Thursday, August 14, 2008

08/13/08

Today was cool - got a solid six hours of sleep - almost felt guilty getting that much! Headed off to the Women's team gymnastics meet. That was pretty interesting, I thought it was going to be packed cause the Men's meet was packed yesterday. But it really wasn't that bad, it was busy - just not overly - I think a lot of people went over to swimming to shoot Phelps get his 11th gold medal... crazy. It sucks when you can basically put the blame on a teams "failure" to only get the silver on one person - that person was Alicia Sacramone - picture below. There was also some discussion in our newsroom as to whether or not Nastia Liukin was giving someone the bird... I personally think she was twirling her hair or something else in her hands but some thought she wasn't being so nice...

I was originally going to try and head to badminton but that fell through because gymnastics went long. It was a bummer that the US team kinda muffed it up. After that I had a lunch break at the MPC and then headed over to USA baseball. It was pretty much like covering any baseball game. It's too bad that baseball doesn't send over any of it's mlb stars instead it sends over minor leaguers. They lost to Korea and apparently snubbed reporter interviews afterwards - there is a "mix-zone" where athletes stop to talk to reporters, they all just walked past and didn't even acknowledge them. Our columnist Ann was supposed to do a story on a local guy but he didn't even look at her even though she called out his name. So no story.

I thought of Brad Mangin, since he loves baseball so much, when I was shooting and I'm betting he can explain why there are no mlb players. A reporter here said a lot of it had to do with the steroid issue another is that the season is going on. But in hockey they let their players go to the Olympics. For goodness sakes America invented baseball the least we could do is send our best players! Basketball sends their best but it's the summer is their off-season I wonder if they would send people if it was during their season.

If you didn't know this is (barring some change) this is the last year for softball and baseball as Olympic sports. Softball seems like an Olympic sport to me - baseball not so much. If you think about it most Olympic sports last no more than a couple of hours - some quite a bit less - like water polo is usually about 45 minutes. Baseball is a robust 3 1/2 - 4 hours. Plus we are inundated with baseball coverage on ESPN and any sports cast or sports page. Most of the sports that are played here (well expect for basketball too) are sports you rarely if ever see unless it is an Olympic year - which makes it cool. Like handball, fencing, table tennis, badminton, etc...

It's really cool when you meet someone at a big event like this cause you can always say - hey remember me we met at... I got to meet two more great photographers today - David Burnett, come on you know him, met him at gymnastics and Erich Schlegel at baseball. If you don't know either of their work then that is a shame. Burnett did the cool Speed Graphic (old time film camera) at the Olympics in 04, go to his website and look at his Olympics 2004 gallery - it's sweet! http://www.davidburnett.com/ Erich works for the Dallas Morning News and I'd easily tag him as one of the best sports shooters out there. Both are super nice.

Bob is all over the place. Bob is not my friend. Nor should Bob be yours. Maybe Bob is male, maybe Bob is female but Bob is all about Bob. I'm referring to Beijing Olympic Broadcasting. I haven't been yelled at by Bob yet, so that is a good sign. Two of those sentences remind me of a song: I'm your only friend, I'm not your only friend but I'm a little glowing friend but really I'm not actually your friend but i am....







1 comment:

Juliette said...

You can tell BOB to kiss my arse. That way he isn't mad at you.

As for the bird, I've had long hair all my life and I admit to even twirling it, but never with just the middle finger. That is either the most awkward moment caught on digital or she was responding to something.