First: The Republican candidate for Congress, Craig Romero, sent a press release saying that he's going to speak at "The Post Office" about how to give South Louisiana a better future. So this morning Jeremy and I went to the downtown Houma bar to cover this speech.
Craig got up on his Soap Box and started to talk. Except the 10 people there (including the 5 members of the media) couldn't hear a word he said because of all the road construction going on behind him. The TV station didn't even try to get any audio. One of those huge machines that tears up the road and dumps it into a truck went by... I'm guessing the name of that machine is not "The Whisper 2000" He had one of his "people" go tell the crew to stop working so he could finish his talk. So they just sat there with the engines still running, still just as loud.
I'm not taking sides or arguing any of the items I think he talked about. I just thought it was silly to have this speech 10 feet from major road work. His "people" even suggested to move it inside where it was quiet. He wasn't having it.
And to make it worse, he handed out a packet of information regarding his speech. He read the entire packet word for word. He hardly ever looked up and made eye contact. He just had his head buried in his personal copy of the packet. That's a photographers nightmare.
I've photographed political speeches in front of construction before, but the work has been related to their platform. Like a levee being built or something like that. But just some random road repair that's been going on for about a week? I think they can come up with a better background than that.
Two: Tonight, I photographed the most entertaining match of volleyball I've ever seen. H.L. Bourgeois High School at Terrebonne High. These two teams don't like each other. It took place in a small gym filled with fans from both teams.
Best of five, each game goes to 25 points via rally scoring. Game five goes to 15, also by rally scoring.
It went into game five with the other four games being decided by no more than five points.
There were rallies that seemed to last for hours. Both teams had to come from behind to win their games.
I've photographed enough high school sports that I don't get excited that much... but I was yelling and clapping along with the best of them tonight. I didn't care who won, I just got caught up in the action.
Terrebonne was the favorite, and they won.
But it's still a tough loss when you get so close to an upset.
It's what high school sports are all about.
Random Baseball Stat: St. Louis is up 3-1 over Detroit in the World Series. The last time St. Louis was leading 3-1 in the World Series... They lost to Kansas City 4-3. Nice.
