November « 2012 « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

November, 2012

Auburn / football / overwriting / photo / weekend — Comments Off
10
Nov 12

Georgia at Auburn

Beautiful day for football. Breezy this morning. Calm and sunny all afternoon.

We watched the morning games at home and then went out for a day of tailgating. We spent much of the afternoon sitting under a tent, because sitting down with back support seems a good idea when your shoulders feel ready to pop off your torso. We made Alabama jokes with friends as we watched the first half of the Texas A&M game.

Had a great time as the sun slide down behind a tree and behind the stadium and the air turned a nice shade of cool. We walked around the stadium to get to the right gate. We walked through the inside of the stadium looking to upgrade our seats, but no such luck tonight.

Not to worry, our seats are low and not the best, but that’s pretty much what this game will be like. The Auburn Olympians are welcomed out on the field. The marketing slogan around here this year is “Welcome home.” The PA script still says, “Welcome back.” They’ll figure it out eventually.

Nova, the golden eagle, flew from the flagpole, soaring over the eastern stands and then looping into his target at midfield. He was feisty this evening. The band marched on, the teams came out. We all watched the scoreboard as the Auburn game got underway and the A&M-Alabama game wrapped up. The Aggies beat the Tide and that was the biggest cheer in Jordan-Hare this year, perhaps.

It was a fine evening. There’s nothing quite like a game under the lights. It just makes for a great atmosphere. Under those lights we saw Onterio McCalebb take the opening kickoff from his four up to the 21 :

The kickoff is a lovely moment. All of the team’s frustration of the year, all of the fans’ gripes, despair or whatever the individuals do in a bad year is wiped out with a simple promise of what might be. The analysis and prognostication and reality is momentarily replaced by the eternal ‘what if’ optimism of the fan. This might be the night.

And that gives way to the first offensive series. The struggles of a young offensive line, a true freshman quarterback, the third starter of the year making only his second start are all remembered. These things and all of the effort and successes and not-quites of all of those young men who’ve played and practiced hard are laid bare.

But still, anything is possible. Until even the most irrational possibilities are re-ordered by reality, whatever the reality is to be. No one yet knows, given the vagaries and the variances. This game could go anywhere. That’s the feeling of any game, or at least the feeling of the desperate in a desperate game.

The first drive went like this: Jonathan Wallace looked to his fullback, crowd favorite Jay Prosch, for a screen pass, gain of one. On second down Tre Mason ran off the left tackle for a gain of one. On third and eight Mason skirted through the offensive line and gained seven yards. On fourth and inches Auburn — a 2-7 team with absolutely nothing to lose except, perhaps, their jobs — punted.

Six plays later Georgia had chewed up 76 yards and scored the game’s first points.

Auburn got the ball back at their own 12 after the next kickoff. After eight plays they’d marched 49 yards to the Georgia 39. On 4th and 14 Auburn couldn’t bear to attempt a 56-yard field goal. They took a delay of game penalty and punted. After nine more plays and 80 more yards Georgia was patting themselves on the back for taking an early 14-0 lead.

Grown men and women barking at each other. This is as erudite as it sounds.

Georgia won easily, as if they were holding a mid-season scrimmage, really. They scored 28 by the half, shut it down to celebrate an SEC East championship, and rode home with a 38-0 win, the most lopsided score in the 116-game history of the series.

That’s two in a row for Georgia in the Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry. Feels like 14 in dog years.

The championship in 2010 seems like a long time ago.

Auburn, we discussed during and after the game, has been competitive in exactly three games against the top half of the SEC in the last two years.

Maybe it would be better if you could point to one thing. If, before that opening kickoff, you could say “If only we can minimize this, or avoid that we’ll have a fighting chance today” and mean it. Instead this is a near total collapse.

The turmoil is just beginning. It will quickly outpace the marketing.

Friday / journalism / links / music / Twitter / video — Comments Off
9
Nov 12

A brief collection of things

You’ve seen some version of this commercial, perhaps:

That Lebron James spot uses “Keep On Pushing” a 1964 hit from Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions. Wonderful stuff.

But that’s like a 1964 spot where NBA megastar Bill Russell moves around town as the 1916 Al Jolson hit “You’re a Dangerous Girl” plays:

Hard to imagine in the 1960s, eh?

Have you seen this Washington Post analysis of how the election was won? Excellent work they produced this week.

Have you seen the post-Sandy cover of New York Magazine? It is an incredible helicopter-at-night shot. Poynter has a great description:

Baan made the image Wednesday night after the storm, using the new Canon 1D X with the new 24-70mm lens on full open aperture. The camera was set at 25,000 ISO, with a 1/40th of a second shutter speed.

“[It was] the kind of shot which was impossible to take before this camera was there,” Baan said.

Unreal.

Battlestar Blood and Chrome, now airing as webisodes. Better than a Friday night slot.

My shoulders and neck are a mess. I’m going to go sit very still.

collarbone / iPhone / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
8
Nov 12

The bad days which come with the good days

Not sure what I’ve done. A few weeks ago my doctor heard how I, genius observer of things, had come to note a correlation between exertion and pain in my collarbone and shoulder. And, I went on astounding him with my powers of perception, it doesn’t take much to over-exert my dinged wing and find myself in a bad way.

He took me off the self-directed therapy sessions which was derivative of the successfully accomplished and officially guided therapy sessions. He told me to do a lot less. Aside from a very few things I have done much less as my shoulder and collarbone continue to heal.

For instance, this week, I’ve done nothing that would make my surgeon or wife mad at me. And yet my shoulder is all out of whack. There are spasms and other things that radiate from my left shoulder, over into my right shoulder, U-turn and then come back and go up into my neck and, like a sick joke, into my head.

If there’s such a thing as good days and bad days, I’m experiencing that this week and it is not cool. This began sometime last weekend and has been growing less pleasant all week.

There is the possibility, one supposes, that some of this might be the return of sensation in my shoulder. Sometimes I feel more than others. And, usually, I’d rather not. If that is contributing to this problem or not I don’t know. I am a keen observer of the human condition — read above — but it takes awhile.

I can say this: having the sensation of a dull, round, cold cylinder shoved through your shoulder, across your back and somehow up into your neck and the top of your head is a drag.

Don’t break your collarbone, kids. How one good break, surgery, titanium and screws can adversely impact everything from your shoulder blades up proves the accuracy of Dem Bones.

So back to the medicine, then.

Also, the lovely autumn:

journalism / links / Samford / Wednesday — Comments Off
7
Nov 12

The election paper

They finally finished their paper somewhere in the 3 a.m. hour. Got two election stories on the inside. Got a tidbit on the lone Supreme Court race and the congressional district that is home to the campus. Proud of them:

Left a big typo in the cutline, though. And a little more planning would have meant they’d finished this before 3 a.m., but they did a fine job. Proud of them.

Check out the paper at samfordcrimson.com

iPhone / journalism / memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
6
Nov 12

Election day

Autumn is here:

You can’t put that in a picture: the smells, the smiling sun, the sometimes crisp air, the crunch of leaves, the smell of that first wood fire in someone’s yard competing with the smell of a fresh lawn. You can’t capture that in a photograph and you can’t share it in a video. But we surely do try.

It was also election day today. I visited my polling place after breakfast. We vote in a hotel. The parking lot was full and so was the overflow lot next to them.

They have the sign-in stations organized by the alphabet, of course. I visit the Q-S line, which had three people in it. I was through the line quickly. Here’s my ID, there I am in your roster. Sign here and take your ballot.

She said they’d been busy since they opened at 7 a.m.

I sat down at a folding table. I was soon joined by a young lady who was making her first vote. She was pretty excited by this prospect, and busy asking her mother what all the amendments on the ballot meant. Her mother didn’t much know either. We had quite a few, and they aren’t written for a low reading level.

I ran my ballot through the machine, watched with pleasure as the tally ticked up one line. I politely turned down the “I voted” sticker, which seemed to throw the nice lady for a loop.

Someone lost their Voter ID registration card. I returned it to the help desk — there was a help desk — feeling it was part of my civic duty. Hopefully they can mail it to the lady.

I received emails from some of my students who were telling me they may be late to class. They were going to vote. One of those extra perks about teaching college students: they’re all getting their first vote this year.

They all made it to class on time, too.

We had a guest speaker in class today. At the end of his presentation there were still two more hours before the polls closed. I encouraged all of the local students, if they had not voted yet, to consider going to do so. “It will mean more to you as you get older.”

Our guest speaker agreed.

Went upstairs to the Crimson office. The news editor was designing a front page for a Romney win and another for an Obama win. I convinced her of the wisdom of designing a third one, a question mark. She started working on that.

Of course the race was all but over by the time I returned from dinner. They’re working long into the night on the paper.

I remember my first election coverage in 1996. I was writing for my college paper. I attended a county watch party. It was held in the same hotel where I voted today. A very inebriated lady of considerable local influence spent most of the party hitting on me. I left there to go to the other party’s headquarters and spoke with a newly elected congressman on the phone. From my place I called a new senator. His staff told me I would be a terrible reporter. I asked too many questions. It was a badge of honor.

I worked on that story late into the night, typing until morning time. I think I had two front page stories that issue.

Elections are like Christmas. And that’s one of the nights the recovering journalist misses being in a working newsroom.

I remember sleeping in my car for two hours on the night of the 2000 election. That was after watching the deadest watch party ever. The candidate hadn’t talked to the media or much of anyone, felt the whole ordeal was basically hers because she deigned run and was stunned when she lost badly. I feel asleep in my car that night, though, after working probably 20 hours, listening to the radio in the early morning. When I nodded off we didn’t know anything about what was really going on in Florida. I woke up before the sunrise to find we still didn’t know anything about what was happening in Florida. I worked all that Wednesday, but don’t remember much about it on zero sleep.

Like Christmas.

Maybe I’ll get a little more rest tonight.