I conclude this marvelous book. Thom Gossom writes of growing up in mostly segregated Birmingham, going to John Carrol HS when it was on the Southside, and then walking on the football team at Auburn. He was reshirted his first year and played from 1971 to 1974. He earned his scholarship after walking on, which is hard to do.
I especially enjoyed reading about the 1972 team, the Amazin's they were called, because after the Sullivan-Beasley years, Auburn wasn't to supposed to have anything in 1972 yet that team lost only one game. We beat Alabama 17 to 16 in the famous two-blocked-punt game.
In what seems comically antique now, Coach Jordan came down hard on facial hair in 1974, but finally relented somewhat. The few black players were ready to quit the team over not being allowed to sport facial hair. The Coach had his rules dating from 1951 and he was slow to change.
Gossom is remembered for that touchdown catch in the 1974 Alabama game which would have won the game for the Tigers (Alabama won 17 to 13), but the score was nullified when an official all the way across the field said that Gossom has stepped out of bounds and came back on the field to catch the pass, which was illegal in 1974. Two years later, the rule was changed which would have made the catch legal. It was a tough loss for that team. In this book, Gossom doesn't really say much about it---I think he's not sure if he stepped out of bounds or not---he only plays up the referee way away from the play making the call while the official closest to the catch ruled touchdown.
Thom Gossom has gone on to do acting jobs in various TV shows and movies. He has done well for himself.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
A Horror Movie to See?
Paranormal Activity: A Horror Phenomenon
By Richard Corliss Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009
Oh, sweet Jesus, that nice couple Kate and Micah are about to go to sleep again! But they already suspect that their house is haunted. Micah has propped up his video camera in their bedroom, to record any unusual phenomena, so they know what awful thing happened last night, while they were sleeping. The bedroom door moved a couple inches, and then... moved back!
The All-TIME Top 25 Horror Movies
Big hairy deal, say cynics who've been bred on gross-out horror movies. Show us heads exploding, chests busting, legs sawed off. Yet the packed audience at a late-night screening of Paranormal Activity on Times Square this week didn't need gore effects to be scared witless.
Yes, they knew it was only a movie — one that, like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and plenty others before it, used "found footage" to give a patina of realism to the fanciful events dreamed up by writer-director Oren Peli and endured by actors Micah Stoat and Katie Featherston (using their real names). But when that door moved, the crowd's collective gasp just about sucked all the oxygen out of the theater. (See the top 25 horror movies of all time.)
The campaign to bring Paranormal Activity to the public is already a movie industry legend.
Shot three years ago by Peli, an Israeli-born videomaker, for $11,000, in a week, in his own house, the picture played a few fright festivals in 2007. While DreamWorks considered buying the rights to do a remake with stars, Steven Spielberg took PA home to watch; and when he'd finished screening it... he found his bathroom door inexplicably locked. (He thought the DVD was haunted.) Two weeks ago, Paramount started playing Peli's film at midnight in 16 college towns.
Many showings were sold out. Sorry, come back next week, if you dare. No tickets created a hot ticket — the movie grossed $1.2 million in its early, limited engagements — and Paramount stoked the fever by urging fans to go online and "demand" a wider release. More than a million such requests came in, allowing its web site to brag that PA is "the first-ever major film release decided by You."
This weekend, PA has expanded to all-day runs on 159 screens in 44 cities, and according to early reports, it's headed for a box-office breakout — perhaps the highest three-day gross of any films showing in fewer than 200 venues. "Look out cuz there's a freight train coming," an executive from a rival studio told Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke, "and Paramount is going to make a TON of cash on this pickup. Cuz they ain't spending anything on it, and who knows where the ceiling is!" The box-office figures will make headlines, give the movie more free publicity and lure bigger crowds eager to learn what all the screaming is about. (See the 100 best movies of all time.)
Beyond the viral ingenuity of the marketing, what's cool about Paranormal Activity is that it's not just a fun thrill ride, but an instructive artistic experience. A horror-movie revisionist, Peli follows a less-is-more strategy; he knows that waiting for the big scary jolt does more damage to the nervous system than getting it. The tension builds slowly, as the very apprehensive Katie, a student, and the skeptical Micah, a day trader, feel the first little emotional tremors. The movie keeps us in its grip — because we never leave the couple's haunted property, and because all we see is what the camera has recorded when held by Micah or Katie, or left on at night to monitor their bedroom. That claustrophobia creates a bond between the couple and the audience; they can't escape, and neither can we.
Peli downplays shock, emphasizes suspense: a shadow creeping across a wall, or the ripple of an unseen form under the bedsheets. The gore scenes in splatter movies carry a sadistic punch, but those are outside most moviegoers' experience. What Peli's interested in is dread, a feeling everyone is familiar with. (Will I lose my job? Has she found someone else? Why hasn't our kid come home yet? What's that strange rash?) Movies take that anxiety, crystallize it and, because fiction demands an ending, resolve it. The threat is provided, the fear made flesh, the monster confronted. All gone — feel better? Horror movies provide vicarious psychotherapy in an hour and a half. PA is different: at the end, it doesn't let viewers off the hook. It leaves them hanging there, and dares them to turn that last shiver into a laugh of relief that the delicious ordeal is over. (See 10 lessons from the summer box office.)
PA really has less in common with modern gore movies than with certain avant-garde films of the late '60s, like Michael Snow's Wavelength, a murder mystery in the form of a single, slow, 45-min. zoom shot through a room, and Morgan Fisher's Phi Phenomenon, an 11-min. shot of a wall clock without a second hand. In Fisher's film, viewers were meant to concentrate so intently that they can see the minute hand move. PA uses a similar strategy: the stationary camera in the overnight bedroom scenes has a time code at the bottom right of the frame. Sometimes the clock spins like mad to show the passing of hours between phenomena — or, in one super-creepy scene, the image of Katie standing motionless, as if still asleep, for two hours straight. It's even more chilling a few nights later, when Katie, clearly the more haunted of the two, again stands still for hours but this time on Micah's side of the bed.
If you're a horror-movie fraidy cat, know that most of the spooky stuff occurs in the bedroom, so — as with The Exorcist back in 1973 — you can steel yourself when the couple goes to sleep.
Then too, you may not be scared at all by Paranormal Activity; but as you sit in a movie house you should feel some fraternal pleasure in noticing that the folks around you are preparing or pretending to be scared. And you should be heartened to realize that — in an age of YouTube, iPod and DVR, where people get their visual media one by one — watching a fictional narrative can still be a communal activity. A thousand people sit as one in the dark, as fretful and enthralled as a child hearing a bedtime story, and wondering, What happens next? No, I can't bear it! No, I have to see!
By Richard Corliss Saturday, Oct. 10, 2009
Oh, sweet Jesus, that nice couple Kate and Micah are about to go to sleep again! But they already suspect that their house is haunted. Micah has propped up his video camera in their bedroom, to record any unusual phenomena, so they know what awful thing happened last night, while they were sleeping. The bedroom door moved a couple inches, and then... moved back!
The All-TIME Top 25 Horror Movies
Big hairy deal, say cynics who've been bred on gross-out horror movies. Show us heads exploding, chests busting, legs sawed off. Yet the packed audience at a late-night screening of Paranormal Activity on Times Square this week didn't need gore effects to be scared witless.
Yes, they knew it was only a movie — one that, like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and plenty others before it, used "found footage" to give a patina of realism to the fanciful events dreamed up by writer-director Oren Peli and endured by actors Micah Stoat and Katie Featherston (using their real names). But when that door moved, the crowd's collective gasp just about sucked all the oxygen out of the theater. (See the top 25 horror movies of all time.)
The campaign to bring Paranormal Activity to the public is already a movie industry legend.
Shot three years ago by Peli, an Israeli-born videomaker, for $11,000, in a week, in his own house, the picture played a few fright festivals in 2007. While DreamWorks considered buying the rights to do a remake with stars, Steven Spielberg took PA home to watch; and when he'd finished screening it... he found his bathroom door inexplicably locked. (He thought the DVD was haunted.) Two weeks ago, Paramount started playing Peli's film at midnight in 16 college towns.
Many showings were sold out. Sorry, come back next week, if you dare. No tickets created a hot ticket — the movie grossed $1.2 million in its early, limited engagements — and Paramount stoked the fever by urging fans to go online and "demand" a wider release. More than a million such requests came in, allowing its web site to brag that PA is "the first-ever major film release decided by You."
This weekend, PA has expanded to all-day runs on 159 screens in 44 cities, and according to early reports, it's headed for a box-office breakout — perhaps the highest three-day gross of any films showing in fewer than 200 venues. "Look out cuz there's a freight train coming," an executive from a rival studio told Deadline Hollywood's Nikki Finke, "and Paramount is going to make a TON of cash on this pickup. Cuz they ain't spending anything on it, and who knows where the ceiling is!" The box-office figures will make headlines, give the movie more free publicity and lure bigger crowds eager to learn what all the screaming is about. (See the 100 best movies of all time.)
Beyond the viral ingenuity of the marketing, what's cool about Paranormal Activity is that it's not just a fun thrill ride, but an instructive artistic experience. A horror-movie revisionist, Peli follows a less-is-more strategy; he knows that waiting for the big scary jolt does more damage to the nervous system than getting it. The tension builds slowly, as the very apprehensive Katie, a student, and the skeptical Micah, a day trader, feel the first little emotional tremors. The movie keeps us in its grip — because we never leave the couple's haunted property, and because all we see is what the camera has recorded when held by Micah or Katie, or left on at night to monitor their bedroom. That claustrophobia creates a bond between the couple and the audience; they can't escape, and neither can we.
Peli downplays shock, emphasizes suspense: a shadow creeping across a wall, or the ripple of an unseen form under the bedsheets. The gore scenes in splatter movies carry a sadistic punch, but those are outside most moviegoers' experience. What Peli's interested in is dread, a feeling everyone is familiar with. (Will I lose my job? Has she found someone else? Why hasn't our kid come home yet? What's that strange rash?) Movies take that anxiety, crystallize it and, because fiction demands an ending, resolve it. The threat is provided, the fear made flesh, the monster confronted. All gone — feel better? Horror movies provide vicarious psychotherapy in an hour and a half. PA is different: at the end, it doesn't let viewers off the hook. It leaves them hanging there, and dares them to turn that last shiver into a laugh of relief that the delicious ordeal is over. (See 10 lessons from the summer box office.)
PA really has less in common with modern gore movies than with certain avant-garde films of the late '60s, like Michael Snow's Wavelength, a murder mystery in the form of a single, slow, 45-min. zoom shot through a room, and Morgan Fisher's Phi Phenomenon, an 11-min. shot of a wall clock without a second hand. In Fisher's film, viewers were meant to concentrate so intently that they can see the minute hand move. PA uses a similar strategy: the stationary camera in the overnight bedroom scenes has a time code at the bottom right of the frame. Sometimes the clock spins like mad to show the passing of hours between phenomena — or, in one super-creepy scene, the image of Katie standing motionless, as if still asleep, for two hours straight. It's even more chilling a few nights later, when Katie, clearly the more haunted of the two, again stands still for hours but this time on Micah's side of the bed.
If you're a horror-movie fraidy cat, know that most of the spooky stuff occurs in the bedroom, so — as with The Exorcist back in 1973 — you can steel yourself when the couple goes to sleep.
Then too, you may not be scared at all by Paranormal Activity; but as you sit in a movie house you should feel some fraternal pleasure in noticing that the folks around you are preparing or pretending to be scared. And you should be heartened to realize that — in an age of YouTube, iPod and DVR, where people get their visual media one by one — watching a fictional narrative can still be a communal activity. A thousand people sit as one in the dark, as fretful and enthralled as a child hearing a bedtime story, and wondering, What happens next? No, I can't bear it! No, I have to see!
These Angry White Men
These angry white men, much commented upon, are of great interest to me. If I were a political scientist, I'd be studying these people with sympathy but with some condescension.
Dionne: Just Because Many Obama Critics Are 'Angry White Men' Doesn't Mean We Should Write Them Off
Why Obama's Nobel Prize will only further inflame the right.
by E.J. Dionne Jr.
It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens.
His opponents are describing the award as premature. The deeper problem is that the Nobel will underscore the extent to which Obama is a cosmopolitan figure, much loved in European capitals because he is the change they have been looking for.
Most Americans will probably be happy to have a leader who wins acclaim around the globe. But, paradoxically, a decision made in Oslo to honor Obama's peaceable intentions may make it more difficult for him to reconcile a body politic roiled by years of cultural warfare, partisan animosity and ideological extremism.
The effort to understand where Obama hatred comes from has been one of the few growth areas in the American economy.
There is no doubt that some of the anger is fueled by racial feeling, which is not the same as saying that all opposition to Obama is explained by racism. Most Obama opponents are simply conservative Republicans who disagree with him. But there are too many racist signs at rallies and too many overtly racial pronouncements in the fever swamps of the right-wing media to deny that racism is part of the anti-Obama mix.
Obama can't do much about those against him because of his race. Even a 1 percent unemployment rate wouldn't change the minds most scarred by prejudice. But there is a second level of angry opposition to which Obama needs to pay more attention. It involves the genuine rage of those who felt displaced in our economy even before the great recession, and are now hurting even more.
These Americans are sometimes written off as "angry white men." In analyzing anti Obama feeling, commentators have taken to rummaging around the work of historian Richard Hofstadter during the 1950s and '60s, focusing on his theory that "status anxiety" helps explain the rise of movements on the far right. The idea is that extremism takes hold in groups who feel their "status" is threatened by new groups on the rise in society.
The problem with status anxiety theory is that it focuses on feelings and psychology, thus easily crossing into condescension. It implies that the victims of status anxiety should be doing a better job accepting their new situations and downplays the idea that they might have something real to be angry about.
In fact, many who now feel rage have legitimate reasons for it, even if neither Obama nor big government is the real culprit. September's unemployment numbers told the story in broad terms: Among men 20 and over, unemployment was 10.3 percent; among women, the rate was 7.8 percent.
Middle-income men, especially those who are not college graduates, have borne the brunt of economic change bred by both globalization and technological transformation. Even before the recession, the decline in the number of well-paying jobs in manufacturing hit the incomes of this group of Americans hard. The trouble in the construction industry since the downturn began has compounded the problem.
This is not a uniquely American problem. Last week, I caught up with Australia's deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, who was visiting Washington for a conference on education. Though Gillard diplomatically avoided direct comment on American politics, she said what's happening here reminded her of the rise of Pauline Hanson, a politician who caused a sensation in Australian politics during the 1990s by creating One Nation, a xenophobic and protectionist political party tinged with racism.
Gillard, a leader of Australia's center-left Labor Party, argues that high unemployment, particularly the displacement of men from previously well-paying jobs, helped unleash Hansonism and "the politics of the ordinary guy versus these elites, the opera-watching, latte-sipping elites."
Hansonism collapsed, partly because the Australian economy boomed. Gillard argued that the key to battling the politics of rage is to acknowledge that it is driven by "real problems" and not simply raw feelings.
No doubt some who despise Obama will see the judges in Norway as part of that latte sipping crowd and hold their esteem for the president against him. He can't do much about this. What he can do -- and perhaps then deserve the domestic equivalent of a peace prize -- is reach out to the angry white men with policies that address their grievances, and do so with an understanding that what matters to them is not status but simply a chance to make a decent living again.
Dionne: Just Because Many Obama Critics Are 'Angry White Men' Doesn't Mean We Should Write Them Off
Why Obama's Nobel Prize will only further inflame the right.
by E.J. Dionne Jr.
It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens.
His opponents are describing the award as premature. The deeper problem is that the Nobel will underscore the extent to which Obama is a cosmopolitan figure, much loved in European capitals because he is the change they have been looking for.
Most Americans will probably be happy to have a leader who wins acclaim around the globe. But, paradoxically, a decision made in Oslo to honor Obama's peaceable intentions may make it more difficult for him to reconcile a body politic roiled by years of cultural warfare, partisan animosity and ideological extremism.
The effort to understand where Obama hatred comes from has been one of the few growth areas in the American economy.
There is no doubt that some of the anger is fueled by racial feeling, which is not the same as saying that all opposition to Obama is explained by racism. Most Obama opponents are simply conservative Republicans who disagree with him. But there are too many racist signs at rallies and too many overtly racial pronouncements in the fever swamps of the right-wing media to deny that racism is part of the anti-Obama mix.
Obama can't do much about those against him because of his race. Even a 1 percent unemployment rate wouldn't change the minds most scarred by prejudice. But there is a second level of angry opposition to which Obama needs to pay more attention. It involves the genuine rage of those who felt displaced in our economy even before the great recession, and are now hurting even more.
These Americans are sometimes written off as "angry white men." In analyzing anti Obama feeling, commentators have taken to rummaging around the work of historian Richard Hofstadter during the 1950s and '60s, focusing on his theory that "status anxiety" helps explain the rise of movements on the far right. The idea is that extremism takes hold in groups who feel their "status" is threatened by new groups on the rise in society.
The problem with status anxiety theory is that it focuses on feelings and psychology, thus easily crossing into condescension. It implies that the victims of status anxiety should be doing a better job accepting their new situations and downplays the idea that they might have something real to be angry about.
In fact, many who now feel rage have legitimate reasons for it, even if neither Obama nor big government is the real culprit. September's unemployment numbers told the story in broad terms: Among men 20 and over, unemployment was 10.3 percent; among women, the rate was 7.8 percent.
Middle-income men, especially those who are not college graduates, have borne the brunt of economic change bred by both globalization and technological transformation. Even before the recession, the decline in the number of well-paying jobs in manufacturing hit the incomes of this group of Americans hard. The trouble in the construction industry since the downturn began has compounded the problem.
This is not a uniquely American problem. Last week, I caught up with Australia's deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, who was visiting Washington for a conference on education. Though Gillard diplomatically avoided direct comment on American politics, she said what's happening here reminded her of the rise of Pauline Hanson, a politician who caused a sensation in Australian politics during the 1990s by creating One Nation, a xenophobic and protectionist political party tinged with racism.
Gillard, a leader of Australia's center-left Labor Party, argues that high unemployment, particularly the displacement of men from previously well-paying jobs, helped unleash Hansonism and "the politics of the ordinary guy versus these elites, the opera-watching, latte-sipping elites."
Hansonism collapsed, partly because the Australian economy boomed. Gillard argued that the key to battling the politics of rage is to acknowledge that it is driven by "real problems" and not simply raw feelings.
No doubt some who despise Obama will see the judges in Norway as part of that latte sipping crowd and hold their esteem for the president against him. He can't do much about this. What he can do -- and perhaps then deserve the domestic equivalent of a peace prize -- is reach out to the angry white men with policies that address their grievances, and do so with an understanding that what matters to them is not status but simply a chance to make a decent living again.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Thom Gossom, Jr. - Walk-On
This book is a wonderful reading experience for someone who was a student at Auburn during those early years when Auburn athletics was being integrated. I do remember Henry Harris, the first black athlete at Auburn. He was a basketball freshman in 1968-69, also my freshman year. James Owens, whose high school nephew has verbal committed to play at Auburn, was our first black football player a year after Henry. Thom Gossom came along a year after Owens. Thom Gossom claims the distinction of being the first black Auburn athlete to graduate, Gossom collecting his diploma in 1975. More coming.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Alan Grayson
I wish more Democrats are like Rep. Alan Grayson. Listen to this speech on the House floor. He tells the GOP to get out of the way!
Alan Grayson: "If Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch, they will try to ban bacon."
Alan Grayson: "If Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch, they will try to ban bacon."
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The Damage Done by the Republican Right
From Andrew Sullivan
08 Oct 2009 03:50 pm
The Base Comes ThroughHere's what the Republican party now is: they reward heckling the first black president with funding for the heckler close to $2.7 million. The rage out there is very, very real. They may be a minority, but their passion and volume is so great. They intend to destroy any attempt by Obama to get past the ideological faultlines of the past and seek practical solutions to profound problems; they intend to blame Obama for all he inherited from Bush and Cheney; and there is no responsible Republican leadership that will try to stop them.
08 Oct 2009 03:50 pm
The Base Comes ThroughHere's what the Republican party now is: they reward heckling the first black president with funding for the heckler close to $2.7 million. The rage out there is very, very real. They may be a minority, but their passion and volume is so great. They intend to destroy any attempt by Obama to get past the ideological faultlines of the past and seek practical solutions to profound problems; they intend to blame Obama for all he inherited from Bush and Cheney; and there is no responsible Republican leadership that will try to stop them.
Monday, October 5, 2009
The Good Book (According to Republicans & Libertarians)
Narcissism
Coming Soon: the New International Free-Market Bible
Posted by Amy Sullivan Monday, October 5, 2009 at 10:56 am
111 Comments • Trackback (0)
This is insane. The guys at Conservapedia (aka, "the trustworthy encyclopedia") have decided to retranslate the Bible in what they're calling the Conservative Bible Project, because "liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations."
And you thought liberal bias was limited to the evil mainstream media. Apparently the early Church fathers had their own problems, because the Conservapediacs are particularly intent on scrubbing the Bible of "liberal" passages they say were inserted into the original canon and therefore shouldn't be considered sacred. Passages like the story of the adulteress whom Jesus saved from being stoned with the famous line: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." Conservapedia complains that liberals have used this story to argue against the death penalty. Plus, this Jesus character sounds like a radical moral relativist.
Also among the goals of the project: replace liberal words like "labor" with preferred conservative terms; use concise language instead of "liberal wordiness"; and--my favorite--"explain the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning." Jesus talks about economics more than any other secular subject in the Bible, so they've got their work cut out for them. I look forward to learning the free-market meaning of "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/10/05/coming-soon-the-new-international-free-market-bible/#ixzz0T5fqobOQ
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