Out of print for more than 30 years, now available for the first time as an eBook, this is the controversial story of John Wooden's first 25 years and first 8 NCAA Championships as UCLA Head Basketball Coach. This is the only book that gives a true picture of the character of John Wooden and the influence of his assistant, Jerry Norman, whose contributions Wooden  ignored and tried to bury.

Compiled with more than 40 hours of interviews with Coach Wooden, learn about the man behind the coach. The players tell their their stories in their own words. This is the book that UCLA Athletic Director J.D. Morgan tried to ban.

Click the book to read the first chapter and for ordering information. Also available on Kindle.

Something Borrowed (chicks 8/10; guys 4/10)

by Tony Medley

Run time 103 minutes

Not for children.

Chicks might love this movie; guys not. The first hour would fit any man’s legal definition of torture for any normal guy. The only reason I remained in my seat was that I had walked out of a screening of Thor after the first 15 minutes and anything would look good compared to that monstrosity. After an hour, however, when Ethan (John Krasinsky), the Tony Randall role, got more attention, there were actually some laugh-out-loud scenes.

Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Darcy (Kate Hudson) are BFF, and as chick-flicky as they could possibly be. Darcy is engaged to marry Dex (Colin Egglesfield) and Rachel has long carried the torch for Dex; in fact she introduced Darcy to Dex. Neither Rachel nor Dex have the courage to speak up for their feelings. So Darcy filled the void and grabbed him and has no clue about how Rachel and Dex feel about each other. The entire movie is getting them to confront their feelings and deal with Darcy, who is aggressive and domineering. Derivative and predictable come flooding to the mind.

The problems with all these chick flicks are twofold. In the first place, they are generally written by chicks (here it’s Jenny Snider from a novel by another chick, Emily Giffin), and the chicks that write them don’t have a clue about how normal men act, think, or speak. That’s true here. The men, you should pardon the expression, are either girly men, like Dex, or sexless, like Ethan, or unbearably gross and crude, like Marcus (Steve Howey), who is clumsily trying to bed Rachel.

The second problem is the dialogue, mainly between and among the women. I hope that this isn’t the way real women speak and act with each other, because all those scenes are enough to send any normal man running out of the theater, screaming.

Despite the script, however, the acting in this is very good, especially Krasinsky and Goodwin.