Embracing The Laziness

The TV programmers cooperated nicely yesterday morning.

"Airplane" was ending right about the time that Gary Cooper was deciding to ship out for World War I in Europe in "Sergeant York."

Just as Alvin finished off the German unit and took his 132 prisoners all with just him and seven other soldiers - a true story, by the way - Colonel Jessup was sneering at Lt. Caffey and saying mockingly "what do you want to talk about now, my favorite color?"

Where to start?

"Airplane," as TigerBlog has written before, was a spoof of a 1957 drama called "Zero Hour," which has the exact same plot line - including the main character Ted Stryker, who has to land the plane when the pilots get too sick (you'd have to be very sick to choose not to at least try to help). 

What "Airplane" did was take the storyline and turn it into a comedy, complete with an Air Israel plane with a long beard and yarmulke and a Puritan-looking woman who looks in total disdain at the man across the aisle who offers her whiskey, only to have her snort a line of cocaine, as well as the career-defining performance of the late, great, nobody-today-compares Leslie Nielsen.

It's a classic.

So is "Sergeant York," though it's a different kind of classic.

Gary Cooper plays Alvin York, the simple farmer from Tennessee who wants to exist only in his tiny speck of the world, only to make himself part of the history of World War I with his heroism.

If you're a fan of "The Sopranos," you know that Tony wanted everyone to be more like Gary Cooper, the strong, silent time who never complained and just went about doing the job that needed to be done. In many ways, he was the personification of that era in Americana.

TB can't remember any movie that Cooper ever made that he didn't like, though "Sergeant York" is his favorite. It tells a great story and does so with the charm and modesty that you'd expect from 1941, and it is complete with war effects that look rather primitive compared to movies from even a decade later, let alone today.

Alvin still had to go back to the United States and be recognized for what he did when TB changed the channel. How could he not?

The fight between Rocky and Apollo Creed at the end of the first "Rocky" movie is the best scene TB has ever seen in a movie.

The scene where Al Pacino dances the tango in "Scent of a Woman" is third.

In between is Colonel Jessup's testimony in "A Few Good Men."

The movie "A Few Good Men" is great, even without that scene. About the only flaw TB can see is that the ending doesn't hold up, because Jessup made one phone call and got out of all his troubles, in exchange for letting Dawson and Downey back in the Corps.

On the other hand, "A Few Good Men" is about the only movie TB can think of where the Tom Cruise lead and the Demi Moore supporting character, who work so closely together and obviously can't stand each other at first, don't get together romantically at the end. It would have been too contrived if they did, and it was a perfect move not to let it happen, instead to allow the respect for the two to grow professionally and personally without crossing over into romance.

For everything else that works in the movie, it's Jessup's testimony that pushes it is way over the top. In fact, TB is still bitter that "Unforgiven" beat out both "A Few Good Men" and "Scent of a Woman" for Best Picture of 1992 and especially that Gene Hackman beat out Jack Nicholson's Colonel Jessup.

Whoever wrote that scene probably started out with the fact that Caffey would trap Jessup on the stand with the whole idea that Private Santiago never needed to be transferred off the base if Jessup had really said that Santiago was not to be touched.

The scene maybe overdoes it a little with how scared Caffey was to challenge Jessup, knowing what would happen if he couldn't get it out of him that he had in fact ordered the Code Red. But that's nitpicking.

Of course, the part when Caffey traps him and Jessup gets all flustered and tries to backtrack, calling Santagio a substandard Marine, is awesome.

And it's nothing compared to Jessup's tirade about how "we live in a world with walls, and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns." That speech is can't-miss every time it's on, which is why Alvin's trip to New York City had to be preempted this time.

After "A Few Good Men," it was time for the Major League Lacrosse championship game, which turned out to be dull, and then ultimately "Full Metal Jacket," which was on later.

If you think "Platoon" is a strong statement about the Vietnam War, make sure you see "Full Metal Jacket."

In all, TB didn't really do too much yesterday. He would call his Sunday "embracing the laziness."

And why not? It was the last such day before the weekends around here take on a completely different feel.

The 2012-13 athletic year at Princeton begins Friday, when the men's and women's soccer teams, field hockey team and women's volleyball teams all play. The only one at home is the women's soccer team, which hosts its invitational and kicks off its season Friday in Game 2 against Wake Forest, a Top 10 team this year and Final Four team last year. The other two teams are Colgate and Hofstra.

Between now and June, there will only be a handful of weekends during which Princeton has no athletic events. Mostly, it'll be contained to December and during exam break in January.

Other than that, it's all weekends, all the time.

It's the nature of working in college athletics. You can't complain about it; to do so would be, as TB always says, like buying a house near the airport and complaining about the noise.

The schedule isn't for everyone. TB knows some great people who have left working in college athletics because they didn't want to work every weekend.

For those who stay in, it becomes just how life is. In fact, beyond the moral griping that you might hear about anyone's job, there is little complaining about having to work weekends.

It's actually the best part of the job. Why work in athletics is you don't want to go to the games, right?

Beginning Friday, there'll be plenty of games to go to.

Princeton Athletics plays in more than 600 athletic events each year, and every single one of them, home and away, require the work of more than one person here.

So even if it was a nice day yesterday, it was still good to embrace the laziness.

The opportunity won't be coming along too often for the next nine months.