We're not positive when this meme started, but some nincompoop (or nincompoops) had the bright idea of tweeting as top thoroughbred horses on Twitter -- i.e. taking on the personality of the horse and tweeting updates from the apparently 13-year-old girl-esque equine point of view. Frankly, it makes the Bronx Zoo Cobra meme look like Stephen Hawking.
Well, it looks like we have an answer to the question of whether or not audiences are interested in a historical, racially charged baseball movie. Brian Helgeland's '42' opened at the top of the box office this weekend, instantly breaking the record for biggest opening for a baseball movie. Sure, it's a minor record to break, but a record is a record.
My grandmother, Rhoda Singer, died earlier this year. She lived much of her life in Brooklyn and was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. Her favorite player was Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers' scrappy white shortstop who famously silenced a racist Cincinnati crowd by putting his arm around his black teammate Jackie Robinson during pre-game warmups.
I thought about my grandmother a lot while watching '42,' the new biopic of Jackie Robinson and his quest to break the color barrier in baseball. On an intellectual level, I can tell you a dozen things wrong with the movie, from its excessively preachy dialogue to its bloated length. But on an emotional level, I have to admit that this movie bypassed my brain and grabbed my heart, pulling each and every string contained therein firmly and repeatedly. It's a pretty good tribute to a great man. And when Pee-Wee and Jackie embraced on that field in Cincinnati I cried.
