The finest film ever made about Indiana basketball. IN YOUR FACE, Hackman.
GateHouse — So somehow I ended up an “assistant coach” on my son’s first-grade basketball team. I might as well be a neurosurgeon, snake handler, public speaker or priest. There are few, if any, non-crocodile-related activities on Earth I am less equipped to introduce to others, even if those others are mostly interested in constantly pushing each other and dramatically falling down for no discernible purpose. Once, while playing for a 2007 rec league team of suckitude so legendary that it was brought up on Facebook this past Sunday, I successfully nailed two consecutive free throws, and the heartbreakingly sympathetic, oh-bless-his-heart applause from my quote-fingers friends in attendance still echoes in my mind on the cold nights.
I am, however, easily swayed and blessed with a below-average awareness of my own shortcomings, so when my friend (and actual basketball person) Jamie needed a hand, I said sure, figuring:
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- You know, “attentive parenting” or whatever and
- I grew up in Indiana in the 1980s, in a nice house in a nice neighbborhood with a nice, picturesque, state-issued rickety backboard nailed to the side of the barn (if you didn’t have one already, barns were assigned to residents via the popular Post-”Hoosiers” Civic Pride Act Of 1986). I also attended Indiana University, so I figured if things get really hairy I could always just fall back on my geographic instinct, which is to choke somebody and get fired.
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John Mellencamp — Small Town (acoustic).mp3
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