A Time To Pause...So Let's Watch A Movie!

            Thank you for joining me once again, dear reader, as I once again traverse and travel and travail and into the wonderful land of bloggerisms.  I would like to thank those that decided to join me on this post and if you’ve already clicked to something else because you found out that a Pokémon is located inside of the local nuclear reactor and you’ve just got to get it, then Godspeed on your journey!
 

            ESPN every year holds a fake gala that they call the ESPY awards.  ESPY of course stands for “Ewww, Sports Performers? Yuck!” which is an immature acronym and I admittedly didn’t think it through whilst fabricating it from the ether whatsoever.  Aside from self-aggrandizing sports figures, who don’t get enough attention already through their lucrative contracts, their lucrative endorsement deals, their lucrative side investments, and their lucrative percentages from their lucrative commercials, the ESPYs are crucial because they fill the one day of the year where there’s no real sports going on and they need to put something on the air in Bristol.  (Hey, anything’s better than putting on a repeat of a WNBA game, right?  Right?!  Ahem.)

 

            However there is a bright spot to the ESPYs and that is the day long auction and awareness given for the V Foundation for Cancer Research.  The V Foundation has to date given over $150 million towards cancer research and is a very worthwhile organization.  It was set up by Jim Valvano and ESPN while Valvano was fighting his own battle with cancer.  Sorry for taking a serious note all of a sudden, but ESPN’s support of the V Foundation is one of the nobler things about the network and I applaud them in their efforts.

 

            So as I was listening to the ESPN radio auctions and stories about those who had survived cancer, those who had succumbed to cancer, and those who were afflicted by cancer in their families, I realized that the anniversary of my own mother’s death from cancer is coming up.  Perhaps with that mindset, the stories I was hearing on the air affected me more than normal.  I was immediately transported back to 2000 and watching my mother fight, struggle, and ultimately yield to the cancer that had taken over her body.

 

            She fought that disease with ultimately great faith and with great humor given the circumstances.  I will always be influenced by her ability to handle something that physically, emotionally, and spiritually draining.  How she and my father were able to even cope was amazing in and of itself to me.  If and when I ever have to face similar situations, I only pray that I will be able to have just a tenth of the courage and resolve that they displayed.

 

            But rather than dwell on those final days, I want to use this as a moment to remember one of my mother’s great legacies in my life: her love of movies.  My mother thoroughly enjoyed film and introduced me to the classics that she enjoyed.  My parents would set up the VCR (look it up, kids) and would tape movies from whatever the local network affiliate would air during their Late Late Show (look it up again, kids).  We got most of the films of the Marx Brothers this way and this is how I became the only 2^nd grader at Gethsemane Evangelical Lutheran to quote Groucho lines and appear to be far wittier than I ever would be.  Hey, if you have to steal, then steal from the best! 

 

             Now with such a large introduction being said, I hope that you would indulge me further as I start a series of posts that will look at some of my mother’s favorite films.  I never tire of watching these particular movies and constantly find something new and interesting within them.  I will dive mostly in the pool of classic movies because frankly they are classic for a reason.  By the way, yes I know that a couple of them are in icky black and white, but suck it up buttercup, you’ll be just fine.  Besides, these films should be given a looksee if you’ve never had the chance to watch them.  And if you have watched them, take a moment to think about a mother and her son bonding over movies and watch them again.