Two Thoughts on Life

Robert Redford and Rob Reiner were two of my favorite actors turned directors.  They both passed away in the last 4 months of  2025 and as a result I've been thinking about them and their work.  Yesterday, quite by accident, a movie quote popped into my mind.  I could not place the movie at first, so I googled it and soon this scene was on my phone.

 

 

This quote from The Natural, although said to Redford's Roy Hobbs rather than by him,   informs and leads  the protagonist to the decisions that makes up the film's climax.

Thinking of Redford naturally made me think of Reiner. Thinking of Reiner led to thinking of the Princess Bride, which led me to this brief scene.  

In reviewing the context of both of these scenes, the hard fact that life is painful cannot be denied.   Both characters were denied (albeit temporarily)  true love due to circumstances beyond their control. The quotes are both delivered to their respective true loves when at each point of the film a happily ever after doesn't seem to be in the cards.  

Hope and bitterness both carry transformative powers.  The concept of hope in the line "the life you learn with, and the life you live with" says to me, yes life is pain, but much like pain you endure in a fire swamp you can learn from that pain.  Thinking that life is only pain can create a bitterness that is hard to overcome.  I am glad  that the 4 characters depicted in these scenes found their happy endings.  When I think of Redford and Reiner and all the stories they told through their acting and directing, it makes me sad that their lives have ended (especially in the tragic way Reiner's ended ) but glad that I am still learning about life through their work.  

Close Only Counts in Horseshoes, Hand Grenades and placing 0-2 Notre Dame in the AP top 25

Today, is my last post of the year.  I originally started this one  September 14th after the AP writers release this, their 4th college poll of the year.  The University of Illinois was 3-0 and they got ranked 9th to show that,  The University of Tennessee was 2-1 having just lost 44-41 to the University of Georgia  in overtime so they were rewarded for their loss by staying put at 15th.  This may seem unfair to some of the 17 other teams along with U of I ranked in the AP top 25 who started 3-0  especially the 8 3-0 teams ranked below TN all because the Volunteers played the Bulldogs close.

However one team dropped inexplicably in the rankings and they certainly had a bigger axe to grind than the 3-0 teams who felt slighted by TN.  This team had started the year ranked 6th in the preseason poll .  The next week they dropped from 6th to 9th.  They had a bye week in week 2 so they were able to jump us from 9th to 8th but then the indignity of plummeting, freed falling, dropping from 9th to 24th.  

This of course was South Bend Indiana's gift to Football itself, Notre Dame.  What did Notre Dame do to deserve this national embarrassment?  Failure to achieve any of the goals they set for themselves?  No, I think that might just be too on the nose for the AP writers.  Notre Dame had lost their first game and then after 2 weeks to think about it lost their 2nd game.  Now, they only lost by a total of 4 points, so that was plenty of reason to place them above undefeated U.S.C. (who beat their 3 opponents by 115 points),  and BYU (+93 point differential in their 2 games). 

I mean that's crazy? How entitled can BYU get complaining thinking that their 2-0 start should be rewarded and place ahead of a team that could at that point  in the season  count all their victories with no hands.

I meant to get that out much sooner than today, but Notre Dame started winning and my original post got relegated to draft status.  I always like to resurrect a post or two from draft status near the end of the year and I thought the title of this post, alone, merited an end of the year reprieve.

Yesterday Illinois and Tennessee met for the first time on the gridiron in the music city bowl here are the highlights.