Friday Night Lights

My friends and I recently got Netflix and now that we have watched all the movies we wanted we found the NCB show Friday Nigh Lights. Not really keeping up with the show when it came out, we decided to start with season one. In high school being a football star this show hit to heart. Once I watched the first episode I could not stop. Friday Night Lights takes its inspiration from the non-fiction book Friday Night Lights: a town, a team, a dream and the 2004 film based on it. The book shows details about the 1988 season of the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, Tx. Season one itself is about the community of Dillon, Texas and how the high school football team affects the town as a whole. While screen time of characters varies from episode to episode, the show is most focused on Panthers' football coach Eric Taylor who strives to balance his emphasis on family, his status in a sometimes confrontational community, and his personal ambitions. His family – wife Tami Taylor a guidance counselor turned principal at Dillon High, and teenage daughter Julie Taylor are also central to the show. Coach Taylor and Tami are the only two characters to appear in every episode. When Tami becomes pregnant and gives birth to Gracie Bell Taylor, tensions within the family increase and Julie becomes more rebellious.

Outside of the Taylor family, the show focuses on the respective lives of the Dillon's high school football players. In the series' first episode, star quarterback Jason Street, who suffers an injury that leads to an end to his football career and a disability that he resists and then learns to cope with throughout the series. Lyla Garrity, who at the time of Jason's injury was his girlfriend, parallels his story, as she goes from a Panther cheerleader to a Christian youth leader later on. As a result of Jason's injury, shy and nervous Matt Seracen, becomes the Panthers' starting quarterback and eventually dates the coaches daughter, Julie. It also reveals that Matt's father is serving in Iraq and that he must therefore care for his grandmother Lorraine Saracen all by himself, with help only from his best friend Landry Clarke. Brash star running back Brian Willams, knows as smash, quest for a college football scholarship and fullback Tim Riggens who is an on-and-off alcoholic and partier. Tyra Collette also stars as a town vixen who goes from Tim's occasional girlfriend to Landry's lover following Landry's defense of her from a rapist. Though this show does not air much anymore on TV, if you havent seen any episodes it is a must for a football fan. 

With The Old Breed

When one speaks of WWII all that pops up in people’s mind is Pearl Harbor and the Nazi Holocaust, but the war was much more than that. In my history test this semester we were assigned to read a WWII memoir by Eugene Sledge, nicknamed Sledgehammer by his company, called With the Old Breed. Sledge was a 60 mm mortar man on the K Company, 3^rd battalion, 5^th marines, 1st division. Sledge's memoir gives a perspective on the Pacific campaign in Peleliu and in Okinawa. His memoir is a front-line account of infantry combat in the Pacific War. It brings the reader into the island hopping, the jungle heat and rain or full frontal assault used by his enemies. Sledge wrote starkly of the brutality displayed by American and Japanese soldiers during the battles, and of the hatred that both sides harbored for each other. In Sledge's words, "this was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands." Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, including one Marine whose genitals had been cut off and stuffed into the corpse's mouth. He also describes the behavior of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpse and taking anything they could find. Sledge describes in detail the sheer physical struggle of living in a combat zone and the debilitating effects of constant fear, fatigue, and filth. In Okinawa marines had trouble staying dry, finding time to eat their rations, practicing basic field sanitation. It was impossible simply moving around on the pulverized coral of Peleliu and in the mud of Okinawa. If you are a fan of WWII this is a must read. I read almost 50 pages a night because I could not put it down. 

Rattlesnake Republic

On Sunday night when I was bored at my friend’s house we put on the animal planet to watch a show I have never seen or heard of, it was called Rattlesnake Republic. The show is located in the heart of Texas. It is a little-known world where men hunt and capture the continent's most dangerous predator which over populates the area. Rattlesnake Republic follows the lives and adventures of four teams of determined rattlesnake wranglers deep in the heart of Texas. They have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world as they make their living tracking, catching and selling these deadly serpents. They are local legends and the men to call when you hear the chilling sound of the rattle. Whether a rancher has an infestation that has been killing his cattle, or a contractor can’t get onto his jobsite, these men come armed with a pair of boots and guts of steel as they grab, chase and capture these snakes, sometimes by the dozen. The larger the snake, the more money one gets, by how many pounds it is. Rattlesnakes are sold for their skin, meat, and venom. Every new episode comes on Sunday at 9P.M. One problem I had watching this show before I had to go to bed was the weird dreams I had full of snakes.

Schindler's List

In my theology class in high school and recently in my history class I have came upon the movie by Stephen Spielberg called Schindler’s List. The movie is based during the time of the holocaust and is based on a true story. I think it is a must see and it really opened my eyes to how horrible the Nazi party was and how much of a good man Oscar Schindler was. In the movie Schindler acquires a factory for the production of army mess kits and pots and pans. Not knowing much about how to properly run such an enterprise, he gains a close collaborator in Itzhak Stern, who has contacts with the Jewish business community and Jews in the black market inside the Ghetto. The Jewish businessmen lend Schindler the money for the factory in return for a small share of products produced. Opening the factory, Schindler pleases the Nazis and enjoys his newfound wealth and status while Stern handles all the administration. Workers in Schindler's factory are allowed outside the ghetto, and Stern falsifies documents to ensure that, as many people as possible are deemed "essential" to the German war effort, which saves them from being transported to concentration or death camps. Changing documents of teachers and rabbis to workers.

Amon Goeth arrives oversee construction of the work camp. Once the camp is completed, he orders the final liquidation of the ghetto.  Hundreds of troops emptying the cramped rooms and arbitrarily murdering anyone who protests or appears uncooperative, elderly or infirm. Schindler, watching the massacre from the hills overlooking the area with his mistress, is profoundly affected. He nevertheless is careful to be good friends with Goeth and, through Stern's attention to bribery, Schindler continues to enjoy Nazi support and protection. During this time, Schindler bribes Goeth into allowing him to build a sub-camp for his workers, so that he can keep his factory running smoothly and protect them from being randomly executed. As time passes, Schindler acts on information provided by Stern to try and save as many lives as he can. As the war shifts, Goeth receives orders commanding him to exhume and destroy the remains of every Jew in the camp, including Schindler's workers, to the Auschwitz concentration camp, which is the worst concentration camp.

Oscar prevails upon Goeth to allow him to keep his workers so that he can move them to a factory in his old home.  Goeth eventually gives in, but charges a massive bribe for each worker. Schindler and Stern assemble a list of workers who are to be kept off the trains to Auschwitz. The train orders get mixed up and send the woman to Auschwitz but Oscar makes sure to save their lives. Once in the factory Oscar does as much as he can to keep them safe by not allowing officers in the factory or shoot anyone. The war ends and the Jews are liberated.