Weekly Mail June 25, 2017

Hey Everybody!

Had Saturday night off, so we went to JPaul's, probably my favorite bar here in Oceanside, to see our friend Paulie who was guest bartending. Haven't been out boozing in quite a while, but I was smart enough to cut myself off before things got too out of hand. Was home and in bed by 12:30 AM.
Such is the middle aged life.

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A couple of months ago, I caught a documentary about Steve McQueen and his attempt to produce a movie about the 24 Hours of LeMans auto race. McQueen was a racing fanatic, and at the time (1969-70) the biggest star in Hollywood, coming off classics as The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullit. He formed his own production company and moved to France to work on the project. He ran into numerous issues, namely that he couldn't settle on a script, and he pretty much did little more than film cars going fast. Add to that one of the drivers he hired got into an accident and was forced to have his leg amputated below the knee, and you have a recipe for disaster. The documentary seemed to go to great lengths to blame the LeMans film for the breakup of his marriage (which probably had more to do with his serial womanizing...I mean this was Steve McQueen we're talking about here) and ultimately contributed to his untimely death in 1980 at age 50. (Which probably had more to do with a life of excess than a movie from 10 years earlier) I may not have agreed with the arguments the film was trying to make, but it was still a pretty interesting story.

Our parents generation had Steve McQueen as one of its heroes.

Our kids? Well, they have Lightning McQueen...




   ***MOVIE REVIEW***MOVIE REVIEW***MOVIE REVIEW***MOVIE REVIEW***


MOVIE: Cars 3
STARRING: Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Armie Hammer, Cristela Alonzo,Chris Cooper
SAW IT AT: AMC Rockville Centre 5
SAW IT WITH: Tara, Timmy, Ethan and Ethan folks Sue and Dan (No Shot) Unverzagt


Sports movies, especially ones with sequels often go for this plot line. Think Willie Mays in the 1973 World Series, or Mohammed Ali vs. Larry Holmes, or in more modern times Tiger Woods trying to complete a tournament..the story of the former great athlete who sticks around too long.

That's where we find our hero Lightning McQueen (Wilson). He has now won several Piston Cups, and looks like he might win yet another one, but from out of nowhere comes Jackson Storm (Hammer) the younger, faster and built better new champ. McQueen contemplates retirement, but his best friend Mater (Cable Guy) and lover Sally (Bonnie Hunt) talk him into giving it one last shot.
Meanwhile the company that has loyally sponsored him all these years Rust-eze has been sold to a billionaire Mr. Sterling (Nathon Fillion) who hires a trainer named Cruz Ramirez (Alonzo) to train McQueen using state of the art equipment. When training doesn't go well, Sterling tries to force McQueen to retire to a life of late night infomercials, but McQueen decides to go train on his own, mainly by reaching out to his mentor Doc Hudson"s (the late great Paul Newman) mentor Smokey (Cooper)

The movie, as Timmy astutely pointed out, had many elements of Rocky III in it. I've explained the premise without giving away any surprises. One thing I will say, this version of Cars was much better than the ridiculous plot of Cars 2. This was more like the original Cars, a movie I have watched, oh, lets see 1, 2, 3.........800 times!

The day I took Timmy to the Post, a discussion started over what his generation would be called. We have the Baby Boomers, Generation X and the Millennials. Someone suggested post-millennial, but that's too unoriginal. Whatever they will be called, I'll bet most of the young men of that generation will count Lightning McQueen as one of it's heroes (and for the females Princess Elsa from Frozen). If this is the last installment of Cars, it was a strong finish.

4.5 Aces.



    ***BOOK REVIEW ***BOOK REVIEW***BOOK REVIEW***BOOK REVIEW***

TITLE: Shattered-Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign.
AUTHORS:Jonathan Allen & Amie Parnes

Hillary Clinton has taken to blaming the Russians and former FBI director James Comey for her stunning loss in the 2016 election. And while they very well played a factor, this book examines other factors that contributed to the huge upset.

Chiefly, but not solely, the book seems to place much of the blame on Hillary's boy wonder campaign chief Robby Mook.

In sports, particularly in baseball, you have sabermetrics guys, Billy Beane, Theo Epstein etc, who mainly rely on statistics to make their baseball decisions. Then you have guys like Joe Torre and Buck Showalter, who have seen thousands of games and manage more on guts and guile.

Mook, according to the book, was strictly a numbers man, while other members of the campaign, mainly Bill Clinton, urged more old fashioned campaigning, heading out and pressing the flesh at greasy spoons all over America, even in places where Hillary wasn't expected to win.

I was a freshman in college when the Big Dog ran for President in 1992, and to this day I believe he and James Carville ran the greatest campaign in the history of politics. Carville managed the message, and Clinton took it to the streets. 18 months after George HW Bish prosecuted the most successful war in US History, (and had 90% approval ratings to boot) he was out of a job.

The authors discuss all the other factors that led to Hillary's defeat, but her campaign's failure to utilize the by the gut strategy and use the "by the numbers" strategy instead was the most fascinating part of the story to me.

In the book's introduction, the authors say if you were a Hillary supporter you might feel angry at her, and if you were a Hillary basher, you may end of having sympathy for her. As a member of the latter, I have to admit that I did feel some sympathy. Not that I wanted her to be President or even do I think she deserved it, but the book shows how hard she worked, how she made conscious efforts to learn from the mistakes of her first run for the White House, and her reliance on advice from younger less experienced operatives, like Mook and Huma Abedin.

As I said, the authors examined multiple reasons for the loss, and did it very well. The old school vs. new wave dynamic was the most interesting part for me, but others may see it differently. In any case, it was a very compelling read.

4 Auggies.

School's out, which is my favorite time of year, even all these years later since I went to school. I hope everyone has an awesome summer 2017.

and as always Have a Great Week.