Special Sauce

Have I used this pic before?  I am very bad at organizing files.  No, that sentence gives me more credit than I deserve.  If I have. . . well, it is worth looking at once again.  Why do all my old NYC film shots look so good?  I don't seem to get that same tonality any more.  I have too many tools and try too hard, I think.  B&W film, a simple scan--done.  It is purer, perhaps, or at least more to my taste.

I wake in the dark two and a half hours before sunrise.  Ili is gone and I can't sleep.  I will go back to bed with the sun and sleep a couple more hours having read the papers, surfed the net, drunk the coffee, and eaten a bowl of high fiber cereal.  Fiber, you know, is the key to life.  Eat your veggies.

I tried watching some of the NCAA tournament last night.  This used to be one of my favorite things of the year.  My college roommate and I watched it together long after we left college.  The highlight had always been Al McGuire and Billy Packer (and Dick Enberg) doing their schtick, Al being our favorite, of course, offbeat, an artist in contrast to Packer who knew the rudiments of the game, intuition vs. study, perhaps, panache vs. the everyday.  But we loved them both, only siding with McGuire but enjoying Packer, too, the games made more exciting by them, and perhaps they were.  Players weren't all pros yet.  Offbeat players would emerge as heroes.  Games were close.  Upsets were plentiful.

Now, players are trained from birth.  They play one sport and perfect it.  They are all better than the players were when Al and Billy made it fun.  There is less zen to the game now, or so it seems to "a man of a certain age."  The players are much better athletes, but the teams are far less interesting to me.  I just like it when the little guys can win.  It doesn't seem to happen as much anymore.

Go U.C. Irvine!

I don't want to become nostalgic.  That is the last encampment.  I'm not ready to go there yet.

But damn, I really did enjoy that show.  It had some special sauce.