February « 2013 « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

February, 2013

Examples of adaptability

Lovely, cool day today. Sunny and clear and a high of 52. Winter, such as it has been, is on notice. We’re preparing to move toward spring. Oh, sure, there will be one or two chilly revolts between here and there, but the corner is in view and we’ll soon round it, and look to find another beautiful spring waiting on us.

Everything will go according to plan: the blooms, the longer sunshine in the afternoon and then the warm days and cool evenings. About that same time will come the leaves, sprigs at first, and then dots and finally, suddenly, that one day when your eyes are overwhelmed by the verdancy.

The leaves!

And then, almost as quickly, your brain will get used to it.

There are the leaves.

The mind is amazingly adaptable like that.

Class today was marred today by a technical problem. I could not show the videos I wanted to show for news critiquing purposes. I will show them Wednesday. Problem solved! Adaptability!

Things to read: Budget outlook worries state legislators :

A decision by Alabama voters to transfer $437 million from savings to fix the General Fund over three years may not be enough to help state agencies that provide programs affecting every state resident.

According to the Associated Press, legislators are worried that the programs could end up with less money for operations in the coming fiscal year.

I, for one, am shocked by this shocking revelation, which finds us all shocked by shocking it is.

Here’s what the state’s elected officials said before they asked primary voters, not the general ballot, for permission to raid the trust fund to pay standard bills:

Gov. Robert Bentley and legislative leaders said Tuesday they are committed to paying back the money if Alabama voters agree to take more than $437 million from a state trust fund and use it to prevent huge cuts in spending on state programs for three years.

Bentley said the commitment should help garner more votes for the proposed constitutional amendment, which is the only thing on the statewide ballot Sept. 18.

So here we are today, probably a few days from the first state legislative vote that would pay that fund back, but:

State agencies that provide programs affecting every Alabama resident could end up with less money for operations in the coming fiscal year even though voters approved shifting $437 million from savings to shore up the beleaguered General Fund over three years.

[…]

(L)egislative leaders said the outlook is troubling despite the extra money provided by voters. State agencies have been asked to prepare operating plans based on budget cuts of 5 percent to 10 percent for the new fiscal year.

Coupons for everyone, then.

Mobile couponing is set to be the next big thing:

The rapidly expanding adoption of mobile couponing is poised to become a major challenge to one of the most profitable and important revenue streams remaining for newspapers: preprint advertising circulars.

[…]

(A)s consumers and marketers rapidly embrace the power of mobile phones to deliver the right deal at the right place and time to exactly the right customer. While only 6.0% of mobile phone owners used mobile coupons in 2012, the number rose to 16.3% in 2012 and is projected to leap to 24.3% by 2014, according to eMarketer, an independent research company.

Who wanted Oreos during the Super ~~Bowl~~ Blackout?:

When a power outage at the Superdome in New Orleans stopped the game between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers for an epic 34 minutes, Oreo’s team took action and posted a simple ad that was retweeted, or shared, more than 14,500 times on Twitter. The message: “Power Out? No Problem” accompanied with a picture of a cookie with the line “You can still dunk in the dark.” How did 360i –the agency responsible for the ad– do it so quickly?

[…]

Oreo’s instant Twitter ad stood out on a night when 30-second ads on TV cost $3.8 million. It helped demonstrate the power of ingenuity over money, and social media over traditional forms. It is likely part of a coming wave of real-time advertising that reacts, like a political campaign war room, to real-time events.

This is going to be great. A clever turn of words, the almost just-right photograph filtering through your various media streams, and all of it precipitated by some external event.

And then it will be clunky. Somewhere it will get out of control. (Some agency is bound to overreach.) And, pretty quickly, we’ll imagine that its always been just like this.

I think this means that more and more of those agency assets become in-house products.

The little boy in Midland is safe, after a week in captivity, being rescued at about 3:12 p.m. today:

4:36 p.m. Law enforcement officials confirm Dykes is dead but declined to say whether they shot him or if he shot himself. Dykes was seen with a gun in his hand, Richardson said.

4:30 p.m. Steve Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of FBI’s Mobile office said that at 3:12 p.m, the FBI safely recovered the child. He said that within the the past 24 hours negotiations deteriorated, and fearing the child was in imminent danger, agents entered the bunker.

That brave little boy turns six this week. Tonight he’s playing with his family again. Follow excellent coverage here.

Why government needs watchdogs: Ruling to open DCS records a victory for children. That’s in Tennessee, where the state was trying to block a big records release when it comes to child deaths under the observation of the state Department of Children’s Services. Victory, indeed.

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3
Feb 13

Paul Harvey, FFA, Dodge win the Super Bowl

Maybe I’m aging out of the demographic. Maybe a lot of sponsors should demand their money back. Either way it seemed that with costs ranging from $3.8 to $4 million per 30-second spot, the value seemed to be lacking.

Unless you look at all of them as regressions, then even some of the average spots might get some Monday replays. For once the game was compelling, and you could actually leave the room during the breaks. In hours of programming, only spot one stood out.

Blake Harris wrote “So the only time all night the room has been totally silent has been during the Paul Harvey commercial. Everyone was glued to tv.”

You could write an essay why. Some obvious points — Paul Harvey, a way of life, a lack of shrill Madison Avenue attitude and agriculture — jump out.

Paul Harvey was the consensus best broadcaster in the business for generations. There’s not much argument on this, nor should there be. The industry won’t allow anyone like him again, let alone better than him. A statement like that owes a lot to his longevity and his staff, but the man had a voice and an intriguing pace. He had a touch with a microphone and everyone attached to his programming had a deft feel for a central element of society.

And maybe those times have changed. Demographies are always changing, improving and evolving. Maybe the people that could identify with Harvey are just living quietly and being drowned out by the morass of mass media. Maybe there’s a lifestyle of quiet humility and moral rectitude that is just beneath the surface. Maybe the spot appeals to a generational nostalgia for which we long. Maybe that’s gone forever. None of these are particularly true over another. All of those things — celebrated in a spot like that, by a man like that — still exist. They’re just a little harder to see because of all the other noise.

You’ve watched commercials, seen ads, felt the highs and lows of every medium. You’ve seen the Super Bowl spots. Reduce any of these things to their own elements. Make them stand alone, apart, from their advertising counterparts. They can be absurd, necessary of course, but absurd. Take your financial advice from a talking baby. Choose your insurance because an actor is pretending to be snow on a roof. Consider every ad produced since “Sex sells” became the first rule of the creative industry. There’s not much else to say about Madison Avenue after that. Perhaps an ad not designed to shock or titillate is actually a winner

Not to talk about that ad frame for frame, but that long, wide, bleak shot of that Angus at the beginning said so much about what you were about to experience. Paul Harvey was talking to the 1978 National FFA Convention in Kansas City in that speech, extolling the virtues of a way of life that, as a society, we’ve almost forgotten because most of us have never known it personally. Because of economic turns and technology and the postal system and education and all manner of things the farm has typically become a big corporate organization. There are less people doing the hard work to keep us fed, even as the production is increasing.

When Paul Harvey made that speech in 1978 the national numbers were:

Total population: 227,020,000
Farm population: 6,051,000
Farmers 3.4% of labor force
Number of farms: 2,439,510

Things were changing awfully fast. Still are, in many respects. These days only 1.96 million people in the U.S. are farmers or working directly in the agricultural industry whereas the nation is filled with an estimated 315,268,206 people as of this writing.

When I was in the FFA — I had the pleasure of attending five national conventions and served as a state officer in the Alabama FFA Association — the stat in use was that two percent of Americans were farmers. That percentage continues to decline, making a narrow part of the hourglass ever more slender.

There’s a movement afoot, the locavore movement, people that aspire to eat local produce, which would naturally promote a simpler example of farm economics. It must be serious because we’ve mangled words to create a new title for them within the language. Maybe a quiet shift is coming. Maybe there’s just a longing for a more romanticized time. Maybe it is just a great spot, filled with both nostalgia and truth.

Ultimately you take two iconic pieces of Americana, Paul Harvey and the men and women on the farm. (Yes, the spot needed migrant workers.) Put them in a quiet presentation that belies every other spot running against it with a tone that didn’t need to be crafted by a skyscraper executive* and you’ll beat a GoDaddy commercial every time. A Wall Street Journal blog has already called it “The Great American Super Bowl Commercial.”

Put together components that bespeak of a certain quite nobility, and you’ll get that.

Ram is raising $1 million for the National FFA Organization. Here’s how you can contribute. You can support them directly, too.

*Indeed, the Super Bowl spot was actually an updated version of this YouTube video that was uploaded in 2011:

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2
Feb 13

Just relaxing

football / Friday / music / recipes / video / YouTube Cover Theater — Comments Off
1
Feb 13

A recipe, a grand football joke and music

I made dinner last night, a new recipe for us, and very occasionally I share those here. So here’s the recipe.

My dinner started off with a chickpea salad with a homemade dressing. Make the dressing first:

1/2 cup – fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup – generic mild red wine vinegar
3 cloves – garlic
1 teaspoon – kosher salt
fresh black pepper

Mince the garlic cloves. Mix the liquids with the garlic. Add the salt and pepper. While that rests, put together your salad:

1 can – chickpeas/garbanzo beans
1 – large cucumber
1 tray – of grape tomatoes
1/4 cup – Athenos Garlic and Herb Feta cheese
1/4 cup – red onion
Fresh pepper

Quarter the cucumber. You should get around three cups. Halve the tomatoes, which should turn into about two cups. Rinse and add the chickpeas. Pour in the crumbled feta and diced onions. When ready to serve, strain any stray bits of garlic from the dressing and then pour into the salad, tossing to cover everything.

The main dish was ravioli with arugula and romano cheese:

1 pound – fresh or frozen cheese ravioli
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon – kosher salt
1/4 cup – extra-virgin olive oil
2 – shallots
3 tablespoons – red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon – honey Dijon mustard
3 cups – arugula (It’s a vegetable.)
Pepper to taste

Boil a pot of water while mashing your garlic (over salt) into smithereens, making a nice past-like substance. Drop the ravioli in your pot and stir. Let them boil until they float.

Pour your oil into a small skillet over medium. Add in your new garlic paste and diced shallots. Brown that mixture, which should be about two or three minutes. Then pour over it your vinegar, mustard and fresh pepper. Remove quickly from the heat.

Your ravioli is probably done by now. Drain that. Put it in a bowl, pour in the skillet’s contents and toss with your arugula. This is where your pecorino or parmesan goes. Serve hot. Enjoy a reasonably healthy meal.

Every so often I find something online and think “This, beyond the obvious military and financial and communication purposes, is what the web was made for.”

This is not that, but APAAWWWLLLLO 13 is worth seeing.

As has been correctly pointed out in the comments at SB Nation, Ken Mattingly, so ably played by Gary Sinise, is an Auburn man, and thus should not be cheering. Everything else feels wholly correct, however.

Naturally Forrest Gump is driving the thing.

YouTube Cover Theater: We find covers online and allow the talent of undiscovered folks playing music in their bedrooms and living rooms and kitchens to shine through. It is like every third show on network television, but without the more annoying parts.

Today’s featured covered artist(s) are the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. If you don’t understand their relative importance, open another tab in your browser and do a bit of Googling as these videos play.

First, here’s an older gentleman playing through a ceramic tunnel into the most acoustically vibrant church designed in the galaxy singing American Dream:

Mr. Bojangles:

OK, so this guy is singing this to his grandmother on her 80th birthday at her request. Automatic entry:

Two of these songs were written by Rodney Crowell, so I guess next week we’ll have to feature covers of songs he performed.

I like, even more than covers, on-stage collaboration. Here’s Nitty Gritty Dirty Band, Allison Kraus and others covering a Johnny Russell classic:

This became way more country-folk than I’d intended when I started. Enjoy the arugula!