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history / Monday / movies / Samford / video — Comments Off
30
Apr 12

An indoor picnic

Last field trip of the semester today. I took my class to meet the nice people at Hoffman Media, who runs an always-growing office not too far from campus. They just bought a new magazine last week, Louisiana Cooking. I believe that’s nine special interest magazines under their banner these days.

The students learned about layout, scheduling, food photography, menu prep, circulation strategies AND got a tour of some of their six test kitchens.

No wonder the students always think that’s one of the better trips of the year. You should see the food stored in those pantries. They test every recipe, and re-test it, before it goes in the magazines. They say the only downside is when their cooking fish, or Mexican first thing in the morning.

The journalism and mass communication department’s awards picnic was this evening. Some two dozen awards and honors were given to people I’ve had in class or worked with in the student media.

Some of them I had in their freshman classes, and now they’re getting set to graduate. They grow so fast …

Last night I watched a bit of Apollo 13 for the 478th time. Love that movie, even the parts where it diverges from history, it does so a bit apologetically. I can take that. It is one of the better film adaptations of a book — in this case the book — that I can recall seeing.

Up the dial a bit Forrest Gump was also on. It allowed me to tell the movie theater story, where a woman in an Apollo 13 screening was frightened for the crew’s safety. Her son said something like “Don’t worry mom, Forrest Gump will get them home.”

I mention all of this because that little tale is cute, but mostly because I wanted to post this video, which is one of the most deliberately underplayed, intense lines ever.

Turns out that’s Ron Howard’s mother playing the part. Jean Speegle Howard was still working until shortly before she died in 2000.

That quote isn’t from the Jim Lovell/Jeffrey Kluger book, but the real Blanch Lovell is in there, scroll down just a bit:

I bet she would have delivered that line with even greater elan.

Auburn / cycling / movies / photo / video / weekend — Comments Off
7
Apr 12

The Hunger Games, the drain defeat and a gymnastics meet

We watched The Hunger Games last night.

It was better than the Twilight Poorly Acted Emolodramas, though I could have done without the insertion of Team Jacob in the third act. It was not as good as its spiritual predecessors, Star Wars and Shakespeare. (And that’s the only time Lucas gets that I’d bet.) I eagerly await the second movie, The Hunger Strikes Back, even if we have to sit through Romeo and Katniss. I’m also looking forward to the inevitable anti-bullying campaign.

Yes, I’m sure the books are dreadful. (Or the best thing since Potter, which might best Steinbeck and Hemingway in that crowd.) I don’t care to read them. Seeing Donald Sutherland as the most normal-looking guy should be left to stand without any further narrative.

Did something incredible today. We lost an earring down a drain yesterday, but it isn’t the kind of drain you can take apart. So we Googled. And then we called everyone we knew to try to borrow a wet-dry vacuum. Finally we found a friend who’s father had a friend. That man let me, a total stranger, borrow his vacuum.

So there we are, hands and knees, trying to figure out a way to get a four-inch hose fit inside a two-inch drain. Ultimately we settled with putting a little drainage tube inside the wet-dry hose. We kept the vacuum by stuffing the excess hose with a washcloth. On the end of the drainage hose we tied off a stocking.

We delicately send the hose down the drain. On the third try, when I was ready to make intubation jokes, I found a second bend in the drain pipe and twisted accordingly. There was the trap. I slowly pulled everything back out. And at the end of the tube, held to the stocking by the power of the vacuum, was this important little earring.

The Yankee sterilized it and put it away for safekeeping. I walked around like a hero for a while. It was a lucky stab, but it saved the day, so this is a “file it away, it might come in handy one day” story. And we couldn’t have done it without the kindness of a friend and a stranger. So this is also an “I love my town” story.

Had a nice little 25-mile ride. I installed the potential new saddle for a test ride. Did a mile or so and realized it wasn’t set right. Off the bike, into the multi-tool. Move the seat approximately three centimeters, making a much better fit.

It is is stiff as possible. Love it.

As I got back in the neighborhood I got heckled by kids: “Get it! Get it! Make those thighs work!”

I tried to put on a good show, but I doubt they were impressed.

Gymnastics regionals were tonight, and they were very impressive.

I enjoy watching them cheer in the background:

Not sure why they are in disguise though …

And, sadly, this is the last time we’ll see Laura Lane tumble:

The co-scholar-athlete of the year is graduating and moving on to other things. Shame, too. She was a lot of fun to watch.

Six teams compete in the regionals. The top two teams in each region advance to the national championship. Auburn finished fourth, posting their second-highest regional score ever. They’ll be somewhere in the teens, probably, in the final gymnastics rankings of the season. And, we counted, about half their routines this year were performed by freshmen.

The future, as they say, is bright.

More gymnastics pictures tomorrow.

iPhone / movies / photo / Samford / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
4
Apr 12

Biscuits, rust and authors

The second-biggest problem with the camera in the iPhone is the depth of field. This looks like a lot more food than it really is.

But, then again, there’s the app that let’s you blur out everything but your focus. (And that biscuit was delicious.) There are also apps that turn your HDR photo into HDRerer, which makes rust look magestic. This is through my dirty windshield, in an oddly lit part of the day, so it doesn’t pop as it could, but:

Think that guy is a beach bum in training? His flip flops do.

To see the real work of an HDR app, consider this picture from a few years ago:

And here’s the treatment:

It really jumps, doesn’t it?

There’s no real particular point to that, other than to say that I had a biscuit for lunch. If you didn’t, you should have. And also, the amount rest of the food really wasn’t that impressive. I’m blaming the frame of the barbecue chicken. The biscuit was the best part, though.

We had a bestseller speak in our class today. Nancy Dorman-Hickson co-wrote the biography on Joanne King Herring, who is a icon of the Republican party in Texas. You might recall her from Charlie Wilson’s War, which demonstrated her role in drumming up support for the United States’ proxy role in the Russo-Afghanistan war:

She was upset, Hickson said, by how overtly sexual she was portrayed in the movie. She is a gentile, Southern lady and so on.

Hickson was great in the class where she talked about freelancing and becoming a book author. She said she got that book contract, in part, because Herring’s people Googled “Southern writer” and “Christian.” And when they did, a small magazine piece she wrote on a Lutheran church event got her foot in the door.

There was a small handful of writers they decided to try out. The prospective authors were to have a phone conversation with Herring, and from there write one of her stories, trying to capture her tone and rhythm.

Hickson says “She was to share one story. Joanne is Southern. Multiple stories ensued.”

Well, yeah. That’s as natural as biscuits.

cycling / Monday / movies / Samford / video — Comments Off
2
Apr 12

“You have short legs”

Pulled the wheel off my bike and put it in my car. The rest of the bike went in there too. If I turn the fork so it looks like the front is trying to bite a flea and it will just fit inside.

It was time for a trip to the bike shop, one close to campus. The one close to home, which is generally very good, wasn’t interested in helping me replace the shifter cover that I lost last August. After the exposed screw sliced open my finger last month it was time. Felt, the manufacturer, told me to visit a store. The store said talk to Felt. And after we shared that joke, we got down to fixing it.

The part cost $10, which is the cheapest thing on a bike, apparently. It would also make my hands, as this is close to where your hands rest 99 percent of the time. So I left the bike with them, asked for a bit of maintenance and we’d scheduled time so I wouldn’t miss a ride.

I walked it and the lady behind the desk was sizing me up the way an expert tailor can tell your size without a tape measure. She sized me up and, I’m sure, found me lacking. It was like I’d told the tailor I wear one size and he glanced at me and said “No.”

With her glance she wondered about my bike set up. My seat is high. My legs are short. But, she concluded, what works for you works for you. She asked if I liked Felt. I was half-ready for her to tell me it was too much bike for me.

Later I was returning calls and found myself talking with a lady who was perfectly happy to be on the phone.
Happy to chat, happy to help. But she was making me late. There was a field trip to take with my class and timing is everything.

This is the introductory class, where we try to show off as many different parts of the business as possible. Today’s trip was to al.com where I worked from 2004 through 2008. Many of the same faces are still there. I saw three sales people, a designer and a producer I knew. The CEO and the office manager were there too. It was nice to catch up for a bit. Good people there.

We sat in the conference room and the guy that runs the content side of the place talked about what they do, the future, the past, internships and first jobs. The students asked good questions. Cards were distributed. The importance of networking was discussed. They crammed a lot of material in 90 minutes.

Some time back Bill Strickland introduced me to Graeme Obree. Tonight I stumbled onto The Flying Scotsman, a movie about the man, on Netflix.

Here’s the gist: He’s a Scottish cyclist who, in the 90s, set out to break the one-hour distance record. He built a bike from scratch, using parts of his washing machine, basically redesigning cycling all by himself. Only he just missed the record.
So the next day, after waking up all night to stretch his legs, he tried again. And he broke the record. It fell the next week to another racer. He took the mark back again soon after. Along the way he battled the sport’s governing body and his own deeply troubling demons.

Despite this trailer, the story (and the movie) make a compelling tale.

Obree, who did some of the cycling for the film, seemed to like it:

Once you get beyond this being, in part, about going in a circle, it is a good sports movie with a great supporting cast.

And then there’s the record itself:

This guy has held the record since 2005. In 2008 a doping suspension forced him into retirement.

Obree, who insists he’s never doped, is apparently preparing for a human powered land speed record. He wants to break 100 miles per hour. I’ve never even driven my car that fast.

cycling / errands / Friday / links / movies / video — Comments Off
10
Feb 12

Emailed items are Undefeated

Email on the wane according to a new ComScore report, as relayed by Alan Mutter:

The use of email has plunged by more than 30% in the last year among consumers under the age of 24, owing to the increased use of texting and Facebook to stay in touch.

[…]

A primary activity among wired individuals since the arrival of the Internet, email use in the last 12 months fell by more than 30% for those under the age of 24 and stayed absolutely flat among those aged 24-44, according to the audience measuring service. As illustrated below, only those aged 45-54 are pecking out more emails today than they were a year ago.

Twenty-two percent of the remainder is in my inbox. Six percent spam, eight percent meant for someone else.

I’m presently inundated with emails from seemingly every agency east of the Rockies that ships cars. Someone is intent on shipping their Volkswagen Jetta from Philadelphia to Chattanooga. The going rate, I can confidently say, ranges between $400 and $550. And the car transport people? They are big on correspondence.

Shipped off the headlight lamp that was supposed to fit my car, but did not fit my car. I clicked the buttons on Amazon, printed the return file, put everything back in the original boxes and carried it to the UPS store. That’s where you can buy UPSes.

The door just about pinched my finger off going in. The two guys working there feigned a mild concern. They were helping a young lady on crutches. She had all of their sympathy. Even the pre-existing injury on my finger didn’t win the day. I didn’t mind. The thing I printed meant I didn’t have to pay for shipping.

Amazon gives you several reasons to return your purchase. Some of them are very nuanced reasons, but some of them mean the difference between you paying a restocking fee, a shipping fee or nothing at all. Fortunately my reason to return the thing meant the seller was footing the bill. And that’s the first thing in the car drama that has worked in my favor.

Snuck in a few quick miles on the bike this evening. It is February, but it is finally turning cold. I could tell on my ride. Still nice and mild when I left home, but about two-thirds of the way through the ride I found myself in the shivers.

Tomorrow we’ll have big winds and maybe the 40s. I’ll just have to wait that out and pile it on Sunday afternoon.

Watched The Undefeated:

If they edited trailers like they do today Rock Hudson would have been a total scene stealer, John Wayne would have punched someone and the love interest would have been slipped in at the end. And then Rock Hudson would say something like “Finding ourselves outnumbered is a fact of life we’ve gotten used to!”

That’s just before the conversation between Hudson’s fleeing rebels and the soon-to-be assaulting Mexican bandits. Their detente doesn’t go well. The bad guys attack. They are turned back by the confederates and then ambushed twice, first by Wayne’s calvary and then by Wayne’s adopted son’s friends.

Later a Juarista general double-crosses Hudson. After a speech, an execution, dilemma and then a running gunfight that takes place in a barely controlled horse stampede we reach the conclusion. And there it is hard to picture a colonel and family man, in the next-to-last scene, having a toast with the man who’d previously held them all hostage.

There had to be at least 100 people shot and killed in the movie, which held a G rating.

Which is better than three percent of the email currently sitting in my spam folder.