The best of intentions for a good night’s sleep Tuesday quickly turned into a battle with restlessness and, before you know it, full-bloom insomnia.
That unwelcome circumstance is the best reason to subscribe to cable, satellite or Internet protocol television services. Can’t sleep … boom … TV.
It was also a moment of reminder, that re-realization to unsubscribe to cable, satellite and Internet protocol television services as the remote flipped hopelessly through channel after channel seeing not one program of interest.
You can watch volleyball reruns on the Longhorn Network for only so long.
If the options on the teletube don’t put you to sleep, the Benzodiazepine classes or even a horse tranquilizer don’t have a chance.
But there I was with few options up to that point when I slipped past the HBO bands and into the options on Turner Classic Movies, which at times obviously uses the term “classic” in a very liberal, not literal, sort of way.
In succession in the middle of this non-starry night were two sports, ahem, “classics,” and another we’ll just call a sports movie cousin, all Walt Disney 1970s standards.
The World’s Greatest Athlete, starring John Amos (James Evans of Good Times), Tim Conway and Jan-Michael Vincent, who in the title role, the to-the-point New York Times said at the time, “athletically tries without much success to make all this good-natured nonsense funny.”
You don’t get that type of speaking-truth-to-power talk in our dailies much anymore.
Up next was The Strongest Man in the World, a sort-of-sports-more-science-fiction movie about a mix-up of university laboratory experiments, which produces something that would have made the stuff Barry Bonds was taking look like placebos.
Finally, there was Gus, the script “made famous” by Ed Asner and Don Knotts. It told the story of the Yugoslav youngster whose mule kicked NFL field goals from 100 yards.
If anything, I could go back to the future. If only I could tell everybody how not to spend their entertainment dollars. Then again, the demographic market for these movies wasn’t much above the 14-year-old.
Not making myself feel much better.
Long before Manu Ginobili, not a bad athlete in his own right as a player in the best basketball league in the world, there was Nanu, an orphaned son of missionaries raised by a local tribe in Zambia, who ran, jumped and threw better than even Jim Thorpe. (He could also outrun a cheetah, by the way.)
Nanu’s character was a ribbing of Johnny Weismuller’s Tarzan of the 1930s without the Tarzan call. To wit, he swung from trees wearing nothing but a loincloth.
He was a man of the jungle.
In Africa, he was discovered by Sam Archer (Amos), the Dutch Meyer of his day who coached everything with not even the slightest degree of success at Merrivale College, and his misfit ne’er-do-well aide Milo Jackson (Tim Conway … not his proudest moment).
After enduring yet another terrible sports season, coaches Archer and Jackson used an African safari as sabbatical to clear their heads and get away from an overbearing, demanding booster. There they discovered and began the recruitment of Nanu, a manly, handsome, pidgin English-speaker who was resistant to Archer’s pitch.
“I’ll make you the world’s greatest athlete,” Archer said. “Kid, you’ll be famous … make a fortune. In three years, you can do anything you want to do.”
Archer even faked his own impending death as part of the recruitment. It was as if he were Nick Saban.
The sham was necessary, however, because in Nanu’s tribe, if you saved a man’s life, you had to follow him for life. (There would be no good Samaritans if America shared this fabricated custom.) This tradition was reinforced by his witch doctor-godfather, who reentered the movie later to cause problems as Nanu was trying the impossible, to win every event at a track and field meet.
Nanu joined Archer in is return to the states, but he had to bring his pet tiger with him.
When John Amos, err, Coach Archer, was caught in his lie, the emotionally wounded Nanu said he “go back to Africa.”
Nanu: “If it so important it make you lie, Nanu want no part of it.”
Archer: “OK, kid, I understand. I guess I just got carried away. You’re right, I did lie to you. One day you’ll find that life is not so simple. Sometimes you have to make the dream happen or you’ll never get a shot at it. I hope someday you’ll understand that.”
Now you know why Walt Disney smoked four packs of cigarettes a day. It was the way he dealt with the guilt of becoming half-a-billionaire making movies like this.
I was thinking of joining him.
Nanu, to no surprise, decided to stay, asking Archer how he could do what Thorpe couldn’t, win every event at a track meet, and, in doing so, continue to impress an extremely hot tutor named … Jane. (Google Dayle Haddon.)
“Me as a coach,” said James Evans.
That might explain why Nanu started his 100 from a standing position.
Reality’s brief appearance came many, many years later when Jan-Michael Vincent violated his probation with three arrests for public drunkenness and an altercation with his wife in 2000.
Of an accident in 1996, he said: “Ya know, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t remember being in an accident.”
That other one-time “world’s greatest athlete,” Bruce Jenner, must have also done some serious drinking once upon a time.
Young Kurt Russell was The Strongest Man in the World. This was actually a sequel!
The plot worked like this: Dexter Riley (Russell) and his would-be college scientist peers at a Medfield U laboratory accidentally combined one’s vitamin cereal mix with Dexter’s concoction of chemical ingredients, which unbeknownst to him created superhuman strength when ingested.
A (not-so) savvy dean (Joe Flynn) envisioned a windfall for the financially strapped college from the cereal, leading to a mano y mano weightlifting showdown between Medfield and generic State U, and Crumply Crunch and Krinkle Krunch cereal companies.
All goes to plan up until the point Dick Van Patten and Cesar Romero (yes, the Joker!) conspire to foil the good guys.
I must be dreaming, right?
Nope, that indeed was Gus the fireman from Leave it to Beaver with a very animated cameo.
In the movie Gus, a 20-something Yugoslav comes to America with his football-kicking mule – Gus — trying to escape the shadow of famous soccer-playing brother, who enjoyed celebrity status in the Land of Tito.
The downtrodden California Atoms brought Andy Petrovic and Gus to America as a halftime sideshow for a dreadful NFL franchise in need of an attendance boost. Both become integral to the team’s field chances when the owner (Asner) made a bet that the Atoms, coached by Knotts, can go from winless to the Super Bowl.
Dick Butkus and Johnny Unitas were in this. So was Dick Enberg.
Dick Van Patten again played the villain as a character named Wilson, who employed two clumsy and inept former convicts Spinner (Tom Bosley) and Crankcase (Tim Conway) to thwart the Atoms’ best player, up to and including getting Gus drunk.
Ah, drinking … why didn’t I think of that?
Where is Major League when you really need it?
