Saturday, July 20, 2013

The Washington/Indiana Tecmo Bowl

Watched Washington vs. Indiana last night through WNBA Live Access but found it very hard to get into.  Part of the reason was the broadcast quality.  WNBA Live Access wasn't broadcasting very quickly and most of the broadcast was plagued with resolution issues.

Furthermore, it was a basic three-camera setup.

1) Camera pointed at center court which swiveled either toward the left basket or the right basket, depending on where the ball was at.
2) A camera at the left baseline, and
3) A camera at the right baseline.

The problem was that the center court camera was somewhat on the upper level and was so far back that I got more of the audience and less of the court than I should have.  The endzone cams seemed to have been used rather sparingly, giving it the impression of a Fever game produced by the Junior High School AV Club.


Can you see the problem there?  I dare you to pick out any of the players.  Hope you have good eyesight.

Very hard to get into that game, I give my viewing experience a 3 out of a 10, tilted toward those moments when the view shifted to an end camera and the broadcast quality was particularly good.  Washington lost the thread at the end when Indiana made a huge run and tightened up on defense, and the Mystics dried up and blew away like that kid who kics the footstool on the Charles Atlas ad.

That viewing experience, however, was an improvement over Tulsa/Connecticut.  It's always hard for a commentator to provide both play by play and color, and this was another one-announcer setup.  Whatever his name was, I want to be on whatever it was he was on.  He moved with the slow of an overly patient Steven Wright.









I just want everyone to know that I agree with John Altavilla.  (Translation:  if I posted this on my own, people would have thought I was a lone nut.  I'm borrowing Altavilla's credibility.)

(* * *)

Went out this morning, got a haircut at the Aveda Institute.  Good haircuts fairly cheap by students studying to be beauticians.  The first haircut I came out looking like I lost a fight with Billy Idol.  The good thing is that hair always grows back.

Unfortunately, I'm getting a Leif Garrett "hair island" in the front.

See that?  Me in ten years.  I have thought about shaving the old nogging.  Talked to a guy behind the counter at Aveda, young slim black guy who started losing his hair at about 15.  He had a "good shaped head" - part of the problem with shaving your head is that some people's heads are a little irregular looking.  He told me to hang on to my hair as long as I could.

The wife is talking about me taking Propecia.  Hoo boy.

(* * *)

Sent out the WNBA Boxscores Sheet today to a few selected friends.  I might make it a public document.  Some day I'll write a long rant about how sports institutions like the WNBA (or Major League Baseball, or the National Football League) make it a point to hide information fans might want.

Take Katie Smith's lone technical foul she got this year.  A great guy, P, stated that Smith's foul had been rescinded by the league.  I didn't know that.  The WNBA didn't go out of its way to make that public, either.  According to P the W rarely publicizes rescinding them unless it affects a player suspension.  

Well, if that's the case, why bother keeping it a secret.  That's another rant somewhere down the line.

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