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Dissecting pop culture: SJ.com live blogs Hoosiers

Discussion in 'Anything goes' started by Bubbler, Dec 12, 2006.

  1. Ledbetter

    Ledbetter Active Member

    How bout another round since Hoosiers is just starting again on AMC?
     
  2. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    God favors a zone defense.
     
  3. dooley_womack1

    dooley_womack1 Well-Known Member

    For the record, my hed would have been: Hickory Defeats South Bend
     
  4. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    Am I really the guy who watches a conversation for several pages, and then chimes in with the "You've got to be fucking kidding me!" and for good measure, "Holy hell!"?

    Damn.
     
  5. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Holy Fucking Shit: Area Team Performs Well.
     
  6. Jones

    Jones Active Member

    I gotta say, as impressive as the writing is, I'm most impressed by the formatting... The tidy little quote boxes, the bolds, the underscores... Reading it, I was like, Holy, he's got a perfect game going! Nobody talk to him! And then Bubs, when he could have played it safe for the last few lines, he throws a link down in there, like it just wasn't nothing. And it works!

    DAMN.
     
  7. Those of us in Oolitic are still pissed, by the way.
     
  8. Bob Cook

    Bob Cook Active Member

    More Hoosiers junk:

    I've had the pleasure of shooting hoops in the Knightstown, Ind., gym that serves as Hickory's home court. I've even run up and down the steps to the lockerroom. As I recall, for $100 or so, you can rent the gym and bring your buddies there for a few runs.

    Great story -- thanks to the attention from the movie, Knightstown (a beautiful little city east of Indianapolis that's like a living antique museum) was able to get funding not only to make some restorations to the gym (the old high school gym), but also get funding to convert the old high school attached to it to 40 low-income apartments and a preschool. In fact, when you run down those lockerroom stairs, if you jog to the right you're in the preschool.

    That was six years ago, so I don't know if anything has changed much. Probably hasn't.

    Also (pat on my own back alert), I did a piece a couple years ago, after Kent Poole's (Merle) suicide, tracking down the native Hoosiers who played on Hickory's team. As of 2004:

    -- Ollie (Wade Schenck) was divorced, had a couple of teenagers, managed a trucking company outlet, and lived in Pittsboro, Jeff Gordon's hometown. He said when he plays HORSE or around-the-world with his son, the last shot is ALWAYS an Ollie-style free throw. He also once ditched filming because his real team (L&M, now-closed but at the time a legendarily powerful small school) had real games.

    -- Rade (Steve Hollar) is a dentist, working one block from his old high school in Warsaw, Ind. He said, only half-jokingly, that if he had missed what proved to be the game-winning free throws in the 1984 title game, he wouldn't have been able to set up practice in his hometown.

    -- Buddy (Brad Long) is doing what he did at the time of filming: selling class rings, yearbooks and stuff for Jostens. He lives in Whiteland, Ind. Like his character in the movie, he's the real-life team captain. He got me email addresses and phone numbers I couldn't otherwise find.

    -- Whit (Brad Boyle) is back in his hometown of Decatur, Ind. He's been in the Army Reserves and is a physician's assistant. He told me the story of how in college, one of his professors excitedly announced a cast member from Hoosiers was in class. Then he had Long enter the room.

    -- Jimmy (Maris Valainis) never got back to me, but I know he's a golf pro and pro caddy in Southern California. His brother was a photo stringer for UPI while I was there -- I believe he's still shooting for Indianapolis Monthly.

    -- Strap (Scott Summers) is the only one I never heard anything from (at least with Valainis, his wife got back to me once). I was told he had been working as a contractor in Indianapolis, but it also sounded like he's spent the last 20 years trying to get as far away from "Hoosiers" as possible.

    And yes, Bubbler, nice catch on Ray Crowe coaching South Bend Central. The Hoosiers behind "Hoosiers" intentionally put him there as a symbol of how life was about to change in Indiana, what with Crowe's Attucks teams (with Oscar Robertson) winning the next two titles after Milan and playing with a style and ability never seen before in the state. Actually, if you're familiar with the evolution of Indiana life and basketball post-Milan, you can view the movie as a study of people who are getting their last shot at glory before the outside world, which they've been able to put off for so long, comes crashing down around them.
     
  9. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    Actually Ragu, that's a poor representation of your usual posts ... your usual measured posts don't really fit the live format, but I wanted to include you so I had you uttering profanity.

    When in doubt ... go with profanity.

    Very few of the "posts" were attempts to capture any posters accurately, other than Starman, who I wanted ripping Norman Dale from start to finish. I changed many names at the last minute to get more posters involved.

    That, and I had to get OnTheRiver slamming my current hometown which he so loves to do, and the only way to get that was to include Jimmy Fucking Olson to give me something to rip, which in turn, gave OTR his star turn.

    It was all done on the fly in the hour or so after my kids fell asleep. Sat in my recliner with my work laptop and a trusty DVR to make sure I represented it accurately.

    I appreciate Jones' mention (I deliberately kept out the Canadian posters, like they gave a shit about Indiana high school basketball, I'm saving them for the Youngblood live blog :D ) about the formatting. THAT took longer than the writing, about 90 minutes to figure out how much copy could fit in one post and how exactly I was going to make it look somewhat realistic.

    Thank God for the horizontal rule, I think that's what made it work. Originally, it would have looked like a play script with the odd quote thrown in.

    Thanks for all of the kind words.
     
  10. imjustagirl2

    imjustagirl2 New Member

    Bubbler:

    1.) You are my personal Jesus.

    2.) I hate short shorts.

    3.) FANTABULOUS work, my friend. I had to skim it, because I started choking while trying to stifle laughs in the office. I'll read it indepth at home tonight.
     
  11. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    Holy shit, Bubbler's going for a Bulls-like dynasty here.
     
  12. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    Dead fucking on.

    I was actually going to put a note at the bottom of the thread saying it was "for" Ray Crowe, but I thought that was pretentious. And it would have gone over the heads of nearly any non-Hoosier.

    Some of the dismissiveness of Crowe's job status in the thread is actually a swipe at us. So often in this age of instant blogging, message boards, etc., we are quick to pull the trigger on people who have ability/talent but might not have had the time or right circumstances to put it together. In trying to replicate our live blogs, which often define knee-jerk opinions and illogic, I thought Crowe was interesting subject matter, even if most non-Hoosiers wouldn't get the reference.

    The amazing thing about Hoosiers if you're from or lived in Indiana are touches that just get it right. Frankly, I think it makes up for a lot of plot points that are overly sentimental or outright cliched, as Hickory's title game comeback pretty much is.

    Crowe, Hilliard Gates (Mizzou's "fucking stud" was the voice of the state tournament into my high school days well over 30 years later), Tom Carnegie (briefly seen as the Butler Fieldhouse P.A. voice, he was a long-time Indy TV personality and is best known as the voice of the Speedway) and other references are really only understood if you've spent time in Indiana.
     
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