The Scene Of The Crime

It was a cold day and this isn’t an out-of-doors kind of neighborhood under the best circumstances. The streets were full of cars and empty of people as I slid Helaine’s to the curb and a space reserved for me by a fire hydrant (I was only staying a few seconds–no citizen’s arrest, please).

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It was like one of those timing routes you hear about in the NFL–the one where the quarterback fires the ball to a spot on the field, perfectly meeting the receiver. We left Connecticut, drove to LaGuardia Airport and about three minutes later picked up Melissa, my niece flying in from Milwaukee.

Not much traffic today. The trip was a breeze in both directions.

On the way back I asked Melissa if she wanted to see where her mother and I grew up? It wasn’t for Melissa. I needed to return to the scene of the crime.

It was a cold day and this isn’t an out-of-doors kind of neighborhood under the best circumstances. The streets were full of cars and empty of people as I slid Helaine’s 4Runner to the curb–a space reserved for me by a fire hydrant (I was only staying a few seconds–no citizen’s arrest, please).

The apartment complex, originally built for electricians in Local 3, is called Electchester. This building, one of a few dozen in the complex, is 55 years old. There is neither warmth nor humanity in this stark, brick architecture.

The wall air conditioners you see were added decades after we first moved in. In the summer it was brutally hot with open windows and the added bonus of low flying planes on the way to LaGuardia.

Heading up Jewel Avenue past Pomonok, the city housing project across the street) the buildings looked smaller than I remembered them. I suspect ‘smaller’ is a common complaint when adults return to childhood haunts.

We didn’t go inside. Outside is friendlier.

Gametime With UCONN Football

Helaine and I spent a good part of the afternoon watching UCONN vs USF from Rentschler Field in East Hartford.

First, I wanted to see if my forecast verified. I’d spent a good deal of air time, both Thursday and Friday, giving a specific gametime forecast. That can be a setup for disaster.

Sorry to the folks in the stands, but I’m glad it poured.

Second, UCONN is now a nationally ranked college football team. That’s new.

In our 23 years in Connecticut, UCONN has served mainly as an easy week for other schools. The change came with Coach Randy Edsall and quarterback Dan Orlovsky (You can see him at Detroit Lions games, mainly carrying a clipboard). All of a sudden UCONN football means something.

“Name two players,” Helaine asked as the game began?

OK, I’m a front runner. I admit it. If UCONN was having another loser season, I wouldn’t be watching. In fact, this might be the first UCONN game I’ve watched from opening kickoff to final gun.

The coverage on ABC has been fine with one exception. The announcers are ‘awayers’… as opposed to homers. Any effective play by UCONN was greeted by surprise. It was only a matter of time before USF would take control – or so they implied.

Grrrr. It’s like listening to the TBS coverage of a Phillies/Braves game.

The game’s not over, and USF may yet win, but UCONN is ahead by a touchdown. A little impartiality might be nice. UCONN has played well and that deserves to be recognized.

And, as it turns out, UCONN wins!

Is It The Kiss Of Death?

Have you seen the cover of Sports Illustrated? Of course you have. There it is over to the left.

That’s Jeff Garcia, Philadelphia Eagles fill-in quarterback. He is here because Donovan McNabb is not. Jeff Garcia, a discarded quarterback well past his peak, is our savior. He’s amazing every second he’s on the field. If this is my football dream, I don’t want to wake up.

But now he’s on the cover of S.I. Oh no!

You see, being on the cover of Sports Illustrated is an honor, but it comes with the world famous SI cover jinx. No, I’m serious. Even lesser sports fans, like me, have heard about it. Sports Illustrated itself, in a true exercise in navel gazing, has written about it.

Whether it’s true or false… it had better be false this time. From here on out, as the Eagles start the first round of the playoffs, it’s win or walk.

I wish they would have put someone else on the cover. How about Tiki or anyone named Manning? Don’t the Giants deserve a little additional attention?

Eagles – Helaine’s Got The Sound Down By Now

We are die hard Eagles fans, we Foxes. Before we caught on that even non-drinkers could watch the game at a bar, we listened on the computer. Before that we scrounged as best we could.

Being an Eagles fan is an exercise in self flagellation. They have found nearly every way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

After losing last year’s Super Bowl they proceeded to self destruct in the off season.

Superstar Terrell Owens started sniping at superstar quarterback about the same time the ref shot off the gun ending the game. Had the gun contained more than blanks, who knows what would have happened.

Owens also protested his superstar contract. It didn’t pay enough.

Then there were injuries and unhappy talk from other players. No one was well. No one was happy. It was the Eagles as only a true fan knows them.

I started as an Eagles fan through a strange quirk. A friend had tickets. That first game was played in the sun, on a warm late summer’s day. An American flag covered the entire length of the field as I walked in and gazed down at The Vet.

It would be like prejudging airline service based on airline ads. I started attending games anyway.

By the time that first season ended on an amazingly cold December day, the Eagles had managed to go 4 – 10&#185. I was hooked.

Tonight is the first game of the new season and the Eagles are playing in front of a national audience on Monday Night Football. As I type, they are down 7-14. The league’s most accurate kicker has missed two so far.

Hey, the night’s young.

Before the game began a scuffle broke out on the field. Forty five minutes before the game began, a ref threw a flag! Jeremiah Trotter of the Eagles was disqualified.

The Atlanta Falcons drew first blood. They flowed down the field like water into New Orleans. They were a torrent. Before long they did it again.

This is not to say the Eagles aren’t playing too. They scored a touchdown and missed those two aforementioned field goals.

The game is young. There’s still a full half to go. The Eagles could turn it around and win big… or get blown out.

Meanwhile, at home, Helaine has a game plan going. The next few sentences are based on my 20+ years experience with her.

She turned on the set, but kept the volume low. Then, after the Falcons scored, she turned it off entirely. At the moment, it is Helaine in the darkened house, the flickering TV dimly lighting the room – but no sound.

I would call her, but… Well, I value our relationship too much too call now. She is in pre-mourning, if you will. Even if the Eagles win she will have spent the entire evening knowing they would lose.

Hey, that’s what real Eagles fandom is all about.

&#185 – Back then the season was mercifully 14 games.

Eagles Get To Go To Jacksonville

If I wouldn’t have seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. The Philadelphia Eagles beat the Atlanta Falcons today, and will play the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX. This was a very convincing win.

Helaine and I sat in the family room to watch the game. We were more than a little pleased to be joined by Stefanie. I’m not going to call her a football fan, because she’d deny it on principle, but she’s getting awfully close.

The Eagles looked great from the the first series. On defense, they kept Michael Vick – a quarterback known for his athleticism and mobility, immobile.

I’m not going to write more about the game, because if you’re a football fan you already know. If you’re not a fan, you don’t care.

Two things do need addressing. Earlier last week, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb (who wears his hair tightly braided) showed up with it totally ‘free.’ I commented on the air, it looked like Oscar Gamble’s. Luckily, thanks to the net, Oscar Gamble photos are available.

Then there’s Eagles tight end Chad Lewis. As a Mormon, Lewis performed missionary work in China. So, of course, he learned to speak the Mandarin dialect of Chinese.

Last year when the Super Bowl was broadcast in China, he worked the telecast as the color commentator, in Chinese. This year he’ll be busy on Super Bowl Sunday.

UConn versus Army

There are more photos available from this blog entry by clicking here

I wasn’t going to let a sore toe stop me (actually, I would have, but the toe is getting a little better day-by-day). This was my day to shoot pictures at the UConn – Army game.

I left the house around 10:30 and drove to Rentschler Field in East Hartford. I knew where the field was, sort of. I had printed out directions off the computer, but chose to listen to the DOT’s radio station on 1610 kHz to get me where I was going.

Any time I’ve listened to DOT’s network of low power highway stations I’ve been disappointed. Usually, there was no usable timely info at all! Adding insult to injury, the broadcast is sometimes padded with time killers, moving you farther from the content you really want to hear. And the signal strength and audio quality are awful

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?

This time was different. The station repeated a recording of simple directions to the field from all the major access roads. This is exactly what should be on.

I turned past the Pratt and Whitney property and followed the cars. If had no idea where to go with my parking pass, but the attendants along the way saw it and waved me in the right direction. I parked about 4-5 minutes walk from the stadium on what looked like well manicured grass.

Thank heavens it wasn’t raining! In fact it was partly cloudy and well into the 70s. In other words, perfect.

I met John Pierson, our sports reporter and Kevin Frederick (who normally shoots video for sports, but was at the game as a ‘civilian,’). I’m glad I ran into John because I don’t think I would have known where to go or what to do once I got into the stadium.

We made our way down to the field level. Both teams were on the field warming up. The stands were 25% full. By game time the teams would have left and returned for their official introductions and the stands would have filled closer to capacity&#185.

I carried my Canon Digital Rebel with the Sigma 70-300 mm lens attached. Over my shoulder was a small camera bag with an 18-125 mm lens, a spare battery and two extra compact flash cards.

By the end of the game… actually before the end of the game, all three cards were filled. That’s over 1 gigabyte of photos! The final count was 317 actual. That’s fewer shots than I anticipated by nearly a hundred. I’m not sure why this particular shoot created such big files.

If there’s one thing I learned at the game, it’s that I need one more card. The prices are down. I’ll order one later today.

John took me to the end zone section adjacent to where the Huskies would enter. He introduced me to four girls, including quarterback Dan Orlovsky’s sister. Then we went and met Dan’s father who has better seats than his daughter!

Dan Sr. and I chatted for a few minutes. Not knowing him, but knowing who his son is, I addressed him as Mr. Orlovsky. Respect under these circumstances is appropriate and fair.

I later found out he’s two years younger than me. Maybe the mister part wasn’t necessary?

There’s an interesting observation to be made here. I have often equated hurricane watching to seeing a car accident in slow motion. Watching Dan Orlovsky is like watching a Lotto winner in slow motion. You know it’s just a matter of time before he’s worth millions of dollars from the NFL. He’s got to know that too. He’s that good – probably a first round pick.

I was afforded an incredible amount of access and freedom on the field. Back a few feet from the out of bounds line and end zone was another line – a dashed line. As long as I stayed behind it, I was fine. It gave me an amazing view of the field.

I started shooting on the first play and soon learned it was very difficult to follow the action on a pass play with a lens. Following with a TV camera is one thing, but my still camera rewards someone who can anticipate where the ball will be in the fraction of a second it takes for the mirror in the camera to flip and the shutter to open.

Often, I’d have my camera at the ready as a play would start, but I’d never get anything to shoot. Other times the player would be turned away from me or blocked by someone else. Sometimes my camera, which is supposed to continually focus while shooting sports action, just wouldn’t focus quickly enough or would focus on something other than what I was tracking.

You can be the judge. I’ve taken forty of the best shots and put them in my gallery. The thumbnails don’t give you a sense of what was shot, so please click for larger versions.

At halftime I went under the stands to a small room for the on-field media. It was surprising to see a number of newspaper photographers downloading their shots onto laptops and sending them on their way. At least one photographer (New Haven Register, I think) was using Photoshop – processing and cropping her shots before an editor even saw them.

As I expected, I saw a lot of much faster lenses – big lenses with wide openings. One of the photographers had a humongously telephoto lens with f1.8 speed. He’s getting 8 times as much light as I am, giving him a great deal of latitude. On the other hand, I can still buy food, something I wouldn’t be able to do as the owner of that lens.

Most of these big lenses demand a monopod. They are too heavy to hand hold for long. The monopod is actually attached to the lens and not the camera body itself.

As the second half was starting I walked by the UConn bench and said hello to Jeff Fox, one of the players. I’m not sure if he got what I was trying to say… that we both had the same name (though one of us spells it incorrectly).

It is cool to have a player with the same name as me. He can’t be related though. None of my relatives, or their families, have any athletic ability at all!

By the time I was finished shooting the stands were back to being 25% full. UConn had cut through the Army like a hot knife through butter. It wasn’t a contest.

This was fun. I’d like to try again. I’m not sure I can quantify what I’ve learned from this, but I’d look back at my shots and try and figure out what worked and why and how I can do it again.

There are more photos available from this game. Just click here

&#185 – The game was a sellout, though that doesn’t mean everyone attended. There were plenty of empty seats.

Go Eagles

Last night was Monday Night Football and the Eagles versus Miami, in Miami. Helaine is actually the bigger football fan in the family, but we’re both Eagles fans. Years ago, I was a season ticket holder – a distinction I wear as some sort of badge of honor. I sat through an Eagles 4-10 season!

I think we’re both a little worried, because the Eagles have played so well. As an Eagles fan, and I’m sure this applies to most teams, you’re always waiting for that boneheaded move that squanders it all. Yet, that hasn’t happened.

The Eagles started the season losers. Donovan McNabb, the quarterback, was ineffective as a passer and non existent as a rusher. And then, the team jelled. All of a sudden, they could do no wrong.

Tonight’s victory against the Dolphins is sweet, but I’ll swear we’re being set up for disappointment somewhere farther down the road. That’s the Eagles fan in me talking.

The Eagles Win

Playing in black uniforms (Helaine says its to maximize their merchandising income) the Philadelphia Eagles put on a football clinic, decimating the Giants.

If a quarterback has looked more in control than Donovan McNabb, I haven’t seen it.

Extremely impressive.

Rush Limbaugh at the Speed of Light

Wow. This whole thing has been played out at warp speed.

Sunday: Rush Limbaugh criticizes Donovan McNabb, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback (as Rush is entitled to do). Unfortunately, Rush prefaces his comments with a reminder that McNabb is black and the NFL wants black players and coaches to succeed.

Wednesday: The whole thing becomes a huge story. McNabb answers questions at a press conference. Limbaugh downplays it on his show. ABC as their ‘affiliate correspondent’ cut a national package which runs nationwide.

Wednesday night: ESPN starts distancing themselves from Limbaugh’s comments and Rush resigns.

Why did this wait until Wednesday? It happened Sunday morning.

And, now it looks like Limbaugh’s troubles are only beginning. The National Enquirer, which has broken some fairly big news stories over the last few years is running a front page story on Limbaugh’s alleged drug abuse!

I predict the future for a living but would have never, in a million years predicted this. Limbaugh is probably safe on the radio, where his core constituency might not mind racist comments, but he has major tsuris to deal with.