television

IU / photo / podcast / television / Tuesday / Twitter — Comments Off on I like to think I’m more of an autumn …
27
Feb 18

I like to think I’m more of an autumn …

I tried a new shade of tie today. It got several nice compliments.

Maybe people just know I’m not naturally a purple?

I don’t know how your day was, or how her day was, but sometimes you just need to cuddle with someone while they hold your head:

I recorded a podcast today with Dominick Jean, who is a news editor of the Indiana Daily Student. I’m pretty confident in my thinking that I couldn’t have done this when I was his age:

Speaking of cool things our students are doing … IUSTV is launching a new show, the second of the semester. First they rolled out a weekly late night kind of show. It’s fun and fairly clever. And now, here’s the first scripted drama they’ve done in a few years, it will be full of location and field shoots, I’m told. If you’re in town and fit any of these demos, come on and take on a role:

Isn’t that cool? Students have an idea for a program and they can pitch it to the student television station and then they all go out and produce the thing. Lucidious makes the fifth new series they’ve rolled out since I’ve been here. What a wonderful and unique opportunity.

And let’s end this on a precious little video:

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more podcasts on Podbean as well.

podcast / television / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Tomorrow is going to hurt, but tonight was a blast
22
Feb 18

Tomorrow is going to hurt, but tonight was a blast

We’ve had a lot of sports on my little podcast lately, so I turned to a straight up newsman for today’s episode. Dominick Jean is a news editor at the IDS, and he’s telling us about a historic drought that could mean the end of running water in Cape Town, South Africa:

Meanwhile, in South Korea:

And, later, or much later which became a time better described as “early,” women’s hockey was offering an incredible product:

IU / memories / photo / podcast / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on გთხოვთ, წავიკითხე მთელი რამ
13
Feb 18

გთხოვთ, წავიკითხე მთელი რამ

One of the things I get to do is teach students how to use new equipment. And one of the areas that has become partly mine are the audio production booths. Can’t imagine why.

Anyway, WIUX, the campus radio station, which is very large, probably has a new group every other week that I get to show how to do this or that, and then we book them to do this or that in one of our production studios. I also get to tell them they can do these same things in their own studios, but that doesn’t offer a solution they like, somehow.

I get it, the production facilities on campus are nice. But if we knew what podcasts were back in my college radio days, I would have never let the booths in the station. Which, come to think of it, I spent an awful lot of time in those production booths anyway. And most of the gear here is much, much nicer than what I learned on. Part of that is the endless march of technology, and also the esteem of things. Indiana has put so much into the student experience and their production opportunities in The Media School that most places just can’t measure up. And I get to work there and learn all of the gadgets and play with them and teach them to others. So I get it. We have some super nice setups.

I was in one of those booths today with five students and I ended up having to pass out a few business cards. So I reached into my pocket and pulled out my business card holder:

One of the guys said “Whoever made that for you is a true friend.”

Well, I made it myself, so here’s to hoping!

It was a weekend project. I made three of them one evening. Different cuts, different stain patterns, and I rotate through them. Everyone thinks they are great, but they are a bit on the thick side and they could probably use a better finish. But they keep my cards from being bent.

I might try some more out of different materials, because there will, hopefully, be another evening that needs a project.

Today’s podcast was about a column about men’s basketball in Colorado. The program at Colorado State is a mess and a writer there has an interesting idea of how to get things cleaned up. At first, the story sounds exactly just like that. But the more you get into it, the more interesting it becomes, and the more interest this episode generated.

The analytics tell me that this little podcast is now truly global. Australia, Canada and Georgia (the country in Eurasia, not the 13th state) all registered downloads this week. I don’t know what the people in Georgia like the most about the program so far, but if they’ve found their way here, I’d just like to say this: I’ve listened to your anthem, Tavisupleba, and it is quite stirring.

If you haven’t had enough talking yet, here’s a show my sports crew produced for last weekend. It’s still steamy and the takes are still hot, as they say, so check it out:

What? That’s not how they say that? Maybe it should be. Have you thought of that?

adventures / Friday / podcast / television — Comments Off on King of the dairy section!
9
Feb 18

King of the dairy section!

The only thing better than a Friday meeting is a Friday meeting to discuss the details of a Saturday you’ll soon work.

That’s a thing you’d say, but this particular upcoming Saturday that I’ll work is a program for incoming students. And the program looks pretty good, too. I’ll be in the television studio for an hour or so. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday.

Now the following Saturday, that might be a different thing.

Today I talked with Robert Quigley, a professor of journalism at the University of Texas. He brought us what is, I believe, the first profile we’ve ever discussed on the show.

Then I interviewed someone else, for something else, which was great. And I coughed through most of it. There’s nothing like working with a microphone when you’re sick. And I’ve been half-sick for a week. But I’ve held it together until today and my guest was kind enough to give me a piece of hard candy to help me through, because my cough drops were all in my office. The odd thing is that I am today actually starting to get better.

After that I spent the rest of the day in the other television studio — we have two, Studio 5 and Studio 7, and they are both incredible. In Studio 5 this afternoon we had some students taping the first episode of a new late night show. I sat in the back, in the dark and caught up emails and schedules and talked marketing and watched them shoot a few segments. It is a pretty clever show, even if they did have to explain one joke to me, and the host has the most ridiculous sports jacket you’ve ever seen. The show should be out next week.

And on our way home we went to the grocery store. We did the thing where one of you climbs on the front of the cart and the second person pushes. I did a lot of the pushing, because The Yankee was taking things off shelves and that let me get to the handle part of the cart. So I pushed her around the store a lot, which made everyone around us smile. I like to think we started a grocery store trend, and started people’s weekend off right. That’s what happens when you put me in charge of picking Saturday night’s dinner.

Instagram / podcast / television / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on There’s an 88-year-old jazz standard at the bottom
7
Feb 18

There’s an 88-year-old jazz standard at the bottom

We talked for like 10 solid minutes and we never made a “braaaaains” joke.

We did talk about the Olympics, CTE, brain donation and the women who are offering theirs for chronic traumatic encephalopathy research. It is an interesting conversation, and a timely one. And of course I’ll be long-tailing this episode through the Winter Games.

I’m sure you saw the big rocket launch yesterday. It was of course terrific, but the booster landing was the best part. That was a somehow-inspiring bit of theater. Not the least of which for its economic impact, or the somehow nonsensical rockets descending visual, but the whole thing just looked like science fiction, but you watch that a few times and you have to come to realize that is our aeronautical reality.

Oh, the car was fun. It was a silly gimmick and a great because-we-can moment and apparently it was a placeholder for some actual payload or scientific effort. And the car won’t last terribly long in the harsh environment of space but —

Wait a minute … Oh this can’t be a good thing:

By now you know that #falconheavy sent a car into space yesterday. Welp … #tesla

A post shared by Kenny Smith (@kennydsmith) on

I have that car in my office. It was a stocking stuffer one Christmas from Santa and his helper, my mother-in-law. So I have four or five cars sitting on a shelf. That’s not exactly accurate. I found a chunk of broken asphalt outside the office one day and that seemed like a dangerous thing to leave in the road, so I picked it up. Before I could figure out what to do with it I took it inside. Since I have five Hot Wheels and they now park on the six-inch chunk of road on a bookshelf.

If anyone on my floor ever brings their children to work I’ll be able to offer them a toy. Maybe they’ll know what to do with the bit of road the cars sit on.

I’ve thought about getting a lot of that old orange car track and turning my little office into a racing wonderland, but then I’d spend days just trying to figure out which car is the fastest.

John Mahoney died a few days ago. He came to acting a bit later in life than most, having taught English for a time and then becoming the editor of a medical journal. But he built a remarkable career on stage and screen. I knew him as a college professor in Moonstruck, a manager for the White Sox in Eight Men Out and a copy in Striking Distance. He was a G-man in In The Line Of Fire. He was a newsman in Hudsucker Proxy and a lobbyist in The American President. Just recently we saw him playing a grieving character on E.R. But it was Frasier where I learned he had a gift for comedy.

This isn’t a strong Mahoney episode, but it is illustrative of one of the things he did, and remains my favorite episode:

What you see throughout the series, during the times when they wrote Niles as a cartoon and, later when they had to humanize him and, thus, made Frasier a more silly character, there was always their father, giving the show this terrific even keel. And then there were moments throughout the show that you found this thing had heart, this 11-year series had soul, which is a lot to say about a sitcom. And every time you had those scenes, every time you got that sense, it was because of Mahoney’s character and his portrayal. It is a remarkable thing.

Some Marty Crane scenes …

Sing us out, John Mahoney:

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