Bill Parcells: 'This Is Why You Lift All Them Weights, This is Why You Do All That'

Source:AZ Quotes- Bill Parcells, when he was head coach of the New York Giants.

SourceThe Daily Review

"Pro Football Hall of Fame head coach & front office executive Bill Parcells comes in at #7 on the list of Top 10 Mic'd Up Guys of All Time."

From NFL Films

Source:NFL Films- Bill Parcells, leading the New York Giants to victory in Super Bowl 25, against the Buffalo Bills. 

As someone who grew up just outside Washington in Bethesda, Maryland and still live there, I grew up a Redskins fan and still am, ( even though Dan Snyder makes it harder for me to remain a Redskins and NFL fan each and everyday ) it gives me great pain to say anything nice about anyone who has ever worked for the New York Giants. Especially someone who not just had great success with the Giants, but had great success against the Redskins while with the Giants. The Redskins and Giants, are great rivals.

The only team that the Giants hate more than the Philadelphia Eagles, are the Redskins. And the only team that the Redskins hate more than the Dallas Cowboys, are the Giants. Welcome to the NFC which is just one small, but great family where everyone hates each other. Which might not be that untypical of the modern American family, especially with the current political situation and division. The NFC East is one of those places that's not that different from the modern American family. For example ( pardon my language ) you can all your brother an asshole or even make fun of your father or mother, but if someone else does especially outside of your family does, you want to kick their ass to set them straight. We don't actually hate each other, we even respect it each other which makes it easier to acknowledge greatness from another team in your division when you see it.

When a car company makes a great car, you bet your life that your competitors will see that and respect that. Perhaps even take notes of what makes that car great and why it's so popular. And when another team in your division does something great, or produces someone who is great like a player, or in Bill Parcells case a great head coach, other teams take note of that to see what made that coach so success with that team.

You could argue that what made Bill Parcells a great head coach was his knowledge for football and the NFL. A great ability to see talent and get the most out of the players that he had and of course that's all true. There are maybe 10 different NFL head coaches that knew enough about football and both sides of the ball that they could've been either a successful defensive coordinator or offensive coordinator: Don Shula, Tom Landry, Chuck Noll, perhaps Bill Cowher, maybe Bill Walsh who gets credit for being the great offensive mind that he was, but the man had a great football mind as well and the San Francisco 49ers played his defenses and defenders were his players, not the defensive coordinator's. But one guy who really sticks out as a great football mind at least post-Tom Landry is Bill Parcells.

But as great a football mind that Bill Parcells was in the NFL and especially with the Giants where he won 2 Super Bowls in 5 years in New York ( or New Jersey, depending on your perspective ) and his knowledge of the game both defensively and offensively is an important factor, there's one more factor that I believe is more important and a bigger reason for his success in the NFL and that's his honesty. Like with the Giants ball control power offense where they almost told the defense what play they were going to run, because they only had a handful of both running and passing plays, there was no deception with the Bill Parcells Giants, they were either going to power run or perhaps pull a sweep outside with Joe Morris or someone else, or QB Phill Simms would go play action and hit a post to his TE Mark Bavaro or WR Lionel Manuel and there was also no deception or bullshit ( to be frank ) in how he treated his players. They always knew where they stood with him.

The classic Bill Parcells quote where he's on the sidelines I believe talking to his offensive line during a game and he's trying to motivate them and get them to play harder and he says, "this is why you lift all them weights, this is why you do all that shit!" Telling them the reason why Parcells makes his players work as hard as he possibly can, is not to punish them and to wear them down, but to make them as strong as they can and to make them as great as they.

It's that old Chuck Knox quote when he was the head coach of the Los Angeles Rams in the 1970s when they were at practice and he tells one of those players, "to be a champion, you have to pay the price." Coach Knox, was also famous for working his players very hard. Bill Parcells, wasn't interested in being popular even in New York, but wanted to build champions and he did that they only way he knew how to which was through blue-collar bluntness and hard work and he was very successful with his approach.

PM Entertainment Group: Ice (1994) Starring Traci Lords

Source:Pic Click- Traci Lords, in Ice. 

SourceThe Action Blog

"Also Known As: Caçada Pela Máfia; Inimigo Letal; Diamanten kalt wie Eis; The Diamond Killing; La croqueuse de diams
Year: 1994"

From Tinatra

Source:PM Entertainment Group- Traci Lords, in Ice. 

I don't think Ice is a great movie, but just because a movie isn't a great movie, doesn't mean that it's not good, or at least entertaining and very entertaining. Typical of a lot of Traci Lords movies which tend to be b-movies anyway, ( I mean, we are talking about a porn actress ) there is a lot of cheesy writing in the movie that makes it sound like some action TV show from the 1970s or 80s, that never got off the ground, because the pilot failed. ( Ha, ha, get it ) But typical of her movies there's also a lot of sexy scenes with her in it and I'm not talking about her porn films ( necessarily ) and a lot of good action scenes. Car chases and shootouts., where she's either playing a tough, badass, sexy, gorgeous cop, or in this case a bad girl who gets the bad guys at the end with her husband.

Source:Alamy- Traci Lords and Jamie Alba 

Even with Traci's gorgeous, baby face, she plays a bad girl in Ice. Ellen Reed ( played by Traci Lords ) and her husband Charley Reed ( played by Phillip Troy ) are cat burglars sho steel diamonds from the mafia and the local police detectives are on to them to try to catch them. This is really not a movie about bad guys and girls versus good guys and girls, but more like a movie about dancing with the devil that you know the best with the mafia being the worst devils in this case and the cops trying to use the Reeds's to help them bring down the local mafia there. Not that different from how the FBI an U.S. Attorney's use informants and ex-mobsters to help them bring down the mafia in New York and other big cities in America.

The plot alone I believe makes Ice a very interesting movie. But it's a cheap film like most b-movies and unlike Intent To Kill that did have other stars in it including Traci Lords with Scott Patterson and Yaphet Koto, I don't believe unless you're some Hollywood movie historian and junkie, I don't believe that you would recognize anyone else in this movie other than Traci Lords. But considering that Ice is a movie with a lot of perhaps c-actors and not even b-actors and that Traci at this point at least is probably just a b-actress at this point, Ice is a very watchable and entertaining film. Especially considering what they had to to work with. Sort of like an NFL team that wins 9 or 10 games without any stars on the team, Ice is a good film especially considering what it had to work with.

Foreign Affairs: Senator Elizabeth Warren: 'A Foreign Policy For All'

Source:The Atlantic Magazine- U.S. Senator's Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren on Capitol Hill. 

Source:The New Democrat 

"Around the world, democracy is under assault. Authoritarian governments are gaining power, and right-wing demagogues are gaining strength. Movements toward openness and pluralism have stalled. Inequality is growing, transforming rule by the people into rule by wealthy elites. And here in the United States, many Americans seem to accept—even embrace—the politics of division and resentment.

How did we get here? There’s a story Americans like to tell ourselves about how we built a liberal international order—one based on democratic principles, committed to civil and human rights, accountable to citizens, bound by the rule of law, and focused on economic prosperity for all. It’s a good story, with deep roots. But in recent decades, Washington’s focus has shifted from policies that benefit everyone to policies that benefit a handful of elites. After the Cold War, U.S. policymakers started to believe that because democracy had outlasted communism, it would be simple to build democracy anywhere and everywhere. They began to export a particular brand of capitalism, one that involved weak regulations, low taxes on the wealthy, and policies favoring multinational corporations. And the United States took on a series of seemingly endless wars, engaging in conflicts with mistaken or uncertain objectives and no obvious path to completion. 

The impact of these policy changes has been devastating. While international economic policies and trade deals have worked gloriously well for elites around the world, they have left working people discouraged and disaffected. Efforts to promote the United States’ own security have soaked up huge resources and destabilized entire regions, and meanwhile, U.S. technological dominance has quietly eroded. Inequality has grown worldwide, contributing to an unfolding nationalist backlash that seeks to upend democracy itself. It is little wonder that the American people have less faith in their government today than at any other time in modern U.S. history. The country is in a moment of crisis decades in the making." 

From Foreign Affairs 

A "foreign policy for all", I guess has a real hipster ring to it, similar to Medicare For All or whatever example you want to use, but like most catch phrases whether they're pop culture or political, when you actually get into them the first question is always, "what does that mean?" What do you mean by that? As much as President Donald Trump's presidency contradicts this, the President of the United States and American government more broadly are actually serious things meant for serious people. This is not a reality TV show or some movie or hip sitcom or anything else. This is real-life where real decisions are made everyday effecting real people. "A foreign policy for all" might have a catch ring to it, but what does that mean and what is in that foreign policy.

So when Senator Elizabeth Warren, argues that it's time to bring our troops home, the first obvious question is, "bring them home from where?" If you're talking about bringing them home from Iraq and Afghanistan, then the next question would be, "what would happen instead after America is out of those two countries?"

Senator Warren, also argues that America spends too much on national defense, OK where would you cut the defense budget? It's hard to get official numbers from the U.S. Defense Department on this, but we're currently somewhere between 50-100 billion dollars on the defense of Europe in NATO. We currently make up just as one country 70% of the entire NATO defense budget. Would asking or demanding that Germany, France, Italy and other European states spend more on their own defense and take a good chunk of that revenue out of our own defense budget since Europe is now spending more on their own defense? America could do a lot with 50-100 billion dollars a year that it wouldn't have to spend on defense.

Sony Pictures Entertainment: The Frontrunner (2018) Hugh Jackman as Senator Gary Hart

Source:Sony Pictures Entertainment- Hugh Jackman, as Senator Gary Hart, when he ran for President in 1984 and 87.

Source:The Daily Review

"Based on a true story that changed everything, Hugh Jackman is #TheFrontRunner – only in theaters this Election Day."

From Sony Pictures Entertainment

Source:We Got This Covered- Hugh Jackman, as Senator Gary Hart.

I saw The Frontrunner not this Saturday, but the previous Saturday in Silver Spring, Maryland because I wanted to see it obviously, ( no, I was kidnapped and forced to watch it ) but because of the subject matter. I was 11 years old and in the 5th grade in Bethesda, Maryland in the spring and early summer of 1987. Gary Hart's presidential campaign for 1988 was so short that I'm not sure it even made it to the summer of 87, at least officially. It made Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign look like a Breaking Bad marathon on AMC. You would have to be familiar with her very brief presidential campaign, as well as Breaking Bad and AMC to get that reference, but it was very short.

So, when Senator Gary Hart was running for president in 1984 and 88, I was a very young kid and don't remember much about his two campaigns. Both were fairly short, but at least for 84 Senator Hart made to January before falling out after finishing third, ( I believe in Iowa ) but going into 87 Democrats knew that they weren't going to have to run against President Ronald Reagan again and the Reagan Administration had the Iran Contra scandal hanging over his head with a Democratic Congress in charge of it since they now controlled both the House and Senate and that those investigations could hurt both President Reagan and then Vice President George H.W. Bush, especially since George Bush was not only the Vice President, but was considered the Republican frontrunner for the 1988 campaign.

Gary Hart, was as very talented politician, as well as a very intelligent man both in foreign affairs and national security policy, but domestic policy as well. He was compared with John F. Kennedy for good reasons. He was very bright, good looking, and also had a tendency to tell people what he believed and what was on his mind. Very similar to Senator Joe Biden who also ran for President that year. He also had an ability to talk about serious and complicated issues, but do it in a way where you didn't believe you needed a Russian or Chinese translator to translate what he was saying. He had a very common touch not that different from Bill Clinton, Ron Reagan, or even George W. Bush. And if his 1987-88 presidential campaign was about what he wanted to be about which was new ideas and time for a new generation, instead of what it became about, maybe he not only wins the 1988 Democratic nomination for President, but defeats Vice President Bush as well.

Which is my lead in to what The Frontrunner is about with actor Hugh Jackman playing Senator Gary Hart. It wasn't the media, it wasn't The Miami or The Washington Post, or NBC News that brought down Gary Hart. Only Gary Hart with his extra marital affair and his political suicidal mistake of daring the media to follow him around to see that he wasn't having an affair. There were rumors going into 1987 that Senator Hart was a bit of playboy who cheated on his wife which was before he even meet Donna Rice the woman he had a brief affair with in the late spring or early summer of 87. And Hart was tired of getting those questions and truly believed that they were none of the media's or the American people's business what kind of relationship that he had with his wife and other women.

Gary Hart, perhaps in a split moment lost his cool at a local diner on one of his campaign stops having lunch with a Washington Post reporter and dared the media to follow him around to see if he was having an affair or not and that's exactly what they did. That's how they got pictures of him with Donna Rice on a boat together in Miami. As well as pictures of them together at his Georgetown townhouse in Washington. Because he invited the media to follow him around and didn't just shoot himself in the foot politically, but shot his whole foot off and perhaps his brain and heart as well. Thanks to 1987, Gary Hart has never ran for political again and has never even served a Democratic President again.

As far as the movie, other than not looking much if at all like Senator Gary Hart, I believe Hugh Jackman did a great job of playing him. But I believe the people who played the reporters and the media officials were the real stars of the movie. As well as Senator Hart's campaign staff including J.K. Simmons especially. Gary Hart, comes as naive when it comes to how the media reports on these stories about politicians and candidates and their relationships with women. Which is how Hart should've been portrayed because in real-life he wasn't expecting the media to cover his affairs, just the substance of his campaign. Which of course is not how the real world in politics works.

PM Stunt Fan: Intent To Kill (1992) Starring Traci Lords

Source:PM Stunt Fan- Traci Lords: "Holy smokes, Batman!" LOL 

Source:The Action Blog 

“Traci Lords as an undercover cop in leather skirt and jacket.” 

Source:Leather Series & Movies- Traci Lords as an LAPD undercover detective in Intent To Kill.  

From Leather Series & Movies

Today shows and movies featuring gorgeous, sexy big city police detectives and other law enforcement officers are very common. Just look at Law & Order SVU, CSI Las Vegas, The Mentalist, movies like One For The Money where Catherine Heigl plays a New Jersey bounty hunter and I could go on. But in the early 1990s, actresses even gorgeous and sexy actresses, even very good if not great actresses were playing the wives or girlfriends of big police detectives, or playing the victims. Perhaps they would play a rookie patrol officer or desk officer, but generally not involved in doing the legwork and dirty work of what vice cops do to bring down criminals and put themselves in serious physical danger.

Source:PM Stunt Fan- Traci Lords, about to kick ass 

Whatever you think of Intent To Kill and I'm one of the first people to say that it's not a great movie, even though I like it and have seen it several times, Intent To Kill was ahead of it's time in a positive way, because it had a female police detective who ends up bringing down the bad guys ( to use a cliche ) almost by herself. Her partner and boyfriend ( played by Scott Patterson ) ends up being the one who dies during the last shootout in the movie, not the woman with her boyfriend trying to save her as well and the day. ( To use another cliche ) Traci Lords, is the badass, super cop in the movie who brings down the bad guys. A Los Angeles drug gang, that's involved in other crimes like rape and murder.

Again, I'm not saying that Intent To Kill is a great movie. Some if not a lot of the writing especially for a 1990s film was pretty cheesy. Traci Lords, made a name for herself in the adult film industry not as a great dramatic or action star. But she's great in this movie as a LAPD vice detective who is gorgeous, sexy, has the look more of an LA biker chick with the black leather biker jacket, Levi's jeans, black leather boots, but who isn't just a pleasure to check out, but who plays a very sharp cop as well who is always ahead of the game. Her first seen in the movie she takes out a rapist on her own, because the victim is a hooker who is simply not believable as a rape victim. Which was a very different time back then. And she ends up essentially playing the female Dirty Harry in this movie and does a great job. A very entailing movie especially if you enjoy seeing gorgeous, sexy women kicking ass.

David Von Pein: CBS News Special Report- Eric Sevareid: 'Presidents and Assassins (November 25, 196)'

Source:David Von Pein- CBS News Special Report from Eric Sevareid.

Source:The New Democrat

"PRESIDENTS AND ASSASSINS" (CBS NEWS SPECIAL REPORT AIRED ON NOVEMBER 25, 1963)"

From David Von Pein

This CBS News Special Report, was just 3 days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. This was all very new with if not most Americans, but certainly a lot of them. Maybe only the oldest people in America remember William Mckinley being assassinated in 1901 and people who would have to be in their early hundreds at this point to remember President Abraham Lincoln being assassinated in 1865. And to remember President Lincoln being assassinated in 1865 and to still alive and to remember that in 1963, you would need one helluva healthy mind and perhaps body as well.

Source:David Von Pein- CBS News Special Report 

And since this was all so new with most Americans and with network news not being the dominate factor in America media in the early 60s that it had become by the early 70s with the Watergate coverage and President Richard Nixon's administration, Americans weren't use to seeing these special reports from the networks devoting so much air time to covering current affairs especially during prime time when most networks back then were showing their family entertainment like sitcoms, dramas, variety shows. Forget about 24 hour news networks not being around yet in the early 60s, network news other than the morning show and nightly news wasn't much of a factor yet by this time.

Source:Assassination of John F. Kennedy- CBS News Special Report 

The JFK assassination changed America a lot as far as how it operated and changed both our government and culture as well. The President got a lot more security with the Secret Service now becoming a major factor not just in the President's life, but his family as well, and ex-president's and their families. Americans started becoming more interested in current affairs with the networks newscast moving from 11 minutes a night to 22 minutes a night ( not including commercials ) and with nightly newscasts expanding, special reports and documentaries that were produced by the network news divisions themselves like CBS News for CBS, because a regular part of TV network viewing in the 1960s.

This CBS News Special Report by Eric Sevareid, is something that today you would probably see from PBS, CNN, perhaps MSNBC or FNC, but probably coming from a real slant. C-SPAN or one of the 24 hour documentary networks like National Geographic Channel today because the broadcast networks don't want to donate even a hour of their time at night to showing a current affairs or history documentary and take that time away from one of their hit sitcoms or dramas, especially when there's PBS, one of the news networks, or the documentary channels like History and others that show this type of programming all day and all night everyday and every night. But post-JFK assassination up until really the 1990s or so documentaries and Special Reports about one particular subject that was going on in the country at the time were shown by the networks on a regular basis back then.

Jayne Mansfield Diamonds To Dust : A Guide For The Married Man (1967) Jayne Mansfield

Source:Jayne Mansfield Diamonds To Dust- Son of a beach!

Source:The Daily Review

I'll be the first to say, actually I would run to make sure I was the first person in line to say that A Guide For The Married Man is not a great movie. It's also not a horrible movie, but perhaps I wouldn't make the same effort to say that. It's a good, funny movie with a great cast: Walter Matthau, Robert Morse, Inger Stevens, Lucile Ball, Phil Silvers, Art Carney, and someone named Jayne Mansfield. ( Perhaps you've heard of her as well ) Except for the bit part or cameo A Guide For The Married Man is right up Jayne's dress, I mean ally for her. Comedy especially romantic comedy was her shtick and it would've been nice if she had a bigger role in this movie. Perhaps playing one of Robert Morse's 10 girlfriends in the movie.

Source:Movies Ala Mark- Hollywood Babydoll Jayne Mansfield and Terry Thomas, in A Guide To The Married Man 

By 1967, Jayne Mansfield was doing most of her work and making most of her money outside of Hollywood. She literally was on the nightclub circuit and doing comedy and music all over America. Think about that for a second: one of the most popular Hollywood Goddesses from the 1950s reduced to singing and doing comedy at nightclubs by 1965 or so. She was also doing films in Britain and Europe, including in Italy. She was tired of doing comedy in Hollywood and by the early 1960s, wanted a newer role and do other things and expand her acting resume.

Source:Flickr Via Podie- Hollywood Babydoll Jayne Mansfield, in A Guide To The Married Man

Which is sort of like saying that Michael Jordan or Larry Bird is tried of shooting the basketball and scoring points, so what they're going to do instead is just rebound and play defense, pass the ball when they have it instead of leading their team in scoring and leading them to victory. Comedy for Jayne Mansfield, was like the passing game for the New England Patriots, it was her bread and butter, her go to offense and what made her famous and popular to go along with her goddess body and little girl adorable appearance. And ironic that her last trip back to Hollywood for work was to do another comedy which is what she was doing in the late 50s with movies like Will Success Spoil Rockwell Hunter and The Girl Can't Help It.

If you want a full post or report on A Guide For The Married Man, I suggest you go somewhere else for that, because I'm really just interested in Jayne Mansfield's role in it. She plays the comic relief in a movie that's pretty funny to begin with but is so good at it playing the mistress of a man who is married and her wife catches them together in their bed and he and Jayne play it off like nothing is going on at all and the wife is completely imagining what she's seeing. And the guy and Jayne just get out of bed, make the bed, get dressed while the wife is in the room and has already seen everything and Jayne leaves the room and house as if nothing had just happened. And they do it so perfectly that the wife starts actually believing that she's imagining everything that she just saw. Great scene with Jayne just making a pretty funny movie even funnier.
Source:Jayne Mansfield Diamonds To Dust