August, 2010


22
Aug 10

When I think school, I think Juno

I woke up, I turned on the television, and there was Julius Caesar, the 1970 version, starring Charlton Heston, Jason Robards, Sir John GielgudĀ  and others. I wrote about it on Twitter:

Watching Julius Caesar, starring prototypical Roman, Charlton Heston. Great American cast reading English dialect about Italians. #globalism

Heston played Marc Antony three times. Unlike Caesar he accepted it thrice. People made Planet of the Apes jokes the second and third time.

Twitter News Alert: They just stabbed Caesar. In a related story, the music is odd percussion, reminding audiences of Planet of the Apes.

Marc Antony gives a stirring, populist speech for Caesar and the people riot. He then drinks from a wooden bowl that breaks like glass.

Robards and Johnson just tear up the big Brutus/Cassius scene. It is exhausting to even watch it. “Fret till your proud heart break!”

Cassius’ death scene was so bad that when Brutus arrived he looked around, as if were expecting to be Punk’d.

Exeunt Robards nee Brutus. Heston comes on to say “We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up!” Credits!

This film isn’t well received at IMDB, I suspect because of the understated power and hammy acting of Charlton Heston. There are times when he feels like he’s performing on a stage for a great audience, waaaay in the back of the house, but forgetting the camera is right there. It is, though, a terrific movie for a day when it is too hot to move.

In the late evening we went for a bike ride. The bike I was riding is, well, messed up. It won’t go above fifth gear. Half the time it won’t go below it. But I can pedal in fifth! So I can coast or ride that one speed, or try to force the chain. Doing that means an awfully big downstroke which creates the other problem: the seat won’t stay up. Every hill or so I have to stop and reset the height, pressing the little clamp down as hard and as far as I can, hoping it will hold.

And it does, for a while. And then, seemingly at random, the clamp gives way, the seat slides down into the tube on the frame and whatever symmetry I had is replaced by something more or less perpendicular to the road, with my splaying feet and knees feeling like they are inches from the ground.

So I only did about five miles like that. The Yankee came in too, it was getting a little dim. Guess we’d started too late.

That’s OK, because after we got cleaned up we made dinner and enjoyed a delicious spaghetti parmesan. We watched the Back to School marathon on USA, which featured Juno, the story of a precocious 16-year-old who gets pregnant and judges everyone in lines a little too dated for someone her age.

Got a one-liner, an adoptive family and everything turns out great! Your parents will support you and your friends will come around. Welcome back to school, kids!

Tomorrow, I’m dumping a bunch of pictures and things on you from the last week. Thinking of making that a regular feature, too. Anything to pad another day around here.


20
Aug 10

Friday is Pie Day

Yesterday’s mystery: that’s Lhoist, a lime plant. You can see why they chose this spot.


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My friend Wade Kwon started a conversation on Twitter about ethics of using that particular tool to report on a suicide. This was prompted by Josh Trujillo, a Seattle reporter who found himself in just that situation this week. Trujillo, who is no cub reporter, called 911, published to Twitter about the circumstance and, as he says, began receiving plenty of questions from local residents, local media and Twitter followers about what was happening. To Trujillo, the story becomes one about the behavior of the motorists who become peripheral and direct players in the dramatic scene.

Wade asked a worthy and basic question: Should you live-tweet a possible suicide attempt? My first answer fell back to the newsroom training. We just don’t cover suicides, for obvious reasons. Trujillo finds the need for a conversation about the behavior of others in a grim situation, and that makes sense. In the news sense, Trujillo finds the need for a second deck story, but there still seems to be little utility in the actual breaking news.

It is sometimes ironic, of course, to discuss merit when it comes to an individual tweet, but what does sharing such information add to a conversation? Unless there is: A.) A counselor B.) Help C.) Local D.) On Twitter E.) Paying attention F.) All of the above at that precise moment, what is the point? Trujillo says he called 911, which is the place that has the best chance at providing all the things the circumstance demands.

Ultimately Twitter shouldn’t be the place one turns in a potential life and death situation. Good conversation, though.

So we head out to continue our Pie Day search. We tried a place called Byron’s tonight, which was well recommended online. One of the first reviews we read was written by a guy I went to college with, in fact. It is his barbecue of choice, and we figured we’d know who to blame him if it was bad.

So we pull into the place and it is virtually empty. Not sure how to interrupt that. Byron’s is in an old Dairy Queen, and they’ve preserved the order-at-the-counter model. They asked for our name, odd considering there were three people in the joint. We fix our drinks. I ask “Where should we sit?”

The Yankee says “Let’s sit in the romantic corner. The Punt Bama Punt corner.”

That’s my girl, y’all.

Our name is called. I fetch the food, bringing back the tray with Styrofoam plates. You know, it is a rarity to find a place with good barbecue that has a sit-down-for-dinner feel. Jim ‘N’ Nicks was rare in that sense. The best barbecue always comes from little places like this. The perfect barbecue comes from a roadside stand, or a backyard operation, or a converted gas station.

Now the barbecue at Byron’s is good. The baked beans are delicious. The fried potatoes are terrific. They only had a scary looking pecan pie, though. So we decided on a two-stage version of Pie Day. We visited a bakery, which did not have pie. We cruised a few more places and finally went to Publix.

We’re thinking about going out for barbecue and then turning to homemade pies.

We hit the pool, a good bookend to the morning trip to the gym. Lightning ran us off, but the water was so nice we might have to go back tomorrow. Elsewhere, just scanned and scanned until the last scanner project of the summer was concluded. That’ll give me something else to upload this fall. Did a little online shopping and, then, this:

Text book

One of my books for this semester, picked up from the library. It’s going to be a real page turner.


19
Aug 10

Now that’s a day

My day started at 5 a.m. for the second time this week. When did yours start? There are people who are already awake by then. I saw them on the road, biking, or at the gym, working out. These are disturbed individuals. I’d say something about waking up that early twice this week, but all of those people did too.

Of course it hit the mid-90s today, and at the early hour it was only 77 degrees with 94 percent humidity, so they are most likely just brilliant self-preservationists.

Another sporadic new feature, Today’s Mystery:

What do they make in there?

Had a class this morning, titled Researching Media Effects. It is taught by an internationally renowned scholar who is the new dean of our graduate program. He’s bringing about swift changes, the kind of things that make you wish he’d had the job a few years back.

Over the summer they’ve been renovating all of our labs, and there is a great deal of promise for future research and hopefully a little of it will help when I get to my dissertation, which is only just around the corner. This is my last class and I’ll be start preparing for comprehensive exams soon.

Time flies when you’re insanely busy, I guess.

Anyway, the class is about researching media effects and given the professor and the reading list it is already one of the best classes of the curriculum. I’m looking forward to the class, but I’d rather still be in the summer.

Visited Samford. Had lunch. We had a church media workshop underway today and I sat in a few of those sessions. I had a meeting with the boss to receive more marching orders for the semester. Had a nice long meeting with the new editor, who is a very collected young woman. I suspect that her staff will put out some quality stories and great papers before too long.

I sold a few cardboard boxes. We bought a few extras for the move and they went unused. The people that sold them will buy them back, making me think I might be in the wrong business. Glenn Beck wants you to invest in cardboard, but there is a humble income to be found in corrugated materials.

And then I headed home. The best thing about a nice afternoon drive:

The clouds. Or the cloud. That’s actually one cloud I chased for a good long while. The road turned just before I got under the thing and the curve never bent the car back underneath. But at least I caught some meaningless video.

We headed out to an owl release this evening. Turned into the parking lot with the crowd, and asked a police officer working the parking traffic what the event was.

“Band-o-Rama.”

So we left, having dodged a musical bullet.

The owl release was just up the road, because nothing motivates previously captive birds like percussion and low brass. Only the owl release had been postponed because of bad weather. But the weather was beautiful. It took three people to explain the delay and hand out fliers to the guests. “Fledglings No More” will take place in September.

At dinner I physically hit the wall. I stood up to get my drink, blinked and felt it. The 5 a.m. part of the day had officially won.

So I edited two videos, wrote this, had dinner and planned tomorrow. It’ll be another great adventure! Hope yours is even better!


18
Aug 10

The 1939 World’s Fair

New on the site: The 1939 World’s Fair Guide Book project is underway. Four entries today, we’ll see a small handful a week until around Thanksgiving. This isn’t a comprehensive look at the guide, or the fair.

This is a focal point for a lot of people online — it was the first fair that looked at the future, a future that was interrupted or ended because of the war. I’m no expert on the fair or the period — I’m surprised fair organizers didn’t just send the guide to visitors’ iPods — but the text is at times entertaining and the art and models are amusing. You and I will just look at the most interesting ones together.

Here’s your first random tidbit. The models were popular images in the book because they gave visitors a certain since of scale about the place. They just look like models today, though, and would never be acceptable for a modern publication.


18
Aug 10

Warming the lamp

That was the afternoon. A threat of meteorological drama which pittered and flittered into nothing. But for a while it looked as if something was about to descend from the clouds.

But that was just part of the day. There was scanning. And scanning! And also I reproduced a digital representation of some real-world items into my computer. Finally, I placed things on a glass that covers a light, pressed a button and watch the light move in a predetermined back and forth fashion.

Took The Yankee out to dinner at the local First Date Place. Haven’t been there in maybe 12 years. (I’ve had dates since then, but just not there.) Provino’s has moved since my last visit. The new place though manages to retain much of the look of the old location. The restaurant was a little cleaner and brighter than my memory — but my recollections can be dusty and dim.

It was good back then and Provino’s was good tonight, too. The garlic rolls still come out in a pool of melted garlic. The salad is cheesy and … well, it is a salad, OK? She had the chicken francese, I had something that was acceptable, but wouldn’t be my regular dish.

Before we ordered The Yankee said “Maybe it will be like Rome.” And then the waitress walks up and says “My name is Amy Leigh and — ”

Yes, exactly like Rome.

Random things: Noted the Eight Commandments of the gas pump. There were more, but they didn’t focus group well. The second one is well written. I do not follow the one about cell phones, because I am not orthodox. I had a picture re-published on The War Eagle Reader. And, tomorrow, it is back to class; so tonight it is back to ironing.