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cycling / Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off
14
Sep 20

Interviewing my wife

We had a nice bike ride over the weekend. I took it easy, nursing an old guy’s bike. (I have come to appreciate the wisdom of listening to my some of my aches and a few of my pains.)

The Yankee did hill repeats:

I did sprint repeats. She might have still been faster, though.

If you go down this hill, all the way down it, you can make it to the lake. And then you’ll wonder if you should regret that decision because theres only the one way back up and you’re on a bicycle. The bottom of the ascent starts out at 12-14 degrees, but averages out for a nice 4-degree climb.

We saw some nice roadside flowers, too.

Also, I interviewed her Friday. When you have a distinguished and renowned sports media scholar who has a home office just around the corner from your own, you book the interview. The premise is “We had the usual amount of sports, and then no sports, and now we have every sport imaginable!”

On Topic with IU · On Topic with IU — Talking about the return of sports with Dr. Lauren Smith

For the record, it was no easier to get her booked, but it was more fun talk to her and easier to edit. Which balanced out the difficulty of trying to write questions about things she talks about all the time. This is an issue for all of these experts: Come, please, talk about your understanding of your life’s work in a basic way. The difference being I’ve heard her talk about it for years, and, with these other people, I send them a cold call email, interview them, thank them for their time and later send them an email link.

If I got one wrong here, or, worse, left one out …

Every now and then I try to encourage her to do any number of shows of her own. One day I’ll find the right idea. Then I’ll get to edit some more of that brilliance.

IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
10
Sep 20

Just a teevee thing

Back in the studio this evening. The sports gang had another two shows to shoot. The highlight show is a little thin just now, IU sports aren’t back yet, but any day now it would seem. The talk show is operating at 100 percent, however. This is how it will look when it is released later this week:

Haley is telling the guys how it is at the beginning of the NFL season. She’s taking Kansas City to repeat. She and Jevan are filling the role of football beat reporters this year. They’re going to do a great job if they get the chance. It’s an open question if Big Ten football will start (it will) when it begins (next month sometime) and how the media will get to work (total mystery).

Jevan is the one on the right. Drew is the host of this show. This is his second year running The Toss Up. Last year there were four chairs on that set. The three-chair arrangement is a concession to social distancing, but I think it is going to wind up creating more interesting camera shots. Drew already thinks it might be better in terms of working in his guests.

Drew came to IUSTV three or four years ago. He learned how the audio booth worked and locked down the A1 role. One night he showed up in a coat and tie, monologue in hand. We had some extra time and he delivered his script. Over time, he used those occasional spare minutes to improve his writing and his presentation.

He got stronger and stronger and those bits became social media extras and then regular features. Two years ago we graduated the last absolute star. (He’s working on the Gulf Coast these days, making me jealous all of the time.) And that meant auditions. Drew got the job and, today, he’s hosting this show, learning about producing and is a co-sports director.

Haley has been an almost-natural from day one, and she’s creating mountains of great clips for her reel. Jevan started out enthusiastic and a little nervous, but each time he’s on camera, you can see him growing more and more comfortable every time the lights come on.

My favorite thing about student media is that it’s so experiential, which is absolutely critical for students studying this stuff. The most important part of it is how easy it is to take advantage of the opportunity. The neatest part is watching students do it.

IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
8
Sep 20

Cluck cluck, tree, cluck cluck

Maples. Rubbing it in. “We’re going away!” Right in front of me, literally, the tree under which I parked today.

Which is the real story here. I went into the office a bit late today because I knew I’d be on campus until about 7:30 — which wound up being actually 8 or so. And even despite rolling onto campus in the middle of the day I parked right next to the building.

You can’t legally park any closer to our building than I did today, just before noon. That’s how many people aren’t on campus right now.

Our building has classes, but only the smaller ones. Anything over 50 students is automatically online. Faculty were able to decided, in a dizzying and disjointed system, whether they would teach in-person or online. One week, faculty could decide. The next, they couldn’t. It was all a part of a summer spent finding our sea legs. There was also a hybridized model, with rotating students on various days of the week and that seemed like it would have too many moving parts for anyone to keep straight. Ultimately, though, whatever got decided at an individual level, or got decided for them from above, has led to a quiet building so far.

With most classes apparently taking place on line, that means few students and very, very few faculty in the building. About 90 percent of the staff is working from home. And that means that, because I have to go in, I can get a parking spot right up front.

Just means I didn’t have to walk too far to my car at the end of the evening after a practice session in the television studio.

Except, after watching some practice shows get produced in anticipation of next week’s season premier episodes from the new news team, I walked to the parking deck. I hadn’t parked in the deck, but right beside that maple tree. It took me a block to realize it, and a block to walk back.

Which, for a Tuesday, isn’t the worst setback.

I’m more disappointed in the maple tree. If you see me out there sometime later this week, staring it down with a look of disappointment on my face, you’ll know why.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
7
Sep 20

Just a few words about a casual bike ride

There’s a moment in this video where the frame rate and the RPMs of the spoke shadows synched up perfectly. Check this out:

This was of course, on a sunny Saturday bike ride, one of the highlights of the weekend.

Weekends taking on a curious level of sameness. We sleep in, get curbside pickup of Chick-fil-A for lunch, eat, go for a bike ride, get cleaned up and settle in for an evening of chatting with a few friends. Sundays usually have a lot of reading, or preparing for the week, or dreading it, or whatever it is that people do.

Next week, we’re changing it up. We’re going to go ride bikes somewhere else!

On our usual weekend route:

She takes beautiful pictures. Pointing those toes a little bit though …

I wonder if I should tell her. Nah. She was already ahead of me. “You’re riding better than me wrong!” would be bitter grapes, indeed.

Friday / IU / photo — Comments Off
4
Sep 20

Approved sidewalk painting

Well, you presume it was approved. A good stencil lends an air of legitimacy and authority.

These two were on sidewalk slabs near one another, just outside our building on campus. I wonder how many different bits of sloganeering that the Office of Sidewalk Painting created. It’s a big campus.

The #LocaleStrong thing is a bit tired. We should have retired that one with Boston. Let them keep it, they did it well. Now it’s a Beantown thing, and we all need our own hashtags. I just counted the mentions on Twitter. There’s been 62 uses of that hashtag since the beginning of the term two weeks ago. Most of them from official accounts. A few of the individual usages have been tongue-in-cheek. One was showing off a picture of the stencil work.

Just down the way, on the same block, some of the other signs were destroyed, and thrown into the creek.

I guess they didn’t see the stenciled, approved, graffiti.