Ruminations

I have lots of new cement at my house. A new cement walk, new back steps, and new front steps.  I wasn't here when they poured everything, so I could also have some new body parts tucked in there too. Mostly I think it's a miracle that nobody wrote their initials in the cement. Or left butt prints.

Speaking of body parts, I decided to leave my house yesterday before the smell of exhaust from my "neighbor's" van turned me into someone in need of a wellness check. [See previous entry.]

I also left them a note that said, in part, "I'm sure it was just an accident, but the next time you need to use your generator/pump motor, you may want to have the exhaust pipe from the van facing YOUR house, not mine. Thank you."

Tomorrow night is high school football night here. My old high school, which is twice the size of every other high school in its conference, if not one of the biggest schools in the state, is playing the conference champion from the last six seasons.

Every week the players' parents complain because that OTHER school always gets good press and high rankings even if they lose. So I checked their past record to see why that is.

In 2000 they won the state championship in the top division for football. Their record was 13 and 1. Here's the irony. They won the state title, but not the conference championship. Because my old high school beat them. That was the 2000 state champ's one and only loss in 2000. Meanwhile my old h.s. lost in the playoffs.

After that -- in 2001-02-03-04-05-06 the 2000 state champs were the conference champions. PLUS!! In 2003, 2004, and 2005 they made it to the state championship game again. But those times they lost.

Meanwhile, my old school gets knocked out regularly in the second game of the playoffs. They've never won the state championship. They came in second once.

More irony -- the current seniors on my old high school's team were the conference champs as freshman and sophomores. They beat the current six time conference champs twice as underclassmen. But when they get to varsity, they can't get the job done. Gee, I wonder whose fault that is?

Okay, so my part in all this is being one of the crew that videos their games and makes inspirational videos to spur them on to victory over their big rivals. It helps that my friends' son is a star on the team. I don't want to take too much credit, but they set a scoring record a couple of weeks ago after the first video I did.

Tomorrow night's game could decide the conference championship. Both teams are already eligible for the playoffs.  So I edited a doozy for this game. After ten minutes of highlights from the last two games, the video ends with a two minute gut wrencher about being the underdog. I used select clips from Matthew McConaghey's You Gotta Have Heart speech from WE ARE MARSHALL intercut with team and opponent footage. I made it look like McConaghey is actually talking to the team. When he talks about their opponents, I actually went to their opponents' game last week end to get video to show how intimidating they are. Yep, I'm a geek.

For those of you who recall my theory about red and black uniforms winning the big games, you should know that tomorrow night's opponents will be wearing red helmets and jerseys with black pants, black socks and black shoes. They are truly scary looking dudes. As I have lamented many times, my old high school's team colors are green and white. I figure they've got two chances -- slim and none.

If, by some miracle, they manage to win the game, the video gets all the credit.