GOAT

Oct. 6 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1853, Antioch College opened in Yellow Springs, Ohio, as the first non-sectarian school to offer equal opportunity for both men and women.

In 1889, Thomas Edison debuts his first motion picture.

In 1908, Austria-Hungary annexes Bosnia-Herzegovina, dual provinces in Europe’s Balkan region which were formerly under the control of the Ottoman Empire, sparking a crisis.

In 1927, The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, Hollywood’s legendary “first talkie,” premiered in New York, ushering in the era of sound and a subsequent end of the silents.

In 1945, the Curse of the Billy Goat was placed on the Chicago Cubs when Billy Sianis and his pet billy goat were ejected from Wrigley Field during Game 4 of the World Series because his pet goat’s strong odor. The curse ended in 2016, when the Cubs won the World Series.

File Photo by Kamil Krzaczynski/UPI

In 1973, Egypt and Syria, attempting to win back territory lost during the third Arab-Israeli war, launched a coordinated attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. This conflict, which would last 19 days, would become known as the Yom Kippur War.

In 1979, Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit the White House.

In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated as he reviewed a military parade in Cairo.

In 1991, Elizabeth Taylor walked down the aisle for the eighth time when she married Larry Fortensky. Though she had eight weddings, the actor had seven grooms; she married Richard Burton twice.

In 2001, Cal Ripken Jr. retired after a baseball career with the Baltimore Orioles that included playing in a record 2,632 consecutive games.

File Photo by Chris Corder/UPI

In 2004, a U.S. weapons inspector said Iraq began destroying its illicit weapons in 1991 and had none by 1996, seven years before the United States invaded. A report determined that 12 years of international sanctions had succeeded in disarming the country of weapons of mass destruction.

In 2017, the tropical storm that would later increase in intensity to Hurricane Nate entered the Gulf of Honduras. The storm made landfall in two days later in Louisiana and resulted in nearly 50 deaths in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and the United States.

In 2017, the Nobel Committee awarded its annual Peace Prize to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

In 2018, Brett Kavanaugh took the oath of office to become a justice on the Supreme Court after a contentious confirmation process in which he was accused of sexual misconduct.

In 2021, the World Health Organization recommended the wide rollout of the world’s first malaria vaccine for children after a two-year pilot program showed promising results.

In 2023, Simone Biles won her sixth all-around world championship title in Antwerp, Belgium. The win made her the most decorated gymnast in history.

File Photo by Olivier Matthys/EPA-EFE

“Is football a game or a religion?” the sports broadcaster Howard Cosell once asked with exasperation. The horror film “Him,” a striking but vacuous gridiron Grand Guignol by Justin Tipping (“Kicks”) takes it as faith that the answer is both. Any fan with a sacred good luck ritual and any player who’s thanked the man upstairs for a touchdown knows the two overlap as tightly as a freshly laced pigskin.

In the home of young elementary schooler Cameron Cade (Austin Pulliam), the fictional San Antonio Saviors quarterback Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans) is the messiah. Next to the TV, there’s even a shrine with devotional portraits of their icon. When White wins a game while suffering a nasty injury, Cameron’s father seizes the moment to deliver a sermon: “That’s what real men do,” he insists. “They make sacrifices.” The candles on the altar flicker ominously.

Tipping, working from a Blacklist script by Skip Bronkie and Zack Akers with Jordan Peele as his producer, considers the sports-as-religion idea so obvious that the film doesn’t bother analyzing why it exists. Instead, “Him” wonders what kind of spiritual practice it is: hero worship or a sinister cult?

Fourteen years later, Cameron (now played by Tyriq Withers) has grown up to become a star college quarterback in line to be the NFL’s top draft pick and take over Isaiah’s position on the Saviors. A violent concussion knocks him off course, but Isaiah, a living legend still leading the team, offers to vouch for the kid if he passes a private training camp at his intimidating desert estate. It couldn’t be more obvious that Isaiah doesn’t have Cameron’s best interests at heart if he blared a warning on the Jumbotron.

The film’s title comes from a bit of braggadocio — “I’m him” — that started sprouting up in sports leagues during the last five years. (It’s why you’ll sometimes see Lakers shooting guard Austin Reaves called “AustHIM” Reaves.) Anointing someone the GOAT, as in “Greatest of All Time,” has been around longer, but the silly thing about both compliments is they’re getting handed out like Halloween candy. Whether Cameron can become the next GOAT is the movie’s main obsession. Yet it resonates, albeit vague and unexplored, with biblical references to goat offerings and images of Jesus as a sacrificial lamb and the movie’s visual allusions to the goat-headed occult idol Baphomet. Plus, it offers us in the audience the thrill of wondering if someone will get spit-roasted.

Cameron enters Isaiah’s home to discover his host surrounded by what looks like taxidermy sheep skins. Nearly all of the film takes place in his compound, a circular warren that looks like a combination of an ancient temple and the Superdome. We’re continually happy to discover all the menacing delights that production designer Jordan Ferrer has concocted. Inside, there’s unnerving minimalist furniture, dramatic saunas and ice baths and an indoor football field with a throwing machine powerful enough to knock out a tooth. Even more terrifying, there’s Isaiah’s lifestyle-influencer wife, Elsie (Julia Fox), who stomps around with a pointy shard of jade that Cameron is supposed to stick up his rear. (You know, for peak performance.) Meanwhile, outside the gates, Isaiah’s cult followers — like visibly brain-fried Marjorie (Naomi Grossman) — are furious that their champion may retire.

Like “Kicks,” Tipping’s excellent 2016 feature debut about a kid who risks his neck for a pair of Nikes, “Him” is about the bloody quest for respect. It wants to be “The Substance” with jockstraps: a Satanic-tinged, steroidal “Rosemary’s Baby.” The film is so stylishly done that I could accept it on those plain terms. Every shot is a stunner, from stark images of eerily spinning footballs to goalposts that loom like devil’s horns. Editor Taylor Joy Mason and cinematographer Kira Kelly have put together queasy-brilliant montages with some kind of an eye-popping camera technique — a mix of thermal imaging, X-ray footage and visual effects — that seems to see right inside the actors’ bodies to their gristle and goo. Bobby Krlic (a.k.a. the Haxan Cloak), who also composed the music for “Midsommar,” wows us with a tragic, thundering score.

But the movie’s thoughts about pain and devotion and locker-room manipulation are still gestating. After I made it to the end of the story and ran it back, little of the plot hung together. I couldn’t with any conviction answer rudimentary questions such as how much does Cameron even want to play football? Or what in Hades will happen to the surviving characters?

Part of the issue is that Tipping and Withers have created a rising football player who might be too authentic. Withers moves with physical confidence and perfect posture and drilled obedience. Participating in a mock media training day, you buy that he was born to sell sneakers.

He speaks with an athlete’s guardedness, too, that post-game interview cadence where each wooden sentence tries to bore the camera into leaving them alone. Cameron describes his football career clinically and neutrally like he’s a product; he refers to himself “performing,” not “playing,” as the latter would imply he’s on the field to have fun.

Surrounded by trainers and doctors and his childhood hero, he acquiesces to pretty much everything, from receiving random injections to a brutal bludgeoning. (At least he doesn’t do you-know-what with that jade crystal.) I’m willing to blame some of that passivity on his head injury, but it’s hard to care about a character who only has a personality for three minutes.

At least Wayans gets to cut loose. His bullying Isaiah sprints from pep talks to threats in the same breath and runs around in nifty outfits covered in weighted beads. He’s in such peak physical condition that you believe Isaiah’s conviction that it’s possible to outrace Father Time. Realizing afterward that Wayans is 53 — almost a decade older than Tom Brady when he retired after announcers even more bold than Cosell treated him like Methuselah — you just might be tempted to bow down to Baphomet yourself.

WE could argue all night about who is the GOAT. 

Messi or Ronaldo? Senna or Schumacher? Tiger or Jack? Ant or Dec? 

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But when it comes to vehicles, it’s not even a debate. 

Greatest Of All Transit. 

The humble Ford Transit has been Britain’s best-selling van since day one – August 9, 1965. 

That’s like Liverpool winning the Prem for 60 years on the bounce. Everyone else might as well give up and go home. 

To celebrate Transit’s 60th, we’ve peppered today’s column with quirky facts, as well as hearing from owners with a cherished van from each decade. 

Ford’s famous Backbone Of Britain telly ad from the Eighties was genius marketing. Yet also 100 per cent true. Transit keeps this country ticking. 

Everything we see and touch was transported in a van. 

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One reason Transit is successful is that Ford engineers sit with owners to find ways of making the next model even more useful.

Like the bloke who shoved a lump of wood through the bottom of the steering wheel to make a lunch table.

The latest Transit Custom has a tilt-up steering wheel with a tray for his quinoa tuna salad. Bosh. 

Retired builder Peter Lee, founder of the Transit Van Club, said: “Transit is like a forklift with two doors.

“Built to work. They’re good honest vans that will do the job.” 

The OG and still the best. 3 MILLION UK sales and counting. Always available in white. 

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