Tuesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Tuesday

movies / photo / podcast / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
22
Sep 15

You will never see John Cage Travolta the same again

Views from a ride I had this weekend:

It was one of those rides where you do a few things surprising, while not doing other things. This is not a disappointment. You huff a little, you sweat a little. You might think it is a bit late in the year for that sort of thing, but you see that sun sinking and you realize you notice that it is falling earlier. And that you noticed that is important, because you know you’ll soon wish for more days when it was warm like that, and you had scenes like this:

Here’s a good read. The Spiritual Path to Kona:

Lantz has raised more than $100,000 for charities over the course of his 13 IRONMAN races, but his focus isn’t just on the money. “I always pick a person who needs added inspiration in their life to go with me on the race,” he explains. He laminates a small picture of the person to carry with him on the course, proudly holds the picture up in his own finisher photo, and then gets a keepsake from the race to give to the person. “I want them to have something to remind them of their worth in the eyes of God, and my love for them,” says Lantz.

One such person was Josh Lucio, a boy with NF1 (neurofibromatosis Type 1) from Mesa, Ariz. “What Josh has had to endure is far more challenging than doing an IRONMAN,” says Lantz. “Despite his severe scoliosis and having tumors around his heart, he is a positive human being and a warrior. If I was able to play a small part in helping him stay focused and healthy, then I’ve used my IRONMAN journey to bless another.”

Lantz raced for Josh at IRONMAN Lake Tahoe, struggling to make it over the finish line before the 17-hour cutoff. “I had to finish for Josh at all costs,” Lantz recalls. “He watched me cross the line from his house.”

Allow me to make you rethink the entire second half of your 1997.

Face/Off came out in June of that year. And now I’m going to shake it all up. What if they were miscast? What if Travolta was originally Castor Troy and Cage was FBI agent Sean Archer, and they switched?

In the inevitable remake, I vote for Robert Pattinson versus Taylor Lautner.

Podcasts! Here are two of them. First, looking around the SEC.

And, second, trying to unwrap the Auburn enigma while looking at foreboding statistics:

Chadd there was my first radio mentor. Great guy. Learned a lot from him. Still do.

Auburn / football / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
Sep 15

The new scoreboard

Everyone seems to have opinions about this, and they seem to vary widely.

I think an excellent promotion would be to superimpose an old version of the scoreboard on the screen every week. The previous scoreboard is supered here, supposedly at a 1:1 ratio. Of course, the one on display would get smaller and more basic each week. We’d see more sky and moving clouds behind it. And, after a few more weeks, there wouldn’t even be a screen to look to, just an actual scoreboard.

Crowd watching on the screen is going to be a lot of fun and the production team does a nice job of hustling around and showing all sorts of people. It’s pretty amusing, if there’s no football on at the moment. Not that you really need the screen to see football. But it is big.

cycling / photo / Samford / Tuesday — Comments Off
8
Sep 15

Back to it, then, short week edition

I love the following sentence. I managed to get in a 31-mile ride before heading off to the office today. The upside to a late night, I suppose, is a slightly later start which today meant I had the opportunity to make a few more tiny circles with my feet.

Also, I got rained on, so I hid under a nearby church’s carport.

I got rained on while driving too, but that provided us with shots like this:

Because of all of those clouds which lingered throughout the rest of the day, we had a marvelous sunset, too:

I know sunset pictures are the standard placeholder around here. And there are people who make capturing that hour of the day their life’s work. You’ll never find mine next to theirs in a sunset photo gallery, I’m sure. But it pays to look up.

We’re also looking down, into computer screens this evening. Tonight our student-journalists are putting to bed their first issue of The Crimson for the school year. I’m eager to see how it looks tomorrow.

photo / running / Samford / swimming / Tuesday — Comments Off
1
Sep 15

You can do a lot with a Tuesday

The university announced record enrollment, which is now an annual announcement. There are now 5,206 students 46 states and 32 other countries. Also, the new yearbooks, documenting last year, were released on campus today. I looked through one and noted all of the people I knew and all of the now departed seniors I miss.

But there’s always new people to meet, new things to try, new toys to explore. Today we replaced our old fleet of Panasonic DVXs with a fleet of Panasonic HC-X1000 4Ks. They look sharp. And small.

Oh the fun we’re going to have with those. All of our students shoot everything in high definition and they do good work with them. And so it was exciting to see some of them come up and help unpack these today. Christmas in September! They’re looking forward to new equipment too. And why wouldn’t they be? They’ve been using the old cameras for three whole years. That deal means every student gets to work with brand new gear at least once in their time on campus.

Our students get a pretty good arrangement, as you can see.

They’re also shooting videos on their phones, of course. Here’s one our features editor has been working on.

After the unpacking party I ran back to my office to record a podcast, it should be live later this week. It is a happy, varied sort of work experience that I have on a daily basis. I like that.

I ran by these windows a few times this evening:

Today it was a 2,500 yard swim and a four-mile run. It didn’t even feel particularly hard, which is probably a sign of something unfortunate. Swim-run bricks are easy and deceptive.

Did you see the beginning of Catember? We’ll have a new photo of Allie each day throughout the month. Be sure to check in often.

photo / podcast / Tuesday — Comments Off
25
Aug 15

Cracked a mic for the first time in seven years

The new podcasting project I’m developing at work. The premise is fairly straightforward, we want to present to you a story in each episode that you might have overlooked, explain why it might be important in the hopes that you’ll seek it out.

My department is taking part in the production. Students are doing the intros and the outros. Soon, I hope, I’ll have students doing some of the guest appearances. It’ll be grand. Here’s the first one:

Maybe tomorrow I’ll remember how to breathe.

We’re aiming for wide, varied topics in easily digestible chunks. Each show will be around nine or 10 minutes, I hope. I’m pretty excited about what we can do with something like this. It should be fun, so follow along on SoundCloud and share with your friends.

Saw this at the big box store tonight:

It takes more than a little entrepreneurial moxie to make a duct tape koozie out of cheap, flimsy rubber. There were only two on the shelf, so they must be selling. That is even more difficult to understand.