If you like football ...
... then this could be the quintessential football movie. Watched this the other night:
Not sure when this came out. I think the Netflix sheath said 1977. Still, it is to football what "Slap Shot" was to hockey. It is the "Any Given Sunday" of its day.
I also remember this book being around our house when I was growing up. The chicks on the cover seemed to capture my attention -- in a decidedly rapturous sort of way -- in my preteen years.
Speaking of media when I was growing up, my parents had quite a range in the bookcase and tapedecks. Some of the book titles that I can instantly recall include:
"As I Lay Dying" by Faulkner
"Roots" by Alex Haley
Erma Bombeck's "If Life Is A Bowl of Cherries This Must Be The Pits" (I have no idea how in the fuck I can remember that; yet I cannot tell you who won the World Series in 1999).
Some odd illustrated book written by an American soldier who was a POW for 15 years. My dad made me read that.
"Helter Skelter" by Vince Bugliosi.
A collection of works by Rudyard Kipling, my father's favorite.
"Carrie" by Stephen King. And I think that's all from the memories banks. In the tapedeck in the truck?
Carly Simon
Helen Reddy
Earl Klugh
Crystal Gayle
This was all the work of my parents. This was the shit they were into. My mother, who despised most rock music, surprisingly loved Alice Cooper and Bob Seger. I remember her telling me that she thought they had really impressive voices. She wasn't one for bands or groups, and could see through most marketing attempts pretty swiftly. She preferred artists who did their own thing, not what the record companies advised them to do, or who to be. Music wasn't played often in the common areas of our house. We listened to it in our rooms or at friends' houses.
My sister Sarah, about 10 years older than me, and my brother Joe, about 14 years my senior, had 8-tracks and records lying around that granted to me early exposure. Joe was out of the house by that time, but I can remember him coming home to work at some plant or on some construction job for 6 or 8 weeks and then go back to the East Coast, only to return 10 months later for the same type of gigs. He had a nice acoustic guitar. I say "nice" because I didn't know the difference between nice and shitty. I still don't. I never played guitar, but I have friends who do/did and, from conversations with them, I have been told what guitars are quality and what are crap.
When I was growing up, I looked at my brother Joe as this detached goofball. My parents told me he never had his shit together, that he had a bad temper, that he was a hedonistic pleasure-seeker. I'm older now and I understand that the latter pretty much applies to all of us. Yeah, Joe burned through jobs and money but he always had a nice car, a top-shelf guitar, and a big bag of weed.I don't know. One could have worse priorities.
Joe's axe of choice was an Ovation. He told me that they made the finest acoustic guitars, that everything else was second-rate. I believe that, but not through my own empirical research, but because a guy who knew how to play told me so. And he would tell me this while playing Neil Young songs for me. Joe existed in a different strata than the rest of my family. He had sage advice. He trusted certain name brands and, to this day, buys only American-made products. He told me the best guitars are Ovations. When I got a 10-speed he told me the best road bike is not made by Schwinn, but rather, Motobecane. When I got my driver's license he told me "I know you don't know how to work on cars but if you remember these things, you won't have too many problems with cars. Change the oil, that's the most important. And when it comes to spending money on your car, make sure you have good brakes and good rubber."
Joe and I would have a series of fallings-out, starting when I was about 14 and ending, oh, probably around the middle part of last week. I would lose respect for him over these matters and came to denounce his advice. I started to really fucking hate Neil Young. I stopped giving a crap about good bicycles. And later, into my 20s, and in a classic form of acting out, I went 10,000 miles without changing my oil, blowing my engine apart.
These are elements of my childhood and my relationship with my parents and siblings, that have the highest SEO's on the search engines in my brain. I remember Joe's advice about dating and getting down with girls. This one is the best, the all-time classic, and is a line that has been repeated between me and Dirty Jase for the last 24 years. Joe told me once, to take certain measure before performing cunnilingus. "Make sure she's washed it first," he said. And later my father would add this simple rhyme to keep things in perspective on the very practice. "If it smells like fish, have all you wish; if it smells like cologne, leave it alone."
While Joe exposed me to the rudimentary components of car care, pussy, and bicycles, my sister Sarah made sure she left enough Van Halen records around to pique my interest. And the Beatles, Peter Frampton, and Black Sabbath. My brother Frank, the one closest in age to me, would turn me on to all sorts of music into my adolescence and beyond -- the B-52s, the Clash, the English Beat, the Sex Pistols, RUN-DMC, the very foundation of my musical interests. He was also good with advice, at least when we weren't treating each other as adversaries. I was trying to mack on this other guy's girl when I was a sophomore in high school. Frank said to me, "You're going to get your ass kicked doing that." And I very nearly did. Lo, the wisdom.
My sister Kim and I were far apart in the age, she the oldest, me the youngest. And while she did not have obvious influences on me in regard to music or interpersonal relationships, I am enjoying a sort of re-connect with her in adulthood. She and I always got along, and I feel like we are getting back to that again.
At the root of The Chicken, are the influence of other, more senior chickens. Yes, much of it is absurd but some of it still sticks to the walls of the coop. It's New Year's Eve day, and rather than look back on the year, apparently, I'm looking back a little farther.
