“Concussion” movie is decent, but should’ve been better. KU fans giving Hield a standing O is another reason I love sports. And Boston Globe reporters deliver the newspaper they wrote

If you haven’t seen this yet, President Obama got highly emotional while outlining new executive orders about gun control Tuesday. He was firm, he was resolute, and most of all he showed why so many of us care about this man: Because he’s deeply, deeply hurt by his inability to do anything to stop the scourge of gun violence in America. This is exactly what you want to see in a President.

After reading and seeing so much about the concussion and brain damage issue in football over the last 10 years, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t learn anything new by seeing the movie “Concussion.”

And I was right, I didn’t learn much new when I saw the movie last week (though it was kinda cool seeing Alec Baldwin play a real-life doctor, Julian Bailes, who I once interviewed).

Still, I wanted to see “Concussion” because it was an important, necessary film about a true hero, Dr. Bennet Omalu, who discovered CTE in the brains of several dead NFL players and was roundly rejected and mocked by those in power who should’ve most cared about what he discovered.

“Concussion” isn’t a bad movie; it’s actually pretty decent, probably 2.5 stars in my book. The good? Will Smith was fantastic, as was most of the rest of the cast (David Morse as Steelers legend Mike Webster was particularly great), and I thought the story told was clear, easy to digest for those who knew nothing about this issue and just were coming to a Will Smith movie. The ending is also terrific, rousing and informative.

But the bad? Lots to choose from. For one thing, the movie was dramatically over-simplified, not really getting the players’ side of the issue, current players I mean, into the story.
I also thought there were several characters we knew nothing about who suddenly were thrust into the story: For example, Omalu and Bailes have a heated conversation with a Dr. Maroon at one point, a five-minute scene where Maroon is very skeptical of Omalu’s linking football with brain disease. But we’re never told who Maroon is, why he’s so adamantly against the CTE research. There’s also a young African-American well-dressed guy in a lot of NFL executive meetings who has a bunch of lines, but we’re never told who he is, either.
Then there was the criminal misrepresentation of ex-NFLer, and CTE sufferer, Dave Duerson. His family has been very public in complaining about how the now-deceased Duerson was shown, and 99 times out of 100, I give the filmmaker license to fictionalize certain things, and I don’t care too much. But this was truly horrendous, libelous stuff that director Peter Landesman did to Duerson’s legacy. (My boy Jeff Pearlman wrote a great blog post about this.)

Anyway, “Concussion” is an important movie, and I’m glad it’s out there. I just wish it had been a little better.

**Next up today, this was one of those moments that makes me remember why I love sports so much. Monday night, late into the wee hours of the morning, there was an amazing college basketball game played. No. 1 Kansas and No. 2 Oklahoma staged a three-OT classic that I watched parts of Monday night, then had to go bed on and watched the rest Tuesday morning.

It was a fantastic, fantastic game, filled with clutch shots, fabulous defense, and a crowd at Kansas’ Phog Allen Fieldhouse as loud as you can imagine.

But as great as the game was, it’s not what I’ll remember. It’s what happened about 10-15 minutes afterwards that’ll stick with me. Oklahoma star guard Buddy Hield had just finished a sensational performance, scoring 46 points, the most ever by a visiting player at Kansas. He was exhausted, he was upset about losing, and he’d just finished a postgame interview with ESPN.

Then, as he got up to walk away, dozens of Kansas fans still in the stands stood up and gave him a standing ovation. This is the star of your team’s rival, a guy you booed for the last three hours.

But greatness is greatness, and the Jayhawks fans realized how special it was what Hield had just done. So they saluted, proudly.

Great, great sportsmanship. I love college sports when stuff like this happens.

**Finally today, I may be biased in thinking this is awesome because I’m an ex-newspaper scribe, but I love this story. The Boston Globe had been having major delivery truck issues last week with their new service, with hundreds and hundreds of subscribers complaining that they never got their papers.

So last Saturday night, every reporter, editor, photographer and other newsroom staffers at the paper decided to do something about it: They went and delivered the papers themselves.

Yep, reporters loaded up trucks and drove around the greater Boston area dropping off Sunday’s paper. Was it a bit of a publicity stunt? Sure. But it still shows the dedication of journalists.

I love it! Nothing like “delivering” your own front-page story.

 

The Jets behave like the Jets, and I still am somewhat surprised. Obama and Seinfeld have coffee and drive around. And the Dashcam Pro infomercial is hysterical and awful

How I can now spend the three hours next weekend that I thought I’d be watching a New York Jets playoff game:
1. Taking a walk outside in freezing January temperatures.
2. Catch up on my correspondence.
3. Contemplate why my 16-month-old gets such immense joy from ripping a piece of toilet paper from the roll, walking to the garbage can, and dropping it in. Then repeating this behavior 11 more times while giggling.
4. Decide once and for all, if I prefer Ginger or Mary Ann.
5. Start learning a foreign language.
6. Beat myself over the head with a wooden mallet, which, let’s face it, is pretty much the same experience as watching a Jets game.

Happily, any and all of those options are at my disposal, since my pathetic excuse for a football team decides the best way to finish off what has been a surprisingly fabulous season is to play an awful game they had to win up in Buffalo, to qualify for the playoffs.

I’m not going to get all upset and riled up again going over all the details. Suffice to say, I was angry for a good solid hour after the game Sunday, then spent 20 minutes mad at myself for being 40 and still allowing this franchise’s performance to affect my emotional state.

So, you know, typical end to the Jets season.

**Next up today, you know I love me some Jerry Seinfeld, and I love when Barack Obama does pop-culture-y things that shows off his sense of humor, so of course I loved this episode of “Comedians in Cars Coffee,” that debuted last week, with Seinfeld and our Commander in Chief kicking it in the White House.

My two favorite parts (and I recommend the whole thing🙂 at the 10-minute mark when Seinfeld asks Obama about if he ever touches the thermostat in the White House, and at around 14:00 when Seinfeld says “How many world leaders do you meet and think they’re completely out of their minds?”

**Finally today, it’s been a while since I’ve had fun with a terrible infomercial on this blog, but I saw this commercial the other day and was immediately horrified/fascinated, which is exactly the reaction you want when watching one of these. Have you seen this, people? It’s the Dashcam Pro videocamera for your car, and it’s apparently a MUST-have item for your vehicle.

I have lots and lots of questions after watching this: First of all, given what we’ve seen on the news the last few years, I have total faith that the white police officer would be fine with the militant-sounding African-American driver in an accident reaching over to his windshield and shoving a small camera in his face.

Next, the first few clips show innocent people getting their cars smashed and their fabulous camera footage saving them. But at the :21 mark, the “innocent” woman is applying makeup while driving and then gets hit. Isn’t she the one at fault here?

Also, at 1:05 they brag about flipping the camera screen on road trips to “capture all those special moments” in the car. Are you kidding me? No actual family has ever had a “special moment” on a road trip. It’s four hours of bickering, threats to turn the car around, or sheer boredom. And if the camera is facing the other way, isn’t going to miss the accident you’re about to have when you turn around to smack your kids?

Wait, I’m just getting started. Do we really need yet another device to be distracted by/have to pay attention to in the car? Will one of the people who get into an accident use the “sorry officer, I was adjusting the angle of my stupid dashboard camera.”

“It’s the most important tool you’ll ever buy for your car!” Really? New brakes, replacement tires, none of that is more important?

And yet… I almost kinda maybe want the thing.

Happy New Year! Some resolutions from yours truly for 2016. The happiest dog at Christmas you’ll ever see. And a really fun new commercial with kids living with their NBA heroes

Happy 2016 to y’all! Hope you had a wonderful and safe New Year’s Eve; mine was happily routine and boring; ever since our little guy came along our Dec. 31 evenings have become pretty tame (then again, we weren’t so wild before the kid came along; I think New Year’s Eve stops becoming important once you turn 30.)

We had the in-laws over, watched a little college football, played some Rummy-O (or Rummy-Cue, or Rummy Cub, the game has like 11 different names), and laughed as usual as Kathy Griffin tried her best to humiliate Anderson Cooper on CNN.

Going to start the first Good News Friday of ’16 with a couple quick New Year’s Resolutions for myself. Honestly, these are for my benefit more than you the reader’s, I find once something is written down it’s a lot harder to ignore. But here’s to doing better in 2016 by doing the following…

1. Look at my cell phone less, especially late at night. It’s terrible for your eyes, it’s distracting, and especially bad in helping me fall asleep when I roll over and look at something. But mostly, I need to fight the urge to constantly be “tuned in” and just enjoy the world around me more.

2. Read more, watch less: My list of books I want to read is now well over two dozen, and not shrinking. Fewer Duke and Rangers games on TV, more reading. First up: Te-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” which has been sitting on my nightstand since September; finishing Nick Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn’s “Half The Sky,” and diving into Jason Gay’s “Little Victories.”

3. Stop measuring my son’s milestones against other children: I try really hard not to do this, but I can’t help it: We’re at a play-date, or in music class, and some kid around Nate’s age is already talking, or already doing something else. And I feel this instant pang of “why isn’t MY kid doing that yet?” It’s completely ridiculous and stupid; I have the happiest, healthiest most wonderful baby on the planet (I may be biased), and I know he’ll reach every milestone when he’s good and ready.

Besides, what if he finally starts talking and says “Daddy, I don’t like the Jets. They stink?”

4. Learn to love Hillary, our next President: OK, maybe not “love.” But at least try to put aside all my past preconceptions of her and learn to embrace her candidacy, once she disposes of my man Bernie Sanders and cruises to the nomination. This one could be tough, but I will try…

5. Stop watching the GOP debates: The biggest guilty pleasure of all time. But I think they’re rotting my brain.

6. Watch the Jets win the Super Bowl: Just kidding. I make that resolution every year, and it ain’t coming true anytime soon 🙂

https://www.thedodo.com/dog-opens-best-christmas-gift-1529447750.html

**Next up, this is a few days old but made me smile. Watch this dog go absolutely nuts with joy over opening a Christmas gift. Don’t you wish you were ever this happy about anything?

**And finally, a wonderful new long commercial by Nike, with a pretty funny concept: A bunch of kids can’t decide who their favorite basketball player is, so they move in with Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, Elena Delle Donne and others for a few days to see which one they like best.

My favorites are the Durant and Paul George ones, although Kobe’s segment is hilarious, too. (“Eight hours of training is nothing compared to a second of losing.”)