Tuesday, July 9, 2013

71.1%

The key number for today is 71.1%, and TigerBlog will get to that after he asks you how long it has been since you've seen "The Silence of the Lambs?"

TigerBlog assumes that pretty much everyone has seen it at least once, and if you have, it's left you fairly freaked out for life to a certain extent.

TB isn't sure the first time he saw it. He doesn't think it was back in 1991, when it first came out and did something only three movies have ever done, which is to sweep Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress.

The other two?

"It Happened One Night" and "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest."

Anthony Hopkins' performance as Hannibal Lecter is extraordinary. It's not easy, after all, to make a cannibalistic serial killer so likeable, like the kind of person you'd want to have a meal with, well, uh, no to that actually.

Hopkins completely dominates the movie, so much so that it's easy to forget that he's on screen for a mere 16 minutes in the entire movie, which may be the shortest time for any Best Actor winner.

As an aside, the most recent Best Supporting Actress winner, Anne Hathaway in "Les Miserables," was on screen for 15 minutes. TB has her third in her own movie among supporting actresses behind Cosette and Eponine, and Hathaway spent 4:48 of her 15 minutes butchering "I Dreamed A Dream."

Meanwhile, back at "The Silence of the Lambs," TB watched it the other night, and it served as a wild reminder of just how freaky the movie really is.

It's scary not because someone is hiding behind the tree with a hockey mask on but because of the character development, the sense that the viewer gets of hoping (but realizing it's futile) that Dr. Lecter will help catch Buffalo Bill without any ulterior motives and because of the way it is filmed, especially the scene where the FBI agents in Illinois and Starling in Ohio are knocking on the door at the same time, with only one at the right house.

Meanwhile, back at 71.1%.

The annual report is due today.

For the OAC, that means compiling a certain amount of data, something that TB always finds interesting.

For interest, Princeton played 606 games in the 2012-13 academic year. This doesn't count things like golf tournaments and track and field meets and such where there were multiple teams in competition.

In rowing, dual races count; larger regattas don't. Also in rowing, if there are three boats that go head-to-head, the team that comes in first is 2-0, the team that comes in second is 1-1 and the team that comes in third is 0-2.

As an aside, TB was once in an Ivy League sports information directors meeting when the subject of what counts as a win and what counts as a loss came up. It sparked an endless discussion about things like if finishing first at Heps in track and field made the winning team 7-0, and it was mostly related to the career records of coaches, where some were listed as 0-0 and others were listed as 1,000-500.

Looking back, dinner with Dr. Lecter doesn't seem that bad.

Anyway, Princeton's overall record for the year was 375-221-10, for a .627 winning percentage. This is all sports, all games, not just Ivy games.

Interestingly, there were exactly 303 men's games and 303 women's games.

The men were 161-135-7. That's a .543 winning percentage.

The women?

Princeton's women went 214-86-3 for the year. That's a winning percentage of .711.

In other words, Princeton's women won 71.1% of the games played this past year.

That, TB thinks, is an extraordinary number. He's not going to look every team in the country, but he wonders if any school can beat that. If he had to guess, he'd pick North Carolina, but he's not going to look up every women's team there.

Anyway, the 71.1% figure is amazing. That's a win in significantly more than two-thirds of each women's game Princeton played last year.

Princeton had huge years in fencing, field hockey, basketball, squash, open rowing and soccer on the women's side. Added together, and it was a wild year for Princeton's women.

And so 71.1 is the number of the day.

Runner up is the number one. That would be where Hannibal Lecter ranked on the AFI's Top 100 movie villains of all-time.

The No. 1 villain. But in a nice, charming way.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I' drink to this...with a glass of a nice chianti....