A Tribute to Jay Howard, Voice of the San Antonio Spurs

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I've been wanting to write this article for many years now, but for some reason, I simply haven't taken the time. But there's no reason why I can't take 30 minutes and get it done! By the way.. Absolutely no offense whatsoever is intended to Bill Schoening! Bill does such a fantastic job that I would rather mute the TV whenever there's no Bill Land & Sean Elliott Spurs' TV broadcast, and listen to Bill, than most of the scrubs we're "forced" to listen to on ESPN & TNT.

A lot of people in my circle of NBA basketball fans absolutely cannot stand the NBA announcing trio of Jeff Van Gundy, Mark Jackson, and Mike Breen, who call games for ESPN & ABC. There are also a lot of people who like them, and surely a ton who don't care. I have written about my opinion of these three before! But this post isn't directed at the blabbering of both Van Gundy and Jackson, as it is towards Mike Breen.

Of the three Mike Breen is the one guy who actually does a halfway decent job calling the play-by-play. While JVG and Jackson continue to argue over irrelevant ideas, and disregard the fact that the fans are listening to their banter, while trying to FOLLOW a game they're interested in, they haven't a clue that they aren't doing the job they've been hired for. As an aside -- Does ESPN get (or acknowledge) any customer feedback in this regard??

OK OK, I said this post wasn't about how much I can't stand Van Gundy & Jackson. This post is to give some long-overdue credit to a guy who used to call Spurs' games back in the day. And also to let Mike Breen know that, although he does a "decent" job as a play-by-play basketball announcer (and bonus points for enduring JVG & Jackson), he needs to know something he probably doesn't know.

Jay Howard was yelling "BANG" LONG BEFORE Breen was!

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Here is good ol' Jay calling our 1999 Championship!

Ozzy Osbourne - Mr. Crowley

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Simply one of the best Ozzy songs of all-time. I've written previously how it's terrible that Randy Rhoads's life was cut short, but we can all still enjoy the beautiful music he produced.

A Metallica Tribute to Iron Maiden: Remember Tomorrow

And here's Iron Maiden's original.. Truly one of the best covers I've ever heard - especially of such a complex song. Note for note, Metallica did an awesome job in this tribute. Kudos!

9/11 Tribute - Part X

CTE!                                                                                                                                                   Via

We'll never forget!

9/11 Tribute - Part IX

Frank A. DeMartini - A Hero of 9/11/01

Frank DeMartini had a passion for old cars, motorcycles, sailing and everything Italian. He also loved restoring Brooklyn brownstones, and was fascinated with the World Trade Center. Mr. DeMartini, an architect, started working at the twin towers when he was hired to assess the damage from the 1993 bombing. He stayed on, becoming the construction manager, the man to see when you wanted to move a wall or rearrange the plumbing. Mr. DeMartini's wife, Nicole, also worked in the towers, and their children, Sabrina, 10, and Dominic, 8, could often be seen splashing around in the pool at the complex's Marriott Hotel.

Compact and athletic, Mr. DeMartini, 49, once used a baseball bat to chase away an intruder who had picked the wrong brownstone. "He was really very fearless," said Michael Prager, a longtime friend. When the north tower was struck, Nicole DeMartini was just leaving her husband's office on the 88th floor. Finding a stairway that was still intact, he ushered her to safety. But he refused to follow just then because others needed help. "He saw himself very much as a protector," Mr. Prager said. -- Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on December 1, 2001. (Source)

In regards to the Towers' immense solid steel construction, Frank A. DeMartini, Manager of WTC Construction & Project Management stated in an interview back in January 2001:

"The building was designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it. That was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners, because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door - this intense grid - and the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting."

Frank DeMartini died on September 11th a hero. After accompanying his wife down 88 flights of stairs from his office in the North Tower, he went back up with fellow WTC worker Pablo Ortiz and rescued over 70 people. DeMartini and Ortiz - both 49 years of age - perished in the collapse of the North Tower. (Source)



Frank DeMartini                                                         Pablo Ortiz
(Source)

9/11: Heroes of the 88th Floor is a must see!

9/11 Tribute - Part VIII

Via

9/11 Tribute - Part VII

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9/11 Tribute - Part VI

Yeah I forgot my 9/11 tribute post last night, and I apologize. So I guess it will be 10 posts in 11 days. Sorry about that!



Click the image, sit back, and remember..

9/11 Tribute - Part V

Rick Rescorla - A True Hero

If you never heard of Rick Rescorla, you are missing out on one of the best stories of an "American" hero.

Born born Cyril Richard Rescorla in Hayle, Cornwall, in 1939.

During WWII the 175th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. 29th Infantry Division was headquartered in Rick's hometown. Being a typical young boy he fell head over heals in love with the American G.I.s. He grew up an athlete, excelling in boxing.

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In 1957 Rescorla joined the British Army The Parachute Regiment and also serving with intelligence. Upon leaving the military he served various jobs as a police officer.

He moved to the United States and joined the United States Army in 1963, wanting to go to Vietnam to fight. In 1965 he was a platoon leader in the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and fought in the Battle of Ia Drang - the battle recounted in the book and depicted in the movie "We Were Soldiers (Once ... And Young)"

While serving in Vietnam Rick earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, a Purple Heart, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry. And didn't come back to the United States to throw any of them on the White House lawn, nor did he join The Winter Soldiers and undermine his military brothers still fighting, bleeding, and dying in Vietnam.

Rescorla was a very bright and astute man. He was a critical thinker. In 1992 he warned the World Trade Center's Port Authority that the massive structures were vulnerable to (what we call now) VIEDs in the basement parking garage, but his warning was not heeded. In 1993 the first terrorist attack on the WTC happened. Rick helped evacuate the building, and was the last man out.

Rescorla became director of security for Morgan Stanley headquartered in the World Trade Center in 1997. Feeling the WTC was too vulnerable a target for terrorists, Rick recommended Morgan Stanley leave the structure and find new office spaces. But they were locked into a lease. So, Rescorla then made certain all employees of Morgan Stanley train and practice in emergency evacuations from the WTC building, drilling them every three months.

On September 11, 2001 Rick Rescorla was supposed to be on vacation. Instead, he was filling in so one of his deputies could go on vacation.

This [at the beginning of the video], I believe, is one of the last known pictures taken of Rick Rescorla on 9-11-01 as he coaxed and lead the evacuation of Morgan Stanley's staff and employees out of WTCT2 and WTC5.



When all the Morgan Stanley employees were safely out, Rick went back inside to help more people escape the inevitable doom he had feared and predicted years before.

On the warm, bright, sunny morning of September 11, 2001 Rick Rescorla was not the last man out of the World Trade Center.

Rick Rescorla's birth certificate may have said England but he was an American hero through and through - in every cell of his body, and every fiber of his heart and soul.

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9/11 Tribute - Part IV

On Sept. 11, 2001, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center in Manhattan. A third hurled into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. But a fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93 from Newark, N. J., to San Francisco, never made it to the hijackers' destination.

The 40 passengers and crew members realized their flight had been hijacked, and from air phones they learned about the attacks on the other sites. According to accounts from the phone conversations, the group took a vote and vowed to take back their plane, which crashed into a field in a remote, rural area near Shanksville, Pa., never to reach its possible target, the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. -- only 20 minutes flying time from the crash site.

In 2005, relatives of those who died on Flight 93 helped select Paul Murdoch's winning design for a memorial out of some 1,000 entries. The remote area proved a challenge. It is a former coal-mining site that required major soil and water cleanup. There also were landowner conflicts and a controversy over a crescent in the design that some took to be a Muslim symbol in the original plan.

To quiet debate, the design was altered from the original crescent shape, and the project eventually will feature a 93-foot-high Tower of Voices containing 40 wind chimes -- one for each passenger and crew member who died -- and 40 groves of red maple trees that will line a circular walkway that follows the natural bowl shape of the land, a result of the surface mining.

The $62 million plan includes 2,200 acres. Visitors can follow the flight path, and in phase one, they will view a slab of white marble inscribed with the names of the 40 victims. A concrete structure will form a gateway for visitors, separating the parking area and the memorial plaza, which extends along the edge of the crash site.

Continue on to the rest of Yahoo's article, and be sure to click the link that takes you to the photo gallery of the memorial (it looks like the pic above).

Or to skip the article, and go straight to the photos, click here..

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9/11 Tribute - Part III

Click the banner image to go see a very well done 9/11 Tribute site..

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9/11 Tribute - Part II

102 Minutes That Changed America - For 102 minutes on September 11, 2001, the world looked on in horror as terrorists flew hijacked passenger planes into New York City's mighty twin towers, destroying the iconic buildings and killing more than 2,700 people. Watch unfiltered videos from nine New Yorkers who witnessed the day that changed America.


Click the image above to go to the interactive site..

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9/11 Tribute - Part I

This is the beginning of an 11-day tribute to the heroes, the memory of victims, and the overall national mourning of the tragedy on September 11, 2001. I'm gonna do my best to post one each day. NatGeo is already airing documentaries for these two weeks, and they are very good, but haunting.


FDNY Chief Richard "Pitch" Picciotto                                                                     Image Source

The highest-ranking firefighter to survive the World Trade Center collapse, and the last fireman to escape the devastation, Richard "Pitch" Picciotto was on a stairwell between the sixth and seventh floors of the North Tower when it collapsed on September 11, 2001. An FDNY battalion commander, his is the harrowing true story of an American hero, a man who thought nothing of himself and gave nearly everything for others during one of our nation's darkest hours. Picciotto tells an outspoken account of that indelible day, shaking and inspiring audiences to the core.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Picciotto answered the call heard around the world. In minutes he was at Ground Zero of the worst terrorist attack on American soil, acting boldly to save innocent lives as the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center began to burn—and then to buckle. Already a veteran of terrorist attacks, Picciotto was present fighting a similar battle after the World Trade Center Bombing in 1993. Again inside the North Tower, where he found himself years earlier, burdened by an eerie sense of familiarity, he focused his concentration on the rescue efforts at hand. But it was there in the smoky stairwells that he heard and felt the South Tower collapse. He then made the call for firemen and rescue workers to evacuate, while he stayed behind with a skeleton team of men to assist a group of disabled and infirm civilians in their struggle to evacuate the inferno. And it was there in the rubble of the North Tower that Picciotto found himself buried for more than four hours after the building's collapse.

Having discovered that members of his team and a 59-year-old grandmother also were alive nearby, he and his men used their radios to send out Mayday calls until they made contact with a firefighter on the ground, and a search party was dispatched. When the light finally appeared about four stories above, he climbed upwards, reached the top, and saw the "unfathomable, mind-boggling destruction." And even then, it was not until after he organized the rescue of the others that he walked across the rubble to safety.

Picciotto's book, Last Man Down, is a tribute to the 343 firefighters and 2,400 civilians who lay dead in the rubble that surrounded him on that day. And moreover, it is a heartfelt remembrance of a day of infamy and profound humanity. The book was an immediate New York Times bestseller upon its release in May 2002.

Chief Picciotto is also a former New York City police officer, and has served as a fire marshal, an arson investigator, a lieutenant, and a captain prior to becoming chief in 1992. He is a 28-year veteran of the FDNY, and for the past nine years, he has presided over the department's Battalion 11, covering Manhattan's Upper West Side. He is the recipient of departmental awards and commendations for his bravery and meritorious service.

"People call us heroes, but we were just doing our jobs." — FDNY Battalion Commander Richard Picciotto

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Tributes

1 - "Believer" (Diary of a Madman) - Dimebag Darrell's tribute to Randy Rhoads


Vocals - Sebastian Bach (Skid Row)
Rhythm Guitar - Kane Roberts
Lead Guitar - Dimebag Darrell (Pantera, Damageplan)
Drums - Michael Cartellone (Damn Yankees, Lynard Skynard)
Bass - Mike Bringardello

2 - Black Label Society - "In This River" - Zakk Wylde's Tribute to Dimebag Darrell


3 - Ozzy "Suicide Solution" from Randy Rhoads Tribute

RIP Don Meredith

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