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IU / photo / site / Thursday / video — Comments Off on What’s in the middle? Eh, there was a cookie at the end
9
Feb 17

What’s in the middle? Eh, there was a cookie at the end

Thursdays … where do they go? I’m really not sure. They start here and end there and stuff surely happens in between, but a lot in the middle doesn’t seem to stand out for some reason. Strange.

On the one-block walk from the parking deck to the office this morning, I saw this:

A video version of this is now the background video of my home page. See it, as no one says, before the snow melts. Because who knows what will replace that video, or when. I’m trying to keep them somewhat topical, and weather is as good an indicator of that as anything else. And right now the weather is changing a bit. Snow one day, almost spring the next, and so on. All of that is better than being in the single digits, so don’t take it as a complaint. But if we hit, and stayed, in the 60s that wouldn’t be so bad, either.

Do you like those videos? I do. They’re a lot of fun and easy to make. There’s some trick to quality I need to resolve, but we’ll get there.

I didn’t spend anytime in the television studio, as I do a few days a week. The show I watch was being produced at the basketball coliseum, where the good guys lost a rivalry game. Here’s the show to tell you all about it:

So, instead, I went to this panel:

Because it seemed like the sort of thing I’d be interested in, right?

Also, when I got there, I saw that they had cookies.

history / Indiana / IU / memories / music / photo / running / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Ancient wisdom: Indoors shoulders gather no snow
8
Feb 17

Ancient wisdom: Indoors shoulders gather no snow

To break up my 11-hour day I went for a run. And just after we started jogging, The Yankee and I, we went by a window and saw snow flakes. And so being indoors was a good idea. Because I could look like this:

But we ran in this gym instead:

That’s Wildermuth, an intramural facility, where I ran eight miles tonight. From 1928 until 1960 it was the home of the basketball team. And, on this day in 1946, it looked like this:

I’m glad I never had to stand in line to register for a college class. I think my freshman year my alma mater was on their second year of phone registration. At an orientation session they plopped in a VHS tape and made us watch a corny — even by the standards of the day — video about how to sign up for classes. But that system only lasted a few more years. Before I graduated they were doing it all online.

Not in line, online. And that probably changed things, too.

Anyway, a few more views on my snowy walk back from Wildermuth to Franklin Hall, where a sports show was recorded tonight:

You reach a certain point with these sort of pictures where you think “Hey, more snow. Yeah, yeah.” And that is almost always just behind “I can’t feel my hands.”

And as an aside about nothing, we had gumbo for dinner tonight. So I washed the dishes while listening

A Louisiana boy singing Delta and soul blues while snow was on the ground outside.

It makes perfect sense while you’re standing at the kitchen sink.

IU / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Needs smellovision
7
Feb 17

Needs smellovision

Tuesdays are full days spent in the office, pecking away at emails or this and that and then an evening spent in the studio watching students do their thing.

Our two anchors on the news show tonight, Lauren and Amelia:

It was Amelia’s first time on the desk. She did a fine job. You could hear her improving in each story, which was pretty cool.

On the pop entertainment show, they had on a special guest. Alex, on the left here, is talking with Brooke:

Brooke graduated from IU last semester and now has her own soap making business, 12 Months Soaps, which has a goal of celebrating black history throughout the year — so a good February interview. And Alex is a good interviewer.

Also, the soap smells great. Shame you can’t get that across on television.

Friday / IU / memories / music / photo / video — Comments Off on I remembered to forget to remember
3
Feb 17

I remembered to forget to remember

Some kind of busy day. It started last night.

I got in at about 10 p.m. last night, just in time for frozen pizza and then bed. Woke up a half hour earlier than usual this morning. I grabbed a bit of breakfast on the way into the office and, when I got there, I loaded up a cart worth of stuff to send to the surplus store.

If you need a handful of old standard definition television cameras or other outdated gear, I know where you can get it.

After that, the morning show:

The two ladies on the right are national champion cheerleaders. They told me it gets harder every year. They’d know. One has two championships, the other has three. Their team has won five of the last six titles. Harder every year. But, for one, her cheer career is almost over. She wants to work in that business, perhaps as a coach. The other is planning to go to medical school.

So this was the second episode of the new morning show. It looks promising and you’ll see it here when they upload it.

I pretty much lived in the studio today. After the morning show there was anchor training and then some other folks came in and used the room for some interviews. We did critiques of the news shows and then I went back to the studio for more of those interviews and a series of pesky emails and so on.

When the day was over I headed to the grocery store. On the way I found a local country station, a 3,800 watt shop with a liner that says “Fox News is coming up next, after this country classic!”

And then Elvis played. “Devil in Disguise.” Even in 1963, with his powers not yet fading, saw that song go top ten on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B charts. That was no country song. Neither was Jerry Lee Lewis’ cover of “Me and Bobby McGee,” but it showed up a few songs later. There was also Linda Ronstadt and Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and there was nothing wrong with any of that. But Elvis? Or, that Elvis?

He had 54 hits on the country charts, including 11 number ones. Altogether, he stayed on the country chart for almost 12 years. Surprisingly, there’s a lot of contradiction on the individual song data online, but this was Elvis’ most successful country song:

Thirty-nine weeks on the country charts. It was written by Stan Kesler and Charlie Feathers wrote it, two more Mississippi boys. It was covered by everyone so it is basically a standard. Should have heard that on the radio.

Oh, which reminds me, I met Elvis once:

Barbecue restaurant, out in the pine tree woods of Georgia, like you do.

history / Indiana / IU / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off on Take me to the river (or the old canal)
2
Feb 17

Take me to the river (or the old canal)

Working at IU, I have a free subscription to the New York Times and other publications. I could read all of the time and not read it all. And that’s just in today’s world. I also have access to the Times Machine which is more than a century and a half of old news, and a reasonably decent search engine.

So I searched. And one of the first things I found was the supposed origin of the word hoosier.

This is one of the stories that gets around. Truth is, no one really knows where the word comes from. There are some scholars still working on trying to figure it out.

Everyone is trying to figure something out, though, I suppose.

We were figuring out a sports show tonight:

And I watched this documentary on the history of music in Memphis. And if you like music, the history of music, or the South, or just watching joyous people do things they enjoy …

That is a film worth your time.

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