video


8
Nov 10

Delicious

Ever wonder where this came from?

Turns out that line is from Bob Riley, Alabama’s governor.

A spokesman for Riley said he assumed the exchange would wind up in the presidential memoir. It seems Bush never let Riley forget it.

“Throughout the rest of his presidency, President Bush in speaking with Governor Riley would often remind the governor of that conversation they had about Michael Brown,” said spokesman Jeff Emerson.

Riley has long argued that FEMA’s response in Alabama was adequate.

But since hurricanes are big, magnificent things that bring destruction across many states, and apparently Louisiana didn’t figure into the presidential briefing or the statement he made before the press … we’ll just call that an oversight. I’m sure more of them will be revealed in George Bush’s book, which will no doubt lead to hagiography and criticism.

I’ll just wait until the Huffington Post review comes out to see if it’s true that Bush has a weather machine floating off the coast of Africa or whether he purposefully destroyed the levees. I’m guessing that isn’t in the book.

In real life we gave a tour of campus to The Yankee’s parents:

RenSamford

They had Toomer’s lemonade, and pronounced it delicious. While it was cold Saturday it was beautiful yesterday and will be beautiful for the rest of their visit.

We had an early Thanksgiving dinner with them last night, and we all pronounced it delicious. My mother-in-law made the turkey, and she cooked a great bird. My family is full of terrific cooks, but it wasn’t until The Yankee made one four or five years ago that I knew a turkey could be juicy.

Our realtor came over. That’s service. Three months in and he’s still stopping by. This time for the food. He brought dessert.

Cake

And though it is still a few weeks before the actual Thanksgiving, I could live on that cake alone between now and then.


6
Nov 10

Chattanooga at Auburn (Homecoming)

War Eagle and laissez les bons temps roulez! Auburn dispatched their homecoming foe with expected ease, 62-24. No one was seriously hurt, it seemed. We all shivered because the thermometers which said 40-degrees were surely lying. And LSU beat Bama. Perfect, perfect day of football.

Here are my Twitter memories, because I don’t want them to disappear one day, as recounted from the south end zone where we spent a great deal of time in an over-worked scoreboard. Wendy’s parents loaned us their seats so we could be down in the lower bowl with the in-laws. Wendy’s parents, like Wendy, are awesome. So here’s the stream of frozen consciousness. Parenthetical additions from after the fact are in bold. Enjoy and War Eagle!

At Tiger Walk. Cam Newton looks unphased.

Hanging out in Jordan-Hare with my in-laws who are taking in their first college football game (in the South). They’ve been to Rutgers games, but that doesn’t really count, now does it?

InLaws

No Daren Bates, no DeAngelo Benton today. They are in jersey, but no pads during warmups.

Eltoro Freeman and Corey Lemonier are announced as defensive starters. Interesting even at homecoming.

Touchdown Auburn. Two plays, 30 seconds and it was Newton to Adams for the 30 yard score. 7-0.

Chattanooga punts against the most vanilla defense you’ve seen since A-Day. Carr muffed the return. Tigers are on the march again. Here’s Quindarius Carr scrambling to recover the ball

InLaws

Touchdown Auburn. Newton to Adams for the 20 yard score. 14-0. This is getting ugly in a hurry.

The Alumni Band, sounding crisp, has already struck up Hey Baby. Seems a bit early for that, with 9:33 to go in the first quarter.

Cam Newton just jogged for a first down. Chattanooga’s defense is not LSU. See that bit with him playing ball with the local elementary school kids on television? It looked almost like that.

Newton slips and falls for a first down. Kenny Rogers on the tackle. It’s funny because that story is the only thing that can slow this guy down.

I know it is Chattanooga, but that 18 second (yes) scramble by Cam Newton was absurd.

Newton to Burns to the goalline and then Newton keeps for the score. 21-0.

Touchdown Auburn. Newton to Adams (I need macros…) for the score. @wesbyrum’s PAT was no good. 27-0. Byrum, now Auburn’s all-time leading scorer, is having another great year. Before this miss he’d hit something like 104 in a row.

Chattanooga crosses midfield for the first time, aided by a pass interference penalty.

After one quarter Chattanooga has 48 total yards. Auburn has 56 yards rushing, 193 yards passing, 249 total. 27-0.

Also, it is cold and windy and the hot chocolate smells delicious.

Touchdown Auburn. Newton to Zachery for the 80-yard score. 34-0.

Chattanooga returns a kickoff 99 yards for the score. And then the guy got a celebration penalty. Hey Moc, it is 34-7.

Touchdown Auburn. McCalebb goes around the end and down the sideline 49 or so yards. 41-7.

So after the most backyardtastic-we-forgot-Dyer-can-play series we shank a punt and get a formation penalty. Georgia much?

My mother-in-law: If they come around selling blankies I’m buying one. The thermometer lies, it is cold on the Plain.

The Auburn Band is now soliciting your donations for a band complex.

Chattanooga scores on a 4th and 6. 41-14.

Touchdown Auburn. Mike Dyer carries 37 yards on the draw. 48-14.

MikeDyer

Chattanooga may be on the verge of a record, having now mishandled three kickoffs and returning a fourth for a 99-yard score.

At the half, Chattanooga has 133 total yards. Auburn has 167 yards rushing and 317 yards passing, totaling 484 yards. Chattanooga is in the Southern Conference, with Samford, whom Auburn plays next year. Not looking forward to that.

Just saw a guy wearing a Grandpa To Be button. Too cool.

It is four dollars for a packet of cocoa powder. That’s an awesome profit margin on a cold day at Jordan-Hare.

They lowered the price to $3, but still. At kickoff it was $4.

Remember two weeks ago when we were out here sweating? Sigh. Did I mention it is cold?

Chattanooga marches down on the Program defense. 48-21. Because you need a program to identify some of the Auburn men now playing, but good for them to get on the field. They deserve a nice reward and an afternoon in the sun. Meanwhile, where I’m sitting in the shade …

They announced this as a sellout. To Ric Smith’s credit he said it with a straight face.

Touchdown Auburn. Mario Fannin carries in for the score. 55-21. Fannin is wrapping up the ball nicely. I hope he gets a chance to run over Georgia next week.

Clearly there is still some work that needs to be done in preparing next year’s secondary.

Saw a four-year-old boy wearing an “I’m taller than Saban” shirt. Heh.

Chattanooga kicks a figgie. 55-24. Anthony Morgan, who’s battled injuries all season, has a nice kickoff return. Mario Fannin scores. 62-24. It isn’t that close, by the way. Auburn’s first team defense came off the field in the first quarter. There are assistant coaches scouring the student body for intramural players at this point.

These are 10-and-oh Tigers!

And be honest: no one would have suggested that in December 2008.

Neil Caudle scrambles inside the 10 … And then takes a knee. Wish he could have scored, he’s a deserving kid.

Hunker down you hairy dogs, you’re next and these Tigers are due!

Rolling Toomer’s with The Yankee and the in laws.

Toomers


4
Nov 10

“We are out of potatoes. We have potatoes. We are out of corn.”

Sitting at the red light to make my turn back onto campus I looked out of the window to see a gust of leaves making their adieu from trees. Floating there, in that transcendent space between instrument of photosynthesis and ground matter, they are so graceful. For all of their work on the branches and all of their nutritional value on the ground it is a shame that they are free for such a short period of time.

So I decided to record their moment. This decision always seems to take a long time, in retrospect. And when the neurons finally connect, assess and send the signal that documenting this visually might be fun, I must still pull my phone from my pocket. This can be cumbersome. The screen must be unlocked, the camera accessed and the video feature selected.

Of course this was when the remaining leaves grew resilient, their petioles growing stronger than the breeze.

That is one long red light.

Grand day. Had a class where students skewered the published works of learned authors. Enjoyed a delicious lunch where things were off the menu, and then back on the menu, but the other supporting item was off the menu instead. The poor waitress had to recite the sides three times through the confusion.

Took part in a meeting. Met a new student, the first-in-their-family type. Very nice person.

Punched out of my weight class in a particularly thorny carpentry problem. Longtime readers will recall I have no business even being in that conversation. But screws, the cheaply made international kind, were breaking off at the wrong time. They must be removed so that other screws of decidedly sturdier stuff can be put in their place. I invented a tool that would facilitate removing the offending broken screw.

But only after my super-powerful magnet idea was dismissed.

Turns out it already exists, this tool, but I didn’t know about it. Even still, it is gratifying to know when you’re on the right track, even if someone patented the thing decades ago.

This was the scene when I left this evening:

UniversityCenter

Samford is a beautiful campus.

Dinner with friends. Our realtor is now a friend. He’s been to our house after we’ve moved in. He didn’t even judge our staging. He had us over to his place for a football party last weekend. We have dinner about once a week now. You probably aren’t supposed to be friends with your realtor, especially if you moved onto an Indian burial ground, but he’s a nice guy and tells the best jokes.

So we had pizza tonight at a place called Little Italy and I brought home the leftovers. These are of the New York style, and while The Yankee has spoiled me on New Haven pies, Little Italy is pretty good stuff.

I just found the obligatory store opening story from two years ago. Those always amuse because the writer inevitably talks about how this new place uses only fresh ingredients. As opposed to, what? Stuff they found in a dumpster around the corner? Whatever fell off the farmer’s truck while he was on his way to market? Something frozen from the Green Giant?

I probably wrote the same thing. Years ago I did a restaurant opening story for a chicken joint just four blocks down from this pizza place. They framed the story and put it on the wall, which was cause for only a slight amount of chagrin when I would later dine there. The chicken was fine, but they had live music and I happened to live across the street from the place, so I found my way there a fair amount. Eventually they moved to a new location, and now Urban Spoon tells me the place is closed.

Those are always the more interesting stories — What did happen to that young couple? — but you don’t see them as much.

Busy and full day. The Glomerata covers will be updated momentarily. Tomorrow will be another full day, I’m sure, and it will come equipped with a full night as well.


1
Nov 10

November?

A new feature, this one set to appear once each month if I can pull it off. This is the video of the month, or more appropriately the video to set the tone. This month’s theme: leaves.

When I showed that to The Yankee she was stunned I covered my iPhone lens. They’re just leaves. And then she said something about how only I would record this. Well, yeah, maybe. But then I put in that pull focus at the end and she isn’t laughing any more.

As I raked I wondered why man hasn’t come up with a better way to do this. Just imagine if we’d attacked this problem with the same fervor with which we’ve faced other challenges or ills. If John Kennedy had said that we chose to deal with leaves not because they were easy, but because they were hard …

In my yard, they aren’t easy. I have a small rake.

The nice lady who visited my neighbor while I was raking observed that I did not even have any leaves yet, really. Probably 90 percent of the leaves are still in the trees, as you can see in the video. There are plenty of gray maple leaves, curled like an old man’s arthritic fingers, mixed in with the flat brown of the willow oak leaves.

But, still, half the yard got down as I shot that footage. You should have seen the outtakes.

Class prep today, blurb writing today, video editing today, reading today. The typical Monday barrage of things that make the day so fulfilling.

I opened a watermelon tonight, perhaps the last of the season. Seedless — may contain seeds, the sticker says — and delicious. I’m not ready to concede the season. The mild weather is nice, the open windows and the evening breeze are certainly welcome, but the shortening days and the impending chill could hold off another four months.

And by then it’d be March.


30
Oct 10

Football Saturday

Straight from Twitter. Watched the Auburn game with friends, and three delightfully distracting little girls who managed to turn the television off at one point. At least they were all short enough to walk under the screen and not get in the way of the shot. On the other hand we learned about chocolate chip cookie brownies, so the trade off might have been worth it.

Stick around for the video at the end:

Florida and Georgia look like two emo kids trying to out emo each other.

Maybe Georgia is the most emo. They are wearing the black trim. Hunker down and play Radiohead, unironically, Bulldogs.

Ok, I’m at the football party. Let’s play ball. What do you mean it is already 7-7? Cam Newton the receiver? That’s just on-field Heisman marketing.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! There is no scheme for Onterio McCalebb on that misdirection.

Masoli to Summers for the score. The Auburn defense will get off the bus shortly. 14-14.

@tzac81au is no fan of Faulkner. Though he does run rather like Sound and Fury.

Cover this guy, cover that guy, there’s always Emory Blake. I love this. They haven’t had to show it, so the pre-season narrative has been diminished and then forgotten, but there are weapons and talent and the ability to produce all over the offensive side of the ball.

We didn’t see that. Best not to see it. As I, and now others, have said: the only team stopping Auburn’s offense is Auburn’s offense. Fumbles will do it. This at a point where they’d produced a defensive stop and could have gone ahead by two scores and start the tidy business of putting this game away. Instead Ole Miss gets a reprieve.

Demond Washinton with the goal line pick. So the drive in which we create separation continues again. I’m starting to warm up to this defense.

I’d like to see Kodi Burns catch one in space, just to see him run again like his freshman year’s enthusiasm. Do you remember that? He’d dance around, gather a few yards, get tackled and then hop up like a kid so flush with energy he couldn’t vent it or express it all at once. It was beautiful. He should get a few more moments like that.

Now this is offensive balance. Fill the box, Auburn will just throw it around the yard. Defensive coordinators are waking up in cold sweats now.

Darvin dropped a pass. Does not compute.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Cameron Newton to Darvin Adams, showing a complete offense to the RebelBears.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Demond Washington! 95 yards! 31-17. Kickoff returns for touchdowns make one think we might get something resembling the illusive complete game. But Washington has been due a big return for weeks and Ole Miss is not very good at this. Stands to reason it would happen here.

Ole Miss comes up short because Josh Bynes shows off his super powers. Now let’s see another score, just to rip out their hearts. The scoring defense isn’t there, but they show up when it matters and that is enough given everywhere else Auburn can produce.

A touchdown would have been nice, but I’ll take a 17-point lead going into the half of a trap game. There is no Admiral Akbar. I just never saw the trap in this game. My sense of peace with it is now validated. And this is only halftime.

Hey Ole Miss? Look away, look away, look away: Tigers are in town. One of the best songs a band plays. About four years ago, after Ole Miss lost at Jordan-Hare the two bands struck up a song simultaneously. Auburn’s band stopped playing while the Rebel band finished this tune. It was late, dark, a little ethereal out. I’ve always liked that memory.

His next update is “This is too easy.” RT @cameronnewton Cameron Newton can tweet during halftime. That’s a spoof Twitter account — I don’t write it, don’t know who does — and it is worth following.

If you can hold a team to a four-yard gain, and feel good about it, you might be playing Auburn. And you’re in trouble. Because, really, you’ve limited Mike Dyer to half his average yards per carry. This guy just gets more impressive with each game.

@wesbyrum stretches the Auburn lead to 20. 37-17.

When ESPN calls your game and gets things wrong about your school you wonder how much they get wrong about other placed too. And, no, I don’t mean just Bob Davie.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! Mike Dyer for 30 yards down the sideline. 44-17. He, too, is about to break a not insignificant Bo Jackson record.

Eli Manning is looking to beat traffic put of Vaught Henmingway!

Ole Miss scores, but this is all garbage time. 44-24. About the waning moments of the game, I feel for Mario Fannin having to fill that role, but I agree with the coaches that they’re going to need him to win. Fumble troubles notwithstanding, he’s a weapon receiving the ball out of the backfield. I hope he gets his chance to redeem himself before his career is done.

Houston Nutt just showed up, Ole Miss recovers a surprise onside kick.

@Lucas_au asked why Eli Manning would leave early, since Vaught-Hemmingway only seats 1,500 people. I replied: It takes a while. He can only drive his daddy.

TOUCHDOWN AUBURN! @tzac81au with the score.

If you were wondering, that’s hanging 51 points on an SEC team on the road. Fifty-one points! No matter if you say three-point road wins are good wins or that Auburn still has something to prove, you have to be impressed by this effort. The easy, obvious, natural comparison people try to make for this Auburn team is the 2004 vintage. I’ve asserted that you can be more confident about the general scoring power of the 2010 team on any given drive in any given game. Just for comparison, the 2004 Tigers, who could beat anyone like a drum by then, won 35-14 in Oxford.

How about that offensive line? They need a award, too. There’s no doubt these guys, Mike Berry, Byron Isom, Ryan Pugh, Lee Ziemba, Brandon Mosley (and A.J. Green, before his injury) are the reason why.

Nine and oh! War Eagle!

In a year where Auburn sheds the ghost of 2004 we find ourselves cheering for USC. Weird. Thanks, Trojans.

And, now, driving by Toomer’s Corner:

Undefeated, top of the charts and War Eagle!