My resident Buffalonian readers — especially those who have followed the city’s beloved Sabres for as long as Becky has — will doubtless appreciate (as she did) these clips of Rick Jeanneret’s radio calls on what WGR 550 calls two of the four greatest moments in Sabres playoff history.

The first clip is from the April 24, 1993 contest that’s known simply as the “May Day” game, in which Brad May’s overtime goal gave Buffalo — playing at home — a playoff sweep of the rival Boston Bruins:

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The second clip is from a game that Becky has told me about countless times since we met: the April 27, 1994 quadruple-overtime win over New Jersey in Game 6, also on Buffalo’s home ice. The Sabres and Devils had essentially played two full games plus an extra 5:43 without either team scoring a goal — Dominik Hasek had 70 saves, 39 of them in overtime — before Buffalo’s Dave Hannan finally scored in the fourth overtime (a.k.a. the seventh period) to send the series to a seventh and deciding game (which, alas, the Devils won). It was a Wednesday-evening game that ultimately ended at 1:52 AM on a Thursday morning, and as Becky tells it, some folks in attendance just went out to breakfast afterward (probably after making a pilgrimage to Chippewa Street) rather than bothering to try to get any sleep before work the next day. Anyway, here’s Jeanneret’s call… you gotta love how his voice is cracking after calling a six-hour hockey game:

The clips are from Jeanneret’s CD, Roll the Highlight Film, which you can supposedly buy here. (Hat tip: Random Thoughts 101.)

For those anxious for a bit more Sabres nostalgia, click the “more…” link below to read a couple of Buffalo News articles about the 1994 game. (Thank you, Lexis-Nexis!)

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Listening to Game 2 of the Sabres-Flyers series (I’m emotionally invested now, after watching that amazing Game 1 in Buffalo) on WGR 550 over the Internet, and so far, it’s a slaughter: 4-0 Sabres, less than 10 minutes into the game! Woohoo!

You wonder if this is one of those situations, like the ALCS last year, where a really close game early in the series causes such a huge momentum swing that the winning team ends up running away with the series. Buffalo fans can hope so, anyway. (Knock on wood!)

On a related note, this audio clip is funny.

UPDATE: Buffalo scores again! 5-0 at the end of the first period. Heh.

UPDATE 2: Our resident Buffalonians will no doubt appreciate this audio clip of Rick Jeanneret’s goal calls from the first period:

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Incidentally, it’s 6-1 now.

For much more Sabres blogging, visit BFLOBLOG.com. (Hat tip: BuffaloPundit.)

P.S. You can download a video of the final play of Game 1, with Jeanneret’s radio call, here. (Hat tip: In da Buff, via BFLOBLOG.) And you can view the memorable Campbell-Umberger hit here.

FINAL UPDATE: Sabres win, 8-2, to take a 2-0 series lead. The AP article begins:

The rest of the Philadelphia Flyers know exactly how rookie R.J. Umberger felt after they, too, where flattened by the Buffalo Sabres.

Heh. Game 3 is Wednesday night in Philadelphia.

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P.S. Jesus loves you, but the Easter Bunny hates you. Heh. (Hat tip: Right Wing News.)

P.P.S. The Easter Bunny seems to like Glenn Reynolds, though!

Following up on my earlier, Deadspin-linked post about the mid-majors containing an audio clip of Jim Nantz sounding like an MVC convert while Billy Packer maintained a stony silence… here’s another such clip, two of them actually, from the UConn-Kentucky game:

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At least this time, Packer wasn’t totally silent. When Nantz brought up the Wichita State-George Mason matchup in the Sweet 16, he said, “Isn’t that something?” But Packer had nothing to say when Nantz elaborated, “Good for them. Good for the little guy, making his presence felt.” Nor did he have any thoughts on Nantz’s later observation that George Mason and the MVC teams have clearly proven themselves worthy, and “well, now you can see why [Hofstra] deserved consideration, based on what their conference foe has done.”

Although Nantz hasn’t explicitly admitted that he’s talking about himself when he says that “a lot of people called into question” the worthiness of the MVC and CAA teams, at least he’s able to recognize and admit that he was wrong, even if he doesn’t quite say the words “I was wrong.” Packer, by contrast, seems capable of no such epiphany. One wonders if he even realizes what an ass he looks like, or if he cares.

UPDATE: I didn’t get it on tape this time, but Nantz just brought up the issue again (during the Villanova-Arizona game), and gave Packer another golden opportunity to jump on the bandwagon — and, again, nary a peep from Packer. “The Missouri Valley really came through with their performance this week,” Nantz said. “Great validation for the Missouri Valley Conference and what they’ve done all this year.” Packer hastily segued back to the game they’re announcing, observing that some freshman player has also achieved “validation.”

Seriously, why can’t CBS let Dick Enberg and Jay Bilas or Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery do the Final Four? Just because Nantz and Packer historically done it, doesn’t mean they’re best guys for the job — not by a long shot. Nantz is okay, but Packer, while certainly knowledgable, can be incredibly irritating. This mid-major kerfuffle is just the latest example of him abusing his bully pulpit to obsess about some pet peeve or personal issue, and he often does the same thing in the course of individual games, focusing on some relatively unimportant issue that nobody except him cares about.

UPDATE 2: And now Packer made what I’m fairly certain was a sarcastic comment about Mason and Wichita. Nantz said he had thought the D.C. regional was the toughest bracket, “but…” at which point Packer intervened: “May still be.” He laughed, and then said, “You’ve got those power guys at the bottom,” referring to Mason and Wichita.

Here’s hoping either the Shockers or Patriots get the last laugh, and go all the way to the Final Four. (Although I must admit, things do seems to be setting up for UConn to do what it did in 2004: romp through a region weakened by upsets.)

UPDATE 3: I didn’t catch everything they said, but both Nantz and Packer sounded fairly reasonable just now in talking about the MVC and CAA’s success. Packer, I believe, was the one who pointed out that they have the same number of Sweet 16 teams as the ACC and Big 12 combined. (You could throw in the Big Ten, too, since that conference got none.) So, good. I’m glad to see Packer apparently coming around a bit. Nantz concluded by again congratulating the Missouri Valley Conference, and saying: “They proved a lot of people wrong, including two who are sitting here at courtside.” Packer laughed sincerely.

WOOOHOOO!!! Go Missouri Valley go!!!

B!
R!
A!
D!
L!
E!
Y!

P.S. Billy Packer’s stony silence when Jim Nantz congratulated Bradley and the MVC was priceless. I’ll post an audio clip later.

UPDATE: All right, so, toward the end of the UAB-Kentucky game, just before a commercial break, Jim Nantz had been talking about the several major-conference tournament winners who had been eliminated in the first round of the NCAAs (Syracuse, Iowa, Kansas). When they came back from commercial (which is when the clip begins), Billy Packer jumped right back into the discussion, anxious to point out that Duke, UCLA and Florida were still alive. But when Nantz segued into a discussion of the Missouri Valley Conference and Bradley’s big win, the talkative and self-important Packer, who seemingly always has something to say about everything, was rendered uncharacteristically speechless. Heh. Here’s the clip:

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It’s official: for the second time in three years, Gonzaga has run the table in the West Coast Conference regular season, finishing 14-0!

The Zags wrapped up their perfect conference season with a less-than-perfect effort, another game that was far closer than it should have been. In fact, San Francisco (11-16) led Gonzaga (25-3) for the most of the game. Blame it on Senior Night nerves, blame it on the “best shot” phenomenon, blame it on playing down to the level of your opponent, blame it on fundamental flaws in Gonzaga’s game — whatever the cause(s), for a while there it looked like the Zags’ best-in-the-nation 37-game home winning streak would end wiith a stunning whimper.

But Adam Morrison & co. rallied, and ultimately pulled out the 75-72 win on a dramatic three-pointer by Pierre Marie Altidor-Cespedes (a.k.a. “P-Mac”) with 0.9 seconds left. Here’s the call from the Bulldogs Radio Network:

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So the Zags can celebrate their 16th consecutive win, their 23rd in a row in conference, and their 38th straight at home. Now it’s on to the WCC tournament, which Gonzaga is hosting this year, and in which they’ll receive a bye straight to Sunday’s semifinals. (The title game is Monday.)

Alas, this game did nothing to quell the doubts about Gonzaga’s NCAA prospects that I expressed after the Pepperdine game. I feel like my motto for the Zags at this point should be, “I Want To Believe.” :)

UPDATE: B. Minich suggests a Photoshop contest. Any takers?

If you didn’t watch last night’s Gonzaga-Stanford game on ESPN, you missed more than just a hard-fought college basketball game. You missed a fantastic highlight-reel clip — and no, I’m not talking about player-of-the-year candidate Adam Morrison. Nothing he did was as spectacular as this:

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Heh.

P.S. Does anyone know the name of this song?

I want to download it, but I don’t know what to look for, and Googling “Whoa oh oh oh oh” doesn’t seem likely to be terribly helpful. :)

 
[UPDATE, 8/22/06: For the latest, up-to-date commentary on Spike Lee’s film — which I was in — please visit my homepage or my Katrina category.]
 
 

Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been busily taking care of odds-and-ends in Connecticut: ripping my CD collection into MP3 form, searching for various old archived files that I need for Bloypedia entries, giving my parents a wedding slideshow, etc.

About my interview with Spike Lee yesterday… it was fun. When I walked into one of the conference rooms at the Park Central that the production company had reserved, I expected to be greeted by an assistant producer or something; instead, I was greeted by… Spike Lee! He was very pleasant and friendly. Immediately noticing my USC sweatshirt, he asked if I’d been to the Notre Dame game and what I thought about the Bush Push. Heh. We later chatted about Notre Dame’s struggling men’s basketball team and the restructured, massive Big East. (Spike thinks 16 teams is too many.)

Another picture of Spike Lee and me.

When it came to the actual interview, I was pretty satisfied with Spike’s questions and my answers. I have no idea what (if anything) he’ll use for the film, of course, but I thought the best parts were when I chronologically described what happened from my perspective during the days leading up to Katrina’s landfall, and when I answered his question about what lessons we should learn from Katrina. (I emphasized the importance of adequately preparing for predictable, ultimately inevitable disasters before they happen, e.g., a San Francisco earthquake, a Mount Rainier eruption, an East or West Coast tsunami, etc.) I also think I did a pretty good job pointing out how much worse Katrina could have been for New Orleans, if not for the “dumb luck” of a last-minute eyewall replacement cycle and a miniscule (but massively important) right-hand turn.

I touched on the racial aspect as well, explaining that I don’t believe there was any “racial animus” involved in Katrina — that the slow federal response was a symptom of incompetence, not malice. I said I think it’s preposterous to claim that the feds responded slowly because Bush “doesn’t care about black people.” And I pointed out that there’s simply no reason to buy into the idea that the government blew up the levees; the floods are perfectly well explained by what we now know about the levees’ shoddy construction. Again: incompetence, not malice.

Of course, I also emphasized the failures of the local and state governments. I was, as always, hard on Mayor Ray Nagin, explaining that I believe his administration’s failure to implement a timely and effective evacuation plan before the storm hit is worse than any of the multiple government failures after the storm, because, again, it was only dumb luck that prevented the storm’s immediate impact from being so horrifyingly severe and deadly that the slow response would have been almost a non-issue. There wouldn’t have been thousands of people waiting for days at the Convention Center, because the vast majority of those people would have died in the storm itself instead of being able to get themselves to higher ground while their city slowly drowned. And if those thousands of people had died, the focus of the blame game would have (quite rightly) centered on the local government’s failure to adequately prepare instead of the federal government’s failure to adequately respond. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and Mayor Nagin could have prevented a lot of the misery in the aftermath of Katrina if he had heeded the sound advice of those who knew better and ordered a mandatory evacuation earlier — and used the resourses at his disposal (like those drowned school buses) to help people get out.

In addition to interviewing me, Spike had me read several of my blog entries aloud on camera. He picked five posts: New Orleans in peril, Humbled by Katrina, Evacuate, The mayor of New Orleans is an idiot, and NHC urges N.O. mayor to issue mandatory evacuation. In reading the last one, I got to say the f-word. Hehe. :)

Anyway, because I was reading these posts off my computer screen, I used WireTap Pro to audio-record myself doing my dramatic readings. :) Here’s a clip of me reading “Evacuate,” including my infamous “get the hell out” line:

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I don’t know what Spike will do with the hour-plus of footage that he shot of me. I presume only a minute or two will be in the film, if that. I just hope my opinions and statements are treated fairly and accurately. Spike seemed like a really nice, intelligent guy in person. Here’s hoping his treatment of me in the film lives up to the high opinion I had of him yesterday.

Incidentally, as I was leaving, a member of the crew stopped me in the hallway and said words to the effect of, “I’m going to check out your blog when I get home. I haven’t heard of it before, but I really like you — you seem to be all about the truth. You don’t have an agenda, you’re just about the truth.” That was nice.

In other news, before meeting with Spike, I met up with Vicki, fellow former Trojan Hall resident and Becky’s ex-roommate from sophomore year. I hadn’t seen her in, oh, I don’t know, maybe five years? So it was great to see her and catch up. Here’s a picture of Vicki and me outside the Park Central:

I always think it’s worth it each year to take 16 minutes out of the day on Martin Luther King Day, and just sit there and listen to Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in its entirety. It never fails gives me goose bumps. Here’s the clip:

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Here we go!

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UPDATE: Texas defense completely stopped USC’s vaunted offense on its first drive, 3-and-out. But then on the punt, USC’s much-maligned special teams forced a fumble, the Trojans got the ball back around midfield, and the offense took advantage. Trojans 7, Longhorns 0!

UPDATE 2: Texas just got a 46-yard field goal, a career long for their kicker, so it’s now 7-3 Trojans in the second quarter. The ‘Horns wouldn’t have had the chance for the FG, if only USC had recovered Vince Young’s fumble two plays earlier. By my count, there have been four fumbles in this game, and Texas has recovered three of them. One of the three was a rare bonehead play by Reggie Bush on the preceding possession — an unnecessary lateral-turned-fumble that probably cost the Trojans a touchdown.

Overall, both defenses are playing well. Vince Young is easily the player of the game so far. I’m not feeling at all comfortable at this point. It feels like Texas is winning, even though they’re behind on the scoreboard. A nice long Reggie Bush run — that doesn’t end in a fumble — would be just what the doctor ordered.

UPDATE 3: Texas scores a non-touchdown that’s incorrectly counted as a touchdown (why do we have replay again?), then misses the extra point. So it’s Texas 9, USC 7. Or, if you prefer, USC 7, Referees 6, Texas 3.

Quasi-senile ABC announcer Keith Jackson lays the blame at the feet of the USC coaching staff, saying the Trojans should have called timeout so the officials would have had time to review the play. BULLS**T. The officials had plenty of time, and USC should not have to waste a timeout in order to make the officials do their jobs!! It’s the officials’ fault they didn’t review a clearly incorrect call, not USC’s fault.

Okay, that’s the last you’ll hear from me about that. Unlike a small but vocal minority of Domers who are still upset about the “Bush Push,” I’m not a sore loser, and if USC ends up losing this game by the margin of that non-touchdown, I’ll accept the loss without further complaint. (Besides, Texas probably would have scored a touchdown anyway, given the way Young was picking apart the Trojan secondary on that drive.)

C’MON TROJANS!

UPDATE 4: USC suddenly can’t tackle. Texas scores again. Longhorns 16, Trojans 7, with 2:34 left in the first half. Time for some Pete Carroll Second Half Magic ^TM…

UPDATE 5: And now a bad call goes USC’s way. Texas had an interception there, but it wasn’t called, and no review. Again: why do we have replay?? Well anyway, now the teams are even on really important bad calls. But this officiating crew needs some Second Half Magic as well.

UPDATE 6: WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE USC COACHING STAFF TODAY??? Why did we let, like, 13 seconds run off the clock before calling timeout??? Jeez!

UPDATE 7: Dinello hits the 43-yard field goal. Texas 16, USC 10 at halftime.

Man, Maggie Smith rocks…

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Speaking of which, here is Becky’s extremely lengthy review of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. (Spoiler alert, obviously.)

I apologize for not yet posting my own thoughts on the movie, which I like a lot, though it does have its flaws. (I’ve seen it three times… yes, yes I am a giant nerd.) Perhaps I’ll post my own detailed review one of these days… but for now, Becky’s review should give our resident Potter-ites plenty of fodder for discussion.

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(Source.)

Everybody remembers the phrase in the title of this post, but easily the most stirring line of the speech is:

Always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

And so we did, thanks to heroes like my Grandpa Loomer.

Anyway, I like that line so much — and found it so applicable to “our generation’s Pearl Harbor” — that I included it in my 9/11 anthem.

More on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor here.

Becky and I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire again tonight. (I know, I know, I should have spent that time studying for finals… but some things are more important, dammit! :)

Anyway, good stuff!! Having now seen the movie twice, I hope to finally get around to posting my thoughts on it one of these days, but for now, I just wanted to highly recommend Track 3 from the soundtrack, “The Quidditch World Cup,” which can be purchased (along with the rest of the album) at the iTunes Music Store.

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The second half of the song (i.e., the Bulgarian part) is the music that ABC used for the USC/ND portion of its football-season highlight reel during the BCS Selection Show on Sunday. It was awesome. Seriously, if anybody TiVo’d it, let me know…

It’s over!

WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!

For those who feel deprived by not being able to hear Conquest at the end of the game because ABC cut away to the Virginia Tech-Florida State game, here you go:

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And here’s Fanfare/Tribute to Troy/Fight On, just for good measure:

UPDATE: In spite of UCLA’s two garbage-time touchdowns, it was the largest margin of victory in the USC-UCLA series since 1930.

BEAT THE LONGHORNS!!!

USC 52, UCLA 6, 0:55 left in the 3rd.

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UPDATE: Now 59-6, with 7:21 to go.