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Took a field trip today

More trip planning, thing doing, list checking, check making.

As in the writing of checkmarks next to things on the list. If you’re looking for money, this is not your site. So sorry about that, too.

Received a visit from a former editor of the Crimson today. Nice to see Drew drop by, giving me grief about the state of the Auburn-Florida sporting rivalry and inspiring me about his plans. He’s a sharp guy ready to go out and conquer his corner of the world. (If you need a sports writer, this is the right blog. You should look up Drew.)

We do have the good fortune to enjoy a fine caliber of students in our program, to be sure. They keep us young.

My class today visited the Alabama Media Group, as I might have mentioned elsewhere. It was a chance to seeold friends in a new place, the first time I’ve visited with my former coworkers at al.com since they made the AMG shift last fall. This was the first time I’ve seen them anywhere besides the Martin Biscuit Building in Lakeview.

They are on the north side now, in the Birmingham News building — which is now for sale.

If you’re on the market for a lot of open floorspace in that is less than 10 years old, I know of a deal for you!

Anyway, lovely and talented folks. I always enjoy visiting them. I didn’t get to see everyone today, but I’ll be back for lunch tomorrow. Of course we heard from AMG’s director of community news, Bob Sims:

At one point a student asked him a question and Bob used, almost word-for-word, the same answer I’d offered to this class on Monday about where they should be focusing right now. I love it when a plan comes together.

Anyway the sun was coming in through that light, over the church across the street and stretching out across this open work area and the AMG folks talked about their numbers and marketing and coverage and where they are planning to go in the future. Students asked good questions. It all came off famously. I was happy to see old friends and to see them looking well.

I did get to visit with Brian and Justin — guys I’ve known for almost a decade now — and some of my newer online friends today. We sat in a corner, the three of us, for a time and we made random references to pranks we once pulled one another and talked almost exclusively about how old we are. So it begins.

Things to read: Jeremy Gray, a local crime writer whom I admire, is doing a little bit of historist work. Journalism-history, that’s not a bad way to spend a slow night on the beat. This story reaches all the way back to the 1920s, involves ax murders, assaults on immigrants and interracial couples, truth serums, three death sentences, reprieves, new trials and several enduring mysteries, all nearly vanished from the modern collective memory. The story is a great read, which defies a brief and cogent excerpt, but do give it a look. I’ll just leave you with this from The trials of ‘The Axemen of Birmingham’: Drug-induced confessions lead to winding courtroom drama:

Descendants of some victims still live in the Birmingham area and at least one, Butch Baldone, a downtown tailor for 53 years, said black people were unfairly targeted in the investigation.

Baldone’s grandparents, Charles and Mary Baldone and their daughter, Virginia, then 14, were assaulted in their 10th Avenue North shop on July 13, 1921. All three survived, but refused to identify their attackers.

While the five black people injected with scopolamine reportedly confessed to the crime, Baldone said he believes the attack and “at least 90 percent” of the others were the work of an Italian mafia that was trying to plant roots in Birmingham.

“Black people got along with Italians because they were the only ones who would give them credit. The white man didn’t want their business,” Baldone said.

[…]

“The Baldones found the people who really did it and, to put it simply, they don’t exist anymore,” Butch Baldone said. “That was the closest the mafia ever came to Birmingham.”

Just so pat and perfect.

From Reuters, “Keep your so-called workers,” U.S. boss tells France:

The CEO of a U.S. tire company has delivered a crushing summary of how some outsiders view France’s work ethic in a letter saying he would have to be stupid to take over a factory whose staff only put in three hours work a day.

Titan International’s Maurice “Morry” Taylor, who goes by “The Grizz” for his bear-like no-nonsense style, told France’s left-wing industry minister in a letter published by Paris media that he had no interest in buying a doomed plant.

“The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three,” Taylor wrote on February 8 in the letter in English addressed to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg.

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S- … what’s that?

“Titan is going to buy a Chinese tire company or an Indian one, pay less than one Euro per hour wage and ship all the tires France needs,” he said. “You can keep the so-called workers.”

Oh, right, the American way.

Finally, some people in higher education have been writing about social media, lately, if you’re interested.

Tomorrow: Road trip.

memories / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
12
Feb 13

Cosby Show outtakes

Brilliant, includes a great Stevie Wonder ad lib, which should be all anyone needs for one day.

When I watch the outtakes I’m convinced the real genius of the show was in Keisha Knight Pulliam.

The last segment here might be the best:

The Cosby Show cast, 25 years later:

Auburn / Friday / friends / memories / video — Comments Off
8
Feb 13

Tumble, flip and twist fast

These are the first tests of a new app I found for my iPhone. It produces tilt-shiftesque videos.

The free version of the app only seems to produce a 10-second clip out of about four minutes of real footage, but I think that would work for most every project, really. (I added the audio in post, as the app doesn’t record any.)

The app is called Miniatures. And this is a test at the Arkansas at Auburn gymnastics meet.

Because I didn’t take any other pictures — I was really only thinking about ways to try that video app — here is my ticket:

I wasn’t working, but I sat in the media area with The Yankee, who was covering the meet for College and Mag. Behind us was one of the first guys I worked with in commercial radio. Hadn’t spoken with him in years, but it was nice to visit with him briefly. Nice guy, still in town, still working in radio. Looked good.

Auburn trailed earlier in the meet and managed to pull things into a tie after three rotations. Arkansas is a talented team and were probably the favorites going in. But, they had a few falls on the beam and the next thing you know:

The little smiley face lets you know the score is official, Auburn won 196.325-195.650. Apparently they set an attendance record, too. Some 7,300 people watched the 15th ranked Tigers get their second victory of the season.

We went to Mellow Mushroom with a friend for pizza after the meet. I ordered the vegetarian pizza. It was delicious. I’ve never eaten a veggie pizza, but I will again.

football / memories / Monday / site / video / weekend — Comments Off
3
Feb 13

Paul Harvey, FFA, Dodge win the Super Bowl

Maybe I’m aging out of the demographic. Maybe a lot of sponsors should demand their money back. Either way it seemed that with costs ranging from $3.8 to $4 million per 30-second spot, the value seemed to be lacking.

Unless you look at all of them as regressions, then even some of the average spots might get some Monday replays. For once the game was compelling, and you could actually leave the room during the breaks. In hours of programming, only spot one stood out.

Blake Harris wrote “So the only time all night the room has been totally silent has been during the Paul Harvey commercial. Everyone was glued to tv.”

You could write an essay why. Some obvious points — Paul Harvey, a way of life, a lack of shrill Madison Avenue attitude and agriculture — jump out.

Paul Harvey was the consensus best broadcaster in the business for generations. There’s not much argument on this, nor should there be. The industry won’t allow anyone like him again, let alone better than him. A statement like that owes a lot to his longevity and his staff, but the man had a voice and an intriguing pace. He had a touch with a microphone and everyone attached to his programming had a deft feel for a central element of society.

And maybe those times have changed. Demographies are always changing, improving and evolving. Maybe the people that could identify with Harvey are just living quietly and being drowned out by the morass of mass media. Maybe there’s a lifestyle of quiet humility and moral rectitude that is just beneath the surface. Maybe the spot appeals to a generational nostalgia for which we long. Maybe that’s gone forever. None of these are particularly true over another. All of those things — celebrated in a spot like that, by a man like that — still exist. They’re just a little harder to see because of all the other noise.

You’ve watched commercials, seen ads, felt the highs and lows of every medium. You’ve seen the Super Bowl spots. Reduce any of these things to their own elements. Make them stand alone, apart, from their advertising counterparts. They can be absurd, necessary of course, but absurd. Take your financial advice from a talking baby. Choose your insurance because an actor is pretending to be snow on a roof. Consider every ad produced since “Sex sells” became the first rule of the creative industry. There’s not much else to say about Madison Avenue after that. Perhaps an ad not designed to shock or titillate is actually a winner

Not to talk about that ad frame for frame, but that long, wide, bleak shot of that Angus at the beginning said so much about what you were about to experience. Paul Harvey was talking to the 1978 National FFA Convention in Kansas City in that speech, extolling the virtues of a way of life that, as a society, we’ve almost forgotten because most of us have never known it personally. Because of economic turns and technology and the postal system and education and all manner of things the farm has typically become a big corporate organization. There are less people doing the hard work to keep us fed, even as the production is increasing.

When Paul Harvey made that speech in 1978 the national numbers were:

Total population: 227,020,000
Farm population: 6,051,000
Farmers 3.4% of labor force
Number of farms: 2,439,510

Things were changing awfully fast. Still are, in many respects. These days only 1.96 million people in the U.S. are farmers or working directly in the agricultural industry whereas the nation is filled with an estimated 315,268,206 people as of this writing.

When I was in the FFA — I had the pleasure of attending five national conventions and served as a state officer in the Alabama FFA Association — the stat in use was that two percent of Americans were farmers. That percentage continues to decline, making a narrow part of the hourglass ever more slender.

There’s a movement afoot, the locavore movement, people that aspire to eat local produce, which would naturally promote a simpler example of farm economics. It must be serious because we’ve mangled words to create a new title for them within the language. Maybe a quiet shift is coming. Maybe there’s just a longing for a more romanticized time. Maybe it is just a great spot, filled with both nostalgia and truth.

Ultimately you take two iconic pieces of Americana, Paul Harvey and the men and women on the farm. (Yes, the spot needed migrant workers.) Put them in a quiet presentation that belies every other spot running against it with a tone that didn’t need to be crafted by a skyscraper executive* and you’ll beat a GoDaddy commercial every time. A Wall Street Journal blog has already called it “The Great American Super Bowl Commercial.”

Put together components that bespeak of a certain quite nobility, and you’ll get that.

Ram is raising $1 million for the National FFA Organization. Here’s how you can contribute. You can support them directly, too.

*Indeed, the Super Bowl spot was actually an updated version of this YouTube video that was uploaded in 2011:

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7
Jan 13

“Now yellow waxen lights Shall wait on honey love”

That’s Thomas Champion, by the way.

But what a day of beautiful light:

That was in the afternoon, sitting in the backyard enjoying the shadows passing through the grass. That was after lunch and a very brief bike ride and some school work. It was before a trip to the big box store and the big warehouse store.

On the way home we saw this light:

It isn’t cold, it isn’t hot, it isn’t really anything at all, just bright and golden and perfect. What a lovely day.

Then the football game happened. In three BCS games the last four years Alabama has outgained their opponents 1,176 to 670 yards. The Tide have outscored Texas/LSU/Notre Dame a combined 100-35. Tonight was a demolition, an anti-climax. A coronation, really, after the SEC championship game.

At halftime Notre Dame’s coach said the best plan was for Alabama to not come back out in the second half. He might have been understating it.

After the game the sideline reporter Tom Rinaldi said to Nick Saban: “Enjoy it if you can.”

All of that said so much.

So my Notre Dame shirt that I got last year during our trip to South Bend was as helpful as I thought it would be. Death, taxes, Saban; Alabama is a dynastic juggernaut.

Beautiful day, though.