Well I think we’re off and running now. With our fifth column, Bridget Trahan has changed our name and my friend Connie Angelle has provided us with fantastic new artwork. What’s Going Orange? is now known as “The Juice.”
Guess we need to start with the Super Bowl. Eagles dominated the Chiefs and all of a sudden Patrick Mahomes is not a great quarterback…please. It does prove why we’ve never seen a three-peat. It’s damn hard in the NFL to keep good teams together for a long time without getting picked a part. Coaches leave, players move on. I have to admit as a media person, I wanted to say I witnessed a three-peat, but as the shutout continued in the third quarter, I was thinking WOW what a storyline. We could go from a possible three-peat to a two-time defending champ being the first team to be shutout in the big game. Of course that didn’t happen, and now we’re starting the long countdown to next season.
Halftime. If you didn’t like the halftime, you have to stop blaming the artist. You blame the NFL and the fact that they partnered with Jay-Z’s company and he makes the creative decision. I think he’s been doing that since 2019. I’m not a big fan of Kendrick Lamar although I do like “Not like Us.” And it was way better than my all-time worst performance by The Weekend. But I wish we could get the bouncing ball with the lyrics at the bottom. Angie and I don’t watch a movie without the captions now. Try it before you laugh at us!
Commercials. I think most of the commercials that involve a celebrity are a waste of money because of what they have to pay them plus the eight million for every 30 seconds. Like the one with Willem Dafoe and Catherine O’Hara. However, my favorite commercial this Super Bowl (the one that made me laugh out loud) had two celebrities and it was very creative. It was the Stella Artois commercial featuring David Beckham and Matt Damon.
Congrats to Vidor softball coach Kellyn Robertson who got her first win as a head coach Monday with a win over Hamshire-Fannett. Coaches don’t forget that first one. I asked three old(er) coaches if they remembered their first win and without hesitation they all knew. I don’t recall my first broadcast. Probably wouldn’t want to listen to it either.
Anyway, I’ve heard the term coaching tree but in high school sports it may be more of a coaching web because there are ups, downs, and sideways but you’re still in the circle. Kellyn (Cormier) was a great pitcher at Bridge City. Her dad Keith was a good baseball player at Orangefield. She married Randall Robertson who was the head basketball coach at BC and is now at Lumberton. Rickey Jacks was the girls basketball coach at Lumberton and now he’s at BC as an assistant and I watched them win their playoff game Monday night with three freshman starting. The game was played in the Huntington, the police radar capital of East Texas. I learned the Athletic Director/Head Baseball Coach there is Shawn Mixson who we (OC baseball teams) faced many times when he was the baseball coach at Jasper. He arranged the playoff date with BC AD Josh Smalley who hit .211 his senior year at BC under Chuck Young. You see what I mean?? Love ya Smalls.
We lost two people that I need to mention this week. Don Rollins of Vidor passed away at age 63 and he was in the music business. His claim to fame was that he co-wrote “It’s five o’clock somewhere” which won a Grammy and opened many doors for him.
I’m thinking Don may have been the only Grammy winner to step foot in the KOGT Studios. I had a chance to interview him and he came in several times to play and talk during the Britt Godwin Show. I don’t recall Richard Corder ever telling me about Gatemouth Brown coming into the building but he may be the only other one I can think of.
The other guy is Mike Sheffield or just Sheff to me. If you’ve been to Shangri La to see Santa the last several years you may have sat on Mike’s lap. To me, he was always a dead ringer for Jerry Garcia. He retired as an electrician/handy man from the Nederland School District. But his love, and how we met, was his pursuit of bringing high school football to a TV screen near you.
I’m going to cut a real long story short here, but we (KOGT) worked with Sheffield Productions years ago when we tried video with VCR machines. We provided the play by play and he and his crew provided video. Then late, late, late after games on Friday night, I would meet Mike Smith somewhere in the woods at a Time Warner hub, and he would put the tape in a VCR machine on a timer to show on the local government channel.
Instead of a one camera set up like you see for the most part today, Sheff was determined to have four cameras, replay, graphics, and everything you see on a Super Bowl broadcast. All from the back of a homemade production trailer that he built. And that was before anything was wireless. Despite the headaches of dealing with equipment and logistics and people every week, that guy kept a smile on his face and his enthusiasm was infectious. I’m so glad to say that he was a friend til the end. And now he has a great seat to watch all of the games.
The Orange Mardi Gras Ball was last weekend and as the story goes, what happens backstage stays backstage. It was another great event with congratulations to our new King and Queen Robert and Sherry Stalnaker from the Creole Krewe. Also to our four Dukes and Duchesses who all put in a lot of time and money to make it a success. I have to apologize about our annual KOGT photo gallery. It’s become a popular part of the Mardi Gras in Orange experience but (another long story short) I was using a new camera and didn’t do my homework so we didn’t have as many photos as we’ve had before. But I thank my nephew for his assistance. Click on the Mardi Gras banner at the top of KOGT.com to learn more about parade weekend. And yes we’re still planning on the KOGT Mardi Gras Treasure Hunt starting Monday if I would just finish the damn clues!
Probably a good place for me to stop.
Love you guys. Thanks for making this fun, so far! (laugh emoji)
-Gary Stelly, KOGT-
gstelly66@gmail.com
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