Brethren Christian redux

I finally got to see a team for a second time, and it was quite a different game. Just a few weeks after a penalty-filled, clock-stopping-for-incomplete-passes, three-hour game that then included the guy at Starbucks in Lakewood turning off the internet on me, Brethren Christian looked like a different team, running the ball most of the time and dominating Fairmont Prep. Here's a link to the story.

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/christian-33696-fairmont-brethren.html

"Mike & Molly" & Me

On Wednesday night, Christina and I did a very "tourist-in-LA" thing, driving out to Burbank to see a taping of a sitcom.

Having already done "Jeopardy!" and "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," I was interested in how a sitcom is put together. The answer is "somewhat haphazardly, but very carefully."

We arrived at Warner Brothers as requested just after 5 p.m., and within an hour we were being seated with about 200 other people at Stage 14, which was home to "Friends" before "Mike & Molly" began to tape there in 2010.

The warmup guy was OK, although Christina and I both said we liked Chunky B from the Ferguson show better. Of course, Chunky gives everyone candy, tells a few bad jokes and then the taping begins, and both times we saw Ferguson they pretty much kept the cameras rolling and were done in little more than the time it takes to watch the show at home.

For "Mike & Molly" the warmup guy had to keep us entertained for about 3 1/2 hours. The first half hour we watched an old episode to get into the right mood for that night's show. Then came the time for the cast introduction. While they were getting ready to film live scenes, we watched two pieces of the show that had been taped earlier so they could record the audience's laughter.

The first of the live scenes took place in the restaurant that Mike and Carl always hang out in. They get a surprise visit from their captain, who was played by special guest Gerald McRaney. The scene was funny and went off flawlessly, although the warmup guy said they would do it a second time just to make sure they had a copy in case something went wrong in post-production. While it was tough to laugh as much the second time, hearing and seeing the same stuff, the audience did its best.

After they moved to the other side of the stage, they did a second scene in the kitchen of Molly's house. That created a little more difficultly. After the first take went flawlessly, the writers spent a few minutes working on new lines, which ended up being funnier, but also required several takes because Swoosie Kurtz and Katy Mixon had a little trouble with them. It was the kind of stuff you'd see on a bloopers show, and at one time Billy Gardell (Mike) even exclaimed, "We DO have rehearsal."

Eventually that scene was done and they moved on to another live scene at Mike's mother's house. After similar line-changing and several takes, the actors were able to complete the scene and the audience was fed (a slice of pizza and a bottle of water).

All the while, the warmup guy tried to keep the audience distracted with bad jokes, magic tricks and getting people to dance, or perform odd talents or talk about where they were from. He also gave out a ton of gift bags and mugs, trying to get the audience to compete for them.

Christina and I were more interested in watching the action on the set, with all of the production people going about their jobs and new lines were tried out. In a way, the rewriting helped, because when the audience thought it had heard everything, some new line caught us off-guard and actually made the scene better.

Following the pizza break, things went a little more smoothly, with a live scene, a taped piece and two more live scenes presented in their proper order so the audience could follow the story. The final bit was also taped, and after the laughter was recorded, the cast did a curtain call and we were on our way.

The total time commitment was close to five hours, so I couldn't see this being a regular thing, but I'm sure I'd go again with someone visiting from out of town, or if there is a sitcom we just HAVE to see in person.

The episode, by the way, is titled "Mike's Boss," and is scheduled to air on CBS at 9:30 p.m. Eastern and Pacific on Monday, Oct. 29. I'm sure Christina and I will watch with particular attention to see how everything is sewed together.

More from the gridiron

Spent another Friday night under the lights, this time at El Segundo for a game against Laguna Hills. In Virginia, teams routinely travel 50 miles to play someone else, but around here this is pretty rare. Turned out to be a great game, which Christina also enjoyed. Here's a link:

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/segundo-33512-second-laguna.html

Three-hour game!

The NFL has nothing on some of the high school teams here in Southern California. On a recent Friday night the game I covered took three hours, and that was with 12 minute quarters and no commercial timeouts. How did that happen? Lots of scoring and lots of incomplete passes to stop the clock. This all added up to to some serious issues making deadline, but I got a story in the Register none-the-less. Enjoy.

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/christian-33378-anthony-brethren.html

Back To My Roots

I'm still looking for a full-time position, but in the interim I have picked up some freelance work with the Orange County Register, covering high school football. It reminds me of Fridays in Luray, when I would work until 4 or 5 p.m., grab something to eat and then meet up with John Natalie wherever it was that we were doing a game. I had to be a double-threat, radio sideline reporting while keeping play-by-play for my stories in the Page News and Courier. Sometimes I had to be a triple-threat, also filing a story for the Potomac News or Manassas Journal-Messenger on deadline that Friday. Anyway, I thought blog readers might like an easy link to this past Friday night's story.

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/lutheran-33208-crean-dominates.html

Delay means Olympic-size frustrations

I have sat back and watched the past two weeks as more and more Olympics viewers are figuring out something I learned 16 years ago while viewing the Atlanta games: NBC doesn’t care about sports fans. The Peacock figures it already has us in its back pocket.

Actually, I haven’t really sat back. I have been following the #nbcfail hashtag on Twitter, where what NBC says is a loud minority has been chronicling the stupid decisions and mistakes that treating the Olympics like a reality show has caused the network. I have been contributing to the discourse on occasion. For those who care, in my opinion tape-delaying anything in 2012 is stupid, but putting soccer and basketball on the former Versus and not breaking for commercials in-game (or schmaltzy features at all) is brilliant.

I thank NBC Sports Network that it is a Ryan Seacrest-free zone. When the online streaming works, such as at 1 o’clock in the morning, it is great. Other than that, I cannot think of anything good to say. Marquee events that the rest of the world -- an audience of some 2 billion -- can see live are postponed six and sometimes 12 hours in the east, and another three in the west. Friends of mine don’t want “spoilers” because they think they can avoid finding out the results for that length of time.

The breaking point for me was a poll that showed a strong majority in favor of BOTH live and tape-delay presentations. This sounds great to me. Let me watch it live on the big TV in the living room when it happens and show it to the 9-to-5ers after dinner if that is the way they want it. According to the Gallup poll conducted Aug. 4-5, 59 percent of those questioned agree while just 12 percent of respondents favored NBC's current approach. Another 17 percent of respondents favored only live coverage, so that means nearly 80 percent want access to the events as they happen.

How does NBC respond to this? Dick Ebersol, who oversaw the Peacock’s Olympic coverage through the 1990s and the first decade of the new century, told blogger Joe Posnanski two days ago that the network doesn’t see this as a sports event. Ebersol told Posnanski, a former Kansas City Star sports columnist:

“People talk about how we should treat this like sports? You know, we’re getting an 18 rating some nights. Do you know what rating we would get if this was not under the banner of the Olympics? We’d be lucky to get a 1 rating for some of these sports.”

Yes, their ratings are great. A big reason why is that the network shuts off all other options on my HDTV by 5 p.m. (since I live in California). But when the winners and losers are determined after the money is counted, people will point fingers at how wrong-headed NBC was in the grand scheme of things. The Olympics ARE sports, they ARE news. And when something smells like day-old news, it is.

Instead, the network relies on a heavy mix of swimming, gymnastics, beach volleyball, diving and athletics. Hours after the events are over, editors slice and dice the actual competition, maybe even create some fake drama,  add a healthy dose of feature stories, and you have the perfect recipe for non-sports fans. As for those who want to actually see the events without all the distractions, they’ll watch like sheep because they have no other option.

But for those paying attention, what NBC is doing is not day-old news, it’s decades-old. In 1996, the network used what it called a “plausibly live” broadcast to delay swimming events by a couple of hours (you could still see daylight around the outdoor swimming venue at 10 p.m. Really?) and that famous Kerri Strug vault that may or may not have lifted the U.S. women to gymnastics gold had taken place earlier in the afternoon, not at 11:30 p.m. And this was for an Olympics that was in a time zone where live coverage was not only possible, but plausible.

So for those who think things will be different when NBC broadcasts the Olympics from Brazil (which shares a time zone with New York and Atlanta) in 2016, who think that #nbcfail will ultimately change things, I offer the example of Atlanta and every other Summer Games since then when I say NBC doesn’t care about sports fans' opinions in this matter.

DN-R: The Big Picture

I wanted to add another writing sample to the blog. This was a great opportunity to spend  couple of days on a bus tour of Civil War battlefield sites in the Shenandoah Valley when the commission designing a new national historic park was added to my beat. And we are nearing the anniversary date of its first publishing.

Daily News-Record (Harrisonburg, VA) - Monday, June 22, 1998

The Big Picture

Battlefield Commission Tours Sites To Be Preserved

By CHARLES PANNUNZIO News-Record Staff Writer The federally-appointed group charged with creating a plan to protect Civil War battlefields in the Shenandoah Valley got a close- up look at the size of its task over the weekend.

The Shenandoah Valley National Battlefield Commission toured sites in four counties and the city of Winchester Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

It was an effort to give commission members, many who own land on battlefields or have extensive knowledge of the war, a feel for the vastness of the district and its value as an educational and cultural resource, said Dennis Frye, president of the Association for the Protection of Civil War Sites.

"No book can ever replicate a battlefield , no matter how graphic the description or how well- written," he said. "No prose can duplicate the ground where these men fought. When you stand upon the ground, many of your senses are stimulated. . . . The battlefield is the theater, it is the stage where the act occurred. No actor or player can get his point across without the stage."

Frye made a similar plea to commission members and guests on the Field of Lost Shoes at the New Market Battlefield Saturday morning. During a walk across the Field of Lost Shoes, he noted that Confederate soldiers were able to close in on Union troops on a hill by disappearing from sight of cannons.

A day earlier, commissioners got a look at what has the potential to be preserved and what is already lost. They spent Friday morning looking battlefields south of Winchester, including an extensive tour of land owned by the Glass- Glen Burnie Foundation at Rose Hill. Portions of a stone wall from the March 1862 Battle of Kernstown remain, although they are hidden by brush most of the year. The battlefield from First Winchester, meanwhile, is hidden by a maze of hotels and restaurants on a hill where Interstate 81 now intersects U.S. 17, U.S. 50 and U.S. 522.

In the afternoon, the tour stopped at unmarked battlefield sites from Second Winchester and Third Winchester.

Following New Market, the tour stopped Saturday at APCWS- owned property at Fishers Hill. It, as well as part of the Cedar Creek battlefield owned by the Belle Grove Foundation and Cedar Creek Foundation, are maintained to a certain extent by farmers who lease the land to graze cattle. The commissioners met a group of cyclists visiting battlefields throughout Virginia and Maryland when they stopped at Cedar Creek Saturday afternoon, and wrapped up the day at Toms Brook, where Shenandoah County already owns much of the battlefield .

Sunday's stops included McDowell in Highland County and Cross Keys and Port Republic in Rockingham County.

Historian Joseph W.A. Whitehorne, vice-chairman of the battlefield commission, said much of the battlefield land still survives, but its future could be of concern.

"Some other things are surviving, in part because they are not near, let's call it the economic cutting edge yet," said Whitehorne, who teaches Civil War history at Lord Fairfax Community College and has written a number of books and tours of the Valley. "One of the reasons why so much more of the real estate in the northern part of the Valley seems to be coming under threat is that it's near the metro area, it's more desirable land. So, as a consequence, it is under a great deal more pressure.

"I have great sympathy for the guy who owns land and it's the equivalent of his stock portfolio," Whitehorne added. "You just can't go waltzing in there and say you're going to preserve this viewshed for historical reasons. You have to come up with a balance that works for the mutual benefit of both."

Whitehorne pointed at the Fishers Hill and Cedar Creek arrangements.

"That's, really when you think of it, one of the natural uses of the land," he said. "Another thing is quality of life. People come out here, retire here . . . because it's pretty, and it's nice. They sure aren't going to come here if it transforms too radically. It's the equivalent of say Ocean City paving its beach for more parking. You just wouldn't do that, because your natural resources are your greatest assets."

The commission's management plan is to be submitted to the Department of Interior by November 2000.

"The biggest enemy of the commission and of Civil War history is time," said Frye. "Every day that passes represents a lost opportunity to save hallowed ground. So time is difficult to concur. It requires time to develop a plan, but each day you plan could represent the loss of what you're trying to preserve. It presents a difficult dilemma."

"It is a challenging prospect," Whitehorne said. "You're talking multiple jurisdiction, many non- profits that have a vested interest that want it done right, but at the same time they don't want their positions undercut. . . . It's a very large task, and most of it is getting to be known and, I hope, being seen as part of the solution, and not part of the problem."