Fish Stories

Last week was a six day work week with two projects for school which is not really all that different from a lot of weeks but just a busy week in general. As it is I was only able to fish once, on Sunday morning, for about three hours. I went back to the Messer Street trestle. There was a nice temperature and an ever so light breeze. The downside with the breeze was that it made light ripples on the water reducing visibility.

I was able to hook another large bass in the three pound neighborhood. I was using a wounded shad pattern, mostly silver with flecks of red which I picked up at Wal-mart for a couple of bucks. I had been losing a lot of fish slipping off the back of my lures so I wanted to buy this particular style with a hook on the back. I tend to do a quick retrieve to avoid a lot of reeds and rocks looking for reaction strikes and I thought this style would help. So anyway, I hooked the bass and he fought well enough that I had to let the drag out a little. With the 20 lb. test line it was probably unnecessary but I'm still pretty new at this. Anyway he tugged hard and brought the line under the bridge. Somehow he was able to rip the lure off the line. Now a customer at the bank that I was telling this story looked at me dubiously at the suggestion that a 3 lb. bass could snap a 20 lb. line. But in reality once we talked about it I realized that I am not tying my lure on correctly and I need to learn a more secure knot. This knot will provide a tremendous amount of strength and doesn't look to complicated to master.

Five Great Military Movies

So my first installment of Motion Picture Monday will have to be a cheapy. I stalled on a weekend paper and as it is due today I had to finish writing it this evening. So just a short review of five great military movies in no particular order.

Gladiator- Let's get this out of the way right now, we weren't the first nation to go to war and we sure as hell won't be the last. I love the battles and Russell Crowe's stoic leadership, a soldier who has been there and understands. Favorite quote, "If you find yourself alone, riding in green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled.For you are in Elysium and you are already dead."

Empire of the Sun- Produced by Steven Spielberg this movie is probably the most elegant war movie ever coupled with a haunting soundtrack featuring a lip-syncing Christian Bale to the Welsh Lullaby Suo Gan. I also love the war imagery, war isn't all about bombs and tanks sometimes it's about riding around a living room on a bicycle and golf shoes that don't quite fit.

Stripes- If I could only watch one movie on a continuous loop until the end of time it would probably be Stripes. Bill Murray, Harold Ramos, and John Candy are like peanut butter, jelly, and powdered sugar.You should go pick it up in the $5 bin at Wal-mart and check out the deleted scenes. "Cuando, cuando, cuando cuuanddooo..."

Red Dawn- Laugh, I don't really care. I grew up at the height of the cold war and when I was a kid and had bad dreams it was of this. The Russians were scary and there was always that little chance no matter how slight that they might not love their children too. Granted I was like eight years old when this movie came out but this is another classic probably found in the $5 bin.

Das Boot- I know you're thinking, "Oh great he's probably got a black beret and will next tell us how much he loves Franz Kafka." But let me tell you, I have like a twelve minute attention span and I was riveted to the director's cut of this movie, which for the record is three and a half hours and entirely in German, seriously.

The Old Course at Saint Andrews

If you are just getting out of bed at ten a.m. on this lovely Sunday morning you are probably a. not a fisherman and b. not interested in the Open Championship (commonly mislabeled the British Open). For our first ever installment of Super Sports Sunday I thought I would throw in my two cents on the state of Tiger Woods and the Open Championship. This year the tournament is being held at The Old Course at Saint Andrews one of the most stunning gems in all of golf. If you had to make a list of five course to play before you die St. Andrews, Pebble Beach, and Augusta National would probably all make most people's lists. You can quibble over the other two until the end of time but any of those three would be tough to exclude. Click here for a stunning interactive map of the course being played today for the championship.

Like anyone who claims to know anything about golf, I too will sit down to a perfectly delightful telecast in high definition and be completely distracted by the performance of the great Tiger Woods. Of course, there was a time when we were collectively awe struck by his innate ability to steamroll through any tournament field, wearing his bright red shirts on Sunday and his opponents wilting away like flowers in the desert sun. Currently the winner of 14 major championships sits in 29th place a completely irrelevant 13 shots behind the leader. Jack Nicklaus is the all-time major tournament champion leader with 18 titles and there was also a time when people expected tiger woods to blow through that number en route to a final destination in the neighborhood of 30. Sitting on 14 titles at 34 years old, and going through significant personal, financial, and marital problems Tiger is looking remarkably human. At 34 let me tell you, you start to feel remarkably human.

Maybe Tiger Woods doesn't deserve to make a comeback. Maybe golf like every other sport is starting to pass this particular athlete by. The vast majority of majors are won by golfers under 40. Tiger is of course a special sort of athlete, but an aging special athlete with a gimpy left knee (so I guess we have that in common as well as our age) who is a lot closer to sunset than he is to sunrise. There was definitely a crowd coming into this tournament who was rooting for the man who carries the sport to make a comeback, to win a major on a course on which he excels. Sadly after of Tiger Woods appear to be an automaton who demolished all comers Tiger Woods looks strangely human. Perhaps more amazing than the young robot who won 14 majors will be a curtain call by an aging legend who wins five more. Whatever else I see in sports in my life, I lived through the eras of Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky and I lived through the era of Tiger Woods.

The Best Laid Plans...

So I have thought out an agenda for the blog. I doesn't necessarily mean that I will start writing every day and I reserve the right to break my own self imposed rules. In the interest of sparking a higher quality of creativity I will try to post on different topics on different days. That way over the course of a week a thought can be more refined on a given topic.

Monday- Motion Picture Monday's will be for discussing or reviewing movies, either the family movie of the week, a new movie coming out, or perhaps a classic favorite. Another possibility is secondary topics related to movies such as who's the best Bond or the Jedi Religion.

Tuesday- Fish Stories will be reserved for Tuesdays. I do most of my fishing over the weekend so this is a good day to spin some new yarns or share some photos.

Wednesday- World Wide Wednesday is the day to explore unusual articles and websites from the web. A link to a link can lead you to some interesting places, and there's always YouTube.

Thursday- A picture is worth A Thousand Words. Picture, link as appropriate, and credit only no words on Thursday.

Friday- Family Friday will cover our adventures in parenting, what the boy is up to, etc.

Saturday- Jumble covers loose odds and ends Muskrat scores, politics, crazy drivers with cell phones, whatever.

Sunday- Super Sports Sunday covers topics near and dear to my heart in the world of sports. The Tour de France, the Little League World Series...whatever as long as it's sports related.

Structure

As if my life doesn't have enough structure I am dabbling with the idea of adding a little structure to my blog. This will give me a different topic as a jumping off point perhaps sparking creativity. One example would be World Wide Wednesday for I find some mindless drivel from the web, like the mushroom song, or this.

We'll see, I am still mulling over topics but with school winding down I will have a ton more free time.