Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher.........really ?

So I must have missed this hoopla when it first was announced about a year ago but a major motion picture is finally going to be made from an adaptation of one of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, Jack Reacher is a 40 something former marine officer who drifts around and inevitably gets involved in situations where he has to wrong some injustice, generally with a significant body count involved in the process. The books are much better than they should be because Child is a solid craftsman and the Reacher character is a classic, the lonewolf anti-hero, slow to act but invincible when he does take action, and usually short on both words and emotions but with a fixed moral compass that will not waver .

One of the real distinguishing features of Reacher is his size, he is a man mountain, 6 foot 5 inches tall and generally weighing in between 225-250 pounds with a fifty inch chest, he breaks bones with one hand and can endure all manners of physical abuse. Reacher's size and strength come into play in every one of the sixteen Reacher novels, they are one of the things that define the character and make him different. Naturally after ten plus years of negotiating to get a Reacher film made the obvious choice to play Reacher is ............Tom Cruise.

Seriously ?

Seriously, Tom Cruise, all five foot seven inch grinning, winking, shorter than his soon to be ex wife, frat boy charm Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher ???

Now don't get me wrong, I admire Tom Cruise as an actor, he has pushed limits on occasions, and made bold choices with films, I personally think he should have won the Best Actor Oscar for Rain Man rather than Dustin Hoffman. I also understand that he may be the single most bankable male star in the film industry, maybe Will Smith might challenge, and actually Will Smith would've been a really cool choice to play Jack Reacher but that's another story.

There are many lively internet discussions regarding better casting choices, Ray Stevenson, who played The Punisher and was brilliant in Rome is a frequent suggestion or something along the lines of Alexander Skarsgard after a year in the gym .  Lee Childs is enthusiastic about his support of the casting, and since the movie's profitability is important to Childs we can sympathize, but regardless of what this movie ends up being, and regardless of the title, it won't feature Jack Reacher .

Facebook

So I finally joined Facebook, my reason for joining was that since daughter became a teenager she now has a Facebook account and we felt she should have some parental supervision, given the state of cyberspace . Wife was supposed to be responsible for the creeping but between her work and playing 3,000 games of Words with Friends daily with Auntie Jacqui I didn't feel we were up to speed, so I joined.

My first mistake was using my real email address, when will I learn, so instantly upon joining I was invited to "friend" many of my real friends. For those who don't know Facebook essentially opens your mail account and checks to see if any of your contacts are on Facebook, then suggests you become friends with these people. Even though, of course, you already are friends with them or they wouldn't be in your address book.

Next I informed some work colleagues that I had joined and they instantly said "Oh I'll friend you"or "we should be friends", to which my thoughts were: "but we already see each other more than once a week...........so ?". Apparently I don't get the concept that "Facebook friending" is different than "real friending", on Facebook we share our taste in YouTube videos, inspirational posters and show off pictures of what we had for lunch, in real life we just talk about silly shit like emotions, politics and the economy......plus of course, YouTube videos and television.

Anyway, I'm on Facebook, I've got 12 friends and it is easier to keep up with people you don't see often, plus I have a whole new window into daughter's world. I can also see how it could become a huge black whole of wasted time and energy but I'm determined not to do that. Anyway I've got to run, someone just posted a new site full of Sheldon Cooper quotes.

Latest FIFA Rankings

So you are probably aware that the last few weeks have featured a major event in the Soccer world, I still have a hard time calling it football. The 2012 Euro Championships recently ended with Spain stamping their passport into the discussion of greatest teams of all time, Germany crumbling under the pressure of being the next one, Italy proving to be better than we thought and England failing miserably on the world stage once again by bowing out in the quarter finals.

England have not reached the semi finals of a major event since 1996 so simple math should mean that since they haven't been in the final four of a world class event in sixteen years that they are surely not one of the top four teams in the world, yet the governing body of world soccer will have you believe that England, mighty England, are in fact the fourth best team on the planet, based on FIFA's latest rankings, brought to you by CocaCola.

Now I realize that ranking these things is a subjective process and that the rankings are a "rolling" count of International success over the previous year, and that England had a couple of nice results at the recent Euro Championship but seriously shouldn't somebody at FIFA, or CocaCola, have taken a quick look at these ranking before publishing them and said:

"Hey, wait a second boys, if England hasn't finished in the top four of anything that matters in sixteen years how in the Hell can we rank them fourth on the planet ?".

Bad FIFA, bad.