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I sent over what I could the very next day—just a few dollars, really, though I wish I could have done more. It seems like there are just too many people watching this tragedy unfold and offering empty opinions instead of simple donations. Honestly, just give whatever you can; every little bit helps someone in need.
Happy New Year's Day! I guess I'm hoping this year turns out just as great for my clubs as the last one did.
Lisa Miller9 said:I guess I'm having a little trouble getting through the essay at the beginning, but maybe it will get better. 👍
I honestly can't stand that trio—Adam Sandler, Jason Biggs, and Ben Stiller. It feels like they always play these incredibly annoying, dim-witted characters that, for some reason, everyone seems to love. They just get on my nerves. Even if a movie actually looked decent, I probably wouldn't watch it simply because they're in it. I guess I’m just not a huge fan of those typical American comedies like Pie or Zoolander, but having them involved is definitely a dealbreaker for me. ☕
I guess I wouldn't put Ben Stiller in the same category as the other two, since he seems like a much more talented actor and writer to me. I don't really find Adam Sandler interesting on screen at all, and I honestly can't figure out how he makes so much money. In most of his movies, he just plays these dim-witted characters that stop being funny after maybe ten minutes. Stiller at least made films like Say Anything... and Marriage License, which I thought were great. I also think Zoolander and Tropic Thunder are excellent, even if they aren't everyone's cup of tea. As for Jason Biggs, he feels like a pretty minor figure to me; he has that one movie and that commercial for AMC Theatres, but he seems like a bit of a one-trick pony.
Benjamin King2 said:I guess he might already be capable of a sub-19 second race; maybe he just needs to land at a meet with a really fast track. 👍
An ESPN's commentator mentioned that if they had been running at high altitude, like in Mexico City, it probably would have been under 19 seconds yesterday.
Well, he didn't break the 19-second mark this time, but I guess that day will come eventually. He even admitted himself that he wasn't happy with how the race went. 😂
Way to go, Blanka! It probably isn't fair to grab gold just an hour after pulling off another miracle like that, but I suppose our local media and fans are going to celebrate it in style! 👍
quietfox38 said:200 Metres - M Final
20 August 2009 - 20:35
1 154 Ramil Guliyev
2 434 Sha'Carri Richardson
3 664 Steve Mullings
4 1230 Wallace Spearmon
5 656 Usain Bolt
6 888 Alonso Edward
7 1172 Charles Clark
8 1174 Shawn Crawford
By the time everyone else hits the 150m mark, I guess Bolt will already be crossing the finish line. I'm not entirely sure if we'll see a world record tonight, but I don't think anyone would dare bet against him.
Is this some kind of word association game? 😁
I'm not quite sure what to expect tonight, but if a world record happens, it might fall under 19 seconds. Maybe Bolt won't go that far, though; he might just be there for the show.
wearyangler29 said:Does anyone know why men run 110m hurdles while women run 100m?
I'm not entirely sure of the exact reason, but I guess the race setup just works out better for the numbers. Both men and women run 10 hurdles, but the distance between them is different—about 9.1m for men and 8.3m for women. I suppose it might be because the average male runner has a longer stride.
Emily Thomas3 said:But why even take it personally? Is it because of snobbery? Or some high-brow view on art? Maybe it's because movies shouldn't just be made for those little boys living inside men even when they hit their 20s? You have no idea how many memories can be triggered by that goofy scene where Keanu Reeves is on a skateboard trying to defuse a bomb. Forget Proust and his madeleines! Tarantino has dedicated a huge chunk of his career to chasing lost time, and he does it with a genuine love for his characters that you rarely see from any other director.
I don't mind if you aren't into Tarantino's "pre-teen" action flicks, but don't dismiss them so easily. They actually mean something to people. For some, it's just ninety minutes of mindless fun, but for others, it's a massive connection to their childhood.
And then there's that moment when he says "Shoot the hostage" in that cool, ruthless way only he can. A total classic!
Benjamin King2 said:Comparing Bolt and Bekele makes sense because they are both completely untouchable in their respective events. They hold world records that (right now) nobody else seems capable of breaking, though I guess Usain still needs to catch up to Kenenis (or Haile Gebrselassie) when it comes to the total number of World Championships and Olympics titles.
While Bekele and Gebrselassie are truly magnificent athletes (though maybe they have a slight edge due to where they're from), they haven't really shifted the paradigm the way Bolt did. For decades, the gold standard for the 100m was the 10.00 mark. Any sprinter dipping under 10 seconds was considered elite, someone fighting for medals at the World Championships or the Olympics. Even Kim Collins was a world champion, despite never running sub-10. If you ask any American track athlete what 10.00 means—really, if you ask almost any white or Asian runner—they'll tell you. But Bolt established an entirely new benchmark; he was the first sprinter in history to truly redefine the limits. Sprinting is one of the most fundamental disciplines, dating all the way back to the first Olympics in ancient Greece. It’s the purest form of competition: getting from point A to near point B as fast as possible. Bekele might be the greatest distance runner ever, but he didn't reset the bar in quite the same way. Running 9.58 in the 100m feels a bit like running 25:00.00 in the 10,000m.
Anyway, I won't ramble on too long. Just enjoy it while we can, because there's probably a new show starting tomorrow.
EDIT: I guess Kim Collins did run a 9.98 once.
Aaron Kim2 said:The hype around Bolt seems a bit much, though I guess it makes sense since he's such a huge star right now. But is he really more legendary for his 100m or 200m records than what Bekele does in the 5k or 6.2 miles??? If you haven't realized, Bekele runs his final lap of a 10,000m in about 55 seconds!!!! I wonder how many people could actually manage just starting and finishing those last 400m without having already run 9,600m before them.
Maybe take a second to think things through before jumping to conclusions. I don't think Usain Bolt is just a "hit"; he’s more like a once-in-a-lifetime athletic phenomenon. A celebrity is someone the media builds up, but Bolt doesn't really need that because his stats speak for themselves. Once you look at the numbers—and it isn't hard, we're talking about 9, 5, and 8—you might see why "legendary" is actually an understatement. That said, I’m a little skeptical because I’ve noticed that Americans, especially folks on internet forums, tend to be pretty quick to tear down anyone who is truly elite. It feels like this might be one of the few places where legends like Phelps or Bolt get criticized just because their sheer excellence is intimidating. Honestly, even if you gave Bolt two full pages in a newspaper, it wouldn't even begin to cover the significance of what he's achieved, even if it is just sports.
Noah Ross7 said:If they somehow crucified him, would you actually believe he was the reincarnation of Jesus?
Nah, I guess that would just be Bolt on the cross.
northerncanyon54 said:you're using some pretty extreme propaganda-style rhetoric there, man... that's probably not the best way to put it.
That kind of extremist rhetoric assumes one person or group is inherently superior, but I think I'm just commenting on what we all witnessed last night. I guess you could say Bolt is just a genetic outlier; he has a natural gift, and I'm honestly just glad he competes in a sport where that talent can really shine.
I think Tyson Gay put what I was trying to say much more clearly and concisely:
"It showed a human can take it to another level."
That’s really it. This goes beyond sports, mostly because he stands so far above everyone else. I can't really think of any champion in any field where the achievement felt like it transcended the sport itself. Competitive athletics, including basics like track or swimming, usually just boils down to beating an opponent. That opponent might be the person in the next lane or a record set thirty years ago. But Bolt isn't really fighting anyone; none of the other sprinters' results even belong in the same category, which is actually kind of sad. Tyson Gay ran a new world-no-Bolt record last night, and I guess people just don't seem to care about that.
Noah Ross7 said:Now all of a sudden, Bolt is the greatest athlete of all time. It's like Jesus. Or God.
I mean, I have to give him credit for last night's performance, but he's still quite a long way from being called the greatest athlete ever.
If you look at the bigger picture a bit more (which I know you haven't, since you haven't really seen anything yet), you might see it. I don't really feel like getting into all the details, but I'll just say you should enjoy what you're watching these days because these are achievements that go beyond just sports. Just enjoy it; maybe one day you'll tell your kids you saw him in action live.
northerncanyon54 said:That German guy pushed him toward 9.58, which he maybe could have done back in Beijing. To hit 9.50, I guess he’d need someone like Gay to run a 9.65 to pull him along. He probably needs some serious motivation to chase a number like that...
Forget about the competition. Yesterday, Bolt pulled Gay along; it wasn't Gay pushing Bolt. That 9.71 was really Bolt's achievement, not Tyson's. I think Bolt just runs as fast as he decides to go, and yesterday all those talk about a head-to-head rivalry pretty much went down the drain since there isn't actually a duel happening.
Bolt is probably the greatest athlete of all time. Actually, I’d say he’s the most capable athlete ever, especially when you consider his results and the specific demands of his sport. I’ve watched just about everything—live matches, old footage, documentaries—across all kinds of sports and games, but those races Bolt ran in Beijing and Berlin really belong in a league of their own.
I watched Michael Jordan play basketball, and I think he was likely the best athlete in team sports. I followed all of Lance Armstrong's victories on the Tour, seeing how he overcame everything under the toughest conditions. I’ve seen Spitz and Phelps and their incredible streaks of world records and medals. I watched Bubka, Sotomayor, and Edwards, with their untouchable technique and world records that just seem to stay put. Bjorn Borg and Roger Federer used to make their opponents look helpless with such effortless grace. And Janica Kostelić always seemed to find just enough of an edge to win by whatever margin was needed.
But Bolt seems to be beyond all of that. Most athletes operate within certain frameworks—there are limits to records, times, heights, distances, or weights. Then there's Bolt, who exists outside of those boundaries. That 9.58 mark isn't even the ceiling. About ten years ago, I remember listening to Moa Greene talk about how a human might be able to hit around 9.50, or how he himself could reach it if everything aligned perfectly. Greene was a fantastic runner, and he did shave five hundredths off the record at the 1997 SP in Athens, but he was still just human. Still, I guess he was right; even though I probably rolled my eyes at the time, there really is someone capable of running near 9.50. There is Bolt!
northerncrane4 said:If you haven't sat through all three movies mentioned, there isn't much point in weighing in on this thread.
OT: Borat and Bruno are great films, but Ali G in Da House feels like a messy first attempt at a feature—something Cohen seems to have realized himself before refining his approach.
I agree, Ali G was a pretty rough movie, though I guess that might be my favorite character he's played.
Anthony Smith3 said:Yeah... who knows... maybe things would change then. He started out with a relatively small budget for Bad Boys—around $23 mil—crushed it at the box office, and once you're on that level, they basically let you off the leash. As his films kept raking in more cash, his budgets just kept ballooning... which led to his movies getting progressively worse (though I wouldn't put The Rock or Armageddon in that camp). They started paying less attention to the story and more to the style... experimenting more and more with camera work and effects with every new release... but honestly, IMO, he always manages to deliver at least some entertainment (depending on what you're into). Take Transformers 2, for example... watched them the other day... man, that movie has less brainpower than Terminator Salvation and Wolverine combined, and even those aren't exactly geniuses. There's so much stupidity, continuity errors, and cheesy sentimentality in there, and you could summarize the plot in three short sentences (Sam finds a piece of the AllSpark, the evil Transformers find Sam, and Sam runs from the Transformers while the good ones protect him)... but personally, those 150 minutes flew by and I actually had a good laugh.
Look, when a movie costs 200 million dollars, the final product really needs to be top-tier in every single department. I think it's pretty obvious that these massive blockbusters end up hurting other film projects, and it's clear that the advertising for these movies takes up all the space meant for everything else, making these kinds of mindless spectacles the default choice for theaters. I'm 26, so I'm still pretty young and I absolutely love action movies, but I guess my brain still works enough to want something more than just 150 minutes of endless noise and explosions. If that's all I wanted, I probably would've just spent a few hundred bucks on fireworks and set up my own mindless spectacle in the backyard. I just can't get behind an industry where Michael Bay is the main attraction.