The Holy Grail Press
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Word of the Every So Often
incruent: (adj.) not bloody, often (well, not anymore) used to explain events that usually happen with bloodshed, casualties, or violence, but this time didn’t. For instance... The rebellion was incruent. Or... When Bob fell off the house it was surprisingly incruent.
The Daily Lesson
It was on August 11, 1973, that the movie American Graffiti made its theatrical debut. The next time you watch it, keep in mind that with the exception of Ron Howard, the movie was cast with complete unknowns. If there’s one movie that stands out for starting the most careers, it has to be American Graffiti. Especially if you don’t count The Outsiders.
Richard Dreyfus went on to star in Jaws and Close Encounters. Harrison Ford became Hans Solo and Indiana Jones. Ron Howard went on to do Happy Days (which was based on American Graffiti). Cindy Williams went on to Lavern and Shirley (which was a spinoff of Happy Days). Mackenzie Phillips to One Day at a Time. And Suzanne Somers to Three’s Company. Paul Le Mat won a Golden Globe, and Cindy Clark was nominated for an Academy Award. She played Debbie Dunham, the girl who hooked up with Toad for the evening. Even Charles Martin Smith, who played Toad, went on to a long career. And lest we forget, American Graffiti was George Lucas’s first major success. The movie was nominated for five Academy Awards, though it didn’t win any. It did win two Golden Globes: Best Musical or Comedy, and New Star of the Year.
I loved the movie. My buddy David and I must’ve seen it five times at the theatre, ostensibly to see the cars, but the story was great, too. By the way, all those cars – Milner’s ’32 Coupe, Falfa’s ’55 Chevy, Steve’s ’58 Impala, Lauri Henderson’s ’56 T-Bird, and every other car on the set – they were all real, either restored especially for the movie or borrowed or purchased from various sources.
Cartoon of the Week
Friar
Stuff
The History of the Future: Sabermetrics and the Demonstrative Display of Faith
Sabermetrics, the use of statistical analysis in baseball to evaluate the performance of players, had been around since the end of the 20th Century. It was in the summer of 2027 that Billy Crudesky, a sportswriter for Weasel Sports, applied Sabermetrics to demonstrative displays of faith in professional baseball. He sought to find out how players who crossed themselves before batting, pointed to the sky after getting a hit, said prayers before taking the mound, or other obvious displays of their religious beliefs actually performed relative to those players who did not. What he found was startling. Those players who publicly demonstrated their faith did far worse than other players. Batters were found to hit, on an average, a full forty points lower than those players who did nothing more than warm up. Base runners were thrown out more often, and less likely to score. Pitchers had a higher ERA, walked more batters, and lost, on an average, five more games per season. And fielders averaged more errors and made fewer marginal plays than those who simply did nothing. By the end of the 2027 baseball season, Crudesky reported that demonstrative displays of faith had completely disappeared from professional baseball.
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