A morning shoot and auditions in the studio this morning. And a Zoom meeting and a phone meeting and a canceled project, too. It left me just enough time to take a walk in the sunshine.
I made a new friend.
They’ll come right up to you if you take a little interest in them. They are used to attention and always hungry. Clearly. Look at him. Hasn’t eaten in days, poor guy.
Also took a few photographs that’ll wind up on the site at some point next week. Here’s a teaser.
We also lined up a podcast for next week, and scheduled some other projects so it was a fair Friday. And now we can turn to the weekend. But first …
Two shows to watch right here, a sports highlight program with a brand new anchor making his debut. Nice guy, always smartly dressed, and he did a fine job here.
The talk show is all about soccer. So much soccer. So much good soccer. And good soccer talk, too.
We sat on the deck for a bit this evening, under blankets. For as mild and warm as we’ve had it the last few days, we get more clouds and more cold coming next week. So that’s something.
Here are the sports shows from last night. First, the highlights from Sports Nite. Big stories are about postseason play in soccer. And basketball. Always basketball. Basketball never ends here. The sport needs a shot clock.
And here’s The Toss Up, which is where they talked about The Masters. A fun time was had by all.
Today I gave two tours. First time I’ve had guests in the building since, I don’t know, maybe February of last year. The first was for a young man who’ll be joining us as a freshman in the fall. The other is a guy who’ll be joining us for grad school. He is also from Alabama. Two new people from home in the same week.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the barbecue situation.
I have made a new look for the front page. I rather like it, and I think you will too. Just click the image below and, via the magic technology of hyperlinks, you will be effortlessly transported to it. Tell me what you think.
And then effortlessly transport yourself to the weekend. I’m starting mine relaxing on the deck. How you are beginning your weekend? You’ve earned it, after all. Enjoy it!
These are the shows the students produced last night.
This one took a little doing, but it came together in the end.
And the talk show followed. They found themselves in a tiny bit of a time crunch, but you’d never notice it here if I didn’t point it out to you, which is a great credit to the people you see in the program.
And some of that rolled into the rest of the night, which was the post-production meeting of which I was enthusiastic about last night. It made for a late night, but a useful one.
This morning it was back in the studio almost first-thing for another show. And then I ended the day in the control room while another show was being produced until 7:30 p.m. That means I was there until 7:30 on a Friday, but it also means students were working at their craft that, late, too. You surely can’t question their dedication when you see them doing that.
But now, finally, the weekend. May yours be all the things you’ve been looking forward to all week.
As promised some two weeks ago, there is a new look to the front page of this humble website. Here is a hint as to the current theme.
And you can see the whole presentation if you just click this little link. That’s from a little flowering tree in the backyard. In a few more weeks it will meet it’s full glory. But we’ll probably be featuring a different look by then.
Quite day today, for the most part. I worked on questions for an interview I recorded late this afternoon. The last official act of the week was editing it. I’ll publish the thing on Monday. It was pleasant. A thoroughly delightful chat with a delightful guy. And, like so much of life, there were few concrete answers. You know that going into a lot of things, it doesn’t ameliorate the feeling after the fact though. He said as much, at one point, too. Occupational hazard for him, you see. He’s spent his whole career in that world. He recounted a conversation he had when he was in college. A friend of his who was studying physics just couldn’t comprehend the inconclusive nature of the soft sciences. You could sum it up as ‘I could work a lifetime on a problem and not be able to see it through. Or know the result. Or know if I was correct.’
I guess we all make peace with some sort of limitations.
Or, maybe, if the idea of that makes you a little twitchy — as it does me — the limitation is misplaced. The journey is the destination and all that. I’m sure a great many books have been written about that approach for the goal- and the task-oriented. There’s a bookstore shelf full of those somewhere. Each with a less satisfying resolution than the last. They say things like, Sure you need provisions from the grocery store, but did you see those clouds in the sky? And have you ever really wondered how those things made it to the store and then found yourself at a working farm asking questions about the history of dairy farming? And why did you drive there, anyway? What does that say about us? That we are slaves to cars, the ultimate sign of freedom? And what of the lives you touched along the way?
Anyway, while it was a little perplexing from an issue-conflict-resolution perspective, it was a fine interview. I’ll put it here Monday.
We do have some sports videos for you. Students produced these last night and they were ready for you, piping hot and fresh, this morning. Highlights and updates, updates and highlights:
And if you want to hear people pick their favorite baseball teams as a pre-season analysis, then we’ve got you covered there, too.
I had a conversation about changing sports just to see how the strategy would change. What if you took two timeouts away from basketball? What if you really only played those last five minutes anyway? Say the XFL had the opportunity to really explore their rule changes before Covid came around, what does that do to your play calling? What would happen if the NCAA took a rooting financial interest in elevating women’s basketball and tried to make, you know, money off the thing? What would that look like? Suppose there weren’t end-of-inning resets for baserunners in baseball. What takes place then? Why not send the Detroit Tigers and the Pittsburgh Pirates down to AAA ball for a year, since they clearly aren’t playing well where they are?
(The answers are: The games would be 15 faster. The games would be 90 minutes shorter. It gets more aggressive. We may never find out because the NCAA is full of shortsighted leadership. Also, they’d pass the buck until they could claim the victory as their own, brought on solely and only because of their fearless leadership. You’d routinely have baseball games will final scores like 19-8, fewer utility infielders, more speed, larger pitching staffs and team psychologists to help ballplayers cope with it all. And who says the Tigers and Pirates aren’t already playing minor league ball?)
I had this conversation with some students who haven’t yet been bored enough to think up things like this. But there comes a day, some day when the only game they can watch are the Detroit Tigers … and they’re going to start thinking these things through.
But hopefully it won’t be on a weekend. A weekend! Which is upon us now! Have a delightful one!
My day started in the studio at about 9 a.m., with a show I can share with you on Monday. And it ended in the studio at almost 7 p.m. with another show that will see the light of day at some point in the next week or so. In between, many calls, many meetings.
Here are the shows the sports guys shot last night. Highlights, highlight and highlights:
And here’s the talk show. It’s March, it’s Indiana, they’re talking March Madness.
That show has added extra graphics and, this week, extra panelists. I am encouraging both for all sorts of reasons. The graphics, I know, will stick around. And hopefully the extra talking people will make some timely returns as well.
Tomorrow we’re returning to riding bikes outside. It’ll be the first time since December 11th. Ninety-eight days. There will also be Chick-fil-A, and chatting with some friends. And that’s not a bad half of a weekend. I’ll tell you about it Monday. Until then, have a great weekend yourself.
