Thursday, May 27, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Yamaha SY-85 | Vintage Synth Explorer
Yamaha • SY-85
In the early 1990's most synth manufacturer's quest to use digital forms of synthesis to re-create acoustic sounds (as well as analog sounds) led to an onslaught of rather boring instruments. Among the mob of digital synths some stood out such as Korg's M1, Roland's D-50, and Yamaha's SY-85. Fading away were the days of Yamaha's FM-synthesis, replaced by Advanced Wave Memory (AWM2). Throughout the 1990's Yamaha used AWM2 in many of their successful products because of its high sonic quality and advanced synth-like editing features. The SY-85 was a powerful workstation keyboard capable of some great sounds and full arrangements.
It's a 16-part multitimbral MIDI synth with a nicely weighted 61-note keyboard designed to be the main keyboard in your MIDI studio, with tons of sounds and sequencing features built-in. It has a long but narrow 40 character x 2 line LCD display and a 5x5 mode selection matrix which enhances operation by allowing fast easy access to any of the SY-85's modes. In addition to pitch & modulation wheels and dual output level controls, the SY-85 has eight slide controls that can be used to control a range of parameters while performing for expressive real-time power. Best of all it's got multi-mode filters and a dual-effects processor with chorus, flange, reverb, delay, exciter, parametric EQ, echo, ring modulation, leslie, distortion, etc. The effects can be used in series or parallel, and there are 4 busses to route sounds through them. Other features include a 3.5" floppy disk drive, external memory card slots and two assignable stereo outputs.
VISITOR COMMENTS (17)
Click here to add a commentlqbePosted 84 days agoIt's 2010 and the SY85 is still a fantastic synthesizer. Even though it lacks FM synthesis (compared to SY77/99). Resonant filters, great FX, charming sound. I like and use it regularly.All of my thoughts here:
http://solasistim.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/yamaha-sy85- workstation-synthesizer/The GhoulPosted 91 days agoI still use one of these, with a DX7IIFD to write all the sequences for my industrial band (2010). Yes the sequencer is limited but it all goes to the laptop for live so what does it matter?Mark HolleyPosted 101 days agoI've owned this board since they first came out.... has served me well. I still use it today, mainly for pads, filter sweeps, strings, and comping sounds... also out of all the boards I own, I use the SY85 for emulating a sax... I have a killer sax patch that I tweaked over the years and it just wails... I also own an SY-99 and a S-30...... also have a Roland JV1010 and a Korg... but the SY85 holds it's own.fhed cuencoPosted 115 days agosy85 is very great very realistic sound. i used it this year 2010 jan 5. i love it. the sound is so good.im from philippinesleonardkristiantoPosted 123 days agodoes anyone know how to get a good Hammond B3 organ for this synth? or does anyone has? i need the info where can i buy or get it from. thanks
My first "real" synthesizer, which I bought with graduation money from my BA degree... used it to compose my Master's Project and dozens of cool yugenro tracks from '92-2002 or so...
Then it just disappeared... I think somebody stole it from the Lotus Cup after an OEE (Ornamental Ether Experience) show... unfortunately I didn't even realize it was missing for several weeks, so un-materialistic I had become...
I hope whoever has my SY85 is really enjoying it and making beautiful music with it... I love you, I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you...
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
A kitty needs a home
Our kitty, Rucie, needs a new home... Nobody really knows her age... she was rescued from a crack house two years ago by an animal-loving friend, and we have taken care of her since. Rucie is hesitant and moves with deliberateness. She like to burrow under things and often sleeps facing a corner like she's hiding, which is so cute!
She doesn't like loud noises or things that move. She will only approach you when she needs something, like food or a little attention. If you approach her slowly and quietly, she will let you pet her, which she LOVES... she really loves to be scratched under the chin, and she absolutely LOVES her hair brush (which we would like to stay with her because it makes her so happy).
She will potty in a litter box, which we can include as well, or she will go outside, too, once she starts feeling comfortable in a new home-- it may take her several months, however, to get comfortable. She does NOT like change of any sort. We are renters and had to move in August and October, and she was very unhappy with all the commotion(!) for that stretch. Thus we really would like her to be in a home for a long term, so she can be happy.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Health vs. Pork: Congress Debates the Farm Bill >> Autumn 2007
Health vs. Pork: Congress Debates the Farm Bill
The Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.
The government also purchases surplus foods like cheese, milk, pork, and beef for distribution to food assistance programs—including school lunches. The government is not required to purchase nutritious foods.
When the House of Representatives debated the bill in July, PCRM, along with many other health and public interest groups, supported the Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment, which was offered by Reps. Ron Kind (D-WI) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ). This amendment would have limited government subsidies of unhealthy foods, cut subsidies to millionaire farmers, and provided more money for nutrition and food assistance programs for Americans and impoverished children overseas.
Unfortunately, politics doomed the reform effort. At the eleventh hour, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) feared that freshman representatives who voted to cut subsidies might risk losing their seats in farm states in the 2008 elections, endangering the Democratic majority. The reform amendment was defeated 117 to 309.
Nonetheless, Congress did make some modest changes to the Farm Bill’s subsidy programs at the very last minute.
This fall, the Senate will have its turn debating and voting on the bill. PCRM will need your help again to encourage senators to cut subsidies for unhealthy foods and increase support for fruits, vegetables, and vegetarian foods. Other groups, including the American Medical Association and the President’s Cancer Panel, are also calling on Congress for sweeping reforms (see sidebar).
Sign up to receive periodic e-mail updates about the Farm Bill and other PCRM campaigns>
Here’s what other groups are saying:
The 2006-2007 Annual Report of the President’s Cancer Panel:
“For example, current agricultural and public health policy is not coordinated—we heavily subsidize the growth of foods (e.g., corn, soy) that in their processed forms (e.g., high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated corn and soybean oils, grain-fed cattle) are known contributors to obesity and associated chronic diseases, including cancer. The upcoming reauthorization of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (the Farm Bill) provides an opportunity that must not be missed to strongly increase support for fruit and vegetable farmers, improve the national food supply, and enhance the health of participants in the national school lunch, food stamp, and Women, Infant, and Children food assistance programs.”
The American Medical Association in a resolution passed by the AMA House of Delegates in 2007:
“RESOLVED, That our American Medical Association support efforts (1) to reduce health disparities by basing food assistance programs on the health needs of their constituents, (2) to provide vegetables, fruits, legumes, grains, vegetarian foods, and healthful nondairy beverages in school lunches and food assistance programs, and (3) to ensure that federal subsidies encourage the consumption of products low in fat and cholesterol.”
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Enlightening... if depressing news enlightens you. Ugh.
Monday, March 08, 2010
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
My Neice Holly: Cheer championship : Corpus Christi Caller-Times
My neice Holly is in the back left, with the glasses. She is one little bundle of energy!
Members of the Corpus Christi All Star Mako Sharks show off their skills during Sunday's American Cheer Power South Texas Open Championship at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Xray: Spondylosis 2
Here is an X-ray of my L5 vertebra/sacrum, showing the forward misalignment of the L5, which is pinching my sciatic nerve. Explains why my legs go numb and hurt after 5-10 minutes of standing/walking. This was taken Oct 10, 2009.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
NASA - Let There Be Light
Endeavour pilot Terry Virts opened the windows of the newly installed cupola one at a time early Wednesday, giving spacewalkers Robert Behnken and Nicholas Patrick an early look into the International Space Station's room with a view that they had helped install.
The cupola's fully opened windows look down on the Sahara Desert in this image that was 'tweeted' from space by JAXA astronaut and Expedition 22 flight engineer Soichi Noguchi.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
The Making of a Mind-Blowing Space Photo | Wired Science
One late night in 2007, Rogelio Bernal Andreo and his wife were driving down Highway 1 along California’s Lost Coast, when his wife opened the moon roof. What spread out above them looked nothing like the mauve sky near their Sunnyvale home.
“It was like the Milky Way was in front of us,” said Andreo, a former early eBay employee, who runs a Spanish-language internet company. “It looked like it was gonna fall on us.”
He pulled out his digital SLR camera and spent two hours trying to capture the vast galaxy. When he got home, he downloaded the photos, and caught the astrophotography bug.
“I started to look on the internet and see all these pictures, really gorgeous pictures,” Andreo said. “I said, ‘How do people do this?’”
Two years of intensive study, rigorous practice, and perhaps $10,000 of equipment later, he knows. And he let Wired.com in on his process. Step-by-step, we’ll break down how he went from the black-and-white star scene below to the mind-blowing space photo above.
Thanks to cheaper high-quality digital cameras and editing equipment, creating beautiful images of galaxies, nebulae and star clusters is now within the reach of anyone with a few thousand dollars to spend.
So, we live in a golden age for space photos, but looking at the technicolor images of what appears to the naked eye to be a fairly bland sky, we find ourselves asking: Does it really look like that?
As we find in this behind-the-scenes look at the making of a mind-blowing space photo, the answer is yes — but just not to your eyes, which are pretty poor sensors, compared with purpose-built astrophotographic equipment.
But that doesn’t mean the photos aren’t “real.” Most astrophotographers have an ethic: They won’t add color or lasso just a part of an image for editing. They can only bring things out of the data, not add them. The photos are often processed in Photoshop, but what they do is the opposite of falsifying the visual record. Astrophotographers are using digital-editing tools to find the truth in the noisy data that are the heavens.
“The stuff up there is really dim,” Andreo said. “The good thing is that the camera records all that and the trick is to bring it out.”
The first step in getting a good space photo is picking a spot without light pollution from cities. In northern California, Andreo prefers Lake San Antonio, Henry Coe State Park and Fremont Peak, depending on how far he wants to drive.
His equipment list is long. He packs a Takahashi telescope, Takahashi mount, tripod, SBIG STL11000M camera, adapters, cables, deep-cycle marine batteries, an Asus eee laptop, food and coffee of course.
This photo is how the process begins. It’s the first of 11 black-and-white exposures that he’ll make. The field of view is just the left third — the area around the bright blue stars of Orion’s belt — of the completed panorama at the top of the page.
“This is just one shot, a 15-minute exposure,” Andreo said. “That’s how it comes out of the camera. The original size of the picture is like 20 megabytes.”
Of course, he shoots in RAW format with no compression to maximize the amount of data the images retain.
Now, the processing begins. Andreo takes his 11 exposures and “stacks” them in
PhotoshopDeep Sky Stacker, one on top of the other. Then, he averages their data to screen out the noise. Each exposure has a set of random noise in some subset of pixels. By combining them, the good pixels outweigh the bad pixels and you end up with a less noisy image.“The stuff that’s really up there is going to stay, but the noise — because it was random — is going to disappear,” he said.
At this stage, he also does background calibration, which tends to brighten the image and make it a little “creamier.”
Here, Andreo has started to “push the histogram,” as astrophotographers say.
“You push up or down the low levels of the image and the high levels of the image and more data starts to show up,” he said. “It’s the first thing that most people are going to do. Once you stack your images, then adjust your histogram a little to see how much stuff is really there.”
Here, more stars are obviously apparent and the creaminess has gone away with the processing for greater contrast. Next comes the color.
After he shoots an area of the sky with the monochrome, high-resolution filter, he switches to separate red, green and blue filters. He goes through the same process for each color component as he did for the black-and-white image. He takes multiple exposures, combines them, and does background calibration.
“It’s just red, green and blue combined and slightly stretched to bring out all the detail,” Andreo said. “You start to see more of pretty picture, basically.”
Here, Andreo has draped the color data onto the more detailed luminance image.
“I take the RGB that you saw from the previous image, and I put it on top of the luminance,” Andreo said, “but I don’t want the details, I just want the color information.”
Once that’s complete, he pushes the histograms some more or perhaps adjusts the levels in the image to bring out the details. Some of the artistry comes out in this stage.
“Because there is a lot of creativity, with the same set of raw data, two different people are going to come up with different things,” he said.
The last step was simply to rotate it vertically because he just “liked it more this way.” After all, the number of targets for amateur astrophotographers is fairly limited. Framing is a key component of standing out.
“I’m hoping that my final picture will escape mediocrity,” he said. “It may not be the best you’ve ever seen, but at least it’s not just one more.”
Later, that rotation turned out fortuitously when a friend saw the image and suggested he combine it with photos he’d taken of an adjacent region of the sky.
Working with a program called Registar that helps photographers join their photos by identifying the common stars in different images, he stitched the images together. It required rotating and cropping his original Orion belt, but when the mosaic was finished, it was absolutely breathtaking. Last month, it was selected by NASA as the agency’s Astronomy Picture of the Day for September 18th.
The image certainly traveled a long way from its initial incarnation to the finished product, but is the first image any more real than the last? Does adding dozens of exposures together and “pushing the histogram” add or subtract from the reality of the image?
After stepping through the transformation, we’re not convinced either way, but we’re sure glad that someone takes pictures of space that look like pieces of the heavens.
Images: Rogelio Bernal Andreo.
See Also:
- More on Mindblowingspacephotos
- Photo: Docked Space Shuttle and Station Cross the Sun
- Photo: Space Shuttle Crosses the Sun
- Spectacular Space Photo of the Christmas Tree Cluster
- Brilliant 360-Degree Panorama of the Milky Way
- The Pinwheel Galaxy Captured in Dazzling Color
- Zoom In on Lagoon Nebula with Super-High-Res Image
- Details of Galactic Core Revealed in X-Rays
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Google Reader feed, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
The making of heavenly beauty...
New Telescope Captures Dazzling Image of Orion Nebula | Wired Science
You’ve undoubtedly seen the smudge of the Orion Nebula hanging just below his belt thousands of times, but the most beautiful image yet of the celestial body was just released Wednesday.
The European Southern Observatory’s new VISTA telescope’s enormous field of view allows it to image the entire nebula at once. It’s been designed to capture near-infrared light. The longer wavelengths of light in that part of the spectrum allow rays to pass through dusty space without being scattering.
The Orion Nebula is located about 1,350 light-years from Earth. The cloud of gas and dust is a nursery for young stars. The red blobs in the features near the center of the image are young, growing stars that are hidden by dust in visible light.
VISTA was just placed into service late last year, so we can expect many more beautiful near-infrared images as it conducts its survey of the sky.
There are detailed close-up shots below, too.
Image: ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit. The 341 MB XXXL version.
See Also:
- The Making of a Mind-Blowing Space Photo
- Slick NASA iPhone App Puts Space in Your Pocket
- Photo: Docked Space Shuttle and Station Cross the Sun
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Tumblr, and green tech history research site; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
The new VISTA infrared telescope is coming online... more images to follow!
Sunday, February 07, 2010
NFL Game Center: New Orleans Saints at Indianapolis Colts - 2009 Super Bowl
Saints overcome slow start to capture first Super Bowl title in franchise history
Associated Press
Ben Liebenberg / NFL.com Coach Sean Payton celebrates the Saints' triumph in Super Bowl XLIV.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- The ultimate underdogs, they ain't. Not anymore. The Saints are Super Bowl champions now.
Who Dat? Try Drew Brees, Sean Payton and a team that has reversed its embarrassing past, carrying an entire city to the top with it.
Put away those paper bags forever.
Brees and the Saints rallied to upset Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 Sunday night in one of pro football's most thrilling title games.
"We just believed in ourselves and we knew that we had an entire city and maybe an entire country behind us," said Brees, the game's MVP. "What can I say? I tried to imagine what this moment would be like for a long time, and it's better than expected."
But not something many expected from these descendants of the hapless Aints, who were five-point underdogs.
"Four years ago, who ever thought this would be happening when 85 percent of the city was under water from (Hurricane) Katrina," Brees said. "Most people not knowing if New Orleans would ever come back or if the organization and the team would come back. ... This is the culmination of that belief and that faith."
Brees tied a Super Bowl record with 32 completions, the last a 2-yard slant to Jeremy Shockey for the winning points with 5:42 remaining. He was 32 for 39 for 288 yards.
A surprise onside kick sparked the Saints' second-half comeback. Their 25th-ranked defense made several key stops, and Tracy Porter's 74-yard interception return touchdown on a pass from Manning clinched it.
Manning tried to give chase, but was blocked by Saints DE Will Smith and fell awkwardly as the cornerback raced by. The four-time NFL MVP forlornly walked to the sideline as the Big Easy celebrations began.
"It's time for the Saints to celebrate," he said. "It's their field and it's their championship."
An NFL also-ran for much of their 43 years, the Saints' football renaissance, led by Brees and Payton, climaxed with Shockey's touchdown and Lance Moore's two-point conversion catch, originally ruled incomplete but overturned on Payton's challenge.
Porter's pick, just as dramatic as his interception of Brett Favre's pass to force overtime in the NFC title game, was the game's only turnover. It's one Manning will forever regret.
The Saints (16-3) won three postseason games this winter after winning only two in the previous 42 years. They beat Arizona, Minnesota and Indianapolis (16-3) -- all division winners -- for their first title, scoring 107 points and allowing only 59.
"We weren't the Aints," Porter said. "We were a team of destiny, a team that can make big plays."
The championship came 4 ½ years after Katrina ravaged New Orleans, making the Saints nomads for the 2005 season. There even was some doubt they would return, but the NFL refused to abandon the city. The Superdome was repaired and the Saints won the NFC South in '06, their first season with Brees and Payton.
That was the season Manning won his only Super Bowl. He got the Colts off to a quick start and had them in front for much of this one, but New Orleans' league-leading offense, which scored 510 points this season, outscored Indy 31-7 after falling behind 10-0. That matched the biggest comeback in a Super Bowl.
Payton held the Vince Lombardi Trophy high over his head and ran into the end zone toward several hundred fans chanting the Saints' rally cry: "Who dat, who dat, who dat say gonna beat dem Saints?"
Nobody can say it now.
"Everybody back in New Orleans gets a piece of this trophy," he said.
"I think I could kiss him," owner Tom Benson said.
Before many of the 74,059 fans got settled following the Who's halftime show, the Saints worked a little football voodoo. Garrett Hartley's onside kick was touched by the Colts' Hank Baskett, then recovered by Chris Reis at the New Orleans' 42.
"I just told our guys you've got to make me look good on this," Payton said. "That really becomes like a turnover."
Looking like the NFL's most potent offense, the Saints seized the opportunity to take their first lead. It came on Pierre Thomas' brilliant 16-yard run with a screen pass, capped by a dive into the end zone.
Manning simply shrugged, found Dallas Clark for 45 yards on a 76-yard drive, and Joseph Addai used a spin move a figure skater would envy to score from the 4.
But that was it for Indy.
"I certainly know how it was three years ago when we won," Manning said. "I know the people of New Orleans and the Saints have that same feeling right now."
Hartley, the hero of the NFC title game with his 40-yard field goal in OT, made a 47-yarder later in the third quarter. After Matt Stover was wide left on a 51-yarder early in the final quarter, Brees led the biggest drive in Saints history.
"We really felt as underdogs we had the better team," Payton said. "To be in that position where maybe a lot of people were picking against us, we liked the spot we were in."
Special to NFL.com Click here to purchase the exclusive stadium collection version of the Super Bowl XLIV game program. Manning looked sharp on the Colts' first two series, taking them 53 yards to a 38-yard field goal by Stover, at 42 the oldest player in Super Bowl history.
Then Manning led a 96-yard, 11-play drive that appeared almost routine, even though it tied the longest march in a Super Bowl. Addai rushed for 53 yards on the series, and Manning found Pierre Garcon behind backup cornerback Usama Young for the 19-yard score on third down.
New Orleans couldn't match that, but did get a 46-yard field goal by Hartley to make it 10-3. Brees was sacked on third down by All-Pro defensive end Dwight Freeney, who sure looked frisky despite ligament damage in his right ankle that made his availability uncertain for two weeks.
Then Indy's defense, ranked 18th during the season but staunch in the playoffs, really showed some power. After the Saints marched 71 yards, including 40 yards on two receptions by Marques Colston, New Orleans had third-and-goal at the 1. Mike Bell slipped trying to run right behind All-Pro guard Jahri Evans, and Thomas was stacked up at the line by Gary Brackett and Clint Session on fourth down.
But the Colts ran three times and punted after getting the ball back, leaving 35 seconds for the league's most prolific offense to get in position for Hartley's 44-yard field goal and a more manageable 10-6 halftime deficit.
Shootout? More like a slowdown. Indy had two three-and-outs and New Orleans had one.
But the points came quickly after halftime -- mostly for the Saints.
"Look around the stadium," linebacker Scott Fujita said. "It was like 6- or 7-to-1 (Saints fans). The black and gold just poured into Miami.
"The whole world was behind us. This was bigger than just a game for the Saints. We are the world's team."
Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press
I am SO proud of the Saints and the city of New Orleans and Drew Brees-- they are all class acts. GEAUX SAINTS!!!
NFL Game Center: New Orleans Saints at Indianapolis Colts - 2009 Super Bowl
Saints overcome slow start to capture first Super Bowl title in franchise history
Associated Press
Ben Liebenberg / NFL.com Coach Sean Payton celebrates the Saints' triumph in Super Bowl XLIV.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- The ultimate underdogs, they ain't. Not anymore. The Saints are Super Bowl champions now.
Who Dat? Try Drew Brees, Sean Payton and a team that has reversed its embarrassing past, carrying an entire city to the top with it.
Put away those paper bags forever.
Brees and the Saints rallied to upset Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 Sunday night in one of pro football's most thrilling title games.
"We just believed in ourselves and we knew that we had an entire city and maybe an entire country behind us," said Brees, the game's MVP. "What can I say? I tried to imagine what this moment would be like for a long time, and it's better than expected."
But not something many expected from these descendants of the hapless Aints, who were five-point underdogs.
"Four years ago, who ever thought this would be happening when 85 percent of the city was under water from (Hurricane) Katrina," Brees said. "Most people not knowing if New Orleans would ever come back or if the organization and the team would come back. ... This is the culmination of that belief and that faith."
Brees tied a Super Bowl record with 32 completions, the last a 2-yard slant to Jeremy Shockey for the winning points with 5:42 remaining. He was 32 for 39 for 288 yards.
A surprise onside kick sparked the Saints' second-half comeback. Their 25th-ranked defense made several key stops, and Tracy Porter's 74-yard interception return touchdown on a pass from Manning clinched it.
Manning tried to give chase, but was blocked by Saints DE Will Smith and fell awkwardly as the cornerback raced by. The four-time NFL MVP forlornly walked to the sideline as the Big Easy celebrations began.
"It's time for the Saints to celebrate," he said. "It's their field and it's their championship."
An NFL also-ran for much of their 43 years, the Saints' football renaissance, led by Brees and Payton, climaxed with Shockey's touchdown and Lance Moore's two-point conversion catch, originally ruled incomplete but overturned on Payton's challenge.
Porter's pick, just as dramatic as his interception of Brett Favre's pass to force overtime in the NFC title game, was the game's only turnover. It's one Manning will forever regret.
The Saints (16-3) won three postseason games this winter after winning only two in the previous 42 years. They beat Arizona, Minnesota and Indianapolis (16-3) -- all division winners -- for their first title, scoring 107 points and allowing only 59.
"We weren't the Aints," Porter said. "We were a team of destiny, a team that can make big plays."
The championship came 4 ½ years after Katrina ravaged New Orleans, making the Saints nomads for the 2005 season. There even was some doubt they would return, but the NFL refused to abandon the city. The Superdome was repaired and the Saints won the NFC South in '06, their first season with Brees and Payton.
That was the season Manning won his only Super Bowl. He got the Colts off to a quick start and had them in front for much of this one, but New Orleans' league-leading offense, which scored 510 points this season, outscored Indy 31-7 after falling behind 10-0. That matched the biggest comeback in a Super Bowl.
Payton held the Vince Lombardi Trophy high over his head and ran into the end zone toward several hundred fans chanting the Saints' rally cry: "Who dat, who dat, who dat say gonna beat dem Saints?"
Nobody can say it now.
"Everybody back in New Orleans gets a piece of this trophy," he said.
"I think I could kiss him," owner Tom Benson said.
Before many of the 74,059 fans got settled following the Who's halftime show, the Saints worked a little football voodoo. Garrett Hartley's onside kick was touched by the Colts' Hank Baskett, then recovered by Chris Reis at the New Orleans' 42.
"I just told our guys you've got to make me look good on this," Payton said. "That really becomes like a turnover."
Looking like the NFL's most potent offense, the Saints seized the opportunity to take their first lead. It came on Pierre Thomas' brilliant 16-yard run with a screen pass, capped by a dive into the end zone.
Manning simply shrugged, found Dallas Clark for 45 yards on a 76-yard drive, and Joseph Addai used a spin move a figure skater would envy to score from the 4.
But that was it for Indy.
"I certainly know how it was three years ago when we won," Manning said. "I know the people of New Orleans and the Saints have that same feeling right now."
Hartley, the hero of the NFC title game with his 40-yard field goal in OT, made a 47-yarder later in the third quarter. After Matt Stover was wide left on a 51-yarder early in the final quarter, Brees led the biggest drive in Saints history.
"We really felt as underdogs we had the better team," Payton said. "To be in that position where maybe a lot of people were picking against us, we liked the spot we were in."
Special to NFL.com Click here to purchase the exclusive stadium collection version of the Super Bowl XLIV game program. Manning looked sharp on the Colts' first two series, taking them 53 yards to a 38-yard field goal by Stover, at 42 the oldest player in Super Bowl history.
Then Manning led a 96-yard, 11-play drive that appeared almost routine, even though it tied the longest march in a Super Bowl. Addai rushed for 53 yards on the series, and Manning found Pierre Garcon behind backup cornerback Usama Young for the 19-yard score on third down.
New Orleans couldn't match that, but did get a 46-yard field goal by Hartley to make it 10-3. Brees was sacked on third down by All-Pro defensive end Dwight Freeney, who sure looked frisky despite ligament damage in his right ankle that made his availability uncertain for two weeks.
Then Indy's defense, ranked 18th during the season but staunch in the playoffs, really showed some power. After the Saints marched 71 yards, including 40 yards on two receptions by Marques Colston, New Orleans had third-and-goal at the 1. Mike Bell slipped trying to run right behind All-Pro guard Jahri Evans, and Thomas was stacked up at the line by Gary Brackett and Clint Session on fourth down.
But the Colts ran three times and punted after getting the ball back, leaving 35 seconds for the league's most prolific offense to get in position for Hartley's 44-yard field goal and a more manageable 10-6 halftime deficit.
Shootout? More like a slowdown. Indy had two three-and-outs and New Orleans had one.
But the points came quickly after halftime -- mostly for the Saints.
"Look around the stadium," linebacker Scott Fujita said. "It was like 6- or 7-to-1 (Saints fans). The black and gold just poured into Miami.
"The whole world was behind us. This was bigger than just a game for the Saints. We are the world's team."
Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press
I am SO proud of the Saints and the city of New Orleans and Drew Brees-- they are all class acts. GEAUX SAINTS!!!
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Calvin & Hobbes: Dancing to classical music at 78rpm!
LOVE this one! I took a few of these poses and copied them to a posterboard to post up on my wall back in 1991 or so...
