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2
Jul 11

Stuff and things

Took the day off the bike. After 29 miles and change — I said somewhere that it was 23, but after re-examining the map I discovered an error — we decided to rest today.

So we rested today.

And so it was that we settled in on the sofa to watch a few things on Netflix, only to discover that the items we’d put in our queue are no longer streaming. It’s like standing in line for a show only to get to the window to discover the room is sold out. You can’t put any more importance on it than that, really. This is a television show we now can’t watch immediately. It is hardly a real problem.

But still, Netflix, can’t you send an Email that says “Hey, we noticed some of the things in your queue are about to be removed from rotation”? Also, improve the user interface. And let me queue things from the television. But otherwise you’re a brilliant service in every way.

We watched other things instead.

Never mentioned, and I’ve meant to two or three times, the fine Sherlock Holmes series from the BBC I watched a week or so ago on Netflix. The first season was only three episodes, but they were great television. It is a modern adaptation of Holmes, who is some sort of forensic pathologist who admits he’s a sociopath in a completely invented job. His fancy title is “detective consultant,” but the real job is “bailing out the police.” His Watson is a veteran of Afghanistan and could be a far more interesting character than his interesting partner. There’s one layer to Holmes; there’s a lot of brooding in Watson.

And the dialog.

Everything is just so crisp.

Is it a function of the characters? Unusually talented writers? Television that doesn’t feel compelled to distill their product to the lowest common denominator?

Great show. I’m ready for the second season.

Sports. The Maple Street Auburn magazine has arrived. It is do on magazine racks and at fine booksellers in a few more days. Pre-order your copy now.

I got one early because I have a piece in the magazine. This is the first year Maple Street has run a pub on Auburn. They reached out to my friend Jay Coulter to edit the magazine. I met Jay years ago when I was at al.com and he joined me for regular sports podcasts. Jay asked me to write a story and then he had to step down from the project for other obligations.

Enter my friend Jeremy Henderson. He took over as editor and he (and Coulter before him) assembled a great staff and they produced a fine magazine fan boys can’t help but love. And, also, I’m in it:

Forty years is a long time to be a sports hero. Pat Sullivan has been doing this for a long time, and does it with the grace and ease of a Southern gentleman.

If you haven’t been following his career: after his most recent stop at Auburn as a quarterbacks coach (1986-1991) he spent five years at TCU as the head coach, seven seasons as the offensive coordinator at UAB and has been the head coach at Samford University in Birmingham for the last five seasons. Now, at 61-years-young, his passion for the game is as strong is ever. His grip is still like stone.

[…]

Sullivan looks at his career through those relationships he’s cultivated along the way. His Heisman Trophy experience was no different.

Back in those days the announcement came as a halftime feature during the Georgia-Georgia Tech game. Instead of being on the front row in New York, Sullivan was in Auburn.

“We were actually at practice that day because we had Alabama on Saturday. My parents had come down to hear the announcement … Our TV went on the blink so we had to go rent a room at the Heart of Auburn. We watched it on TV just like everybody else,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan, perhaps the last Heisman Trophy winner to stay at the Heart of Auburn, says his room number has been lost to history. There are plenty of clear memories from the night, though.

Be sure to check out the magazine, on shelves July 19th.

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23
Jun 11

“You gettin’ wet, ain’t ya?”

“Watch out for storms,” she said.

This is good advice. Useless, but good.

I’m on my bike, about 14 miles into the ride when the sprinkling started. Oh, I’d watched out for the storms, but this did me no good. My certainty of the existence of rain did not dissuade it from falling upon me. My awareness of the clouds to my left did not preclude precipitation.

There was a gas station, though, where I managed to take refuge when the wet stuff really started falling. We need the rain so bad I would have stayed under there for a long time, but I was back on the road again in half an hour.

In that time I had two great conversations, each centering around my predicament. One guy asked how far I had to go. When I told him he just laughed. Another man asked if I was getting wet.

No sir, that’s why I’m standing under the awning.

It reminded me of the time in 1994 — during the LSU vs Auburn game*, in fact — that I had a flat tire. My jack slipped and I had to try to pick up the corner of my old Buick by my shoulder. This guy walked by and asked “Have a flat?”

No, I just rotate my tires every 50,000 miles no matter where I am.

You know, it might have been the same guy.

So the rain stopped, my ride continued. And then the rain returned for about 45 seconds. I pedaled on. Stopped at my pre-arranged place to pick up a snack and some replacement beverages. And off I went for the second half of my ride. This is an area I’ve only ridden twice before, so I’m only starting to get comfortable in the hills. I struggle my way through until it is time for a snack … and realize I can’t open the packaging from the bike. So I stop. Still can’t open it. Poke it with a stick, no luck. Find a sharp rock, and suddenly I’m a prehistoric man in sweaty raglan.

Eat my nuts and honey snack, get back on my bike and realize one of my water bottles is missing. Well.

So I backtrack. I go all the way down one road with no luck. Down a huge hill and another road with no sight of the gray and yellow bottle. And then down a third stretch of asphalt.

Where I find it sitting next to a bridge. I had squarely hit the rim-wrecking pothole on the bridge and the bottle fell out of the cage. Probably I was grunting too hard to hear it land.

Now which way? I didn’t want to go up that huge hill again, and it felt as if I hadn’t reached the mid-point so I called an audible and worked my way back home. When I got in and looked at the altered route I found it was a 41 mile day.

Didn’t feel nearly as miserable as I did from our 41 mile trek last weekend. That’s improvement.

And I was only heckled twice, so clearly I’m doing something right.

Farmer’s market this afternoon, where we bought cantaloupe, watermelon, corn (from a different grower), peaches, squash and tomatoes.

I sound so healthy, don’t I? (We had cookies for dessert tonight.)

Random things: Reporters arrested for … reporting. That’s going to court with a great hue and cry.

Publishers to universities: We aren’t the bad guys. Another tough spot for everyone that devolves to control, and impressive markups.

What’s eating college radio? Bottom line issues, apparently, though we’ve been discussing it and the prevailing opinion among WEGL-alumni is that all the good ones graduated. (And I did, too.)

Dumb commercial of the night:

* This is what I missed while struggling with my car. I remember it because the seven turnovers to win was quite ridiculous. My senior year in high school, Auburn was as out of that game as you could be when I blew my tire. By the time I got back to the radio the game was over and they’d done the improbable, and thank you Curley Hallman.

Is it football season yet?

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17
May 11

Waiting for 4.0

That tree will haunt your dreams. I want to go back to Big Lots, buy it and bury it so it doesn’t frighten little children.

Would anyone like to hang it, instead? Or maybe put it in a lake as a fish reef?

Pedaled around the southern part of town today. Again it was very cool. The high today was 68 degrees. I set out down the hill of death and up the two hills of shame, took a right at the light and raced past the back of the subdivision. Turned right, passed a school, up two huge hills where I geared up as far as I could and still had to just put my head down, grit my teeth and make mind-deals. Just 20 more strokes and you’ll be there. OK, five more.

Crossed the interstate on the narrowest overpass in town, dodged traffic on the bypass and then cruised through one of the great old neighborhoods. When I made it to campus I turned around, cruised the neighborhood the other direction, got caught by a bunch of buses on the bypass and then made it home feeling strong.

Later I went back downtown to see about a watch. The crystal needs replacing, and the jeweler at Ware’s with whom I spoke could not see through the scuffs to read who made the watch.

It’s a Fossil.

“Oh,” she said shaking her head sadly. There’s bad news here. “Fossil doesn’t let us do any work on their watches. They have some sort of warranty deal, though.”

And then I asked the wrong question. Is that pretty much a standard thing? Would that be what the rest of the jewelers in town would say if I went asking?

“You could try Walmart, but we have some of the best jewelers in the state right here …”

Right. Well then.

She was happy to not help me, though, so there’s that.

So I went to the bike story, because I have this issue with gears and hoped someone would answer my question. But the answer was no better than what I’d read. Score one more for the Internet. Now if it would just get me up the hills a bit easier … (That’s web 4.0, I hear.)

Started watching The Pacific tonight. Made it through the first two discs, thanks to Netflix. We’ve seen Guadalcanal and Pavuvu. This was all promoted, when it debuted on HBO, as the Band of Brothers of the Pacific Theater. And the men that fought there have long had a legitimate claim that their stories have gone unnoticed through all the retellings of what happened in Europe.

The series, four episodes in, is fine. It is no Band of Brothers. I’ve seen that many more times and read Ambrose’s book that spawned the series and two memoirs (Dick Winters’ and Lynn Compton’s) around it. That story was much more about the camaraderie. I’ve only read one of the memoirs (Eugene Sledge’s) that was the source material for The Pacific, and will one day get around to Hugh Ambrose’s book. So far, this one is about the sun and palm trees and firefights at night and grim desperation in the daytime. But there are six more episodes to go, maybe it will get there.

The island hopping miseries are an interesting thing. Somehow you wonder if you’re getting the full story, but if you look around at enough perspectives you realize how this may have been a period of the deepest deprivations (from both sides) of man and maybe you don’t want to know every little terrible detail.

Finished an article I’ve been working on. The task was this: write a 2,000 catching-up-with profile. And the focal point gave me a lot of coachspeak and platitudes. Not that I blame him. The interview was fine — the coach is a very nice guy and has always been an accommodating gentleman — but coaches get in the habit of speaking like coaches. They’re always a little bit leary, because you never know who’ll read the thing. That just carries over, hopefully not at home, but whenever someone breaks out a recorder or a notepad.

So write 2,000 words on a series of humble “doing greats” and “we’re excited about the season” and “one game at a time” and “we see it as a business trip.” This took a bit of creativity.

I’d written about 2,200 words and then cut a few hundred, which just made the thing better. I wrote one ending, but decided against it, so it became the end of a section. And then, to finish the story, I wrote back to where the tale began.

Sent that off, it’ll be on shelves this summer, wrote this and now time for bed.

Oh, when I took out the garbage tonight I noticed I could see my breath. May in Alabama. It was 48 degrees.

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18
Apr 11

Random Mondayness

I interviewed a former Heisman trophy winner this morning. Had a very nice chat. When I type up the notes in the next few days I’ll give you a little more insight into the piece, which is a freelance article I’ve been asked to write for a summer publication. So come back for more details on that later.

Hint: It was not Gino Torretta. He had a similar outcome to his post-Heisman bowl game, however. Like Torretta, it happened in the Sugar Bowl.

Much of the rest of the day was spent making recruiting phone calls, reading and grading. These things have seemed to take over most everything lately. But that’s fine. I enjoy talking with prospective students, though I get a lot of machines and write a lot of email. I do love to read. And grading is … well … everyone needs to have things graded.

This evening I visited the Galleria for the first time in probably a year or more. On Twitter I wrote, “Places I’ve been less crowded than this mall: Nevada desert, Belizian rain forest, Alabama library, IRS parties.” It was amazing how dead most of the place was.

Just for context, I worked there for part of my senior year in high school. A classmate helped me land the easy job of selling coupon books in those little mid-mall kiosks. You don’t antagonize people, you wait patiently for them to come to you. And the hourly pay, for a high school student, was extravagant. (I think I was making about $9 an hour.) Anyway, one night while I was not selling coupon books to the random passers by, a famous Southern winter storm descended upon us. Everything closed up quickly. This was like that. (Incidentally, that particular night, there was no snow if I remember correctly.)

There was no bad weather tonight, either. Just the economy, the Internet and people tired of malls, apparently.

I went looking for clothes sales. Finding none, I also left the mall.

Speaking of mall culture … Who’s ready for a third in Bill & Ted’s storyline? Besides Keanu, I mean.

“When we last got together, part of it was that Bill and Ted were supposed to have written the song that saved the world, and it hasn’t happened. … So they’ve now become kind of possessed by trying to do that. Then there’s an element of time and they have to go back.”

Ghostbusters III doesn’t look like a bad idea in comparison, now, does it?

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29
Mar 11

Springtime

Now if it only felt like spring. It is cold, and this is no fun. The high was 58 and it dipped into the 40s, but this was the cold version of the low 40s.

Busy day today, class, the newspaper, radiation. Don’t panic. Your microwave, when it is cooking your television wrapped in aluminum foil, emits more bad stuff. Just don’t go outside and lick caterpillars and you should be fine.

I blame this guy, ousted state supreme court justice Roy Moore. He’s more radioactive than anything else in the air around here. Drummed off the bench because he misread the times in defying a court order, badly defeated twice for the GOP nomination for governor and now he’s considering running for president.

In one of my recent comps questions I was asked to design experiments that would help a potential candidate determine a.) if she should run and b.) how she should run. The only solution I did not include was “Float a trial balloon and read the comments.”

Here’s my favorite from that story, the easy majority of which are adamantly against our old friend Roy Moore running for president.

“Roy Moore will become the Shorty Price of presidential elections.”

Here’s longtime political reporter Bob Ingram, many years back now, reminding people of Shorty Price.

There’s a restaurant I occasion with a picture of Shorty Price hanging in the restroom. The guy was such a character that he probably would have appreciated that gesture.

Roy Moore is no Shorty Price, though.

In class today we heard a presentation on social media tools, which was nicely done by the students. I’m working on this and that, elsewhere. Trying to get my act together for the dissertation. I started recycling a bunch of old newsprint today, too. ANd the student-journalists are hard at work putting together their paper for the week. Hard to believe their year is almost over, they’ll only have four more issues after this paper.

Took part in a teleconference tonight with Public Square an online organization with the goal of fostering debate on political, legal and social issues. I mention this because I get to serve on the board of directors there. They are thoughtful people doing interesting work with big ideas. Also, the call was in high definition. I hadn’t realized that had become a necessary function of the conference calling business, but there it was, in beautiful bit rate. The sound effects are still pretty basic, though.

And then there’s this. I’m guessing it will be ugly for two days and then disappear for a long while. Then it will come back again with more ground-shaking, but plausibly odd assertions, which is all you need as evidence in the sporting world these days. We’ve seen these things before, you see.