Anti-sports movie accepted into D.I.F.F., nominated for MFA

[Fat Man]

I just wrote a lengthy reply, but I was timed out & everything was lost. So here's the short version:

Thanks everyone, for watching the movie & I really appreciate the clicks (keep 'em coming!). Ironically, The High Five is the best movie I've ever made, but I can't even put it on my demo reel because nobody wants to hire a guy that puts dog boners in his videos (not to mention the glaring hatred for the national pastime).

The essay I mentioned is becoming a manifesto. I'm developing plans & systems that could benefit the world through education, economics, & energy programs, & all of the benefits arise from re-assessing the value placed on sports. It begins with a filtering system in our schools, designed to identify which students are "learners" & which are "jocks", & then channeling them into courses designed to build on those potentials. I'll post it here first, as soon as the rewrite is finished.

Earl: you're right about P.E. having a negative effect on non-athletic kids. The things I've seen in gym class & the locker room had the effect of the Scared Straight program on me. I'd be interested to hear the proposals people are making to reform P.E. in schools. Competitiveness does seem to be at the heart of the problem. Not only can it physically ruin an unfit person for life, but it fosters feelings of worthlessness among those who have the potential to be scientists, artists, politicians, etc., while building a scary brand of confidence in those who really have nothing more to offer the world than a chance to see them play with a ball.

It's actually insane how society values sports more than science, athletics more than academics.

Don't these stupid jocks realize, that without the "nerds" and "techno-geeks" whom the jocks like to bully around so much, that we would not have such an advanced technology as we have today.

The jocks, Oh! How they love their technological toys! They love their big flat screen high definition TV sets, and they love all the fancy gadgets in their expensive cars, the they get for free after having raped someone!

And yet . . . . . they hate all the nerd and techno-geek that make all of this possible!

Where do they think it all comes from? Do they still believe in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth fairy, or what?

They're all like retarded children who think that all their wonderful technological toys are somehow wrought by magic or something.

Jock are retarded and infantile, as though they have never really grown up!

HEY EVERYBODY!!!

THIS IS MY POST # 2,500!!!

[recovering_fan]

THIS IS MY POST # 2,500!!!

There's 2500 Turkish lira for you. It isn't worth as much as it used to be, but at least the metal will always retain some value.

[i_like_1981]

HEY EVERYBODY!!!

THIS IS MY POST # 2,500!!!

Congratulations Fat Man! I only recently passed my 1500 post mark. Get this man a beer.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

[Earl]

Fat Man, congratulations for your Post No. 2500. I'll never catch up with you.

Miketv, just in case you missed my last post (which is the last one on page 1), I did respond to your request for information about the movement to reform P.E. Since four posts were submitted by other members after my last post, I was afraid you might have missed mine. It's easy to do when several people are posting in the same thread. I was concerned because I thought it was important for you and others to learn that there is a long overdue movement to reform P.E.

[ChrisOH]

HEY EVERYBODY!!!

THIS IS MY POST # 2,500!!!

Congratulations Fat Man! I only recently passed my 1500 post mark. Get this man a beer.

Just don't make it a Buckhorn!

Anyway....congratulations, Fat Man!

[miketv]

Earl, that's a pretty impressive program. Thanks for posting it. It seems like such a clear program that it should be the status quo.
In fact, the only complaint I have is when Lawler says, "Iâ??ll go head-to-head with someone from any curriculum and defend ours as the most important at the school" (referring to the New P.E.)

& this part:

"Parents appear to agree. For three years running, theyâ??ve ranked P.E. the best class offered at Naperville Junior High."

Shouldn't a school's top-ranking class be academic in nature, not physical? We need to be careful not to make heroes of people just for trying to do the right thing. Once people get that kind of power, they tend to run away with it. I could see this being used as an excuse to expand public schools' physical education budgets way out of proportion.

[miketv]

congrats, Fat Man

[Earl]

Earl, that's a pretty impressive program. Thanks for posting it.

You're welcome.

It seems like such a clear program that it should be the status quo.

I continue to be amazed by all the people who fail to recognize that promoting sports is not the same as promoting physical fitness. Forcing nonathletic students who have no interest in them to participate in competitive team sports is counterproductive. Such coercion and the way they're often treated in mandatory sports-based classes causes them to resent coaches and athlete classmates. The professed concern for the physical health of nonathletic children is a display of ignornance, hypocrisy, or a combination of both. The advocates of mandatory sports-based classes should be pressed to explain why nonathletes should be forced to participate in sports. If they were forced to respond, I think you (and many other people, for that matter) would be amazed at the ludicrous comments they would make. For example, Matt Labash (senior editor of The Weekly Standard online) actually claimed that doing away with mandatory dodgeball would cause the United States to suffer military defeat in a war with Iran. He was actually serious when he said that! (Not surprisingly, Labash also has shown no sympathy for kids bullied in school.) The fact is that those who want to impose sports on all students care more about sports than they do about the physical health of nonathletes, and for that reason I hold them in contempt.

Shouldn't a school's top-ranking class be academic in nature, not physical? We need to be careful not to make heroes of people just for trying to do the right thing. Once people get that kind of power, they tend to run away with it. I could see this being used as an excuse to expand public schools' physical education budgets way out of proportion.

I agree. The overriding purpose of private and public education should be to provide academic education. In a perfect world, I would say that only the parents are responsible for the physical health of their children. One reason I'm such a strong supporter of PE4Life is because there now is a strong push in the direction of some kind of mandatory P.E. There will be one kind or the other. If all students are to be required to take such classes, then genuine fitness programs should be provided that actually promote physical health instead of subjecting nonathletic students to some useless routine that often promotes bullying. With the current push towards mandatory P.E., we must not repeat the mistakes of the past; and the only way we can do that is by learning from our mistakes. But people whose minds are closed are incapable of learning anything.

[ChrisOH]

I continue to be amazed by all the people who fail to recognize that promoting sports is not the same as promoting physical fitness. Forcing nonathletic students who have no interest in them to participate in competitive team sports is counterproductive.

Hello Earl!

You've just hit upon a big issue for me -- that too many people seem to falsely equate "fitness and health" with "sports". I recently read an article online about First Lady Michelle Obama and her campaign to end childhood obesity. In the article, Mrs. Obama stated that "the professional sports community is on board with this." Of course they're "on board" with it -- it makes pro sports leagues look like the "good guys" who are concerned for the health of children. All about marketing.

In reality, the fitness and sports are separate concepts that may converge from time to time, but not nearly all the time. Earl, you've talked about your personal training and bodybuilding keeping you fit and healthy without participation in sports, and I've commented about the hiking groups I'm in where many people are very physically fit. (Some people would view bodybuilding and hiking as sports; I don't in our cases, since we're not doing them competitively.) On the flip side, Fat Man has posted some rather comical photos of the overweight, out-of-shape football players, but one need only glance at a TV football game to see that many of the players are hardly what we'd consider "buff". Also, if anyone can check out photos of Shaquille O'Neal or Prince Fielder (basketball and baseball, respectively), it doesn't look like they spend a considerable amount of time running laps or working out. The fact is, the pro leagues don't care -- they just want big people who can shove other guys around, especially in what they call "non-skill" positions. So, their stance against "childhood obesity" would seem a tad hypocritical to me.

Of course, there's always the subject of steroid abuse in sports, which begs another question: If sports make one so "fit", why do they need to inject extra chemicals into their body to give them an edge? Shouldn't the very acts of practicing and playing sports make them fit enough to compete at a high level? Why do they feel the need for something extra?

For example, Matt Labash (senior editor of The Weekly Standard online) actually claimed that doing away with mandatory dodgeball would cause the United States to suffer military defeat in a war with Iran. He was actually serious when he said that! (Not surprisingly, Labash also has shown no sympathy for kids bullied in school.)

Ha! Perhaps those aren't nuclear reactors the Iranians are building -- they're actually dodgeball factories, so they can prepare to defeat the Great Satan by hitting us with rubber balls!

[Fat Man]

congrats, Fat Man

Thank you very much!

Earl, that's a pretty impressive program. Thanks for posting it. It seems like such a clear program that it should be the status quo. In fact, the only complaint I have is when Lawler says, "Iâ??ll go head-to-head with someone from any curriculum and defend ours as the most important at the school" (referring to the New P.E.)

& this part:

"Parents appear to agree. For three years running, theyâ??ve ranked P.E. the best class offered at Naperville Junior High."

Shouldn't a school's top-ranking class be academic in nature, not physical? We need to be careful not to make heroes of people just for trying to do the right thing. Once people get that kind of power, they tend to run away with it. I could see this being used as an excuse to expand public schools' physical education budgets way out of proportion.

Yes, I must agree.

Now, I do agree with Earl that we need PE reforms, because it might help to greatly reduce the incidents of bullying of the nonathletic students.

But I would certainly hope that it does not get used as a means of increasing funding toward PE at the expense of academics, and I'm afraid that might happen. Our society is way too morally corrupt and we just might be paving another road to Hell with our good intentions.

What we need most is education reforms, and focus more on science and math, and all academic subjects. I also favor supporting the arts and music, because culture is important. The arts have a civilizing influence on young minds.

The focus on sports only appeals to our animal instincts, which clashes with the goals of civilization. It has taken us over 100,000 years to climb up out of the jungle.

So, our main focus should be on educational reforms.

PE reforms should also be instituted as well, to reduce the incidents of bullying, but the PE reforms should be instituted only by those who's main focus is educational reforms, so that we can be sure that PE reforms will not be used as an excuse to increase funding for PE at the expense of academics.

And if a school is having severe financial problems and finds it necessary to cut expenses, then PE should be the first thing on the chopping block.

This recent focus on mandatory PE is happening now because we're all so concerned about the so-called obesity epidemic.

Well, I believe that education, even without PE would be the solution to that problem.

Obesity is more common among the poor than it is among the middle class and the rich.

I say, get rid of PE entirely, focus on education, and then, as more and more citizens are better educated, they would be more likely to go on to college, and have better jobs, and rise up out of poverty, and live healthier lives.

PE, as it is now, actually contributes to our so-called obesity crises. Students who get bullied around in PE are going to lose interest in physical activities, so I say, it's the bullying in our PE that has contributed to these problems in the first place.

The moment our politicians shoot off their big mouths about health and physical fitness, they only poison the waters, as Kennedy did with his 50 mile hike fuck-up, which lead immediately to the declining quality of education back in the 60s.

Thanks a lot Kennedy! Too bad you didn't get your shit-for-brains blown out before you opened you big mouth about Americans being out of shape and needing to go on 50 mile hikes! Burn in Hell you son of a bitch!

Yeah! And we were going to go to the moon! Uh huh!

Well, they knew we couldn't very well do that with our educational system, because our schools were too fucking busy teaching how to fold paper footballs, and expelling students if they couldn't perform well in PE.

So, we had to enlist the aid of a NAZI war criminal, Arther Rudolph, to help us put a rocket together to fly American astronauts to the moon, because we Americans were too fucking stupid to do it ourselves.

I was 11 years old when I was getting my head bashed against a brick wall by a sports obsessed teacher would not allow me to check out astronomy books from the school library, while some low-life Fascist NAZI scum-bag piece of human garbage who was responsible for the deaths of over 12,000 war prisoners was able to immigrate to the USA and help design the Saturn V booster for Project Apollo.

Thank you America!

You should all be put up against a stone wall and shot for being the traitorous dogs that you are!

Yeah! Back in the 1960s, the USA was perfectly willing to throw innocent children away like garbage if they were physically unable to perform well in sports, while the fuck-heads who ran this country, from the President on down, were all sucking NAZI cocks, giving blow-jobs to NAZI war criminals!

I think I know what the N in NASA really stood for. It stood for NAZI. Yeah! The NAZI Aeronautical Space Administration.

I remember actually being proud that the USA had beaten the Soviet Union to the moon, but that was before I knew that one of the rocket scientists who helped to design the Saturn V booster was a NAZI war criminal.

Yeah, when I was 11 years old in the 5th grade, that pig-fucker was allowed to play with rockets while I was not allowed to check out Astronomy books from the school library.

Thank you America! Nice going you fuck-tards!!!

It was sometime back in the 1980s when I found out on the TV NEWS about Arther Rudolph, a NAZI war criminal working for NASA, and then, being sent back to Germany. If I had been rich enough to buy a plane ticket, I would have flown to Germany, tracked that pig-fucker down, cut off his head, and mailed it off to the good folks in NASA in a big jar of formaldehyde! Oh! And I would have also included his pecker as well so they could suck on it!!! And in another big jar, his ass so they could kiss it!!!

Well, Arther Rudolph is dead now, I don't remember when he bought the farm, but I can imagine that Arther Rudolph, President Kennedy, and Adolph Hitler are all butt-buddies down in Hell giving each other blow jobs for all eternity! Aw! Now ain't that sweet!

As I have said before . . .

The only reason why we were able to go to the moon in the first place was because . . . . .

NASA had . . . . .

THE REICH STUFF!!!

[i_like_1981]

PE, as it is now, actually contributes to our so-called obesity crises. Students who get bullied around in PE are going to lose interest in physical activities, so I say, it's the bullying in our PE that has contributed to these problems in the first place.

A very good point there, Fat Man. Now, I don't believe PE should be banned completely, but changes to the lesson planning are definitely necessary - the way I see it, it would be best if students could get a choice between playing competitive sports or choosing to increase their fitness level by means of gymnastics or going into a training room. That way, all the so-called "monkey boys" who are desperate to play the ball games they love can do so, and the lesser-athletic students can build up their fitness levels in an environment that encourages less bullying and more adult supervision. But like you say, forcing non-athletic students to participate in competitive sports where they will obviously feel maladjusted and even threatened, as I did, is only going to put them off doing physical activity in any form, because they'll always feel ashamed and fear that they're going to get harshly criticised and mocked for their attempts. I know for a fact that forcing me into doing games like football with people who were obviously going to run me down for near enough everything I did just about completely discouraged me from aiming to improve my physical fitness and only comparatively recently did I rise above that with my gym visits. Nothing good can come out of forcing people to do things that quite clearly aren't appropriate for them. PE classes need to start catering more for individual students and less for the physically stronger majority.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

[Earl]

ChrisOH, i_like_1981, and Fat Man, what more can I say? I concur with all of your comments about P.E. I continue to be amazed by what I consider to be the willful ignorance of so many people concerning this issue. Learning is next to impossible in any class in which the bullying of students is permitted, if not encouraged. Why can't people understand these basic points? Perhaps because they don't care. All they do care about is sports, sports, sports, sports. (Sure, sports are fine as a form of recreation for those who want to play them.)

Fat Man, now that I think about it, the fact occurs to me that my mandatory sports-based P.E. experience began before John Kennedy was even elected President. I'm not completely familiar with the history of P.E., but it seems to me that mandatory sports-based P.E. had already been around for a very long time. I'm not familiar with the "fitness" policies of the Kennedy administration. I don't know exactly what impact they had. But they definitely did not promote the reform that is so badly needed today. (I take that back. It's always been needed.) A friend of mine who is a sociology professor played football at the university where he earned his degree. Before some of you groan, he's been a dear friend of mine who also advocates P.E. reform. Even though he was a football player in high school, he was bullied physically (actually, the word I should use is "beaten") by one of his coaches. (Excuse me. I mentioned this before.) He's called the P.E. of our generation "The Stone Age" of P.E. in the United States.

[Fat Man]

Fat Man, now that I think about it, the fact occurs to me that my mandatory sports-based P.E. experience began before John Kennedy was even elected President. I'm not completely familiar with the history of P.E., but it seems to me that mandatory sports-based P.E. had already been around for a very long time. I'm not familiar with the "fitness" policies of the Kennedy administration. I don't know exactly what impact they had. But they definitely did not promote the reform that is so badly needed today. (I take that back. It's always been needed.) A friend of mine who is a sociology professor played football at the university where he earned his degree. Before some of you groan, he's been a dear friend of mine who also advocates P.E. reform. Even though he was a football player in high school, he was bullied physically (actually, the word I should use is "beaten") by one of his coaches. (Excuse me. I mentioned this before.) He's called the P.E. of our generation "The Stone Age" of P.E. in the United States.

Good evening Earl:

Yes, sometimes the jocks are often bullied around by their own coaches.

Actually, it's been my experience that the sports fans and the coaches are many times even worse than the jocks!

Yes, while I have been bullied around by a few jocks, most of the bullies, while not jocks themselves, were sports fans, and my PE coaches, and and some of my teachers were actually the worst bullies of them all, adults who should have known better.

[ChrisOH]

Fat Man, now that I think about it, the fact occurs to me that my mandatory sports-based P.E. experience began before John Kennedy was even elected President. I'm not completely familiar with the history of P.E., but it seems to me that mandatory sports-based P.E. had already been around for a very long time.

When I was in middle school (probably 5th or 6th grade, so late 1970's/early '80's), some of us in our class asked our regular classroom teacher why we had to take PE. She told us that it was made mandatory back in the 1950's, because while the military draft was still in effect in the U.S., too many draftees were physically weak and couldn't keep up with the rigors of army training. So it was decided to make it mandatory for all schoolchildren to take PE to increase their fitness. I also believe it was Eisenhower who initiated the President's Council on Physical Fitness in the 1950's as well.

A friend of mine who is a sociology professor played football at the university where he earned his degree. Before some of you groan, he's been a dear friend of mine who also advocates P.E. reform. Even though he was a football player in high school, he was bullied physically (actually, the word I should use is "beaten") by one of his coaches. (Excuse me. I mentioned this before.) He's called the P.E. of our generation "The Stone Age" of P.E. in the United States.

Wow! I'm so glad we have sports to promote teamwork, cooperation, loyalty, and self-esteem!

[i_like_1981]

Even though he was a football player in high school, he was bullied physically (actually, the word I should use is "beaten") by one of his coaches.

This is one thing I could never understand. Why the hell would a coach beat on his top sportsmen? What the hell is there to gain from that? It's one thing you don't hear of here in Britain - quite the contrary, because I'm pretty sure that some of the upper-class sports players here in Britain would more than likely have relationships with their trainers that involved much friendly chatting and drinking of tea. But I really don't get why it happens so much in America, coaches abusing and even assaulting their top players. It's like a maths teacher beating up their top students for getting better marks than everyone else. WHAT IS THE POINT? It doesn't make sense. I rarely speak in the defence of jocks but now I feel inspired to - the job of coach seems to attract some real psychos over in the USA, so it seems. I'm sure I'm not the only one who can't see any sense whatsoever in what these coaches do, and I just can't see how they would see any sense in it either. What is there to gain from it?

Best regards,
i_like_1981