Tony’s Journal

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Check this guy, going to the Fair in style, a woman on each arm:

Picture Me Rollin

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I was kind of sick of looking at the Twelve-Spotted Cucumber Beetle, so I switched it up. Some of the stuff doesn’t look right, but eh. And I am gonna replace the stock images with ones that I’ve take. Oh, have I got photos.

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Happened around 10 am today. Man, this is not good news. Seems that the pilot was killed. It seems that the plane was having engine trouble and had to come down out of the clouds, but the clouds are really low today. On the way in, the meager Raleigh skyline was cut off and I couldn’t even see about the top 15 floors of the BB&T building. So the pilot apparently got below the clouds, saw 70 and avoided it, right into the McCall’s parking lot and into the restaurant.

It’s big news around here. WRAL is covering it live. Obviously no Sky 5 on account of the clouds. Drew reports that it was on the news already in Boone, on the station broadcasting from Johnson City TN.

Luckily though, no one in the restaurant was hurt. It happened about 10 am, and apparently some old-timers were in the parking lot fixin to get their buffet on. Even though the place wasn’t open yet. Essentially they were camping out for McCall’s. (You know how Johnston County do.) But the employees and manager were all in the kitchen in the back of the restaurant, so they are all okay, and God willing they toted some of that banana pudding out with them.

It’s just surreal. One of my favorite restaurants, and of all the damn things, a plane crashes into it. My list is short, but of restaurants near and dear to my heart, about which I’d say “I hope a plane does not crash into that place,” it’s maybe Mitch’s, McCall’s, Bo on Western, Schwartz’s, and Riverview.

Here’s another reason it’s surreal:

On a recent visit, I took this photo of the Lloyd men:

And today you can see those photos on the wall, since the front wall was torn clean off:

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Hmm, this is quickly turning into a multimedia blog.

So on Saturday, UVA was playing at UNC (I shall call this “The Pennyloafer Bowl”), and the officials dished up a serving of home cooking for Carolina. Surprise! Ref error in Carolina’s favor! Check out this field goal attempt by UVA.

The reason that official is standing there is because it is his job to see whether the field goal was good. What you don’t see in this video is that, as the long (48-yard) attempt descended, he actually ducked out of the way and DID NOT EVEN WATCH, then straightened back up to say the kick was no good.

The call was overturned on replay, which Al Groh inexplicably had to request, even though the ACC says that “all plays are reviewed” by the lackeys in the booth upstairs. The last time we heard that quote, it was delivered in spite of the evidence — in the Akron-NCSU game last year, on the final play when Akron supposedly scored to win the game, the play was very close. The RB’s knee was down right around the time that he got in the end zone. An official signaled a TD, Akron celebrated their asses into the locker room at a high rate of speed hoping that the video guys wouldn’t review it. And it worked. Because the ACC is there to ensure that everything is left to the luck of the draw, unless you’re Duke or Carolina, in which case they will arbitrarily err in the favor of those teams and deal with the fallout later by having press conferences all “aww shucks, I reckon we might have done things wrong.”

In this instance:

“The officials clearly erred in not calling that field goal good,” Doug Rhoads, the ACC supervisor of football officials, said from Greensboro. “It was a breakdown in their mechanics. … It was a deviation from our standard practice of mechanics by both officials.”

“A DEVIATION IN STANDARD PRACTICE.” How about “they are supposed to watch the FG attempt and make the correct call, not look in the wrong direction and then guess.” Ahh, the ACC.

By the way, if Al Groh hadn’t challenged, who knows if the booth would have? I am guessing no, since no article I’ve seen says that the booth was already looking at the play when Groh challenged. And UVA ended up winning by 2.

Well, also this weekend, in the Chargers-Pats debacle, a rare bright spot for the Chargers was when the Chargers were called for holding. After considering and picking up the flag, ref Ed “Gun Show” Hochuli said “there was no hold on the play, the defender was simply overpowered.” Ha, that guy tells it like it is.

All this refereeing news was a hot topic this weekend, and plenty of mention was made of this video. I had never seen it before. It’s an NFL call from 1983, in which a referee assesses a 15-yard penalty against the Jets for “giving him the business.”

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One month from today: It Begins.

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If you were a real lady, you’d be pretty. But you’re not. You’re green and filled with a Heineken Draughtkeg, and there may or may not be three of you in there. It isn’t clear. I don’t get it. Something is Wrong with you.

Get off my TV, you terrifying hellspawn robokeg lady.

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Hey! I have sort of begun moving into my new office. I don’t have a key yet, nor do I have my mule student worker here today, so I have not moved much. But I did need to do some Real Work today, and I did so in my new office.

Behold! A view! A view of the roof of Pork Chops, the new Math and Stat building poking above it, and the State College smokestack.

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