White Shadow season one, episode eleven - Spare the Rod

Plot - Coach Reeves is volunteered by the principal to be the substitute gym teacher. Lucious Robinson, a menacing ne'er do well is a student in the class who refuses to participate. Reeves cajoles him into standing up at which point he lashes out at Reeves. Reeves catches him and sends him off, and then receives a cheap shot punch in the face from Lucious. Reeves quickly retaliates with a sharp right to the mouth and we are on our way to a compelling episode about corporal punishment.
There are different camps around the school. The team is unhappy about it and question Reeves' intentions. Reeves is mad at himself and really broken up about the incident as he opposes getting physical. The adminstration supports Reeves and moves to expel Robinson. The faculty treat Reeves as a hero. Reeves was willing to "spare the rod" until Robinson makes a very unwanted advance on Ms. Buchanan and loses all hope.
Observations - A welcome return to a quality episode after the last two turkeys. The director did excellent with some different camera angles. The lack of music augmented the tension rather than detracting from it. Solid acting all around from the cast.
At one point Reeves visited the Robinson house expecting to see a rat-infested house with an abusive drunk father. The parents were humble and admittedly had struggled with raising Lucious. In the small but well-kept house there pictures of JFK and MLK on the wall. I've seen this before on TV and movies from that era. It used to be ordinary for people to put a picture of the president or other figure on the wall. Today it would appear odd to see a picture of a national figure such Dubya, Obama, or the Grizzly Mama and would seem to cause serious tension with half of the people that see it. Such is the divisive country we live in.

Turn the page

Is a half-hearted attempt better than none at all???
For some odd reason I prefer the concept of finishing a book more than the act itself. Tonight at the library I resisted the temptation to check out a book since I have some I'm currently reading but haven't finished yet. I estimate I finish about a fifth of the books I start.
This has even reached to my two sons to whom I was reading Treasure Island and an abridged version of The Jungle Book. Needless to say we're not reading them anymore.
Here are some books I'm working on that hopefully will make it to a review on this blog:
The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam - Covers history of decisions leading to and keeping US in the Vietnam War.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle- New Age book was recommended to me to ease occasional insomnia.
The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly - recommended to me by a co-worker. Pretty good but like most self-help books they are hard to finish as their is no storyline.
The Everything Chess book - The only thing harder than playing chess is reading about it. I just need someone to sit down and teach me how to play better.
These are just the bedside books. There are more scattered around the house.
Two that come to mind quickly are Sense and Sensibility and The Great Train Robbery.

I have mixed feelings about this. First of all no one cares, much less me. But there is some small voice telling me I should plow ahead and by doing that I will come across something valuable. Finally, to paraphrase a airline magazine article, "if there were so many good books, then why are you sitting here reading this blog?"

White Shadow season one, episode nine - We're in the Money

Plot - The Carver team is invited to play in an invitational tournament in Las Vegas.
Coach Reeves acts as the coach and chaperone. The players hatch an idea to win money gambling and are able to raise $420 from the student body. Eventually they sneak out of the hotel,find a minor-league casino, and eventually lose most of the money. Reeves does not explode as expected but seems resigned to this type of behavior. They lose both of the tournament games. Near the end, Goldstein finds a wallet with $6000. Reeves forces them to return it and the collect a finders fee.
Observations - This episode was poor but relatively better than Airball. For the second straight episode there was no basketball action. The casino scenes were fairly well-done and shows that Vegas hasn't really changed, just evolved. I can't explain why the producers felt these two episodes were necessary. Perhaps they felt that we'd had too many serious topics and needed a break.

White Shadow, season one, episode nine - Airball

Plot - The team is invited to play in a tournament in San Jose and the episode consists of the preparation for the flight and the flight itself. This creates a great deal of excitement with the players because none of them had flown before. There are problems with the landing gear and the flight is forced to return back to LA because "there aren't enough rooms in the hospital" in San Jose.
Observations - It's taken me a week to write this because I was so disappointed with this episode. It seemed like the producers were given a bigger budget and the writers were told just to make something up. This showed in the vacuous plot and dialogue. Without going into too much detail, there are four items to share. First, Coach Reeves told the team to be ready to leave from Carver to LAX by 8am for a 9:20 am flight. Simply impossible. Second, air travel seemed to be slightly tamer at the time and more of a novelty for everyone involved. Nowadays it seems most fliers and flight crews are weary and stressed out. Third, the plot itself was something of a ripoff of the disaster movie genre of the 70s. By the time the public had seen Airport, Airport 1975, Airport '77, and would soon endure The Concorde...Airport '79. Luckily this episode was only 45 minutes long rather than a full-length movie. Finally, if I had to pick a best actor for this episode, it would be Erik Kilpatrick, who portrays Curtis Jackson.