battlefield football

So, I went home to Effingham Saturday night and didn't have a chance to write anything on here, so I'm going to talk about Saturday now. I got up around 830am and was bored so I booted my mac pro into windows mode and played Battlefield 2142 for like 4 hours. Yeah 4 hours. The football game against Youngstown State didn't start until 230 so I had time.

Battlefield 2142 is an online first-person shooter with good graphics and it's set in the year 2142 and all you gotta do really is capture a bunch of places on the map with your 31 teammates and kill guys from the other side. I actually got my account to rank up by doing super awesome and I was unable to unlock grenades and this cool rocket launchery thing for when I play as an "Assault" guy with machine guns and whatsits, so I had lots more fun than I've had previously playing the game when I only had a gun and a knife.

After I finally forced myself off the game, I got showered and I got ready for the football game. When I left my apartment at about 205pm, I was carrying my camera bag, my 1D with a 400 2.8 on it, my 20D with a 70-200 2.8 on it, my video camera with a big microphone sticking out the front of it, and my monopod. I felt like a model for Canon. Or a muscle magazine cuz i was carrying like 50 lbs. of stuff. Or like a Fat Guy magazine, cuz i am kinda fat. Then i thought it'd be funny to start a Fat Guy Magazine all about fat guy stuff with lots of pictures of fat guys and advertisements for twinkies and mountain dew and stuff. I bet it would be successful.

Anyway, also on my way to the football game, I ran into Megan Kramper, one of our sports writers, for whom I had planned on shooting some volleyball video later that evening, and she had got in a wreck right outside my apartment buildings. Don't know who's fault it was, but this mustang like t-boned her or whatever you call it and crushed both her passenger-side doors, mashing the mustang's front all up. So, since she was already stressed enough, I went up and told her I wasn't sure if Sean the sports editor wanted her to do video of volleyball anymore and she flipped out cuz she hadn't heard anything like that.

Anyway I shot the football game, SIU's Homecoming vs. Youngstown State, for both the SIU Daily Egyptian, the newspaper I work for, and the Vindicator, a newspaper in Youngstown, OH (www.vindy.com). It was kinda interesting shooting both ways, because every time the ball traded possession i had to run to the other end of the field. The game was televised on CSTV, the college sports tv network, and if you watch the game, there are instances where you can see me on the sidelines and around the endzone. So, basically, I WAS ON TV! For those of you that missed it, CSTV will show the game tonight again at 12:30am Central Time. Set your TiVos!

I had some pretty good images from the game. There will be a whole slideshow of 25-30 of them on siuDE.com by tomorrow, as well as one or two in the paper. I should also have one or two like the ones above in The Vindicator, which is exciting. I hope I can get a copy of the paper somehow if I do. I think the DE is going to run this one:

Really just because it shows the YSU guy flat on his face and the SIU wide receiver Justin Alan prancing off to celebrate his TD. SIU won, by the way. 24-17, I think, making their record 6-0 for the season. I ended up leaving in the third quarter because The Vindicator wanted photos between 5 and 6 and it was already like a quarter til 6. So I got like 10 photos emailed to them and I felt all cool because they were pretty good shots and I rushed off to the volleyball match that was starting at 7. Around the time I got there, I was called up and told I didn't have to shoot the volleyball match anymore and Megan had tossed out the video project for now because she wanted to prepare for it more first and James the freshman photographer was going to shoot it anyway so I left and was happy because I could leave for Effingham 2 hours earlier than I had originally planned.

Then I got a message from Bill Lewis from the photo desk in Youngstown, OH, saying that he got the photos but I didn't put any captions with them and they wanted captions and they couldn't tell who a lot of the players were and they didn't like how I hadn't put any information with the images. So, i was bummed cuz I didn't want to screw up my first string-for-another-paper experience and I didn't know they needed player names and stuff, I was kinda figuring they had all that info and they could put what they wanted with them. Oh well, he said they were able to piece together a couple and they used 2 images of mine, but , for future reference, WRITE CAPTIONS.

After all that, I drove home. I went to Amber's. I was happy to see her. and her family. and her dogs. not her cat Rascal, though, he's stupid. We went and visited my mom and brother and picked up a couple things and left a couple things there and visited my cat Leo and I was so happy to see him when I opened the door, I picked him up and squeezed him and scratched him and made him remember me. He's my favorite pet in the world. I'll be sad when he keels over from old age.

Then we went back to Amber's and went to bed. End of day.

TB