Shortly after sitting down, we realized that most of the folks around us were supporters of the visiting team. I wasn't worried; they were well-behaved. Besides, I'm well-trained in the manly arts of dodging, diving, and running away. But seriously, my whole body is a weapon...and just as effective as the body of the fictional deputy who originally said that.
The girls on the home team eventually scraped a game plan together; they completely dominated the rest of the game, making up the deficit and winning by about five points. It was quite inspirational for the home crowd.
The most remarkable part of the evening was the prelude to the varsity game. There is a time at these events when the divisions of teams and towns fall away; all of the spectators and participants are unified in a vision that transcends mere athletic competition. It begins before the starting players are introduced. The announcer says a few things; the cheerleaders move to the floor; the band prepares to play. A flag slowly unfurls from a case hidden in the ceiling; the audience rises. As the announcer completes his recitation, the cheerleaders, on command of one of their own, turn in unison away from the audience to face the red, white, and blue of the great banner descended. A moment later, the band bursts forth with the strains of the national anthem. For a few minutes, the audience and players, home and away, are united in reverence and respect for the sacrifices of those who brought forth a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, for the brave whose sacrifices have hallowed the cause; we add our devotion to the proposition, with knowledge of past imperfections, but with a desire to preserve this more perfect union.
At The Movies
If our family goes to a movie during the year, it will probably be at Christmas time. My daughter has three of the movies currently playing on her wish list. My list has only one movie. If our lists were set in a Venn Diagram, it would look like a pair of spectacles--the circles did not overlap. Naturally, since I was paying, and driving...we saw one from daughter's list. Wife didn't care which we saw.
The first fifteen minutes of the movie provided an excellent illustration of how modern youth have become largely divorced from reality. Three of the four previews of coming attractions played upon that virtual--as opposed to real--reality connection. I could make additional comment upon that, but I know that nobody wants to read that...and I don't want to go to the trouble of writing it. I already write enough stuff that nobody wants to read.
As for the movie itself, Jumanji, you know what you're getting when you walk into the theater. If you've seen the 1995 film, or the 2005 Zathura, you shouldn't be surprised by this 2017 film. The only twist is that the game becomes a video game that pulls the players into it as the game avatars; instead of bringing the jungle to the players, the players are brought to the jungle. So there's not much that's new here.
You know where this movie is going, and how it's going to get there. Nevertheless, it's an awful lot of fun. The Rock, and Kevin Hart are particularly entertaining. At times, it was laugh-out-loud funny. I have to admit that I was a little disappointed with Jack Black's role; he plays the self-absorbed girl in the body of the male avatar. He just wasn't very funny. The predictable jokes about male anatomy didn't do the film any favors; they were the lowest of the lowbrow moments in the film.
On a ST:TOS scale, with "The Enterprise Incident," "The Omega Glory," and "Balance of Terror" being at the top of the scale; and "The Alternative Factor," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," and "Plato's Stepchildren" being at the bottom of the scale, 2017 Jumanji ranks in the middle of the upper half of the scale, just below "A Piece of the Action."
