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.

Due Date (3/10)

by Tony Medley

Run time 95 minutes.

Not for children.

This distasteful film by Todd Philips, who scored big with the sleeper hit The Hangover, indicates that he might be a one-hit wonder. While it contains sparkling performances by Robert Downey, Jr. and Zach Galifianakis, the film goes over the edge that The Hangover fortunately avoided.

It is, in short, idiotic. The scenes created by Philips and Alan R. Cohen & Alan Freedland and Adam Sztykiel & Todd Philips (too many writing credits, never a good sign) defy credibility. With one absurdly contrived scene after another, one eventually just rolls his eyes and hopes for a quick ending.

Philips throws in vomit and masturbation to tweak the viewer. There is even a scene of a dog masturbating. Vomit and masturbation are not funny; rather they constitute a plea for laughs based on shock value when a writer and director can’t create them with talent.

He also shows Downey, who is racing to get home in time for his wife birthing their first child, doubting her fidelity, thinking that she cheated on him with his best friend, Jamie Foxx, egged on by Galifianakis. Rather than trusting his wife, he believes Galifianakis, a stranger he barely knows, but a person he does know to be unbalanced. Philips apparently thinks that this plot point is a funny enough story line to keep it going throughout the film, which should be enough by itself to keep one away from this film.

In perhaps the most absurd scene of many, Philips has Downey and Galifianakis drive their car off a freeway bridge, landing in the middle of another freeway 30 feet below on its roof, a calamity that couldn’t avoid breaking both of their necks. Not to worry, Galifianakis survives without a scratch and Downey gets only a broken arm.

Speaking of Foxx, his appearance barely qualifies as a cameo, and the same can be said of the talented Michelle Monaghan, who plays Downey’s wife. It borders on fraud to list these people as stars in the cast because if you blink at certain points in the film, you risk missing them altogether.

I don’t really want to waste any more time writing about this low class, preposterous film. It could appeal to a certain segment of the viewing public, but most of them are the fictional people one sees in beer commercials.

November 3, 2010