Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Eli Manning’s gamble shows why he’s one of the NFL’s best

Tom Brady in daze of disappointment after Super Bowl loss

It was naïve to think that the contretemps between Jim Irsay and Peyton Manning would simmer down for the week. And they did not exactly put out the fire.

Also victor cruz jersey cheap, at the ESPN party, Baltimore Ravens’ fullback Vonta Leach grabbed my shoulder and said “You cut me!” I said: “Well 2012 super bowl jerseys, it wasn’t actually me at the Packers, but we did release you when I was there. “I didn’t remember the circumstances but he certainly did in great detail – how we needed a roster spot for Koren Robinson in 2006. Vonta, who made the Pro Bowl, and I had a nice laugh, and he has gotten over being cut. … think.
Peyton Manning deflected some of the attention from his little brother last week.

Last week’s episode in a nutshell: Peyton’s doctors say he has been medically cleared to play. Irsay’s doctors say he has not. Clear as mud.

Irsay has demurred every opportunity to welcome Peyton back, and a new general manager and coach have avoided the subject.
 

When I started in the sports business as an agent cheap victor cruz jersey, one of the first clients I worked with was Chris Doleman of the Minnesota Vikings. Although an inexperienced agent fresh out of law school victor cruz superbowl jersey cheap, Chris was a friend and treated me like an equal. On Saturday he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It was an honor to – unexpectedly – be with him that day.

Peyton Place

And while everyone packs up to leave Indianapolis, here are more thoughts on Peyton, who may also soon be leaving:

The experience

Irsay earlier tweeted that he didn’t mind paying “$26 hakeem nicks jersey,000,000.00 to #18” referencing the $26.4 million he paid Manning last season (evidently forgetting the extra $400,000.00), spinning a $26 million “pre-severance” prior to an expected decline of the $28 option million plus future salaries.

Despite the unglamorous setting of Indianapolis, the A-listers were out in full force. Please indulge me with a couple personal memories.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones must be shaking his head about the deep freeze he hosted last year. Weather matters.

Unapproved tattoo operation in southern Alberta shut down

Many at the festival understand the initial shock of the counterculture events tattoo machines, especially to people unfamiliar with alternative art. However they hope the public won't judge a book by it's cover. Or a person by their tattoo.

The province has shut down Sandra Wiltzen's tattoo parlour in Lethbridge.

Individuals may have been exposed to the hepatitis and AIDS viruses.

Health officials say the shop did not have proper sterilization equipment.

To see more about the tour dates of the festival super tattoo, click here.

While Rainbolt has many tattoos, Ally Mitchell only has one.

Alberta Health Services is urging anyone who got a tattoo at an unapproved home operation in southern Alberta to be tested for hepatitis and HIV.

"It's for my grandmother. She died on Christmas Eve three years ago tattoo equipments," explained Mitchell with tears in her eyes. "I just think of how much love I have in my heart and just how amazing she was. And who I am today is because of her."

"Tattoos to me signify hope," agreed Mitchell. "If I can go through the pain of getting a tattoo on my spine tattoo transfer, I can go through anything."

"Body art and tattooing has become very mainstream over the years. Some people just need to look outside of the box and realize it doesn't make you a bad person," said Garfield. "And just because somebody's tattooed doesn't mean that they are stupid. It doesn't mean that they are not intelligent. It doesn't mean that they are ignorant. It just means that they've chosen to live a different lifestyle. And it's okay."

Officials say the operator was given 30 days to provide Alberta Health Services with a complete list of clients tattoo supplies, but has not done so.

Springfield is the only city that forced festival organizers to make last minute changes before the doors opened. Due to the holdups, people who work at the festival said they are unsure if they will return back to the Ozarks next year.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Private meetings by secondary mates helped Giants’ defense improve enough to beat Patriots

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The simple answer is home study. The more complicated, psychobabble answer is that the Giants’ cornerbacks and safeties learned to trust one another and, in turn, be able to tell Fewell what worked and what didn’t.

“I have never had a unit go from that point to this point like this unit did,” Fewell said after the Giants reeled off a sixth straight victory.

“For me, it was really important to have the older guys tell me, ‘You don’t want to look like this,’ ” said Amukamara new england patriots super bowl xlvi jerseys, who missed extensive time with a broken leg and was behind much of the season. “I was trying to get caught up on the defense and my technique and all of that work helped.”

This was work. Aaron Ross and Corey Webster had been meeting most of the season at home to review game video, and they eventually were joined by Deon Grant, Kenny Phillips and Antrel Rolle. Then rookie Prince Amukamara showed up. Pretty soon, the entire unit was there going over play after play eli manning super bowl jerseys, trying to figure out what worked and, more important hakeem nicks super bowl jerseys, what wasn’t working.

This is the same defense that just two months and a day earlier was torched at home against the Green Bay Packers in a three-point loss new york giants customized jerseys, the team’s fourth consecutive defeat. Two weeks after that, the Giants’ secondary looked bad in a loss to the Washington Redskins with a series of busted coverages.

“That was close,” Phillips said when asked who had the best grub. “Those turkey burgers were good.”

Exactly what those X’s and O’s were is irrelevant. What’s important is how the Giants’ secondary went from toasted to the toast of the NFL, helping keep Brady and the Patriots under control for a 21-17 victory in Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday at Lucas Oil Stadium.

More to the point was how close the players got.

“We got tired of looking this bad, that’s what it was about,” Ross said. “We knew what the problems were. It wasn’t that we couldn’t play, but we were off by a little bit here or there. We weren’t reacting to the situations and the calls the way we were supposed to and we needed to get that straight and we had to do it amongst ourselves.”

The sessions went from one night a week to three or four. The players started bringing in food and drink. Ross’ wife, Olympic gold medalist track star Sanya Richards, made turkey burgers. Webster brought in steak and lobster from Outback Steakhouse.

Yet as the Giants limited Brady to only eight completions in his final 20 passes for 86 yards and an interception after he previously completed 16 consecutive throws, Fewell kept switching from man to zone to man again to something “we kept in our back pocket.”

As New York Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell switched time and again from one defense to the next, eventually confusing New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, a person with any sense of recent events would have called his moves the stuff of madness.

Giants co-owner John Mara on Super Bowl win

super bowl green jerseys

But on the night he let the sure pass bounce off his hands, he just wanted to get as far as he could from the Super Bowl.

The young security guard assigned to Welker glanced at the player walking beside him. He thought Welker looked sad.

“You know you had a great season superbowl love pink,” the young security guard said to Welker.

The catch was hard to make. Welker had to twist his body while running and reach above his head for the ball. But it hit both his hands and was a play he usually makes, the kind of play the Patriots made in their three Super Bowl wins and the kind of play they haven’t made in two Super Bowl losses to the Giants.

And Welker and the young security guard walked together out of the interview area and back into the concrete corridor where the Giants players were still running down the hall and fans yelled their names. At one point another security guard directed them to stand against the wall so more Giants could run by. Welker watched as the Giants players passed him. He didn’t say anything.

“You too new england patriots super bowl jerseys,” Welker replied politely.

As they approached the first of the three Patriots’ motor coaches – Miller Trailways bus No. 9261 – the young security guard smiled at the most famous man he has probably ever walked beside.

“It was nice to meet you,” he said cheerily.

“Yeah patriots super bowl jerseys,” Welker grunted.

Then he stepped onto the bus. Back in the locker room his equipment bag was still unpacked, a white bathrobe still dangled from its hanger. His nameplate – usually a souvenir all players try to keep – sat above his locker. It looked as if he was still coming back.

“That’s very unfair authentic victor cruz jersey,” safety Patrick Chung would later say of the suggestion that the defeat was somehow Welker’s fault. “There are four or five big plays in the game and we just needed them to be made by us.”

“Take him to the bus,” the public relations man said.

Welker nodded.

Even later Brady would say: “I’ll keep throwing the ball to him for as long as I possibly can. … I love that guy.”

“Don’t get down,” the young security guard added. “You make a lot of great plays.”

But it’s not likely any of this was going to make Wes Welker feel better on the night he dropped the surest thing that might have come his way in weeks. He started to walk out of the interview area but had no idea where to go. He looked at the public relations man and asked how to get to the bus. The public relations man was unsure. He asked another public relations man and that man grabbed a young security guard wearing a red jacket and pushed him toward Welker.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Tattoo - Dappy's Girlfriend Tattoos Her Love

While Kaye has shown her commitment with a number of tattoos tattoo grips, Dappy recently revealed he had bought an eternity ring for his girlfriend as a symbol of his devotion to her.

He said: "I love her to death. I've been naughty in the past, I've cheated and done silly things. I've made my mistakes but now I'm going to do my utmost to be faithful. I bought her an eternity ring the other day. She loved it. She cried."

He told Q magazine: "What's the craziest thing I've been sent by a fan? Pictures of tattoos of my face over one girl's back. My initials tattoo transfer, lyrics to my sons, choruses on people's forearms. I've seen my face on loads of people's bodies.

"They don't always look like me."

Dappy thinks his girlfriend is ''crazy'' because she has many tattoos dedicated to him.

The 'No Regrets' hitmaker says Kaye Vassell - with who he has two sons tattoo equipments, Gino, two tattoo needles and tips, and 13-month-old Milo - is a "tomboy" and admits he finds her inkings "crazy".

"She's got Amy Winehouse on her arm. She's got lots tattoo tips, she's a tomboy."

He said: "My girlfriend's got a tattoo of me. She's got my name on her back. She's got my initials on her leg. She had my name on the back of her neck as well. It's crazy.

Dappy's girlfriend has several tattoos dedicated to him.

Kaye isn't the only person to have a tattoo dedicated to Dappy as the N-Dubz star revealed he is regularly sent pictures from fans showing permanent depictions of the singer etched onto their bodies.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Kickers stumbled into key Super Bowl roles

Tynes and Gostkowski didn’t aspire to the heart-pounding role when they were growing up.

Win a Super Bowl? That wasn’t in their plans.

“You’re never going to get it out of your mind completely,” Vinatieri said this week, after making some kicks at an NFL fan event in town. “I’m sure when I was out there on the Super Bowl kicks, my heart was racing.”

In the 11th grade, his team needed a kicker. A coach urged him to try out, knowing he was a good soccer player.

Gostkowski was a three-sport star in Mississippi, going 16-2 with a 1.00 ERA as a pitcher who led Madison Central High to a state title in 2002. He also kicked a 55-yard field goal that is a school record. Baseball was more his style, though, and he went to Memphis on a partial baseball scholarship.

“Whenever they throw a highlight on, I stop what I’m doing and watch it victor cruz superbowl jersey cheap,” Vinatieri said. “It’s kind of a surreal feeling.”

Such extremes of emotion simply come with a job that neither aspired to while growing up.

Those daydream moments become otherworldly when they come true.

“I am glad I did, because the only reason I did it was to hang out with my buddies in practice,” he said.

Tynes is the NFL’s first Scottish-born player wes welker jersey, his father a U.S. Navy officer who met his mother abroad. They moved to Florida when he was 11 years old. Football wasn’t appealing, with all the bashing and bruising.

All because his friends talked him into trying out in high school.

“They’re like walk-off homers,” Tynes said. “Those are fun, that’s the only word to describe it. You get to turn around and see 52 grown men acting like kids again. That’s the best part.”

“So I went out to the baseball field, he throws his keys down in front of where I was going to kick and he said cheap hakeem nicks jersey, `Kick the ball and pick my keys up,’ just to keep my head down,” Tynes said. “Ironically enough, I went to spring football going into my senior year. I went to spring training, and I haven’t stopped since. It’s pretty weird how it worked out.”

Like basketball players who dream of hitting the winning shot for the NBA title or baseball players who pretend they’re at bat with two outs in the ninth and the bases loaded in Game 7 of the World Series, kickers grow up pretending they’re lining up in the final seconds of the Super Bowl.

Miss? Well, that’s something entirely else. For the two kickers, there’s no hiding in this game.

As a freshman, he tried out for the football team as a walk-on and earned a full scholarship that changed his career. The Patriots drafted him in the fourth round in 2006 to replace Vinatieri. Gostkowski turned into a Pro Bowl kicker, but has yet to line up for a Super Bowl winner like the kicker he replaced.

Good deal. Tynes was on the Giants team that upset the Patriots four years ago. His 31-yard field goal in overtime of the NFC championship game at San Francisco got them back to the big game.

Tynes only joined his high school football team so he could hang around with his friends. Gostkowski was a baseball pitcher at college, decided to try out for the football team and never looked back.

“Kicking hasn’t been the only sport in my life,” he said. “I’ve dealt with difficult situations and I’ve struggled before in every sport I’ve played. I’ve had success in every sport. If you go into a game and think you’re going to screw up, you’re probably not going to be at a professional level. Stuff like that doesn’t cross my mind.”

He doesn’t worry about living up to Vinatieri’s legacy if he gets the chance.

Fair or not patriots customized jerseys, reputations are made or broken with one swing of the leg when everything’s on the line. Scott Norwood’s long miss in 1991 broke Buffalo hearts. On the other side super bowl black jerseys, Adam Vinatieri became the Super Bowl standard for clutch kicking by making two game winners with the New England Patriots in 2002 and 2004.

Vinatieri has seen his kicks replayed all week leading up to the game.

He became very good at it very quickly and went to Troy University as a kicker. He bounced between the Kansas City Chiefs and Ottawa Roughriders before the Giants got him from Kansas City for a seventh-round draft pick in 2007.

Scotland-raised Lawrence Tynes of the New York Giants and New England’s Stephen Gostkowski know one of them could be the first player celebrating—or hunched in anguish—in the final seconds at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Both Super Bowl kickers have taken uncommon paths to this Sunday’s NFL decider, essentially stumbling into a job that often decides titles and legacies for better or worse.

Now, they’ve got a chance for one of the ultimate thrills in sports—kick it through the uprights and go wild in front of a massive global audience.

Fast Talk How This Tattoo Artist Became a Tech Entrepreneur

I start people off at $150 an hour, for the first six hours. After that, I bring it down to $100 an hour. I know a lot of artists charge more, but once I get into that relationship with a client, we're friends tattoo needles, we're in a relationship together. I would love to not have to charge for this; it almost feels as if I'm doing something wrong, when I'm applying so much love into this piece. Hopefully if Vor-Tek starts to grow out of its infancy and starts to pay off, I can continue tattooing but not charge anymore.

FAST COMPANY: Do you lead a double life?

How did you end up joining forces with Ashley Day, Vor-Tek's CEO?

It was a typical consultation day in 2007, and Ashley came in. A lot of my clients come in to cover up bad decisions, tattoos they had in the past. He had this strange geometric tribal lizard that was just off the wall of some tattoo shop tattoo supplies, on his chest. We covered it up with a large filigreed piece based on a tribute to his wife and two daughters. About the third session, we got into a conversation about goals and aspirations. He started to fill me in on the problem of the world's gyres, and specifically the Pacific Vortex, which he described as this giant patch of garbage the size of two Texases put together. The next session, I said tattoo needles and tips, "You know what we talked about last time? I came up with something." I sent him some pictures, and he was pretty excited, seeing as I wasn't in the industry, I wasn't an engineer or anything. His exact words were that his best engineers couldn't come up with that. We started working together to build a prototype of the marine particle skimmer, a device to pick up small particles of plastic. One modification led to another, until we made one focused on oil.

Meet Fred Giovannitti, whose ability to tease designs out of people's brains proves useful in two very different pursuits: tattoo artistry and environmental engineering.

FRED GIOVANNITTI: I sure do. Half of it is living here in Bend, a small town in Oregon, enjoying time with my children and family while working on projects for Vor-Tek, whose mission is to clean the world's oceans of oil, plastic super tattoo, and pollution. Then I fly to Las Vegas for two weeks out of every month for a full schedule of 12-hour days, and I live my life as a well-sought-after tattoo artist in Vegas. The tattoo shop I own is called Tatlantis Allied Arts and Sciences.

I'm very picky with who I tattoo. Throughout my consultations, I ask the right questions to find out if this is someone I want to hang out with, because I have to spend three hours at a time, two times a month tattoo power supply, for months on end. Basically the relationships I put myself in with the client is a co-parent relationship, and the tattoo is our child. If I'm gonna put all my love into it, the co-parent has to be someone I can be in a relationship with.

What is it about your process that lets you pull designs out of people's heads?

Can I afford you?

We do a lot of tinkering over there, building my prototypes, the things I invent. For example, a footswitch is used in tattooing. When you're tattooing, you have one foot on its heel at a 45-degree angle, and that's putting a lot of stress on the calf. I needed something a little more flush to the ground. I created this footpad that's flush to the ground, and all you have to do is apply very slight pressure, and it releases all the tension from the calves.

What are the "allied arts and sciences"?

Fred Giovannitti is that rarity: a man who divides his time between two extremely disparate careers. Giovannitti makes his living giving tattoos to discerning customers in Las Vegas, but he also spends a considerable amount of time as the creative director at Vor-Tek Recovery Solutions, a young company with a mission to engineer new ways of cleaning the world's oceans and waterways. Vor-Tek was a finalist in a recent X Challenge dedicated to faster cleanup of oil spills, partly due to Giovannitti's innovative designs.

What tattooing has taught me is the whole concept of producing a creative project by organizing the thoughts and visions of, say, two or more minds--mine and somebody else's--to where I can pull a design out of their head, by asking the right questions. I help others see on paper what they can just barely see behind their eyelids. That's my specific talent in this, and that's turned out to be really helpful in the industry I'm sharing my time with right now.