Marty Kirkland: Web we read is tangled

When I have the time, the money and feel like either lighting up the grill or finding a suitable restaurant, there’s nothing better than a juicy New York strip. (Rare, please; I want to taste my steak.) But there are times when making the drive to Chatsworth for a Big V cheeseburger is just as delectable a culinary experience.

I’ve seen Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” Terrence Malick’s “The Thin Red Line” and David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive,” and found something enjoyable about each of them. My AP English teacher even forced us to watch Kurosawa’s “Ran,” although she did not appreciate our MST3K-style commentary. On the other hand, for some reason she decided we needed to watch “Night of the Living Dead” in class and allowed me to screen “UHF,” Weird Al Yankovic’s 1989 crash-and-burn shot at a feature film.

(I passed the test for college credit, by the way, even if I did have to write about literature from my junior year.)

I’ve been to the Louvre — twice, actually — and the Musées d’Orsay, Rodin and Picasso in Paris. With little more than a couple of brochures and my eyes, I think I was able to add a new layer of depth to my appreciation of art. Still, I find the work of MAD Magazine’s Jack Davis pretty special, too.

I think you see where this is going. Sometimes you need something a little more high-minded and fancy to satisfy your appetite. Sometimes you just want empty calories, figuratively or literally.

And so is the case when you’re looking online for information on high school football in Georgia.

Since it launched a few years ago, the Georgia High School Football Historians Association website has been an amazing source on Peach State prep football. It’s a result of the hard work of those with an interest in seeing the history of the sport — and that includes both media and fans — documented correctly so that it’s not lost to misplaced memory or yellowed newspapers.

Because it involves the work of, you know, real people, it’s not perfect. You may come across a mistake. But it comes from a motive of getting things right, which is a pretty good place to start when it comes to documenting history, and the site’s operators will welcome a correction when it’s merited. I’m among the many sports writers, fans and coaches around the state who have enjoyed having all that information a few clicks away any time of day.

There are discussion forums there, too, where scholarly talk apparently goes on, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s all about the scores — year by year, team by team, coach by coach, opponent by opponent, all the way back to 1948 for many of the state’s teams that have been around that long. The information is good, if not always perfect, and it’s worth your attention if you’re a high school football fan.

But as with so many things, “junk” has its place, too.

The first time I came across the Georgia Varsity Sports Vent — commonly known as simply “the Vent” — was probably in the late 1990s. I’m not sure how long it had been around, but it was relatively new, as most websites were at that point. I’d never been on a message board, much less one for high school sports, and it was pretty cool to see people from Athens to Albany talking about their favorite team.

However, a common theme had already emerged, as it probably had about five minutes after the Vent went live for the first time: People were saying stuff they wouldn’t have dreamed of in person with little reservation. Trash talking had found its way to the Information Superhighway like a Porsche does the autobahn, and it was trying to blow the engine as quickly as possible.

A sample from a recent thread discussing the Northwest Whitfield-Dalton scrimmage and the Catamounts’ hopes for the season included this gem: “Maybe if you are don’t reproduce, there might be a chance to improve the IQ of the gene pool here in the USA.” (That’s a direct quote, by the way.)

Now there is some actual, real — dare I say informative? — talk on the Vent, too, from time to time. In fact, it might be that there’s more of that than said trash talk. But it’s also kind of hard to hear in all that sound and fury.

Which isn’t to say the Vent isn’t often intriguing or entertaining because of such trash talk. And on top of that, in the midst of the mud, rumors and half truths, you occasionally learn something you might not have known. You’ll need to verify it with an actual, real, live person, of course, but it might actually be the starting point to information worth processing.

Even if it isn’t, it might remind you that passion and scholarship don’t always go hand in hand.

If I have time next weekend, I might go see the critically acclaimed “Get Low” when it opens in Dalton. The film features both Bill Murray and Robert Duvall, two actors who know how to sell popcorn as well as drama.

Then again, I might just pop in my “Smokey and the Bandit” DVD.

Both experiences have their allure.

Marty Kirkland is Sports Editor of The Daily Citizen. You can write to him at martykirkland@daltoncitizen.com.

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