Shirley Temple

I saw a commercial today for a Shirley Temple box set. Got me to wondering, what the hell happened to her after her three year career. Looked up her mini biography on imdb.com and got this:

"Shirley Temple was easily the most popular and famous child star of all time. She got her start in the movies at the age of three and soon progressed to super stardom. Shirley could do it all, act, sing and dance and all at the age of five! Fans loved her as she was bright, bouncy and cheerful in her films and they ultimitely bought millions of dollars worth of products that had her likeness on them. Dolls, phonograph records, mugs, hats, dresses, whatever it was, if it had her picture on there they bought it. Shirley was the box-office champion for three straight years, 1936-37-38, beating out such great grown up stars as Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford. By 1939, her popularity declined. Although she starred in some very good movies like "Since You Went Away," and the "Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer," her career was nearing its end. Later she served as an ambassodor to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. It was once guessed that she had more than 50 golden curls on her head."

One of these facts is not like the other...

GHANA and CZECHOSLOVAKIA? How is that a sidenote? Sandwiched between an ending career and a number of curls guess? How does an aging child star get selected to be a foreign ambassador? I suppose it's possible she got herself an education and deserved it, but really, "Nice to meet you, I'm Ambassador Shirley Temple?" Whacked.

Happy Solstice

Yep! It was today. Longest day of the year. I put a couple hours of it to good use scaring old people by running through their neighborhood. I don't think any of them have seen a 22 year old in decades much less one as attractive as this guy... right..

King Kong is ridiculous. I'm still not sure if it's ridiculously bad or ridiculously good. I do know that the whole ape-chick love thing is kinda weird. And the whole Heart of Darkness thing is kinda whacked, and what the hell happens to Jimmy, huh? Never mind, I decided. Movie sucks. Now the seventies version, that's bad in a great way. "I'm a Libra, what sign are you? No no, don't tell me, you're an Aries! I can tell." So says "Dwan" (it's like Dawn but she switched two letters to make it more memorable) to Kong when he's about to eat her. I shit you not. Great stuff.

Tomorrow my nine year old cousin is coming running with me. I've been down here for two days and she thinks I'm some kind of god. At least it'll get her off the couch and away from her XBox for a while. Guess it'll be a slower run tomorrow, at least till she quits. No worries, maybe it'll inspire her to start athletics again. She's nine, and she's already moved through four sports, didn't like any of them but was good at em all. Go figure.

Choosing Readership

How does one choose their blog-readers? Certainly it's not always up to one's own discretion, word will always spread (as I became painfully aware during 'the situation'). I know I wouldn't feel comfortable spreading the word about someone else's private blog. However, if you give out readerships to more than a few people, you run the risk of offending those who you don't give it out to. Of course, there's always the easy excuse, "I didn't think you'd be interested," but that sounds a lot like, "I didn't think us close enough that you'd be interested in anything personal to me." In order to avoid putting people in that position I don't think I've ever asked for someone's blog url, and so I only know the ones that I've either linked to or been told about, and further I've avoided letting other people tell me about other people's blogs. The only blog url I've ever given out is TallE's, but only after it was linked to on ICUltimate.com, an action I'd consider to be the breaking into the public blogosphere.

So does that mean I can link to TallE's now whether it be an in-post link or one of the ones off to the side? I'm pretty sure I can't link to the other three I read, in case any of those three wouldn't want one of the other five people I know of reading mine to read theirs as well. Pretty sure there's only five people reading here, though I guess really there's no way to tell unless they comment. And not everyone has blogs, so it's not like it's a 'you can read mine if i can read yours' kind of thing.

Maybe the answer is in the purpose of the blog. My goal here is just to record thoughts that I'm not particularly ashamed of. I may occasionally criticize an individual, but I'm pretty sure that all the people reading here can take such criticism constructively since they all know me pretty well. But is someone like... say... T.O. capable of accepting such criticism? What happens if he were to read about how bad of a teammate I think he's been, how his actions have been selfish and destructive? Do I have the freedom to speak openly here? I suppose without password protected blogs I really don't, despite the effort we put into it.

Jim Strathmeyer once said that idea behind ghenry was that we could talk about people as if they weren't reading it. Granted, that was his philosophy towards life and he was a giant asshole about it, but is that what we're trying for here?

I wonder how many other people have blogs I don't know about. I wonder if I should invite anyone other than Tallz, Josh, Vatz, Sean, and K2 to read here? By the way, if you're not one of those, you weren't invited, and so you should comment. Nothing worse than an unknown lurker.

Throwing Tonight

Tonight I went up to the cost center to work on reaching out on my flick. I put a chair a couple yards to my right so I'd have to get out as far as I could, pivoted out past it, held the position and threw around it. I had a target two yards wide and fifteen yards away. Almost every throw went at or within the chairs, but few were as flat and down the middle as I would have liked. Then I threw some hucks, about 45 yards on the flicks and 55-60 on the backhands. They were unmarked however, I just kind of wanted to work out the arm.

Tony also came up and worked by himself in a corner throwing flicks about 20-25 yards into a lacrosse(?) net.

Lack of Self-Control

Oh right. Last night after watching two episodes of Rome with DTR I noticed that Family Guy and Boondocks were new. I got pissed off because I wanted to go to bed but had to watch them. Now, I don't know why I had to watch them, except that they were new, I might not get another chance, and I like the shows. But I really didn't want to be up until 3:30am. I didn't eat breakfast this morning because of it. I did manage to not stay up till 4:30am in order to watch the new Aqua Teen. I had a videotape I was using for such things, but it disappeared from the VCR. completely canished, no idea what happened to it. Now I'm sitting here having started the Manchurian Candidate, realizing the same thing is happening, and I'm not stopping it. Not at all.

Damn it.

Obvious Differences in Attitude

Once again reminded tonight of the differences between the attitudes of players that could one day be good and those who never will.

As Sean reminded me on Friday night, some battles are against opponents but some battles are against ourselves. I had a little motivational talk during a drill in which I tried to get impress on the importance of 'bringing it' and battling even if it's coed pickup or a thirty thirty drill. I think it made sense to some players. There are players on the B team who really push themselves and it shows. Pannone, Kitten and Bailey are some of these players. I'm not saying they'll all make drastic improvements in one year, but they are definitely getting better.

As for myself, I played decently. My defense is good enough to cover B teamers, but I gave up some deeper cuts that I won't be able too in the spring. Got open at will, though Camilo and Justin just don't have the skill/experience to know when or where the efficient and effective cuts will be coming. Still, I know I cut well and that's what matters. Stepping far and reaching out for flicks are a little stiff, but it's throwing them that'll loosen it up. I got a little more aggressive today, but still avoided a collision I didn't like the looks of.

Josh and I cannot eat two Mad Mex meals. Not yet. We will though, and it will be glorious.

Current State

Well, one week of practice and playing down, and to be honest I feel pretty good. I played in my high school alumni game (only six points of 16 though) and practiced on Tuesday and Thursday with the B team. I was pretty careful about it all, didn't bid for anything, avoided contact (except a hit with Bradburn in which I decided he could take it better than I could and lowered my left shoulder into him), and kept most of my throws relatively short. Feeling good, I threw three flick hucks on Thursday. One was beautiful, one wasn't so good, and one I think loosened some scar tissue and hurt a little bit. Not the best percentages for flick hucks. Still, I'm starting to get some field sense back, starting to feel better about some throwing motions. I brought some discs back from home, and I'll be getting some throwing practice in. Hopefully Weasel/TallE/Sean will be able to work with me a little.