Balls of Fury

I have decided to review the epic picture Balls of Fury as my first post for WWWWW. I rented this crapper at the behest of Momma Dawger aka Soiux Fan. She has the 3rd worse taste in movies behind her sister who ironically recommended this film to Soiux Fan and Snake.

Soiux Fan's sister's movie recommendation resume includes box office smashes such as Bench Warmers and Nacho Libre. Snake has recommended turds such as Super Troopers, Crash (not the academy award winning version but the movie starring Super Perv James Spader in which he intentionally gets into car accidents and then makes love to the wounds in his woman's body). and Van Wilder part II the Rise of Taj.

Anyways back to the review. Balls of Fury is about this prodigy (raging Nerd)Ping Pong player named Randy Daytona. He ends up choking in the finals against against an East German homo wearing a wrestling singelet. So far absolutely nothing remotely funny has happened.

Fast forward 19 years and Randy Daytona has morphed into a 5'4" super chubby Nerd with long wild hair, sports a head band and likes to rock. He is a very poor man's version of Jack Black. He does the same schtick but it is way less funny. Thats
saying a lot because I think Jack Black sucks worse then Dane Cook.

I was fooled into thinking that this movie might be redeemed by Christopher Walken's character (who doesn't show up until the movie's midpoint) but I was wrong again. Walken mails in his performance because even he could tell that there wasn't anything that would save this miserable movie. Memo to Chris Walken : Start reading the script before agreeing to do any old movie that comes your way.

The Ping Pong scenes were so outrageous because there was no getting around Randy Daytona and his short, stubby, fat legs and arms could be good at anything other then playing video games and smoking pot. Then the movie went completely overboard when the smoking hot Asian chick somehow falls in love with this squatty misfit. It was disgusting. I'm sure in hind sight she wishes she would have broke into hollywood the old fashioned way and done porn.

I won't bore you with any more details from this crap box movie. I will also warn you that there isn't enough booze or pot in the world to make this movie enjoyable. I highly recommend avoiding this movie at all costs. You will never look at Ping Pong or hot Asian chicks the same.

Book Reviews

From time-to-time, I'll take a moment to review a Sports-related book I've recently read. This time, I'll highlight two books I highly recommend reading, and two others I recommend staying away from that I have read this year.

RECOMMEND:

The Last Best League, by Jim Collins:
Awesome book about the Cape Cod League, where the best of the high school graduate/college players come to play ball in the summer. The same league that one movie with Freddy Prinze and Jessica Biel was based on, only in this book the main character doesn't leave in the ninth inning of a no-hitter to chase after the girl. Oh no! I spoiled it. Anyway, the book is one of the best sports books I've ever read.

A Good Walk Spoiled, by John Feinstein:
I really could have put any non-fiction by Feinstein here, but A Good Walk Spoiled is the book of his I read most recently. Feinstein follows the PGA Tour for a season, with total access behind the scenes. It's a little older, written in 1995, so the golfers followed are a little older - Norman, Faldo, Watson - but it is still very good. See also: Tales from Q School, The Last Amateurs, A Season on the Brink, A March to Madness

NOT RECOMMENDED:

Throwing Bullets, by Roy Rowan:
Somewhat similar as The Last Best League as it follows minor league players, but not very well written. It follows Francisco Liriano and some other Twins minor leaguer who I can't remember for a season, although they are playing in different cities, so the author can't completely cover either player. I'm guessing it got published simply because of Liriano's amazing run last season, because it is very sloppily written and really doesn't hold up.

Faithful, by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan:
I love Stephen King, he's my all-time favorite author, and I love baseball. Should be great, right? Nope. It's written by the two authors, die hard Sox fans, although O'Nan says he's also a Pirates fan, so what's up with that, as they follow the Sox through the 2004 Championship season. The problem, is that they both wrote it diary-style, mostly separately, and there's no real narrative here. It would be very entertaining if we were reading it during the season, night-after-night, but in this format it's really, quite boring. I found myself continuing to read it only to get to their reactions to the actual playoffs, and that was pretty anti-climactic somehow. Read only if you're a die-hard Red Sox fan.