When we were in our late teens and early 20s we would go illegally buy beer and “wahoo” old tennis balls from the nearby tennis club and then go somewhere and drink beer and play “ home run derby” and see who hit the most balls – say – over that house across the street or over that fence in the park there or into the school parking lot over there (etc). Chris’ sister was married to this whiny fucking prick who I absolutely hated but we had to hang out with him and when I pitched the ball to him he could never hit anything off me and literally went around screaming MY GOD ERIC SUCKS HOW CAN ANYONE HIT HIS HORRIBLE PITCHING JESUS CHRIST WHY OH MY GOD HE SUCKS OH GOD JESUS ITS SO AWFUL OH MY GOD OH GOD literally every single time I threw him a ball and not only did I develop a truly deep hatred for his obnoxious personality and loathe him for being an idiot, I started throwing him knuckleballs because they cone in a lot slower and you have a better chance at them. Now the purpose of the knuckler is that the batter is typically expecting a zinging fast or curve ball coming in at 90MPH so you drop a floating knuckle in at about 40MPH and it’s a strike every time (supposedly) because no one expects that garbage. And typically no one really throws them that much anyway because they’re hard on the shoulders. Is this movie a documentary about our foibles and athletics back when we were young and good looking?

No, this thriller movie set in the snow called Knuckleball sounded exciting in my brains and it started off nice and good and was going right along and then someone died and the acting was good and Michael Ironside was in it and I could see everything and then maybe the knuckleball here is that everything just kind of went poop on itself and it floated around doing nothing until the nothing end and then great ok but what about this and that and that huh come on mister but nothing and great, super, show’s over bye. But it’s not like there was some huge build up that was hopefully going to come exploding out at us but it was really like “ok ok ok ok well then ok ok oh that’s it?” And I don’t think anyone or anything at all was ever meant to or alluded to hitting a home run like that movie poster indicates. *thinks reflectively. Maybe I missed something.

SO – since that’s highly probable, we’re going to see if Ghoulie Joe can read my mind and make sense of this movie she’s never seen or heard of by just looking at some pictures I found on the internet.

The pics:

And her verdict:

"I've got it! Knuckleball is this old-school game where two players meet up in the woods and have an axe duel over the stuff in a crate. There's a random kid in the car and Michael Ironside playing referee."

Now, while the enterprising person could go read about this and fact check our work, her description is actually better than what happened in the movie. Or me throwing tennis balls at Justin in my intro up at the top. Promise!

FILED UNDER: RANDOM PEOPLE LOCKED UP IN A DUNGEON IN A BARN IN THE SNOW THAT MAKES NO BLEEPING SENSE OH AND THAT PERSON MAY OR MAY NOT BE SOMEONE’S DAUGHTER’S BROTHER’S SISTER MOM OR SOMETHING IT ESCAPES ME

P.S. that epilogue sentence I wrote there reminds me of this song I heard on my way home the other day called “I’m my own grandpa” by Guy Lombardo. It was hilarious and great and thinking about how it works makes my head googly.