It’s a gray, cloudy day here. 80% chance of rain all day, so it certainly won’t improve. It’s almost like typical autumn weather in the Carolinas, except that it’s hovering right around 70 degrees F – oddly warm for this time of year.

Not a whole lot going on this week, and that’s kind of nice. Got my first class project turned in yesterday (a week early, thankyouverymuch!), and I’m going to start on my first project for another class today – it’s due next Wednesday. No worries.

So. Let me tell y’all a little story.

Many years ago (OK, twenty years ago. Good gods, it’s been that long!), I was in high school in Anderson, South Carolina. Thomas Lucas Hanna High School, to be exact. Among my few extra-curricular activities (besides quiz bowl team) was acting as video manager for the football team. Yeah, I was the geek with the video camera set up on top of the press boxes of high school football stadiums all across northwestern South Carolina in all kinds of weather. As an extra bonus, I sometimes got to mix up the Gatorade for the football team on practice days and generally hang around. Hell, for a repressed, non-social high school student, I was doing pretty good. But enough about me.

One of the interesting things about the football team was that they had a guy who hung out with them a lot. He wasn’t a student – he was in his 30’s, actually. In fact I’m not sure he had ever been a student at Hanna. He was a black guy who was rather mentally challenged. I think his name was James, but I’m not sure – his nickname was Radio, after the radio he always carried with him. Radio was a pretty cool guy and the team usually (note that’s usually) treated him with respect. The coach, Harold Jones, took him under his wing and allowed him to help out the football team – as manager, as cheerleader, or whatever role he wanted. I never really talked to him much, but he was an amusing part of the scenery and added a little personality to the team.

I graduated from high school and pretty much forgot all about Hanna and Radio. Until I heard some interesting news last year. Apparently some people thought that the story of Radio and Coach Jones was a pretty inspirational one. Radio was featured in a spot on ESPN2, and on Harry Smith’s former CBS show, “Travels With Harry.” And lo and behold, now we have this: Radio, starring Cuba Gooding Jr., Ed Harris, Debra Winger, and Alfre Woodard. Good grief. Hollywood comes to my hometown. The movie premieres in the next few weeks, and I’ve been seeing previews on network TV (though from the scenes I’ve seen, they didn’t actually shoot the football practice scenes on the Hanna practice football field. It’s not particularly photogenic, I guess). Looks to be a pretty big deal, though.

According to this article, it’s going to be set in the 1980’s. Hey, that was right when I was there – I graduated in 1986. I wonder who they’re going to get to play the deeply closeted gay video manager who liked to sneak peeks at the football players in the showers 🙂 I suppose I’ll see this movie at some point, if only to see what little bit they did film in Anderson. It looks like they also shot some of the movie further south, in Walterboro, SC.

Wow. I hung out with Radio, who was played by Cuba Gooding Jr., who was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon. I have a Bacon Number of 3!