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ld goal kicking punting has become a specialty usually a punter has no other function on the field he s a little like a closer in baseball a player whose sole purpose is to do a single thing in a specific situation and nothing else mediocre kickers are a dime a dozen even in the pros kickers who were stars as college players usually do not have very successful careers a kicker s life in pro football is usually very short despite the fact that they suffer the least amount of physical abuse because of the job required of them a kicker s maximum body profile tends to be a lot less bulky than his teammates he s not expected to block or tackle or take hits in fact the rules now forbid running into the kicker since a kicker is in a very vulnerable position with respect to oncoming rushers and there is a severe penalty for being flagged for that you would think that kicking given that it involves only a couple of physical functions catching the ball as it s hiked by the center holding it in front of one s body and kicking it as far as possible downfield would be a simple thing to do well not so to do it well and consistently is very difficult in the first place there is no room for error a kicker can t move to elude oncoming rushers he has only a hectic second or two to execute his play clearly getting even a poor kick successfully in the air is better than not getting it kicked at all so the margin for error is usually razor thin in order to kick a ball so that the maximum amount of force is transmitted from the rising foot of the kicker to the inert ball above there must be a perfect collision a slight deviation of impact will result in a shank or weak kick with shorter distance both height length of hang time and distance are required for a superior kick you want to force the opposing receiver to catch the ball as far back from the line of scrimmage as possible and you want it to take as long as possible to reach him in order to allow your teammates to run downfield to cover the receiver s return attempt and of course in cases where the field is short the kicker is required to attempt to kick the ball out of bounds as close to the end zone line as he can but without crossing it before going out of bounds which necessitates accuracy as well as control of force most teams settle for mediocre kicking and work to overcome the deficits which result field position is regarded as a strategic approach which is less important than having a superior offense or defense short field drives are obviously easier than long sustained ones but short field approaches are typical of defensive oriented teams generally playing for position is like playing poker whereas in the world of high power pro offenses a good passing game can make playing for position an inappropriate choice the most crucial situation involving the kicking game is when a team is backed up almost to its own goal line and must punt out of its own end zone a safety is always a risk in these circumstances and no kicker wants to get caught for the dreaded two points or even god forbid a touchdown the ability to kick for distance when backed up can mean the difference between winning and losing a game andy lee has been the 49ers punter now for nine years in each of his nine seasons he s been a stand out qualifying for all pro status three times he s always among the leaders in average yards and hang time and his efficiency is nearly perfect he never gets tackled and always gets his kick away for a decade the 49ers have had the luxury of not having to worry about their punting game punters come and punters go but good ones are hard to come by when you have one like lee you feel blessed one very vital aspect of your franchise is taken care of reliable in professional sports reliability is usually in short supply which is why andy lee is a star in a role that most fans usually don t appreciate or appreciate enough over time a great punter may actually account for several wins singlehandedly that s a rare gift a claim that only a great quarterback or a star running back can make posted by curtis faville at 11 57 am no comments sunday december 8 2013 o hara dean james byron dean 2 8 31 9 30 55 on september 30th 1955 the popular young screen actor james dean was driving his new porsche 550 spyder convertible towards a racing event in salinas california using newly acquired earnings from his two movie roles in rebel without a cause and east of eden he d been buying fancy racing cars and competing in amateur and professional racing events with some success racing had become a passion for him proceeding in stages towards salinas he was speeding at 85 mph and had already received one speeding citation earlier that day when trying to beat another oncoming car to a cross over intersection his vehicle impacted a 1950 ford tudor coupe head on in a horrific crash dean sustained serious injuries and was pronounced dead on arrival at a hospital in paso robles early that evening for those too young to remember him james dean 2 8 31 9 30 55 had taken hollywood almost by storm in the 1950 s in his first movie role as cal in east of eden warner brothers directed by elia kazan he blossomed overnight into a major star in the current actor s studio marlon brando mold with a kind of sullen smoldering eccentric persona that captured perfectly the confused rebellious over emotional adolescent spirit of early beat era youth this role was followed closely by rebel without a cause warner brothers 1955 in which dean played the classic mixed up teen ager a gang member with a death wish and a flashy fragile sexiness that drove fans wild drag racing switchblades sex booze delinquency all the vital ingredients of the underground frustration with the conservative middle class world of 1950 s america and in his third major role and his last he reprised this persona one more time in giant warner brothers 1956 released after dean s death playing a poor white neighbor of a big texas ranch family who strikes it rich and rises to prominence as a super rich emotionally wounded but morally debased oil baron in his private life dean followed a parallel path he liked to be on the edge and automobile racing was the perfect vehicle for it reports concerning his love life are contradictory and clouded but it seems probable that he was mildly bi sexual and enjoyed relationships with both women and men fatally handsome and with a charming combination of flirtatious sexiness and feinting vulnerability he had his pick of partners audiences projected every kind of obsessive regard upon him if he had not died when he did there seemed almost no limit to the dimensions his career might have attained but like the fallen heroes of history and literature dean s early death made him into a classic romantic idol in the keats shelley mode and in this sense the perfect subject for elegy and memorial his funeral on october 8th 1955 in fairmount indiana was attended by more than 3000 mourners america had lost one of its true media heroes and a movie star legend of major proportions was born in our media obsessed contemporary milieu it may be difficult to realize how unusual and novel the idea of turning a movie matinee idol into poetic subject matter would have been in 1955 the movie promotion system was already well into high gear in the 1920 s and it only grew bigger over the succeeding decades but famous figures from popular music the cinema or the theatre weren t commonly regarded as serious personifications in highbrow art forms like opera poetry or drama in the early 1950 s the original new york school poets john ashbery frank o hara kenneth koch james schuyler barbara guest who of course weren t known as that then and certainly didn t think of themselves as a movement at the time were experimenting with form and seeking new strategies to express the meaning of their time as gay writers in the immediate post war period o hara ashbery and schuyler not to speak of edward field allen ginsberg paul goodman robert duncan jack spicer john wieners jonathan williams and james merrill to name a handful they were seeking to express themselves using either older traditional structures and themes or by adapting exotic european models or simply by trying something new o hara a lyricist a social creature voluble and daring ventured to declare his homosexual nature directly through his poetry trained in traditional literary styles and models he won the hopwood award at the university of michigan as a graduate student in the m a program before moving to new york in 1951 he was attracted to the revolutionary writings of the french surrealists as well as to mallarmé apollinaire reverdy the early soviet russians especially mayakovsky and was strongly influenced as well by the new painting of the period abstract expressionism etc also particularly he was moved by cinema and was keenly aware of the relationship between the cultural counter currents and the the ways that movies might mirror or inspire changes in the zeitgeist as a progenitor of a rising gay consciousness he was acutely sensitive to the subtle revelations of behavior and coded cues that might be revealed on the silver screen gays had traditionally enjoyed the ironic privilege of identifying with both the male and female protagonists with the femme fatale stereotype who draws men to her sexuality like a moth to the flame as well as the male heart throb who functions in both genders dimensions at once in the case of james dean the sexual ambiguity of his underground reputation did nothing to discourage this kind of fantasy projection during 1955 o hara had spent a good deal of mental energy meditating about the persona dean portrayed in east of eden it wasn t simply that dean was gorgeously endowed with a photogenic face and a rustic lyrical almost balletic physical grace o hara saw aspects of his own emotional development in cal s dean s intuition of his own difference a metaphor for o hara s homosexual awakening with associated guilt and confusion o hara saw in the narrative a psycho drama of his own emotional history and when dean was killed he responded predictably by attempting to address the tragedy as a personal loss not merely as a private projection but as an allegory for society s condemnation of homosexuality with dean as the symbolic martyr to the cause of sexual emancipation it didn t matter that dean mightn t have been a full fledged homosexual what mattered was how o hara felt about him inspired by the death o hara re read milton s lycida s tennyson s in memoriam and shelley s mourn not for adonais as warm ups for a serious attempt at an elegy on the late young actor s demise the poem o hara eventually completed has entered the canon of post war american verse as an artifact in its own right o hara s own tragic and bizarre death run over by a dune buggy on the beach at night 7 24 5 66 enhances the poem s interest in retrospect an ironic parallel for james dean welcome me if you will as the ambassador of a hatred who knows its cause and does not envy you your whim of ending him for a young actor i am begging peace gods alone in the empty streets of new york i am its dirty feet and head and he is dead he has banged into your wall of air your hubris racing towards your heights and you have cut him from your table which is built how unfairly for us not on trees but on clouds i speak as one whose filth is like his own of pride and speed and your terrible example nearer than the siren s speech a spirit eager for the punishment which is your only recognition peace to be true to a city of rats and to love the envy of the dreary smudged mouthers of an arcane dejection smoldering quietly in the perception of hopelessness and scandal at unnatural vigor their dreams are their own as are the toilets of a great railway terminal and the sequins of a very small very fat eyelid i take this for myself and you take up the thread of my life between your teeth tin thread and tarnished with abuse you still shall hear as long as the beast in me maintains its taciturn power to close my lids in tears and my loins move yet in the ennobling pursuit of all the worlds you have left me alone in and would be the dolorous distraction from while you summon your army of anguishes which is a million hooting blood vessels on the eyes and in the ears at the instant before death and the menials who surrounded him critically langorously waiting for a final impertinence to rebel and enslave him starlets and other glittering things in the hog wallow lunging mireward in their inane moth like adoration of niggardly cares and stagnant respects paid themselves you spared as a hospital preserves its orderlies are these your latter day saints these unctuous starers muscular somnambulists these stages for which no word s been written hollow enough these exhibitionists in well veiled booths these navel suckers is it true that you high ones celebrated among amorous flies hated the prodigy and invention of his nerves to withhold your light from painstaking paths your love should be difficult as his was hard nostrils of pain down avenues of luminous spit globes breathe in the fragrance of his innocent flesh like smoke the temporary lift the post cancer excitement of vile manners and veal thin lips obscure in the carelessness of your scissors men cry from the grave while they still live and now i am this dead man s voice stammering a little in the earth i take up the nourishment of his pale green eyes out of which i shall prevent flowers from growing your flowers march 1956 poetry magazine in searching for metaphors for his sardonic smoldering indignation against the generalized prejudice of the cultural machines of taste and permitted behaviors o hara extemporizes a collective persecution originating in a kind of hollywood of the gods all the machinery of production executives publicity departments gossip columnists fellow aspirants and groupies and parasites to fame and talent and imagines that he is this dead man s voice from the grave a little in the earth who will prevent flowers from growing their flowers as a plateau in the historical progression of literary archetypes it s probably among the very earliest examples of the use of a modern public media figure one might have imagined that george gershwyn or dylan thomas or some similarly early casualty could have inspired some of the same kind of classical martyrdom but dean wasn t just a talented actor he represented the struggle of a whole society to come to terms with some of its biggest demons the exploitation and debasement of talent the relentless inquisitiveness into privacy the corruption of innocence the ephemeral and empty fruits of success youth identified with him as an ambassador of its own adolescent frustrations and thwarted desires the poem s openly fatalistic petulant depressed mood struck a new chord in o hara s poetry one which would come to seem fami...