Hammon's, who's dad was also a coach, always dreamed of being in the NBA
I can admit it. I had the biggest crush on Becky Hammon for years. Cute girls that hoop are easy to love. She played ball in my state at Colorado State University, so I always had a close up view of this incredibly special player. As a coach myself, I instantly recognize special players on the floor. They somehow are quick but they never hurry. Their knack for knowing when the game needs a momentum change, and providing it is uncanny. Becky Hammon has always been that type of player.
Now that she has been hired by the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA as an assistant coach, she gets to reveal herself as that kind of coach. Hammon is a bull dog with dimples. Her temperament is stern by nature and she is unafraid of confrontation. She might even like confrontation a bit. When she addresses a player, she walks into that uncomfortable region that most people avoid to both hear and be heard, and its not just because she is diminutive. I have seen Hammon extend her ear to another person, player or coach, so often that it seems burned in my memories of who she is as a person. The most powerful teachers in the world come across as intense listeners. Hammon's voice will be powerful in this league because she listens with her spirit looking for an opportunity to help her team maximize their individual skills.
If a team is but a reflection of the coach, I predict that Becky Hammon will not only become the first female head coach in the NBA, she will be the coach of the most confident team of NBA players that ever stepped on the floor. Confidence is who she is because she has every reason to be. Becky Hammon, who just so happens to be female, knows basketball as well as any PERSON on this planet.
For some time now, I have lived by the belief that we can, and should destroy welfare as we know it. Welfare these days is hardly the shameful welfare of the 70's and 80's. You know, when the case manager used to check in your house to see if June Bug was laying up in there. Of course, June Bug was your boyfriend and maybe even the biological father of your children, but the case manager felt it was not beneficial (or lawful) for a woman to have a man and still need social services. In effect, case managers ran off June Bug and his would be replacement as well. Under the Paul Ryan plan, case managers might return.
Cost And Commitment
By the time Bill Clinton achieved a second term, it wasn't hard for him to unleash his conservative leanings. As a result of a Clinton signed bill, welfare recipients have had a shortened benefits clock for years (TANF Temporary Assistance For Needy Families). While our current, so-called liberal president has inflated recipient numbers, the welfare to work reform bill already does much of what Paul Ryan thinks he is coming up with, especially the connection to resources that prepare people for the end of assistance. If we re-institute a modern version of the age old case worker, we might sneak into areas of cost (for individual case managers) and commitment from recipients who must follow the plan in order for the program to achieve objectives.
What is the danger of such an idea? Mandatory (again, to achieve stated objectives) case manager visits that get missed resulting in disrupted benefits harm children more than their irresponsible parents. Over the years, we should have learned that forcing the ignorant poor to submit to their own betterment is not as easy as it sounds on paper. For a black American (me), these are the moments that the REAL crime of slavery starts to manifest.
Similar to the Ebola virus, ignorance is not the kind of disease you ever want to let live. Federal laws surrounding how we educate our kids reflect an awareness of this reality, but in our history, we not only functionally allowed ignorance, we forcibly produced it in mass, actually killing many who were caught pursuing its cure. Among the worse symptoms of ignorance is how it blinds those worse stricken with the disease from the only path that leads them to health. If quarantined, ignorance would die off in time, but we're too dumb for that. Ignorance is much too contagious to ignore, but we've found a way to do it with our toxic rhetoric that blames one party or another for the reasons that OUR kids are still struggling in school.
In reality, we are all in this mess together and Ryan's plan will fix some of the issues with the social safety net (Earned Income Credit increases for example) but might cause others. Namely, the fund diversion scheme that he uniquely calls the Opportunity Grant. No, this is not new government monies in the form of an additional federal grant on top of monies already being received by each state to support its welfare needs. This grant is an opportunity to switch money you already get, into services of your own choosing. Services like case managers for instance. The real concern is that Governors will soon divert these funds to address other state shortfalls, at the risk of increased hunger and homelessness in their state.
Do you remember when charter schools began to receive the headcount allotment that state and federal budgets spend each year on each student (the money follows the student)? In a similar fashion, the Ryan plan allows states to take up to 80% of their federal welfare subsidy and spend that money in ways driven by that states ideology and agenda. More conservative states are likely to force the case manager process upon poor people in order to assign blame in the event they remain poor after the process reaches an end.
In an MSNBC interview with Chuck Todd, Ryan admitted that " If the status quo was working, I would be supporting it." It is not working, according to Ryan, and Ryan says that we've got record poverty to prove that the war on poverty (i.e. welfare) isn't working. The proof of welfare is a mixed bag of success and failure that remains a subject of debate. Freeing 80% of the welfare bounty from of each state into the hands of whichever Governor is in office at the time begs for a better quality of governor than we have seen lately. These days, governors are constantly testifying before a grand jury in order to clear their name of fraud. Either Ryan is confident that his law will pass at a time when corruption in state government has gone away for good, or he needs to crumble up this bill and smoke it in his pipe dream.
He's not totally dreaming when he says that welfare is not working. By and large, welfare works about as well as common cold medicine, which can hide the symptoms for a while. Ryan is dreaming about this causation between welfare and the rise of poverty. Welfare didn't make poverty rise anymore than cold medicine made colds return again each winter. In fact, several conservatives have noted that federal dollars on a per person basis actually increased after Clinton forced so many slackers off of the doles. Those who focus on this fact, lose sight of the corner that this backs them into. If less people had access to welfare benefits as result of the Clinton reforms, doesn't it make it harder to blame welfare for increased poverty?
One day, when we gain the wisdom of the Italians or even the Native Americans, we will finally stop connecting wealth to knowledge and ignorance to poverty. There may very well be a link, but that direct causation died with the Leave It To Beaver Show and a vibrant American job market. Today, poverty is rooted in a whole complex web of decisions that are often bigger than the individuals trying to make them. Bad choices do create bad outcomes, but limited choices and limited knowledge of good choices when choices present themselves tilt the odds in a predictable direction. While it may be easy to remain insensitive when the bad decisions are done by adult decision makers, the children they breed become innocent victims of the ignorance that they will likely proliferate themselves. So What Is The Cure?
For the common cold we don't have one. As for poverty, if you assume ignorance and poverty have a natural link, than you will spend a lot of time educating poor people only to discover that they still may not have enough jobs in their neighborhoods even if they had the education to fill them (see; Detroit, Michigan). Our economy not only has a problem with the ignorant poor, it now must deal with the educated but economically disenfranchised. Welfare can't fix poverty because welfare didn't cause it in the first place. Welfare will help some families seeking to rise above poverty, just as it does condone laziness from some too.
Ryan's plan does accept what America seems to believe as well. Welfare is necessary on some level or another, even if Ryan thinks the states can best determine that level on their own. Ryan, and America, also seem to naturally equate the words welfare and poverty as if they are one and the same. They are not, and no war on poverty needs to attack the social safety net nor look to it as a liberal panacea for poverty. Disregard what the Great Society though it could do. Welfare can only offer a humanitarian bridge when life demands it. Outside of that, welfare is not even a cool name, much less a cool idea and its presence speaks more negatively on a society than positively.
If Ryan were really interested in ending poverty, like he will pretend to be when he announces his run at the presidency soon, he would focus on job creation measures as well as a wage increase initiative. Instead, he is beginning his run with a book tour and this middle of the road pandering bill aimed towards all of those he will soon ask a vote from (mainstream republicans and independents primarily). Mainstream republicans may appreciate the name association that this bill does between welfare and poverty, but previously independent people and unaffiliated voters who have found themselves in the need of the humanitarian bridge we call welfare, won't appreciate the name association or Ryan turning a blind eye to their existence or their plight.
While nearing the homestretch on a recent weed pulling session in my front yard, I came across an idea that seemed rather brilliant at the time, until I reexamined my discovery.
The conflict in the middle east is rooted in an aged old division between Muslims that occurred upon the death of the religions founding prophet, Mohammed. At the time, tradition stated that election was the means in which a successor should be elected (Sunni belief), whereas some (Shi'ites) believed that the successor should come from Mohammed's lineage. Today, those roots have evolved into a tangled web of conflict, as each side continues to force Muslim nations to declare an allegiance to one ideology or the other. Add the presence of Christian's and Jews in certain pockets of the middle east, and the entire scene is a powder keg constantly waiting to erupt.
Yet, it can be basically symbolized in the simply act of lawn care. Whether you choose the slow and marginally effective chemical approach, or you prefer the old fashion method of pulling them at the root, the goal is still the same. Rid the area of the undesirables. Often times both methods are employed, but the process demands diligence and persistence. Weeds are a life form that functions like all life forms; to preserve their future. Genocide is not a word that we consider when talking about lawn care, but to the weeds that are under attack, it is the essence of genocide.
The grass is often greener on the other side of the fence, but every lawn that appears to be free of weeds is simply an illusion. Weeds are a constant that requires weekly attention, lest they begin the inevitable journey of repopulating the region and eventually overtaking the land altogether. Those who call the middle east home, deal with this same constant evolution of time and space within their homelands. At different times, their space becomes occupied with undesirable elements that are difficult to look at each day without acting to eliminate them. To the Sunni, it may be the Shi'ite. To the Shi'ite, it might be the Christians or Jews ruining the landscape for everybody else. In the end, the issue is driven by individual perspectives of people who are much more alike than they are different. In other words, the entire middle east conflict is an illusion of distorted perspectives. One day the militant group you support becomes the oppressive regime that looks and behaves just like the weed you thought you'd removed and vice versa.
Michael Leiter, an American counter terrorism expert who served under both President's Bush and Obama, offered a perspective that bears consideration. While Leiter approved of the President's current actions in Iraq, he voiced the legitimate concerns of Obama's critics who ask how Obama can execute this "narrowly tailored mission and the (somewhat) broader regional concern of the tactical battle around Kurdistan, without addressing the broader conflict in the region?", said Leiter during and MSNBC interview. In expanding on the "broader conflict", Leiter especially noted how the future of Iraq will ultimately impact certain neighboring countries like Jordan, which will ultimately force the hand of the U.S. to act anyway. In hindsight, Leiter suggested that the U.S. presence in Iraq would have stiffened the spines of Iraqi's who ultimately must pave their own future. Leiter also noted that our continued presence might minimize the likelihood that the Sunni, Shi'ite conflict takes on a retaliatory behavior (weed pulling), as it often does once one side or the other assumes control.
The official press version of these matters only further complicates the nearly impossible response that America, and President Obama, must make. In Iraq, the failure might have been in leaving so abruptly and allowing outside factions, namely ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, based in Syria) to fill the power vacuum created in our absence. In principle, I stand with the President on the importance of pulling our troops from endlessly "pulling at weeds". In the final analysis, it would take a strong armed dictator (like Saddam Hussein) or unprecedented regional acceptance of the grass and the weeds and the flowers and the most peculiar plant, the Christian Kurds trapped on top of the mountain, to maintain peace in Iraq.
High atop a mountain in the Kurdistan region of Iraq are a nation of Christian Kurds that are being threatened with certain genocide if they don't receive aid to their mountain perch. Surrounded by ISIS militants, these Kurds are certain to be gunned down if they pursue safe passage from the mountain, so President Barack Obama has immediately moved to destroy the ISIS militants that are threatening these Kurds, and to insure humanitarian assistance gets to those people on that mountain before death overtakes them all. Air strikes and air drops are under way as we speak, and the Kurdish Peshmerga (the military group fighting to stave off ISIS) is receiving U.S.support towards their goal of defeating ISIS, the newest weed to invade Iraq.
So Why No Boots On The Ground?!
Is President Obama simply avoiding the obvious criticism that would come from returning boots to the very ground we abruptly left just a few years back? Maybe. I personally see Barack Obama as a new aged black conservative (much like Clinton...much like myself), who's nature is to actively express U.S. military strength as a means of maintaining peace at home and abroad. His intensive use of drones proves all that I need to know about his willingness to "go there" when necessary. According to former Ambassador Marc Ginsberg, "This is not an issue of boots on the ground. The President has been using drone strikes in Yemen for years. Why can't we use them to disrupt ISIS?", said Ginsberg. Ginsberg admitted what Obama realizes as well. America, especially Congress, has no further taste for war. I personally celebrate this turn in rhetoric because I am a staunch advocate of the expansion of drone warfare. In fact, what other kind of warfare should one use against terrorism and militant groups who behave like terrorist? Terrorism doesn't utilize constraints, so neither should counter terrorism.
In a region struggling to determine who will chart the future of Iraq as a nation, ISIS might be seen as simply doing some weed pulling of their own. After all, this area already has too many religious factions vying for supreme control of Iraq, even if only for the sake of their own future. The notion of an American backed, Christian rooted faction of people having a viable stake in the discussion is peculiar for sure. In the process of war, the easiest way to avoid gaining an allegiance is to simply not need one, and ISIS does not appear to be pursuing the surrender, capture or allegiance of these Christian Kurds.
Syria absolutely has a stake in what becomes of Iraq, and they have placed their stake in ISIS. If ISIS wins, Syria insures a safer place for Syrian's. If ISIS loses, they become the new Hamas and Syria has to wonder if a pro Syrian regime will control Iraq, or will an anti-Syria (U.S. backed) Iraqi regime finally control what is ultimately one of the richest nations in the middle east in terms of natural resources. ISIS will greatly dictate Syria's future(which is why Syria is all-in) thus, the entire world must recognize the importance of destroying ISIS, the second coming of Hamas. These weeds are the kind that will not peacefully exist alongside good grass. They will destroy the grass until their is no more grass to be found, or surround a mountain until a nation of people die off from starvation.
What turned my brilliant "weed pulling" analogy into a trivial example of a much more complex problem was this revelation. All sides of this matter think that they are the grass and the other guy is the weed, and few seem willing to live alongside what they perceive as an eye sore. In America, grass and weeds live in segregated communities. Its a more humane form of intolerance that all civilizations come to grips with after they finish assigning power through civil war. Palestine and Hamas have little chance of winning their civil dispute with Israel, but must find a way to live and breathe, and grow in the same environment as Israeli's even after they establish a border region that they can call their own. There will never be an independent Palestinian economy, so there can never exist a truly distinct Palestinian nation. While not as dependent on the Palestinian nation, the same holds true from the Israeli perspective as well, but these are the revelations they shall both discover once the civil war has ended.
In essence, all of these nations are engaging in the very process we endured, and sometimes even genocide becomes a REAL part of the equation. When exiting Iraq, Obama seemed okay with admitting that sometimes civilizations have had to watch the futile attempts man makes at genocide of man, as a way of expressing his insistence on a complete withdrawal from Iraq. Now he says we can do something without sending troops back to Iraqi soil.
This whole song and dance reminds me of weed pulling.
If one stem or any seeds remain...the species survives.
Even when I thought I got every bit of the weed that seeded this failed brilliance, I stopped to notice that the plant had already flowered, and only one of the blossoms remained on this impressive weed that I skillfully extricated from my lawn. My vision of lawn domination started blowing in the wind because the seeds of this weeds future had long since journey'd on their way. Actually, getting at the root of the problem was no longer the key to conquering my quest for regional purity. I have to fight with a fair perspective on this war.
..you got WHAT on your driver's test??!! A perfect score?
My youngest daughter just got back from taking her drivers test and stopped me in the hallway with an abrupt, come to Jesus type declaration that had me standing frozen in my feet.
"Dad, guess what??!!", she loudly exclaimed. Before I could even gather my breath to decipher what had just happened, she barreled into her good news.
"I just got a 100 on my drivers test!".
I know it is all the rage to wear your hair in the long bangs with a 70's style headband across the crown, but at the moment she said it, my ears got a little cloudy, like when you get water in them the wrong way, and a beam of light came in to shine upon the headband adorned crown of my youngest child. Not quite an angelic beam of light, but one that combined with my daughters hair-do to remind me of that musical, Jesus Christ, Superstar.
Didn't it speak of the coming of one who would master the state driving test (without cheating or guessing on more than 3 questions). Apparently, the worker who graded her test asked did she cheat just like I did. Not that I really thought she had cheated, but I did expect her to say she guessed on a few like the rest of us had to do. I knew people who studied hard for the test. I sort of studied well myself, and did just as well as anybody that I know. What we un-believers came to realize is that they will take a driving edict that you may have learned fairly well, and word it in a way that guarantees to trip up any public school educated person.
Apparently, my daughter has been thoroughly baptized in the sacred waters of standardized testing (STEM charter school) that prophets said would be demanded of the chosen one. The more I tried to explain the consternation of the state worker who stared, for some time, at her perfect score, I realized that THIS chosen one had no knowledge of her dire necessity. Legend had it that to break the chains of inadequate public school education, it would take someone who could master the state drivers test. Like removing Excalibur from the stone, this achievement would mark the culmination of educational pursuits that have eluded this nation since we first decided to scratch cheat sheets on our hands before we headed to school one day (who was the first classroom cheater, and why don't we commemorate his destruction of the American school system?).
If the drivers test Messiah has truly arrived, then the chains of public school ignorance are soon to fall as well. For what is a nation if not one that can vanquish tricky drivers test questions? One where flying is still quite a bit safer than driving, that's what.
So, in my desperation to shave a few strokes off of my golf game, I have gone deeper into the analysis of data to focus on fine tuning my failures into success.
Good golfers already know what my impressionable mind has just uncovered on paper. Once you have improved your GIR (Greens In Regulation), you now have a fair shot at being mediocre in golf. It is rare for even mediocre golfers to bogey a hole and not 3 putt as well. In other words, the key to golf is the putter. I am learning to accept that par is a fabulous score on most days, especially when it comes with a fair amount of legitimate birdie opportunities. Scrambling to save par is the pathway to bogeys or worse. Inside of these options that golf presents lies the ever important 2 putt. Sadly the wisest golf decision one can pursue is also one that many golfers rarely embrace. The 2-Putt mentality becomes the equivalent of passing ahead for a better shot, but in the lonely world of golf, half court buzzer beaters are constantly tempting the fool hearty.
In honor of the putter, Sergio Garcia, and the death of the 3 putt, I have switched back to my putter that looks more like the one Sergio used to sink 11 one-putts in a row en route to a second place finish at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational tournament this past weekend. You heard me. ELEVEN.
While you digest the absurdity of 11 one-putts in a row, the more important question might be, why did I switch putters in the first place? Because I stink at putting and I am uncomfortable in this pungent condition, so I tried something new....or old....or different. Typically I am on in regulation, so the issue has clearly been identified as an inability to sink the free throw (I find these exercises to be somewhat similar). However, getting on and getting close to the pin are distinctly separate worlds in the final scoring analysis. Simply "getting on" was the reason I switched to my long distance putter in the first place. The extra weight offered an extra "bang" if you will, that my Sergio style putter wasn't giving me on those 60 footers I always had left for birdie.
This line of rationale was tragically flawed because no one needs a 60 foot (or longer) putter in the bag. What you need is a much better approach shot.....or a 2 putt plan to finish that 60 footer with minimal damage (aka, maintaining par). For a long time, I had neither skills within my game, but backyard golf will give you a wicked chip game. What I learned is that it is he who seeketh to drop 60 footers that invented the 3 putt. On occasion, the long ones fall, but getting a sinkable second putt should ALWAYS be the ultimate mission for the average hack.
With all of that in context, did Sergio approach the pin perfectly 11 times in a row to accomplish this feat? No. He had a variation of everything golf offers, but time after time his line and speed proved perfect. What allows a player to achieve such a feat and then return to the pack of normalcy that defines us as human? Hard to say, but easy to answer. Sergio certainly played well the rest of the tournament, but his 11 1-putts may have been the only reason he salvaged second place in the end, as Rory McIlroy rushed from behind to win the tournament. Was 11 in a row sheer luck? Where is the line between great play and great luck? Only hard workers can answer the question because they are the only ones performing consistently enough to analyze the data.
......and their report? Hard work has its own guarantee of luck. Its the flip side to all of the failure that hard work guarantees as well. 11 in a row might be lucky, but it never comes to someone who hasn't putt in the work (golf pun intended...of course).
For the sake of those who simply need to view such things, I have included the video of Paul George's injury. Personally, I have not seen, nor do I plan to see it. I was watching live when former Redskins QB, Joe Theismann did it back in the day, so I don't need any more than my fair share of such torture.
I get the merits of both sides of this question, so I have attempted to refrain from voicing an opinion. I even did my best to remain neutral on the topic and refraining from seeing the video has helped along the way. It seems as though those who have seen the tape (or even worse, saw it live) are more inclined towards the "no more pro's" side of this question. However, to question if pro's should play is not new, it just simply had no real injuries to make it a balanced debate.
Now it does, and the question we asked years ago is finally a debate that actually begins with the open tib-fib (tibia and fibula) fracture of George. Whether that is unfair to those who said, "I told you so" is hard to ascertain. Did the anti-pro Joe's lose the power of their conviction in recent years given the noteworthy silence from those who vociferously complain now, or was the lack of any serious injury allowing the pro-pro's side to ignore the obvious risk and drown out the voices of those who mentioned it? Most truth's lie in the middle of opposing ideas because accepted truth becomes that which wise men agree upon. No one can deny that Olympic level competition is rather risky and does not offer a direct income. Players who play, risk their own millions as well as millions for the teams and cities that they compete for. On the other hand, it is the unpaid sports that they've played in the years leading up to the NBA that determines if you are worthy of a long term income in this specialized world. For champions, it is all of the unpaid effort that the camera never captures that makes the difference between them and everyone else. What if Paul George had injured himself during some other non-paying moment in his career? Would it be time for the pro-athlete protective bubble company to start doubling up on manufacturing? Emergency room workers who typically see this type of injury see it from motorcycle wrecks and mountain climbing accidents, and USA basketball has 22 years without incident, so even the rarity is compelling.
Colorado sports fans will recall a time when John Elway was a topic of debate because he liked skiing, but Bronco fans, and Broncos owner Pat Bowlen, were torn over whether or not our million dollar arm should be jeopardized by a nasty mogul. At what point does even living (shoveling snow or climbing stairs) cross over into an unworthy risk? The fact that the NBA players didn't always take part in such risks gives credence to the exorbitant cost of doing it. America didn't bring on the pro hoopers until we could no longer roll over the world using only college kids. Those who supported the change didn't have risk aversion before the pro's took over international play and probably don't have it now. They simply got tired of losing at our own damn game. The risk aversion conversation began with the first Dream Team, but now, every player gets asked about the risk that they put their NBA careers under by playing on the national team.
These decisions are made by intelligent men who decide on much harder things everyday than whether or not it is safe to play the game that they've played (for free) all of their lives and have now chosen as a career. To suggest that they need anyone to sound in on such a decision is peculiar to say the least. MY BIG ISSUE with this debate is the statement it makes towards every player who once did this job and every player who might assume this job if the NBA players are no longer allowed to play. Would we be happier if the leg that snapped right before our eyes was some regular dude? Would we watch that leg shatter and declare, "I am glad that wasn't LeBron or someone important"?
A couple of years ago, back when I used to offer open gym for middle school kids followed by open gym for older players, we had one of OUR regular dudes snap his foot and ankle in Paul George fashion. Several of the younger players, including my 8th grade daughter, witnessed the injury. She was still new to the game and was hardly experienced in traumatic sports injuries. Since that time, she has also seen an athlete collapse at court side due to a weak heart that would be replaced within a year of the incident. Her collective experiences have baptized her in the realm of sports realities, yet she still enjoys the challenge and the risk of competition.
Part of the reward of life, and of basketball, is overcoming risk and challenges to stand victorious in the end. Paul George faced the risk and took a blow as a result. Prognosis is good for his physical recovery, but the true challenge with these type of things is 90% mental and 10% physical. Whether you are the victim of a sports injury or just a witness to one, the mental recovery is for real. Recovery involves overcoming the question; can I rise above a level that will subdue an opponent who is willing to endure the same risks (or more) that I must overcome?
At the risk of losing our stature in the world of basketball, America must either embrace the challenge or run from the risk. I personally do not see the millions that we could save the Indiana Pacers as an equal trade off for the competitive dignity that international competition embodies. I won't begin to mention the indirect gains that the league enjoys as a result of the exposure (oh....too late). Even the injury itself might be providing unsolicited, but valuable exposure to the league as we speak.
America may never win the World Cup of soccer competition because we simply do not have the talent equal to that of the world teams. However, if by some miracle America were to win the World Cup someday, I hope its not after the best teams and players have opted to stay away for monetary reasons. Just saying that out loud makes me realize that only American's would ever dream of such an idea. Every other country seems to embrace the risk and the challenge of international competition as part of the life.
Life is always a risky game, no matter how you play it.
What is the formula for a really high end B movie?
Especially this skeptic
Make it free on cable (prerequisite for me) but include so many has been actors and really famous non-actors, that any viewer
will disregard the fact that sharks can't fly. Alright, I realize that this is not the attack of super sharks, this is Sharknado 2 (The Second One), but since I never saw The First One, I was expecting to make sense out of these randomly flying sharks that seem to have laser guided attack ability.
Having never viewed the first rendition of this virtual cult film, I found myself more interested in the buzz than anything else. Following cultural trends is how I'm living these days, so it was difficult to disregard the media circus that lead up to this viewing. I might have even watched it live with the original Sharknado fans, but my curiosity didn't extend into the realm of remembering the time and date of the program.
No worries! This is the day and age that a man can grab a comfortable seat outside in the yard and pull up a popular show right from the telephone. Needless to say, the SyFy channel insured that an appropriate link to Sharknado 2 (The Second One) was made available as a top selection when I activated my Xfinity app. Instantly I paused for a moment realizing that I was at that anxious juncture the we all experience in the process of decision making, in which you had better run or you might get lured in. Freshly made cake just when you started your diet. Those shoes in the window of that one store (don't even think about them, they cost way too much). High on my list of forced avoidance has always been stupid B movies that take one and a half hours out of your life every time they suck you in (and they will suck you in). Sometimes you aren't enraged about the experience, but they do call them B movies for a reason. Maybe it means B-ware?
Come On Man! You expect me to believe that?
In the back of my mind, I realized that I would eventually give in to an easy access link on my telephone, so I really had to decide if I was willing to give up "that" hour and a half, and regret losing the only sunny evening Colorado had seen during our annual monsoon rain stretch. Honestly, I don't even recall pressing the link (can a link auto activate if you stare at it for too long), but I proceeded to watch, certain that I would eventually regret it, but conscious of how easy it would be to scrap this journey if the path was all that I had worried it would be.
Sharknado2 (The Second One), is not just a tornado of fish. This is a strategic shark war being launched upon the city of New York and aided by two really big tornado's. No, not hurricanes so that the writer would have had to give it its own name. This is a tornado of sharks, but only two of them this time (sharknado 2....you get it.....the second..never mind).
Maybe I really should go watch the first one to understand why the sharks are doing this, but that question is easier to answer than why I was watching this flick. It's a B-movie (of sorts). If the sharks aren't flying or the killer tomatoes were not attacking, these type of movies would not even be on screen. However, this B movie has A+ effort placed into the suspension of reality measures that are needed for mass B-movie appeal. Mass B-movie appeal is only possible when you are able to stick a hook in the mouth of movie skeptics (me) and keep them along for the ride. Slapstick viewers don't require this. They've suspended reality permanently as it relates to television and the silver screen, so these movies offer a magical joyride for them. The rest of us either catch jokes way too late, sometimes not at all or get them, but fail to find the humor.
Take, for example, the early scene from this movie in which Tara Reid is nearly falling from a flying airplane that was damaged while under attack from the first wave of these sharks. The air marshal who is trying to rescue her, throws his gun to Reid (don't ask me her character's name) who proceeds to grab the gun and let off a few rounds in the direction of an oncoming shark. The shark takes the bullets like a champ, and proceeds to bite off the hand of Reid as we watch (really fake looking) blood spray from her severed appendage. If that wasn't enough early foolishness in this film, how about when the sharks make their way to the baseball game and everybody grabs a baseball bat to protect themselves from sharks. One guy actually hits one of the sharks, and smacks a home run into the stadium scoreboard. Either a really small shark or a really great swing (B movie, B movie...move on bro').
Excluding the really fake looking blood squirt from Reid's lost hand, the blood and guts are gruesomely realistic in this movie, which appealed to the testosterone region of my brain. That was good enough to keep me watching early on, but that home run shark almost made me lose it. My mission was rather simple in viewing this movie. See what the buzz is all about without feeling like I wasted nearly 2 hours of life. Viewing as a skeptic, I was glad that some of the anticipated predictability had not made its way into this flick. I was certain that when Reid lost her hand to that shark within the opening 10 minutes of the show, that someone would wake up from a cliche dream sequence. Nope! She had a stump the whole movie. Miraculously. I mean, in normal B-movie fashion, they find the shark who took that hand, and the gun, and they use the gun to kill another shark (didn't work so well the first time), recapturing the love (and the wedding ring) that was lost from days gone by.
But that's at the end of this movie. In between, a whole lot of weirdness that I really don't often sit and watch kept me sitting and watching. I never lost my compulsion to turn the movie off, but somehow I never really came close to doing it either. This movie is cleverly woven together with a thread called "who else is in this damn movie". From beginning to end, star after star, after has been actor, after television news mogul, seems to make an appearance in this flick, offering the subconscious legitimacy that this kind of extreme outlandishness demands. The variation of famous cameos becomes as much of the viewing experience as is the bloody shark attacks.
How did that shark chase them up the stairs?
Hip hop culture gets a few of its famous faces as Sandy (Salt of Salt and Pepa) Denton plays a role in which she did not get killed within the first ten minutes of the film. Or Vinny, the pizza shop owner played by legendary rapper Biz Markie. After a long stint on the screen, Denton's character finally gets flattened by a shark while riding a bike to get away. The shark that landed on her was more like a small whale, which made me wonder, how could she be riding a bike in the kind of wind that blows whale sized sharks around? Al Roker and Matt Lauer came in at that very moment to clarify the storm (I mean Sharknado), so we pressed on.
Every time I found myself at my wits end, Al and Matt or Kelly and Michael came in to certify the legitimacy of the sharknado. Eventually, I was no longer skeptical of sharknado's, I was skeptical of why New York only has one taxi driver (Judd Hirsch, Alex from "Taxi" the television series) and why is a city of bad asses letting Vivica Fox, Tara Reid and that one dude from Beverly Hills 90210, save the entire city by themselves?
No matter. NY is saved in the end and Hawaii is probably the only American state left that could experience a sharknado Can sharknado's reach my hometown, Colorado (I'd better Google that)? Would the makers of this film find a way to get them here if they could? If John Elway and Peyton Manning would back the effort, I am sure it could be done. But how many films can they squeeze out of snow skiing sharks?
I can see it now. Sharkalanche 3 (It's All Downhill From Here)
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