Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. Notre Dame Coach Digger Phelps said, "I used this book as an inspiration for the biggest win of my career when we ended UCLA's all-time 88-game winning streak in 1974."

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. Click the Book to read the players telling their stories in their own words. This is the book that UCLA Athletic Director J.D. Morgan tried to ban.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information.

Valentine’s Day (7/10)

by Tony Medley

Run time 117 minutes,

Not for children.

This movie is getting roasted by critics, with a 16% rating on Rottentomatoes as of this writing. So it’s appropriate to set forth my expectations going in, which were low. I’ve not been an admirer of  the talents of Jennifer Garner or Anne Hathaway. I’m really not too fond of ensemble casts of stars. And, although Garry Marshall has directed some pretty funny movies, like “Overboard” (1987), and at least one that rose above the norm in lots of people’s minds, “Pretty Woman” (1990), he’s also been involved with some turkeys like “Princess Diaries 2, Royal Engagement” (2004). So I was expecting dreck.

But Marshall has a nice touch here. For one thing, he loads the film with terrific shots of Los Angeles. The locations include Marina del Rey, the Hollywood Freeway, the fountain at Wilshire & Santa Monica Blvds. in Beverly Hills, the Venice Canals, and the Hollywood sign, among many others.

In addition to Garner and Hathaway, the cast also includes Ashton Kutcher and Topher Grace, both of whom live up to the potential they have shown in the past. So for me to say that two of the best things about this movie are Garner and Hathaway, I’m not damning with faint praise. Both give rewarding performances, Garner as a woman in love with a creep, Patrick Dempsey, who keeps his happy marriage a secret from Garner, and Hathaway, who plays a receptionist doubling as a phone sex operator. She falls for Grace, but even when she’s out on a date with the clueless Grace, the phone keeps ringing…

The cast is a who’s who of Hollywood including, in addition to the foregoing, Shirley McLaine, Jamie Foxx, Queen Latifah, Jessica Biel, Kathy Bates, Bradley Cooper, Taylor Swift, George Lopez, and Julia Roberts. In one way or another, all are involved in some sort of love relationship.

There are a few plot holes, but one that shouted out at me was when two people are listening to “Mike and Mike in the Morning” on ESPN radio as they are driving along in their car with the sun shining brightly. Unfortunately, “Mike and Mike” is on from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. in Los Angeles.

One puzzling aspect of the movie is that it contains a love relationship between two gay men. In the Elizabethan era, men played the roles of women because women were forbidden to appear onstage. When that taboo was lifted, men ceased playing women. Hollywood does not cast white actors to play black people, or vice-versa. No longer does it cast Caucasians to play Asians, like it did when Warner Oland and Sidney Toler played Charlie Chan and Peter Lorre played Mr. Moto in the ‘30s and ‘40s.

However, recent movies have cast men who have a reputation of being heterosexual in real life to play gay roles. In this film, the actors portraying the gay men are, from all we know, heterosexual. But in today’s enlightened and politically correct Hollywood, there is an abundance of gay actors. Nobody could ever accuse Hollywood of being anti-gay, so If Hollywood wants to portray a gay relationship, why doesn’t it cast gay actors to portray those parts? Why don’t the gay pressure groups speak up? Asian pressure groups raised such a ruckus about Charlie Chan that the films were effectively blacklisted from TV for years. Why isn’t there the same sort of ruckus about heterosexual men playing gay parts? Perish the thought, but could there be a political agenda at work here? Of course, the actors who are playing these gay parts could actually be gay, in which case these last two paragraphs could be considered inoperative; who knows?

Agenda or no, this might be a trifle, but it's an entertaining trifle.