Ol Hickory

I'm exhausted.  No, not like after a good run.  I had a really strange, bad day yesterday and I ended up only getting about three or four hours of sleep.  The fact that I had a cat walk on my face at six this morning didn't help.  Here are the talking points of the day:

1.  As I was on the Stair-climber yesterday (don't judge me), I was reading through the latest Sports Illustrated.  On the top of the cover, the magazine says that 2008 was the best year in sports history.  I kind of laughed at first but when I read the whole article, it makes sense.  What a great story it was that huge underdog, NY Giants, beat the undefeated New England Patriots in one of the greatest football games ever played.  How about the NCAA basketball championship where for the first time in history, all four #1 seeds make the Final Four.  I remember Mario Chalmers of Kansas hitting the game tying three pointer with less than one second left.  I remember watching the Roger Federer vs. Rafael Nadal match at Wimbeldon this year that ESPN said was the greatest tennis match of all time.  Also, the Olympics were spectacular.  Besides Phelps, the gymnastics were great and we saw Usain Bolt of Jamaica crush the 100 and 200 meter records to rightfully claim himself as the fastest man ever to live.  Maybe 2008 was the best year in sports.

2.  I rented the movie Bobby last night.  I thought it was really good and I give it an A-.  Look at this cast (in alphabetical order):  Harry Belafonte, Nick Cannon, Emilio Estevez, Laurence Fishburn, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LeBouf, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy, Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Christian Slator, Sharon Stone, and Elijah Wood.  Have you ever seen a cast with that many big names?  The movie was about the night Bobby Kennedy was killed a little over forty years ago and how it impacted so many different areas of America.  A very very underrated movie.

3.  This weekend, while driving to and from Wisconsin, I read a book called American Lion.  The author is Jon Meachem (editor of Newsweek).  The book is a biography on Andrew Jackson, our 7th president.  I thought it was really interesting.  Jackson is considered by many to be one of the top ten greatest presidents of all time.  He did a lot of good for the United States but I am also amazed at the walking contradiction that was Ol Hickory.  Jackson's childhood was extremely painful.  His Father died while his Mother was pregnant.  And his mother, and two siblings, both died while he was a child/teenager.  He grew up with nothing and became famous as a war hero.  He hated the elite, wealthy types yet he married a woman, Rachel Donnelyson, who happened to be married to another man at the time and came from gobs of money.   He was known as a brilliant, and kind man, but he was absolutely viscous as a soldier, butchering and killing many Native Americans.  As a president, he swindled the Native Americans out of lots and lots of land.  You would think he hated them, yet he adopted a Native American child.  Jackson hated the idea of civil war, yet he was not opposed to slavery and actually won several duals that he participated in during his life.  But that is not to take away from Jackson's accomplishments.  Lincoln called Jackson the greatest president of all time.  Both Roosevelts and Truman said that Jackson was in the top three.  Because Jackson did not come from the elite, he did much throughout his presidency to help the poor and middle class, often times at his own political expense.  He helped ease poor people to vote, and would do anything to help his fellow man... as long as they were white of course.  Anyway, very interesting book from a very important, but flawed president.