Tag Archives: albany

WHO’S YOUR COACH GREEN?

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ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED on LINKEDIN.COM, Nov. 14, 2022

Exactly one year ago today I read a tweet that contained a spark of a story, which I’m thrilled to now share in the short film linked below. It springs from the football world of one small town. But even if you’ve never been there, never met someone from Washingtonville, New York, chances are you know someplace like it. The fortunate among us certainly know a Coach Green, a Mrs. Gallivan, a Sugar Bear – the people in all walks who quietly change the world one moment, one student at a time.

What a difference a year, a person, even a Tweet can make. Hope you enjoy the story this one inspired, and that maybe it inspires you to reach out to YOUR Coach Green.

Thanks to all those in the last 365 who contributed to this project, starting with Scott Pioli. Without his public expression of love and gratitude for his teammates and coaches, this film would have never happened. Thanks to all my NFL Films teammates who brought The Ville to the the screen, particularly Director of Photography Dave Malek, Location Sound Mixer Mark Ricci and Archival Producer Mikayla Rhoda. Thanks Brian Connolly and his team at Washingtonville High School, as well as to all the ’81 Wizards. Forty-one autumns ago, your selfless commitment to each other created something that lives forever.

Finally – thanks to all MY Coach Greens, in particular David Doemel, at Christian Brothers Academy, Albany, who I thought of often during the production of this film. As a Teacher, Principal, Coach, Counselor, and Dad, Mr. Doemel has worked tirelessly for more years for more people than I could count. He’s a five-tool servant-leader, equally capable of communicating the necessary message through an example, a word, or a look. It’s now been decades(!) since I watched and experienced it firsthand, yet Mr. Doemel’s influence has only grown stronger and more relevant the further life’s journeys take me from those years. Sending much love, gratitude, and respect, Mr. Doemel, for everything you did to help me and so many others write our stories.

WHY NOT THE EGG? – A Tweed Typewriter Short

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If we’re not counting The Egg among the Great Wonders of the World, what are we doing?!? That’s the question explored in this Tweed Typewriter short film. Hatched from the historic skyline of Albany, New York’s Empire State Plaza, it’ll leave you saying I Heart The Egg.

THE BIG DOG – A Tweed Typewriter Short

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Zo is the canine king of the block. Until the morning he moseys down a different street and discovers a new world view. A humorous story for lovers of pups, Albany, or pups from Albany.

NOTE: This story was published originally on this site as a poem only, then again in Steller Stories format. To see the progression from script to screen, click here.

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I L’OEUF NEW YORK

LEAPS and GROUNDS

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The tulips are up.
Why? What do they know?
That the Groundhog was right?
That we’re done with snow?!?

It’s still February,
They’re shaking my nerves.
It’s been warm this week
But March weather curves!

Suppose they keep rising
Up out of the yard
And one night a frost
Descends on them hard.

The head start each bulb
Will have by then got
Could in one cold flash
Become all for not.

Which leaves me to wonder ….
About flower brains,
And the speed and direction of
Flower thought trains….

Are my tulips digging
Toward their own demise?
Or are they well informed
As they reach for the skies?

I’ve watched and I’ve listened,
My ear to the ground,
But so far there’s been
Not from them one sound.

Loose lips may sink ships
But these tulips don’t speak,
Except by the rise
Of their eager green beaks,
Out of the dirt
Propelled maybe by knowing:
This year’s nearer to flowers
Than it is to snowing.

 

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HOUSTON on the HUDSON

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EGG ON MY SPACE

 

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Egg on My Space . . . #flashbackfriday to 40 years ago, when this stained glass window rendering of Albany’s own Corning Tower and The Egg was designed and built by my father, Chris. For nearly two decades it hung around the corner from the buildings that inspired it as part of a six window set he created for the dining room of my Uncle Tony’s restaurant, Anthony’s Park Plaza. Today, this piece of Albany and my family’s history adorns my office at NFL Films in Mount Laurel, NJ – nearly 250 miles from where it and I was born, but nonetheless, providing a crystal clear view of our hometown. . . . . . . . . (Inset photos include: Anthony’s at 27 Elk Street, circa 1985 ; Dad and I on stage at Albany’s Palace Theatre, 2015) . . . . . . . . #albany #albanyny #theegg #corningtower #downtownalbany #518 #stainedglass #stainedglassart #stainedglasswindow #upstateny #discoveralbany #iloveny #stainedglasswindow #empirestateplaza #albanyarchives #downtownalbanybid #palacetheatre

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NEW BIG DOG

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UPDATED 9/18/17: To see this poem as a fully photo illustrated STELLER STORY, click here.

Up in the Hudson Valley
Lived a dog named Zo
He was always the biggest pooch
Wherever he would go.

Weighing more than most grownups,
Even far away he looked tall,
“No dog in all this land,” thought Zo,
“Could ever make me feel small.”

As he started each day
That was Zo’s world view
It kept his sun warm,
Made his sky extra blue.

And that’s how it was
As he strolled a new street
One morning and looked up
And saw two large feet,

And above them huge legs,
Giant ears, a big kisser,
Eyes climbing, Zo thought,
“What have we got here, Mister?

“That can’t be a dog,
There’s no way. But it is.
Up there … on that roof ….
That whole building is his.

“Do my peepers deceive me?
Is he bigger than I?
Who am I kidding?
He blocks out the sky!

“Could he be part Bull?
Smooth Fox? Jack Russell?
Would even Godzilla
With this fella tussle?”

Politely Zo nodded
And yipped a hello.
The roof dog’s response
Was too slight to show.

Or too little, at least,
To detect from the street,
At the level of Zo’s
Now fast moving feet.

“Good day sir,” Zo barked,
without looking back,
“It appears on this street
You’ve got things well intact.

“Should you stop what you’re doing
because of me? No!
You just hang out up there,
I’ll go keep being Zo.”

Then off he moseyed
Politely smiling
While in his brain this address
He was filing.

Good old clear sighted Zo
Still gets thrown in a fog
Thinking back to first meeting
That other big dog.

JOY OF X

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It marks the spot
From the last it is third
But for x-ray
It starts almost no words.

Expunges
Expires
Examines
Extolls

Elixir, a mixer
Ex post facto.

In both cases it looks the same
Like Cousin C
It’s a cross only not straight up
Like Cousin T.

Explaining
Exerting
Expatriating

Extant, exacting
Exasperating

There’s no alphabet king
No one “Letter Rex”
But in Alphabetowne
There’s no one quite like X

O. bOy

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To be like
the letter O,
around and around
you must go.

pano_shore

Turn all day
but corners resist,
like a gyroscope-dreidel-top
let spinning persist.

pano_palace

Then when a donut
Is in your looking glass –
Holey Hula-hoop, you’ve made it! –
You’re an O at last.

pano_thatch

Pan-O-Ramas, from Top:
The Boardwalk, Ocean City, NJ ;
The Palace Theater, Albany, NY ;
John Boyd Thatcher State Park ; Voorheesville, NY ;
Photos: PaC

ONE SUMMER ROADMAP

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Collected from May to today

From New Orleans to Albany

These shots together form a

FlyIreWerDelis.

Buzzing, brightening

Petals, pavement,

Earth, sky, shining sea:

A mashed-up summer roadmap bouquet,

The FlyIreWerDelis

FlyIreWerDelis

For more photos, check out my Instagram gallery at tweed_typewriter

EGG ODE

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Twelve letters say it:
Why Not The Egg?
Up there so high
without even one leg.

Why Not The Egg?
It isn’t a joke:
It just might contain
Planet Earth’s biggest yolk,

Or hard boiled folk,
Or a shell hard as oak
Or be filled to the brim
With Poached Cherry Coke.

The Egg is no yoke
that saddles its city,
As giant Egg buildings go
it’s downright pretty

Making the skyline
so very fine
It’s an Egg to admire,
not on which to dine.

The scramble to see it
does not ever stop,
Not its round belly bottom
or skyward flat top.

All that and more
is why it’s no bull
That Egg lovers glasses
are always half full.

Shouting, “Why Not The Egg?”
Those twelve little letters
For Egg-love reminders
no Dozen is better.

SUI EGGENERIS: The Egg – Albany, NY

 

New Look at a Classic: “I HEART NY”

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UPDATED: APRIL 9, 2020 – I L’Oeuf NY, V_2.0

 

 

New to me are these regional spins on the iconic I HEART NY logo.  I saw them for the first time just recently, alongside even more takes in which the red image between the I and NY represented other aspects of the Empire State.

Though they obviously don’t use the words BUFFALO

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or SARATOGA,

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to my mind these two renditions can’t help but explicitly represent those cities, and as such, they had me dreaming of an “explicitly” Albany version that would feature the profile of the Capital City’s most iconic building, The Egg.

iEGG_sketch

Apologies to the New York State Tourism Bureau if this was already present somewhere on the very billboard where I saw the official buffalo and horse images above. And if it wasn’t: get cracking on production of the “I Egg NY” merch! FOOTNOTE to THE EGG: I can’t put a number on how many times I saw this building in my life before the day I stood before it on assignment to direct a short film about a football player from Albany. That day, for the first time ever to me, The Egg looked like a football:  virtually the top of the Lombardi Trophy itself, tipped slightly and blown up a lot.

In all that I-Hearting I came across this fabulous story of the original logo, the remarkable designer who created it, and the interesting life that both man and art have led.  Definitely worth a read and/or listen, via the podcast 99% Invisible.

STROLLING THE $1 MILLION STAIRCASE: A Steller Story from Albany, NY

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Due to the boundaries of conventional photography, it’s necessary to see the Grand Canyon in person if you want to have any real sense of it.  Even then, the limitations of the human eyeball and depth perception make it challenging to compute what exactly it is that’s before you.  The scale. The structure.  The origin story.  They combine to form something like nothing else, and so by definition, laying eyes on it is a moment for which you cannot be prepared.  Even as you’re looking at the Canyon, it’s hard to know where to direct your eyes first, next, or last.  The result can be a sort of dizzying rush of astonishment and adrenaline.

As man made things go, the $1 Million Staircase — located in the New York State Capitol Building in Albany, NY — sent my head into similar spaces.  Capturing a photograph that could successfully illustrate both the massiveness and nuance of the Stairs seemed impossible.  In an effort to instead take a series of mental snapshots, every neck contortion and eye swivel I could muster felt insufficient.  There was simply too much to the space, also referred to in Capitol parlance as The Great Western Staircase, to feel like I’d seen or digested it all.  To try and add it up as I walked it was to be transported into a real-life composite of MC Escher artwork, someplace at once concrete and impossible.

The Staircase is a singular sight with a remarkable story ; for someone interested in art, architecture, or history, it’s an absolute must-see.  And believe it or not, the tour is free ; not a bad deal for a look at something priceless that may just leave you speechless.

For a sneak peek and more on how the $1 Million Staircase came to be, read my Steller Story on it by clicking the photo below.

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To see The $1 Million Staircase inside the historic New York State Capitol Building via @StellerStories, click on the image above.

A SON-OF-ALBANY STORY, CO-STARRING MY DAD

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PROLOGUE – Following is a behind-the-scenes account of my recent short film on a fellow Son of Albany, Charles Leigh.  He made history as the first player known to sign an NFL contract directly out of high school, before becoming part of the Miami Dolphins Dynasty of the 1970s.  This summer I had the privilege of telling his story for NFL Films Presents.

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LOGUE – Below is the second part of the written story originally published on the NFL Films blog, “They Call it Pro Football.”  To see the piece there, where it includes a slideshow of production photos and a link to a Charles Leigh highlight video consisting of footage discovered during the making of the film, click here.

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EPILOGUE – During our July, 2015 shoot in my hometown, I brought my Dad to work.  Actually, I needed him to drive me to locations, so it’s probably more accurate to say that he brought me to work.  Either way, it all felt somewhat prophetic come fall when I learned the Leigh feature, previewed in the Albany Times-Union, would premiere as part of an episode titled “Fathers and Sons”.

 

MALLING IT IN

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Remember Jake and Elwood literally driving through their local shopping mall, delighted that it now housed a Pier One?  Or Wyatt and Gary finally achieving a moment of teenage cool, only to have it destroyed by a red Icee raining down on their heads?  And who can forget the epic opening title sequence to Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High?   Yes boys and girls, there once was a time when the big screen simply reflected what the world firmly believed:  that if something was happening, it was happening at your local mall.

A generation ago, these one-stop Shangri-las of food courts, multiplexes, anchor stores, and fake plants were still sprouting up all across America, promising to be a new kind of lifestyle altering cultural-commerical crossroads, equal parts vast Persian marketplace and great Parisian salon.  And if you think that’s hyperbole, gettaloadathis:

The feature attraction in that video opened exactly thirty years ago.  I can attest that today it’s still alive and kicking, unlike some of the spots in this photo collection of abandoned shopping malls recently published on FastCoexist.com — images that provide a great sense of what a One Day Sale would look like if it was held at the End of Days.  Clearly not every utopian indoor shopping concept blossomed into a world famous attraction like the Mall of America, where legions still flock to ride one of the planet’s few roller coasters covered by skylights rather than sky.

For the rest of the malls in America, the up and down ride through our hearts continues.  And while you can continue to expect long lines at the nearby mall when Kris Kringle or Peter Cottontail are in the house, history has shown that developing an over-dependence on the Christmas and Easter crowds can transform a spirited community house into a temple of fund raisers.  Even those magnets once fit for the silver screen eventually lose their drawing power.  And when they do, sometimes all that’s left is plenty of good parking.

A giant Legoman dwarfs visitors to the Mall of America in October, 2013. (Photo: PaC)

A giant Legoman dwarfs visitors to the Mall of America in October, 2013. (Photo: PaC)