November 20, 2012
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NINERS!
Colin Kaepernick Kicks Bears Behinds in First Start!!!
1 On a national stage.
2 I expect my Bay Area teams to create torture.
3 Last night wasn't supposed to be that easy.
4 When the Niners first acquired Colin Kaepernick, I looked at his films from college. His statistics as both a baseball pitcher and a quarterback were startling. He pitched two no-hitters in high school. Maybe the Giants could use him. The film of his career at the University of Nevada was incredible.
5 I was absolutely convinced that he was amazing. My only criticism of the guy was that he focused on his primary receiver almost to the point of telegraphing where he was going to throw. I saw him as a guy who could get intercepted, and I still see that.
6 But his mobility and ability to get the ball downfield was obvious, and awesome.
7 I never thought Alex Smith was anything but a dog-and-pony show. Once Harbaugh drafted Kaepernick, I knew that Alex Smith was just a poseur, if I may use that idiotic term. Every now and again I go to a frilly word. All apologies.
8 I knew that they were grooming Kaepernick to be the real quarterback, and that the second Smith couldn't play, he would become the guy.
9 He did it last night on a national stage against a pretty good team.
10 I'm still a bit shaky on the guy, but last night he unleashed his talents and showed them off to the world.
11 He isn't just a one-trick pony.
12 It is too early to tell, but I have been a huge supporter of Kaepernick since we got the guy.
13 My only concern as a Bay Area team guy is that he must have some sort of weakness.
14 To me, his only weakness is his youth, and his telescopic focus on his receivers. The NFL isn't stupid, and defenses will feast on a guy who telegraphs his throws.
15 He has shown that he can get shaken, and that he can throw the ball up for interceptions.
16 He didn't show that last night.
17 Once this guy has a few games under his belt, he is going to be awesome.
18 After last night's performance, Alex Smith may not be back.
19 Smith is a fine quarterback; I never thought I would hear myself say that.
20 He just has an inability to go deep.
21 Kaepernick staged a clinic last night in how to get the ball downfield and to score in the red zone.
22 It's still too early to tell, but if Kaepernick becomes consistent, then the Niners are going to be the toughest team in football.
23 And how can you underestimate Harbaugh's performance?
24 The guy just came back from a stay at the hospital for heart murmers, and he is out there on Monday night getting crazy once again.
25 The circus has clearly come to town.
26 Fun game, but certainly a weird one.
27 Talks of Super Bowl are a bit premature in my eyes. I'm going to enjoy last night's game just because I have been exhausted from work, and it was a decent rest. I even found time to nap during the game.
28 This is a good thing.
29 Nice job, Niners. Even if someone isn't a fan, you gotta love watching Kaepernick.
30 And Aldon Smith played like the madman he is. The guy has had the weirdest year anyone could, and he came in last night to prove he can play football.
31 Frankly, I don't like the guy. His off-field behaviors are pretty suspect. I don't mean to judge, but he comes off to me as a moron with skills, unlike most NFL super stars.
32 I'm glad the Niners have held back on promoting a Smith Brothers handle.
33 That doesn't play well when one guy is getting beat up in bars and the other is clearly a steroidbot.
34 Sorry.
35 No evidence.
36 Except the guy's size, age, and speed.
37 That stuff is rampant in the NFL. Get real.
38 We are a nation of stooges.
39 Moving on, Part the First: In other news, we educators have a two-day week this week.
40 The idea seemed so good when everyone voted on it.
41 The deal is that we have these things called "furlough" days, which save the state money.
42 Older teachers love them, because furlough=days off. We older guys can afford days off. Younger teachers take a bit of a hit on furlough days.
43 What they do is they cut the school year shorter. It is in actuality a bad thing for the students, because they get fewer days of school each year.
44 This affects the entire second part of the school year, particularly athletics and other after-school activities.
45 When you combine furloughs with state testing, the education of our young people diminishes dramatically in the second semester.
46 When we have to vote on which days we are going to scrap, I usually vote to take it off at the end of the school year, when the seniors are gone and it is usually the dog days of the year.
47 But someone at some meeting brought up the idea that the day before Thanksgiving would be a perfect furlough day. We usually have a minimum then anyway, so why not just give us the entire day off?
48 The day before Thanksgiving off would give all of us time to spend with family, and to help set up Thanksgiving. The idea looks awesome on paper.
49 Makes perfect sense.
50 What most of us forgot was that by giving up this Wednesday, Monday and Tuesday become goof-off days to the students.
51 I spent my entire weekend planning my JFK unit. I feel it was a brilliant move to bring in that unit as an exercise in fiction/non-fiction. The newest trend in education is to teach non-fiction, because it is more useful.
52 Something like that.
53 Don't get me going.
54 I decided long ago that bringing back my JFK unit would be a perfect way to teach fiction/non-fiction, since the Warren Report remains a sack of boushit to this very minute.
55 And government lying is quite the trend on Facebook, Twitter, and all the rest of that nonsense that seems to pass as news nowadays.
56 I almost wrote "nowadaze" but thought it corny.
57 AnywayZ...
58 Nothing worked with my JFK unit. I found this awesomely accurate nine-part documentary called The Men Who Killed Kennedy, but it was on a VHS which had a very weak sound. I had everything tested and ready, and the sound couldn't go past two feet yesterday. The trouble is I watched the You Tube version, but brought in the VHS without having tested it for sound quality.
59 I had to re-route the sound from the teevee to an LCD projector, and then put an audio-out cord into my iPod deck in order to get the sound louder.
60 This required ten-minutes of re-setup on a Monday of a Monday/Tuesday week.
61 I succeeded, but none of it came close to the impact I wanted to make as a teacher. The sound was louder, but a bit scratchy and muddled. It was okay for the students, but tremendously difficult to hear and understand. On a getaway Monday/Tuesday session, it got a bit lost on them.
62 And today is a getaway day. Failure is not an option. Today I have to bring in the big guns. Today I will bring in Oliver Stone's JFK, which is a pretty accurate depiction of what took place on November 22, 1963. Stone's effort was deemed a "conspiracy theory" in the press, but so was Garrison's incredible story. Don't listen to the propaganda. Stone's JFK stands as monumental work in my eyes. This is coming from a guy who expected it to be lousy. I was impressed and remain impressed by the accuracy of JFK.
63 It will work. Meanwhile, educationally I'm not so sure the Wednesday Thanksgiving furlough was such a good idea.
64 We would probably be better served to simply take this entire week off and add two days to the end of the year. It would clearly be better for the students.
65 Live and learn.
66 It is well into the 5 a.m. so I think I'm pretty much done here.
67 I'm going to go home right after school today and clean my gutters.
68 It's turkey time. Oh yeah, that's right. Family and friends. Remember them?
69 Have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone.
70 See you again on Monday.
71 Peace.
~H~
www.xanga.com/bharrington
Comments (1)
I came by to see your take on Kaep's game against the Bears (some starting debut, huh?) but was more fascinated by the endorsement of Stone's JFK. I've always avoided seeing anything by Stone because of the fact that I've been convinced of his leftwing bias. But if I get a chance, I'll let you convince me to rent the DVD and give it a watch.