From Super Bowl to Hyperbole

There’s Curt Gowdy, NBC’s main play-by-play man. Dressed in bright green sport coat, he’s superimposed over a live image of a packed Orange Bowl Stadium pre-kickoff crowd. All that, scrunched within the square aspect ratio TV screen. On the field, helmets look a little square, too; same for the huge shoulder pads. Even the head coaches are square – or dapper – both dressed in ties.

Forty-man rosters stand compactly within a twenty-five yard space along their respective sidelines. Just beside both, photographers and spindly, tie-clad policeman linger only a yard behind the out-of-bounds line; beyond them, the lonely cloth goal line flag flapping in the Miami breeze. It’s January 12, 1969. The upstart NY Jets are playing the mighty Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.

Jets’ Bake Turner, a straight-on kicker, boots the ball and Super Bowl III is off and running. And running. So many running plays. After just a couple of series, millions of viewers already know play is tough, players are gritty but the completion is clean. Bodies are tackled, not heads, nor footballs to strip them free.

In their high tech production, NBC is using the miracle of instant replay, reserved mostly for pass play reviews. There’s close-up camera work, too, although used far too amply for the face and bodies of referees. NBC’s picture quality is state of the art, but is still rather fuzzy. For example, it’s difficult to count the number of face bars on player’s helmets. Is it true the punters and safeties have only one face bar? But the on-screen graphics are fairly tight, with streamlined, typewriter-like all cap white letters superimposed over images.

Colts’ Tom Mitchell dives for an errant throw. Laid out in prone position, he’s saved injury by Jets safety Johnny Sample who holds back from landing on him. Such grace under pressure.

Sublime is Joe Namath’s flick of the arm that tosses a perfect spiral fifty-five yards downfield. An incomplete pass, all players hustle back to the line of scrimmage. There are no player substitutions. There are practically no shifts at the line of scrimmage. If anyone is subbed, it’s done during time outs or commercial breaks, of which there are very few.

Super Bowl III has evolved into a defensive clash with the Jets leading 10-0 in the third quarter. Namath looks conspicuous on the sideline, the only player with his helmet off. How strange no one else utilizes this opportunity for valued face time. He’s so talented and so cool. Joe Willy has become my idol. But he trots off the field a series later, favoring an injured throwing hand. No one, even a trainer, comes over to look at it. Heroically, Joe Namath comes back in, pain and all.

Colts’ Jerry Hill scores a touchdown with three minutes to go. With the score 16-7, Baltimore goes for an on-side kick. They get it, but safety Rick Volk is dazed, unable to get off the field. Thirty million viewers watch four Colts drag him to the sideline. Even the great Johnny Unitas, replacing ineffective Earl Morrall, can’t perform magic and the Colts, eighteen point favorites, lose, 16-7. In a landmark sports event, the AFL (now the AFC conference) has caught up with the once far superior NFL teams in talent.

~

January 24, 2016. It’s the AFC Championship game between the New England Patriots and Denver Broncos, with today’s AFC winner going to Super Bowl 50. Invesco Field, seen with gigantic Jumbotron on one end, military units the other, is being presented by CBS in HD Cinemascope-like scale, including scintillating graphics to expand the viewer experience (all this just for coverage of the national anthem).

New England’s opening series is three and out. The two pass plays are reviewed by five replays; there are none for the boring run. After the punt, four commercials follow, their combined real-time exceeding the game clock time for the entirety of New England’s initial possession (1:58).

Denver’s first drive includes fancy on-screen team statistical comparisons, a close-up revealing one eyelash missing from Peyton Manning’s right eye, shots of both coaching staffs dressed in casual sweat suits, and – oh, yes – a passing touchdown culminated by the receiver celebrating near the stands. The subsequent extra point is overshadowed by four more commercials.

After Denver’s kickoff, the game is stopped again for four more commercials, including one with Peyton Manning singing and selling insurance. New England suffers another three and out, their possession highlighted by player’s constant bickering over pass interference. After their punt, four commercials follow, including one touting player character and what NFL warriors are doing for underprivileged kids in their communities.

Just before the first quarter ends, New England scores, making the score 7-6. Add also nine more commercials, a three-minute and ten second coach’s challenge, an on-field interview, two ugly personal foul calls, another TD celebration (a demonstrative Rocky-like pose for fans), a missed extra point, 76 total player substitutions (just a guess), and an awesome plastic pylon cam shot of the touchdown.

What the next three quarters reveal is one very great game. Competitive, exciting, and well-played, one in which Denver prevails, 20-18, demonstrating yet again – much like Super Bowl III – that hard nose defenses win championships.

But these last three quarters also provide great insight on modern NFL football.

There are many sideline reports interspersing – or interrupting – the game with in-the-moment media information: a player “has just passed the league’s concussion protocol,” “…tablets on the New England sideline are okay to use now,” a reporter’s views on the kicker’s specific thought process and physical protocol preparing for the upcoming kick, and even a shot of Rob Gronkowski lying flat on his back, oxygen mask over mouth, receiving massive leg massages on the sideline.

Perhaps the game no longer needs referees. All game long, Patriot and Bronco players are most adept at gesturing what should be called, among their specialties fumble recoveries, out-of-bounds calls, touchdowns, first downs, and incomplete passes (their favorite). Regular gesticulations to the crowd about just how great they are is another forte players possess. Seizing camera time, but in this far more grandiose manner, is where we’ve come from Namath’s seemingly harmless quest for attention removing his helmet on the sidelines many years ago.

Since referees fail to impede player’s constant pushing and shoving of opposing team members (even the kickers!), do we really need the zebras? Then again, if players are so smart, why were the majority of penalties for brainless false starts, unnecessary misconducts, and pass interference calls? It’s interesting to note the championship game had 14 combined penalties for 104 yards while Super Bowl III saw a total of three yellow flags.

Gang tackling by speedy, yet heavy-muscled players reveals a game far more brutal than pioneer Super Bowl contests. Today, offensive tackles average a height of 6’6” while nose tackles average 322 pounds. The median player weight of the Super Bowl III teams was 229, whereas the 2015 Indianapolis Colts squad averaged 256, a 27 pound increase in muscle, strength and power. This, combined with speed, make collisions frightening, yet hard hits are what make fans and defensive backs salivate.

Perhaps the heaviest weight put upon the modern game is commercials. One hundred and five thirty-second commercials were broadcast during the Patriots-Broncos game (not including halftime). That’s 52:30 in real-time of a game that’s 60:00 long. No wonder it took three hours and thirty minutes to complete this contest, keeping in mind most commercials interrupt play: players wait while television viewers are sold cars.

Maybe it was Curt Gowdy’s soothing voice that made Super Bowl III such a great game for me to watch. Or is it my inner voice, one continually tapping my shoulder from some distant, foggy time, that constantly reminds me of the once simple, swift and comparatively innocent NFL game I remember from 43 Super Bowls ago.

 

 

 

Reading Books as a Last Resort

The clock ticks on. And on. And on. And sometimes, our lives go on unhappily, unless we do something to change the things we don’t like.

I hear the ticks clicking toward next Monday when I’m voluntarily going through a series of neuropsychological evaluations. No, I don’t have ADHD or Autism Spectrum Disorder (that I know of!). No, I don’t have headaches or Traumatic Brain Disorder, thank goodness. What I do have is a strong determination to better understand my lifelong headache of poor reading and comprehension skills. I’m sick of them, and sick of not knowing why I have either. If testing at this late stage seems desperate, it’s less desperate than the years spent floundering in school – and at work, still – dealing with my secret problem.

Cases in point:

Mrs. Johnson’s first grade reading period.

“All right, everyone. Read the first five pages silently at your desk and when you are done, we will talk about the story.”

The race begins. I blast through five pages, snap the book shut, cross my arms, and lean back in my chair.

A few minutes later, old Mrs. Johnson says, “Class, raise your hands if you’re done.”

My hand takes flight far over my head; all other hands appear grounded in comparison.

“All right, Michael. So. What color shoes was Jane wearing?”

Jane wore shoes?

“Speak up, Michael. Weren’t they the same color as the lamb?”

What lamb?

I look around. Every hand in class is waving hysterically, as if trying to peel the cracking paint chips off the ceiling.

“Michael, please sit down. Ellen, do you know?” This Ellen girl, with right arm nearly pulled out of its shoulder socket from spastic hand swaying, jumps to give her answer.

Her response is muted by a menacing white noise, like the sound I hear inside a conch shell. Such is the deep echo I encounter whenever I’ve done something wrong.

Finally, reading period is over. On to the all-purpose room for Friday art class.

Creating popsicle stick houses with glue, I am free. I’m an artist, not a reader. Right? Who needs library cards and late book fees? Who needs reading when TV’s around. Thank God for the weekend.

I start Saturday morning by viewing Captain Kangaroo and cartoon shows. During the afternoon, it’s movies – the simpler the better. After dinner, Mom and Dad switch the mood to serious evening news. Most interesting is the set decor, what the anchorman looks like, the pictures that magically pop up behind him. And commercials are the ultimate bonanza, always surefire entertainment!

Mrs. Marcotte’s eighth grade English class.

“So, Michael,” she says, catching me off guard. “What do you like to read at home?”

I’m astonished how many thoughts can flash through my mind in a split second of time to answer this question: The Flintstones / easy to follow TV show / no complicated character development / no deep universal themes you keep hitting me over the head with in class / love TV / hate your class …

“What?” I ask.

“Michael, I said, ‘do you watch television?’”

“Oh, yes.”

“Well, I think you need to watch less TV and start reading more. After all, what’s going to happen when you have to read things like Faust, Oedipus the King, and Pippi Longstocking?”

What? Who? Pippi Longstocking was a movie, but what movie were those other people in?

My guidance counselor’s office and my first plea for help.

“I don’t like to read.”

“Why?” Mr. Sexton asks.

“I just don’t. Mrs. Marcotte says we’re reading timeless landmarks of literature, but they’re really the most boring stories ever told …”

“Oh, no they’re not …”

“Oh, yes they are – of all time. And why does everyone and everything have to be so symbolic to something, and then symbolic to something else? If authors knew we had to go through all this in reading their books, they’d never have written them in the first place. Everyone else in my family is smart. Mom said we all came from good Scandinavian stock, so what happened to me?”

“Ha!”

“What?”

“If you want to see some really stupid people ….”

Mr. Sexton spins around in his chair and leans toward the floor between the wall and a cabinet. He returns with a big cardboard box that he dumps on his desk.

“Now t-h-e-s-e kids ….”

The box is filled with a carnival of confiscated classroom items: fuzzy dice, chains, novelty false teeth, yo-yos, cap guns, rubber knives, real knives, spray paint cans, “Car Mechanic” magazines, and a copy of Iliad with a giant “X” knife-gouged into the cover.

“Michael, you’re not dumb, unless you don’t use what you have. Learn to use what it is you do have – and always use it to its fullest. Perhaps you have a learning disability. Do you think so?”

“I dunno. What’s that? Other teachers just say I have the inability to learn, period if that’s what you mean. Guess there’s nothing symbolic about that, is there?” I say quite emphatically.

Sure, I’m smart enough to scrape by, but what about getting into college?

The mailman delivers a cream colored letter, postmarked “Princeton, New Jersey.” It couldn’t be the Princeton University New Jersey people, could it? Could it?

I rip open the envelope. It’s the SAT Princeton New Jersey people, and they have my score. 742. Out of 1200. It has to be a misprint. I look again. 742. It can’t be. My life is doomed – the SAT proves it. After all, isn’t that what tests are designed for, to find out if you’re stupid?

Good Scandinavian stock Mom had said. Good Scandinavian livestock maybe.

Why would college be any different than high school?

I’m having trouble absorbing any textbook with less than forty percent charts and graphs. Ones without two-page photo spreads every three pages put me to sleep. Even my art history book is ninety-five percent text, a huge disappointment. I’m bamboozled reading long paragraphs, especially those containing clauses with double negatives. And reading the pamphlet, “Gaining Better Concentration and Command of Written Material,” at the college learning center is of no use. Deciphering all its outlines, checkpoints and checklists seem more complicated than reading itself.    

With so much catching up to do, I take a seat in McKelden Library one early Saturday morning and spread all my books out on the table.

By lunchtime, I’ve completed only one reading assignment. By two o’clock, I’m asleep in my chair. By four o’clock, all books are opened to pictures, graphs and colorful pie charts. By five, I’m asleep. By dinner time, I feel achy. I plan to skip eating and study some more before realizing I’m too tired to concentrate on anything, let alone read.

Preparing to leave, I strap on my knapsack. Stuffed with so many books, the weight hurts my back. Unable to carry the load, I retake my seat. Freed from assigned readings, my mind engages the real world. Questions abound. Why does my reading malady remain such a mystery? When did it begin? What explains it?

I exhale hard. Many characters, settings and dramas have led me here. But feeling so incomplete, there has to be more to the story than this.

Perhaps the neuropsychological tests are the rest of the story, or at least a beginning. Beginnings are hard, but I must unravel the conundrum that is my reading problem, not to mention anything associated with my slow learning, poor short term memory and difficulty understanding instructions.

I don’t expect anything to appreciably change just because I’ve been tested. It’s more about wanting to know what makes me tick.

 

Italicized sections are excerpts from Chapter Two, “Reading,” in my memoir, Maybe Boomer.

Lightfoot!

Three houses. Fifty years apart. Two people. One great musician. Come inside.

Gordon Lightfoot, songwriter of such hits as “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Sundown,” writes songs in total isolation and composes in big batches. Solitude is a must, part of his music methodology.

Owning two houses these days, he writes, practices the guitar and plays songs in one house while his wife and family live in the other. Isolation, Lightfoot’s key to creativity, must also be a killer. “Gee, honey, if only you could read my mind. Be back at sundown.” But it’s who Canadian-born Gordon Lightfoot seems to be, and has been from the start of his career. Liner notes from his second album, The Way I Feel, reveal him working alone for a week in a room of producer John Court’s house, perfecting the album’s material. The persistence produced a great collection of songs. But his very first album, Lightfoot!, released in January of 1966 – fifty years ago this month – is what interests me most.

The house I grew up in in Silver Spring, Maryland, was nowhere near Canada, no den of folk music, but – from time to time – entertained greatness. I’d already been educated by Bob Dylan and the Beatles from songs I heard over my family’s various transistor radios. Listening to Lightfoot!, a vinyl treasure brought into the house by my older sister and brothers, I’d never heard such personal ache set to music and lyrics, at least as our old living room Motorola stereo set could produce.

A moody kid, I related to the yearning voice in Lightfoot’s songs, as if he called out from a place of wilderness, the same place I felt somehow akin to despite living in suburban Maryland all my life. There was something that connected the two of us.

Where the long river flows
It flows by my window
Where the tall timber grows
It grows ’round my door
Where the mountains meet the sky
And the white clouds fly
Where the long river flows by my window 
*[From “Long River”]

Listen to that song! Listen to all of them. I really want to play music like this. I love Lightfoot’s voice, precise guitar picking and great songwriting. Mom paid big money last year in hopes I’d learn guitar and piano, but I flopped both times, opportunities lost. I still play guitar in my room, dreaming I’ll be good some day. I ache – is playing music pleasure or pain?

Now here I am with my hat in my hand
Standing on the broad highway will you give a ride
To a lonesome boy who missed the train last night
I went in town for one last round and I gambled my ticket away
And the big steel rail won’t carry me home to the one I love
*[From “Steel Rail Blues”]

In a Orilla, Ontario, grocery store one day, Lightfoot’s mother heard him singing to himself. So moved by his melodic spontaneity, she encouraged him with music in school and church. By twelve, he excelled in voice, choir and piano, even going on to a regular gig in a barbershop quartet.

I’m gonna buy me two wings of silver
Yes ‘n Lord to fly me home
I’m gonna buy me two wings of silver
Yes ‘n Lord to fly me home
And when I get my silvery wings
Then an angel choir will sing
I’m gonna get me two wings of silver to get me home
*[From “Rich Man’s Spiritual”]

I’m no good. Maybe I should quit. It’s frustrating having to figure out keys and chords, not to mention what key Lightfoot is singing in. Winter is bleak and grey. Alone in my room, light has abandoned me.

Oh gal don’t you say goodbye
Now that I need you by my side
Love me now or be on your way
If you go be gone to stay
*[From “Oh Linda”]

Bob Dylan, frontrunner of the early sixties Folk Revival, inspired Lightfoot. As a result, his songwriting became more personal. In a Toronto club one night, he played the mournful ballad, “Early Morning Rain.” Folk group Ian & Sylvia heard him play it and became the first big group to record a Lightfoot song.

Out on runway number nine, big seven-o-seven set to go
But I’m stuck here in the grass where the cold wind blows
Now the liquor tasted good and the women all were fast
Well now there she goes my friend, well she’s rolling down at last
*[From “Early Mornin’ Rain”]

Our house has come alive! No one ever agrees on anything, but all the sudden all four of us kids think Gordon Lightfoot is cool. Time to celebrate. I can even hear rejoice in Lightfoot’s voice.

Gonna buy me a long white robe
Yes ‘n Lord to help me home
I’m gonna buy me a long white robe
Yes ‘n Lord to get me home
And when I get my heavenly gown
And I lay my burden down
I’m gonna get me a long white robe to get me home
*[From “Rich Man’s Spiritual”]

Putting the Lightfoot! album together wasn’t all merriment. The New York City recording studio was sterile and unwelcoming – lonely – despite human companionship of an unmoved assistant engineer who assisted in recording the album by misspelling names of Lightfoot’s songs.

Here in this cold room lyin’
Don’t want to see no one but you
Lord I wish I could be dyin’
To forget you  
*[From “Ribbon of Darkness”]

I can’t read a lick of music, but what feels so good is how I can play any song on guitar by ear. And my finger pickings sound just like what I hear Lightfoot doing. I’m actually pretty good. But I also spend a lot of time getting to be pretty good. Over and over. Day after day. Kinda alone.

The way I feel is like a robin
Whose babes have flown to come no more
Like a tall oak tree alone and cryin’
When the birds have flown and the nest is bare
*[From “The Way I Feel”]

Two albums later, with a folk following of his own, Lightfoot has a band family to support in addition to his own back home. Responsibility is high. Pressure mounts. And the Folk Revival is dying. Rock and roll is taking over. Lightfoot must reinvent himself without going that way. There’s still room for ballads and romanticism without sentimentality, isn’t there? Boom, his fourth album, Sit Down Young Stranger, goes gold in 1970.

Oh may the light of freedom shine
For all the world to see
And peace and joy to all mankind
Through all the years to be
For soon the leaves will die
And the long hard wind will blow
May this world find a resting place
Where peaceful waters flow
*[From “Peaceful Waters”]

A song comes to my mind. I like writing songs. Each breathes its own air. It’s the boss. It leads me, I do not lead it. I must listen, listen carefully in the cold silence, for which direction I must go. Song – is king.

I can’t say I’ll always do
The things you want me to
I’m not saying I’ll be true but I’ll try
*[From “I’m Not Sayin’”]

Suddenly, there’s regular Lightfoot gigs on weekly TV shows, Midnight Special and Don Kirchner’s Rock Concert. But then a diagnosis of Bells Palsy, drugs and alcohol abuse in the 70’s and 80’s, a 2002 abdominal hemorrhage that left him in a coma for five weeks, and a small stroke in 2004.

This old airport’s got me down, it’s no earthly good to me
‘Cause I’m stuck here on the ground, as cold and drunk as I can be
You can’t jump a jet plane like you can a freight train
So I’d best be on my way in the early mornin’ rain
*[From “Early Mornin’ Rain”]

In an 2008 interview with Matt Fink of American Songwriter magazine, Lightfoot said all his marriages were doomed to fail due to his need for isolation to write. Yet, as of today, he’s compiled 20 albums, 16 Juno awards (Canadian Grammys), Canadian Music Hall of Fame membership, and has had many of his songs sung by an impressive list of great musicians. Was all the work, the grind – the isolation – worth it?

~

I have to get out of the house. It’s time to go fishing.

As I drive through the beautiful forests in Bandelier National Monument on my way to fish near Jemez Springs, New Mexico, I slide the Lightfoot! song collection into my CD player.

Sixteen miles to seven lakes way up among the pines
In some hidden valley where the twirlin’ river twines
Where the fish swim up and down and the sparklin’ waters falls
Where the thunder rolls and the lonely puma calls 
*[From “Sixteen Miles (To Seven Lakes)”]

A tear comes to my eye.

Isolation isn’t so bad, at least when shared with Gordon Lightfoot.

 

 

Many thanks to the following sites for providing additional information:  American Songwriter and connectsavannah.com. Check them out for more on Gordon Lightfoot.

*All lyrics from original Gordon Lightfoot compositions in Lightfoot!