A Saturday Night Family Night &
Idea for Mother's Day
Saturday nights are a night my family and I lately enjoy the living room, Uber Eats, and a movie.
Why do we tend to stay in and not go to the theatre? Lately, it’s really hard to find a movie for the entire family.
From what I gather, here are the family’s unwritten rules:
**prefer no dumbed-down Animation (I even ordered Ralph Bakshi’s Tolkien cartoons to watch)
**No vulgar or explicit scene
**Light on violence and kissing (same reaction from kids)
**No politics and ideology
**Nothing too scary
**No black and white movies, especially from the 30s (they just don’t understand)
Now, if a movie has midgets, some rules will be overlooked (I have no idea, but it could be their age)
If you want, take these rules and filter them into Claude .ai and see what comes out?
The list I received was:
Willow (1988) — Warwick Davis invokes the exception again. Straight-faced high fantasy that respects its audience. Ron Howard didn’t wink at the camera once.
Babe (1995) — Practically flawless on every criterion. Intelligent, warm, no violence, no ideology, no romance. Holds up for adults too.
The Black Stallion (1979) — Visually stunning, nearly dialogue-free for stretches. Francis Ford Coppola produced it. Kids sit in silence for this one.
My Neighbor Totoro (1988) — Miyazaki is the anti-dumbed-down. No villain, no real plot, just wonder. Safe for any age.
The problem this Saturday Night everyone was tired and had to quickly find something suitable, and I found this on HBO
We watched the first episode and loved it.
It actually brought memories about when I was a kid, I used to watch NASCAR and bowling on Saturday mornings since nothing was really on.
And there was one thing that I never knew about bowling and always bugged me, how do these elite bowlers not bowl strikes all the time?
For the life of me, I never knew that the lane is altered slightly to throw them off their game, and is called oil patterns, and much like putting in golf.
And I’m thinking that with that one thought, this game could be exciting and watchable.
And possibly the beginning of a NEW TREND.
With new trends=opportunities
HBO’s Born to Bowl has 5 entertaining episodes
What these episodes show isn’t really about bowling. It’s about identity, survival, and obsession.
Men who’ve dedicated their lives to something the mainstream doesn’t take seriously, grinding from city to city for modest money.
Think Hoop Dreams meets Anvil! (a Canadian metal group that inspired Metallica and other greats)
If you liked McMillion$, Drive to Survive, or Last Chance U this is made for you.
But who made this?
Recognize the names?
They are all heavy hitters in Hollywood. What you would call trendsetters.
From A24, arguably the most culturally powerful studio in Hollywood right now, to a titan of comedy and creator of the current monster hit on Apple TV, Severance, Ben Stiller and the creators, who are all Emmy award winners.
They create not for the paycheck, but for something else, the zeitgeist.
Zeitgeist is, according to the English law firm of Merriam & Webster
“a German loanword meaning ‘spirit of the times’ (Zeit = time, Geist = spirit), referring to the invisible, dominant cultural, intellectual, and ethical climate of a specific era.
It defines the prevailing beliefs, fashions, and attitudes that shape a society during a particular, often only recognized in hindsight.”
So I did a little digging and saw that there is ONE bowling stock in the world, and also the owner of the tournament events (normally very valuable if it becomes popular)
The stock stinks. No one is investing in it because it’s not as hot as semiconductors.
But things begin to change if a bid occurs, and the downtrend is broken. $9.00
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
For me, we look for athletes who are like us. Most sports are in a different stratosphere, and so are the ticket prices. Things can change.
When you see our athletes, who we cheered for, altering their lifestyle and viewpoints, it makes it tough to know what is real anymore.
From Travis Kelce to the Rock, we kind of want to see some consistency.
Travis Kelce news
Rock news
Apparently, the Kelce news was “fake” but the reason people believed it was that it sounded about right. Disappointing.
Our future heroes are going to be the everyman like this fella in the documentary.
Absurd you say?
Isn’t Dino Anthony | 𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞 and many other cultural accounts reminding us about a time and hopefully the present of family values and institutions?
If so, one of those institutions was bowling.
Bowling was huge.
Bowling had its golden era first.
Then cable arrived, fragmented the audience, and the sport never found its analog in the new media environment. By 2000, the debt-riddled PBA sold for $5 million.
And, ironically, streaming through HBO will revive it.
So, for this fine Mother’s Day, ask your wife if she wants to go bowling, and you’ll know if we are early or not.
Make it a grateful and appreciative day,
Eric