Yep. I took Gonzaga, Lawrence took the rest of the field, $5 straight across, again.
This post is to document our wager.
I have a good feeling about Gonzaga this year.
(I also have a good feeling about the Cubs this year. But we’ll wait until closer to opening day for that.)
Well, this is odd. I completely missed the story until I went over to ESPN’s web site. (I was trying to find out when the NCAA brackets will be announced. Again, not that I care about men’s basketball, but Gonzaga!)
Ruth Ann Steinhagen passed away on December 29th, but her death did not become public knowledge until last week.
“Who?”
On the night of June 14, 1949, Ms. Steinhagen lured Eddie Waittkus, first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, to her room in the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Mr. Waitkus had played for the Chicago Cubs, but was traded after the 1948 season. Ms. Steinhagen had an obsession with him.
Mr. Waitkus survived. Ms. Steinhagen was found to be insane and spent three years in a mental hospital. And if this story sounds very familiar, yes, this was the basis for Bernard Malamud’s The Natural
The “Theodore” in the quote above is John Theodore, who wrote what sounds like an interesting non-fiction book about the incident, Baseball’s Natural: The Story of Eddie Waitkus
Last night, we watched The Killing at the home of my friends who shall remain nameless.
I bow to no man in my admiration for Stanley Kubrick. I will happily engage in physical combat with John Gruber and Jim Coudal simultaneously to determine which of us is the greater Kubrick fan, if it comes to that.
I realize The Killing is early Kubrick. I expected it to be a little rough around the edges, and I think it is an important work to watch, Kubrick fan or non-fan. (The Killing pioneered some tricks that you see in more modern movies, such as the non-linear timeline.)
But there’s one big huge problem with the movie: Marie Windsor.
I feel bad about saying this. I’m sure Ms. Windsor was a very nice woman, and she certainly had a long career. But she sucks the life out of The Killing in Every. Single. Scene. She’s. In. Every moment she was on screen, we were thinking “Get this woman off the screen!” The setup and execution of the racetrack robbery is compelling, but Ms. Windsor’s scenes with Elisha Cook drove me bugnuts crazy. They don’t work well as a couple, and Ms. Windsor’s dialogue in particular is just awful; it shoot for smart and clever, and misses by a mile.
This may not have been entirely Ms. Windsor’s plot: Jim Thompson co-wrote the dialogue, and I can easily believe he was drunk off his hind end the entire time he was writing it. But even if the writing is bad, Ms. Windsor’s delivery of it still sets my teeth on edge. I think Lawrence came very close to pulling the pin on this one, solely because Ms. Windsor was driving him crazy as well.
Spoiler space: