My favorite meme of all time has become a campus group’s poster:
That, of course, is Joseph Ducreux, who was a French portrait painter at the court of Louis XVI and after the French Revolution. He liked physiognomy, assessing one’s personality by their facial expressions, hence his unorthodox portraiture, like this self-portait and, of course, the very famous Internet joke. You can’t even find the original set anymore, so buried are they amongst everyone’scontribution.
Two students showed this video in class today during a demonstration about advertising. The gasps from the rest of the class were great. See if you can figure out where this is going:
Happy birthday to The Birmingham News, which turned 124 today. This is the June 20, 1900, front page:
So the paper was 12 years old at the time. I haven’t seen any of the first volume’s front pages.
Advertising executives -– both marketers and their agency representatives -– continue to increase their optimism toward digital media options, and are beginning to swing toward it as more of a “branding” than a performance “option,” but there are some significant disconnects between the way they look at various digital media silos. While agency executives tend to be far more bullish on the overall use of digital media, marketers are much more optimistic about budgeting for social media.
The findings, which are part of new, detailed analysis coming out of Advertiser Perceptions’ Fall 2011 survey on ad executive attitudes and optimism about media, show the overall index for digital -– including online display, search and video advertising –- trending upward, but the sentiment appears to be driven primarily by agencies. That insight is interesting, because the bottom line of big agencies appears to be benefitting from their continuing shift toward a greater reliance on digital media, according to a Pivotal Research analysis released Monday (OMD, March 13).
“But there is a discrepancy in the way marketers and agencies are seeing it,” says Randy Cohen, a partner in AP — which produces an ongoing series of ad industry tracking studies under its Advertiser Intelligence Reports banner, including this one. “It’s a disconnect,” he says, adding, “But agencies tend to do what marketers want them to.”
If that’s the case, social media should be the primary beneficiary, according to Cohen, because marketer sentiment is building much more favorably toward social networks versus the rest of the digital mix.
Sat inside and watched the birds. Sneaked outside to watch the birds. Finally shook off the tired, not-quite-my-usual-self feeling.
It was a beautiful day. A great day for baseball. Auburn hosted Belmont for the second game of a three-game series this afternoon. The Tigers scored in the bottom of the first inning, and again in the third and fourth innings. Belmont touched the plate twice in the fifth inning and rallied in the top of the ninth. Auburn got out of a jam, and won the game 3-2 on a crisp double play.
Auburn only stranded four runners on base, a season low. I looked this up: The Tigers are getting on base, but not getting all the way around. They’re leaving 9.93 runners on base per game on the short season, including several 14 or 15 LOB games.
A Kentucky legislator is proposing to greatly expand the meaning of unlawful harassment, to include sending anyone a “comment, request, suggestion, or proposal” that is “filthy” or “indecent.”
[…]
Sending someone a “filthy” message with the intent to “annoy” is impolite, to be sure. But “good manners” has never been the standard for constitutional protection. If Kentucky were to pass HB 129 in anything like its current form, a court would surely strike it down as unconstitutionally over-broad.
Not to be outdone, Alabama lawmakers are proposing to criminalize a broad range of conduct (for adults as well as for kids) under the umbrella of “cyberbullying.” The prohibition would include sending or posting material with the intent to “annoy” or “alarm” someone, if it causes “substantial embarrassment or humiliation” in professional or academic circles. Conviction would carry misdemeanor criminal sanctions.
The bill contains no protective language for editorial commentary, nor does it afford any greater latitude for criticism of the performance of public officials. If House Bill 400 [sponsored by Rep. Paul DeMarco (R – Homewood)]or its Senate counterpart, SB 356 [sponsored by Sen. Cam Ward (R – Alabaster) and Sen. Phil Williams (R – Gadsden)], were to become law as introduced, a political candidate whose “substantially embarrassing” personal behavior was truthfully exposed on a news blog could seek criminal charges against the author. (That is, until a court threw out the law as unconstitutional, as undoubtedly would happen if a political commentator was prosecuted for disclosing “embarrassing” facts.)
Also, the bill seems to be lacking some key definitions which should give one pause.
Tablet fever will grip more than a third of all U.S. adults by 2016, according to Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps.
In a report released yesterday, Forrester upped its estimates for U.S. tablet ownership, now forecasting that 112.5 million adults, or 34 percent of the population, will own a tablet in another four years. If that prediction proves correct, it means the industry will sell almost 293 million tablets in the six years from 2010 to 2016.
The price point needs to come down, or a lot of those people will have vastly inferior tablets giving longing looks to people holding iPads.
This quiz is inspired by American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray’s new book, “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” which explores the unprecedented, class-based cultural gap in America. How culturally isolated are you? Answer these 20 questions to find out.
I happily answered enough questions to land right in the middle of everyone.
Shouldn’t this really be the scary day. The 13th is a 19th century conceit, but the Friday business goes back to The Canterbury Tales at least. So much of Chaucer is often forgotten. Friday is frequently seen as the beginning of a good thing.
Monday the 13th still offends the apostolic notion of completeness. And yet we’re all back at the office. Monday the 13th. That’s disconcerting. Imagine the marketing the Jason people could have had there.
Chaucer to Jason in under 45 words. And they said it couldn’t be done.
(The exception to this hasty Friday the 13 is a good day idea being if you are paying for a service. Think long and hard about tire rotation or a roof repair done on Friday. Those diligent and hardworking people could be distracted by thoughts of the weekend too.)
Monday the 13th is a good day here. A great day, even. They often are. Taught a class, answered a lot of questions, discussed resumes and style. Generally tried to be helpful. Wrapped up a few small projects. Got handed a few more. Great Monday. For a 13th, that is.
I love this. Some of our classrooms have old newspapers on display. Some of the newspapers are national, historical front pages. This one is from the first issue of the 1925 edition of the Howard Crimson. The paper was just 10 years old at the time when students were still studying on the old Eastlake campus. This was a front page ad. Imagine the scandal of such a notion!
They led fashion, they did not chase it. What a great ad. Someone should run a mini campaign in this still today, just to see how it stands out from the contemporary fare.
Blach’s was a family-owned department store chain founded in 1885 by German immigrant Julius Blach. At it’s peak in the 1960s and 1970s they had five stores. In 1987, Blach’s filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but the reorganization couldn’t revive the company and they closed for good that same year. The invaluable BhamWiki records:
During the 1945 printers’ strike, which stopped the publication of all three of Birmingham’s daily newspapers, WAPI-AM posted news stories in two of Blach’s windows, organized by various categories. The resulting crowds, according to Time magazine, “all but blocked traffic past the store.”
The Blach’s building started as the Hood, built in 1890 to serve as the storefront for the Hood-Yielding General Merchandise Store. In 1910 it was converted into the 100-room Bencor Hotel and in 1935 it took the Blach name.
Here’s a view from just a few years after that ad. And this is it today:
It sat stagnant for much of the time after bankruptcy and was renovated in 2007, before the bank foreclosed in 2009. Now you can rent a loft there, apparently with the original hardwood.
Do you know what’s great about 100-year-old hardwood? No splinters! Makes every Monday better.
Some of the awards floating around in the Crimson office. We have another room in another building with quite a few awards. A lot of these honors go home with students. Even still, there’s an end table sitting here with these things, waiting to be joined by others. Every now and then I move them around, putting the ones in the back to the front. It is a good excuse to wipe a little dust away from them.
These are a bit older, so the names of the kids that won them are unrecognizable to the student-journalists working here now. One day I’ll look them all up and see what they’re doing now. These were people who were students before I came to Samford, so odds are I might have heard a name or two, but haven’t met them.
It is not unlike one of the drawers in my desk. A student signed it in the early 1990s, along with a note urging future people that sat there to save it because “it will be worth something some day.” He’s out in California and he has been at MySpace (at the right time) and at Netflix, so maybe he was on to something. There’s another name written in permanent marker within that desk drawer. It is his wife’s name.
I have a large stack of archived newspapers sitting next to my desk. One of my chairs was handed down from Maxwell Air Force Base — it still has their ID tag on the bottom — and I’ve learned a fair amount about the history of this place and a great deal about the sometimes colorful history of our department. But those two autographs in the desk are my favorite details.
And they graduated a several years before those awards were won, so really, between the autographs, the see-through trophies and today’s students we’re talking about four or five generations of students. Time does flit about prodigiously.
That picture was taking with my iPhone, which is indispensable as a snapshot tool. Of course this weekend, I’ll take a picture with my DSLR and be amazed at how much better that lens is. It should be, of course, but in tech you think of recency, and my phone is a few years old. The primary lens on my DSLR is a little more than a decade old, just a bit older than those awards. (I bought it as a replacement for one I dropped in a creek in Tennessee.) Maybe prodigious isn’t an expressive enough word.
Anyway, that picture is on the iPhone, filtered through Trey Ratcliff’s brilliant 100 Cameras app. I think the screen filter was called “When I was dirty and you laughed.” It gave the picture a certain level of cool color to an already monotone composition. I liked it, I posted it because I never use that app. Shame.
I have three folders of photography apps on my phone. I should never miss an important moment.
I did not talk about phones in class today. The “we’re all reporters now” speech will come up a bit later this semester. We did talk about Joe Paterno and the unverified night of mistaken news. I walked the class through the details and showed off the Storify I made that night to demonstrate how rapidly all of this unfolded. Looking back, only this far removed, the errors in minutes seem staggering. The lesson, friends, is verification. So we talked about that. The class was very much interested in the Onward State’s apology and resignation from the managing editor.
It is a great way to give the “We practice our craft in the public eye” speech again. I give that one a lot, it seems.
We also set up WordPress sites today. I have my tutorial on that down pat, now. “Let’s say I want to do this … but that only gives me a link and I wanted to embed the video.” In two clicks I’ve demonstrated that mistakes are possible, correctable and given students a better way of presenting information.
I’d like to thank WordPress for cooperating entirely in that effort.
It has been an adventurous day. In short order I was almost sideswiped by a car hauler, a dump truck and an 18-wheeler. It seems my car has that new invisible paint we’ve all heard so much about.
The tradeoff was hearing the DJ crack his microphone between songs and say “Monday in America in the middle of winter.” Then Etta Jones began to sing Trav’lin’ Light. Surprisingly her version, a superior take in my opinion, of the now 70-year-old Johnny Mercer song doesn’t seem to exist on the Internet.
The song played and I found myself stuck in the DJ’s aperitif. He had this husky, breathy, beatnik tone. And I thought what a remarkably obvious and obviously unremarkable series of things to say together.
Monday — we feel it
America — oh that’s where I am
Middle of winter — the trees are bare
The song wears on though, this delicate, unfolding and Etta Jones just sighs “No one to see I’m free as the breeze No one but me
And my memories.” And you think, yeah, OK, Monday, America, Winter. I see what he means. Look at that sky.
And then a song later he does it again. “February. Pitchers and catchers report in … 10 days” and a song. I’m unfamiliar with this particular DJ’s work, but I wonder if he can carry this all year long. I bet late July and August he becomes desperate for things to say. There isn’t a lot to say between the fireworks and Labor Day.
“Hot today. How’s that pool? Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Four more weeks before the kids are back in school.”
“Hot dogs. On the grill again. Try it with some relish this time,” and then you hear Thelonious Monk.
So while there is no Etta Jones version on the Internet, there are plenty of Ella Fitzgerald renditions as you might imagine. This one is from 1964. The song was 18 years old. She’d been singing for three decades already:
Anita Day, in her prime, did it in 1963 in Tokyo, where there was apparently a big demand for big band/jazz.
But we’re skipping over that because of course there’s Billie Holiday:
And now you have your Valentine’s Day music. Push play on that album in the kitchen, or in the hallway. Louis Armstrong’s trumpet works in unexpected places.
Anyway. No one can see my car. Tonight I was in the left lane of a two-lane, one way street. Sitting at the red light waiting for the change of the signal and a woman from the side street turns right, which is almost into me. She bites the corner instead, dragging her exhaust probably saying a few things under her breath about the problem. Several, I am sure, were aimed at me. But then again I was in the right lane, which in this case was the left lane.
Do they make blaze orange vests for cars? It might be the season.
When he walked at his graduation at Auburn William H. Holley, like many before and since, shook the hand of the university’s president, Dr. Bradford Knapp. The governor was Bibb Graves. Know those names?
The oaks at Toomer’s hadn’t been planted yet. Toomer’s Drugs was still competing with Homer Wright as the local top druggist. (Wright’s phone number: Nine.) S.L. Toomer simply referred to his place as The Store On The Corner.
Obligatory sports references: George Bohler was coaching both the Auburn football and basketball teams that year. The football team was 1-8, beating only Howard College. Snitz Snider — Olympic track star and future legendary high school football coach — was hurt much of the season. Another key player Babe Taylor — who, as a tackle, dressed at 6-feet-2 and “around two hundred pounds” as a tackle (Auburn’s current punter is bigger) — also had nagging injuries during the down year. Bohler’s basketball team went 3-13. At least the baseball team was posting winning records! Cliff Hare Stadium? Hardly.
The Bank of Auburn, in the back of Holley’s senior Glomerata, advertised four percent on your savings. Burton’s Book Store was the place to get your dusty tomes. J&M was decades away. Samford Hall, Comer, Mary Martin, Smith and Langdon Halls were all a part of campus. Ramsay Hall was brand new. Perhaps you’ll have heard of Holley’s dean: Bennett Battle Ross of Ross Hall fame. That building was still being erected when Holley graduated.
If those things don’t sound conceivable, don’t worry. Auburn’s oldest living alum has a few years on you. Holley celebrated his 105th birthday Wednesday at the Henry County Nursing Home in Dothan (Auburn stuff was everywhere).
His walk into the real world coincided with the beginning of the Great Depression. The 1929 graduate would work as a pharmacist in Abbeville and soon after helped soldiers get their prescriptions in France during World War II. When the Army let him go he settled with his wife and family in Headland, Ala. He became a pillar of that community where he handed out medication until he retired in 1973. His son Bill, a 1971 Auburn graduate, took over the druggist desk. His son has since retired.
Holley’s Auburn kids: Elizabeth (’59) and Bill Jr (’71):
But the elder Holley refused to slow down long after retirement. He has maintained two farms, one in his hometown of Samson, Ala. and another in Headland. He was famously building fence lines by hand well into his 90s. He has four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren in his life. He maintained his driver’s license well beyond his centennial, “just in case.”
His API diploma, made of sheepskin, still proudly adorns a wall in his bedroom.
As he told Auburn Magazine, learning about Newton’s first law in a physics class has played a big role in his long life. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Living Right, he said simply, is the key. He’d know.
