CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HOUSTON ASTROS: 2017 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Dazzling Erin

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HOUSTON ASTROS, THE 2017 WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!

It wasn’t always an easy journey. When the Astros made the switch from the National League to the American League, it was not always a smooth transition. But this season, the Astros have again and again proved themselves to be the best team in the American League.

And tonight, they are the best team in major league baseball.

It took them seven games to win. The Los Angeles Dodgers proved to be a tough and worthy opponent. Of all the World Series that I have watched, this has been one of the most exciting and unpredictable When the Astros lost Game 6 on Halloween, no one gave them much of chance to win Game 7. They were playing in Los Angeles and everyone said that the Dodgers couldn’t be beaten at home.

Tonight, the Astros did the same thing that they did during the regular season. They played good baseball and the proved the doubters wrong. Tonight, the Astros won their first World Series. For the first time, the World Series has been won by a team from Texas.

Just as people underestimated the Astros this year, people have also underestimated Houston. When Hurricane Harvey flooded the city, it was said that Houston and the people who lived there would never recover. Just like the Astros, both Houston and Texas are proving the doubters wrong.

Congratulations to the Houston Astros! Tonight, the Astros showed the world what it means to be Houston Strong!

A Movie A Day #297: Tommy (2017, directed by Gentry Kirby and Erin Leyden)

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Tommy Morrison. He came from Oklahoma and he was briefly one of the best-known heavyweights in the country. He may be best remembered for playing Tommy “Machine” Gunn in Rocky V but he also fought everyone from Lennox Lewis to Ray Mercer to George Foreman. He had the raw talent to be a contender but lacked the discipline to win his biggest fights. They called him “The Duke” because Tommy claimed to be related to John Wayne.

Tommy’s career came crashing down when, in 1996, he tested positive for HIV. Suspended from boxing, Tommy announced that he would never fight again and then spent the rest of his life trying to return to the ring. In 2006, after serving time in prison on drug and weapons charges, Morrison claimed that the original test had been a false negative. Morrison provided new test results that he said proved that he was HIV-negative. Some believed him. Most did not. When Morrison returned to the ring, it was against lesser opponents than he fought in his heyday. When he died of AIDS complications in 2013, he was 44 years old.

Produced for ESPN’s 30 For 30, Tommy examine the life of Tommy Morrison. Featuring interviews with his family and trainers, Tommy starts with a 13 year-old Tommy Morrison using a fake ID to enter toughman contests in Oklahoma and follows him from the height of his boxing career to his eventual downfall. Tommy emerges as sincere but undisciplined and tragically incapable of handling the sudden fame that was thrust on him as result of being the latest in a long line of great white hopes. (In an interview, Ray Mercer says that he knew he would beat Tommy as soon as he saw the outbreak of acne of Tommy’s back, a sign that Tommy was using steroids and would run out of gas before their fight ended.) Tommy spends his final days in denial about both his poor health and the end of his career.

I wish Tommy had gone into more detail about some aspects of Morrison’s story. The documentary does not address the accusations that, during his comeback tour, Tommy presented doctored tests to attempt to prove that he was HIV-negative. Tommy is still an interesting documentary, one that will mostly appeal to fans of boxing or anyone who wants to know more about the actor who played Tommy Gunn.

Artwork of the Day: Andrew’s Harvest

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Dazzling Erin

Unknown Artist

Music Video of the Day: Wide Boy by Nik Kershaw (1985, dir. Storm Thorgerson)

Posted on November 1, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

I wanted to hold off spotlighting a Nik Kershaw video for a bit, but I might as well polish off this surreal thing I started months ago with some of his videos.

I swear I must have heard this song as a kid. I just can’t find any evidence to support that memory. My best guess is that since I did watch Doc Hollywood (1991) a lot as a kid, even though Chesney Hawkes was the one to sing Kershaw’s The One And Only, I still recognize the style. That song was also used in a movie called Buddy’s Song. I haven’t seen the film yet, but this song seems to fit the plot summary on IMDb as well as that one:

Buddy is an aspiring teenager who is a very good musician and has pressure to go further than his Dad’s teddy boy rocker days. However when his father is sent away for a year for covering up for criminal Des it puts further strain on the family relationship. When Terry is released things get steadily harder while Buddy’s career gets rosier.

Like other Kershaw videos, it’s ambitious. The song doesn’t start till 2:20. Up till then, we see Kershaw sitting in an apartment drinking when we hear what sounds like the TARDIS before revealing a guy who appears to be there to claim his soul. I guess Kershaw’s character sold his soul to have overnight success we see in the rest of the video. At least that’s my interpretation of this version of the video, considering the chorus.

There’s a slightly different version posted below.

There is some change with the color, but the big difference is that it cuts out the beginning of the video and has an alternate ending. We see the doctors walk away and the video ends. In the other one, they pull the Nik Kershaw headshot away from their faces, and we see the man from the start of the video carrying Kershaw’s body before Kershaw fades into the ever growing pixels. I’m not sure why they changed it other than that people might be confused as to who he is if they had already edited out the start of the video for runtime.

And no, I didn’t pick out this song because it technically ties together yesterday’s post of a Huey Lewis & The News horror-themed music video with this one. The connection is that Roger Daltrey was in Buddy’s Song, and he and Huey would go on to be in .com for Murder (2002) together.

Thorgerson of album art fame directed this, and several other Kershaw videos.

Prolific art director and production designer Nigel Talamo was an art director on the video along with Caroline Greville-Morris who has also done a fair amount of work as an art director. She also worked on feature films as a production designer.

Enjoy!

30 Days Of Surrealism: