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Two videos to start your weekend

I put about 39 markers on a custom map tonight. You have the name and then you must consult by LAT/LONG, postal address or by eyeballing a cross-referenced map, to place the marker. You enter the name. You get the next name, spend several moments researching the precise location — the idea being that if you went to the marker you would be at least within a pitching wedge of the actual location — and do it all over again. Do these three dozen more times. And then, somehow, ruin the entire effort. This is what I have to say to that:

Sometimes she sticks her tongue out and forgets, for a bit, to put it back in. We rush to grab a camera or a phone. She is reasonably tolerable of the camera, but you have to trick her a bit and be ready before you point.

The phone must come out of the pocket. The screen must be unlocked, the phone app accessed and that you have the flash set as the circumstance demands. If you can do all of that before the marginally inattentive cat starts noticing you, you can get two or three quick shots. If you put something in her face before you’re ready and then try to compose a masterpiece you’re going to be disappointed in your effort.

Baseball season is upon us. The hype video was found by Victoria Cumbow, with whom we have the regular Why I Love the Internet This Week joke:

And this, I love this:

S*uff Samford Students NEVER Say from Connor Wangner on Vimeo.

A former student produced that video. They all did a great job. I watched it twice.

video / Wednesday — Comments Off
15
Feb 12

Spamalot

A snippet of their encore number … from waaaay in the back of the hall.

video / weekend — Comments Off
11
Feb 12

Joe Greene, still taking gifts from strangers

Cold. So cold. Made all the worse because all of winter has been so delightfully mild. It isn’t even terribly cold, he said as the wind chill hit 14 degrees in the late hour, the skin just isn’t prepared for it. The last time I went out, to fetch Chinese take out, the wind chill was a balmy 19.7 degrees.

The first sound I heard today was the neighbor’s daughter’s basketball goal falling over in the driveway. There was a breeze this morning. So let’s do yardwork!

The Yankee is spreading soil and removing old debris from one of the flower beds. We’re tilling. We’re digging. We’re removing rocks. It’ll be in the 60s by midweek. This is a hard time of year to figure.

We are simultaneously under a hard freeze warning and a fire weather warning.

And now, a comparison of two Joe Greene commercials.

“Mr. Greene … you played a great game. As a demonstration of my appreciation I’d like to offer to help or, failing that, insist that you enjoy this Coke in the hopes that its restorative powers help you find your A-game in time for next week’s matchup, at which time I will see you again.”

“Hey kid!” Toss jersey, jingle out.

“Mr. Greene? Mr. Greene?”

You’re a bit older and harder of hearing.

“Want my Downy Unstoppables?”

I make awkward faces while I try to stretch this container into people’s laundry rooms or, failing that, into people’s subconscious.

“Really. You can have it. (That’s what the cue card says, Joe!)”

Joe takes it, sniffs, so amazed by the smells that the angels begin to drown out the stadium crowd.

She turns, “See ya around.” Clearly bummed because a few generations ago Joe Greene just gave his jerseys away. And this would be a terrific e-bay opportunity. But no. He has to smell the darn Unstoppables some more. It is like they are … unstoppable.

Clearly, she’s pouting twice as hard as the kid in the original. (The football legend says, in a making of the commercial interview, that the kid was disappointed because he only intended to share the Coke, but Mean Joe Green drank it all.)

Realizing he is typecast, Greene tosses the jersey once more. But the scent is too strong — her olfactory nerves having intercepted the odious game time exertions — and she throws it back.

He waits half a beat and looks into the camera. “Last time I’m doing this.”

Read: “I’m in the Hall of Fame, and I have six Super Bowl rings. But I wanted to buy a nice gift for someone and this came with a hefty check. Stop trying to recreate this spot in jetways.”

Actually the Los Angeles Times quotes him, “It didn’t take much to convince me” to reprise the spot. So maybe I have that wrong. Perhaps he misses when people would make that joke at the airport. Maybe you should try it and see.

Let me know how that works out for you. I will not recite commercial lines to Mean Joe.

cycling / errands / Friday / links / movies / video — Comments Off
10
Feb 12

Emailed items are Undefeated

Email on the wane according to a new ComScore report, as relayed by Alan Mutter:

The use of email has plunged by more than 30% in the last year among consumers under the age of 24, owing to the increased use of texting and Facebook to stay in touch.

[…]

A primary activity among wired individuals since the arrival of the Internet, email use in the last 12 months fell by more than 30% for those under the age of 24 and stayed absolutely flat among those aged 24-44, according to the audience measuring service. As illustrated below, only those aged 45-54 are pecking out more emails today than they were a year ago.

Twenty-two percent of the remainder is in my inbox. Six percent spam, eight percent meant for someone else.

I’m presently inundated with emails from seemingly every agency east of the Rockies that ships cars. Someone is intent on shipping their Volkswagen Jetta from Philadelphia to Chattanooga. The going rate, I can confidently say, ranges between $400 and $550. And the car transport people? They are big on correspondence.

Shipped off the headlight lamp that was supposed to fit my car, but did not fit my car. I clicked the buttons on Amazon, printed the return file, put everything back in the original boxes and carried it to the UPS store. That’s where you can buy UPSes.

The door just about pinched my finger off going in. The two guys working there feigned a mild concern. They were helping a young lady on crutches. She had all of their sympathy. Even the pre-existing injury on my finger didn’t win the day. I didn’t mind. The thing I printed meant I didn’t have to pay for shipping.

Amazon gives you several reasons to return your purchase. Some of them are very nuanced reasons, but some of them mean the difference between you paying a restocking fee, a shipping fee or nothing at all. Fortunately my reason to return the thing meant the seller was footing the bill. And that’s the first thing in the car drama that has worked in my favor.

Snuck in a few quick miles on the bike this evening. It is February, but it is finally turning cold. I could tell on my ride. Still nice and mild when I left home, but about two-thirds of the way through the ride I found myself in the shivers.

Tomorrow we’ll have big winds and maybe the 40s. I’ll just have to wait that out and pile it on Sunday afternoon.

Watched The Undefeated:

If they edited trailers like they do today Rock Hudson would have been a total scene stealer, John Wayne would have punched someone and the love interest would have been slipped in at the end. And then Rock Hudson would say something like “Finding ourselves outnumbered is a fact of life we’ve gotten used to!”

That’s just before the conversation between Hudson’s fleeing rebels and the soon-to-be assaulting Mexican bandits. Their detente doesn’t go well. The bad guys attack. They are turned back by the confederates and then ambushed twice, first by Wayne’s calvary and then by Wayne’s adopted son’s friends.

Later a Juarista general double-crosses Hudson. After a speech, an execution, dilemma and then a running gunfight that takes place in a barely controlled horse stampede we reach the conclusion. And there it is hard to picture a colonel and family man, in the next-to-last scene, having a toast with the man who’d previously held them all hostage.

There had to be at least 100 people shot and killed in the movie, which held a G rating.

Which is better than three percent of the email currently sitting in my spam folder.

links / Thursday / video — Comments Off
9
Feb 12

The cleverness of Mississippi lawmakers

The Gulf of America, nee Mexico?

A retiring Mississippi lawmaker says there’s a method to his madness in proposing a bill to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

Mississippi Rep. Steve Holland in a phone interview that he authored the bill in order to fight “a litany of assaults on immigrants and poor people,” introduced by the Republican-controlled Mississippi Legislature.

“I just thought I’d give them some more red meat to throw at their base,” Holland said, adding that the bill would give Mississippi residents “no reason to ever have to refer to someone who looks different from us.”

Step 1: Come up with a concept that toes the line between novel and sublimely ridiculous.

Step 2: Never mind that you’re a state lawmaker who has no power to change the name of an international body of water. You’re retiring. Who cares?

Step 3: When you get a little more blowback than you anticipated … reach for any old talking point that you’ve heard your colleagues talk about the last few days and make a tenuous connection.

In other news, legislators in Mississippi have solved all of the problems in their great state and have moved on to international waters. So that’s a nice development.

Grading today, and read a bit. Managed to ride for a while. Spilled my milk after I got finished. I wasn’t sure how to react to that. Milk is so expensive these days you almost have to cry, no? And it wasn’t even milk, but chocolate milk!

Made my Valentine’s Day plans: Waffle House!

Not really. Though a waffle does sound good. (And you have to love that there are three shots of the jukebox in the first 13 seconds of B-roll. The man knows his Waffle House iconography.)