BREAKING TRAINING





I had so many plans for this weekend -- the weekend I was going to be in the Keys, practicing with Pattabhi Jois.

Since I didn't go to Florida, I was going to get rid of a bunch of stuff.

I was going to clean the bathroom.

I was going to get a jump on the seven deadlines that are coming up.

I was going to satsang at the Sivananda shala.

I was going to update my bio.

I was going to pay bills.

But I did none of these things.

Instead I stayed up and watched All that Jazz* on Friday night.

Instead I practiced and breakfasted yesterday.

I excercised some self-control by not seeing the rarely-screened, not-on-VHS-or-DVD Frank Capra masterpiece The Bitter Tea of General Yen.

I did some work at home and met Bindi and the Colonel at the fantastic Korean horror film The Host, in which the Americans look like the bunch of a-holes they (we) are.

Afterwards I picked up some free panties at Victoria's Secret, went home, cleaned the kitchen and took a 20-minute nap.

Then I returned to the same theater to meet SportMarty and see the terrific German thriller The Lives of Others, in which the secret police (Stasi) are a-holes -- except for one man who has his consciousness expanded by Art and takes the path of a true yogi, doing the right thing with no attachment to the consequences.

I highly recommend both movies, although it's an unusual double bill.

Which reminds me....

I've not seen the Bad News Bears since I was 12 (the 1976 version, not the 2005 remake). Of its stars, Walter Matthau is dead and, until recently, Jackie Earle Haley and Tatum O'Neal have been absent from showbiz.

Literally absent. As in, completely-off-the-radar absent.

Jackie didn't get much work after Breaking Away and moved to Texas, where he married and started a video production company. If you look at his IMDB file, there's nothing between 1993 and 2006. Nada.

This is almost as much of a crime as Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker working for a Wal-Mart distribution center in rural Georgia.

And poor Tatum was so busy with rehab and fighting John McEnroe for custody of their kids and writing that tell-all memoir and whatnot that she had little time for a career (and did nothing, it seems, between 1996 and 2002).

More recently, Jackie's been in two films (Little Children and All the King's Men) and among other things Tatum plays the drunken sister on Rescue Me.

Now, if only they'd find something for Kristy McNichol** to do.




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*A length of Paulina street in Chicago at roughly 4400 north received the honorary designation of Bob Fosse Way. He was born here in 1927.

**Kristy was told she had the part of Amanda in Bad News Bears -- until a week later, when the producers gave it to O'Neal. They later co-starred in 1980's Little Darlings. That film featured Matt Dillon, who has also been getting some good roles these days.