memories « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

memories

‘There’s a magic in the sound of their name’

Where am I? One last clue from earlier this morning:

OK, one more clue:

Yes! Notre Dame! How did you guess? How do you do it? The exterior photo above is of O’Neill Hall, a building they’ve just recently opened after a $25 million dollar gift that helped change everything about the football stadium. Which is why I’m visiting. I’m taking a tour of their new television facilities. They have a gorgeous new setup and it is being used for classes, athletics and for the church. It is a unique situation Notre Dame has, of course, and it sounds like they are putting a great strategy together.

When you hear about 4K or HDR shoots, it is probably coming through a camera like this.

That’s a pretty nice multiview you have there, Irish. This is one of a handful of control rooms that are are all tied together. They built out a quality facility:

It was a nice day trip. We had breakfast, heard about how they built their gear out, enjoyed a fire alarm, had lunch, took a tour of their new production facilities and then it is time to get back on the road.

Incidentally, I’ve now enjoyed two fire alarms in two college buildings on two college campuses within 24 hours.

Anyway, this is an exterior shot of the famed Notre Dame Stadium:

Apropos of all of that, you can see the highlights from my previous trip to South Bend here and here

It was such a lovely, gray day in South Bend that I took a walk in some of the off-campus touristy areas. And I saw this:

You lose two shoes, well, that’ll happen. You lose one shoe, that’s a story.

Also, I discovered that they have Limebike. No locks or bike mounting system necessary. They charge $1 per ride and, like a good pusher, your first ride free.

On the way back, I stopped off at IKEA. It was their opening day. I went to IKEA during the grand opening.

It wasn’t as bad as Christmas shopping, to be honest. And I managed to pick up all three things I wanted.

memories / photo / Tuesday / windshield time — Comments Off
10
Oct 17

Travel day

I’m on the road. I’m in a rental car. The university gave me a Ford Focus, which is fine enough for a rental car.

I was on the flat, open country to the north. And now I’m in a hotel room after a perfectly anonymous dinner where I read magazine articles while a server absentmindedly sang while she swept and did her cut work. She had a lovely voice.

I’ve been to this city one time before, but The Yankee made that trip six years ago and I’m on the road on my own this time.

Six years ago today, in fact. Weird.

Where am I? Tell you tomorrow.

adventures / memories / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
Oct 17

And now, storytime

This came in conversation today. It dates back to May of 2012. I wrote about it here. We were in a small town barbecue restaurant and Big Will, the owner, came out from the kitchen to say hello.

My contemporary notes:

Somehow we got on the subject of The Yankee being from Connecticut …

He then reached into the pocket of his overalls and pulled out a .45. She jumped. We laughed. It was a great joke.

There were six people at the table. Five of us were from the South. Only one of us was surprised when he produced his pistol.

She was genuinely afraid, but he was just making a joke, of course. She tried to hide behind me. Someone pointed out she’d need to get more cover than that.

Sometime later he went back out to his truck and brought back his AR-15.

That place opened in 2011. Will said he’d previously been a machinist, but that there had been a car accident in the family. The restaurant, then, was a way to for the family to spend more time together. And, there it was. Will’s wife was working in the store on a slow May day. His daughter was singing for an audience of six. (She was good, too.) It was as small-town as you could get.

It looks like the place closed last year. That’d be a shame. The world is suffering from a shortage of good barbecue.

memories / television / video — Comments Off
27
Sep 17

How long was that mission, again?

I don’t know how this took so long to make, but it was worth the wait.

The original Trek, of course, came out in 1965. I always wonder about period camp, but now that things I grew up with are … ahem … of a certain age, my eternal questions of dramatic portrayals and television campiness seem only more unanswered.

Next Generation landed on Fox in 1987. I remember reading about it in a TV Guide before it came on. I was old enough to appreciate the original show in syndication and now, there would be this new show. It launched 22 years after the original. We are now farther away from the beginning of TNG than Patrick Stewart was from William Shatner. Even Voyager made it to air in less than three decades from the original show. And we are, today, sneaking up on the 30th anniversary of The Final Frontier. Meanwhile, people are waiting to pay for a streaming service for a new Trek property.

None of this timing feels hardly likely. But we must ask ourselves, which 30-year span of time between now and then has seen the biggest changes in the storytelling we watch?

IU / journalism / memories / Thursday — Comments Off
27
Jul 17

Of timeless news men

I once worked with a man who (last year) retired after 61 years on the same station. I watched and admired another gentleman at the end of his career of 63 years on the air. And I’ve read columns by writers who spent their last days on memories of games or people that happened 40 years ago because they or their editors thought that was what their audience was interested in.

Even if you’re mailing in a memories column, even if you’re working part time broadcasting at the end of your career in a station where everyone calls you “Mr.” on air in deference to your time in the business, even if the new kid is printing things out for you because printers are a mystery to you … if you spend that long in the media, you’ve done something.

So I’d like to introduce you to David Perlman:

David Perlman was born in 1918 — a decade before the discovery of penicillin and the Big Bang Theory.

And, for the majority of his career, he covered scientific progress in the 20th century and beyond, writing thousands of articles about everything from the beginning of the space age to the computer age.

Until now.

The 98-year-old science editor is retiring from The San Francisco Chronicle after nearly seven decades at the newspaper, a decision he said had been coming for a while.

It is too easy to say “end of an era” but that is truly the case at the Chronicle. I hope all the young people on the staff there were smart enough to spend some time with Perlman. The man no doubt has plenty to teach us all.

And then there’s the next generation. I gave a tour of Franklin Hall to 15 members of the local Boys and Girls Club. It was a sort of last minute thing: Can you show these kids around in half an hour?

So they show up and they are younger than I expected. Know your audience and all of that, so I showed them the giant screen, the television studio and the video game design labs. Fourteen of them said they wanted to move in. Most did not seem dissuaded by the idea that there are no beds or showers or a real kitchen in the building.

I think they just liked that we could play Xbox or Playstation games on the giant screen.

One of them asks how old you have to be to come to college. And then she decides that’s too far off. Oh, but if you study hard and do well in school, my young friend, you too can sit here with us and watch the giant TV.

I wonder what Perlman would say to a gaggle of elementary school children who stopped by his corner of the newsroom in his last days on the job.