Category: Current Affairs

Old Olympic Dreams Never Die–They Just Go Slower

Ah yes, the ol’ missing first paragraph is back:

My Olympic dream died sometime around 1978. The reality was that I could barely crack the top 10 of an average high school cross country race, so there was little hope of me ever mounting the winner’s platform and hearing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in my lifetime.

And here’s the rest.

BONUS:
Here’s some footage of me running the last lap in that charity fundraiser at Harding University in 1983.

And here I am today with my Sunday morning running buddies, “Team Wannabe” (that’s actual speed, not slow-mo).

Old Olympic dreams never die–they just go slower.… Read the rest

“One World One Dream”…and Tanks Too

I was out soccering last night with Numbers Two and Three and their teams in the opening tournament of the year, so I haven’t caught much of the opening ceremonies yet. Scrolling through the 4-plus hours of recording on my DVR and hitting the highlights is on my to-do list today, after more soccer matches, mowing the lawn, my weekly elliptical trainer workout at the gym…phew, I should get a gold medal for doing all that.

Number One, who was watching at home, called during the soccer matches and said it all seemed a little “creepy,” in a “if 1.3 billion people are capable of putting on this kind of show, what else are they capable of doing?”… Read the rest

The Huntsville Times’ McCarter Covers Beijing

The Huntsville Times‘ very own sports reporter and columnist Mark McCarter is wheels down in Beijing and already up and reporting.

I may check in with our intrepid man on the ground in the Olympic village a little later and have him check to see if Ocular Fusion has been blocked by Chinese censors.

With all the crap I’ve been throwing their away about that LUNG-CHOKING SMOG, I wouldn’t be surprised.

UPDATE: No need to check with McCarter after all. I checked here, and it looks like Ocular Fusion is still up and running behind The Great Firewall of China:

Website Test Results

Tested From: Beijing, China
Tested At: 2008-08-06
16:28:37 (GMT -04:00)
URL Tested: http://WWW.OCULARFUSION.NET
… Read the rest

Who Is That Masked Athlete?

TWSJ gives us the answer.

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UPDATE: I could see this coming a mile away. And it only took less than 24 hrs.

This sort of reminds me of that time back in ’78 when I and the rest of the Franklin County High School cross country team brought several bottles of lime Gatorade to drink at lunch on the afternoon of that big meet at Northside High.

Assistant Principal Hodges spotted the glass bottles and confiscated them and we were forced to apologize for violating the “no glass containers in the lunchroom” policy.

By the way, it was 95 degrees that day, and on the way home from the meet (we lost), the team bus had to stop at Roanoke Memorial Hospital so that I could get IV fluids for my heat exhaustion.… Read the rest

The Morning Slog

homer_running-754097.jpgIt’s August in Alabama, and that means triple digit heat indexes all across the state over the next few weeks. It’s sauna city the instant you step out the door, and then just try doing anything. The gurus at Nike haven’t even conceived of wicking fabric that can pump away the gallons of sweat produced on a typical Deep South “dog days of summer” afternoon.

That makes exercise in this stuff particularly tricky. Do I go for a morning run and deal with 90% + humidity and less heat, or do I wait until the evening when there’s typically less humidity but the temperatures often stay in 90s up until the time the sun sets?… Read the rest

Hey Lionsgate–I’m Watching You

I promised that I would follow the story that I reported the other day about Lionsgate Picture’s apparent use of Ginny Owens’ “Be Thou My Vision” on the trailer for the upcoming release of Saw V.

This message was just posted on her website:

Friends: Sometime during the afternoon of Friday, July 25th, my voice on “Be Thou My Vision” was replaced by another singer.

The track still sounds nearly identical, and most websites continue to “credit” me for it, but the background music for the Saw V trailer is no longer my original version of “Be Thou My Vision.”

… Read the rest

You Can’t Keep A Good Song Down

“Be Thou My Vision,” that wonderful old Irish (we think) hymn, is one of my favorites. And if I have to explain to you why, then you haven’t been paying very close attention these past 3 years.

I’ve always considered sacred music, well, you know, sacred. So imagine my surprise to hear the strains of Ginny Owens’ hauntingly beautiful rendition of that hymn intermeshed with the trailer for the latest installment of the Saw series, Saw V.

We were waiting for the new X Files movie to start Friday night, and the misdirection totally threw me. I was thinking, hey this looks and sounds interesting.… Read the rest

Color Me Audacious

Recently, during a Bible class at my church, the teacher, a man in his early 30s, said something to this effect: I wish we could return to our 1950s morality.

I immediately thought: Which 1950s morality are you talking about? The black and white, warm and fuzzy, cut and dry predictability of Ozzie and Harriet or the black and white Jim Crow laws and state-supported racism which consigned a significant portion of our Southern population to second-class citizenship, public lynchings and other various and sundry travesties of justice?

And what year were you born in? 1975? What could you possibly know about “1950s morality?”… Read the rest