Shots Sport Quotes

So you have you price," I said with a mouthful of crumbs. "Your soul for a cookie." Fang made sure Dr. Martinez wasn't looking and then shot me the bird.

I BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW THIS, but lots of guys have a thing for Ariel. You know, from The Little Mermaid? I’ve never been into her myself, but I can understand the attraction: she fills out her shells nicely, she’s a redhead, and she spends most of the movie unable to speak. In light of this, I’m not too disturbed about the semi I’m sporting while watching Beauty and the Beast—part of the homework Erin gave me. I like Belle. She’s hot. Well…for a cartoon, anyway. She reminds me of Kate. She’s resourceful. Smart. And she doesn’t take any shit from the Beast or that douchebag with the freakishly large arms. I stare at the television as Belle bends over to feed a bird. Then I lean forward, hoping for a nice cleavage shot… I’m going to hell, aren’t I?

Excuses are tools of incompetence used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness, and those who use them seldom specialize in anything else.

When Thad began nuzzling her neck, pressing his opened lips against her, she smacked him in the back of the head. "Don't go vamp on me now!" "Whaa!" He shot upright, his fangs sharp. "Where am I?" She glanced at his fangs, then down. "Oh, my gods, when do you not sport wood? There are bathrooms in the back, so go burp the worm or whatever.

Wraith snorted. "Cowards. Seriously. Who brings a gun to a knife fight? That's cheating." "You don't have a gun?" Kynan asked. Wraith made a face of digust. "It's not very sporting to shoot people." "So you're saying that you didn't shoot the people who shot you?" "Hell, yeah, I shot them.

This was Mississippi, where for years whites shot blacks for any reason or no reason and no one cared; where whites raped blacks and it was considered sport; where blacks were hanged for fighting back.

Good thing in this business is that you just have to make one big shot and that’s enough to make you forget 9 other shots that you missed.

Maybe the critics are right. Maybe there's no escaping our great political divide, an endless clash of armies, and any attempts to alter the rules of engagement are futile. Or maybe the trivialization of politics has reached a point of no return, so that most people see it as just one more diversion, a sport, with politicians our paunch-bellied gladiators and those who bother to pay attention just fans on the sidelines: We paint our faces red or blue and cheer our side and boo their side, and if it takes a late hit or cheap shot to beat the other team, so be it, for winning is all that matters. But I don't think so. They are out there, I think to myself, those ordinary citizens who have grown up in the midst of all the political and cultural battles, but who have found a way-in their own lives, at least- to make peace with their neighbors, and themselves. ...I imagine they are waiting for a politics with the maturity to balance idealism and realism, to distinguish between what can and cannot be compromised, to admit the possibility that the other side might sometimes have a point. They don't always understand the arguments between right and left, conservative and liberal, but they recognize the difference between dogma and common sense, responsibility and irresponsibility, between those things that last and those that are fleeting. They are out there, waiting for Republicans and Democrats to catch up with them.

The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself--the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent--all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action.

Tennis taught me to take chances, to take life as it comes. To hit every ball that comes to me no matter how hard it looks, to give it my best shot.

You have to love what you do, to give your best.

Are you kidding, Riley? I can’t believe I found a woman like you in an airport sports bar on Christmas Eve. Call this Scrooge converted, because Christmas miracles do exist.

You hit a bad shot, you have to get over it right there and then so you can get focused on the next one

She’s right. I’m dirty. How could I not be after that animal was inside me? After he subdued me like a rabbit he only left alive for sport?

Memory can be dramatically disrupted if you force something that’s implicit into explicit channels. Here’s an example that will finally make reading this book worth your while—how to make neurobiology work to your competitive advantage at sports. You’re playing tennis against someone who is beating the pants off of you. Wait until your adversary has pulled off some amazing backhand, then offer a warm smile and say, “You are a fabulous tennis player. I mean it; you’re terrific. Look at that shot you just made. How did you do that? When you do a backhand like that, do you hold your thumb this way or that, and what about your other fingers? And how about your butt, do you scrunch up the left side of it and put your weight on your right toes, or the other way around?” Do it right, and the next time that shot is called for, your opponent/victim will make the mistake of thinking about it explicitly, and the stroke won’t be anywhere near as effective. As Yogi Berra once said, “You can’t think and hit at the same time.

AN ACADEMIC DEFINITION of Lynchian might be that the term "refers to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." But like postmodern or pornographic, Lynchian is one of those Porter Stewart-type words that's ultimately definable only ostensively-i.e., we know it when we see it. Ted Bundy wasn't particularly Lynchian, but good old Jeffrey Dahmer, with his victims' various anatomies neatly separated and stored in his fridge alongside his chocolate milk and Shedd Spread, was thoroughgoingly Lynchian. A recent homicide in Boston, in which the deacon of a South Shore church reportedly gave chase to a vehicle that bad cut him off, forced the car off the road, and shot the driver with a highpowered crossbow, was borderline Lynchian. A Rotary luncheon where everybody's got a comb-over and a polyester sport coat and is eating bland Rotarian chicken and exchanging Republican platitudes with heartfelt sincerity and yet all are either amputees or neurologically damaged or both would be more Lynchian than not.

If you wanted to kill me, why haven't you smothered me in my sleep?" "No sport in that." She gestured towards the ceiling. "Can I expect to be strung up on that bar and gutted like a deer?" He looked up at the bar and frowned. "Too much sport. Lots of heave-hoeing. Big mess to clean up after. Instead, why don't you just drink the poison-laced whiskey?" He extended the glass toward her again and when she didn't move he said, "No? Okay then." He shot the drink. She might not want the edge taken off but he sure as hell did.

You know how when you step on court your coach is like "go go go!"? And all throughout you just keep telling yourself to hit harder and harder and keep at it? You know how much you treasure those five-minute timeouts? You know how good you feel at the end of a session? You know how you're glad you're tired? No pills, no shots, just plain energy. I want to work like that. Whether I have to write ten thousand words or send five hundred emails, brainstorm for hours at a time, I want to have that energy. To keep fighting. To know it's all worth it. Oh, yeah. That's my perfect day.

Martians have a win/lose philosophy—I want to win, and I don’t care if you lose. As long as each Martian took care of himself this formula worked fine. It worked for centuries, but now it needed to be changed. Giving primarily to themselves was no longer as satisfying. Being in love, they wanted the Venusians to win as much as themselves. In most sports today we can see an extension of this Martian competitive code. For example, in tennis I not only want to win but also try to make my friend lose by making it difficult for him to return my shots. I enjoy winning even though my friend loses. Most of these Martian attitudes have a place in life, but this win/lose attitude becomes harmful in our adult relationships. If I seek to fulfill my own needs at the expense of my partner, we are sure to experience unhappiness, resentment, and conflict. The secret of forming a successful relationship is for both partners to win.

Love is terrifying. Love coming from someone you didn't expect it to, is even worse, but it's also the most amazing thing that exists on this planet.

She's been a barrel of bitchy monkeys since Jordan and I walked out of the Arrivals gate together earlier this afternoon.

The only difference between a good shot and a bad shot is if it goes in or not

27:17 (NIV) says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” You are only as good as the people whom you consistently surround yourself with.

Miranda wants Andre to rim you. Is that okay?" "What is...is that?" Alex thinks about basketball. He played soccer in high school and he's kind of embarrassed about how little he knows the sport. Rim. Rim shot. Lay up? Free throw? "It's where he licks your asshole...But most guys get into it after a little while...It feels nice, I promise." So. Not basketball.

The best example I know, of this astonishingly stupid attitude towards sport, is that of Franz Ferdinand. His, however, was an achievement with the gun. He used to shoot at Konopist with no less than seven weapons and four loaders, and he once killed more than 4,000 birds, himself, in one day. [A propos of statistics and quite beside the point: a Yorkshireman once drank 52½ pints of beer in one hour.] Now why did Franz Ferdinand do this? Even if he shot for twelve hours at a stretch, without pause for luncheon, it means that he killed six birds in each minute of the day. The mere manual labour, a pheasant every ten seconds for twelve successive hours, is enough to make a road-mender stagger; and there is little wonder that, by the time the unhappy archduke had accumulated his collection of 300,000 head of game, he was shooting with rubber pads on his coat and a bandage round his ears. The unfortunate man had practically stunned himself with gunpowder, long before they bagged him also at Sarajevo.

For Eric, Columbine was a performance. Homicidal art. He actually referred to his audience in his journal: “the majority of the audience wont even understand my motives,” he complained. He scripted Columbine as made-for-TV murder, and his chief concern was that we would be too stupid to see the point. Fear was Eric’s ultimate weapon. He wanted to maximize the terror. He didn’t want kids to fear isolated events like a sporting event or a dance; he wanted them to fear their daily lives. It worked. Parents across the country were afraid to send their kids to school. Eric didn’t have the political agenda of a terrorist, but he had adopted terrorist tactics. Sociology professor Mark Juergensmeyer identified the central characteristic of terrorism as “performance violence.” Terrorists design events “to be spectacular in their viciousness and awesome in their destructive power. Such instances of exaggerated violence are constructed events: they are mind-numbing, mesmerizing theater.” The audience—for Timothy McVeigh, Eric Harris, or the Palestine Liberation Organization—was always miles away, watching on TV. Terrorists rarely settle for just shooting; that limits the damage to individuals. They prefer to blow up things—buildings, usually, and the smart ones choose carefully. “During that brief dramatic moment when a terrorist act levels a building or damages some entity that a society regards as central to its existence, the perpetrators of the act assert that they—and not the secular government—have ultimate control over that entity and its centrality,” Juergensmeyer wrote. He pointed out that during the same day as the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993, a deadlier attack was leveled against a coffee shop in Cairo. The attacks were presumably coordinated by the same group. The body count was worse in Egypt, yet the explosion was barely reported outside that country. “A coffeehouse is not the World Trade Center,” he explained. Most terrorists target symbols of the system they abhor—generally, iconic government buildings. Eric followed the same logic. He understood that the cornerstone of his plan was the explosives. When all his bombs fizzled, everything about his attack was misread. He didn’t just fail to top Timothy McVeigh’s record—he wasn’t even recognized for trying. He was never categorized with his peer group. We lumped him in with the pathetic loners who shot people.

My conception of New York City came from rap music. I envisioned it as a place where people shot each other on the street and got away with it; no one walked on the streets, rather people drove in their sports cars looking for nightclubs and for violence.

A champion thinks: ‘That’s going in the hole, pot the blue and get on to the pink; that’s the shot.’ Embrace the moment, I told myself. This is what top sport is about, this is how you separate yourself from the pack. You grab these opportunities, and commit.

He needed to be willing to take risks. He needed to commit himself to going with his first instincts. That first instinct is the product of the subconscious brain, and he had honed his subconscious perception over thousands of practice shots and rounds of golf.

If he wanted to be great, he would find the time and energy. The actual number of shots I suggested was not as important as the idea that Lebron would set a practice goal for himself, commit to achieving it everyday , and wait patiently for results. Patience was essential.

Oosthuizen's red spot is a classic example of what's known in sports psychology as a process goal--a technique by which the athlete is required to focus on something, however minor, to prevent them from thinking about other things: in Oosthuizen's case, all the ways he could possibly screw up the shot.

Research and practice are clear. Stress inoculation doesn’t work unless you have acquired the skills to navigate the environment you will encounter. As sports psychologist Brian Zuleger told me, “Telling people to relax doesn’t work unless you’ve taught people how to actually relax. The same goes for mental strength. The historical way to develop toughness was to do something physically challenging, and you’d have a fifty-fifty shot if they thrived. You have to teach the skill before it can be applied.” Throwing people in the deep end doesn’t work unless they’ve been taught the basics of how to swim.

fishing, my philosophy is that men will treat women like one of these two things: a sports fish or a keeper. How we meet, how the conversation goes, how the relationship develops, and the demands you make on a man will all determine whether you’ll be treated like a sports fish—a throwback—or a keeper, the kind of woman a man can envision settling down with. And the way we separate the two is very simple, as I explain next. A SPORTS FISH . . . Doesn’t have any rules, requirements, respect for herself, or guidelines, and we men can pick up her scent a mile away. She’s the party girl who takes a sip of her Long Island iced tea or a shot of her Patrón, then announces to her suitor that she just wants to “date and see how it goes,” and she’s the conservatively dressed woman at the office who is a master at networking, but clueless about how to approach men. She has no plans for any ongoing relationships, is not expecting anything in particular from a man, and sets absolutely not nary one condition or restriction on anyone standing before her—she makes it very clear that she’s just along for whatever is getting ready to happen. For sure, as soon as she lets a man know through words and action that he can treat her just any old kind of way, he will do just

firm in Chicago called Klein’s Sporting Goods was known to have sold the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle by magazine coupon. Chicago had been asked to track down Klein’s management and, if necessary, to get them out of bed and try to locate a Dallas or New Orleans order from Lee Harvey Oswald, Lee Oswald, L. H. Oswald, Alex Hiddell, A. Hidell, or A. Hidel.

The toe end of the golf club caught him just behind his right ear and Grant had put all his considerable strength into that one shot. The cracking noise of the impact was impressive. Indeed, I was surprised that the metal hadn’t gone right through the skull and embedded itself deep into Forrester’s brain. Now who thought golf was a silly sport? Not me.

In a proud fatherly sadomasicisticly way, I am thrilled when I get hit. As every deep purple bruise on my body represented a perfect swing. If I were to lift my shirt at any time there would be 4-5 bruises on my body. ... As soon as I was able to, I would throw batting practice again from the short distance, and take another shot if necessary to keep the boys in the zone.

Duke University’s legendary basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, or Coach K as he’s often called, famously came up with the dictum, widely practiced in sports, of “next play.” If you miss a shot in basketball, swing and miss in baseball, or throw an interception in football, you should quickly reset your mind and keep going. Focus on the task at hand rather than on what just happened.

Even though I was born in America, and my ancestors built its infrastructure for free, I’m not a part of the “Our” when they sing, “Our flag was still there!” I feel like the “Our” doesn’t include blacks, most women, gays, trans, and poor people of all colors. And, sadly, our nation reminds us every day. Some may reject the anthem because Francis Scott Key sang for freedom while enslaving blacks. His hatred even bled into the lyrics of the elongated version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” you won’t hear at a sporting event. The third stanza reads: No refuge could save the hireling and slave/From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave That line was basically a shot at slaves who agreed to fight with the British during the War of 1812 in exchange for their freedom.

ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC’D And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry? No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad hearts round him thickened, ’Twas not from sickness’ shots. No whooping-cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots; Not these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots. Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots. O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world fly By falling down a well. They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great. If

I think having faith and believing that things are ultimately in God’s hands is very close to trusting your ability in sports such as golf. When a golfer is in the right frame of mind, he’s confident that he can produce the shot he sees with his mind’s eye. He trusts that the skills he has ingrained through practice are going to work for him if he just lets them and doesn’t try to guide or steer the ball. But at the same time, part of his thinking is acceptance of whatever happens to the golf ball once he hits it. He knows that because he’s a human being, not every shot will come off the way he intends it. He knows that because golf can be a capricious game, his ball is sometimes going to take a weird hop into the woods. He knows he can only do his best and wait to see what the outcome is.

THey were jeered and admired by both sides and were not shot at, for display and panoply were part of war, which was less war than ceremonial sport, a wild, fierce festival.... A day of war was dangerous and splendid, regardless of its outcome; it was a war of individuals and gallantry, quite innocent of tactics and cold slaughter. A single death--or two or three--was the end purpose of the war....

I still suffer hate and pain in my heart every time I see the word "Duke" on a TV screen, and that rotten Thing happened nine years ago when that Swine Christian Laettner hit that impossible last-second shot against Kentucky. I still have a Memory Block about it -- but as I recall it was in the East Regional final that is still known as "the Best basketball game ever played." Geez, it Was and remains the Worst Shock I've experienced in my Life.

He told her of horses which he had bought for a trifle and sold for incredible sums; of racing matches, in which his judgment had infallibly foretold the winner; of shooting parties, in which he had killed more birds (though without having one good shot) than all his companions together; and described to her some famous day’s sport, with the fox-hounds, in which his foresight and skill in directing the dogs had repaired the mistakes of the most experienced huntsman, and in which the boldness of his riding, though it had never endangered his own life for a moment, had been constantly leading others into difficulties, which he calmly concluded had broken the necks of many. Little as Catherine was in the habit of judging for herself, and unfixed as were her general notions of what men ought to be, she could not entirely repress a doubt, while she bore with the effusions of his endless conceit, of his being altogether completely agreeable.

we don’t hate violence. We hate and fear the wrong kind of violence, violence in the wrong context. Because violence in the right context is different. We pay good money to watch it in a stadium, we teach our kids to fight back, we feel proud when, in creaky middle age, we manage a dirty hip-check in a weekend basketball game. Our conversations are filled with military metaphors—we rally the troops after our ideas get shot down. Our sports teams’ names celebrate violence—Warriors, Vikings, Lions, Tigers, and Bears.

The more I know you, the more I wonder who you are.” He counted off her qualities on his fingers. “You have the accent of a lady. You dress like a peasant. You shoot like a marksman. You view the world cynically, yet you venerate Miss Victorine. Your face and body would be the envy of a young goddess, yet you sport an air of innocence. And that innocence hides a criminal mind and the cheek to pull off the most outrageous of felonies.” “So I’m Athena, the goddess of war.” “Definitely not Diana, the goddess of virginity.” As the last shot hit home, he saw Amy’s mask slip. Blood rushed to her face. She bit her lip and looked toward the stairs as if only now realizing she could have—should have—left this whole discussion behind. He laughed softly, triumphantly. “Or perhaps I’m mistaken. Perhaps you have more in common with Diana than I thought.” “Pray remember, sir, that Diana was also the goddess of the hunt.” Amy leaned across the table, intent on making her point—but the blush still played across her cheeks. “She carried a bow and arrow, and she always bagged her quarry. Have a look at the bullet hole in the rock behind you and remember my skill and my cynicism. For we do know things about each other. I know that if you escape, you’ll make sure I’m hung from a gibbet. You know that if I catch you escaping, I’ll shoot you through the heart. Remember that as you cast longing glances toward the window.” With a flourish, she picked up the breakfast tray and walked up the stairs. Jermyn had learned something else about Amy. She liked to have the last word.

This is a central point of this book—we don’t hate violence. We hate and fear the wrong kind of violence, violence in the wrong context. Because violence in the right context is different. We pay good money to watch it in a stadium, we teach our kids to fight back, we feel proud when, in creaky middle age, we manage a dirty hip-check in a weekend basketball game. Our conversations are filled with military metaphors—we rally the troops after our ideas get shot down. Our sports teams’ names celebrate violence—Warriors, Vikings, Lions, Tigers, and Bears.

Oh no,” she breathed. “Not the Highwoods.” She called after the coach as it rumbled off into the distance. “Mrs. Highwood, wait! Come back. I can explain everything. Don’t leave!” “They seem to have already left.” She turned on Bram, flashing him an angry blue glare. The force of it pushed against his sternum. Not nearly sufficient to move him, but enough to leave an impression. “I do hope you’re happy, sir. If tormenting innocent sheep and blowing ruts in our road weren’t enough mischief for you today, you’ve ruined a young woman’s future.” “Ruined?” Bram wasn’t in the habit of ruining young ladies-that was his cousin’s specialty-but if he ever decided to take up the sport, he’d employ a different technique. He edged closer, lowering his voice. “Really, it was just a little kiss. Or is this about your frock?” His gaze dipped. Her frock had caught the worst of their encounter. Grass and dirt streaked the yards of shell-pink muslin. A torn flounce drooped to the ground, limp as a forgotten handkerchief. Her neckline had likewise strayed. He wondered if she knew her left breast was one exhortation away from popping free of her bodice altogether. He wondered if he should stop staring at it. No, he decided. He would do her a favor by staring at it, calling her attention to what needed to be repaired. Indeed. Staring at her half-exposed, emotion-flushed breast was his solemn duty, and Bram was never one to shirk responsibility. “Ahem.” She crossed her arms over her chest, abruptly aborting his mission. “It’s not about me,” she said, “or my frock. The woman in that carriage was vulnerable and in need of help, and…” She blew out a breath, lifting the stray wisps of hair from her brow. “And now she’s gone. They’re all gone.” She looked him up and down. “So what is it you require? A wheelwright? Supplies? Directions to the main thoroughfare? Just tell me what you need to be on your way, and I will happily supply it.” “We won’t put you to any such trouble. So long as this is the road to Summerfield, we’ll-“ “Summerfield? You didn’t say Summerfield.” Vaguely, he understood that she was vexed with him, and that he probably deserved it. But damned if he could bring himself to feel sorry. Her fluster was fiercely attractive. The way her freckles bunched as she frowned at him. The elongation of her pale, slender neck as she stood straight in challenge. She was tall for a woman. He liked his women tall. “I did say Summerfield,” he replied. “That is the residence of Sir Lewis Finch, is it not?” Her brow creased. “What business do you have with Sir Lewis Finch?” “Men’s business, love. The specifics needn’t concern you.” “Summerfield is my home,” she said. “And Sir Lewis Finch is my father. So yes, Lieutenant Colonel Victor Bramwell”-she fired each word as a separate shot-“you concern me.

Mentally practice two or three times each week for about 10 to 15 minutes per rehearsal. Select a specific sports skill to further develop, or work your way though different scenarios, incorporating various game-ending situations. Examples include meeting your marathon goal time, striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth, or making the game-winning shot as the final buzzer is sounding. Mental practice sessions that are shorter in length are also beneficial. Good times include during any downtime in your schedule, the night before a competition, as an element of your pregame routine, and especially as part of a preshot routine.

Instead, Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes and archers. So, to recap: he never played a sport, was shot with a ton of arrows and then beaten to death with clubs and bats, and the Church made him the patron saint of athletes and archers! Essentially, we made him the patron saint of people who brandish clubs, bats or bows. That means someone trying to shoot something with an arrow or hit something with a bat, may actually pray to Sebastian for help. Why would we do that to him? If I were Sebastian, I would never want to see an arrow, archer or bat again. That’s like making JFK the patron saint of sharpshooters, or Elvis the patron saint of bacon cheeseburgers.

The last week of shooting, we did a scene in which I drag Amanda Wyss, the sexy, blond actress who played Tina, across the ceiling of her bedroom, a sequence that ultimately became one of the most visceral from the entire Nightmare franchise. Tina’s bedroom was constructed as a revolving set, and before Tina and Freddy did their dance of death, Wes did a few POV shots of Nick Corri (aka Rod) staring at the ceiling in disbelief, then we flipped the room, and the floor became the ceiling and the ceiling became the floor and Amanda and I went to work. As was almost always the case when Freddy was chasing after a nubile young girl possessed by her nightmare, Amanda was clad only in her baby-doll nightie. Wes had a creative camera angle planned that he wanted to try, a POV shot from between Amanda’s legs. Amanda, however, wasn’t in the cameramen’s union and wouldn’t legally be allowed to operate the cemera for the shot. Fortunately, Amy Haitkin, our director of photography’s wife, was our film’s focus puller and a gifted camera operator in her own right. Being a good sport, she peeled off her jeans and volunteered to stand in for Amanda. The makeup crew dapped some fake blood onto her thighs, she lay down on the ground, Jacques handed her the camera, I grabbed her ankles, and Wes called, “Action.” After I dragged Amy across the floor/ceiling, I spontaneously blew her a kiss with my blood-covered claw; the fake blood on my blades was viscous, so that when I blew her my kiss of death, the blood webbed between my blades formed a bubble, a happy cinematic accident. The image of her pale, slender, blood-covered legs, Freddy looming over her, straddling the supine adolescent girl, knife fingers dripping, was surreal, erotic, and made for one of the most sexually charged shots of the movie. Unfortunately it got left on the cutting-room floor. If Wes had left it in, the MPAA - who always seemed to have it out for Mr. Craven - would definitely have tagged us with an X rating. You win some, you lose some.

And sleep training? Guess who proposed that unique technique? Why, a surgeon-turned-sportswriter, of course, who wrote under the pseudonym Stonehenge. If babies “are left to go to sleep in their cots, and allowed to find out that they do not get their way by crying, they at once become reconciled, and after a short time will go to bed even more readily in the cot than on the lap,” Dr. John Henry Walsh wrote in his Manual of Domestic Economy in 1857. Besides doling out advice on infant sleep, John Henry also authored several books about guns, including The Shot-Gun and Sporting Rifle and The Modern Sportsman’s Gun and Rifle. (And he lost a big chunk of his left hand one day when a gun exploded in his grasp.)

An incredulous scowl crossed his face as he saw a gathering of dockworkers, porters, and cabmen near his wife. A navvy called out to her- "Gi' me a smile, ye sweet tidbit! One little smile! What's yer name?" Cassandra tried to ignore the catcalls, while the coast guard stood by, doing nothing to shield her. "Now, now, Mr. Severin-" the old harbormaster said, following as Tom headed toward Cassandra with swift, ground-eating strides. Tom reached his wife, blocked her from view, and sent a chilling glance at the navvy. "My wife doesn't feel like smiling. Is there something you'd like to say to me?" The catcalls faded, and the navvy met his gaze, taking his measure... deciding to back down. "Only that you're the luckiest bastard alive," the navvy said cheekily. The crowd broke up with a mixture of chuckles and guffaws. "On your way now, lads," the harbormaster said, briskly dispersing the gathering. "Time to go about your business." As Tom turned to Cassandra, he was relieved to see that she didn't seem upset. "Are you all right?" he asked. She nodded immediately. "No harm done." The officer looked sheepish. "I thought they would tire of their sport if we ignored them long enough." "Ignoring doesn't work," Tom said curtly. "It's the same as permission. Next time, pick the ringleader and go for him." "He was twice my size," the officer protested. Tom shot him an exasperated glance. "The world expects a man to have a backbone. Especially when a woman is being harassed.

Moreover, although reference works existed on library shelves in available, and redundant, profusion, no direct access could be obtained to the banned, or burned, books of the three cosmologists, Xertigny, Yates and Zotov (pen names), who had recklessly started the whole business half a century earlier, causing, and endorsing, panic, demency and execrable romanchiks. All three scientists had vanished now: X had committed suicide; Y had been kidnapped by a laundryman and transported to Tartary; and Z, a ruddy, white-whiskered old sport, was driving his Yakima jailers crazy by means of incomprehensible crepitations, ceaseless invention of invisible inks, chameleonizations, nerve signals, spirals of out-going lights and feats of ventriloquism that imitated pistol shots and sirens.

Quickly I find another surprise. The boys are wilder writers — less careful of convention, more willing to leap into the new. I start watching the dozens of vaguely familiar girls, who seem to have shaved off all distinguishing characteristics. They are so careful. Careful about their appearance, what they say and how they say it, how they sit, what they write. Even in the five-minute free writes, they are less willing to go out from where they are — to go out there, where you have to go, to write. They are reluctant to show me rough work, imperfect work, anything I might criticize; they are very careful to write down my instructions word by word. They’re all trying themselves on day by day, hour by hour, I know — already making choices that will last too unfairly long. I’m surprised to find, after a few days, how invigorating it all is. I pace and plead for reaction, for ideas, for words, and gradually we all relax a little and we make progress. The boys crouch in their too-small desks, giant feet sticking out, and the girls perch on the edge, alert like little groundhogs listening for the patter of coyote feet. I begin to like them a lot. Then the outlines come in. I am startled at the preoccupation with romance and family in many of these imaginary futures. But the distinction between boys and girls is perfectly, painfully stereotypical. The boys also imagine adventure, crime, inventions, drama. One expects war with China, several get rich and lose it all, one invents a time warp, another resurrects Jesus, another is shot by a robber. Their outlines are heavy on action, light on response. A freshman: “I grow populerity and for the rest of my life I’m a million air.” [sic] A sophomore boy in his middle age: “Amazingly, my first attempt at movie-making won all the year’s Oscars. So did the next two. And my band was a HUGE success. It only followed that I run the country.” Among the girls, in all the dozens and dozens of girls, the preoccupation with marriage and children is almost everything. They are entirely reaction, marked by caution. One after the other writes of falling in love, getting married, having children and giving up — giving up careers, travel, college, sports, private hopes, to save the marriage, take care of the children. The outlines seem to describe with remarkable precision the quietly desperate and disappointed lives many women live today.

We're working on disrupting an old family tradition." He accepted the glass the Justice offered. "He means feud," Shelby explained at her mother's blank look. She sipped the liqueur,approved it, then sat on the arm of Myra's chair. "Oh...Oh," Deborah repeated as she remembered. "The Campbells and the MacGregors were blood enemies in Scotland-though I can't quite remember why." "They stole our land," Alan put in mildly. "That's what you say." Shelby shot him a look as she sipped again. "We acquired MacGregor land through a royal decree.They weren't good sports about it." Alan gave her a thoughtful smile. "I'd be interested to hear you debate that issue with my father." "What a match," Myra said, brightening at the thought. "Herbert,can you just see our Shelby nose-to-nose with Daniel? All that red hair and stubbornness. You really should arrange it, Alan." "I've been giving it some thought." "Have you?" Shelby's brows lifted to disappear completely under her frizz of bangs. "Quite a bit of thought," he said in the same even tone. "I've been to that wonderful anachronism in Hyannis Port." Myra gave Shelby a brief pat on the thigh. "It's right up your alley,dear.She's so fond of the-well,let's say unique,shall we?" "Yes." Deborah sent Shelby a fond smile. "I could never figure out why. But then,both of my children have always been a mystery.Perhaps it's because they're so bright and clever and restless.I'm always hoping they'll settle down." This time she beamed the smile at Alan. "You're not married, either,are you,Senator?" "If you'd like," Shelby said as she studied the color of her liqueur through the crystal, "I could just step out while you discuss the terms of the dowry." "Shelby,really," Deborah murmured over the sound of the Justice's chuckle.

tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams have experienced losing to a male with not nearly as much notoriety as they have… in a blowout. In 1998, in a matchup against Karsten Braasch, the 203rd ranked male tennis player from Germany, Serena lost 6–1 and Venus lost 6–2. Keep in mind Serena is a 23-time Grand Champion and her sister a 7-time Grand Champion. Serena herself said, “I hit shots that would have been winners on the women’s Tour, and he got to them easily.” Is it a good time to mention at the time Braasch was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, and smoked during changeovers the day of the match? He also admitted to playing a round of golf and drinking a few cocktails before facing the Williams sisters as well as performing like “a guy ranked 600th.” Thirteen years later, in an interview with David Letterman, Serena noted she would lose to Andy Murray 6–0 in just a matter of minutes. She went as far to say men and women’s tennis is a totally different sport. Serena told Letterman, “I love to play women’s tennis. I only want to play girls because I don’t want to be embarrassed.

Oh, it's you, sir," she exclaimed. She drew the door right back. A look of highly pleasurable excitement spread over her face. "Come in, sir, if you please, sir." We entered the hall. From beneath the door on the left, loud snuffling sounds proceeded, interspersed with growls. Bob was endeavoring to "place" us correctly. "You can let him out", I suggested. "I will, sir. He's quite all right, really, but he makes such a noise and rushes at people so it frightens them. He's a splendid watchdog though." She opened the morning room door, and Bob shot through like a suddenly projected cannonball. "Who is it? Where are they? Oh, there you are. Dear me, don't I seem to remember -" sniff- sniff- sniff- prolonged snort. "Of course! We have met!" "Hullo, old man," I said. "How goes it?" Bob wagged his tail perfunctorily. "Nicely, thank you. Let me just see -" he resumed his researches. "Been talking to a spaniel lately, I smell. Foolish dogs, I think. What's this? A cat? That is interesting. Wish we had her here. We'd have rare sport. H'm - not a bad bull terrier." Having correctly diagnosed a visit I had paid recently to some doggy friends, he transferred his attention to Poirot, inhaled a noseful of benzine and walked away reproachfully. "Bob", I called. He threw me a look over his shoulder. "It's all right. I know what I am doing. I'll be back in a jiffy.

Some martial arts, or combat sports at least, offer a career path that includes fame and riches. An Olympic gold medal, perhaps. But that is not true of ours. I train martial arts because they can offer moments of utter transcendence. The ineffable made manifest. This is traditionally described as “beyond words” or “indescribable” but, as a martial artist and a writer, that would feel like a cop-out. I will take this feeling and wrestle it down onto the page, or at least give it my best shot. It is a moment when every atom in your body is exactly where it should be. Every step you have taken on life’s path makes sense, and is part of a coherent story. The pain of every mistake is made worthwhile by the lessons contained within. There is a feeling of physical power without limit; strength without stiffness; flow without randomness; precision without pedantry; focus without blinkers; breadth and depth; massive destructive capability, but utter gentleness; self-awareness without self-consciousness; force without fury; your body alive as it has never been, all fear and pain burned away in a moment of absolute clarity; certainty without dogma; and an overpowering love, even for your enemies, that enables you to destroy them without degrading them. For a religious person it is the breath of God within you; for an atheist it is a moment of attaining perfection as a human being.

You’re back,” I said, refusing to embarrass myself further by getting angry. “I took Tag home. He had big plans to train for his next fight old school, like Rocky, but discovered that it’s a little more appealing in the movies. Plus, I don’t do a very good Apollo Creed.” “Tag’s a fighter?” “Yeah. Mixed martial arts stuff. He’s pretty good.” “Huh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know anything about the sport. “Didn’t Apollo Creed die in one of the movies?” “Yeah. The black guy always dies at the hands of the white man.” I rolled my eyes, and he grinned, making me grin with him before I remembered that I was embarrassed and ticked off that he had kissed me and left town. It felt a little too much like the past. The grin slipped from my face and I turned away, busying myself shaking out the saddle blankets. “So why did you come back?” I kept my eyes averted. He was quiet for a minute, and I bit my lips so I wouldn’t start to babble into the awkward silence. “The house needs more work,” he replied at last. “And I’m thinking of changing my name.” My head shot up, and I met his smirk with confusion. “Huh?” “I heard there was this new law in Georgia. Nobody named Moses can even visit. So I’m thinking a name change is in order.” I just shook my head and laughed, both embarrassed and pleased at his underlying meaning. “Shut up, Apollo,” I said, and it was his turn to laugh.

Zap. Sports channel. Normal is nine innings, four balls, three strikes, somebody wins, somebody loses, there’s no such thing as a tie. Zap. Normal is unreal people, mostly rich unreal people, having sex with rappers and basketball players and thinking of their unreal family as a real-world brand, like Pepsi or Drano or Ford. Zap. News channels. Normal is guns and the normal America that really wants to be great again. Then there’s another normal if your skin color is the wrong color and another if you’re educated and another if you think education is brainwashing and there’s an America that believes in vaccines for kids and another that says that’s a con trick and everything one normal believes is a lie to another normal and they’re all on TV depending where you look, so, yeah, it’s confusing. I’m really trying to understand which this is America now. Zap zap zap. A man with his head in a bag being shot by a man without a shirt on. A fat man in a red hat screaming at men and women also fat also in red hats about victory, We’re undereducated and overfed. We’re full of pride over who the f*ck knows. We drive to the emergency room and send Granny to get our guns and cigarettes. We don’t need no stinkin’ allies cause we’re stupid and you can suck our dicks. We are Beavis and Butt-Head on ’roids. We drink Roundup from the can. Our president looks like a Christmas ham and talks like Chucky. We’re America, bitch. Zap. Immigrants raping our women every day. We need Space Force because Space ISIS. Zap. Normal is Upside-Down Land. Our old friends are our enemies now and our old enemy is our pal. Zap, zap. Men and men, women and women in love. The purple mountains’ majesty. A man with an oil painting of himself with Jesus hanging in his living room. Dead schoolkids. Hurricanes. Beauty. Lies. Zap, zap, zap. “Normal doesn’t feel so normal to me,” I tell him. “It’s normal to feel that way,” he replies.

He found that when the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey team—once described as the national team of French Canada—got knocked out of the playoffs early between 1951 and 1992, Quebecois males aged fifteen to thirty-four became more likely to kill themselves. Robert Fernquist, a sociologist at the University of Central Missouri, went further. He studied thirty American metropolitan areas with professional sports teams from 1971 to 1990 and showed that fewer suicides occurred in cities whose teams made the playoffs more often. Routinely reaching the playoffs could reduce suicides by about twenty each year in a metropolitan area the size of Boston or Atlanta, said Fernquist. These saved lives were the converse of the mythical Brazilians throwing themselves off apartment blocks. Later, Fernquist investigated another link between sports and suicide: he looked at the suicide rate in American cities after a local sports team moved to another town. It turned out that some of the fans abandoned by their team killed themselves. This happened in New York in 1957 when the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants baseball teams left, in Cleveland in 1995–1996 when the Browns football team moved to Baltimore, and in Houston in 1997–1998 when the Oilers football team departed. In each case the suicide rate was 10 percent to 14 percent higher in the two months around the team’s departure than in the same months of the previous year. Each move probably helped prompt a handful of suicides. Fernquist wrote, “The sudden change brought about due to the geographic relocations of pro sports teams does appear to, at least for a short time, make highly identified fans drastically change the way they view the normative order in society.” Clearly none of these people killed themselves just because they lost their team. Rather, they were very troubled individuals for whom this sporting disappointment was too much to bear. Perhaps the most famous recent case of a man who found he could not live without sports was the Gonzo author Hunter S. Thompson. He shot himself in February 2005, four days after writing a note in black marker with the title, “Football Season Is Over”:

Then, on a left-hand curve 2.8 kilometres from the finish line, Marco delivers another cutting acceleration. Tonkov is immediately out of the saddle. The gap reaches two lengths. Tonkov fights his way back and is on Marco’s wheel when Marco, who is still standing on the pedals, accelerates again. Suddenly Tonkov is no longer there. Afterwards Tonkov would say he could no longer feel his hands and feet. ‘I had to stop. I lost his slipstream. I couldn’t go on.’ Marco told Romano Cenni he could taste blood. His performance on Montecampione was close to self-mutilation. Seven hundred metres from the finish line, the TV camera on the inside of the final right-hand bend, looking down the hill, picks Marco up over two hundred metres from the line and follows him for fifty metres, a fifteen-second close-up, grainy, pallid in the late-afternoon light. A car and motorbike, diffused and ghostlike, pass between the camera and Marco, emerging out of the gloom. The image cuts to another camera, tight on him as he swings round into the finishing straight, a five-second flash before the live, wide shot of the stage finish: Marco, framed between ecstatic fans on either side, and the finish-line scaffolding adorned with race sponsors‘ logos; largest, and centrally, the Gazzetta dello Sport, surrounded by branding for iced tea, shower gel, telephone services. Then we see it again in the super-slow-motion replay; the five seconds between the moment Marco appeared in the closing straight and the moment he crossed the finish line are extruded to fifteen strung-out seconds. The image frames his head and little else, revealing details invisible in real time and at standard resolution: a drop of sweat that falls from his chin as he makes the bend, the gaping jaw and crumpled forehead and lines beneath the eyes that deepen as Marco wrings still more speed from the mountain. As he rides towards victory in the Giro d‘Italia, Marco pushes himself so deeply into the pain of physical exertion that the gaucheness he has always shown before the camera dissolves, and — this must be the instant he crosses the line — he begins to rise out of his agony. The torso lifts to vertical, the arms spread out into a crucifix position, the eyelids descend, and Marco‘s face, altered by the darkness he has seen in his apnoea, lifts towards the light.

The enemy won some points at the very beginning. On both of the two days preceding his remarks about Worth, Hitchcock notes that American deserters had been shot while crossing the Rio Grande. Probably they were just bored with army rations but there was some thought that they might be responding to a proclamation of General Ampudia’s which spies had been able to circulate in camp. Noting the number of Irish, French, and Polish immigrants in the American force, Ampudia had summoned them to assert a common Catholicism, come across the river, cease “to defend a robbery and usurpation which, be assured, the civilized nations of Europe look upon with the utmost indignation,” and settle down on a generous land bounty. Some of them did so, and the St. Patrick Battalion of American deserters was eventually formed, fought splendidly throughout the war, and was decimated in the campaign for Mexico City — after which its survivors were executed in daily batches.… This earliest shooting of deserters as they swam the Rio Grande, an unwelcome reminder that war has ugly aspects, at once produced an agitation. As soon as word of it reached Washington, the National Intelligencer led the Whig press into a sustained howl about tyranny. In the House J. Q. Adams rose to resolve the court-martial of every officer or soldier who should order the killing of a soldier without trial and an inquiry into the reasons for desertion. He was voted down but thereafter there were deserters in every Whig speech on the conduct of the war, and Calm Observer wrote to all party papers that such brutality would make discipline impossible. But a struggling magazine which had been founded the previous September in the interest of sports got on a sound financial footing at last. The National Police Gazette began to publish lists of deserters from the army, and the War Department bought up big editions to distribute among the troops. Taylor sat in his field works writing prose. Ampudia’s patrols reconnoitered the camp and occasionally perpetrated an annoyance. Taylor badly needed the Texas Rangers, a mobile force formed for frontier service in the Texas War of Independence and celebrated ever since. It was not yet available to him, however, and he was content to send out a few scouts now and then. So Colonel Truman Cross, the assistant quartermaster general, did not return from one of his daily rides. He was still absent twelve days later, and Lieutenant Porter, who went looking for him with ten men, ran into some Mexican foragers and got killed.

When Oliver called time a few moments later, she’d beaten them all. But she’d beaten Mr. Pinter by only one bird. “It appears, Lady Celia, that you’ve won a new rifle,” the duke said graciously. “No,” she answered. They all stared at her. “It doesn’t seem sporting to win a challenge only because one of my opponents had a faulty firearm. Which we provided to him, by the way.” “Don’t worry,” Mr. Pinter drawled. “I won’t hold the fault firearm against you and your brothers.” “That’s not the point. This should be fair, and it isn’t.” “Then we’ll move forward,” Oliver said, “and let the servants flush the grouse again. Pinter can take one more shot. That’s probably all that the misfire delayed him by. If he misses, then you’ve won squarely. If he hits his target then it’s a tie, and we’ll decide a tie breaker.” “That seems fair.” She glanced over at Mr. Pinter. “What do you say, sir?” “Whatever my lady wishes.” His eyes met hers in a heated glance. She had the unsettling feeling that he referred to more than just the shooting. “Well, then,” she said lightly. “Let’s get on with it.” The beaters headed forward to flush the grouse, but either because of where the grouse had last settled or because of the beaters’ position, the birds rose farther away than was practical. “Damn it all,” Gabe uttered. “He won’t make a shot from here.” “You can ignore this one, and we’ll have them flushed again,” Celia said. But Mr. Pinter raised his gun to follow their flight. With a flash and the repugnant smell of black powder igniting, the gun fired and white smoke filled the air. She saw a bird fall. No, not one bird. He’d hit two birds with an impossible shot. Her breath lodged in her throat. She’d hit two with one shot a few times, due to how they clustered and how well the birdshot scattered, but to do it at such a distance… She glanced at him, astonished. No one had ever beaten her-and certainly not with such an amazing shot. Mr. Pinter gazed at her steadily as he handed off the gun to a servant. “It appears that I’ve won, my lady.” Her mouth went dry. “It does indeed.” Gabe hooted pleased at having escaped buying her a rifle. The duke and the viscount scowled, while Devonmont just looked amused as usual. All of that fell away as Mr. Pinter’s gaze dropped to her mouth. “Well done, Pinter,” Oliver said, clapping him on the shoulder. “You obviously more than earned a kiss.” For a moment, raw hunger flickered in his eyes. Then it was as if a veil descended over his face, for his features turned blank. He walked up to her, bent his head… And kissed her on the forehead. Hot color flooded her cheeks. How dared he kiss her last night as if she were a woman, and then treat her like a child in front of her suitors! Or worse, a woman beneath his notice! “Thank heavens that’s done,” she said loftily, trying to retain some dignity. The men all laughed-except Mr. Pinter, who watched her with a shuttered expression. As the other gentleman crowded round to congratulate him on his fine shot, she plotted. She would make him answer for every remark, every embarrassment of this day, as soon as she had the chance to get him alone. Because no man made a fool of her and got away with it.

The players rose as one into the air, ignoring the Quaffle and dodging the Blooders. Both Keepers abandoned the goal baskets and joined the hunt. The poor little Snidget shot up and down the pitch seeking a means of escape, but the wizards in the crowd forced it back with Repelling Spells. Well, Pru, you know how I am about Snidget-hunting and what I get like when my temper goes. I ran on to the pitch and screamed, ‘Chief Bragge, this is not sport! Let the Snidget go free and let us watch the noble game of Cuaditch which we have all come to see!’ If you’ll believe me, Pru, all the brute did was laugh and throw the empty birdcage at me. Well, I saw red, Pru, I really did. When the poor little Snidget flew my way I did a Summoning Charm. You know how good my Summoning Charms are, Pru – of course it was easier for me to aim properly, not being mounted on a broomstick at the time. The little bird came zooming into my hand. I stuffed it down the front of my robes and ran like fury. Well, they caught me, but not before I’d got out of the crowds and released the Snidget. Chief Bragge was very angry and for a moment I thought I’d end up a horned toad, or worse, but luckily his advisers calmed him down and I was only fined ten Galleons for disrupting the game. Of course I’ve never had ten Galleons in my life, so that’s the old home gone. I’ll be coming to live with you shortly, luckily they didn’t take the Hippogriff. And I’ll tell you this, Pru, Chief Bragge would have lost my vote if I’d had one. Your loving sister, Modesty

Why is this? How can experience be so valuable in some professions but almost worthless in others? To see why, suppose that you are playing golf. You are out on the driving range, hitting balls toward a target. You are concentrating, and every time you fire the ball wide you adjust your technique in order to get it closer to where you want it to go. This is how practice happens in sport. It is a process of trial and error. But now suppose that instead of practicing in daylight, you practice at night—in the pitch-black. In these circumstances, you could practice for ten years or ten thousand years without improving at all. How could you progress if you don’t have a clue where the ball has landed? With each shot, it could have gone long, short, left, or right. Every shot has been swallowed by the night. You wouldn’t have any data to improve your accuracy. This metaphor solves the apparent mystery of expertise. Think about being a chess player. When you make a poor move, you are instantly punished by your opponent. Think of being a clinical nurse. When you make a mistaken diagnosis, you are rapidly alerted by the condition of the patient (and by later testing). The intuitions of nurses and chess players are constantly checked and challenged by their errors. They are forced to adapt, to improve, to restructure their judgments. This is a hallmark of what is called deliberate practice. For psychotherapists things are radically different. Their job is to improve the mental functioning of their patients. But how can they tell when their interventions are going wrong or, for that matter, right? Where is the feedback? Most psychotherapists gauge how their clients are responding to treatment not with objective data, but by observing them in clinic. But these data are highly unreliable. After all, patients might be inclined to exaggerate how well they are to please the therapist, a well-known issue in psychotherapy. But there is a deeper problem. Psychotherapists rarely track their clients after therapy has finished. This means that they do not get any feedback on the lasting impact of their interventions. They have no idea if their methods are working or failing—if the client’s long-term mental functioning is actually improving. And that is why the clinical judgments of many practitioners don’t improve over time. They are effectively playing golf in the dark.11

It is one of the eternal stories that are told about soccer: when Brazil gets knocked out of a World Cup, Brazilians jump off apartment blocks. It can happen even when Brazil wins. One writer at the World Cup in Sweden in 1958 claims to have seen a Brazilian fan kill himself out of “sheer joy” after his team’s victory in the final. Janet Lever tells that story in Soccer Madness, her eye-opening study of Brazilian soccer culture published way back in 1983, when nobody (and certainly not female American social scientists) wrote books about soccer. Lever continues: Of course, Brazilians are not the only fans to kill themselves for their teams. In the 1966 World Cup a West German fatally shot himself when his television set broke down during the final game between his country and England. Nor have Americans escaped some bizarre ends. An often cited case is the Denver man who wrote a suicide note—”I have been a Broncos fan since the Broncos were first organized and I can’t stand their fumbling anymore”—and then shot himself. Even worse was the suicide of Amelia Bolaños. In June 1969 she was an eighteen-year-old El Salvadorean watching the Honduras–El Salvador game at home on TV. When Honduras scored the winner in the last minute, wrote the great Polish reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski, Bolaños “got up and ran to the desk which contained her father’s pistol in a drawer. She then shot herself in the heart.” Her funeral was televised. El Salvador’s president and ministers, and the country’s soccer team walked behind the flag-draped coffin. Within a month, Bolaños’s death would help prompt the “Soccer War” between El Salvador and Honduras.

It was the Michael Jordan/Nike phenomenon that really let people see that athletes were OK, and black athletes were OK. Defying a previous wisdom - not only that black athletes wouldn't sell in white America, but that the NBA as a predominantly black sport could not sell in white America.

Still onto This Day, I Dawdle to Be Plagued With The Same Unfortunate Reoccurring Nightmare. In My Horrifying Dream, there is an Attractive Women With Piercing Blue Eyes And Light Brownish Hair, Sporting A Lengthy Red Dress With Extended Dark Black Heals Who Kills Me On Christmas Day. In My Dream I am Listening to A Christmas Song… “Jingle Bells” While Rambling Down a Dark Corridor Inside A Home. I am Shot in The Back of The Head And The Music Box Lingers Playing The Same Tune. I Can See Nothing but The Bottom of Her Mends, And Then All Becomes Ample Dark.

NBA 2K18 Wishlist - Good Badges To Deal Problems In 2K17 The NBA 2K18 release date has basketball fans hyped. The new game in the series will be the definitive way for fans to take control of their favorite franchises and players on the Xbox One and PS4. As of the features player wish to be added into NBA 2K18, we can compare it with NBA 2K17. Today, we'll list the best badges players would like to see in the latest NBA franchise. Flashy Dunker 2K Sports has spent a large amount of time recording flashy dunk animations that look great when they trigger. Unfortunately players do not equip any of these because they get blocked at a higher rate than the basic one and two hand dunk packages. NBA 2K17 has posterizer to help with contact dunks but Flashy Dunker would be for non-contact animations. The badge would allow you to use these flashy dunk packages in traffic while getting blocked at a lower rate in NBA 2K18. Bullet Passer Badge Even with a high passer rating and Hall of Fame dimer you can still find yourself throwing slow lob passes inexplicably. These passes are easy to intercept and give the defense too much time to recover. Bullet Passer would be an increase in the speed of passes that you throw, allowing you to create open looks for teammates in 2K18 that were not possible in NBA 2K17. A strong passing game is more important than ISO ball and this badge would help with that style of play. 3 And D Badge The 3 and D badge would be an archetype in NBA 2K18 ideally but a badge version would be an acceptable substitute. This badge would once again reward players for playing good defense. The badge would trigger after a block, steal, or good shot defense and would lead to an increase in shooting percentage on the next possession from behind the 3 point arc. Dominant Post Presence Badge It's a travesty that post scorer is one of the more under-utilized archetypes in NBA 2K17. Many players that have created a post scorer can immediately tell you why they do not play it as much as their other MyPlayers, it is incredibly easy to lose the ball in the post. Whether it is a double team or your matchup, getting the ball poked loose is a constant problem. Dominant Post Presence would trigger when you attempt to post up and would be an increase in your ability to maintain possession of the ball as long as NBA 2K18 add this badge. In addition the badge would be an increase in the shooting percentage of your teammate when you pass out of the post to an open man. The Glove NBA 2K17 has too many contested shots. The shot contest rating on most archetypes is not enough to outweigh the contested midrange or 3 point rating and consistently force misses. It's obviously that height helps you contest shots in a major way but it also slows you down. However, the Glove would solve this problem in NBA 2K18. This badge would increase your ability to contest shots effectively, forcing more misses and allowing you to play better defense. Of course, there should be more other tips and tricks for NBA 2K18. If you have better advices, tell us on the official media. The NBA 2K18 Early Tip-Off Weekend starts September 15th. That's a total of four days for dedicated fans to get in the game and try its new features before other buyers. The game is completely unlocked for Early Tip-Off Weekend. Be sure to make enough preparation for the upcoming event.

The enormous salaries paid to sports stars and entertainers lead people to believe that they are the most important people in our society, or have the most important jobs. I believe they are as important as anyone else, but we must ask ourselves what will maintain the pinnacle position of our nation in the world: the ability to shoot a twenty-five-foot jump shot, or the ability to solve a quadratic equation.

You didn’t miss out on your only shot at success. That negative experience will now lead to positive experiences in the future because it has made you smarter and more prepared for the future. You’re now wiser, more experienced, and one step closer to the inevitable success you’ve prepared yourself for.

Sports teams conduct practice sessions and call time-outs mid-game to quickly review what’s going wrong and introduce modified approaches. This is true even in sports that don’t allow breaks. In rowing, for instance, a coxswain might call on a crew to focus on a particular aspect of their technique for five or ten strokes to recover their timing. A basketball point guard might dribble a few seconds off the shot clock while shouting directions to her teammates so they can regroup. Similarly, leaders must reserve time for slowification. Toyota, studied for their organizational learning and outstanding performance, routinely puts breaks between shifts so leaders can run problem-solving and improvement activities before production resumes. When production is interrupted, downtime is often used as a slowification opportunity.

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In watching any of the hoverboard sequences, especially the extended ones like the chase in the Hill Valley square and the tunnel where Biff is trying to reclaim the sports almanac, one can see that a mixture of techniques were used. In some cases, the effects that appear amazing on-screen were really quite low-tech. Thin metal wire legs were placed right in the middle of the underside of some Styrofoam props, so that when Michael J. Fox threw them down, they would wobble as if levitating. In shots where one end of the board was out of frame, the other side was sometimes held by a crew member until Fox grabbed it and tucked it under his arm. When the actors’ feet were obscured, they were often shot from the waist up and put on actual skateboards. Sometimes they were pulled on a large dolly. Large sheets of plywood would be added to the ground in order to create additional height in comparison with the rest of what was in the frame.

A long time ago inside a local ice rink, 15 year olds went to battle to win a game of hockey.  They played for themselves, for their teams, for their coaches, for their towns, and for their families. It was a 0-0 tie in the 2nd period.     Both goalies were outstanding.  But one appeared to be somewhere else. Thinking.  The shot came.    The antagonist wasn’t aiming to break the scoreless tie.  He was living up to his agreement with the other team’s coach.  A coach who wanted his son to be the team's goalie.     He didn’t want a new goalie that could take his team where they have never been.  The playoffs.  A goalie that could secure his team at the top.  The coach watched the shot he bought.      The goalie could have shifted, dodged out of the way, but he was paralyzed.  He dropped to the ice when the puck struck his unprotected neck.     The player skated over to examine the goalie. He had accomplished his task.    And with the money he earned, he can buy the bicycle he always wanted.     The goalie’s father was standing amongst the other parents.  He was enraged that his son didn’t make the save.     He felt the hard work he put into his boy slowly fade, and quickly die out.  He knew how good his son was, and would be.  He knew the puck struck because the goalie let it.  He did not know why.   I groaned as the puck hit me in the arm.  I had pads, but pads can only soften the blow. I squeezed my arm.     My father stood and watched.     My friend fired another shot that whacked me in the throat, knocking me down.  I felt dizzy.      It was frigid on the pond in winter.     This is where I learned to play hockey.  This is also where I learned it was painful to be a goaltender.  I got up slowly, glowering at him.  My friend was perplexed at my tenacity.     “This time, stay down!” And then he took the hardest slap shot I have ever encountered.     The puck tore through the icy air at incredible speed right into my face.     My glove rapidly came up and snatched it right before it would shatter my jaw.  I took my glove off and reached for the puck inside.     I swung my arm and pitched it as fiercely as I could at my friend.     Next time we play, I should wear my mask and he should wear a little more cover than a hat.  I turned towards my father.  He was smiling.  That was rare.     I was relieved to know that I was getting better and he knew it.  The ice cracked open and I dropped through…      The goalie was alone at the hospital.  He got up and opened the curtains the nurse keeps closing at night so he could see through the clear wall.     He eyed out the window and there was nothing interesting except a lonely little tree.  He noticed the way the moonlight shined off the grass and radiated everything else.  But not the tree.  The tree was as colourless as the sky.     But the sky had lots of bright little glowing stars.  What did the tree have?  He went back to his bed and dozed off before he could answer his own question.   Nobody came to visit him at the hospital but his mother.     His father was at home and upset that his son is no longer on the team.  The goalie spot was seized by the team’s original goalie, the coach’s son.     The goalie’s entire life had been hockey.  He played every day as his father observed.  He really wanted a regular father, whatever that was.  A father that cares about him and not about hockey.  The goalie did like hockey, but it was a game.         A sport just like other sports, only there’s an ice surface to play on.  But he did not love hockey.     It was just something he became very good at, with plenty of practice and bruises.     He was silent in his new team’s locker room, so he didn’t assume anyone would come and see how he was doing.

If you want my opinion . . .” Brooke said, lifting a decanter of whiskey. “I don’t.” Brooke, of course, was undeterred. To the contrary, a keen anticipation lit his eyes. The man possessed a cutting wit, and used it to draw blood. Some gentlemen angled trout while on holiday; others shot game. Arthur Brooke made it a sport to disenchant— as though it were his personal mission to drive fancy and naiveté to extinction. He said smugly, “My dear Mrs. Yardley, you have assembled a lovely collection of words.” Portia eyed him with skepticism. “I don’t suppose that’s a compliment.” “No, it isn’t,” he answered. “Pretty words, all, but there are too many of them. With so many extravagant ornaments, one cannot make out the story beneath.” “I can make out the story quite clearly,” Cecily protested. “It’s nighttime, and there is a terrific storm.” “There you have it,” Denny said. “It was a dark and stormy night.” He made a generous motion toward Portia. “Feel free to use that. I won’t mind.” With a groan, Portia rose from her chair and swept to the window. “The difficulty is, this is not a dark and stormy night. It is clear, and well-lit by the moon, and unseasonably warm for autumn. Terrible. I was promised a gothic holiday to inspire my literary imagination, and Swinford Manor is hopeless. Mr. Denton, your house is entirely too cheerful and maintained.” “So sorry to disappoint,” Denny said. “Shall I instruct the housekeeper to neglect the cobwebs in your chambers?” “That wouldn’t be nearly enough. There’s still that sprightly toile wallpaper to contend with— all those gamboling lambs and frolicking dairymaids. Can you imagine, this morning I found myself humming! I expected this house to be decrepit, lugubrious . . .” “Lugubrious.” Brooke drawled the word into his whiskey. “Another pretty word, lugubrious. More than pretty. Positively voluptuous with vowels, lugubrious. And spoken with such . . . mellifluence.” Portia flicked him a bemused glance. He added, “One pretty word deserves another, don’t you think?

With five players on each team taking the field, the goal is to get the orange basketball in the hoop. Two points are scored for close shots, three points if it is behind the large arc. While popular in the United States, other countries also play this sport. Michael Jordan is the stand out player in this game.

FARBSS (Friedman Archives Recipe for Better Sports Shots) method, which you may wish to commit to a memory location: · Set your camera to A (Aperture Priority) mode (yes, APERTURE). · Set the F/stop all the way open (lowest number). · Set ISO to something reasonable depending on your light. Your target goal for shutter speed is 1/2000th of a second or faster. · Set Focus mode to AF-C. · Set Focus Area to Wide. · Set Drive Mode to Continuous Shooting in Mid- or Hi-speed mode.

Rumors get started with a kernel of truth

Pregame jitters hadn’t been a part of Myron’s existence for over a decade, and he knew now what he’d always suspected: this nerve-jangled high was directly connected to basketball. Nothing else. He had never experienced anything similar in his business or personal life. Even violent confrontations—a perverted high if ever there was one—were not exactly like this. He had thought this uniquely sports-related sensation would ebb away with age and maturity, when a young man no longer takes a small event like a basketball game and blows it into an entity of near biblical importance, when something so relatively insignificant in the long run is no longer magnified to epic dimensions through the prism of youth. An adult, of course, can see what is useless to explain to a child—that one particular school dance or missed foul shot would be no more than a pang in the future. Yet here Myron was, comfortably ensconced in his thirties and still feeling the same heightened and raw sensations he had known only in youth. They hadn’t gone away with age. They’d just hibernated—as Calvin had warned him—hoping for a chance to stir, a chance that normally never came in one man’s lifetime. Were

Sydney enjoyed living in the country, though she took no direct part in field sports. After her marriage, there is no record of her shooting or hunting, though as a girl she rode well and often, and when she accompanied her father to Scotland in 1898 she was regarded as ‘a brilliant shot’.33 As they grew up she encouraged her children to follow the hounds of the Heythrop Hunt and join their father when he fished and shot, but if they were not interested she was unconcerned. Many of her friends would have said she was a countrywoman, but she enjoyed London too.

When you look at other sports it’s just ludicrous, really. A soccer player’s touched; he collapses like he’s been shot. Tennis: A player cramps, there’s a break, he gets a massage. But the embarrassment, the humiliation LeMond had to endure. But I tell you one thing: He went up in my estimation for that. There was always a sense that LeMond was … classy but soft. Yeah, classy but soft. He was looked on as being a curiosity, as not being serious. Being in a French team, I tried to fit in by pretending I was French, following the French rules—no ice cream but a ton of cheese. He refused that, refused to compromise. But what a bike rider. What a fucking bike rider.

I mostly saw Vince Foster in the hallways. He was Mrs. Clinton’s personal attaché, a lawyer from Arkansas. Word circulated that she berated him mercilessly. The first time I saw Foster I figured he wouldn’t last a year. He looked uncomfortable and unhappy in the White House. I knew what it was like to be yelled at by superiors, but Mrs. Clinton never hesitated to launch a tirade. Yet her staffers never dared say, “I don’t have to take this shit!” They reminded me of battered wives: too loyal, too unwilling to acknowledge they’d never assuage her. They had no one to blame but themselves, but they could never admit it. She criticized Foster for failing to get ahead of the constant scandals, for cabinet positions not confirmed, and for the slowness of staffing the White House. Foster eventually took his own life in Fort Marcy Park. In his briefcase was a note torn into twenty-seven pieces, blaming the FBI, the media, the Republicans—even the White House Ushers Office. A rumor circulated among law enforcement types that contended his suicide weapon had to be repaired in order for the forensics team to fire it since it wouldn’t function for them. Maybe his final shot misaligned the cylinders and later prevented contact with the bullet primers. But that, along with many other public details of the case (carpet fibers on his suit coat, etc.), made his case spooky. The last lines of his sparse suicide note read: “I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington. Here ruining people is considered sport.” A UD friend of mine, Hank O’Neil, was posted outside of Foster’s office as part of the FBI’s investigation of his suicide. Maggie Williams, Mrs. Clinton’s always well dressed chief of staff, physically pushed her way past Hank into Foster’s office, arguing that he had no right to block her entrance. She removed boxes that were never recovered; they were destroyed. Congressmen bashed Officer O’Neil’s integrity, but he held firm. He reported exactly what he saw and didn’t make any inferences about it, but they were sure he held some smoking gun and was protecting the Clintons.

It's hard to unlock a door with a condom," Emma shot back. His brilliant smile stole her heart. "Honey, you'd be surprised how many doors those babies have unlocked.

The cheery woman was coming toward me from the adjoining yard as if she had been standing at the corner of the house there, waiting. She was maybe five-eight, and dark the way you’re dark when you spend a lot of time in the sun running and working out and playing sports. I made her for her early- to mid-thirties, but the lines around her eyes and mouth were deep. Probably from all the sun. She was wearing designer jeans like the black guy and Reebok court shoes and a loose linen top that she would probably cover with a linen sport coat if it weren’t so hot. Stylish and attractive, even with the Browning 9mm clipped to her right hip. She badged me with an LAPD detective shield as she approached, still cheery with the smile, and I recognized her just before she said, “Mr. Cole, my name is Angela Rossi. The detective in the gray suit would like to ask you a few questions.” She glanced at the guy in the bad suit and I followed her look just as she knew I would, and when I did she stepped close and threw an overhand with a black leather sap, trying for the side of my head. Sucker shot. I picked up her move and tried to twist out of the way, but she was good and fast and I caught most of the sap on my right cheek with a blossom of pain. The guy in the suit yelled, “Hey!” and the black guy grunted, “Shit!” like they were surprised, too. Rossi followed the sap with a hard knee, but it caught me in the thigh instead of the groin, and then the older guy was there, wedging himself between us, forcing her away and saying, “Dammit, Rossi, you want another beef in your file? Is that what you want?

I needed to grab another box of screws, but, when I got to the truck, I realized I’d left my wallet in my tool bucket. When I went back ground the house to get it, she had my plans open and was double-checking all my measurements.” Emma’s cheeks burned when Gram laughed at Sean’s story, but, since she couldn’t deny it, she stuck her last bite of the fabulous steak he’d grilled into her mouth. “That’s my Emma,” Gram said. “I think her first words were ‘If you want something done right, do it yourself.’” “In my defense,” she said when she’d swallowed, pointing her fork at Sean for emphasis, “my name is on the truck, and being able to pound nails doesn’t make you a builder. I have a responsibility to my clients to make sure they get quality work.” “I do quality work.” “I know you build a quality deck, but stairs are tricky.” She smiled sweetly at him. “I had to double-check.” “It’s all done but the seating now and it’s good work, even though I practically had to duct tape you to a tree in order to work in peace.” She might have taken offense at his words if not for the fact he was playing footsie with her under the table. And when he nudged her foot to get her to look at him, he winked in that way that—along with the grin—made it almost impossible for her to be mad at him. “It’s Sean’s turn to wash tonight. Emma, you dry and I’ll put away.” “I’ll wash, Gram. Sean can dry.” “I can wash,” Sean told her. “The world won’t come to an end if I wash the silverware before the cups.” “It makes me twitch.” “I know it does. That’s why I do it.” He leaned over and kissed her before she could protest. “That new undercover-cop show I like is on tonight,” Gram said as they cleared the table. “Maybe Sean won’t snort his way through this episode.” He laughed and started filling the sink with hot, soapy water. “I’m sorry, but if he keeps shoving his gun in his waistband like that, he’s going to shoot his…he’s going to shoot himself in a place men don’t want to be shot.” Emma watched him dump the plates and silverware into the water—while three coffee mugs sat on the counter waiting to be washed—but forced herself to ignore it. “Can’t be worse than the movie the other night.” “That was just stupid,” Sean said while Gram laughed. They’d tried to watch a military-action movie and by the time they were fifteen minutes in, she thought they were going to have to medicate Sean if they wanted to see the end. After a particularly heated lecture about what helicopters could and couldn’t do, Emma had hushed him, but he’d still snorted so often in derision she was surprised he hadn’t done permanent damage to his sinuses. “I don’t want you to think that’s real life,” he told them. “I promise,” Gram said, “if I ever want to use a tank to break somebody out of a federal prison, I’ll ask you how to do it correctly first.” Sean kissed the top of her head. “Thanks, Cat. At least you appreciate me, unlike Emma, who just tells me to shut up.” “I’d appreciate you more if there wasn’t salad dressing floating in the dishwater you’re about to wash my coffee cup in.” “According to the official guy’s handbook, if I keep doing it wrong, you’re supposed to let me watch SportsCenter while you do it yourself.” “Did the official guy’s handbook also tell you that if that happens, you’ll also be free to watch the late-night sports show while I do other things myself?

Foxes are considered vermin by landowners, have a population inflated by modern farming techniques, and may be shot or snared by anyone—which is not clearly less cruel than hunting them with dogs. Nor was the ban a blow for class warfare, contrary to the belief of many Labour antis, who considered the “so-called sport” an exclusive preserve of cruel toffs. It never was. And by then fox-hunting, with village cricket and the Sunday service, was a fading vestige of the class-based, yet not wholly class-bound way of much of British rural society for centuries. “If the French nobility had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt,” the historian G.M. Trevelyan wrote. Had they ridden to hounds with their tenants, as 19th-century English gentlemen huntsmen did, then cheered them as they sent in the terriers,

However, our kind Nigerian friend failed to mention that not only is stripping in Japan a full-contact sport above the waist, but also apparently having shots poured over your breasts and sucked off your nipples by strange Japanese men is as commonplace as the gyrations to be overheard in the dark quarters where much more than private dances went on.

I’ve been lumbered with this great lug of dog through a friend of a friend for a couple of months and he has some ...behavioural problems I need to manage ASAP.” “Really?” Her gaze switched to Tiny who wagged his tail looking completely angelic. Ryder could have sworn the damn mutt was smiling. “Look at you, you gorgeous boy,” she crooned, unlatching a section of the counter, lifting it up and ducking through it to join him on the other side. Tiny wagged his tail harder as Juliet approached, one hand held out in friendly greeting. Tiny, whose head came to her breasts, took full advantage, nosing her right in the cleavage as the woman slid her hands on either side of his face and cooed at him. “You are adorable, aren’t you?” Tiny licked, actually licked, her cleavage then shot a shit eating grin in Ryder’s direction. If the dog had eyebrows, one of them would be arrogantly cocked. Ryder blinked. The damn animal had more game than him. “Are you sure?” She leaned forward to drop some kisses between Tiny’s eyes, pushing his snout even further into the cushioned heaven between her breasts. “He seems very placid.” Tiny’s gave an ecstatic little shiver, his tail a blur as it dusted the floor. “Trust me. He’s the antichrist.” “Oh I don’t believe that,” she said to Tiny, her voice light and teasing, her mouth a cute little moue. “Look how sweet and well behaved he is. Good boy.” She kissed him again. “Good boy.” Ryder would be sweet and well behaved if Juliet called him a good boy while cradling his head between her breasts. Hell, he’d roll over and play dead if she wanted.

Did you jack off last night?” He swallowed, his throat undulating against her lips. “No.” “Really?” He wouldn’t be the first guy to lie about a quick wank. “Cross my heart. Got no sleep at all.” A surge of triumph shot through her system and her lips curved upwards. “You think” —she slid her hand between them and groped his dick through his shorts—“you’re going to last very long when I get on my knees and blow you?” Juliet revelled in both the unsteady timbre of his breathing and the feel of him in her hand. The power she had over him in this moment hit her right between the legs. “I think I will last an embarrassingly short amount of time.

The Comanche rode in a wide circle around the frightened, riderless horses and tossed Amy into the arms of a fellow Indian who waited in the ranks. The little girl’s indignant screeching filled the air. Loretta lifted the Spencer carbine to her shoulder, leveling the sights on the Comanche as he circled back to her. The bells on his moccasins tinkled merrily with each movement of his horse. “Let me go!” Amy screamed. “You stinkin’ savage.” Loretta glanced toward the child. A young brave struggled to keep Amy atop his pony. He laughed uproariously when she tried to scratch him. The girl caught a handful of his black hair and pulled with all her might. “Ai-ee!” the boy exclaimed. “She tries to take my scalp.” Whoops of laughter spiraled among the men. Loretta dragged her gaze back to Hunter. He had halted his mount some fifteen feet from her. “Where will you spend your cartridge?” he asked. “If you love her, shoot her. It is wisdom.” Amy’s screaming turned to pitiful sobbing. Loretta’s aim wavered, and she glanced toward the other Indians, trying to see her cousin. What was Henry doing? Why didn’t he back her up? How long could it take to load a rifle? The miserable coward. “You have time for one shot,” Hunter went on. “If you waste it on me, my friend will take your sister and avenge me. Your father hides behind his wooden walls. You stand alone.” Sweat ran into Loretta’s eyes. She turned slightly and leveled the barrel of her gun at Amy. Blinking, she snugged her finger around the trigger. Tears sprang to her eyes as she recalled Amy’s queries about blessed release. It’s something bad, isn’t it? It’s killing yourself, isn’t it? Not always, Loretta thought. Sometimes it was death by a loved one’s hand. “Think long on this, Yellow Hair,” Hunter cautioned. “I came in peace to buy a woman, not steal a child. She is too skinny to bring this Comanche pleasure. You are not.” He leaned forward, stretching an arm along his horse’s neck, his hand open to her. “Come to me, and I will send your sister back to her mother unharmed.” Loretta stared at him. Did he mean it? His eyes pierced hers. The scar on the side of his face flickered as his jaw muscle tightened. If the tales about him were true, he might spare Amy. On the other hand, he might take them both captive if given half a chance. She remembered how gently he had touched her last night, and her confusion mounted. “Drop the weapon and come,” he urged. “It is a fair trade, no? She goes free. I have spoken it.” In the background, Loretta heard laughter ringing. Already the braves made sport of Amy. The child screeched again. “You will do this, no? You have courage. It shines in your eyes. If you fight the big fight, you cannot win. It is best to hold the head high and surrender with dignity. Put down the gun.

Oh my God, what did Quinn say when he found out?” Beck asked. Hunter shot him a grin. “He had no idea it was even happening until Gran showed up at the ranch with one of the guys who’d responded to the ad. Gran spent almost a week chatting with the guy online before she told him she wasn’t Quinn.” “She cat-fished him?” I managed to get out. Hunter nodded. “The guy was a good sport about it. I guess after seeing Quinn’s picture, he was all in, if you know what I mean.” I

Under the beggar, the long-distance shots are only given to the right hand, regardless of which opponent's hand is attacking . The opponent's straight blow stops with the open palm of his right hand at his chin. At the same time, the boxer is given the opportunity to give the opponent a free left hand, in combination with the torso of the torso to the right, a counter-blow to the head. Counter-kill (as well as any other blow) should be asked very quickly to warn the opponent.

I shot him at the base of the brain. He quivered, looking ahead wide-eyed, straining, then slowly all the life force slid from those eyes and his muscles lost their tension. He took one last, long, slow breath and died. I cried inside and out. I want to sit here for another half hour with the elk, as if at the bedside of an old friend. Just sit as I have done before and try to figure out why it is I do this. Kill and then mourn." There is a whole genre of this stuff, always with the same theme of killing and bereavement, killing and self-revulsion, killing and emptiness. The idea that just maybe killing is the problem, and it might be best to work it all out at home, take a little break from the blood sports to "figure out why it is I do this," never seems to occur to them.

That first year, the real recruiting comes in rooting out the people who don’t want to be there,” Bud said. “I didn’t come in and kick anyone off the team because I believe everyone deserves a shot. But the ones who won’t fit in stand out pretty quickly and they tend to weed themselves out. The key is to not be tempted to convince a player who isn’t a

A woman who can talk sports and talk trash? A fucking sparkling unicorn.

GOLF (Men’s Journal, 1992) The smooth, long, liquid sweep of a three wood smacking into the equator of a dimpled Titleist … It makes a potent but slightly foolish noise like the fart of a small, powerful nature god. The ball sails away in a beautiful hip or breast of a curve. And I am filled with joy. At least that’s what I’m filled with when I manage to connect. Most of my strokes whiz by the tee the way a drunk passes a truck on a curve or dig into the turf in a manner that is more gardening than golf. But now and then I nail one, and each time I do it’s an epiphany. This is how the Australopithecus felt, one or two million years ago, when he first hit something with a stick. Puny hominoid muscles were amplified by the principles of mechanics so that a little monkey swat suddenly became a great manly engine of destruction able to bring enormous force to bear upon enemy predators, hunting prey, and the long fairway shots necessary to get on the green over the early Pleistocene’s tar pit hazards. Hitting things with a stick is the cornerstone of civilization. Consider all the things that can be improved by hitting them with a stick: veal, the TV, Woody Allen. Having a dozen good sticks at hand, all of them well balanced and expertly made, is one reason I took up golf. I also wanted to show my support for the vice president. I now know for certain that Quayle is smarter than his critics. He’s smart enough to prefer golf to spelling. How many times has a friend called you on a Sunday morning and said, “It’s a beautiful day. Let’s go spell potato”? I waited until I was almost forty-five to hit my first golf ball. When I was younger I thought golf was a pointless sport. Of course all sports are pointless unless you’re a professional athlete or a professional athlete’s agent, but complex rules and noisy competition mask the essential inanity of most athletics. Golf is so casual. You just go to the course, miss things, tramp around in the briars, use pungent language, and throw two thousand dollars’ worth of equipment in a pond. Unlike skydiving or rugby, golf gives you leisure to realize it’s pointless. There comes a time in life, however, when all the things that do have a point—career, marriage, exercising to stay fit—start turning, frankly, golflike. And that’s when you’re ready for

actions until your objective is completed.

Robin Hood strung his bow and took his place with never a word, albeit his heartstrings quivered with anger and loathing. Twice he shot, the first time hitting within an inch of the wand, the second time splitting it fairly in the middle. Then, without giving the other a chance for speech, he flung his bow upon the ground. "There, thou bloody villain!" cried he fiercely, "let that show thee how little thou knowest of manly sports. And now look thy last upon the daylight, for the good earth hath been befouled long enough by thee, thou vile beast! This day, Our Lady willing, thou diest—I am Robin Hood." So saying, he flashed forth his bright sword in the sunlight.