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12
Mar 26

Have another

I attended the Sport and Discrimination conference today. It was being held on the Dublin City University campus. Today I saw presentations on Olympians who suffered abuse over social media. The authors of this study examined the accounts of 1,917 Olympians from the Paris Games and found 809 instances that were verified as abusive, and 128 of those were escalated for “additional action.” I saw another great study about the diversity (or lack of) in European sports administration and sports media. There was another fascinating presentation about athlete activism, the discussion and findings of which I am sure will work their way into a future class. I took many notes.

I also took this photo out of one of the classroom windows when the day’s presentations were done.

This was a two-day conference, and it was paired with the IACS conference. The timing worked out for both groups, and there’s a fair amount of crossover in the scholars and the scholarship. I registered for, and enjoyed attending the sessions in Sport and Discrimination today, but I’m presenting twice in the next conference. One of them is a piece I’ve worked on with my lovely bride. She is also the rock star that is the executive director of the organization, so she’s running the thing. The International Association for Communication and Sport’s summit began unofficially tonight, with a mixer.

We took a trip, in two buses, almost 200 people, to the Guinness brewery or museum, or both. It wasn’t clear to me. It’s a tourist attraction, basically, opened at the turn of the century. This is not the sort of trip I would take, but everyone seemed excited about the prospect, and I heard a few people saying this one thing off of their trip’s checklist, and there we were, having dinner. (Which was small and light, but incredibly tasty.) Before dinner, we got a tour.

But before the journey began we saw the actual original lease, which is mounted in the floor.

It is dated 1750, and Arthur Guinness agreed to pay £45 per year for 9,000 years. Eventually this becomes the largest brewery in the country, and then in the world. Today it is remains the largest brewer of stout. But in between the company purchased the property, so this is just an artifact at this point, and many of the buildings in the area. Making the drink was an intensive process. They had their own power plant.

Today, the museum is a well curated walked display. A lot of polished things to see, not a lot of places to linger, which is good for a walking tour. You’ll pass this cool display.

The characters are made of falling …

Water is a big deal here. Beer has the four ingredients and you can’t make it without water. We learned that once it took 11 pints of water to make one pint of Guinness. At some point that came to sound ridiculous. Our guide told us the process is nwo down to three pints of water to make one pint of the stout. They are targeting a 1:1 relationship in the near future.

You can see some of the old equipment. This mill dates to 1906 and the Ganz people, based in Budapest, made their first mills. The last mill they bought was acquired in 1916. Inside it, malt, roast and barley were milled and dropped into a kieve below. From there, it was mixed with water and sent to the second stages of the brewing process.

Here’s a side view of the mill, because moving parts are interesting and not at all a workplace hazard.

You don’t want to be the brew man getting your sleeve or tie snatched up in this machinery.

Nearby was the triple ram pump of 1958. The sign tells us that it circulated yeast through the coolers and other vessels in the storehouse.

Behind it you see the rest of the gear. Steam kept the stainless steel cylinders, valves, pistons and chambers clean.
All of this was made by David Brown & Sons. By that time I believe it was the son. The firm is still in operation, and they’re works are all over the UK, fancy buildings, tractors in fields, you name it.

Steele’s masher was created by a man named William Steele, and it mixed milled barley and water together. This one which dates back to 1880 or so, worked in brewhouse 1, which no longer exists. Not sure when that was razed.

The sign says this is “Manway door from No. 3 copper, Park Royal Brewery. This copper lid was installed in the Guinness Park Royal Brewery on opening in 1936.” The door was made by Robert Morton & Company, in Burton on Trent, which was founded in 1840, but was acquired by another concern in 2023.

They do professional taste testing for quality control every morning, hence this clock. Apparently this is a serious part of the business. You are doing the work at 10 a.m., but you can’t have eaten anything or drank certain things, you can’t have showered beforehand, and so on. You wonder how much of that is necessary and how much is historically traditional

Here’s their first advertisement. You can tell because the ad copy itself says so. It’s from a 1929 national newspaper.

And that was both their first ad, and the first one displayed in a tidy little section. Our tour guide seemed to suggest that not all of the advertisements were grounded in truth.

But it is a toucan, and toucans are always a marketing win.

Whereas this one also seems farfetched.

What you don’t see enough of in advertising are seals. (Or sea lions. Let’s not quibble the art.) Gilroy knew it.

Gilroy was John Thomas Young Gilroy. He was studying at Durham University when the Great War took him from the books and sent him into the Royal Field Artillery. After the war he went back to school at the Royal College of Art in London. He later taught there and another arts school. By 1925 he was in advertising, and that’s how he came to Guinness, his style features in a lot of the mid-century English advertising, though. He also created cover designs for the Radio Times, painted portraits and national propaganda during WW2.

It’s not clear how much time he spent in farm country though, this is all wrong.

He knew something about professionals, though. But, from our perspective decades hence, this reads different.

Opening time means you’ve had a bad day, or have a big problem. Go home, toucan, you’re already drunk.

Everyone seemed to think the highlight of the Guinness experience was the opportunity to learn how to pour a proper Guinness. There’s a process. Fortunately, they offered a good teacher. Hilariously, all of the professors found this to be intimidating.

You take a bunch of people who like to learn and feel the need to perform at a high level and then ask them to do it in public, and in front of one another … it gets stressful, I guess. That guy talked everyone through it, though. You hold the glass just so, 45-degree angle, and pour until the black liquid reaches the golden harp. Then you put it on the part and let the chemistry do it’s part. Bubbles of nitrogen rise and that forms the iconic head of the drink. After that’s done it’s work then you go back to the spout and top it off. Despite their nerves, people were getting it right. They earned themselves a fancy certificate. I’m sure some of them will be displayed in offices soon.

OK, now I have to go finish up my notes for tomorrow’s presentation.

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4
Mar 26

Shiver spring?

Here’s the deal I, a southern boy, have made in my decade of living in northern climes. Below a certain temperature, I don’t go outside if I don’t want to. At the same time, I acknowledge that life has brought me to a place where winter happens. (Items one and two here generally take of each other.) If winter is going to happen, it should stick within certain calendar confines. (I never get my way on this one, really, I mean look at us.) Anything after February 14th won’t do, because, back home, trees are budding and the lilies have burst through the soil and the jonquils aren’t far behind. Winter is going to happen, though, and so I will accept days that are cold and bright, or dull and warmer. The wrong combination there is unwanted. And, somewhere in February, because I can’t have spring on schedule, I begin to think things like “Oh this feels awfully warm!” and it is 51 degrees. This is the Stockholm Syndrome that comes in the last third of winter.

The last third, because we’re not done yet.

There has been entirely too much of this in the atmosphere for March.

Walking into our building on campus today I could see my breath. This wasn’t so much about the cold, but the dew point. It was one of those days where everything felt like it would be cold soggy forever.

In Rits and Trads we wrapped up the student presentations of traditions they found. Someone actually showed off the Red Wings thing. While they love it in Detroit, where it is presumably gray until May, this strikes me as problematic for a lot of people.

Another student showed a video from his high school, which was cool, but I’ll never find again. The idea was how they integrated the marching band and the football team taking the field. It was simple, and neat.

Someone discussed the Red Sox playing Sweet Caroline. Fits the bill. Crowd loves it.

And the Buffalo Bills do a Mr. Brightside thing now, which is on its way to becoming a tradition, it looks like.

Admittedly, these guys right here aren’t the best singers, but this is all about the choreographed stadium atmosphere. The Buffalo snow probably helps.

I wonder if they’ll take this song, and emerging tradition, next door to the new stadium this year.

In Criticism, we watched this documentary, which I thought was fascinating, as it takes on issues of gender, politicization, culture, history, and colonization. It’s a slow start, which allows the whole story to breathe, but most of the last half hour feels like a sports film. Also, it shocks the sensibilities a bit to see 8th and 9th and 10th graders having to fight to play a sport they love.

We talked about those things, and a few others, after the film, which is now 10 years old. Apparently not a lot of people have seen it, but maybe more should.

It’s a good way to avoid a bit of winter, I’d say.

Rowan / sports / Thursday / video — Comments Off
26
Feb 26

Videos we watched in class

In Rituals and Traditions we discussed the notion of traditions as spectacle. We started with the basic definitions, the unusual, the notable, the entertaining, the exciting public event that is visually striking. All of those things that go into making a gameday atmosphere. I love that stuff. I want to know how they all started, and how they came to pass. And some of these we can get to pretty easily.

For instance, when we talked about aural expressions, I showed this video, and part of the origin story is tacked on to the end.

We discussed other chants and cheers. And the silent expressions. I thought about just showing raw footage of Taylor University’s silent night, but this TV package explains the whole thing.

We discussed visual displays, and I showed this video, while I also confessed that dotting the i does nothing for me. But if it was like this every week, it’d be one of my favorite traditions. Dotting the i is 90 years old this year, and it’s thought to be one of the first big marching band arrangements, and certainly one of the longest lasting.

And, since I’d poked fun at the Aggies on Tuesday, I gave them a little video redemption today, sharing part of this package on midnight yell practice. All of which, as I explained, stems from there not being anything else to do at College Station.

And we talked about stadium performances, like this new thing that Clemson is doing. It’s great! I know, in my part of the world Clemson and great don’t often go together, but this is great, which the game announcers conveniently explained for us.

I talked more about Osceola and Renegade than perhaps they wanted to know, but this is a fascinating piece of lore.

Just to change it up, I touched on the La Barra Brava at DC United. No one knew what barra brava meant, but we talked about Bolivian immigrants coming to that region and attaching themselves to the club in the 1990s and now it’s impossible to think about a game there without them, even as what they’re doing isn’t routinely expected at U.S.A. sporting events.

And then I shared an example of one of the few instances of tifo in the U.S.

There are a lot of compelling examples in soccer, mostly from Europe, where these fans have tied the game and the club to their community, where it feels far more intensely wrapped into identity in a way that we don’t often see here, but you can’t everything in in one day.

And now, next week, they all have to share examples of rituals and traditions they’ve found, in brief individual presentations. We should get two dozen new examples out of the exercise. Or at least I hope we do.

During office hours, since no one came to visit, I knocked off some work, and then I started writing a column. I had this idea the other day and it has been bouncing around in my head long enough that I had to start whipping it into shape. I didn’t finish the job, but this evening I’ve made the thing much better. We’ll see, tomorrow, if I can perhaps try to make something of it.

We watched these videos in Criticism today. This was a long-form ESPN package that ESPN wrote, which followed up on a newspaper article we discussed in class on Tuesday. This woman is just incredible.

We also watched this one, and I think I’m retiring the video. I like it better than two consecutive classes. And I don’t think they’re as impressed with what’s going on in this production, or my explanation of it, than perhaps they should. But the man at the end is a hit.

And then there was this video, which two or three of them had seen, but more were interested in. Many excellent questions were raised. They couldn’t answer them all themselves, but right now I’m pleased to see them thinking their way into the questions.

It occurred to me, watching this once again before the class met, that this particular game was perhaps the first time a where-were-you-when moment took place that everyone had phones in their pocket. They didn’t make that specific point in the piece, but they walk you right up to it.

That’s enough for now. I have a meeting in the morning for which I must prepare. And more things to grade. And other items to work on, too. Keeps me out of trouble.

photo / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
19
Feb 26

Working on my own media aesthetic, it turns out

I bought some new lights. I wanted to backlight some books. The lights arrived Monday, hurled onto the porch from the delivery man’s truck-mounted trebuchet, for he feared my ice labyrinth (a yard of ice and snow, and a driveway still buried until yesterday.

Last night, I finally had a chance to open them. Two small LED lamps connected to one power cable. Lots of pretty colors. Looked great on the promotional website. The video and the inexpensive price sold me.

I opened the box, found the two lights and four different mounts. I also found this booklet.

And, look, light booklet copywriter, I’m glad you have that job. Those gigs aren’t easy to come by, but you should be proud of the work you did throughout. This is important, though: we’re not going on a journey. You’re going to backlight some books.

I spent some time sliding them between the bookcase that holds the Gloms and the wall. It didn’t work quite the way I wanted to. But the lights are fun. You can run them from an app, use standard schemes or develop your own, set a timer, and so on. They’re just the wrong size. But I’ve also got colorful corner laps, slender little things that stand 58 inches tall. So I took apart the frames, slid those behind the Gloms and, ya know, it mostly works. The new lights are now going behind other books. (I have a lot of books, I wonder if I need more lights.) And the look now mostly works! So I have one large bookshelf backlit. I have the top of another backlit. And my old 1930s radio is backlit.

The idea is to make it all the backdrop for video meetings. But as I tinker with the light settings and the exact locations, this could be the beginning of a nice evening setup.

I had an epiphany about the snow today.

I’m going to miss it. We have a sandy soil, but this is just a wet, spongy ground right now. And the grass is, well, brown, as you’d expect.

I found a bowl of candy at the office today. I wonder how long that’ll last. I have two colleagues that have a playful feud about peanut M&Ms and when I saw this, I thought of those guys. One of them is wrong. Peanut M&Ms are just fine. I enjoyed the peanut butter ones today.

It was a nice treat before class. In Rituals and Traditions, we broke the class into groups again. They’ve got group work to do and so group work we began. The group work is now picking up speed. I’m excited to see what they do.

I was also excited to screen this documentary in my Criticism class. I asked them all to jot down the name and impressions they had of all of the people we meet. There’s about eight of them in here.

Then we talked about all of those people. The documentary is about video game addiction. I selected this one because it is a bit shorter, but also because we could do this exercise. We could discuss the different points of view — the guy trying to overcome his problem and help others, his mother, two psychologists, a Facebook executive and a few others — and consider all of the ways that each are talking about the issue.

This could be a media effects conversation, and I pointed that out. We considered the different ways the people came about their ideas in a field of important research that is really only just getting underway. Finally, it is a study in expertise, source credibility, perspective, and authoritative voice.

I was pleased with that. And I was sure to sum it up in the right tone of voice so it sounded, you know, authoritative.

I should have set up some dramatic lighting for precisely that moment in the classroom, too. Maybe next time.

photo / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
12
Feb 26

Ice Station Alpha

Nope, still not melting. Because it is never going to melt. Oh, they say this weekend. But this weekend will turn to next week. Just wait and see. And while we wait and see, I actually like this one, shut from the hip, but how the light comes in from the side is nice, even if I blew it on the horizon.

I always blow it on the horizon.

You shouldn’t put your horizon right in the middle, but there I was, admiring that light leaking in from the left, and there’s the horizon, right there. But this time it makes sense, see. Because I’m telling two stories in this photograph.

First, the sky, the clouds, and the light. Lovely!

Second, the snow and ice. Which will never melt.

In Rituals and Traditions we talked about fan identity and social identity. Here I make fun of Georgia fans, because they make it easy. We also talked about highly identified fans, and so I used this local TV package to introduce them to Roll Tide Willie, who is a wonderful example.

We also discussed BIRGing and CORFing — basking in reflected glory and cutting off reflected failure — and there are, of course, examples of Willie CORFing. He’s a little over-the-top as an example, but he’s funny and memorable. And, as I said, I know more than a few people like this. Fans are fans, after all.

We’ll talk about a different view of fandom next week. I’m trying to do all of this from the point of view of looking at fans as if we worked for a team, or a league, or an athletic department. A big question is, How do we help maximize the fan experience? From there, I think, this class could become quite rewarding.

In Criticism we watched the excellent documentary “Venus vs.”

It’s a 2013 piece, directed by Ana DuVernay. As she told the story of a tennis player rising to the peak of her powers and changing the sport, she was, herself, on her way to huge successes. It’s a good documentary, and we talked about it for a few minutes near the end of class. What can documentaries teach us? How, and in what ways, should we view documentaries. And how should we think about what we’re seeing?

On Tuesday, we’ll talk about some of the visuals in that documentary. Look at the way those interviews were captured. We’ll talk about media aesthetics. Why were the shots composed as they are? What do those shots say?

What does this shot say?

It says it is never going to melt. And if you think it feels like a rejected shot from Ice Station Zebra, I wouldn’t disagree.

Maybe this weekend. But probably not.