Friday Night Potpourri

Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts:

• My long time friend Tim Hammack - I've known him since he was in high school - is an accomplished chef who left his job at a five star restaurant in Napa Valley to be the soup kitchen chef at the Bay Area Rescue Mission in Richmond, CA. Tim takes unpredictable food donations off a truck every morning and turns them into fine food for the homeless. He also trains new chefs as part of a drug recovery program. Tim has been featured on several national news programs. Here is a recent story (an up-front ad precedes the main story.)
• Dr. Lenny posts a proposed constitutional amendment I may be able to live with.
• What would today look like if the 70's never happened?
• My kids were talking about new video games. I remember when Pong came out. Man, we spent a lot of time playing that one.
  
• It was so windy this morning that the leaves falling from the trees onto the wood back deck sounded like rain.
  
• Wild thunder storms at sundown today. The visuals of the sky were stunning.
  
• Another fourth grade phonograph favorite. I wrote in an earlier FNP that my first 45 was Three Dog Night's The Show Must Go On. I'm sure this week's cover of a Motown fave was not far behind. I've never heard the LP version, which this one is, as the 45 cut out the studio happenings in the background before the song started. Of course, it was years before I even knew this was a cover, but a great cover it is. Relive and enjoy!
  

Weekend Potpourri

Friday skipped a beat this week, so here's an extended version of the potpourri:

• Cal beat #14 Stanford in the 112th Big Game on Saturday, winning in last minute fashsion 34-28, killing Stanford's Rose Bowl hopes.
• Last week there was a dead skunk on the road when I took my kid to school. By the time I returned it had been removed. The smell from the road lasted for another week.
• Tim Lincecum won the NL Cy Young award for the second consecutive year. Congrats, Timmy!
• All the kids (including cousins!) are out of school the entire week. Daytime fun should multiply.
• Since our move, I've been jogging in a new park. I rather like it, as I've used it since kindergarten. It has an Olympic swimming pool, one of the best on the West Coast.
• The weather this fall has been outstanding.
• In what is an obvious play on Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, this video is my favorite from the MTV era.

John Elway's Best Last Minute Comeback

John Elway was one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time. He is probably most famous for his last-minute comeback victories. He has more come from behind victories than any other quarterback ever. Joe Montana is in second place and isn't even close. What is perhaps Elway's greatest last minute comeback isn't even remembered by most people. It happened 27 years ago, and I found a clip of it on YouTube. I certainly remember it because I was a freshman at the opposing school. Elway did it to us!

Consider the circumstances he faced and you might agree that this may be the most pressure-packed drive ever:

• It was the last drive in the last minute of the last game of his senior year in college.
• It was their rivalry game; one of the top ten greatest rivalries in college football history, and the ninth oldest. Bragging rights were on the line.
• He was faced with 4th down and 17 from his own 13 yard line, down by 2 points with less than a minute to go.
• A bowl game berth was guaranteed; but only if they won. So a bowl game was on the line.
• He was one of the top two Hiesman Trophy candidates that year. So the Heisman Trophy was on the line.
• NFL scouts were watching closely. So the NFL draft was on the line. And...
• HE PULLED IT OFF! 87 yards in 45 seconds to score!

So why doesn't anybody remember it? Even though the finish to this game is almost unanimously considered the greatest comeback in all of football history, Elway's part in it isn't, because he made a great mistake in calling his last time out. He left just a bit too much time on the clock.

Watch this truly amazing comeback by Elway, and his mistake that caused it to be remembered by nobody, by clicking here. Then, click here for an electronic enhancement of the last play. Enjoy!

Friday Night Potpourri

Collected thoughts for the seven day period:

• Visited my college campus today to get a copy of my transcripts. Berkeley. It's a beautiful campus. No riots or demonstrations today, but it brought back many memories.
• People drove today like it was Friday the 13th and a full moon.
• If you're bored and want a bit of entertainment, go to the courthouse steps and watch foreclosures being auctioned off.
• My post last Saturday titled When Does The Church Sing TO One Another? was almost duplicated by Alan Knox without reading my post first.
• Christmas stuff is out in many of the stores. I want to say it's far too early because it's not even Thanksgiving yet, but I seem to remember a few years ago it was out in October in many stores.
• I saw a flock of geese flying north today.
• Soccer is over, pee-wee baseball is over. Do I get to sleep in on Saturdays now?
• I've taken the oldest kids over to an open space area in the hills behind where I grew up. We've seen deer, hawks, snake skins, but no coyotes like it shows on the sign.
• He never made it as an actor; say what you want about the movie, but as I remember the soundtrack had some pretty good music on it.

Friday Night Potpourri

Music to sleep by on a Friday night:

• The sale of our house is complete. Signed all the last papers, the buyer's funding came through, escrow is closed. Celebration? Yes.
• A few days ago our two year old cried for well over an hour, "I wanna go home." Sad.
• The leaves are definitely a different color now. Many of the maples are still green, some mixed, some red. Up on the hill looking down into the valley, it looks great.
• Our ninth wedding anniversary is next week. Wow, nine years. Congratulations, Mrs. Scott!
• There's a huge open space area out behind our neighborhood in the hills. We used to play out there as kids, but the slaughter house was knocked down decades ago. There used to be bones all over out there.
• This was the first 45 record I bought as a kid. One of two in the same purchase, actually. Can anybody guess the other? You never will.

A Thousand Posts

This is my one thousandth post here at From the Pew. [And there was much rejoicing] I've been blogging here since April 11, 2005; approximately 4 1/2 years. Overall I've averaged about 220 posts per year, or about one every day and a half. The first year or so was much more lean, so I've since averaged about a post a day. A post a day is my base goal.

It seems both like I've been blogging forever with millions of posts and like I've hardly blogged at all. I sure have much more that I want to blog about, and I'm sure I could crank material out for as long as blogging is a viable medium. I've racked close to 25,000 site visits and over 40,000 page views (since implementing site data software). My very first post can be read here, and I still have the same basic goal.

Here's to many more posts at From the Pew.