new beast of the east

Some of the cast and crew of "Fish Bait" slept aboard the luxury houseboat at Flat Hollow Marina & Resort. Those of us who arrived later in the week were given rooms on land in the gorgeous A-frame chalets overlooking the water. I was one of four people in the Pinewood Chalet.



One of the producers, Andrew Rogers, arranged the shooting schedule so that I didn't have any scenes to film while my wife and I went to church on Sunday. After Mass, we still had enough time to watch the first half of the Redskins game. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the chalet not only had DirecTV but the NFL Sunday Ticket also. Just because I could, I flipped around to other games briefly during commercial breaks. However the Redskins game was actually on regular TV in our area this week.

The picture froze a few times during the game. I assumed that someone or something had gotten in the way of the chalet's satellite dish. I wasn't too concerned because I was recording the game in HD back at home. I was called to the set at halftime and avoided hearing the score until I got home last night and could watch the second half. Unfortunately my reception at home was poor too. Instead of glorious HD, WTNZ switched to SD for most of the game, which makes me think the problem was on their end, not mine.

Last night, while I was uploading my photos from the weekend, I finished watching the game and then flipped around the dial hoping to at least see some highlights in HD. Instead, I saw every play on NFL Sunday Ticket SuperFan's Short Cuts. A normal football game takes over three hours to watch. NFL Replay fits the game into an hour and a half. Short Cuts gives you the whole game in only half an hour. You get every play and none of the in-between stuff. However the audio is a little disconcerting. While re-enjoying the Redskins victories over the Cowboys and Eagles, I got used to ignoring the sentence fragments from the color commentator and focusing on the play-by-play announcer. For example, Troy Aikman would be in the middle of one of his favorite Jay Novacek stories when Joe Buck would interrupt to bring us back to 2008.

Speaking of the past, last week I also watched Brett Favre's record-setting performance in those weird Jets throwback uniforms against the Cardinals.

weekend roundup

Several unrelated stories came across the Frank Murphy Dot Com newsdesk over the weekend.

The annual "What The Fluff?" festival in Massachusetts was postponed from Saturday to Sunday. One of the activities was a Fluff Lick Off, in which contestants had to lick a large dollop of Marshmallow Fluff off a piece of clear plastic. One blogger has posted photos that say it all. By the way, the festival still has me misidentified as "Frank Miller" on their site.

They held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Body Farm in Texas on Friday. News footage from the Fox affiliate in Austin shows a guy who looks exactly like UT's Dr. Bill Bass as one of the ribbon cutters.

Perry Simon posted a link to a great ESPN.com article about the closing of Shea Stadium. Like all Mets fans, I'm disappointed that the old joint didn't get to host the playoffs and World Series one more time.

My wife says that her guilty pleasure today was to read the comments posted by irate Cowboys fans on various Dallas websites. She happily pointed out to me that Jim Zorn will be the only Redskins coach with a perfect regular season record at the soon-to-be-vacant Texas Stadium.

replay booth

A packed agenda kept me from watching all the sporting events I wanted to see this weekend, although Friday night's game was only on the radio. My wife and I heard a post-game interview with Luke Smith of Knoxville Catholic High School as we drove home from a dinner party. The description of their game against Baylor and the overtime period made me wish that the contest had been covered by Wazoo Sports. Wazoo offers a live video stream of a high school game each week on their site, which is also picked up by VolunteerTV.com. Next Friday they will cover the KCHS at Anderson County matchup. I couldn't get it to work tonight but in the past, I've been able to click on an archived game to see some of Catholic's victory over Austin-East.

I was at work on Saturday and saw none of the Mets game. I caught a little bit of college football. I'm glad Notre Dame won and Florida lost but I feel bad for all the UT fans. The Vols should have won their game against Auburn.

Today I had a work thing downtown at the same time as the Mets game. I recorded the pregame show on TBS, hoping to see some of the "Shea Goodbye" festivities. Thanks to a brief rain delay, I saw none of it. I found out later that most of the stuff I wanted to see happened after the game. The Mets blew the opportunity to make the playoffs and ended their season today.

I've only just now finished watching the Redskins upset victory over the Cowboys. I had to record the game while I went to a table reading for the independent film I'll be in next weekend. I didn't know the score but had a hint that the Redskins had won from my wife's tone of voice. Meanwhile, I found out that the filmmakers still need a few extras for a party scene on Saturday. Send your headshot to info@fishbait-themovie.com