Sent the in-laws home today. They’re lovely folks, full of fun and I’m glad when they get to visit. It seems we’re making this an annual thing, though, their fall trip for a weekend. Last year they made it down for a homecoming game. This weekend they saw Auburn host Ole Miss. Next year, a big-time game perhaps.
Anyway, we had breakfast at Barbecue House, as has become a weekly tradition. Some football players were there, including an offensive lineman. My mother-in-law barely came up to his shoulder blades. Mr. Price now remembers me. He asked my mother-in-law if if I was back or visiting.
And this is the sign that I ate here too much in undergrad — several times a week for breakfast and sometimes for lunch as my class schedule allowed — he now recalls me by name. That’s a powerful memory.
I graduated a decade ago.
Saw them off and headed to campus. Did a little work, graded some papers, mingled a bit and went to class.
I learned what relief sounds like. I told the students they would have no quiz today and the room got brighter, louder and the barometric pressure dropped two degrees. The escape of tension can be a tangible thing.
At the paper, where the student-journalists are hard at work … showing each other videos. Rapper’s Delight shows up in here, as well as other high points of the genre:
There are three things about that. First, I’ve now seen Jimmy Fallon do something funny — he’s just … not. Second, I think I’ve found Jimmy Fallon’s audience — the college student. Third, this is the jumping off point where I can no longer relate to that audience — I’m old.
They are also putting together a paper, alas, there is no compelling video of this herculean feat. There will be news copy tomorrow, however.
Google is making changes. They are horrible. More on that tomorrow.
Beyond that window is a brightly flaring tree. Beyond that tree is a campus covered in low clouds. Beyond that non-fog is rain.
And that’s what the world looks like today.
The big JMC Advisory Council was today, where the faculty welcome back alumni, recent grads and local industry pros to get a ground-level sense of the industry and where we should be heading as a department. These sorts of meetings can be insightful, particularly if you’re prepared to hear what the advisory council comes to say. When this happens there are many thoughtful nods, supportive gestures of considerable heft from important people. Also, there are snacks and jokes.
I found myself taking minutes of the meeting. Never done that before. I typed, single-spaced, eight pages of notes.
Outside of the room where this took place were two floor-to-ceiling book shelves filled with old books free for the taking. I went a little crazy. When I stacked them up later my haul was up to my knee. A lot of writing books and a few tomes of literature, which will all look good in the office, and then a few more that will look good as I read them.
One day. I now have two full shelves of books at home waiting to be read.
Shot this video and edited it on my phone, for fun, while waiting on a table at dinner tonight:
I hate the music to it, but it was the only track that fit the edited footage of nothingness that I had on my phone. I need more bumper music! He said to an uncaring world.
“You and everybody else, bub.”
My in-laws are here. They flew in today for a weekend visit, since we don’t have the chance to make it New England for Thanksgiving. Also, they’re missing the first snow fall of the year, apparently. That’s early and unwanted by everyone in their part of the world, but they’ll be enjoying sun and a breeze here.
I really think they come for the football. They were down for the Homecoming game last year. This season we’ve upped the ante a bit, having them for a conference foe in pitiful Ole Miss. Next year they’ll have to come for a more heated rivalry.
Anyway, I was editing that video as they made it to the restaurant. The Yankee, her parents and Brian, who is also in town for football, went to the charity home run derby at the baseball park tonight. I made it home in time to put our name on the wait list. We had corn nuggets and fried pickles and sandwiches and a lovely time all together at dinner.
Feeling sort of wimpy, I may have to call it an early evening. This was a fairly long day after about four hours of sleep. (I was writing things.)
So, just so you don’t go without, YouTube Cover Theater, where we demonstrate the power of the video camera, the Internet and passion for music, in the form of talented people covering tunes because they like the way they sound. This week’s featured artist is Ray Charles.
We’ll start with people in wigs and bad hats covering the tune that was the precursor to soul music:
Who likes harmonica?
Ray. Willie. Must have it here:
Ray Charles covered a lot over his great career. Here he is re-imagining Eleanor Rigby:
Alabama’s new and controversial immigration law makes an appearance on the Colbert Report:Comedy as commentary is difficult to overcome, is it not?
Class this afternoon, so much of the morning was devoted to preparing there. The students were writing fake stories. Here are the details, write a story based on what you know. There was a fake story about a shooting death, another about a prominent local company moving their operations overseas and one more on a car fatality with alcohol involved.
These exercises are important, because the place we put ideas and the words we use to get there are critical to a story. For most people, winding up in the news is not a pleasant experience. We don’t need to make things worse with a misplaced modifier or some other syntax error.
The future! By Microsoft:
I scrolled down through the comments, hoping the very first one would have some incredible insight. The first three, however, noted that Microsoft envisions better tech in videos than they produce. And then a big argument about Apple and St. Steve inventing the tablet. Also, within about three minutes of each other different people thought this was the loneliest future they’ve ever seen, or the coolest thing ever and “I want one now!”
I’m glad to see that typos will still be a part of our future. Check out the 2:55 mark.
Also in the future, Roy Moore wants his old job back. The last time he had that job he was fired by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. I remember covering that story like it was yesterday. November of 2003 he lost the job, but this fight had been going on for months. I remember sitting in my studio, watching video from Montgomery and a man in a red flannel shirt, red-faced, veins throbbing, screaming at the top of his lungs demanding Moore’s Ten Commandments monument be put back. I was concerned about that guy’s health. Wonder where he is now.
Because I love myself I visited Walmart tonight. I know! And this after getting a haircut yesterday. Haircuts are one of my least favorite chores, because of the conversations. These are is especially awkward if you go to one of those places where you never see the same person twice. The conversation, then, demands a very basic, elevator level of commitment spread out over a longer period of time than a three floor ride in a large box.
The lady that cut my hair this time smelled of cigarettes. She disliked the cold. She could not decide if she’d seen me before. (She had not.) And she had trouble breathing. The guy that’s cut my hair the last two times, elsewhere at an actual barber shop, scares me a little. And his finished job is a bit severe. The lady yesterday, though, did a nice job on everything but the sideburns. This is remarkably hard, trimming things to be level; no one ever does it right and is no longer something that can be judged.
Everything else, though, centered on the awkward conversation. I like conversation, but the hair chair isn’t the place. Cab drivers need conversation because some of them are already on the edge. Plus there’s the where are you going, where have you been, who will you be when you get there mystery of cab rides. Most any other place a little chit chat is fine. Rapport is great, fishing for repeat customers is understandable, making people feel at ease is applauded. I want you to concentrate on what you are doing. Don’t jam my eye with the clipper. She almost did last night.
Having survived, though, why not go to Walmart tonight? Taylor Swift has a line of greeting cards now. Bing Crosby warned that Santa Claus is coming to town. We change the clocks in two weeks. Halloween is this weekend. This might be a little early.
The checkout line was … post office-like in it’s slowness.
Maybe it was the guy trying to get information from the cashier about her coworker so he could go flirt. There’s another awkward conversation, at least no sharp instruments were used.
Busy schoolwork day. I wrote three brief link posts on my blog for journalism students, one on the new faces of poverty another on the return of the police blotter and linked to an interview offering a little bit of social media advice for journalists. I’d like to think most people have gotten that figured out, but every once in a while someone does something that makes you wonder.
So those are the posts that I have been copying here from time to time. I can never make up my mind about how I want to present them. They’ll probably be reprinted here again next week, just out of habit.
One of the neater things I saw today. A six-year-old donates her birthday to help donate clean water to people in need. The founder of the non-profit recorded her a personal video:
The high touch is still a very valuable thing. Sending personalized notes like these at the right time to the right people makes for memorable content, and maybe some devoted followers.
The rest of my day was spent grading a few things and, mostly, preparing a big presentation on infographics for tomorrow’s class. There’s something like 40 pages of slides, a handout and the thing is still growing.
Oh, and there’s also a current events quiz for tomorrow’s class. MUHAHA.
The idea is simple and brilliant: he interviews everyone who played a captain on Star Trek. He’s a very good interviewer. The subjects are varied … In the end it’s about Bill, and life, and work, and what you lose, and death, and what you make in life. There’s even a big trip to a convention, and one scene that just about grinds your heart into a fine dry paste – which you can reanimate with your tears, if you please. Recommended.
This really became an excuse for Shatner to travel around and talk with people about himself while asking a few questions. At least that was the way it was edited. Maybe no one is as interesting as him. Scott Bakula and Patrick Stewart remain the most likable of the bunch, because they aren’t not crazy, bitter or overcome with ego. Chris Pine might be too cool for school, but he’s only in a fraction of the film, so it is difficult to tell. I call Kirk-level shenanigans.
Pardon me. My phone is ringing.
[…]
Step-father. He has dialed me by accident. I hear him speaking pointedly about … something. There’s someone else’s voice. And what sounds like some news-type talk show on in the background.
He is the only person that accidentally dials me. I think maybe my number is one of the hot buttons on his phone. It doesn’t happen often, but about once a year I’ll find myself comically yelling “HellllllOOOOOOOOOOO!”
This time I thought, What if he is flying? The recorders might not like my tinny voice in the background making jokes.
Why it has taken me that long to think that is a bit problematic. But I’ll distract myself with this question of morality: If someone unknowingly calls you, and you listen in, are you eavesdropping?
Because, you know, what if he were speaking pointedly about me?
He was not. When he realized his phone was on we had a little chat. Turns out he was talking about companies who are only out to get the consumer. Lots of folks can relate.
The most productive accomplishment of the day was in trimming the hedges. This is no small thing, as our house is surrounded on three sides by shrubbery. I’m not sure why the southernmost side is bare.
Everything along the front, save the door, the sidewalk and the garage, are bordered with green, growing things. All but one segment was trimmed. The lucky ones — and isn’t that just like a bunch of bushes, bragging to their neighbors? “You got chopped up, but I’m still here. Look at me grow! — I left alone because they’ll probably be dug out of the ground in a few weeks. Others along the front got lowered, including one that borders the garage. We’ve developed a little contour into it for the car’s side mirror.
There are also two at the end of the drive. These must be maintained to preserve the proper turning ratio as one backs out of the drive. This requires the acquisition of surveying tools, and chalk lines. I am the only person in America going through such precise measurements.
The unintended benefit, or consequence, is that one of them is growing around the mailbox post. I’d let it grow over the thing, but that would probably violate some nuance of the neighborhood and only make the mail carrier mad.
I do all of this, by the way, with the 24-inch Black & Decker Hedge Hog, which is like mounting an M-60 onto Excalibur and plugging an extension cord into the hilt. You hit the trigger, feel that dual blade action, wave it above your head and know: your kingdom is only limited by your vision.
And municipally recognized property lines.
Trimming up the northern side of the estate required the ladder, because there are some bushes on steroids on that side of the house. Two of them would have been easier to reach from the roof.
So I’m standing on the top of a multi-use ladder. We have a transformer of aluminum that makes shapes that are only limited by your imagination, and not its contortion. I dutifully set the ladder into a standard A configuration, straddling the center hinge point with a foot on either side. I realized I couldn’t reach the very back of the bush. OK then. So I find myself standing on the top of the A, in the hinge-point, waving about a whirring 24-bladed saw with shark teeth moving at 2,900 strokes per minute.
My kingdom is suddenly a lot less interesting from this vantage point. I climbed down quickly.
The curious thing about the greenery here is that there is a lot of variety. Once the offending shrubs are out of the front there will only be one place surrounding the entire structure where you see two of the same species next to one another. I haven’t yet decided if that’s a feature or a bug. If you had to dig them all up, every annoying root, what would you replace them with? Uniformity or everything that could grow in this climate?
And that’s the sort of thing you think about as you rake away the leaves leavings. That’s some way to start your Friday evening.
YouTube Cover Theatre, where we see the talent that people have, until the advent of webcams and the Internet, people were hiding in their homes. Since Irecently watched the George Harrison documentary, we may as well check out covers of some of his work.
The Beatles weren’t my band. I like them fine, they just don’t belong to me. Wrong generation. But, if I had been in the right group, I think Harrison would have been my favorite of the bunch. And since you can’t have Harrison without the band, we’ll start with a cover of All Those Years Ago:
That looks like an impossibly difficult tune and he did a nice job. Then he leaned back against his den’s wood paneled walls and enjoyed the rest of his evening.
This cover of My Sweet Lord has received 26,000 views, which may be the largest count that we’ve ever seen in YouTube Cover Theater. Aside, is it just me, or has this song always sounded like it should be appropriated as commercial bed music?
One of the cool things about the Beatles, I would think, would be introducing what has essentially become timeless music to kids. I mean the clean cut, less drugs portion of the catalog. And while this is essentially a Paul McCartney tune, Harrison wrote the main riff, which is enough of an excuse to show a cute cover by a father serenading his daughter for her second birthday.
When she’s older she’s going to be humming Beatles tunes and won’t remember why. Then she’s going to stumble through her dad’s YouTube uploads and it will all click. It will be adorable.
Hard to believe it has been 10 years since George Harrison died. I was doing a network newscast at the time, the last segment of which was a 30 second spot and outro. That day I just played this song for 30 seconds and signed off:
Just for fun, here’s a recreation of Harrison’s Bangladesh Concert with members of Wonderous Stories, Alan Parsons Live Project and more, covering Wah Wah:
Other things happened today, too, emails and organizational things. We’ll have wrapped up the latest big project at work by the first part of the week, it seems my part has largely been completed, except for showing up at the various events next week. Homecoming at Samford means advisory council meetings and wall of fame induction ceremonies and all of the attendant activities.
With those things now completed I can return to other work. Like digging up shrubs.
