Stupid Movie Reviews: Power Rangers

It’s only the second week of Stupid Movie Reviews, and already I can see what the recurring theme of this column is going to be.  

“How the Hell did anyone think that this would be a good idea for a movie?”

#SBRLLR: First Taste of Glory (Part 5)

The San Diego CIF Championships were towards the end of the school year.  I qualified in the 100 Fly and as a member of Fallbrook’s medley relay team.  From a team of about thirty boys and thirty girls, less than a dozen total traveled to CIF.  This included all of the year-round swimmers and a few of the real standouts from the water polo team who happened to have some pure speed.  We sat out under a big beige tarp on the deck at Mt. Carmel High School, which had by far the fastest high school pool I’d ever seen.  The competition facility was eight lanes wide by twelve feet deep and had new-looking double-lane lines and deep aluminum gutters all the way around.  These things reduced wake and therefore drag, ensuring a smooth, glassy surface for competition.  Mt. Caramel also had a separate warm-up pool, which was shallow and maybe four lanes across, though this was not particularly unusual.  Fallbrook’s competition pool had only six lanes, but even we had a separate diving well.  

Crunch: Too Much, Too Soon

You may remember me talking a bit about executing a “kamikaze fitness attack” for my buddy’s APFT last time out.  It probably sounded like at least half of a dumb idea, am I right?

Yeah.  It kinda was.

It’s been a humbling week, honestly.  If my mother was still alive, she’d be delighted.

#SBRLLR: First Taste of Glory (Part 4)

How different was Fallbrook from our previous home in New Bern, North Carolina?  

As spring approached, I saw the differences spelled out first hand on the front page of our local newspaper’s sports section.  The local high school beat writer ran a full half-page preview of the coming high school swim season, with a note about each of Fallbrook’s returning stars.  The last column started with the sentence, “Perhaps the fastest Warrior on this year’s team is freshman Dan Head…”

They were actually hyping my season, and it was insane.

Stupid Movie Reviews: Valerian & the City of a Thousand Planets

Welcome to Stupid Movie Reviews!  This is a new, uh, maybe bi-weekly segment on the blog.  This week, we’re looking at a rather enjoyable stupid movie,Valerian & the City of a Thousand Planets.

Crunch: On Competition & the Value of Short Term Goals

I went skiing with my buddy Brian a few weeks ago.  Despite losing a day at Mount Snow to comically extensive airline delays, we wound up having a great time out at Okemo once we finally got out there.  We put in something like fifteen runs over the course of maybe five hours plus lunch.  It was enough that we staggered off the mountain at the end of it, exhausted but happy.  About the only thing that kept me awake on the drive home was Brian’s minute-by-minute updates on Army’s lacrosse game against perennial powerhouse Syracuse.

#SBRLLR: First Taste of Glory (Part 3)

I found myself sitting on the windswept bench of some close-packed aluminum bleachers a month or so after school began, watching my father take command of First Reconnaissance Battalion.  His men were formed up in companies in front of a forlorn Quonset hut outpost called Camp Tallega, which sat lost in the sun drenched high-desert hinterlands of Camp Pendleton’s immense beachside training ranges.  Dad had written a speech on notecards for the event, but when he got up to give it in front of his new Marines, he went through a mere card or two before putting his notes away and speaking extemporaneously.  He looked ill at ease to my eyes, particularly when trying to speak from notes, but he was also grimly determined to be the man, the commander, that his Marines needed him to be.  He was discomfited to be around guys who saw themselves more as a special operations unit than as traditional infantrymen, a change in mindset typified in my father’s eyes by the fact that Recon Marines said “Hooyah!” rather than the more traditional “Ooorah!” that characterized the rifle companies he’d been with prior to that point in his career.  I had no idea what his prepared remarks were intended to say, but off the cuff, he acknowledged that the language barrier was only the beginning of the things that he needed to learn to be the best commander that he possibly could be.  He also promised that the Marines in front of him could count on learning a few things from him as well.

His men stood silently in formation, looking uniformly lean, mean, and competent as Hell.

Six Things on a Saturday: Trying to Get Caught Up

I’ve had a busy week.  Did a lot happen while I was gone?

I actually have the day off!  Yay!!!

#SBRLLR: First Taste of Glory (Part 2)

I was a few weeks into the process of becoming “myself” in the pool in Vista when I arrived on the pool deck at Fallbrook for the first time for water polo tryouts.  I’d found a home on the Vista Swim Team, but now I had to find a way to fit in at my school.

5 Things on a Friday: Return to Chaos

Happy Founder’s Day!

On March 16, 1802, Thomas Jefferson signed a document declaring "that the said Corps, when so organized, shall be stationed at West Point... and shall constitute a military academy. The Corps of today celebrated the 216th anniversary of Founders Day.

Photos by: CDT Alex Werden pic.twitter.com/TbVyf7fJgq

— US Military Academy (@WestPoint_USMA) March 2, 2018

The Summer Reading List, 2018

Sketch in My Notebook

Though we’ve done book and TV reviews since this blog’s inception, the Summer Reading List Project didn’t formally get its start until 2016.  That first List was very successful, both in the sense that my friends enjoyed participating and because I myself found a bunch of books that I quite enjoyed reading.  I’ve done a few additional Lists in the months since, but none of those have informed my actual summer reading in the same way.  Mostly, they’re just been lists of related books that I put together as part of the Project’s archives.

This year, however, I’m actually looking for something to read.  Like you, I have my favorites.  But it seems like a lot of my favorite authors aren’t publishing right now, and here we are.