The Buddy Reynolds Film Festival

I went to the same college as Buddy Reynolds.

Palm Beach Junior College.

Of course, by the time I got there--I spent eight years in the Air Force, and was behind my high school class, in college--he'd moved on. And Palm Beach High always did look down on Seacrest.

I keep seeing previews for The Longest Yard, with Adam Sandler and Chris Rock. I rented the DVD of the original movie, with commentary by Burt Reynolds, and read his account of the making of the movie in The Games Do Count: America's Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports, by Brian Kilmeade.

I call him Reno in those older movies.

Whenever Granny Brown would see Burt Reynolds or Tom Selleck, she would say, "Is that Reno, or Selix?" Now I can barely tell Adam Sandler from Chris Rock.

Reynolds reports that Ray Nitschke tried to tear his head off. "Kill the movie actor," he would say.

Ray Nitschke was the middle linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, back when the NFL was on CBS in black-and-white. And the AFL was on NBC in color.

There were people who watched the NFL on CBS in black-and-white. There were people who watched the AFL on NBC in color.

You can guess which one I was. I was an NFL snob.

Sports as metaphor.

The Games Do Count left me out, so I wrote my own entry, in their format. You can't copyright a format.

I went out for sports in high school. Football, basketball, baseball. I dressed out, practiced with the team, sat on the bench. Sat on the B-team bench.

Woodie Allen said he used to shop at a place that sold used seconds. He bought a hat with a finger in it. That was me. A hat with a finger in it.

Some of the coaches were organization men and assholes, but I admired Coach Price more than I did my old art teacher, Mr. Ennis, and Coach Frump, who was no longer coaching, had played football for George Halas and the Chicago Bears. Coach Frump played with Bronko Nagurski. When Coach Frump played the Flying Wedge was still legal.

I also admired the municipal tennis pro, Dick van den Bosch, who saw that a poor kid had a racquet to play with. He called his racquet his bat, and favored a large grip. After Pancho Gonzales, a smaller grip became fashionable.

I noticed that the kids who excelled at sandlot, playgroud games often did not go out for organized, team sports, and the stars of the letter jackets didn't bother to play pick-up games.

Sometimes a farm boy would have chores to do after school, and couldn't make practice. If you were good, there was pressure to play. The coach at Rutherford even got Owen to go out for Spring Training, because of his size.

Because of my size I was awkward. I was 6' 2" tall in the 7th grade. My coordination never caught up to my growth spurt.
But I could play run-through tackle.

Run-through tackle, there was a large lawn, with a sidewalk at either end. One person was it. In the middle. Everybody ran from one sidewalk to the other. The person who was it would tackle someone and then they were in the middle. Eventually, everyone was in the middle except two men, then one man. The last man to be tackled won.

You can see a version of this game being played, in Australia, in Sirens.

I don't remember any girls playing, and I don't remember any preacher's wives running naked through the scrum.

I was good at this game. I didn't have to catch the ball. I was like Jerry Lewis, running as a crazed spastic. Think of the Virgil Partch cartoon, "I just washed my husband and can't do a thing with him."

Body-surfing is a matter of timing, knowledge of wave behavior, and swimming skills.

One time Potter and I went body-surfing at The Jetties, in Panama City, when a hurricane was coming towards us. Big rollers were crashing in. We went further and further out. The lifeguards panicked and closed the beach. Everyone swam in but us. We were waiting for the right wave.

The lifeguards whistled. A crowd gathered. The people who swam in lingered.

Finally, the right wave came.

We caught it and rode all the way to shore, stepping out of the surf and walking past the stunned lifeguards, as the crowd cheered, and people admired us.

Barracuda, sharks, manta rays, and moray eels were among the dangers one encountered spearfishing with a face mask and a Hawaiian sling.

One time we came on crawfish schooled up and marching along the bottom and speared a gunny sack full. It was a regular Marianas Turkey Shoot of spiny lobsters. Once I got in a school of African pompano and speared several, before they swam off. I shot a green turtle on the 12-Mile Reef, off Nassau. I put the Kentucky windage on it and hit him in the neck. The spear went straight through his neck.

I never caught a sailfish, but I was with Bill when he landed, and released one. I caught schooly dolphin, kingfish, tarpon, snook, sea trout, bluefish, jack crevalle, and mullet, for bait. I never caught a wahoo.

Oh, yea, I caught houndfish on light tackle. They will walk on their tail. And Owen and I caught a ladyfish, or skipjack, on light tackle.

Bicycling was not a sport, it was a means of transportation, but I went everywhere by bike, I had a paper route on a bike, I could do things on a bike without thinking, a bike gave me freedom, mobility, I rode bikes to work as an adult, ten-speed bikes, mountain bikes, I love a bike. I rode a bike to work in Atlanta in any weather and every day, in traffic, in the rain, in snow and sleet, I could get through when the traffic was stalled, was in gridlock, the motorists hated you, and would try to run you off the road.

You can divide people into motorists and bicyclists. I'm a bike snob.

Last weekend at Larry and Hazel's I fell off a bike, standing still. I lost my balance and started to go and couldn't stop myself. I sprained my wrist, breaking my fall. I'm fat, and top-heavy. Like Dennis Quaid in Everybody's All-American, playing golf.