Photo Essay and One (Point) Weird Dream

[captainsblog]

The photos will go more-or-less from oldest to newest of when I saw them. First up, one that a longtime trivia friend put up:



Jeff and I usually get into pretty lengthy pun wars, but this time I broke my usual trend and pointed him to an actual photo essay- by a Rochester artist who's documenting the demise of the pay phone medium:



These are not snapshots. They are carefully considered portraits that evoke a relationship between a bygone technology and its surroundings. The photos, all black-and-white, are largely devoid of people, giving them a post-apocalyptic feel that is simultaneously beautiful and eerie and recalls the rise and fall of civilization.

I can go weeks without seeing one, even in travels into downtowns, and despite the vitriol levied upon the poor over their "Obamaphones" (a program begun by Reagan and extended to mobiles by Bush 43), there are still those who need these lifelines and no longer have them.

Sad.

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Speaking of downtowns: this, seen on one of my very few remaining forays into Buffalo's Real Courthouseland:



That seemed funny when I posted it; I even speculated whether the driver was wearing a pullover. But then word out of another downtown came- a Rochester grand jury refused to charge police officers implicated in the death of a Black mental health patient on the city's streets last summer, and the more recent incident of an officer pepper-spraying a Black nine-year-old continues to be copsplained as "necessary." But wypipos can make jokes about law enforcement on their license plates. 

Sick.

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I left work a little early yesterday, since I had a very early start to today, and I was totally not expecting what was waiting for me in my office:



I don't know how it wound up getting delivered to my office, other than it being much closer to Emily's high school than our house is (I didn't even have an office there when she was in attendance), but whatever. That's the self-portrait she did during her senior year that, lo this decade later, was still on display in one of the high school hallways. The person who dropped it off said they are taking them all down for an unspecified reason and wanted to return them to their artists.

I sent her the shot of the wrapped portrait, and she does want it back from us whenever they're back in this vicinity. I'll try to get a photo of it up without the fiddlybits on it.

Sentimental.

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Today's COVID humor:



Sloshed.

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A bit of CartWho-nery:



The Time Lord's immortal enemy, the Delay-ek. Not that the Doctor's any better, flying around in a TARDY-IS.

Silly.

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And finally,

Subconscious: in in the sports department of my mind, weird timing is followed by weird dreaming.

I turned in around 9:30 last night, and in a fit of optimism decided, for the first time in months, to tune in to see how the Sabres were doing after their first win in, seemingly, months on Sunday. I hit "play" just as that goddam annoying goal horn at the Nassau Mausoleum was going off to celebrate the Fishsticks' come-from-behind-HOW-DID-YOU-GET-BEHIND-AGAINST-THEM?!? win over the Butterknives.

My subconscious apparently preferred football, because in a dream some hours later, I was checking a Bills score on my phone and they were ahead 3-0. Nothing unusual there. But when I checked again, they had padded their commanding lead. To 4-0.  My first thought was that this was impossible, unless you've been traded to the CFL.  I asked Facebook friends to take a 50-50 guess if an NFL team has EVER ended a game scoring only four points.
 

A four-point final score by an NFL team only happened once- in 1923, when the Chicago Cardinals' only scores of a game were two two-point safeties. But in finding that out, I also discovered I was wrong- you can score only one point on a play other than after your own touchdown, but it's never happened in the NFL, and the closest to ever do it were, who else, Da Bills:

According to the NFL’s scoring rules under Section 11-3-2-C, the rare one-point safety is awarded when a safety occurs by either team during a “try,” or a point after try such as a two-point conversion or extra point attempt.

 

When the Patriots lined up for a 2-point conversion following James White’s one-yard rushing touchdown, Tom Brady’s pass to Cordarrelle Patterson was intercepted by Bills linebacker Julian Stanford. When Stanford started to bring the ball out of the end zone, he fumbled the ball before crossing the goal line, and it was recovered by Buffalo in the end zone.

Now, if the defensive player had crossed back into the field of play and fumbled, then Buffalo recovered possession of the ball back inside their own end zone, it would by rule be a safety, and New England would have been awarded a single point.

 

Shout.