Swoopes

I saw the documentary about Swoopes from Nine for IX last night on ESPN. It's a great story.  There's really not much for me to say that better people can't say already.  (As opposed to say, the AV Club, which gave the documentary a "C" and wrote a long review where the author misspelled Sheryl Swoopes's name as "Cheryl" from beginning to end. It's fixed now, but trust me, the misspelling practically jumped out at you.)

The AV Club author did say a few things that rang true, even though I believe that the writer was doing a hit job.  One of those was that the documentary doesn't really have the courage to let Swoopes be a basketball player - this might just be a fault of the subject matter, but they have to shoehorn family relations, her relationship with Alicia Scott and her new beau, and a bunch of auxiliary stuff in an attempt to "round out" Swoopes.  I won't say "feminize" but I'm sure thinking it - the documentary is marred by that espnW mindset that thinks that female fans really want something more along the lines of one of those feel-sad-good videos that they show to provide "human interest" whenever the Olympic Games are on and you don't know anything about the competitors.

A more interesting documentary might have been made about the Houston Comets franchise itself - how it came together, the role of Kim Perrot, the chemistry of Cooper-Swoopes-Thompson, some stuff about Arcain, the four franchise championships, the decline, some stuff about Les Alexander and how he pretty much had contempt for his own product, Van Chancellor going out the door, the disastrous sale to Hilton Koch, and the final game at Strahan Coliseum.  Now there's a saga for you.

Or...frankly...a documentary about Kim Perrot all by herself.  Kevin McFarland at AV Club would probably spell her name as "Kim Parrot" and give it a C-, though.

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I've finally got the Freshmen minutes spreadsheet finished.  It's going to be a busy day at work, though, so don't expect anything until maybe Thursday-Friday.

Tonight might be busy because it's my 11th Anniversary.  That's right, 11 years ago today I got married, and the smartest words I've ever said were "I do".  However, we're a little tight on cash, so unless Ruth's got something special planned that she's not telling me about, the anniversary dinner is going to be spaghetti.

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The WNBA is back.  Thank goodness, I was starting to get withdrawal shakes.  Tonight's game is New York at Washington, but I might not get to watch it.  (See above paragraph.)