The emotional impact of Tuesdays with Morrie

As I said in a previous blog post, we were given an assignment to read a novel called "Tuesdays with Morrie" over the Christmas break.  This was a very emotional book.  It recalls the tale of a man, Mitch Albom, who recently learned that his old favorite teacher Morrie Schwartz is terminally ill with Lou Gherig's Disease or ALS.  When Mitch was in college, he was a student of Morrie's.  He and Morrie were very close.  Mitch recalls that he used to call Morrie coach, and Morrie loved Mitch like a son.  Mitch Albom, the narrator, uses flashbacks to help show the immense affection that he and Morrie have for each other.  When Mitch graduated college, he introduced Morrie to his parents.  Morrie told Mitch's parents that their son was a "very special boy".  This shows the affection that Morrie has towards Mitch.  When they were saying their goodbyes, Morrie makes Mitch promise that they will stay in touch.  Mitch promises with the best intentions, but over the years he forgets.  He and Morrie never actually stay in touch.  One night while Mitch is watching TV, he notices Morrie being interviewed by ABC's nightline.  He immediately recognizes Morrie and cannot believe how frail he looks.  The disease has begun to eat away at his physical stature.  Mitch feels bad that he broke his promise of keeping in touch with Morrie and he can't believe that he did not keep in touch with him.  The rest of the novel is devoted to Mitch attempting to make up for all of the time that he missed with Morrie.  Every Tuesday he and Morrie meet, and Morrie teaches him a little more about life.  Morrie informs Mitch that he is not afraid of dying.  That he wishes death were not directly related with the word useless.  The entire novel sends us on an emotional rollercoaster as we learn of the relationship the two have shared, and the degrade of Morrie's physical well-being.  But in the end, we are relatively happy that Morrie is eventually at peace. 

Review of The Bourne Legacy

The other day I saw "The Bourne Legacy".  I was very relcutant to watch the movie because it did not have Matt Damon playing Jason Bourne like all of the other movies.  Instead the lead character was played by Jeremy Renner.  I was not sure that Jeremy Renner would be able to fulfill the hole that Matt Damon left when he decided that he was not going to make another "Bourne" movie for fear of ruining the series.  In the beginning of the movie, I was confused as to what was happening in the movie.  It seemed rather fictitious that the CIA agents would be genetically mutated to become "super soldiers".  But after continuing with the film, I realized that Jeremy Renner would actually be a very good fit to replace Matt Damon.  The director, Tony Gilroy, set the movie at the same time when Jason Bourne was on the run during the other movies.  Throughout the movie, references to Jason Bourne and the crimes that he was committing in the other "Bourne" movies can be seem, adding a bit of depth to the new Bourne movie.  Overall, compared to the other "Bourne" movies, this movie was actually quite similar from a broad perspective.  The movie mainly consisted of a CIA agent who realizes that the organization he works for is trying to kill him, causing him to go rogue.  The CIA agent who goes rogue, meets a woman who is willing to help him so he can further his own cause, very similar to the woman that Jason Bourne met during the first movie: "The Bourne Identity".  And finally, the main character overcomes a series of obstacles, killing many to conquer the people trying to stop him.  This is very similar to the other "Bourne" movies.  Even though this movie was very similar to all of the others, I still found it very surprising and I did enjoy it very much.  However, if the director continues to make his movies very similar to each other, I can already predict what will happen in the next movie. 

Sports as a religion

We recently had to read "Tuesdays with Morrie" in our Death and Dying class.  In this book, the narrator, Mitch, recalls an assignment he is given by his teacher.  The assignment is a senior final thesis.  The topic of this thesis was something along the lines of "Is sports a religion for some people".  Today, as I sit in my basement watching the football playoffs, I began wondering if this is true.  There are people out there that will devote their entire lives to sports.  They will spend their entire life savings to attend sports games.  They live for sports.  Personally, I love sports.  I would much rather attend a professional sports game than do just about anything else.  I enjoy playing sports as well, but that does not mean that I will spend my entire life savings or devote my entire life to a specific team or sport.  My friend Ian devotes his entire Sunday to watching football, and during the offseason for football he moves onto another sport.  I would honestly say that he may be obsessed with sports.  But there are people that go past that.  There was a fan of the New York Jets.  His name is Ed Anzalone.  Every game for years, Ed Anzalone (better known as Fireman Ed) would attend Jets games in a New York Jets fire fighter hat.  He would inspire other fans and lead the stadium with the "J-E-T-S Jets Jets Jets" chant.  Ed is an ex NYFD firefighter that was injured on the job and receives monthly checks from the government.  He spends those checks to attend Jets games.  He is literally spending almost everything he has to attend the games.  You could easily make an argument that sports is a religion for him.  It does not just stop at him.  There are thousands of fans who attend every game of sports, their lives revolve around their favorite sports team.  Also some fans idolize certain athletes.  We purchase jerseys of players, we cheer when they do something great, we boo them when they screw up.  Those athletes serve as demi-gods to some people.  We view the athletes as perfect, they can do no wrong on the field.  We, as a society, view sports as a way to escape from our everyday lives.  Some of us follow sports religiously, while others hardly follow them at all.  But for the people who follow sports regularly, they most certainly have a profound impact on our lives.

Review of The Hobbit Movie

For many teenage boys in my generation, Tolkien's books have almost become almost an icon of our childhoods.  As children we are told stories of elves and dwarves.  These stories are some of the first tales that we are told that we can remember.  For the rest of our lives, we look for stories like these to remind us of our childhoods.  I personally loved the Lord of the Rings series, and have watched them all at least a dozen times.  So when I was told that "The Hobbit" was going to be made into three separate movies, I was ecstatic.  The thought of a book like "The Hobbit" being made into a movie with modern special effects filled me with joy.  When the movie was released, I was there for the midnight release.  I was surprised by how many people were at the theater.  I knew that "The Hobbit" was highly anticipated, but I did not expect to almost not be able to find a seat in the theater.  When I first saw the movie, I was very happy.  I thought the director did a fantastic job allowing his audience to know the dwarves on a more personal level, something that was never done in the book.  The first hour of the movie is devoted to learning more about the dwarves and why they are attempting to regain their city.  I also enjoyed the amount of detail that was put into making the dwarves look like what everyone thought they would have looked like based on the description given in the book.  When I finished watching the movie for the first time, I thought that I needed to watch it again.  I realized that after watching the movie once, all I had noticed is what Peter Jackson had done right, now I needed to watch the movie again to see what I did not like from the movie.  Upon my second viewing, I noticed that Jackson had changed many things from the book.  I understand that a lot of these changes were to make the story easily told in a movie, but they changed the story greatly.  Jackson added a new antagonist to the film, a white orc whose sole goal is to kill Thorin and his fellow dwarves.  I am unsure as to whether or not I like this addition to the movie.  While the new antagonist allows the movie to be followed easily, the movie becomes less what I imagined it would be like.  Jackson also added a new wizard to the movie as a comic relief point after a moment of immense action.  This part was not really needed in the movie.  Jackson devoted about twenty minutes to the introduction of the new wizard, which was not necessary at all.  The new wizard, along with the white orc, were both strategically added to make the story more "movie friendly", and while they weren't extremely necessary, they both added to an already fantastic movie.