the groundhog day project

I actually watched Major League --today's movie in my childhood deconstruction's confused final weeks--just last year. As a movies-by-minutes podcaster, I participated in a charity trivia contest, and along with UHF , Major League was the topic one of the rounds. The final round was live at a movies-by-minutes get together in Portland, Oregon in August. This year's event has been cancelled because a pandemic makes such events problematic. This year was going to be in Philadelphia. I don't think I've ever been there. Maybe next year. Meanwhile, Rachel Phelps wants to move the Cleveland Indians to Miami, so she has called for some very specific recruits for this year's team, slackers, nobodies, has-beans, weirdos. Jake Taylor is hungover in Mexico when he gets the call. His knees are shot. But, he' supposed to be a catcher. Rick Vaughn is in prison when he gets the call. Eddie Harris has to put, among other things, snot on the ball, to pit...

1985 is behind me now. Again. In the 80s, I guess it was like any year I made it all the way through was awesome because The Day After and Threads had offered up some wonderful visuals for my overactive imagination and cult-induced apocalypticism. Better to be Phil, stuck in the same day again and again and again, knowing that world didn't fall apart that day, no big war began, no pandemic struck, no aliens invaded. Just small town problems, a natural death or two*, and that's all. (* if you think only the Old Man died in Punxsutawney my friends, I suggest you watch this deleted scene and picture what that truck would have done to that little girl and that puppy if Phil hadn't been there.) Quick sidenote: I'm watching on the blu-Ray and the subtitles not quite matching up with the dialogue (which I've still got locked in my head as well) is really bugging me, but someone's doing laundry, and I don't want to just blast the film to the entire neighb...