Welcome Dallas Rattlers

Dallas lacrosse fans now have their own professional team

Hey Rattlers, welcome to Texas.

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The Rochester Rattlers, a professional lacrosse team from New York, will relocate to Texas. As rumored, the team will be rebranded as the Dallas Rattlers for the 2018 MLL season, and will play its home games at Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, the Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters and practice facility, and the site of the 2017 MLL Championship Game.

David Gross, head of Major League Lacrosse (MLL), the outdoor professional lacrosse league, confirmed that they've been interested in North Texas for quite some time. "We believe this relocation will make the franchise stronger than ever and will bring the highest level of lacrosse to a rapidly growing hotbed for the sport," he said in a release.

Longtime sports executive Bill Goren will be president of the team.

Bill Warder will serve as head coach, replacing Tim Soudan, who is stepping down. An assistant coach with the Rattlers since 2007, Warder played in MLL in 2001 and has held coaching roles with the Rattlers and his alma mater of Hobart College. He was an assistant coach when Rochester won the first MLL Championship in franchise history in 2008.

"Bill brings incredible passion and knowledge of MLL and will be a strong asset for the club," Gross said.

Last season, the Rattlers went 8-6 and qualified for the postseason for the eighth time in franchise history. They were eliminated by the Outlaws in the MLL Semi-Finals, 15-8.

New Balance will continue to own the team and the Rattlers will be the first MLL franchise in the state of Texas and the only team to play in the Central Time Zone.

The Rattlers were managed by David and Wendy Dworkin during the 2017 season and returned to play at Capelli Sport Stadium. They are one of the six original franchises that began play in MLL in 2001 and won the Steinfeld Trophy in 2008 with a 16-6 win over the Outlaws for the first Championship in franchise history.

The team relocated to Toronto before the 2009 season, but resumed play under the Rochester Rattlers brand in 2011 when the Chicago Machine relocated to Rochester.

Ford Center is a 12,000-seat indoor facility on the campus of The Star that hosts the Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters and serves as the team's practice facility. It opened in August 2016 and hosted the 2017 MLL Championship Game that saw the Ohio Machine win the first league title in franchise history.

The facility serves as a focal point to the sports and entertainment district with more than 15 restaurants, the Dallas Cowboys Ring of Honor Walk, an Omni Hotel, and the Tostitos Championship Plaza.

The Rattlers will be the seventh professional sports franchise in Frisco, which is home to the Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters, the Dallas Stars corporate headquarters and practice rink, FC Dallas of Major League Soccer, the Texas Rangers Double-A affiliate, the Frisco Roughriders, the Texas Revolution of Champions Indoor Football, and the Texas Legends, the G-League affiliate of the Dallas Mavericks.

Frisco also hosts FBS football’s Frisco Bowl, the FCS Championship Game for Division I college football, and the Conference USA Basketball Championships.

Major League Lacrosse (MLL), the premier professional outdoor lacrosse league, was founded by Jake Steinfeld and is headquartered in Boston. MLL has continued to lead the sport of lacrosse into the mainstream of competitive team sports since 2001. The league is made up of nine teams: The Atlanta Blaze, Boston Cannons, Charlotte Hounds, Chesapeake Bayhawks, Dallas Rattlers, Denver Outlaws, Florida Launch, New York Lizards, and Ohio Machine.

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig searches for elusive new bond in audacious film Queer

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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