Where Do Philadelphia Eagles Fans Come From? Part 1of5

The Quick Answer: a 25 cent football helmet machine.

The Long Answer: From years of agonizing ups and downs
where loyalty is tested in the hell fires that spawned
little annoying demons of silver/blue, red/blue, and red/orange.

Growing up in Las Vegas, the "Entertainment Capital of the World", in the late 70's was about as entertaining as watching an off-broadway stage play starring Tony Danza in drag. (Which I think actually ran at the Riviera for a while). But like all desert dwelling kids with nothing to do, I found ways to pass the time.

Like other kids, I had a paper route and blew most of that money on Asteroids,
Space Invaders, and Pinball. I always saved a couple bucks for football cards
(Topps or Fleer chipboard gum-stained variety - we didn't have 'upper deck'
glossy cards back then)and our neighborhood version of childhood gambling:
NFL Football helmets. Yep, thats right, put a quarter in and DAMN if you didn't
get another lame Baltimore Colts or New England Patriots (2-14 that year) helmet!
EVERY quarter was a crap shoot.

I admit, at the point of near-vomiting, I was a bit of a front-runner at 11 and I think the winningest team of the day was the Steelers. I knew nothing about them, I just knew they recently beat the Los Angeles Rams on TV and that was good enough for me. I put a quarter in the NFL Helmet lotto dispenser and instead of a black and gold helmet, out came a Green helmet with silver wings on each side. I thought it was very cool looking. I kept it, despite wanting to trade it at first, and through a little magazine called "Football Digest" (We didn't have ESPN or nfl.com back in those days) I discovered that this was the Philadelphia Eagles, and with a "superback" named Wilbert Montgomery, was a serious up-and-comer in the NFL.

I read anything I could find about them, magazines, football stats from the backs of my Topps, chipboard, gum-stained cards, anything. The next season, I was going to watch for this team.
It just so happened that the season I chose to start following the birds was the 1980 football season. For a little 11 year old front runner, the timing couldn't have been better. I only saw one televised game in Las Vegas that year, Eagles vs Saints (of course we didn't have DirectTV back then). Which was an Eagle blowout. This Eagle team went on to a 12-4 record and I watched them destroy the only team I truly hated in the NFL at the time: The Dallas Cowboys. This new favorite team went to the Superbowl the first season I followed them. It was fate. I'm sure.

I began to trade my worthless Franco Harris, Stallworth, and Bradshaw cards
for the more valuable (in my mind) Jaworski, Carmichael, and Montgomery cards
(which I still have today). I couldn't wait for the Superbowl, my best friend
at the time was (and still is) an avid Raiders fan. He couldn't believe that
I was turning on him and his team to support the Eagles! He was still ticked
off at the Eagles because earlier that year Philadelphia played Oakland and
beat them 10-6.
Coming into this Superbowl game, the Raiders were the "underdogs"
(a new term to me that I would NEVER forget in the subsequent Eagle seasons).
I was sure that my new favorite team was guaranteed a Super Bowl victory
over the evil black jerseyed Raiders!

Then, reality set in, the game started, Rod Martin of the Raiders was EVERYwhere,
he intercepted so many of Jaworski's passes that I think he started calling for
"fair catch" every time Jaworski dropped back to pass (a la John McKay of the Buccaneers). It was awful. We managed 1 touchdown to Keith Krepfle, not even Montgomery or Carmichael! and one Tony Franklin field goal. Despite the
touchdown cutting the Raiders' lead to only 2 touchdowns (24-10)
our defense: Bill Bergey, John Bunting, Randy Logan, etc.
just couldn't stop Pumpkin-head Plunkett and his offense from getting
into field goal range. They scored the final points of the game bring
the final score to 27-10.

At the end of it, I confess, I was 12 years old and crying like a baby. I don't know why. As a 12 year old boy, I knew that crying was evil and make-fun worthy by every OTHER 12 year old boy, but I couldn't help myself. I sensed a great disappointment of missed opportunity. In fact, prior to that game I NEVER had any emotional attachment to any team besides maybe the little church soccer teams I played for, this was truly something I'd never felt before.

In hindsight, I believe that this new found 'attachment' was what made me a true Eagles fan. Even though I had never set foot in Philadelphia and was trapped in a mob-infested desert hell-hole in Nevada: I was still emotionally attached to this football team on the other side of the Earth.
I somehow, came to identify with a professional team, 'bled green' with, if you will, and Dick Vermeil was my new hero and my destiny as an Eagles fan would forever be cemented, despite that loss to the Raiders in Superbowl XV.

Part 1 ends with the Eagles reaching the Superbowl, part 2 will catalogue the excruciating tests of loyalty I was soon to face as a new-born Eagles supporter.

Hope in a Crazy World

This is a video with my nephew and niece performing the skit for Lifehouse "Everything". I called it "Hope in a Crazy World" because that seems to be what the message is about.

Newsmax Carpet Bombers of Popups in Your Browser

I've just had a rather annoying experience with a conservative news site called "Newsmax". I was so frustrated that I wrote a letter to the editor. Hopefully, dude responds so I can post that as well.

I just signed up for the RSS feed for Newsmax, after having turned away from your website a couple years ago.
Back then, I would have my email box bombarded with emails from Newsmax selling all kinds of strange things. Finally, I just couldn't take it anymore and I unsubscribed (repeatedly) from those continual emails, and after much effort, I was free. Now I've moved on to Web 2.0 and have embraced the idea of 'news digest' via an RSS reader...BRILLIANT! I thought. And I immediately sought out conservative news sources to balance the liberal CNN's, Yahoo's, and Reuters of the world. I first went to "Drudge Report". I love what the site has to say, but they may as well just print that out on a Guttenberg press, as they do not offer ANY option to subscribe via RSS. (they are SO 2003!) then, silly and giddy as I was in my new found technology, I returned to Newsmax, and you fine folks had an RSS feed...YAHOO! literally, yahoo...shouts of glee, not the liberal dotcom organization.
Anyhow, here is where my rant to the editor all goes to hell in a hand basket. I sign up with your RSS and do you want to know what happens!? OK I'll tell you since you asked, EVERY time I click on a news headline from my RSS feeder, I AM CARPET BOMBED BY POPUPS!!! Holy crap!? I am amazed that ANYbody besides PORN sites actually still uses carpet bombing popups...or popups at ALL! As I began to write this, LITERALLY, I was continually interrupted with popups that tried to sell me books about heart disease and some other weird crap that you guys tried to sell me through email 5 years ago! Now, to leave this lengthy letter, I had to give you my email address again, how much do you want to bet, Mr. Editor, that I start getting bombarded again with ridiculous ad emails from Newsmax again!? How much? Yeah, you're right. Its a sucker bet. I'll be posting this on my blog. I hope you plan to respond to this so I can post your response, in all conservative fairness, as well.

Love you guys, Having fun at camp.

your son

Andrew Hamilton
Hamilton International Productions

Going to Build a Bear at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas

Alright alright I know. I'm a local, been in Vegas my whole life. So what on earth am I doing at Planet Hollywood? Shakabra. Actually, I sucked it up and we took our little 3 year old Joshua to build his own little bear. There are several steps, each with their own little video. I wanted to edit them all together, since thats what I do, but if I did that, it would never get done, so here it is, piece by piece at a timer!

This video is step 1. He had to pick the bear:

Intelligent Design gets 'Expelled' - Opinion

Intelligent Design gets 'Expelled' - Opinion

HamiltonfamilyLV

Learn how to draw cartoons, comics, and anime at Sketchfu!

Kindergarten Graduation Video

This is a fun Kindergarten graduation that we filmed a while back.