Old Head

After the death of his mother, a retired basketball player and his daughter return home to settle her estate. The owner of the creepy old castle up the road has wanted desperately for years to purchase the home. When the athlete goes to sell his childhood home, he learns that the residents of the citadel are a coven of vampires, led by the Lord of the bloodsuckers himself, Count Dracula! 

Kyle Starks wrote and illustrated this madcap tale that may look suitable for children. But it's anything but! Lots of swears. Tons of gratuitous talk about sexual depravity. Lots of blood and death. Some nudity; including an anus! What do you expect? It's rated mature!

My wife actually picked this book up for me. It states on the back cover that Dracula and his brood are preparing for their favorite holiday. Me being a fan of holiday comics and graphic novels, she thought that this was a Halloween set book. I must admit, from reading the description, I did too. But there's a saying, 'don't judge a book by its cover ' and that also applies to the back of the book as well as the front.

I also thought that the retired basketball star, nicknamed 'Old Head' by rookies, was going to battle the vampires in a game of basketball. It would have fit with the oddball nature of the book. Plus there's an image on the back cover of the protagonist dunking over someone outdoors, at night with a full moon out. Assumptions got me again.

Not a bad read for only $3. I won't keep it. But maybe I can get a keeper when I trade this in at a used book store somewhere. Expect the unexpected. Only not in terms of scares but Monty Python level comedic twists that definitely push the envelope over the edge and into the rubbish bin. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.

Dragon Hoops (2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Oakland, California. It's the start of the 2014-15 school year and graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang has just finished the book tour of his 2 volume account of China's Boxer Rebellion Boxers and Saints. Ready to begin another year of teaching computer science at Bishop O'Dowd High School, Yang is also feeling the stress of following up his recent critically acclaimed works. 

Yang is afraid that he's out of ideas. But a chance encounter with members of the O'Dowd Dragons boys basketball squad brings forth inspiration. Gene has never really been great at sports. More of a nerd than a jock, the part-time comics creator really doesn't even understand that game of basketball. But after meeting with O'Dowd's coach, Lou Richie, Yang thinks he's got the idea for his next book.

O'Dowd lost in the state final last year. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride seems to follow the boys of Bishop O'Dowd. But with the state's top prospect, Ivan Rabb along with seniors Paris Austin, Alex Zhao, Isaiah Thomas and Jeevin Sandhu, O'Dowd has a very good chance to finally win their first championship!

From pre-season practices all the way to the California High School big dance, Gene Luen Yang will travel with the Dragons to chronicle their season. Along the way, Yang highlights the team seniors, diving into the depths of their past histories. What is it like to be a young black basketball star in Oakland, America, the world? How does a Sikh Indian immigrant handle the pressure when the opposing fans brand him an Islamic terrorist? How does a Chinese basketball prospect live abroad in the United States with a host family? Can you thrive in basketball as the little brother of a superstar women's basketball prospect? These are just some of the questions about culture Yang will explore as he also takes the reader on an early history of the game of basketball.

I found Dragon Hoops a fascinating read. It's what Friday Night Lights is to football. Yang basically has to do 3 things in this book. He's got to educate us on the origins of basketball. He'll need to introduce us to all of the major characters of this book. And he has to guide us through an entire season of high school boys basketball. Gene Luen Yang balances all 3 segments of this book extremely well without once being boring or repetitive. 

Dragon Hoops is just over 440 pages long. I did not want this book to end. I've been all smiles as I've Googled many of the characters in this graphic novel to see how they've fared since the end of the 2014-15 season. Yang berates himself for not being good at drawing likenesses. But I think he did a really great job at this book.

Gene Luen Yang no longer teaches. Right after this book, he devoted himself to comics full time being tasked with a run on Superman before creating a line-up of Chinese legacy heroes in the pages of New Super-Man. After both successful runs, it was nothing but up, Up and UP for Yang. But don't be surprised if we see a return to Bishop O'Dowd. Not that I think Yang is going to go back to teaching or anything like that. But I really could see this biographical graphic novel becoming a movie or TV series.

And if that happens, you read it here first! 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #39 (Featuring the LGBTQ+ or different ethnic group) of the 2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge. 

1977: A Madman Turns 40: 2017- Day 155

  

  
     For today's edition of a Madman Turns 40, I look at hoops- basketball hoops!

     It was on this date that the Portland Trailblazers won their first and so far, only NBA title. They beat the Philadelphia 76ers in 6 games 

Future NBA Hall-of-Famers
Bill Walton and Coach Jack Ramsey celebrate winning the NBA Championship.

     Portland was the clear underdog in this match-up. The 76ers had George McGinnis. They also had Doctor J- Julius Erving! However, the Trailblazers did have a promising young star in UCLA's Bill Walton. Sadly, a foot injury the next season would be the first of many leg issues for the tall red-head and cut his career drastically short.

Doctor J. takes flight!

     In 2017- the Golden State Warriors are looking to win their 5th title against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Lead by the inhuman Seth Curry, the Warriors currently lead the series 2-0. However, Lebron James and Duke's Kyrie Irving look to do what Walton and the Blazers did in '77, come back from a 2-0 deficit to sweep the next 4 games. It should be an interesting match-up...

The Portland fans celebrate!

    Well, that's my look at my favorite year for today. Until next time...

1977: A Madman Turns 40: 2017- Day 80

  
  Yesterday, Duke lost in the NCAA Tournament to South Carolina. But there was an even bigger loss to the Duke program as it was sportscaster Bob Harris' last stint as the play-by-play announcer.

    This was Mr. Harris' last season and though he got started in 1976 calling Duke football games on the radio, if you do the math, this season's 2016-2017 basketball season was #40! That means as long as I have been alive, nobody else has ever called a Duke football or basketball game for Duke Sports Radio. So of course, I've got to pay some tribute to the man known as the 'Voice of the Blue Devils.' 

     My mother was an NC State fan. My father loved UNC. Being an individual, I went my own way and choose Duke. In middle school and high school, I wanted to go to Duke so bad. I loved watching Laettner, Hurley, Davis, and the Hills (no relation) destroy the competition! Lead by the one and only Coach K, the Duke Blue Devils were back-to-back Final Four Champs! It was a great time to be a Duke fan.

     Back in the 90s, you didn't get to see every Duke game on TV like you can now. You only had ESPN, ABC, NBC, and CBS. So unless you got lucky and Duke was selected as the game of the week, the only way to regularly catch a Duke game was on the radio. So I spent many a day and night listening to Mr. Bob Harris call those Duke games on AM radio. 

      At the same time I was listening to Harris call the games on the radio, my future wife and future in-laws were doing the same as I and listening to the games being called by Bob. Janni was a Duke grad, an original Cameron Crazie, and she works for the Duke hospital system where she is the system's reigning Social Worker of the Year! 

   Though I never got to go to Duke, I now work there too in the University's dining system as a chef manager. So Duke's a very big deal in our home and Bob Harris' retirement is a very bittersweet thing.

Check on the video at 1:25 for the

Ultimate NCAA baskestball play of all-time.

    Before I go, let's look at the achievements of Bob Harris' career and the amazing things he had the privilege to call on the Duke Radio Network:

Member North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame

3 time North Carolina Sportscaster of the Year

                                     Recipient of the Order of the Long Leaf Pine Award, 2016

(North Carolina's highest civilian honor)

Called 456 consecutive Duke football games 

& 1,358+ Duke basketball games 

1 Duke Football Bowl Win (Pinstripe Bowl, 2015)

41 ACC men's basketball tournament games

16 ACC Championships

13 Final Four appearances

11 national championship games

and 5 NCAA Champion titles.

Best of Luck Bob- We'll miss you!

1977: A Madman Turns 40: 2017- Day 32

Forty years ago today, two high school basketball teams took to the court. They dribbled, they shot, they rebounded, and they scored only once. That's rights, these two titans of the 10-foot tall hop battled to a 2-0 score to make history as the lowest scoring official game in history. Not only did it happen in my favorite year, it also happened in my very own backyard!

   The game was between the Hornets of Durham Hillside and the Person County High School team out of Roxboro. Other than the score and the participants, that's about all I can find out about this game. I can't even get a straight answer as to whether this game was played at Hillside or Person. But I did confirm that this game actually happened via the North Carolina High School Athletic Association (NCHSAA) website.

Edited screenshot from the NCHSAA.

You would think that this record would ever be matched, but in 2015, two Alabama high school teams matched the 2-0 record set 38-years earlier.

One thing that I want to know is this- how bad were these teams? My sister used to play Pee-wee basketball and those games would at least end with a score of something like 10-7. Even the lowest scoring NBA game of all-time had both teams manage to score double digits and those were in the days of no shot clock or 3- pointers. (The Lakers beat the Pistons 19-18 in a 1950 game.)

Hillside High School,
possible site of the epic 2-0 game.

So we start February with an oddity. Even more odd is how all kinds of websites know about this weird game yet nobody seems to have further details. With this being the 40th anniversary of the game, I'll scour the Durham paper and update this entry if I learn anything new.

   Until tomorrow or more fun facts come to light...