most amazing cinematography I’ve ever seen. To this day, I want to be marooned on a desert island with a horse, about 500 books, pizza, ice cream, beer and Johnny Depp. Eventually he’d have to break down and speak to me.

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Although I’d rather pick up a case of crabs than a golf club, I love movies about golf.

A cable TV movie I’ve never seen is Dead Solid Perfect. I recently discovered it existed and it hasn’t been released on DVD. If I ever do get to see it, it would probably piss me off because movies are never as good as the books I love. I worship Dan Jenkins, the author of the book, which was dead solid perfect as far as I’m concerned. According to the buzz on the Internet, there is a gratuitous nude scene in it. I couldn’t find any quotes, but I recommend the book. If I can ever write a line as funny as most of Jenkins’, I’ll consider myself a success.

I completely related to Roy ‘Tin Cup’ McAvoy in Tin Cup when he shot into the water hazard again and again. I’m that stubborn. Don Johnson plays an asshole in the movie and according to my corporate pilot brother who’s flown the guy to a party, he’s an asshole in real life as well. Learning that robs me of the satisfaction I received from my Miami Vice fantasy life in the 80s.

Memorable quotes:

“There’s no such thing as semi-platonic.”

“Well, there ought to be.”

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“Oh, you amuse me, Roy, but I’m the only woman in America born after World War II that thinks astrology’s a crock of shit.”

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I can’t think of Happy Gilmore without remembering the scene where Bob Barker beats the shit out of Adam Sandler. That guy must have a plastic surgeon and a personal trainer on retainer. When I’m as old as Barker, I fully expect to be sitting in a puddle of my own drool.

Memorable quotes:

“During high school, I played junior hockey and still hold two league records: most time spent in the penalty box, and I was the only guy to ever take off his skate and try to stab somebody.”

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“Spoken like a true asshole.”

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I’ll never be accused of being an intellectual when I confess that Caddyshack is my favorite sports movie. It stars a dancing gopher! That’s so cool.

Memorable quotes:

“You’re a lot of woman, you know that? Yeah, wanna make fourteen dollars the hard way?”

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“I hear this place is restricted, Wang, so don’t tell ‘em you’re Jewish, okay?”

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“I’ve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. Didn’t want to do it. I felt I owed it to them.”

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“Oh, this your wife, huh? A lovely lady. Hey baby, you must’ve been something before electricity. “

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“I want a hamburger…no, a cheeseburger. I want a hot dog. I want a milkshake.”

“You’ll get nothing and like it.”

You’ll get nothing and like it.  Think about that as you guzzle your beer and eat your chips, sports (movie) fans.  Think about that.