TERENCE CRAWFORD

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Just watched the Crawford-Gamboa fight from Saturday night again and I have a feeling that Terence Crawford is going to be one of the boxing greats.

He got shut out by Gamboa, a terrific fighter, in the first four rounds, then came back to put Gamboa on the canvas in the fifth. He decked him again in the eighth, and was trying to finish him off in the ninth when Gamboa rocked him with a punch that almost put him down. Crawford kept his cool, held onto Gamboa until he got his legs back and his mind clear, then dropped Gamboa twice, ending the fight.

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Fast hands that come at an opponent from unexpected angles, knockout power in both hands, ring smarts, a level head and a good appreciation of the value of persistent body shots — the guy is already, at 26, a master of the sweet science and can only get better.

THIS

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. . . pizza was created in New York and has already been consumed.  Licking your computer screen won’t bring it back.

Photo by Bryan Castañeda . . .

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ANGEL

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Thanks to the extraordinary, almost hallucinatory clarity of Twilight Time’s Blu-ray of Leave Her To Heaven, I just noticed, after many viewings of the film, that Mae Marsh has a brief one-line cameo in it, holding a fishing rod on a boat dock in the opening scene.

Marsh was there when the art of movies was born, playing in many films by D. W. Griffith, becoming a major star in the silent era.  Later on she had small character roles, often uncredited, in scores of films right up until 1964, a few years before her death.  John Ford used her often in small roles, but so did other directors.

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She was like a recording angel in those fleeting later appearances, carrying the whole history of American movies in her always expressive eyes — a professional angel collecting small paychecks for doing a job she obviously loved, whatever notice it may or may not have brought her.

She persevered, as angels do.

GO TELL THE SPARTANS

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You fall in love with someone who sees you as the best you can imagine yourself to be. You fall out of love with them when you realize that they see you as you know yourself to be, just as fucked-up as everyone else is.

None of this is really about love.

Love is a pact between two totally fucked-up people “to uphold each other in joy”.  It’s an agreement to rendezvous and stand your ground at Thermopylae.

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