Day: November 11, 2010

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Hoop Dreams’

Before Hoop Dreams, they didn’t make documentaries like this. Non-fiction films were almost invariably a series of talking heads placed against a backdrop of some kind of studio drapery, intercut with archival footage. After 90 minutes, some critical, cultural subject (say, the Vietnam Memorial, the plight of undernourished children) would be illuminated-with the goal of driving the audience to either run immediately for a museum or to make a donation to some relevant charity.

Hoop Dreams was something different: A three-hour film that documented the lives of two underprivileged black youths, William Gates and Arthur Agee, both trying to make it from high school and street pick-up games to college and eventually professional basketball. Filmmakers Peter Gilbert, Steve James, and Frederick Marx followed these ‘hoop dreams’ for five long years, cutting a mountain of footage into what has become one of cinema’s most beloved and enduring documentaries. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Hoop Dreams’

Baby, you can’t drive my car

A woman from … wait for it … Florida was arrested for trying to sell her baby to buy a car.

Now, before you get upset (Too late? OK.), let’s look at this logically. If you’re trying to buy a car, and your only trade-in is something you made yourself, then you’re looking at a sharp depreciation drop. So, ideally, you want to trade as early as possible to get a really good deal.

The baby’s grandparents were also arrested, presumably because they promised to match whatever funds their daughter raised for the car’s down payment.

But at least she didn’t abort the baby, right? If financial independence and hands-on parenting are wrong, then we don’t want be right.

At least it’s not business ethics

Pop quiz time.

If you have 200 already made sneakers, and you just got an order for 600 more sneakers to be made, just how much would it cost you to ship them from your third world factory where they’re made to your distributor in San Francisco, California, in order to them pass them on to three of the four biggest retailers in the world?

Don’t know the question? Maybe you should’ve studied. Here’s another one instead.

Potentially how many students, out of his six hundred, cheated on University of Central Florida Professor Richard Quinn on his business class midterm exam?

The answer? Two hundred. Here’s to hoping that if you didn’t need to study for that answer it’s for legitimate reasons.

AC/DC would beg to differ

It’s not enough for animals to attack us where we live, where we vacation or poop on our cars. No, the enemy is constantly coming up with new ways to defeat the human race, and it is only through the vigilance of this blog and you, alert reader, that we are winning this war. But now, the animals are after our manliness!

Scientists have determined that an animal–not humans, has the largest size huevos based on body mass. The winner is the bushcricket (Teehee!), whose males have testes which make up roughly 14% of their entire body mass, not that they’re really heavy or anything.

The Guys refuse to be intimidated by this.