Many have tried but only a handful of professional athletes are able to make the crossover into a successful acting career. We may not see them walk onto a stage and receive an Emmy or an Oscar but some have become very successful in their second careers and have also turned into some fairly respectable actors.
The criteria I used for this list is they had to have played a sport professionally. For the “order” criteria (which was not easy) I took into consideration their body of work in both their sports career and their acting career. I also considered their acting ability and their overall success as an actor. I am not including any professional bodybuilders or professional wrestlers in this list because stage presence and theatrics are already exhibited in these two sports.
Pro Sports Career: Played Baseball with Milwaukee Braves, St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies & Atlanta Braves from 1962-1967
It just seems fitting that Bob Ueker should come in at number 12 but at least he made the cut. After his lackluster baseball career Uecker made the most of it by making fun of himself and describing his experiences on the talk show circuit and then started appearing in several TV shows & movies. His line “Just a bit outside” from the move Major League is still a classic. He later was one of the main characters in the TV series Mr. Belvedere which aired from 1985 to 1990.
Pro Sports Career: Played Basketball with Boston Celtics & Las Angeles Lakers from 1991 to 2004.
It is may be a little too early to tell if Fox will have a really successful acting career but he has shown some real promise appearing in shows like HBOs Oz and in a couple of episodes of Ugly Betty.
Pro Sports Career: Professional skateboarder from the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Professional skateboarding is not exactly the sport you might think of when you hear about pro athletes becoming actors. However when you think of the skill level and the athletic ability involved along with the competitiveness I think it deserves to be here with the other sports.
Jason Lee is the youngest on the list and also probably the one with the brightest future as an actor. Lee is just perfect as the character Earl Hickey in the TV series My Name is Earl which started airing in 2005. Lee also recently appeared in the movie Alvin and the Chipmunks and was also the voice of Underdog which was released in 2007.
Pro Sports Career: Played football for the Detroit Lions from 1958-1962 & 1964-1970
Who can forget Karras’s great performance as Mongo in Blazing Saddles?
He later proved to be a successful actor as he appeared in more movies and many television shows including Webster in which he was one of the main characters along with his wife Susan Clark.
Pro Sports Career: Played football with Minnesota Vikings, New York Jets & Seattle Seahawks from 1972-1977 Marinaro was also the runner-up for the 1971 Heisman Trophy Award.
Ed Marinaro has appeared in several movies and television shows but is best known for the character Officer Joe Coffey on Hill Street Blues which aired from 1981 to 1987.
Pro Sports Career: Played baseball for the Chicago Cubs & Brooklyn Dodgers from 1949 to 1951. Connors also played basketball for the Boson Celtics from 1946-1948.
When watching old reruns of The Rifleman many people are not aware that Chuck Connors had another life as a professional athlete before his acting career. Although his athletic career was not exactly stellar Connor’s is one of only 12 people who played both pro baseball & pro basketball. Connor’s was also in dozens of movies besides his popular television show which ran for 6 years.
Pro Sports Career: Played football for the Los Angeles Rams from 1962-1976 and was known as one of the “The Fearsome Foursome”.
Merlin Olson is best known for his series Father Murphy which lasted from 1981 to 1983. He also appeared in many episodes of Little House on the Prairie as the character Jonathan Garvey from 1974 to 1983.
Pro Sports Career: Was a footballer (Soccer player) from 1984-1999 Football Clubs: Wimbledon, Leeds United, Sheffield United, Chelsea, Queens Park.
Not following English football I was not aware that Jones was a former professional athlete when I saw his solid performance in the movie Swordfish. Later I learned about his impressive soccer career. He seems to have great screen presence and continues to be a very busy actor and is now starring in most of his movies.
Pro Sports Career: Played football for the Oakland Raiders & the British Columbia Lions from 1970-1974.
Carl Weathers was perfect in the roll as Apollo Creed in the Rocky movies. He also has proven his acting ability in several TV series including Street Justice which aired from 1991 to 1993.
Pro Sports Career: Played football for the New York Giants & Los Angeles Rams from 1969-1981.
Fred Dryer is best known for his starring roll in the TV series Hunter as Det. Sgt. Rick Hunter which lasted for a very respectable 7 years from 1984-1991. Dryer also directed several of the Hunter episodes. He later produced and starred in another TV series called Land’s End.
Pro Sports Career: Played Football for Pittsburgh Steelers, Oakland Raiders & Kansas City Chiefs from 1960-1967
Williamson kept busy in movies and TV for over three decades. Although many have criticized him for starring in several movies that are considered black exploitation (blaxploitation) films no one can argue that Williamson has made his mark on the film industry. Williamson also produces, writes & directs. Recently Williamson displayed good comedy instincts playing Captain Dobey in the movie Starsky & Hutch.
Pro Sports Career: Played football for the Cleveland Browns from 1957 to 1965.
Sure it would be nice to see Jim Brown take on more versatile roles but when you consider he was one of the greatest football players ever along with his very successful movie career it is hard to deny him first place on this list. Everyone remembers his performance in The Dirty Dozen which launched his movie career. Since then he has starred in over 30 movies and also produces and directs.
Contributor: Blogball
119. Still sad that we still in a society that lets people get off the hook purely based on the color of their skin. Usually it’s the other way around, but this time we learned if you have enough money, allow a court to be made into a three-ring circus, and live in an area still reeling from the effects of racial rioting, then you can get away with murder. Literally. Apologies for the illiterations.
no oj?!?!!
no bodybuilders? that’s the hardest sport there is bub!
OJ is a professional murderer…. cancels out his athletic career
#121. Cedestra – July 2nd, 2008
119… this time we learned if you have enough money, allow a court to be made into a three-ring circus, and live in an area still reeling from the effects of racial rioting, then you can get away with murder. Literally.
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The Rodney King riots (or “civil unrest” as the politically correct would have us call it. It was neither “civil” nor “unrest”. It was flat out rioting, destroying both public and private property, the loss of life, the horrific beating of *one* man by a mob, bearing bricks, rocks, bats, and bars, while police WATCHED without doing a thing to stop it, so they couldn’t be accused of “over-reacting”.
People I knew who had always been anti NRA went out and bought arsenals for their homes.
Working in a multi-racial environment, as I did, the usual casual friendships became strained…not a very productive workplace.
Yes, it was money and fear which played the largest part in the verdict, but to be honest we can’t forget two other important aspects:
1 – many of the jurors were not highly educated and much of the evidence was based on (then new) DNA.
2 – the trial was televised, and some of the attorneys (whom I refuse to name) played well to both the jury and the cameras.
There’s a lot more, but it’s not for this List.
Sorry.
I cannot believe you forgot Arnold!
BTW, although I grew up watching johnny Weissmiller as Tarzan; he was an Olympian, not professional.
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125. Tervuren – July 2nd
I grew up watching johnny Weissmiller as Tarzan
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I *wanted* to add Johnny, but that last name of his just threw me for a loop.
glad to see jim brown topping the list, he was exceptional in the film ‘fingers’.
segue I am always taken by your perceptions. You raised some very valid points I hadn’t considered. I always thought the verdict was a joke. “If the glove don’t fit, you can’t convict.”
And I thought it was Weissmuller with a “u”
What, not even a mention of OJ Simpson or Arnold Schwarzenegger? Is body building not athletic? Was OJ not a pro athlete turned actor?
Sorry if this has been said before, in my shock I didn’t even read the comments >_>
You’re spot on, Vera,
Johnny Weissmuller it is.
To be pedantic, the Germanic origin is Weissmüller, which means “white miller”, so it’s kind of half translated in 125 above. Anglophones often spell Müller as Mueller, because it comes closer to preserving the German sound and even in these globalised days not all keyboards have an umlaut (= ¨) like mine. But for all that, pronunciation is often ambiguous. If I write Wagner here, you’re not going to know how to say it until I add something like Robert, film star, or Richard, divine opera and wedding march composer and nasty little racist *****.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson played professional football in Canada as well as being an NCAA champion in 1999. Everyone knows that college football players are paid, thus making them professional.
Spanner in the works: Richard Wagner was a “nasty little racist *****?” Really? Anti-semetic, or what? What does Spanner in the works mean, if I can ask. I know you knw who the “real” Vera Lynn was (is?) but she is mentined in a song by my favorite band Pink Floyd “Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn? Remember how she said that we would meet again some sunny day. Vera…Vera…What has become of you? Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?”
wrestling may not be a sport but they are still athletes and the rock aint a half bad actor, surely if skateboarding counts…..
Remember Brett Favre in “There’s Something About Mary”.
I love Brett Favre but he should definitely stick to football and not acting
Although he is decent in the Wrangler Jeans and Prilosec commercials.
MPW Some one brought that up already. Did you not read all the comments? Teasin. Lots of talk about Farve today *wink wink* We overlap. Haha
And while side-tracking on the subject of racism, thanks for your fascinating if horrifying expansion and context for the whole OJ thing, segue. You most certainly haven’t failed to register in this column, judging from the reaction. Perhaps a list of 10 facts about OJ might be in order?
I always supposed it was pure money that got him off. Isn’t there supposed to be some attourney in your Land of the Free who tells anyone to pre-plan and commit a murder, and then he will guarantee they get found not guilty … provided they can meet his fee?
In fact I’ve always considered it particularly sickening that O.J.’s verdict was hailed as a triumph for Afro-Americans, when any POOR black would probably have ended up guilty, perhaps even including where there remained a smidgeon of doubt. It always appeared to me as nothing more or less than a triumph for wealth and privilege, regardless of whose.
Now, thanks to you, the panorama is much more complex, dark and frightening. Although I’m no longer resident in U.K., it stirs up the unease I feel about racial and cultural mixes there. They should result in inter-tolerance and “hybrid vigour”, but … In many ways they are essentially a volatile mix that remains tranquil so long as things go well. But what happens if there is a (say fundamentalist Muslim) explosive focal point, as at Watts, or the economy starts to melt down and there aren’t enough jobs and welfare to go around? I read about a lot of that potential tension in much of Europe. It worries me, and I just hope it can be contained for the sake of my family who still live there, and of course for everyone else.
But how scarey if the price for containing it is letting people get away with murder, literally. That shows how brittle the glue holding society together really can become at times in places.
Vera Lynn,Favre is always worth mentioning more than once:)
how about Jim Palmer’s infomercials
As long as we’re looking at people who were in the ring as athletes, how about martial artists?
I know that I’ll be lambasted for this one, but I prefer Dolph Ludgren’s Punisher to the Tom Jane version. He was a full-contact karate champion of Europe and Australia before going to acting.
Bruce Lee’s skills were barely capturable on the film because of his amazing speed. Enter the Dragon is still one of the best action films out there.
MPW Jim McMan’s commercials for scooters “Outrageousness” was his tag line for them.
Hi (smilie with big teeth) YATB
I meant “McMahon” Sorry
Jason Taylor from the Miami Dolphins wants to act after his football(the manly version)is over
^^Career
@bucslim (28): Take over the world….I hope you were joking, otherwise all I have to say is – ‘grow up man’
Arnold Schwarzenegger. hehehehe… his name very difficult..
Hey – thanks everyone for all the additions
Starting with the last posting, 145, I’ll take on the rather reluctant task of philologist, but happily hand it over to anyone better qualified than my long-since, half-forgotten schoolboy German.
Arnie, baby?
No problem with the root schwarz. It means black, as a lot of people know.
Now we might have Schwarze Negger, which could be taken as black negro. That is not only over the top, but a curious ancestry for a guy who is pretty obviously Caucasian and from central Europe. But German for negro is Neger, anyway. O.K., so perhaps it’s Austrian dilect for negro then?
Well, interestingly, there is a pair of mountains in the Austrian Alps called Grosse (greater) Scheidegge and Kleine (lessser) Scheidegge. Now I’m fairly sure Scheid-egge means ‘split plough’ (sorry ‘plow’, youse from the U.S.A.) and gives us what is probably a defining clue.
Schwarzenegger is Schwarzen Egger, in my opinion, almost certainly meaning dark ploughman/plowman, and it’s not unreasonable to suppose that dark perhaps refers to his hair in a country of so many blonds, rather than a skin colour.
After that I tried out Schwarze Negger and Schwarzen Egger with ‘translate’ on Google, and was directed to Dr Weevil. Interestingly, his first posting mumbled on vaguely about black negroes too, and speculated how Arnie might possibly have got that moniker.
But by the next posting someone had caused him to reconsider it as exactly the same conclusion of black ploughman/plowman that I had, so that seems pretty conclusive.
What a shame generation difference has deprived us of Weissmuller and Schwarzenegger together in a film!
Inconsequential footnote. Our plant geneticist neighbour where I live recently went to a high-level co-operative conference in L.A. Last weekend he showed us digitals of himself chatting away to Arnie (the Governor). Just like Forrest Gump, but this was the real Arnie, not some clever newsreel image manipulation.
Now for your questions at 133, Vera.
whether literal or figurative, a spanner in the works is anything that buggers up something which was running smoothly before. Imagine an engine ticking over and you suddenly drop a spanner into all the whirling cogs, chains, belts and pistons. A spoke in the wheel is a kind of similar metaphor. I suppose I could have taken it a mite further and called myself *****stirrer, but that’s not really my style. The idea is that if someone says anything I consider or know is wrong, or I disagree with, I’d hope to pick them up, drop a spanner in their works. John Lennon published a small book of poems, reflections and puns. Its title was a pun on my nom de plume: ‘A Spaniard in the Works’. Of the great Beatles I sadly find John a mite in the mould of Richard Wagner. I like his music one whole heap better than the vibes I pick up of the man himself. He strikes me as often having been pretty cruel, selfish and arrogant. O.K. so now I’ve lit the blue touch paper under a secular god, and I’d better stand clear of the back-blast.
One of the all-time greatest ironies in classical music is experienced unknowingly by nearly every bride married in church. She walks one way down the aisle to Richard Wagner and back to Felix Mendelssohn (whose delectable incidental music to ‘A Midsummernight’s Dream’, from which the Wedding March originates, deserves to be heard in full). Two great pieces of music. Yet had both composers been around in the middle of the following century, I don’t have the faintest doubt Richard would have volunteered to shovel Felix (a Jew) personally into the gas chambers. He hated Jews, and he hated Jewish musicians and composers even more. To him the race was responsible for everything wrong with the German-speaking world, and the musicians for everything wrong with German music. The ironies continue. One who was a direct inheritor of Wagner’s musical development was the Jewish Gustav Mahler. And no one could seem more Hunnishly Teutonic than the contemporary Johannes Brahms, who yet had more beloved Jewish musician and artistic friends than you could shake a stick at.
In fact I’ve laid this out as a fairly personal and musical thing, but it isn’t. Anti-semitism both has deep roots (in York, England, in the 1400s, for example, and read ‘The Merchant of Venice’) and bursts out like boils at points through history. Bismark’s united, nascent, imperial Germany was brewing up profound racism long before Hitler arrived on the scene, even though many Jewish Germans fought bravely and loyally for Kaiser Bill in WW1. But Wagner was particularly odious, and one of many examples of a divinely gifted genius whose personality just doesn’t seem to square with his output. Some can’t accept that, others can. The Argentine-Jewish conductor, Daniel Barenboim, courageously was the first to play Wagner in Israel. He met A LOT of opposition. By the way, Barenboim has set up a mixed symphony orchestra of young Jewish and Arab musicians. How about that?
Let me make finally clear`though: I cant resist what appeals to me of either John Lennon’s or Wagner’s music, and I don’t try or want to.
It’s very late where I live. Not sure if I’ve still got time for Vera Lynn, Vera Lynn, so I’ll post this now in case.
Look up you pen-namesake in Wikipedia, Vera.
Just type VERA LYNN WIKIPEDIA in the GOOGLE box (or whatever search engine you have: I promise not to drop a spanner in it) press search and then activate the entry. She’s nicely profiled there.
And everything I wrote to you before (over in Top 10 Conspiracies?) is true. She is still alive (in her 90s). We did hear her live in 1995 at the WW2 50 anniversary ceremony in London (but not by the Thames, as I thought. That’s where the fireworks were). And her voice was still amazingly strong, clear and fresh too. We do have about 5 CDs with a lot of her output, and certainly all the wartime and just postwar favourites. And I did reply “We’ve met again some sunny day” to you at another of jfr’s sites). And I was around when she was in her prime. Though not quite old enough to fall in love with her. Judy Garland was my first. Followed by a younger crooner than Vera called Carole Carr. After that it was Julie Christie, and I’ve been faithful to her (and Anita) ever since. I claim to have “discovered” Julie on an old Brit B.& W. TV science fiction series before the world had even heard of her. OK. so I told you I’d belt the ***** out of anyone with my Zimmer frame who took liberties. What do I care who knows. You lot don’t know me. I’m old. As f***ing old as f***ing Jack Nicholson, so there. Anyone want to f***ing make anything of it?
You’re as old as you feel, anyway, and I feel about 100 right now, ‘cos its longpast my bedtime. So Goodnight, Vera.
No doubt there’s a heap of cricketers that have gone on to star in Bollywood movies – not that I’m into Bollywood movies…or cricket.
Vera,
I’ve just popped back to say I’m glad you like Pink Floyd. I do too, but my rock has become so neglected these days because I have so much classical stuff that I can’t stop listening to and not enough life to live for it all. Because one doesn’t do something doesn’t mean one wouldn’t like to.
I had a friend who every time he picked up a magazine in a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room found another fascinating subject that he said needed another whole lifetime to explore. He thought cloning oneself might be the answer. The whole mass of these lists and all their varied subjects here is like that anyway.
Roman Gabriel, anyone?
If you’re including martial artist you guys missed a big one. CHUCK NORRIS
Regarding Vinnie Jones… I never thought of soccer players as body building types like Vinnie looks. Seems it would make it hard to run up and down the field with all the extra muscle mass.
The first name I thought of was Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and he wasn’t even on the list?! He’s the most electrifying man in sports and entertainment! Also, he was just on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.
Great list…what about Brian Bosworth. He got run over during his football career (Bo Jackson, huh, warrrreagle) and then got run down by critics in his film career.
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137. Spanner in the works – July 2nd, 2008
And while side-tracking on the subject of racism, thanks for your fascinating if horrifying expansion and context for the whole OJ thing, segue. You most certainly haven’t failed to register in this column, judging from the reaction. Perhaps a list of 10 facts about OJ might be in order?
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Spanner – When I read the beginning of your comments, I thought you were mocking me (there is something about the total absence of vocal and facial clues which can so easily lead one astray), but as I read on, I became convinced your concerns for your family were real.
I could easily do a list like the one, but the emotional cost would be too high. I was reacting (over-reacting? to some comments re: OJ in the posts), and I apologized for go so far afield.
Everything I posted was true, factual, as it happened.
But enough is enough. Besides, now we have even larger worries.
So back to happier List topics!
Now!
147. Spanner in the works – July 2nd, 2008
plough’ (sorry ‘plow’, youse from the U.S.A.) and gives us what is probably a defining clue.
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Us poorly educated Americans, well, some of us, know a ‘plough’ is a ‘plow’. I had only 6 weeks of German in school, but kept it up myself, along with the languages required of me (Latin and French, along with ancient Greek roots et al).
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148. Spanner in the works – July 2nd, 2008
Now for your questions at 133, Vera…
whether literal or figurative, a spanner in the works is anything that buggers up something which was running smoothly before. Imagine an engine ticking over and you suddenly drop a spanner into all the whirling cogs, chains, belts and pistons…
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just in case that didn’t give you the perfect picture (though it was beautiful!)
a spanner is an adjustable-angle head wrench.
Your basic wrench.
anything you can break your bones in is a sport. Thats what I always say
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151. Spanner in the works – July 3rd, 2008
I’ve just popped back to say I’m glad you like Pink Floyd. I do too, but my rock has become so neglected these days because I have so much classical stuff that I can’t stop listening to and not enough life to live for it all.
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Spanner, II have managed to overcome that problem by keeping my iPod filled with a mixture of my favorite music at all times.
Since my favorites include Classical, Jazz (the real stuff, not Kenny G), 60′s-mid70′s Rock (pick ‘n’ choose), African tribal music, Celtic…you can see the problem re: time, so I reload my iPod at least once a week and listen to it a few hours a day.
manohman, are we off topic.
miller: I think of a sport as a physical competition between either individuals or teams which results in a winner and a loser. Which eliminates, let’s seee…. chess and pro wrestling!
Spanner in the works Thank you. I had no idea. This stuff is not routinely taught. Until recently, history was my least favorite subject. Now I love it and soak it up. Thank you for the thumb-nail sketch. And I’m sorry you stayed up so late.
BTW You and segue are going to have a lot of fun here. She’s terrific.
segue
I.m just up and refreshed.
Oh dear,
I do need to add voice tone and facial expression. I see how easily my blundering attempts to be inclusive of what I know are different phrases or spellings in USA (recognising how many of your countrymen fill these columns) might be taken as mocking, facetious, f***ing superior Brit attitude, etc.
So for any from Oz reading, Good on yer.
And kiwis, don’t drag yer dags.
Your language history puts my level of Spanish (needed for everyday here) to shame.
Vera,
I’m not going to clog up here telling you my dismal scholarly record of history (no memory for dates!) I passed the exam by writing an impassioned 10 page piece on the Dreyfus case and ignoring all the other questions. Incredible (that I passed, I mean). A great deal has been added piecmeal since for fun.
153, fivestring63,
Highly recommend you visit VINNIE JONES WIKIPEDIA site via Google or your search machine. His on-pitch record is jaw-dropping. Worth a film in its own right. He was tough. He managed to end someone’s career with a tackle once.
Vinnie was a midfielder. In other words he needed the muscle to block opposing forward moves and the thrust to build attacks for his own side. Sure he needed to be mobile, to react rapidly to any situation and move to where he was needed. But the nice thing about soccer is that it can accommodate just about any size and shape of really fit guy who can move fast enough and think quickly enough and has the right co-ordination. You don’t have to be 10 foot high so you can flip a ball down a net-basket.
Nobby Stiles of the 1966 England World Cup winning side, LOOKED too nerdishly unathletic by half, and he was blind as a bat without his contacts (lost on the pitch at least once, I believe), but he could cut the mustard.
Georgie Best was a fragile, anorexic waif, who just used to skip, wriggle, magic and shimmy past everyone to avoid the splintering attention of guys like Vinnie. Its this mix that draws we addicts to the sport.
I may regard Maradona as the Richard Wagner of soccer. However, his legendary speed, skill and balance were undeniable, fantastic, even awe-inspiring. But he was very short and all muscle. He just used to make his legs move like blurred pistons. If you see images of him running, he looks like one of the Pixel creations from ‘Toy Story’!
The art of a good manager is to take these long and short and tall and weld them into a smooth machine.
Miller: Polish people break bones raking leaves (they fall out of the tree) but it is not a recognized sport…outside of Poland anyway.
160.
Offhand I think I’d qualify chess and marbles as games rather than sports. Though I’m hard-pressed to recall a hollywood star who was a professional marbles champion.
Bollywood maybe?
150.
I came up empty for cricketers too. Pity. I like the idea of Bollywood. Do you suppose Apu might have been a professional Indian cricketer before he arrived at Springfield? He looks like one and joins in all the sports.
158.
Golf is a sport. It’s a bit difficult to break your bones in that unless you fall in a bunker. What about sport fishing? I think a lot of these pursuits take up so much time, there wouldn’t be room for a second career. In fact, come to think of it, professional sport on any scale is pretty recent anyway, and quite limited as to geography. The commies often used to fund their sportspeople by ‘drafting’ them into the aremed services.
Excuse me, trojan_man,
I just happen to be a career botanist who trained as a professional gardener. You rake leaves off the ground when they fall from trees in autumn (fall, I guess that’s why it’s called fall). At least everywhere in the world I’ve been.
Are they so efficient in Poland they rake them down before they fall (technically, leaves dehisce)?
Or have Poles maybe actually invented a sport where one guy tries to defoliate a tree faster than another?
When I didn’t know better and got stuck with manual work, gardeners did use to fall out trees and break bones when they did tree surgery with pruning saws, chain saws and the like though.
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), so I guess the game is a family legacy.
#162. Spanner in the works – July 3rd
…Oh dear
I do need to add voice tone and facial expression…
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Spanner, language is a funny thing, isn’t it?
Back to sports. My Mother was an Aussie, all of her brothers played rugby union, Aussie Rules (for those unaware of the distinction, A.R. basically states that play only stops if one of the players on field has died and his body is in the way of play).
My youngest daughter, 5’4″, and 118 lbs, plays rugby union, first line, hooker (*NOT* a prostitute you dirty-minded little rats
Spanner in the works: I think you are either playing along too well or missed the joke entirely.
You’re right, Troj.
I’m up the Pole.
(Hoping that gets taken the right way)
Actually I couldn’t resist because I’ve just come back from tree surging our walnuts in the garden this very moment. No broken bones, only broken nuts.
(Hoping that gets taken the right way)
Segue,
I’m a botanist. William Jackson Hooker and Joseph Dalton Hooker are two of the great names and founding fathers of Kew Gardens.
But I couldn’t once resist the subtitle,
“The Hookers of Kew” in a serious work.
I can’t deny it, I’m a dirty-minded little rat. But so long as it’s (only) all in the mind, as they had it on Peter Sellers et al.’s famous radio half hour, The Goon Show.
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170. Spanner in the works
only broken nuts
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Great, Spanner. Now I have a craving for Nutella on rice cakes.
damn.
Troj,
I’ve worked for garden supervisors who have asked us to do astonishingly more stupid things than merely raking leaves down from trees before they fall.
So you nver know.
Segue,
If I wanted to make a really abstruse botanical pun that nobody would understand, with you being an Australian, and Botany Bay and all that, I suppose I’d say the real Aussie Rules Kew Gardens hooker* was Joseph Banks.
or
Botany Bay Rules O.K.
*Sorry one of my dearest friends and Best Man at my first wedding was an Oz MD doing the Earl’s Court thing. Rob was crazy about Rules, but never explained the rules, so I don’t know if you actually do have hookers.
But Australia has great cinema. No ex pro Rules players turned actors, I suppose? Mel Gibson?
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#174. Spanner in the works
Segue, …with you being an Australian,..so I don’t know if you actually do have hookers…
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Only half Australian. I lived in Sydney as a child for a few years, but grew up in Los Angeles, CA., Hollywood, home of the fruits and nuts…I’m one of the nuts.
Yes, Rugby does, indeed, have “hookers”. They are the key position on a rugby front line, the main “man”, sort of a quarterback who’s willing to get stomped half to death several times a game, and oh-so-much-more.
I could give you a very technical description of exactly what a hooker does, but it would take far too much space, bore everyone, and, unless you already have a working knowledge of rugby, leave you as clueless as you were when I started.
As to Mel Gibson – Mel is American-born. Family moved to Australia when he was a child.
By the by, you being a botanist and all, (though not a landscape designer, unless you’re keeping secrets), there is a book you may find interesting,
” The Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson.
It’s two non-fiction tales woven together, and would have been better left separate. The part you’d love, I believe, (I did), concerns Frederick Law Olmstead.
Olmstead, as I’m sure you know, designed New York’s Central Park, along with Calvert Vaux. This book concerns Olmstead’s work designing the gardens and waterways for the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair. The White City.
A fascinating look at a man driven to create perfection.
175, Segue,
Thanks for the book tip. I recommend ‘The Orchid Thief’ as a good non-specialised read, if you haven’t already. The layout is a bit of an ill-designed patchwork, but the contents (again about obsession) are fascinating. I believe there was a film, but none too directly about the book’s contents.
You say Rugby. Are we actually talking a hooker in Australian Rules here, which I meant? You don’t have to tell me about Union. I played it (as scrum half, quite well actually) when a short-arsed schoolboy. Or League, which I loved watching on the box when resident in my country of birth. Those Yorkshire commentators just used to slay me. Like the radio cricket commentators, they were almost the best part of it.
HEY – YOU MISSED OJ THE MURDERER !!!!
Naked Gun movies, Roots…
He should be in prison tho, that nasty killer…
Anyone mentioned Tony Danza yet? He was a pro boxer in the late 70′s I believe.
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176. Spanner in the works
You say Rugby. Are we actually talking a hooker in Australian Rules here, which I meant? You don’t have to tell me about Union. I played it (as scrum half, quite well actually) when a short-arsed schoolboy.
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She plays Union. AR does have a hooker( if I recall correctly ), but if my baby girl wanted to play AR I would have immediately made my way from Cambria (on CA.’s central coast) to Santa Monica and rung her neck for being so bl**dy stupid!
Ahhhh. The Orchid Thief! I read it when it was first published and loved it. An absolutely wonderful book.
My library, which is quite large, runs heavily to the sciences. Next, in order of magnitude, are the poets…Milton, Dante, Donne, Shakespeare, and etc., and then history, biography…my Art book collection is good sized, as I was a Photography Major at University (among other fields), so I have a lot of books devoted to photographs and other visual arts.
I have a very scattershot brain.
Well remembered revolver0410
Wikipedia says he had a 3 year pro career (1976-1979), with a 9-3 record, ALL ended in K.O.s.
Segue,
So glad you enjoyed ‘The Orchid Thief’. Two more in that vein I think you’d enjoy are ‘The Island of Lost Maps’ and ‘Of Moths and Men’. But a friend in Denver Bot. Gardens who abandoned a career in Chinese Mandarin language, or alternatively as a Nabokov specialist, for plants recommended me ‘Nabokov’s Blues’, which is absolutely wonderful beyond words. He got to know I was a Nabokov nut too. This book has nothing to do either with jazz or clinical depression. It examines the dichotomy between Nabokov’s twin careers as a professional entomolgist and a renowned author, how the two interweave and the reaction of both disciplines, with Nabokov pulled between them like a wishbone. It’s more than fantastic for us, because some of the little butterflies he wrote scientific papers on actually fly in our garden. It is written jointly by a literary critic and an entomologist.
You library sounds right up my street. Ours is extensive too, because I have to have as much botanical stuff on hand as possible for reference. Other than that, there’s a section on places, travel and survival; favourite paperbacks I couldn’t bring myself to ditch; a variety on natural history in general, particularly birds and insects; general science topics; a very few on other less mainstream reading interests such as aviation and soccer; and a poetry selection more random than yours, Keats, Ted Hughes, Ovid, T. S. Elliott, Wordsworth, Larkin that sort of stuff, inter alia. Mainly reference though. There isn’t room to keep everything I’ve ever read, as I once tried to. There wouldn’t be room for all the CDs, DVDs and VHSs otherwise! I do tend to listen rather more than read. I inherited from my mother a set of Shakespeare minatures she was given as a pressie, the entire (unabridged) works all in 22 x 19 x 6 cm!
Scattergun. Hmmm, yes, well. With revolver0410 heading this posting, and thinking of me as well as you, I reckon that would have been a perfect e-name (nom d’e ?) for me rather than Spanner in the works.