This is one of the many I
items I treated myself to for my birthday.
Got the three disc set pretty cheap, but no price can be put on the
memories I had from the early days of the Premier League.
I started following (very
distantly) Manchester United during the first season of the Premier League when
they ended their 26 year drought of winning the title. Robson, Bruce, Hughes and company led the Red
Devils to glory in those early years, followed by Keane, Cantona, and the kids
before Cole, Yorke, Solskjaer and Stam took over.
Going through the seasons,
I picked up new information, like Nicky Barmby played for Spurs? Had no idea.
Plus there were all the clubs that have fallen away like Crystal Palace
and Norwich and Swindon and Charlton and QPR.
Great goals and great
memories.
I picked this up at the
library because I had just finished The War for Late Night. The tour looked brutal and showed Conan’s
struggle between the rush of performing and the need to always be “on”. Loved the fly on the wall nature of the
documentary and feel that I may have missed out a comedic voice.
Love this show because
almost everything is in my wheel house: sense of community amongst the study group,
pop culture references throughout, the yearning for the days of college, and
just a hint of awkwardness.
Not every episode is a
winner but the season as a whole is thoroughly enjoyable, especially the
trampoline episode and the epic two part, Fistful of Dollars/Star Wars
inspired, paintball finale. Even the
Zombie episode wasn’t too bad and that’s not really my thing.
Is the show the most
amazing thing ever? No but it’s a fun,
non-nutritious snack that I can’t get enough of.
ESPN, to celebrate their
30th anniversary, released a series called 30 for 30, which covered
a wide range of sports and topics. One
of the first ones I heard about was Once Brothers, the story of the Yugoslavian
Basketball Team from the late 80’s, early 90’s.
This was particularly interesting to me because of my love of the
Croatian Sensation, the Waiter, Toni Kukoc.
I knew of their success—silver in 1988 Olympics and 1990 World
Champions—but I didn’t know their story.
The film is Vlade Divac’s
account of his rise from small town to Yugoslavian basketball club star to
world champion to NBA players and the relationships with his teammates, which
became more and more strained as the former Soviet Republic broke apart. It was heart wrenching to see him and Drazen
Petrovic drift apart after a moment of nationalistic pride from Vlade. The whole film had me on the verge of tears,
as the glory and drama and tragedy of that team was retold. I highly recommend this movie. This is bigger than basketball and is story
of friendship and hard work and redemption.
