The trailer for the new documentary — particularly appropriate for the Memorial Day weekend — is below.
Texas Monthly’s Gary Cartwright caught my eye recently with this op-ed in which he bemoans the decline of sports writing in Texas.
I mean really. Can anyone who regularly reads the sports pages of Texas newspapers make a good faith argument against the notion that the current slate of Texas newspaper sportswriters cannot hold a candle to Dan Jenkins and his contemporaries?
Enter the Chronicle’s lead sports columnist, Richard Justice.
Justice — whose shoddy reporting, vapid analysis and bizarre blog comment attacks have been a frequent topic here for years — essentially proves Cartwright’s point about the demise of Texas sportswriting with this snarling and petty reply to Cartwright’s op-ed.
An old saying in India is that "sarcasm is the last weapon of the defeated wit."
Justice is living proof of the truth of that adage.
Emmylou Harris’ version in 1977 of Townes Van Zandt’s classic song.
This earlier post provided the trailer for Collision, the new Darren Doake-directed documentary about the series of debates and conversations last year between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson over the existence of God. Here is a longer sneak peak of the documentary. It looks as if it is very well done. Enjoy.
With the latest Star Trek movie opening this weekend, you may want to pass the following video of an old William Shatner Saturday Night Life sketch along to your Trekkie friends. Be sure to watch through the end.
Clear Thinkers favorites Dan Jenkins, the dean of American golf writers, is making his first trek to TPC Sawgrass in a decade this week to cover my favorite tournament, The Players (which includes the always fun video of the 17th hole).
Geoff Shackelford scores this interview with Jenkins (which is a follow-up on this one from last year), and it is clear that Jenkins is already in mid-season form. The first part of the answer below is from last year’s interview, the second from this year’s:
The men’s tour sucks. Everybody drives it 340 and shoots 63. I’ve never heard of half their names, and don’t care to know them until they get back to me with two majors.
My fee for talking to Tiger Woods is going up every day. I’ve tried for 10 years to get a one-on-one with him—and can’t. Why? Because Mark Steinberg says, "We have nothing to gain."
Can you imagine what the men’s tour would look like if Tiger and Phil both suffered career-ending injuries? I’ll tell you. It would look like what it looks like today when they aren’t in the field. It would increase interest in polo.
. . .[I]in my declining years, I have arrived at the point where I don’t give a damn about anything but the four majors and the Ryder Cup. They are important. The regular tour sucks.
I should mention that the regular tour didn’t used to suck. It used to be quite glamorous, when the LA Open was always first, when the Crosby was the Crosby, when the players wore snappy clothes and movie stars hung around them, when the Florida swing had its own charm, same for Texas, and so on. But mainly when every winner was SOMEBODY.
I live in the past. It was a better world.
No doubt that more than a few of the folks attending the tournament this week will, at least part of the time, be enjoying Jenkins’ classic “Mankind’s 10 Stages of Drunkenness” from his 1981 novel, Baja Oklahoma:
0) Sober
1) Witty and Charming
2) Rich and Powerful
3) Benevolent
4) Clairvoyant
5) F**k Dinner
6) Patriotic
7) Crank Up the Enola Gay
8) Witty and Charming, Part II
9) Invisible
10) Bulletproof
