Sometimes I wish I had HBO.....

Starting this Sunday on HBO, a mini series called "John Adams" begins airing. It's based on the Pulitzer Prize winning biography of the same name by David McCullough, and it stars Paul Giamatti as John Adams, Laura Linney as Abigail Adams, Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin and David Morse as George Washington, among its huge cast. Having watched the trailer and a short featurette on the making of this movie, I wish like mad I had HBO so I could see it. I have to admit to knowing next to nothing about the Revolutionary period of our country's history but I still find it intriguing nonetheless. Oh, I suppose this series will eventually find its way to DVD, at which time I can finally see it, but that may take a while yet. I love any kind of historical saga and this one looks particularly good. It's amazing how they were able to do so much CGI work but I would imagine that it'd be difficult for an actor to work up against a "green screen" over which an image will eventually be projected later on in the film editing process. These kinds of movies are very expensive to make, so they have to resort to a lot of special effects to make up for not having huge buildings, towns and interiors to build, and large "cast of thousands" scenes where tons of extras need to be paid. So they do all these computer generated effects instead, thus saving the cost of being able to film these historical epics in the first place. I don't know how they did it in the days of Cecil B. DeMille, when they truly did have casts of thousands, like in the movie "The Ten Commandments", which will probably be aired sometime this week, it being "Holy Week" which leads up to Easter. (This movie, by the way, is one of my favorite "so bad it's good" movies that I see each and every year during this season.....who can forget Anne Baxter as Nefretiti and her melodramatic pleas of "Oh, Moses, Moses!" every time she's in his arms. And Yul Brynner constantly uttering his staccato, "So let it be written! So let it be done!" There are some wonderful parodies of this movie available on YouTube, my favorite of which is called "Ten Things I Hate About Commandments". I laugh out loud every time I see this!) So anyway, I guess I am just going to have to wait until this series on John Adams comes out on DVD and hope that there isn't a long waiting list of people dying to see it. I can always look for it at my local video store, probably sometime in the summer, at the earliest.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

KSU Flashes go to MAC Championship Tourney!

Tonight, the KSU Flashes men's basketball team will play for the Mid-American Conference championship against the University of Akron Zips at Quicken Loans Arena ("The Q" for short) in downtown Cleveland. It should be a good game and although I will not be there, I will doubtless read about it online or in tomorrow morning's newspapers. This team has all the look of the team that a few years ago went deep into the NCAA tournament, all the way to the Elite Eight, before being defeated. For one brief week until they were defeated by Buffalo, the KSU team was nationally ranked at #23. They lost that ranking upon their defeat by a lesser team, but I think that people will take them seriously for an NCAA bid if they win tonight. It's been a few years since the team was chosen for the NCAA's and they've had to settle for the National Invitational Tournament instead for post-season play, and they've never gone past the first round of that, as it is. The NIT is a second banana to the NCAA "March Madness" tourneys, but I am sure that it's every bit as exciting for those who are playing in the brackets. Still, the media pays more attention to the NCAA's than the NIT, so it ends up flying very much under the radar as a result. Smaller leagues from lesser schools typically play in the NIT, and it's a shame that not more attention is paid to the mid-majors like the MAC. Maybe KSU will make them sit up and take notice this year that mid-majors deserve as much to be considered for the NCAA as the big leagues are.

MORE WORKOUT NOTES

I've been battling such insecurity about the whole working out thing, but I am finding that when I go to the Women's Fitness class at Breakaway, I feel better about what I am doing as opposed to working out with Joe's Speed and Agility class, which is mostly kids. So far, the women's class has consisted of myself and Alexa Bush, a middle aged mother of several children who is closer to my own age. She's probably in better shape than me from playing tennis as long as she has, but at least I don't feel so aware of my age and my short leg when I am working out with someone who is closer to my age and a woman as opposed to a bunch of middle school aged boys who are younger, tougher and stronger than me. Having just two of us also means getting a lot more individual attention from Jason, something I need a lot more of to feel like I am getting somewhere with all of this. When we were finishing up with some abs exercises today on large green balance balls, he helped me to get the right form and placement on the ball to maximize what I was trying to do. Alexa relentlessly pushed me, too, wanting more reps of each exercise and wanting to do different things on it as well to get the most out of working the core to get it fit, something most of us women really need to do. Sure, I kept thinking, geez, the woman's a glutton for punishment, but I need to be pushed beyond my comfort zone and do the really tough stuff. I'm stronger now than I have been for a good long while now, and I can only hope to continue strengthening, firming, toning and keeping my weight at a reasonable level. The main thing I have to work on now is getting over my complex about my short leg and the lift on my shoe. I have to remind myself that it's not as much of a big deal as I make it out to be in my mind. After all, most of this is a mind over body thing. And I need to remind myself of what progress I have made since I began working out in the first place. I've come a long way. And all I can do now is to continue to improve, stay strong, stay fit and stay healthy.