Those Visa Sports Commercials! Continued

The answer to the Thorpedo:


And a vault I will remember forever.

Those Visa Sports Commercials!

I have to say, I'm a big softy. I cry at commercials. I cry when I see athletes achieve their goals. I cried when Russell won the sixth season of So You Think You Can Dance (and boy! do I love watching him crump).

But this blog post is dedicated to those memorable Visa Olympics commercials.


This was a moment that I cried at (well, both moments). I cried with Dan in 1988 when he fell and sat there dispondent because he had broken his promise to his sister, who had died from leukemia just a few hours before. And I cried when he won a gold on his very last race (before he retired) 6 years later. A man who had tried in 3 Olympics to win a race finally achieved it on his very last try.

A nice article about Dan's efforts and accomplishment.

Next up: Bob Beamon.

I thought it was so cool to hear his story. He was one Olympic athlete that I wasn't completely familiar with.

The Fosbury Flop!

Beware Toasted Skin Syndrome!!!

Picture courtesy of the Telegraph (UK)
Saw the press release for this article on "Toasted Skin Syndrome" today and had to comment on it.

Apparently "a 12-year-old boy developed a sponge-patterned skin discoloration on his left thigh after playing computer games a few hours every day for several months." And a Virginia law student spent 6-hours a day with it propped in her lap.

Here are my thoughts:
1) Why did Swiss researchers waste time studying this?
2) Why call it a syndrome when it's happened to 10(TEN) people in the last 6(SIX) years?
3) Why did the Telegraph (UK) or the Huffington Post bother relaying this? (Although it is nice to know that "A medical report several years ago found that men who used laptops on their laps had elevated scrotum temperatures. If prolonged, that kind of heat can decrease sperm production, which can potentially lead to infertility."

And finally:

4) Who is stupid enough to let their laptop toast their skin in the first place?!! That heat makes me uncomfortable so I put something in between me and it. That's just common sense.

Project 365 - W26

Week 26. Fingers crossed about Brussels!


Monday. It was 'busy,' meaning I found things to do in the Photo Bubble. Even though the reporters were working on things, we had no photo requests for the day, actually for the entire week. And what's really annoying - a reporter from the sports desk, who knew she had 3 volleyball games to cover that week earlier than Monday morning, just waited until the last minute to put her requests in. And they were crappy requests, too! No information whatsoever. She didn't even bother to tell us the sport, let alone where on the high school it would held. I sometimes wonder if it's just this semester or if reporters are always this pathetic. Okay, I'm being severe. It comes from my frustration -- because if you can't follow simple directions, how can you accurately investigate a story?

What I found to do was look through community calendars and make FYI photo requests. Which actually turned out to be very helpful this week (according to Brian) because it gave us stuff to do and take pictures of. So, come Monday morning, I will search the week's calendars for events. I think one of the reasons why Brian likes it is because he likes being able to 'get one up on' the print desk by telling them things they don't know (but should).

And this picture? What does this picture have to do with anything? Well, right at the end of my shift, there was an announcement over the police scanner (yes, we have a police scanner, which alerts us to happening news...) about a woman being pried out of a car. At the intersection of Rogers and Fifth Street (an intersection I drive through at least twice a day). So Tim rushed right over there (before the reporter went out to the scene, too ;) I took this picture with my iPhone as I was driving by the accident. This guy was one of many watching all the action.

Saturday Night in the Photo Bubble

John Reynolds, from New York, kisses his girlfriend, Kristina Wenzel, a Doctorate student at MU while watching Dan Tyminski play at Locust and 7th Street at the Roots 'N Blues 'N BBQ Festival on Saturday, October 2nd, 2010. Reynolds jokingly said that he came all the way from New York just for the barbecue. | ANDREW WILLIAMS

The above picture is one of my favorites from the entire evening. Such a great moment. Good job, Andrew!!!

So, today was the second day of the Roots 'N Blues 'N BBQ Festival, which meant a whole mess of photos to edit for Saturday night. And since today was also the end of MPW, that meant that Erica was working all by herself. So I volunteered to come in and help her Saturday evening with the slide shows for the event.


Rex Scott, 34, grills chicken at the Jamaican Jerk Hut during the Roots 'N Blues 'N BBQ Festival on Saturday, October 2nd, 2010. Scott said that he has been cooking jerk chicken at the festival ever since it started 2007. The Jamaican Jerk Hut cooks about 500 pounds of meat which takes around three hours to grill. | ANDREW WILLIAMS

Arriving a little after 7 pm, I didn't really get very busy until around 7:45. That's when the photographers started coming back in from being out shooting. As we talked, we figured out that a slide show from Friday hadn't been created/posted, so I put it on my to-do list and got to work.

Going Ballooning

One thing that I've been wanting to do for a while is photograph my friend, Tracy Sines, and his parents, Jan and Gary, doing hot air ballooning. This Saturday (September 25), I got the opportunity to see them in action. And boy, was it fun!

Tracy's parents own Balloon Stormers, a company which flies in races, trains pilots, and offers rides throughout the state of Missouri. They've competed in the US, as well as Costa Rica, Mexico, and China. They also own the World's Biggest Gumball Machine and Coco the Clown balloon. Neither balloon flew on Saturday.

We (Tracy, Steven and Melissa Silvey, and I) drove to New Haven, Mo., to attend its annual balloon race. The race was actually canceled because of weather, but some people flew away, including Tracy's mom, Jan. His dad, Gary, decided to inflate their balloon, the World's Biggest Gumball Machine. Here's some of my favorites from this event.


This one was taken through the vent at the other end of the balloon. I love that I caught them peering into the balloon to watch it inflate.

The Woman Who Inspired Champions

I am, of course, speaking about Nadia Comăneci. She was the very first gymnast to score a perfect 10. She did it in 1976 at the age of 14.


Left: © Jerry Cooke; Middle: © Steve Powell/Allsport; Right: © Tony Duffy/Allsport

When I was a very little girl, I remember watching Nadia perform and she inspired me to be a gymnast. Of course, I never became a gymnast. My family moved too often and didn't quite put a priority on me being active in sports. But I still remember loving this girl who poured her heart out when she performed.

Project 365 - W25

Week 25. I've been pretty busy.


Monday. One of the photographers in Staff, Ally, has been having problems when going out on assignment. Her insecurity and perfectionism contributed to her psyching herself out and barely producing useable images. I was getting frustrated. She was getting frustrated. Other editors were getting frustrated. So I approached her about going out on a shoot together so that we could talk about how we approached things, etc. We were going to go to the Heritage Festival on Sunday, but it was cancelled. So on this Monday, I went out with Ally on a reshoot of people working with bacon for the paper.

-- Side note: stupid article on bacon! The number of shoots they had us do (which were a pain in the tuccous) and then don't link the article to the multimedia. And the pictures that ended up in the paper were pretty lame. The frustrations of photo editing! --