The big cultural event of the spring at Samford is Step Sing, the choreographed, team-based, song and dance revue put on by the Greeks, independent groups and who knows whom else. I learned today that there was once a professors’ group. I suspect there’s probably enough interest in creating a local alumni group. I say local because this is a seriously orchestrated event. They put in about 40 hours of rehearsals for the three days of shows. It eats into everything.
One of the ancillary aspects of Step Sing is the banner drop. There are 14 groups performing this year. I know this because there are 14 banners now on display in the Caf. Everything is supposed to be kept strictly confidential until the banners are unveiled, and then the real anticipation for the shows begins. Here are two of the banners:
More later this week.
I say Step Sing eats into everything. The only thing big enough to eat Step Sing is winter weather. And so it was, that on the sixth day of February, and for the fifth time in just the second week of the term, we’ve had campus closed.
So I went home. Which was good, because we had to be in Atlanta tonight. There was a play:
Here is the curtain call:
That show isn’t for everyone, but if you like your satire acerbic and irreverent, well you might find a place in that show.
Things to read … because reading is for everyone.
This story should really be titled “Russia: Our shower surveillance says the hotel rooms are fine.” Russian Officials Fire Back at Olympic Critics
If you were wondering about J.C. Penney’s Super Bowl adventures, here’s an explanation. How JC Penney Accidentally Won the Super Bowl:
But here’s the kicker: It never even occurred to the company or its agencies that people would accuse them of staging a hack — or, for that matter, being drunk. In reality, the tweets were part of JCPenney’s ongoing campaign for the Olympics, which involves promoting its special Go Team USA mittens. The original plan for the Super Bowl was to tweet a stream of these misspelled, clumsy tweets through the big game and then reveal the #tweetingwithmittens hashtag at the end.
If you believe this telling — which has some depth to it — then you have to acknowledge that what really happened here was J.C. Penney was more or less very lucky with an incredible unsound strategy.
You’re going to run a series of bad tweets for a few hours and then tell the joke? There were 25 million tweets during the game, which is to say the firehose was turned on full bore. And you’re going to run a joke for three hours in an environment that is guaranteed to have an audience with an attention span of Dory the Pacific regal blue tang? At best you get ignored and forgotten. At worst people assume, well, what they assumed.
J.C. Penney will take all of the publicity they can get, but the point is this was a deeply flawed plan.
Quick ones:
More of … something … tomorrow.
