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2
Oct 25

A specific elegance

Here’s the view from the campus office, where we live next-to-corner-office wishes and sixth floor dreams. Also, I share this office with my lovely bride, though we are seldom there at the same time. Offsetting office hours make that happen this semester.

Anyway, just look at those clouds. There’s a certain elegance in the clouds when they thin and march out like that. I wonder if that’s how earlier artists were inspired to take on the challenge of forced perspective.

The office has lights, but I do not know if they work. Plenty of natural light comes through that window, and I’ve never tried turning them on.

The office has the four travel posters that commemorate our honeymoon. And there are a few other framed things on the wall. I should add some of my own. And there’s a bookshelf, but I should add some books that are currently sitting in the basement, looking awesome. We have a rug we need to bring in.

I have also been collecting vintage local sports pennants. I’d all but completed the set when countries started shipping things to the U.S. The baseball pennant I bought two months ago from someone in Canada is somewhere stuck in that morass, so I’m getting a refund. But I need a new vintage baseball pennant, so back to E-bay, I guess. Then we can get a giant frame and hang that on an office wall.

In my mind, this will look really classy and cool.

The first problem is that there’s a lot of cool stuff I could put on a wall. The second problem is the nails. Or, more precisely, the nail holes. It feels very permanent, and I don’t mean in the photo that’s been on your grandparents’ wall your whole life sense of permanence. This is silly, there are several high quality putties and sealants and a fresh coat of paint goes a long way, but puncturing drywall is a real commitment.

This also explains all of the things not hanging on walls here at home, where I could also put up some other cool stuff.

In Criticism today we watched the new documentary on British Olympian Tom Daley.

It left something to be desired, from a critical perspective, but Daley was an executive producer, and I’m sure that figures into it. He’s going to tell his story his way — and why not? With that in mind, much of it felt a lot like a sort of oral history he was recording for his children.

It’s also an unconventional documentary in some respects. He’s watching footage of himself on a big screen, footage from throughout his life, because there have always been video cameras. And he was such an incredibly high profile athlete throughout his diving career, there were always broadcast cameras, too. Plus, I’m a big believer in the need of time and space away from the subject of a documentary. Maturing, evolving, crystallizing perspectives and all of that. This doc ends with his Paris Olympics. (And it felt rushed at the end.)

It got a mixed response from the class, now I’ve just got to get them to explain aloud why. But criticism is a learned process, and we’ve got some time yet to go this term.

In org comm my god-brother-in-law came to talk about his work. He’s a professional mountain biker, a filmmaker, a storyteller. Brice is also pretty great at all of those things. So he talked about niche storytelling. He was great at that, too. Here’s one of his films.

What was gratifying to me was to see how so many of the students were engaged in what he was saying, even though he is in a niche field, and this was not their niche. Well, most of them. One guy in the room, turns out, rides a bit, and they got nerdy with the vocabulary in a hurry, which was amusing to watch. There were suddenly industry specific terms flying all over the place and everyone else in the room came to realize they had no chance of catching up, or even catching on. It’s a niche kind of storytelling.

And look, I ride bikes. I tell stories. I do niche things. I teach this class. I was taking notes on what Brice was telling us.

I have some more things to grade, but if I did that tonight, what would I do tomorrow? Plenty of other things, of course. So I’ll just grade (tomorrow) instead.

See how I do that? There’s a certain elegance to it.

Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
25
Sep 25

There are many kinds of star power

Today in my Criticism class we watched, and discussed, the Nine for IX documentary, Venus vs. The tennis icon took on a years long fight for equal pay in women’s tennis. This is a great documentary, a documentary which, itself, was the beginning of a momentary effort by ESPN to correct a gender imbalance. This was the debut of the Nine for IX series. It debuted as ESPN carried their first installment of Wimbledon, and just a few years from the resolution of this long campaign.

So, if you’re keeping score, last week we went from a 1999 doc produced about a 1968 event, the Olympics, to a 2013 doc today which focuses on parts of the early 21st century career of Venus Williams. Next week we’ll watch a program produced this year.

And, also next week, I think I’ll take some stills from the Venus vs. program and talk for a moment about shot composition. I’ve given the class a primer on critiquing techniques and one of the points is about visuals. That documentary, produced and directed by Ana Duvernay before she’d become a huge hit-maker, has some things to say, visually.

In Org Comm today we continued our conversation on branding, which features a lot of sports commercials, and will somehow go into Tuesday.

My favorite one of the bunch isn’t even a real commercial.

And also this one, just because of how Peyton Manning trades on his referent power, and his incredibly philanthropy through the meaning transfer model …

Don’t tell the students, but all of the star power things we’ve been talking about this week are on an assignment they’ll have to conquer on Tuesday. That’s when we’ll start to see if I’m making any sense.

Rowan / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
24
Sep 25

And if that wall asks anything of me …

It turns out that we streamed the Charles Barkley conversation last night. You can watch it here, if you like.

If that doesn’t automatically jump to the right moment, just scrub to about 13:00 to get to the talking.

I’ve got nothing for you, but a day of timeless email tales, and trying to figure out how two days of branding talk will become three days of branding talk, and working on an assignment for next week. And also re-watching a documentary we’ll watch in class tomorrow. One must make notes so one can have something insightful to say.

Also this morning there was a Zoom meeting. And all afternoon, a faculty meeting. So enjoy Sir Charles, I want to blankly stare at a wall now.

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
22
Sep 25

I’m not saying I rode with a ghost; I’m also not not saying that

I’ll just tell you, straight away, that this is going to be a full week for me. I’ll probably feel it for the next three weeks. Which is to say that this week is busy, and I’ll insist upon taking an extra moment or two next week to recover. And, because of that, the week after that, I’ll be in this same boat again.

Also, I have papers to review, extra meetings to attend and some things to write. And I’ve been writing other things. Maybe some of them will see the light of day at some point. Plus the regular work, of course. Well, it keeps you busy, as they say. Anyway, you’ll probably just get a lot of scenes this week. So let’s do that!

Here’s a little sunset montage I made, but I don’t think I ever shared it. Nothing to it, just a few extra photos, literal over-the-shoulder photos.

I went on a circular ride on Saturday. A crude circle. A child’s unsteady drawing of a circle, if you looked at the map, and if the child did not yet understand circles. The wind was in my face for about three-quarters of the ride. Especially right here. I’d been ducking one breeze and then took a hard left, thing I could be relieved because that wind would be on my shoulder, but, no, an even more annoying breeze was in my nose.

A bridge near us has been closed for a good long while. Closed in a “Yes, this applies to you” way. But now it is open. If you go over that bridge you’re pretty quickly into another township, which makes for three or four in one quick effort out that direction. This was from today’s ride.

And on that same ride, as I paced myself back toward the neighborhood and the approved low-light roads … the sun is telling these spent cornstalks good night.

It’s not as dark as I look, and I made it back into the evening roads. It’s a nine-mile route with bike lanes or extremely low traffic or both. And, if you’re really desperate, you can add in another five miles of pre-approved neighborhood roads to the mix. (I have negotiated this with my lovely bride in a safety-first way and, since, have only annoyed her with my choices twice.)

So I made it back to that area, and that’s where this photo is from.

I was on that road because one stretch of those 14 miles of evening roads is now being undone and redone. It’d be great for the gravel bike, but that’s not what I was riding. I suppose the good news is that I was able to share that chip and seal news with the local bike ride group we’re forming up. Way out here, where the heavy land and the green sands meet, we have a hardy little bunch of eight people in that riding chat, and that doesn’t include one of other just-too-far-away riding buddies and a few of the notorious no-one-can-hold-their-wheel beasts that I see out from time to time.

I rode with one of those guys for a while today. I was just a few miles in and then I heard the noise come along side. Big man. He turned his head to look at me for about two pedal strokes, wordlessly, and then moved to the front. I sat on his wheel for about three miles, turning out 25 and 26 mile per hour splits. I had to let him go, and he had the decency to turn a different direction at the next road.

I see him on Strava. I think I saw him off in the distance on a ride earlier this year, when I chased a taillight for miles, but then it disappeared I know not how. The locals say that, on a quiet evening, if you listen really closely, you can hear him sigh, shift gears and pedal into the phantom world.

I bet he would have enjoyed Saturday’s wind.

adventures / history / photo / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
18
Sep 25

The goal is the goal

It was a busy day on campus. In my Criticism class we watched a documentary about the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. It’s titled “Fists of Freedom.” You can find it in a few places online, including on the HBO app, but here’s a little tease from the night the doc won a Peabody.

Watching it took the full class. Tuesday we’ll talk about it, both the story they told, but also the craft of documentaries. We’ll watch a lot of documentaries in this class, and for these first two we’ll talk a tiny bit about the filmmaking as a format of criticism, too. I have worked diligently to create a wildly varied menu of documentaries. This one is historical and about track and field. (Good as it is, Bob Beamon’s world record long jump is my favorite part of that film.) The next one is contemporary and about tennis. We’ll look at an unconventional documentary centering on a diver after that.

In org comm today we discussed the overarching concept of the uniqueness of sport communication. Anyone that comes back next week will get to laugh at a lot of commercials as we talk about branding.

My godniece-in-law (just go with it) is a high school senior and playing some of her last field hockey games. So we went to see one of them this evening. Her little sister, my other godniece-in-law (again, go with it) played in a JV game, so we got to see both.

Now, I’d hoped to take a few photos of the senior, thinking maybe I could get one or two of her to share with her. The problem is I know nothing about field hockey. I’ve been to, I think, three or four games, and it’s still largely inscrutable to me. Fortunately, one of my students is a field hockey star. She gave me some tips today.

So we went to the games, I followed the suggestions of my field hockey folk hero. The game is played on the school’s football field, which serves quadruple duty as football field, soccer pitch, field hockey pitch and some of their field events for track. The field has a play turf surface, which feels like it’d be fun to run on.

I can say that because I set up shot behind the cage, which sits under the mobile soccer goal, which rests under the football field goal. The game is getting underway, I sneak back there. Sneak by walking at a normal pace. And as I’m fiddling with the settings on my camera, my godniece-in-law scores a goal. Missed it.

At the start of the second half the two teams swapped sides, so I walked over to stand behind the other goal. And back there, was this, which covers the high jump pad. For some reason, they’re really quite serious about staying away from this cover, which is just all kinds of dangerous.

Soon after, a gentleman walked over and told me to leave. So I walked back over to the stands, properly chagrined. It was the first time I’ve gotten in not-trouble at a high school in decades. Such a rule breaker am I.

Leaning against the post of the soccer goal felt comfortable. I haven’t done that since I was 20 or so. And, from back there, watching the game come toward me, I understood what was going on much better than the side-view you get from the bleachers. I have been assured by the people I’ve asked — including a chat tonight with my godniece-in-law’s grandfather, who is my godfather-in-law (just go with it) — that there many rules about what you can and can’t do in field hockey. They mysterious and inscrutable rules to us mere fans, but grounded in safety. He was a field hockey coach for 20 years. He’d know the rules, right? He did not tell me all of the rules. I’ve come to conclude they’re meant to be secret.

Most importantly, the home team won both games.