Daniel Ruettiger

Great movies transcend genres and achieve a universality that provokes human emotion. Rudy(1993) is a great movie. I cry, without fail, every single time I watch it. Based on a true story, the film chronicles a young man as he struggles to attend the University of Notre Dame and walk on the football team. Sure, it is a stereotypical account of an underdog that was glorified by Hollywood. However, it goes beyond football. It surpasses the symbolism of sport, and reminds the viewer of the importance of dreams.

Ever since I was a runt I have been infatuated with Notre Dame football, and being half Irish and raised Catholic the only two colors that mattered were blue and gold. Rudy just affirmed the only two options in my mind for college: 1) the University of Notre Dame, or 2) no college at all. Now that I have graduated from a university, that was not named Notre Dame, that had no football team to speak of, Rudy still remains a beacon of light.

Living in New York can be strenuous, even suffocating, and it can be easy to lose sight of things. Important things, like dreams. While football waved goodbye to me long ago, it was replaced by other dreams – modified dreams. However, living in NYC tends to bury them deep within my subconscious, and watching Rudy unearths them. Without dreams, I'm not convinced that life is worth living. While you may think that it's just a stupid movie about an undersized and talentless kid from a small town in Indiana who defies naysayers, I challenge you to consider your dreams and what you would be willing to sacrifice to achieve those dreams.

Ash Wednesday

Today marks the first day of Lent for Roman Catholics. Lent is a religious season, almost like a countdown for Jesus' resurrection on Easter. For me, Lent is a time when I try to avoid eating meat on Fridays and consider sacrificing something. In the recent past I've solely tried to observe the dietary restrictions, but this year I will try my hardest to "give up something." I figure the least I can do is attempt to curb this terrible habit of spewing curse words, considering Jesus died for man and all. I'm 99.99999% sure that I won't be able to make good on this little promise, but I figured it's worth a try, and for some unknown reason I think that if I write this down that it will stick.

One day down, and I haven't used a curse word, and I've noticed I'm much more pleasant to be around (which is a secondary objective for this season). Being sober at work is not really challenging; the real test will be when I'm at the bar teetering on my fourth beer and consider using curses as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. in an attempt to verbally chastise an UES girl. I guess we've all got our own crosses to bear, and mine just so happens to be a potty-free mouth. I've told people about my sacrifice and they can't help but laugh, "What do I get when you curse?" I guess my penalty is damnation in hell. I'd say that is a fairly dire consequence.