post 1000: Poor USC.

Over at DrSaturday.com, Matt Hinton's faux-bemoaning the Trojans having to settle for yet another Rose Bowl after OSU's defensive incontinence.

"Just when everyone was actually beginning to believe in those scrappy kids and their sad little beards."

post 111: Destiny is a pole dancer's name.

To win your rivalry game by a score like 65-38 is a beautiful thing, because some jerks who think they own the state need to be reminded on occasion that they're just renters.

Even the good fans of Oregon Agricultural College -- and, being a native Oregonian, I have many friends who maintain that status despite their allegiance to that alleged institution -- were getting a little full of themselves over the last few weeks. It was hard to walk the streets of Salem without hearing the word "DESTINY", or seeing it on a newspaper cover, or reading it on purportedly independent media sites. The Beaver "Nation" had moved beyond delusional right into the Destiny Hotel. 

So, it had to hurt. And it was especially nice to see my team add a little extra sand to the vaseline.

And, amazingly, for all the years of suckitude the barkrats hung on their fans, those 27 straight losing seasons, their hard-to-shake laughingstock status, they had never in 114 years of football given up as many points in a game as they did today. Or as many yards. 

So, OAC, here's hoping you enjoy your trip to El Paso this holiday season.

This all proves again that it is impossible to "control your own destiny" -- if it's destined to happen, YOU can't control it -- the way Oregon stomped the barkrats like a narc at a biker rally, with the help of some timely picks, is a reminder that, ultimately, Destiny chooses its victims of torment in a random and unpredictable fashion (Warning: NSFW.)

post 110: This is what you do when you're set for life..

and you're famous athlete Plaxico Burress.

Here's how the plasticene Giant has spent his season so far:

• Sept 4: Signs a five year, $35 million contract, of which he'll earn $11 mil this year. Celebrates with a big night against Washington.
• Sept. 14: Puts up big numbers again.
• Sept 21: Bengals hold him to three catches and no TDs.
• Sept 24: Blows off a team meeting during the bye week, doesn't return the team's calls to his cell, and is suspended for the next game and docked two weeks of pay (about $235K).  Files grievance against league, because how dare they?
• Sept 28: FOXSports reveals Burress has been fined "40 to 50 separate times since 2005". Giants management smacks forehead, says "Crap, how did we forget about that?"
• Sept 29: CBS reports Burress may be fined for failure to report two domestic dispute incidents that resulted in restraining orders. (Note that he's not fined for the incident itself, only for not reporting it... shocking, I know, but keep reading.)
• Oct 9: NY Post reports Burress trashed a rented SUV and didn't bother reporting it to the agency (and didn't return their calls; at least he's consistent). Unimpressed rental agency turns matter over to collection.
• Oct 14: Four catches and a TD vs Cleveland.
• Oct 19: Playing with a torn pinky tendon, he gets three for 24 yds and a TD vs San Francisco. Argues with coach about angrily ripping off his helmet after a bad call. Coach says Burress used a "naughty word." Reports that the word was "poopybutt" were unconfirmed. Calls out officials after the game (to the media, not to the officials, shockingly).
• Oct 22: Skips practice due to sore shoulder and stiff neck.
• Oct 23: Hospitalized due to soreness in neck.
• Oct 25: Fined $45k by league for his SF tantrums.
• Oct 26: Held out of 1st quarter against Pittsburg, goes for three/15 and a TD.
• Nov 2: Three catches, 34 yards, no scores vs Dallas, with two bad drops.
• Nov 10: One catch for 17 and a TD.
• Nov 16: Three catches for 47 and no score at Baltimore.
• Nov 20: Misses practice all week with a hamstring injury.
• Nov 23: Tweaks hammie at Arizona in 1st quarter, no catches.
• Nov 24: Says "Hamstrings are funny." Guess that's why they call them hamstrings.
• Nov 27: Still not practicing.
• Nov 28: Declared out for Washington this week. Better find something to do quick... hey, let's go clubbing!
• Nov 28: Hospitalized at 2AM for a gunshot wound, Plax tells police he "accidentally shot himself" in an incident at the Latin Quarter nightclub in Manhattan's Lexington Hotel while "partying" with two teammates and his wife Tiffany and an "unidentified man".
• Nov 29: The loaded weapon Plax apparently felt it was a good idea to take into a nightclub in Manhattan wasn't licensed in New York. NYPD shows up for a chat at Plax's home in Totowa, NJ, where Tiffany tells them to fuck off because she watches a lot of TV and they don't got no jurisdiction. NYPD hangs out for 37 minutes anyway just in case she was kidding. They come back a few hours later but, finding nobody home, leave without being told to fuck off.
• Nov 29: NY Post reports that Burress shot himself while "fumbling with a gun in the vestibule" of the nightclub. He reportedly was trying to unload the gun, apparently not understanding that pulling the trigger is not always the preferred technique for same.
• Nov 29: Giants are reportedly "tired of Burress's act." 

I know, the young, athletic and rich are different from you and me (well, certainly from *me*), but how much hubris do you have to absorb for your brain to not undertand that it's probably not cool to pack unlicensed heat at a Manhattan nightclub after midnight when you're a high-profile athlete? 

It remains to be seen whether Plax will be given a Jock's Pass and avoid prosecution of a weapons felony that ordinary citizens would risk 3 to 5 years in Sing Sing for.

All will, of course, be forgiven if he wins the city another Super Bowl.

post 101: On cameras

I'm buying a new camera. A Nikon D90.

Before I get into the details of this particular bit of dilletante whimsy, I should explain why this is, and isn't, a big deal for someone who's owned maybe a dozen cameras and is rarely satisfied with any of them.

Hardware is, of course, a well-regarded cure for deficiencies in software. The two best examples are golf (no, you really can't buy a swing) and cooking (Wow, Paul, that's great soup! You must have really good pans!).

In photography, you can at least make a case that a "better camera" and a "better lens" will *help* you take "better pictures". If you don't have a good eye and basic understanding of the concepts of light and form, you can blow $43K on a Hasselblad and still wind up with highly detailed pictures of crap. But if you're reasonably creative and willing to learn, a better tool can help you get to the point where you have what you thought you would get when you pushed the shutter.

After 40 years behind a lens I like to think I have a good eye. But I've often been frustrated by the tools in my camera bag, because I'm frequently seduced by bells and whistles and "easier" technologies. I've vacillated between SLRs, point-and-shoots, rangefinders, and what have you. And my indecision gets in the way of what I want. I make too many compromises as a result. I'm trying to put a stop to that at last.

Some history is in order.

1967: Polaroid Swinger. 
Cost: "Nineteen dollars and ninety-five!"

price in 2008 dollars: $123.50
Reason for compromise: None; Christmas gift, and knowing what I know now about the family financial situation in 1967, I'm surprised not to have received coal.

(yes, that's Ali MacGraw!) 

Even in the mid-60s, twenty bucks wasn't a heck of a lot of money, but you still didn't get much of a camera for it. The Swinger had a plastic body, a "single-element plastic lens", and for all I know a plastic shuter. It took Polaroid *roll* film -- only black and white -- The aperture, manually adjusted by squeezing and turning the shutter knob betwixt thumb and forefinger, worked with a light in the viewfinder that flashed "YES! YES! YES!" wh

en you were within three stops of proper exposure. 

The lens was sort of wide-angle, fixed focus, and roughly aligned with the film plane. The film itself was capable of delivering crappy pictures in a minute, but if you didn't remember to carry around the little brush-on tube of fixer, you'd see your stunning pictures of the sunset or beach party or protest rally fade to sepia, then nothingness, almost before your eyes.

I saw one of these at a flea market a while back. They wanted twenty bucks for it. Unlike a '67 Leica, not much of an inflation hedge.

1975: Canon FTbn

purchase price: $ 245 with 50mm lens

price in 2008 dollars: $934.50

reason for compromise: Couldn't afford an F1.

This was my first "real" camera, bought with christmas money when I was a college freshman. It was $245 and came with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. The FTb (officially, the revised FTbn, with a shutter speed indicator in the viewfinder and a plastic tip on the wind lever) was the bottom of Canon's SLR line at the time but was still a real solid piece.  

In fact one of the primary selling points was its ability to be wielded as a somewhat high-tech flail, since at 18 and just out of high school I still felt susceptible to bullying, 

a personality trait I eventually cured by.. well, by marrying a bully, but that's

 another story.

The camera seemed to weigh a ton. This was useful to a photographer like me, who was constantly shooting in available darkness. "Use a tripod if your shutter speed is slower than the inverse of the focal length" was for pussies. I'd waste whole rolls of film trying to prove that almost one in four shots of a spider-illuminated-by-a-candle-at-three-feet was almost clear. 

The FTb was completely manual, if you can  imagine that.. determine your optimum shutter speed based on the subject.. turn the aperture ring so the meter needle fits in the little circle.. turn the focus ring until the focus indicator sharpened up. I loaded my own bulk Tri-X film cans at school and did my own processing until I could afford to shoot color. Film seems so archaic now, it's hard to believe I ever had to consider what it would cost me to shoot 24 images -- never mind how long it would take to get anything out of them (and not knowing if i *would*).

I collected an assortment of cheap and fairly useless lenses -- a "Bushnell" 28mm with a dented filter ring and a sticky diaphragm, 

a Kenko fish-eye that screwed onto the front of the 50mm, making the entire camera look like it was designed for bovine insemination, and a Soligor 80-200 zoom lens, $80 at Jafco. The zoom, and my jaunty manner on the streets of Portland one winter day, were probably responsible for making me look like I had money to throw away, explaining why two Scientologists did their best to get me to pause my documentation of street life for a quick tour of their new Dianetics center. Little did they know I was broke; all my cash went for film. Then again, maybe they just knew a gullible doofus when they saw one.

Like most everything else I had at that time, I eventually sold the lenses for a fraction of what I paid, but I kept the camera quite a while. After four years or so the meter stopped working altogether. Never stopped me from shooting, though -- I got to be pretty good at guessing exposures, and, like blurred images, I had more important things to worry about than blown highlights or low contrast.

I had the FTb as my only camera for maybe 8 years, a lean period in my life, but eventually I saved enough for.. (the next blog entry).

post 100: Remember Flavor-aid?

Thirty years ago this month Jim Jones was merrily drinking himself to death along with scores of his followers, thus introducing the phrase "drank the Kool-Aid" into the national lexicon. This is ironic, because it wasn't Kool-Aid that was laced with cyanide and lovingly fed to 900+ lemmings; it was Flavor-Aid, a low-cost knock-off product that managed to avoid the fate of death-by-mass-market-association, and is still sold today, unlike a familiar diet product of the time...


November 78 brings back many memories for me. Talk about a previous life.. at the time I was a mass communications student in Eugene, working for the NPR radio station on campus. First marriage, my daughter was 6 months old, and I had three jobs (radio in the afternoon, Jiffy Market evenings, and KVAL-TV weekends schlepping cameras and lighting around for the 11pm local news; now there's a glamour job).

I was working the news desk at KLCC that afternoon. Back then we got our news feeds via two teletype machines, the ones that made the "chgchgchcchgchgchgchg" sound you used to hear in the background of news broadcasts -- one AP, one UPI. When news reports would come in we'd hear bells.. one or two or three, depending on the severity.

At about 2:10 pm I was editing some copy for the 3pm news update when the bells went off. TEN bells. I'd never heard more than three before. First AP, then UPI (UPI always seemed to be a step behind; maybe that's why they're now owned by the Moonies and have little relevance today). The updates came in little spurts of concise text.. ten bells, "ATTN REPORTS OF ASSASSINATION OF REP LEO RYAN D-CALI IN GUYANA".. ten bells, "EYEWITNESSES REPORT MASS SUICIDE OF RELIGIOUS GROUP IN GUYANA".. etc.

This was back before NPR had its own national news feeds, so any news before All Things Considered aired was locally produced. I put together a readable text based on what I had at the time and dashed upstairs to where the board op / hourly news update guy, a very cool dude, was cleaning jazz LPs. He read the copy. "This is a joke, right?" Nope. "Great, but you know as soon as I read this everyone will turn off the jazz and turn on the TV, right?" He was only half joking. He hated TV. "Yeah, bummer, dude." He decided to air it right then, not waiting for the hour, although he did do Freddie Hubbard the courtesy of finishing his track.

I went back downstairs, where the reports were still coming in, not as rapid, not as many bells, but more detail. Gunshots at the airport, a cameraman playing dead while others are having their heads blown off, mothers killing their children.. absolutely horrifying. I obsessed over it for weeks. The covers of Newsweek and Time, with Time screaming "Cult of Death" while Newsweek opted for the more explicit "The Cult of Death".

Later that night I heard the word "shit" for the first time on the national news. The NBC sound guy, Steve Sung, was describing how he played dead while the Jonestown boys massacred the congressional party: "I was watching the Congressman, he said 'Ow', or 'shit' or something, and then the guy blew his head off.."

It really shook me up. At the time I was really excited about being a videographer (there wasn't a lot of ENG going on in '78, but everyone knew it was coming). This was the first time I realized there might be a downside to a field journalism career.

A month later, I was working at the post office. But that's another story.

post 11: Who said *beaver* fans are delusional?

Oregon beat writer for the Register-Guard, Rob Moseley, has carefully delineated the series of impossible events that would have to occur for Oregon to earn the honor of getting pwned by Penn State again in a Rose Bowl.

I have to say I'm impressed, not just because it is theoretically possible for this to happen, but that Rob cared enough to construct the level of Rube Goldberg gyrations such a possibility would require (then again maybe he just has TMTOH):

1. OSU beats Arizona. Kind of depends on which Arizona team shows up. Beavs haven't played all that well on the road -- their only road wins are at UCLA (bad) and Washington (superbad) -- and although they could have beaten Utah with a full game effort, and should have beaten Stanford, the point is they didn't. So, the Cats will be a real test, and I give them maybe a coin-toss chance to win at best. 
   
   
2. Oregon beats OSU. OK, not impossible, it's a rivalry game and all that, but I think it's unlikely given OSU's Team Of Destiny Status.. although it would be sweet and -- if USC pulls in an at-large BCS bid -- I'd be happy to stop here and plan a trip to the Holiday Bowl. Better to be stomped by a third-place Big12 team on ESPN than by the BigTelevEN champ in a BCS marquee game. 
   
   This is where the whole thing becomes less nearfetched..
   
   
3. UCLA, suddenly discovering a hidden cache of actual uninjured Pac-10 quality athletes eligible to play this season, beats ASU, then USC.
   
   
4. Arizona State, finally realizing after its pathetic stomping at the hands of the neuly mighty Bruins that it was supposed to not suck this year, rights its ship and smites Arizona with a mighty blow. Arizona's trustees, forgetting they no longer have basketball to fall back on, get their Irish up and give Mike Stoops a ten-year extension as a reward for all those games they almost won this year.
   
   
5. Cal, completely demoralized after losing a game in Corvallis, suffers a mass mutiny of players, who come to the conclusion that all this has something to do with the tree-huggers being coaxed out of their aerial homes. Trading playbooks for bongos, they form a drum circle on the construction site, stopping both construction work and their season; as a result, the Bears give Ty Willingham a going-away road victory present (albeit sadly removing some of the anti-lustre from the Sour Apple Cup, because wouldn't it be more fun to see two winless teams than one?), then in the Big Game gives the conference a bonus by making Stanford bowl eligible.
   
   
6. Finally, after all that, Oregon would have to find a way to get itself ranked ahead of both OSU and USC in the final BCS standings. This likely requires either USC to lose to Notre Dame (see #3), or some level of fraud at the polls. 

This is about as far from "controlling your own destiny" as you can go.  Somehow, I like the barkrats' chances better this year.

post 10: Nothing uniform about Oregon football fashion.

The worst-kept secret in gridironing hit the striped runway yesterday as the mighty University of Oregon Fighting Ducks released their new fall couturf collection during Senior Day. Since no week of football is complete without somebody in the media yammering on about the latest look, someone was smart enough to send one of the new "army black primer" hats to the gang at ESPN.. who, remarkably, did not take the opportunity to use the helmet as a barf bag.

When the team hit the tunnel for the opener against Arizona yesterday, bursting into the sunlight with the metally-looking feather-armor-steak knives on the shoulders glinting away, topped with the I AM IRON MAN black Rustoleum helmets, the contrast with the almost-black-green jerseys resembling nothing less than an an outtake from Starship Troopers.. well, it's no wonder they were leading 45-17 at halftime. It took Arizona's team half a game to realize they didn't just have to sit there and be shredded by shoulder-mounted Cuisinart blades.

And if this isn't enough, the word on the virtual street is that yet another complete redesign is due for 2010. Apparently, "uniformity" is so twentieth century.

The reactions to all these uni changes typically fall along generational lines. Those who feel American Football is a game of tradition, the good-ol'-boy types who revere JoePa, the horseshoe, TD Jesus, Hook'em, Roll Tide, and that blasted Conquest theme, almost unanimously dog on Oregon's style efforts. 

So you see posts like this, and polls like this, and everyone laughs except for members of two groups:

• Recruits
• UO Athletic Dept
  

The kids like this stuff. Yes, some of the combinations have been pretty nasty -- I still think the abomination they rolled out for the Vegas Bowl in '05 was at least partly responsible for the pandemic of mental influenza that was their performance..

Whoever decided that a low-value olive-green would look good with a neon yellow really should have their eyes, if not their head, examined, before they are taken out and shot.

But Oregon doesn't have a world-class school of sports marketing for nothing. They get talked about. The people who make these decisions don't give an armpit fart what some SEC blogger thinks of their uniforms. They want to attract attention, assist with recruiting, get free media coverage, and ultimately make the U a more attractive destination for potential students. It's the modern, viral equivalent of "just spell the name right."

Since I remember a time not long ago when it was common for eastern media types and college football fans to mistake Oregon for the substantially inferior rural agricultural college up the river, I say kudos to all efforts at differentiation enforcement.

And -- to take an objective viewpoint -- it's not as if Oregon's was all Penn State with its uniform combinations through history:

Alex Molden in the '95 Rose Bowl..

Bill Musgrave circa 1989..

Reuben Droughns, 1998...

or Reuben Droughns, 1999. (This was, I think, the first uniform change directly influenced by Nike.)

None of this is anything new.  Unis change all the time. If they're ugly, well, so's yo mama.

Something tells me the football traditionalists will not be happy until the Ducks go back to the early 70s look of Fouts and Not-Yet-Rashad.

Then again, they'd have to wear adidas, so that'll never happen...