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Ok, so last Saturday we got new Yellow Pages directories delivered to every doorstep in the neighborhood. It’s now Wednesday and the cancer queen next door continues to step right over this big-ass, bright neon yellow, encyclopedia size phone atlas in order to get into her house. That’s five days, folks. Maybe all that cigarette smoke gives you the can’t-see-the-crap-you-gotta-repeatedly-step-over-itis.

These chicks are such lazy asses that they’ll separate the mail that they wanna read and leave the rest in the mailbox! There are newspapers and other assorted trash on the sidewalk in front of their door and they’ll just walk right over it several times a day for days on end!

Right next to the phone book lies an empty Marlboro box that the slack-jawed one dropped nearly two weeks ago and neither of them has bothered to pick it up. I could see guys doing that but girls?

Sheesh.

Sometimes a less than appealing NFL matchup ends up being a pretty decent game. I was sent to Baltimore last weekend to shoot the Cardinals at the Ravens. Not much appeal there, but hey, it’s an NFL game and I can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday in the fall.

The Ravens dominated the first half, moving the ball at will, but were unable to score touchdowns. They had a 20 - 3 lead when the Cards replaced their young quarterback Matt Leinhart with the wily veteran Kurt Warner. The offense went “no huddle” and the redbirds started moving the ball. By the 4th quarter the score was knotted at 23!

The Ravens moved into position for a game winning field goal with a few seconds left and Matt Stover drilled it though for the win. The capacity crowd of 71,000 loved it!

So that’s three game winning field goals in three weeks for me. Denver beat Buffalo with a kick as time expired in week 1. Then Detroit nipped Minnesota with a field gaol in overtime. And now this. I hope the football gods keep ‘em coming.

When did the post office start using so many friggin’ rubber bands? In the old days, the mail carrier would actually have to rub two brain cells together and match up the number on the letter with the number on the house. This was craftily done in real-time, on the fly, with angry dogs in hot pursuit. Nowadays we’re depleting the world’s rubber supply so that these dipshits can deliver an entire bundle of the wrong mail to my house instead of just a single letter.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful but we enjoy the distinction of having the world’s worst post office right here in my neighborhood. The service at the walk-up window is bad on an olympic level. One clerk for a line of 15 people and another clerk looking over her shoulder while mowing through a bag of chips. They’re both surly as rattlesnakes and the line moves slower than New York traffic. It’s maddening.

They will routinely disappear into the back room for 10 or 15 minutes looking for someone’s package - a long line of customers left staring into that stylish, bulletproof room with nary a sign of human life. Please, make it stop.

My post office has one of those news ticker things with information about all the wonderful services they offer. Unfortunately, they’re not big on grammar so the ticker informs you that they now _except_ credit cards. It’s as if the ticker was programmed by a pro athlete. Ouch! That’s gotta hurt.

I’m the kind of person who can’t just throw crap in the garbage can. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with this rubber band. Maybe I can use it. I’ll just put it in a drawer. And I better pick up all the other rubber bands that the letter carrier dropped on my sidewalk and put them in the drawer too.

So now I have roughly a metric ton of rubber bands in a kitchen drawer and if I don’t clear them out soon, the entire kitchen could very well collapse under the strain. Can you recycle these things?

One of the most frequent topics I’m asked about is getting hit on the sidelines while shooting. It happens to someone nearly every game. It’s like being in a plane crash or getting hit by lightning - it usually happens to someone else.

The first time I got hit was in Minneapolis on a Sunday night during a game between the Eagles and Vikings. It was Primetime in Philly and everyone saw the carnage when Orlando Thomas flattened my ass on national television. The hit was so clean, so incredibly square and pure that I don’t think either of us felt it. It’s like when you hit a golf ball just right. There’s no shock, no vibration, just a satisfyingly soft bit of feedback that tells you you struck it just right.

I had no pain - in fact, the only sign that I had been hit was a strawberry on my elbow thanks to that lovely turf in the Metrodome. Of course, I was around thirty years old and fairly fit so I didn’t expect to feel sore. These days I’d never get away with that.

Fast forward about 12 years to September 9, 2007. I’m 42 and I’m now regularly sore from the rigors of sleeping. It’s tough to just lay there for 8 hours. Anyway, I’m in my usual position, seated along the side of the end zone as the Broncos are driving for a score. Cutler releases the ball. I tilt up, find it, lock on and roll focus. Everything slows down. I immediately start thinking about getting crushed because if the ball isn’t caught it’s going to hit me. It’s one of those timing plays where the quarterback just lobs the ball up into the corner of the end zone and hopes his receiver can make a play. And make a play he did.

Brandon Marshall, a 6′4″ 230lb. receiver made a perfect grab, tapped both toes inbounds and fell directly into me. My lens hit him right between the numbers, jamming the viewfinder into the bridge of my nose. What’s a little blood between friends?

Marshall recovered nicely and went on his way, celebrating a truly great catch. I dusted myself off, mopped the blood off my nose and commented that I couldn’t wait to see that one on HBO. As it turns out, my shot was nearly as well executed as the Broncos’ touchdown play. The fact that I didn’t bail out on the shot makes it - in my humble opinion - one of the best shots of a touchdown from a guy who got creamed. I mean, I was steady until the absolute moment of impact and I widened out just at the right moment so you could see him catch the ball and then tap both toes inbounds. I think I nailed it and if you’re a competitive sideline shooter, those are the moments you live for.

Lots of friends and colleagues commented on the shot but very few asked if I had any lasting effects. It turns out that this hit was much harder to recover from than the shot I had taken more than a decade earlier. It’s three weeks on and I still have some soreness in my chest and back.

It’s a bitch getting old.

There are some places in the NFL that have a certain funk. You know, the kind of place you get sent when you’re not on the “A” team. These are places you wouldn’t necessarily go if given the choice. Let me just go on record as saying that for me, Buffalo isn’t one of them. The team has been bad lately but in a sick way, I enjoy going there.

Buffalo has the best wing place in the world. Duff’s is on Millersport Highway in Amherst. If you like wings and football, do yourself a favor and go to there for a weekend of spicy bird parts and good gridiron action. Screw the Anchor Bar, Duff’s knows how to make a chicken wing. They also have their own beer which isn’t too bad.

I used to have Duff’s number programmed into my phone’s speed dial. I’d call them when I landed at the airport and pick up 20 mediums on the way to the hotel. Now we have a guy who drives the film up and back so we usually go there together to shoot the shit and stuff ourselves.

Buffalo also has one of the most underappreciated camera assistants in the business. Dave Budzjeiko is a local, quirky guy with a thick upstate New York accent and a thin upstate New York mustache. He’s a lot like me, a freelancer who is sometimes unsure of exactly where he stands. What can I tell ya, we’re all insecure.

Dave gets a ton of respect from me because he’s simply one of the best. I have never, ever had a problem with a mag loaded by Dave. He’s fast, accurate and he thinks ahead. He’s what every film loader should aspire to be. Good thing the Bills haven’t won anything lately or I may never have found Duff’s…and one of the company’s best assistants.

This week, I got confronted for what I wrote in a previous entry about some guys that I work with. It caught me off guard, but I didn’t make excuses for what I wrote. I didn’t feel I had to. Maybe it was one of life’s lessons. Sometimes you step on people’s toes. Fortunately, I didn’t just make it up. It’s what I feel and I can live with that.

I hope they didn’t take it as an indictment of the entire staff but they probably did. My feelings come from my experiences as a freelancer, an outsider, a guy out of the loop. It’s a tough place…competitive and unforgiving. Fortunately, I got some support from guys who could relate.

When I first started doing this, there were guys who looked out for me and guys who didn’t want me around. I was shunned by a couple of guys. They wouldn’t let me travel with them even though they had a ton of room. They didn’t talk to me, they didn’t want anything to do with me. I was used to a work environment where we were all on the same team. The attitude was that you looked out for the other members of your team. This job wasn’t always like that.

There were a couple of guys who looked out for me though. Joe always played the role around the guys, but he told me more than once that he had my back. I always respected him for reassuring me that he’d help me if I needed it. There’s another guy - very well connected there - who has expressed his distaste for that old school attitude that had me feeling rotten. It was clear that there was a new attitude among the younger guys and that attitude thrives today, and the worst offenders are no longer on staff there.

The same guy who confronted me about the blog has been one of my biggest supporters. He had to break my stones and I’m glad he did. Hell, I didn’t think anyone was reading this! Way back in the late 1990s, when I was new and unproven, this guy pulled me aside and told me that I was doing a good job. You can’t imagine what that means to someone in my position. As an outsider, it made my day, week, month. And today, after busting my stones about the blog, he told me I did a good job last week.

That kind of feedback from a respected senior colleague means more than awards and money. It’s what drives you to keep working hard and fighting for what you think is right.