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.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

Don Jon (1/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 90 minutes.

Not for children.

It’s probably not possible to make a tasteful movie about a subject as distasteful as masturbation, but this movie doesn’t even try. Filled with frank conversation and gutter language, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a successful ladies’ man who can pick up a beautiful woman in a bar and have his way with her with a snap of his fingers. He finally meets his “10,” gum-chewing sexpot Scarlett Johansson, and thinks he’s fallen in love.

Problem is, he’d rather have sex in front of his computer watching porn than with a woman, even one as beautiful as Johansson. He goes to confession every week and confesses a few dalliances with females, but 20-30 bouts with masturbation in front of his computer. The priest duly gives him absolution, so he goes on and continues.

The movie doesn’t understand how confession and sin work in the Catholic Church. You can confess your sins and be forgiven, but only if you have a firm desire of amendment. In fact, you don’t get absolution unless you have such a firm desire. Generally, if it’s clear you’ve got a problem, the priest will talk to you a little and try to guide you down a better path, help you deal with your demons. Not in this film, though. Confession is pictured as imagined by someone like Gordon-Levitt, who was raised in a Jewish family, who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Although the film is written and directed by Gordon-Levitt, it is not only misogynistic, it’s got misandry thrown in, too. All of the guys in the film are crude, foul-mouthed stereotypes who objectify women as sexual targets, nothing more. Even Gordon-Levitt’s father, Tony Danza, is a misogynistic clod who speaks like a motorcycle bum at the dinner table, dropping one F-bomb after another in front of his wife and daughter at the dinner table dressed in his sleeveless undershirt. No man in this film shows any respect for any woman. And no man is featured sympathetically.

Julianne Moore enters the film in the middle as an older woman who tries to bring Gordon-Levitt into the real world. Her character is maddeningly and unconvincingly contrived, as if Gordon-Levitt just wanted to include another big name in the cast.

If this was intended as a comedy as it is advertised, it misses the mark because there is nothing the least bit humorous anywhere.

Whatever was intended, after only five minutes I started looking at my watch and continued to urge those hands to move faster throughout the rest of the film.

September 18, 2013