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. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their 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. Also available on Kindle.

Bridesmaids (1/10)

by Tony Medley

Run time 125 minutes

Not for children

If a movie is full of vomit, diarrhea, and profligate use of f-bombs, especially by women, you can be pretty sure it’s by producer Judd Apatow, who continues his assault on gentility and good taste with this disgraceful roll in the gutter that degrades women. The sad part is that there is a good, sweet movie lurking here behind all the vulgarity.

Written by SNL actress Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo and directed by Paul Feig, Wiig is in almost every scene. As Annie, she is a bridesmaid and best friend to bride-to-be Lillian (Maya Rudolph). This is the story of Annie trying to find herself and it rapidly descends into SNL raunch.

About the only things all the bridesmaids have in common is that they talk like truck drivers and have low moral tones.

I like the old fashioned idea of looking up to women. They are our mothers and the mothers of our children. In almost every society they are placed on a pedestal. The idea here is to take away from women this respect they are due as mothers, and to view them as just no different from some bum in a bar. No need for a man to treat them special, like a lady, because that idea is passé.

The film starts out with Annie in bed with her apparent boyfriend Ted (Jon Hamm), a hedonistic, self-centered bohemian who is presented as a typical male, offering him sex in any position he wants for however long he wants it. Then, to make matters worse, she talks about it with her best friend, Lillian, going into relatively graphic, uncomfortable, detail.

The whole idea of Apatow’s films, and this film in particular, is to present cringe-worthy raunch as a substitute for real humor. People laugh not because it’s funny, but because it is uncomfortable. Nothing is out of bounds in an Apatow movie; the more distasteful the better. This film is down to Apatow standards.