"WELCOME TO DEATH VALLEY"

So I've been here at one of the largest college football hubs in the nation for a year and a half, but haven't yet managed to make it to one of the games--this grad school thing has kept me extraordinarily busy, and I haven't really tried to score any Tiger tickets yet; I just figured it would be a big hassle. Consequently, I haven't yet seen all the hooplah surrounding home games here at LSU. Sure, I live near campus, and have inadvertantly gotten caught up in game traffic a few times, but I haven't really made the attempt to wade into the football madness. Until today, that is.

We open up Shaw's Arms and the Man in a couple of weeks, which is being produced by LSU's professional theater company, Swine Palace. The cast is essentially the seven members of my MFA acting class, our first real show together as a company of players. Apparently, as part of pregame festivities, certain LSU events are announced on the field about forty five minutes before kickoff, complete with key event participants standing between the hash marks at the fifty yard line while a camera visually beams their images up to the enormous TV screens on the two scoreboards at the two end zones. In other words, it's free publicity that Swine Palace's marketing guy got us in on.

That's right, earlier this evening I went and stood on LSU's football field with my classmates and waved to the crowd. "Weird" doesn't even begin to describe the experience. My buddy Reuben, who plays the male lead in our show, told me a couple of days ago that he would be bringing his camera. "What a great idea," I thought, "that'll be my blog entry for Saturday night."

And here it is, Saturday night.

I mentioned game day traffic above. It's BAD, worse than anything I've ever seen. Becky tried to take me to the theater where I would join my class before hiking over to the stadium, but she only got a block before we realized that our planned route had been barricaded by the BRPD. So I had to walk for half an hour, which was actually a good thing because I got to see the tailgating festivities. LSU is one of the most spirited universities of which I know: they're like Texas A&M on crack and meth and coffee. It's wild, man.



In the picture above, a grassy patch I walk through on the way to class was converted into something of a mini-carnival and or barbeque. And this is only one tiny slice of it all. Take the above scene and multiply it by, say, a thousand, and you might get the idea. The whole campus is partying down:



Of course, we are in the South, and the "Southern heritage" idiots were out in force:



Yes, that's right: it's a Confederate battle flag, but in LSU colors. This damned symbol, which historically represents an ideologically driven white-power regime economically based on the enslavement of another race, that is, the CSA, causes no end of controversy here. Personally, I think these morons, who may or may not actually be racists, enjoy pissing people off. At any rate, "heritage" or not, this thing is just plain offensive. I think there are plenty of other ways to celebrate one's culture without referencing positively that culture's brutal past, but, no, they've gotta go with what, for me, amounts to an American swastika.

It's funny. While I was snapping the above picture, the people with the flag were loudly playing Hank Williams Jr.'s "Family Tradition." I love the song, but it just seemed so utterly stereotypical, you know, the racists playing their loud, down-home tunes. Speaking of stereotypes, check out this shot:



A pick 'em up truck sporting the offensive banner. Not surprising at all. Not that there's anything wrong with pick 'em up trucks; it just seems like support for the Confederacy kind of walks hand in hand with pick 'em up truck ownership in some parts of the country. Like here, for instance.

Anyway, after assembling at the theater, off we went into the abyss:



It's kind of like Mardi Gras, only everytime there's a home game. Maybe not as much drunkenness, but there are masses and masses of wild Louisianians running around all freaky like.

Finally, we got onto the field, which is nicknamed "Death Valley." And just to make sure that visiting teams remember where they are, one of the huge scoreboards reminds them:



By the way, the Applebee's ad is one of the two TV screens they put us on as we waved to the crowd. But that didn't happen just yet. Once we got there, we first had to wait on the sideline for twenty or thirty minutes until our moment in the limelight, which was a great opportunity for me and my camera to document the overall event.

Like the student section (background) and news photographers (foreground):



Or some pregame team drills:







There's something about football and butts that I haven't figured out: players are either patting each others' bottoms, or sticking them out all the time. What's up with all that?

Not that there's anything wrong with it.

I tried to get some shots of our quarterback Jamarcus Russell, who is my classmate Derek's student in the intro-to-acting class he teaches, taking some practice throws, but it was hell to get something worth keeping. Sports photography is much harder than it looks.

I also got some shots of these guys who were very clearly former players there to cheer the Tigers on:



After I got home, I did my damndest to get some info on these guys, but couldn't find anything. The man on the left is named Williams, I think, and the middle guy is named Broha, and the shorter younger guy is named Buckels. Anybody know anything about them? I'm very curious.

Here's the marching band for today's opponent, the Auburn Tigers. Cute, huh? Tigers versus Tigers.



This was cool:



The guy in middle of the frame is wearing a purple shirt with gold lettering that says "Beat Oklahoma." Of course, I love to see something like that. It's hard to read at this size, but if you click here, you'll see it quite clearly. Obviously, the shirt was printed a couple of years ago when LSU played OU for the national championship, beating them convincingly, but not enough to silence critics who thought USC should have been in the BCS championship that year. Whatever, beating OU is fun no matter what the circumstances. Heh. "Beat Oklahoma." Now that's a welcome sign for a Longhorn if ever I've seen one. And frankly, I really did need such a sign: while I was hanging out in Death Valley, I was having to miss the second half of the Texas versus Texas Tech game on TV--fortunately everything worked out okay with that.

Finally, it was time for us to take the field. I couldn't take any pictures of that; we were just supposed to stand there and wave while the camera moved past our faces as each of our names and hometowns were announced over the PA system. Two of my classmates are also from Texas: quite nice to hear the word "Texas" spoken three times right smack dab in the middle of "Geaux Tiger" country. Hee-hee.

And then it was over, just like that, anti-climactic at best, but still pretty cool overall. After all, there were still a few more shots on my camera's card. Like the gun guys:



I must admit that these military uniforms are much snazzier than the traditional wild west costumes the guys who deal with the cannon for UT games wear. I also got this cool shot of the stadium filling up as I was heading out:



Yeah, that's right: "as I was heading out." The publicity package did not include free tickets for the game. So I missed the second half of Texas blowing out Tech, and I missed the entire LSU game, which was broadcast on ESPN, which I don't have. Ah well, at least I watched some of the Astros game, but even that was kind of a bummer because they lost. Ah well, there are more games in the future for everybody.

Finally, I took some shots of my fellow actors on the way out. Here's Reuben, the guy who brilliantly suggested photographing all this:



Here are the women, Kesha, Anna, and Nikki, and Reuben manages to get into this one, too:



Here's Mark and, once again, Reuben:

Mark has the mutant super-power of super speed.

And here's Derek, from Austin, a city I obviously love, who, as mentioned above, teaches our team's starting QB:



And last, but not least, on the outside side of the stadium:



I'm happy to report that the Tigers, the LSU Tigers that is, did indeed, "geaux:" we beat Auburn in overtime by a field goal. Very cool, very cool. Wish I'd gotten to see it.

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