The movie "Semi-Pro" is wrong from the git-go
by Bryce Martin

Listen, I realize Will Farrell is no great actor. He can hide behind that lack of distinction by being known as a comedian. His greatest acting job thus far was when he convinced thousands of NASCAR fans he was laughing with them and not at them. Well, maybe that didn't take all that much skill. After all, they are NASCAR fans.

I won't be seeing Farrell's new movie, Semi-Pro, but it has struck a nerve nonetheless.

I can see now how Farrell is able to play the clueless bumpkin over and over in one disposable movie after another. Just take any one of his movies, once you've bought and viewed it, and plunk it in a sink of warm water and it will dissolve before your eyes like a foam dinner plate. The reason why Farrell is so good at being permanently OTL is because he apparently is. I've seen the mini-interviews where he touts Semi-Pro as being authentic in detail and a sort of time capsule of the era captured on celluloid.

What hogwash. The most un-authentic part about the movie is its title. It's a movie about the old American Basketball Association (ABA), which was a professional league and not a semi-pro league. That's not just my opinion, it's a fact. It's not even up for debate.

For years I have battled Average Joes who refer to players on minor league baseball teams as "semi-pros." Even some old-timers I read about who actually played professional minor league baseball back in the, say, the 1950s, refer to that experience wrongly as "semi-pro." It's not just minor league baseball of course, it's about any professional minor league team or player. Mr. AJ (Average Joe) thinks anything less than major league is semi-pro, which is just not true and is highly inaccurate and a slam against those who were and are pros and not semi-pros.

The guy who pitches for a fast-pitch softball team on weekends and who gets gas, meal and motel money for weekend out of town tournaments is a semi-pro.

It's a battle I will never win, educating the American public. Especially now that Will Farrell has set me back another 10 years or so.

-30-

When "gospel rock" was an oxymoron
by Bryce Martin

It's the Devil's music with the Lord's chorus serving as counterpoint.

That might be my definition for the music genre known as "Christian rock" or "gospel rock." It, to me, is still an odd combination of words and an even more odd genre of music. When I first heard the term, I was stymied. Surely, it was an oxymoron, in the vein of "dry ice" and "jumbo shrimp," or everybody's favorite, "military intelligence." Rock 'n' roll was the Devil's music, birthed, bought and paid for in the 1950s, so why kowtow to it? Why humor it? Dismiss it outright and be gone with it.

In a recent newspaper filler, I read that the man who invented the genre had moved on to that rockin' band of angels in the sky, presumably. I imagine that history will little note nor long remember Larry Norman ("Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman dies at 60"; Tennessean; February 27, 2008). Norman, as noted in the small article, was inducted into the Gospel Hall of Fame in 2001. But it was his 1969 album Upon This Rock that introduced the concept of Christian rock and the act that prompted his title as "father of Christian rock."

Christian-themed lyrics to Chuck Berry chords or a Bo Diddley beat.

Even a casual historian on the subject of rock 'n' roll music knows the genre owes a kinship to blues and gospel music. Some oldtime gospel songs even long before Elvis rocked in a way that Elvis was to rock later on. Elvis, in fact, received much of his music tutelage as a young churchgoer.

It gave me goosebumps to hear hundreds of combat boots stomping in an unrehearsed, completely inspired unison/cadence in my place of order in the balcony of a large chapel while our godforsaken pitiful selves sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" each Sunday in U.S. Marine Corps boot camp in San Diego in 1964.

The sound was there then -- and had been around for who knows how long -- many of us just didn't know it.

-30-

Suicide Bombers dumber than dumb
by Bryce Martin

Now we find out that the Feb. 1 market bombings in Iraq carried out by women suicide dingdongs were females who did not have Down syndrome as originally reported, that they were not women with that disability who killed innocent people and themselves in the name of their religion.

I suspected as much. People I have known with Down syndrome were smarter than that.
...

Turnip Truck Talk

I was amused when Oprah Winfrey seemed shocked that many weeks after she endorsed Barack Omama she couldn't believe people felt she did it because he was black. Imagine that. Blacks vote for democrats (read liberals) at a 90+rate. (No bloc of voters would vote that high a percentage on the sun rising in the east each morning in the U.S. of A.). Plus, Omama is a strict liberal, with nothing new on the same old liberal agenda we haven't heard for years. It's not like she can say she offered her support because he is a fresh voice.
...

The Real George

"Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi."

George Orwell, October 1941
...

Favorite Recordings

Take Five
Dave Brubeck Quartet
1961

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Gene Pitney
1962

Soulful Strut
Young-Holt Unlimited
1968

The Poor People of Paris
Les Baxter
1956

Cherry Bomb
John Mellencamp
1987

Hot Rod Hearts
Robbie Dupree
1981

Blinded by the Light
Manfred Mann
1977

Pancho & Lefty
Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard
1983

Somethin' Else
Eddie Cochran
1959

I Love L.A.
Randy Newman
1983

In the Mood
Ernie Fields
1959

Tusk
Fleetwood Mac
1979

For a Few Dollars More
Ennio Morricone
1967

A Whiter Shade of Pale
Procol Harum
1967

Topsy II
Cozy Cole
1958

Roll Truck Roll
Red Simpson
1966

Tequila
The Champs
1958

Made in Japan
Buck Owens
1972

Slow Motion
Wade Flemons
1959

Pretty Baby
Jimmy Thurman
1959

Sugar Town
Nancy Sinatra
1967

Patricia
Perez Prado
1958


-30-

Snapshots in the Sun
by Bryce Martin

These are the days we will see again,
No matter how things they may go,
These days will be our snapshots in the sun.

These are the sunny highlights
we will remember,
Like snapshots in the sun;
Like all those snapshots in the sun.

Squinting at the past,
Of days long done,
Days of youth,
These will be our snapshots in the sun.

-30-

Pirate Pitching Staff
by Bryce Martin

All-time major league baseball 12-man pitching staff, worthy of ruling the high seas:

Jerry Davie
Sam Jones
Bob Locker
Bob Walk
Ed Plank
Ed High
Fred Waters
Mike Parrott
Dave Jolly
Steve Rogers
Lem Cross
Ricky Bones

Manager on the Deck: Sparky "Captain Hook" Anderson
Side coaches: Johnny "Patcheye" Gill, Jay Hook

Tex Cobb: 'Bad body' bad boy (Part 1 of 3)
by Bryce Martin

In Tex Cobb's world, the sport of boxing was hindered by the rules of the ring. He affirmed a last-man-standing approach.

It was the same routine every morning. He would come in alone about 7 a.m., round up a discarded morning newspaper and order coffee, for which he would need about 100 purple packets of artificial sweeteners. He always sat in the wall booth next to the jukebox and always played the same songs, sometimes carrying a book. It would always be a book filled with a collection of classic, philosophical insights.

I was already acquainted with Randall "Tex" Cobb, boxer-cum-actor, when we crossed paths for around three hours every morning during several months in 1989 and 1990 at the 24-hour Steak 'n' Egg Kitchen on West End Ave. in Nashville. Getting to know more about him proved interesting.

He would read some mornings but would not absorb himself in the material if it meant distracting someone who wanted to carry on a conversation. Once, I asked about his famous comment regarding sportscaster Howard Cosell… actually about the bout he had with then-champion Larry Holmes in November 1982 in Houston with the World Boxing Council heavyweight title at stake that led to the comment. Cobb was referred to as "Randy" in those days.

"Holmes didn’t whip me," Cobb said. "He beat me in fifteen rounds. If we’d kept on going I would have won. That’s in the ring. Outside the ring, in the street, I would have handled him like a pussycat. He knows it, too."

Holmes pounded Cobb savagely during the ABC-televised contest, never knocking the challenger down in winning a unanimous decision. Cosell pronounced it a travesty and never again broadcast another boxing match.

Cobb’s fabled rejoinder: "If I had known that’s what it would take to get Cosell to quit doing boxing I would have fought Holmes a long time ago."

But, back to Cobb’s opinion on the fight, the part about him not losing to Holmes.

"I was in the best shape of any heavyweight who ever fought," he said. "It’s not about how hard you can hit. It’s about how many punches you can throw. I was a ‘bad body’ fighter, probably in the top three all-time. Those who judged me on how I looked didn’t see the whole picture."

So, given more time, Holmes would have eventually toppled for the count?

"I’m a gladiator. I’ve never trained just for boxing. My workouts go way beyond what any boxer has even attempted to try. You can’t kill someone who wants to die."

A death wish, is it?

Then came the Cobbian laugh, the one you could never be prepared for, best described as some short honks delivered in meticulously punctuated intervals. Customers from faraway booths turned heads to target the eruptions, smiled, and repositioned themselves.

"Give me a broad-axe and a club. That’s the way I wish it could be."

I knew that he had played football at Hardin-Simmons in Abilene, Tex., left that for kick-boxing, a sport not nearly as popular then as now and one in which he excelled, and in later years I had read an article about him in a fitness magazine that described his workouts, incredibly grueling and torturous in description. He began a professional boxing career in 1977 at age 22.

Each morning, he would be wearing a bulky sweatshirt, either jeans or sweatpants, scuffed white athletic shoes and usually a sock hat to cover a bushy head of hair. He was not one to put on airs. "Whatcha see is what you get," he liked to say.

It was not uncommon for him to disappear for lengthy intervals. Those were the times he would be doing movie work or television commercials. He was best known for his biker role in "Raising Arizona." A second movie, "Uncommon Valor," provided a prominent role as well.

"Yeah, they let me run my mouth some in that one," he smiled.

He had worked with the likes of Richard Pryor, Nicolas Cage, Chevy Chase, Gene Hackman, and several other big names, but he never talked about movies or himself unless someone asked, then he would usually turn it into a joke and steer the conversation elsewhere.

"They had me playing a psycho…rip off your arm and wrap it around your head and not blink twice about it… It was a stretch but I think I handled it."

He would then add his loud and deranged laugh, which somehow did not make him any less likable. Usually polite, a good listener and with the smiling, open manner of one who enjoys life and wants those around him to do the same, Cobb seemed natural in making friends with all those he met.

His nose was that of a boxer’s, flat and broad; yet other than the defacement of that most prominent feature, a stranger to his existence might not tab him as being a fighter. I can’t help but try to picture how he might have looked had he chosen a more regular profession. I find it impossible to form any other image.

Married, he would call his wife, Sharon, from the restaurant phone and discuss their plans for the rest of the day just before leaving.

END PART 1

By Bryce Martin
Published: 4/30/2001

-30-