Here’s a new flickr photoset I’ll be working on, and here’s the related Signs of Grangeville flickr group…on the off chance someone else actually likes this idea and wants to contribute.
And here’s the latest in the set of oddballs. Also, I decided I hate the default wordpress gallery enough to go back to flickr, despite some worries. I figure, I’m putting all these photos out there on the broadest possible creative commons license anyway, so what am I worried about?
“This song is what exclamation marks sound like.” - some youtube commenter
So….people still read this blog, eh?
That’s cool.
And the kind of thing I’d like to encourage more of.
I’m not territorial, but I am a total badass.
(Seems like the kind of thing passersby should be aware of.)
((Other things the passersby should be aware of will follow shortly. Or longly.))
(((There is a zero percent chance of Luc Longley ever appearing on this blog.)))
Has Joe Buck’s voice deviated from metronomic monotone twice in one play since the infamous Randy Moss moonshine incident? I don’t know — I mute him whenever possible — and it doesn’t really matter.
Nor is it that Buck and Troy Aikman were fooled by the entire Chicago special teams unit. (The camera people were obviously also fooled, as was Chicago’s whole purpose.)
And it’s not just that Buck made football sound unexciting. It’s also not just that during and after the play, Buck — by rote — summed it all up as if Devin Hester’s decoy action and a referee’s penalty flag-toss were the most significant actions underway.
It’s that he didn’t actually describe what was happening on the field.
He lowered the bar for himself and his profession during Sunday’s Bears-Packers game. This is the nadir. (I really, really hope this is the nadir, as I have no doubt that Buck is capable of lowering the bar even further if he and Tim McCarver keep getting paid to ignore baseball games this October.)
As Johnny Knox sprints down the sideline, Buck plods: “Penalty flag comes down.”
By the time he finishes pointing out the penalty marker, Knox has crossed midfield. Buck, still plodding: “As the catch is *made* on the far side of the field by Knox.”
By the time he gets around to telling us that the returner is Knox, Knox is passing the 20 and is on the verge confronting the Green Bay punter, who has shed an attempted block and is about to attempt a tackle. Buck, ploddingly: “A total deke by Devin Hester.” (Who is about to appear on-screen, jogging.) “A flag is down.”
After Buck plods through explaining that the penalty has nullified what was “an interesting play, with Hester moving as if he was going to catch it, when the punt was in the direction of the far sideline, but they’re calling a *hold* to erase the play” — after all that — Aikman’s bedazzlement sounds convincing and lucid: “That thing was set up beautifully. Ohhhh-ho-ho man.”
After hearing Aikman’s exposition and the referee’s inevitably metronomic monotone explanation that there was, in fact, holding, and the play was, in fact, nullified, Buck offers an explanation/analysis of the play that flatly contradicts what anyone not blind just saw: “Watch Devin Hester, he’s calling for a fair catch, everyone’s eyes go to Hester. Meanwhile, the punt is on the other side of the field, and the only person over there is Johnny Knox.”
Meanwhile, the screen actually shows us an unnamed blocker blocking an unnamed punter, both of whom are directly in front of Johnny Knox.
More plodding: “But there’s a hold to erase it,” Buck reminds as Knox sheds the still-unnamed would-be tackler.*
The director behind the screen then, perhaps reluctantly, shows us a tighter angle of an incoherent mass of humanity that Buck has insisted on paying close attention: “Talk about not needing to hold anybody…There’s nobody on that side of the field.”
Buck then contextualizes the play he has repeatedly told us is null: “It would have been one of the plays of the season so far.”
I know I’m going to be disappointed, but I’m hoping the vocally-dull announcers of the future will figure out how to (at least!) describe and analyze more like this:
“The Bears set up a return. Hester signals fair catch. A flag’s down. Knox has it on the far sideline, one man to beat, *breaks* a tackle, touchdown. They’re already calling it back, but that’s a brilliant play on special teams by Chicago. How ’bout that?”
“That thing was set up beautifully. Ohhhh-ho-ho man.”
“The Bears set it up like it was going to Hester, and Tim Masthy was the only Packer who knew where it went. He got over there, but he’s not beating that block *or* catching Knox from behind.”
“You know what, Joe? It didn’t work today, but that’s gonna be a great way for Chicago to counter if teams are going to keep kicking it away from Devin Hester every time. It might not work out like that ever again, but teams will have to guard against it, space out their lanes and defend the whole width of the field. That’ll make Hester even harder to stop.”
This week’s links:
Also check out the photos from the three-gun competition.
This week’s links…the first one led the front page of the print edition:
I’ll update the sidebar links tonight.
OK, so the headline is overblown, but there’s no exaggeration in this:
I’d put that line a notch better than #2 on this list, but no amount of statistical hoodoo would justify putting Dirk Nowitzki’s 48-in-15 ahead of The Jordan Game.
In case any of my loyal readers (or maybe even all nine of you!) are looking for the words and pictures I’m putting in the print edition of the Idaho County Free Press every week, they’re all linked right here:
The Wednesday Wrap will be an ongoing thing. At the moment, I’m leaning toward maintaining it as a links list in the sidebar, but if it clicks, I’ll do a post like this one every week.
From The Bitterroot & Mr. Brandborg, a book I’m reading for background on the history of conservation in this area:
The Nezperce National Forest, one of four created out of the original Bitter Root reserve, stretched across the entire width of north-central Idaho, beginning in the sunbaked depths of Hells Canyon on the Snake River and culminating in the lofty mountain headwaters of the Selway River far to the east. More than a vertical mile separated the Snake from the dark crags of the bordering Seven Devils Mountains, from which the land plunged again into the canyon of the lower Salmon River, one of the Snake’s main tributaries. Close by this precipitous topography lay the town of Grangeville, a service center for wheat farmers and cattle ranchers living in the broad upland called Camas Prairie. The town also served the mining camps of Elk City and Dixie in the mountains to the east, both of which enjoyed boom times during the nineteenth century before settling into desultory attempts at ore production. The Brandborgs would spend almost eleven years in Grangeville, Brandy’s duties taking him down to the grasslands along the Snake and into the most remote parts of the Bitterroot Range. Within this wilderness he and Edna introduced their children to Idaho’s breathtaking mountain peaks, rushing streams, and subalpine lakes—experiences that would shape their understanding of one of the West’s wildest landscapes.
And yes, I did run a 6-column photo of a guy with mud on his face clutching a cow with its tongue sticking out while the other guy in the photo makes a mad grab for a teat across the top of the sports section in this week’s Idaho County Free Press.
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