How to Have Fun During the National Shutdown

 It took me two tries to watch this. Episode One is so awful, so cold and humiliating and frightful that I gave up. You see what it’s like having a rape kit taken. Men don’t know about this. We kind of blink it away. Why I felt compelled to go back and see the whole incredibly long ordeal. Available at Netflix. How can the lead actress even do these scenes? As they say, better man than I am.

We watched this one open-mouthed for hours. Kid you not. This is one incredibly amazing air disaster flick. The subtitles don’t even matter. At Amazon Prime. You never heard of anybody in it. Doesn’t matter. All Russian movie stars are gorgeous.

If, like us, you’re a diehard fan of “Die Hard,” the new American Christmas movie, it might be welcome news to you that the Koreans took on that challenge and raised the stakes. This is a fabulous movie. Available at Amazon Prime.

Okay. I’m not going to call it a fight, but there has been, uh, disagreement. In my typically diplomatic way, I have declared Star Trek Voyager the single greatest Star Trek series ever. My better half prefers Deep Space Nine, which doesn’t even have a Vulcan or photon torpedoes. Enough said. Are there problems with Voyager? Yes. But there are problems with all of them. Not for you if you have some kind of hang up with a Starship captain from Katherine Hepburn’s Bryn Mawr school of elocution. See, I have no problem with a female starship captain. It’s comforting to know she’s from the Main Line. What does it have no other ST series does? A black Vulcan, a Borg body to die for, a doomed and lonely mission across the entire universe, and at least twice, the utter destruction of a starship based on principles better than Picard’s Canadian Surrender First and Talk About it Later crapola. Sometimes the Bryn Mawr bitch goes to war. Why she gets my vote. On Netflix. 170 episodes.

Two old hands get it done. Yes, there are good movies out there. Not all of them in English. A couple of the best slam bang action thrillers are in Korean and Russian. We’ll get to those shortly because we don’t have the time for half measures, what with the world about to come to an end and all, but today we’ll start you off easy. With an actually good movie made in America. Surprised? Of course you are. Available right now at Netflix. P.S. Yeah, Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down with extreme violence. By guns. By two old white men. Who killed a woman, back when we knew what a woman was. No wonder the critics yawned at this movie. Don’t believe them.

I had a bunch of other candidate movies. I got overruled. The Black Sox won. Available on Xfinity.

They just cancelled the Players Tournament. Did you know that there was a Tiger Woods before there was a Tiger Woods? Jim Caviezel. It’s hard playing Jesus. Harder to play Bobby Jones. Back in the day when you could be the best ever and everybody actually cared when you started to die. Right before you won every single thing they call a grand slam. Available at Amazon Prime.

Ernie Davis. Same college —Syracuse— different star running back. What might have been. Available at Xfinity.

Even though the Flyers’ great season is cancelled for now, you can still enjoy some amazing hockey. The Hockey, right? So how about a completely amateur game in the middle of nowhere? Of course. It’s at Xfinity. Starring Russell Crowe, Colm Meany (who’s always in everything), and that guy who played Nero Wolfe in that TV series. And some lissome young woman. Seriously.

Everything fun in the outside world is gone for now. We’ll show you how and where to have fun anyway. ESPN is dead as a doornail. Why we’ll start there. Now that there are no seasons for basketball, baseball, hockey, horse racing, boxing, and Formula 1, we’ll offer substitutes you can breathe freely from your couch at home. As we go, we’ll hit other entertainment delights, including great movies and binge-worthy series. But to begin, we’ll address the black hole called Sports. First up? Best sports movie ever. (Oh, did we forget to mention, you need at a minimum Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Xfinity streaming services.) This gem is currently playing on Amazon Prime. True story. I remember Immaculata from my Mercersburg days. Now you’ll remember them too.