I haven’t found time to post the last week or so. Probably won’t as much in the next week or two, either. On top of that, I haven’t been able to log in for the last 24 hours or so, which hindered this being posted earlier. So, here’s a few items from the last week.

Who are these people?

Here’s a good post on stock photography I found recently over at the Church Marketing Sucks site. I found this a little humorous because, just before we left Alabama last year, our church redesigned it’s website. The new website included photos in the headers of people I’d never seen before, people I was certain did not attend our church. (In other words, it was obvious they were models - they looked like photos from a magazine.) When I arrived here in Little Rock a couple of months later and received brochures on our medical and dental insurance here at work, one of the dental brochues contained one of the exact photos from the church’s website. (I found it odd that members of our previous church had also been modeling for dental brochures.) And these pictures are still on the website today. This all reminded me of this post from last spring by Mike Cope.

French Open

Roger Federer once again came up short at the French Open. He had won the last three grand slams and would have become one of the few to win all four titles, and one of the even fewer to win them all in a row (but not in the same year - which an even shorter list.) Few have won all four titles over their entire career. Only two Americans - Don Budge and Andre Agassi - have managed that feat. Not even Connors, McEnroe or Sampras managed it. This means little, in my opinion. Undoubtedly, Federer will, by the end of his career, be one of the greatest of all time even if he never wins the French (consider the names I just mentioned.) But many believe he could very well be the greatest ever to have played the game when he walks away. Without the French, it may be harder to make that claim. My feeling, though, is that eventually, he’ll add a French title. And I do know that, except for when he’s playing Rafael Nadal on clay, he’s by far the best player out there right now.

Netflix

I signed up for a free trial with Netflix recently. I used to watch a lot more movies than I have in recent years. It’s been harder with kids, finding the time. Plus, my love of reading has caused me to watch less over the years. I haven’t been to a video store for a rental since we moved back to Little Rock. I bought one movie via cable on-demand (Crash) a few months back, but that’s the only rental I’ve made in nearly a year. Plus, I’d rather rent a DVD and have the “special features” (which occasionally are actually special). So, now there’s Netflix. I’ve received a couple already and enjoy the convenience of having the movies come to me. I’m going to test it out to see how I like it. One thing I like the most is the ability to rent obscure or dated films/television that you might not be able to find at the local video store.

Glory Road and Rupp’s racism

The first Netflix movie I received and watched was Glory Road, which I wanted to see in the theater a few months ago but never made it. I enjoyed it a lot. The film, of course, is about the 1966 NCAA Basketball Championship game between Texas Western and Kentucky - a historic game in that Texas Western coach Don Haskins started 5 black players, which was the first time it had been done in an NCAA championship game.This was particularly noteworthy due to the fact that Kentucky, an all-white team from the South, was also coached by Adolph Rupp, who, whether justified or not, has often been cast as a racist.

As one who despises Kentucky basketball, I’d love to cast anything related to it in as negative a light as possible. But I’m not entirely certain Rupp has been treated fairly. Yes, he no doubt had some prejudices, being a white coach in the South during the 60’s. And he did resist recruiting black players until the very end of his career in the early 70’s (but so did many other coaches.) I suspect he was not quite the “Klansman” he’s been made out to be. He was probably no more so than many other white coaches in the South at the time. He coached at Kentucky, so that’s reason enough for me to dislike him :)

It’s been a few years since I read Frank Fitzpatrick’s book about this historic game (And The Walls Came Tumbling Down, which was excellent) so I’m not sure how much embellishment might have been added to the movie, but I think it was mostly accurate and it was very good. The “special features” were good, too, with interviews of Coach Haskins and the players, including a couple of Kentucky players (most notably Pat Riley). This is a great story and a good movie worth watching.

NBA Finals

Speaking of Pat Riley, the NBA Finals started last week. I’ve seen fewer playoff games this year than in a very long time - probably since the early 80’s. That is primarily due to having limited cable and no longer having TNT. If it’s not been on network, I haven’t seen it. And even when it has, I haven’t watched much of it. I watched bits and pieces of games 1 and 2, and it appeared Dallas might end it in four. As I watched most of game 3, which was the first time I’d watched “most of” a game this season, nothing was changing my mind, as Dallas was up 13 with about 6 minutes to go and Miami looked like they’d given up. But they hadn’t, and made a late run to pull out a win in the final minute. Dallas really folded up and should have won the game. But, my guess is they’ll do just that in games 4 and 5 and this will be over in a few days. And nobody will really care.

Most inspirational movies

I watched the latest AFI special last night - 100 Years, 100 Cheers - in which they counted down the top 100 inspirational movies. I’m not going to go over the whole list, but I thought some were lower than I would’ve placed them, but that’s mainly because they’re among my favorites (like The Shawshank Redemption, which I thought deserved higher than #23.) But the top 25 or so was a pretty good list. The top 3 are actually among my very favorite movies - (3) Schindler’s List, (2) To Kill A Mockingbird, and (1) It’s A Wonderful Life. A couple of suprises to me were that Hotel Rwanda was at 90, and Chariots of Fire was at 100. I would’ve thought both would be higher on the list.

Shades

President Bush can’t really catch a break. Yesterday he joked with a reporter about wearing sunglasses while asking a question at a press conference, pointing out that “there’s no sun”, but was later told that the reporter is legally blind. An apology was quickly issued.