Billy Kim and the Korean Youth Choir performed at the Convocation at Samford. They had lunch in the campus cafeteria and then serenaded students with an impromptu show featuring Oh Susanna, God Bless America, Jesus Loves Me and more.
And then this cute little moment, right at the end of their show …
Otherwise, my comps defense got rescheduled. That was supposed to be tomorrow, but external frustrating things sometime happen. So now they’ll be in another week-and-a-half, four weeks after taking the comps. They are supposed to be defended within two weeks, but what can you do?
Made a great deal of organizational progress in the digital video center today. Taught a class. Had a meeting with the boss. Cleaned off two of my desks. (I have four surfaces in my office with stuff to do. Lately the notes are crawling up the side of a filing cabinet, too.) All of the grading will get done this weekend, though.
Something new on the LOMO blog. One addition to Tumblr today. An update to the Glomerata section is on the way.
What not to do on your bike: destroy the crank set first thing.
My Felt showed up two weeks ago and this afternoon I finally had a chance to take it out for a spin. Five miles out — and fortunately close to home — the aluminum machining was ruined.
So that was frustrating. And will be costly to replace and set me back a week.
But at least I have all of the necessary bike accessories.
And, hey, I’ve reviewed a book blurb, chewed through my grading, started staring at my dissertation notes and more this week.
We had dinner tonight with hysterical friends. Andrew, with whom The Yankee and I studied at Alabama, was passing through town. That brought out one of his friends from undergrad at AUM.
From this conversation we’ve learned one of life’s most important questions: are you salad curious?
YouTube Cover Theater returns with three quick samples from Pete Yorn. First up is a cover of a Yorn duet with Scarlett Johansson, Relator:
There’s his turn of the century first single, Life on a Chain:
And, finally, this, which is more interesting for the story than the cover. The guy here had just retired and bought this guitar with his last paycheck:
Back into the swing of things today. It was this evening before I realized I felt normal today. Weird. I’ve plowed through many long projects, pulled far more consecutive all-nighters and found myself in lots of anxious tests, papers, projects, work assignments and so on. But the comps last week beat me up far better than any of those things. I wrapped that up Thursday and I couldn’t get back to feeling normal (meaning exhaustion and general ease) until tonight.
I went to bed last night before 10 p.m., for example. That just doesn’t happen.
Anyway. Back to it today. Back to the phones and the email and the syllabus and grading and so on. Lots of grading this week.
Also rode the bike a little bit. A tiny bit. My pedals arrived — I’m not sure if I care for them — and so I did a few laps around the neighborhood sizing everything up. Feels like a good bike, the new Felt. Now I just have to remember how to ride.
It’s like riding a bike. Yes, I know. I learned to ride a bike on a gravel road. Merry Christmas, and thanks. It was no one’s fault in particular. My first big boy bike was delivered by Santa to my grandparents who, until the last few years, were so far out their county didn’t even realize they were out there. Necessity being a mother, I was taught the Jedi trick of balance, was pushed, pedaled and fell.
But if you fall on gravel you learn quickly how to prevent that from happening again.
[I fell off a bike just a few weeks ago, so take that gravel road! (My grandparent’s road is paved now) I couldn’t stop fast enough, and I had the choice between a curb or a port-a-potty. I got over the curb, saved the bike and managed to execute a perfect fall, distributing the kinetic energy of my motion as evenly as possible over the ground … and laughed as I was covered in mud.]
So maybe gravel doesn’t teach you how to never fall again. But you learn quickly all the same.
On this day in history, since I couldn’t anywhere to take pictures today, this is stripped directly from my Twitter stream and indulgently embellished beyond the 140-character limit.
In 1997 there was the North Hollywood shootout. It was a Friday. (I just clicked back through my calendar to be sure. You want depressing? Click back to the point you were in college and wonder why carpal tunnel is kicking in. Too many clicks.) I was a sophomore, so I’d probably gotten smart about morning classes by then. Let’s say I was just waking up. Two bad guys killed, eleven officers and seven bystanders shot. More than 2,000 rounds of ammunition were expended. There was a television movie, which was better than it should have been. Some of the footage was made at the scene of the shoot out, six years earlier. Also, the film used 40,000 rounds of blanks.
You can just imagine how that played out in production meetings.
“So we’ve got to find a way to get more than 2,000 rounds in 44 minutes. That’s almost a shot per second!”
“Have you seen the work of John Woo?”
“Right. Better make it 40,000.”
On this day in 1993 the Branch Davidian raid started the standoff in Waco. I was in high school (and, thus, am not clicking back that far to see what day of the week this lands on.) Four feds and six Davidians were killed as the ATF tried to serve a search warrant. Since that worked so smashingly they decided to lay siege for 50 days. Seventy-six people, including almost two dozen children, died in the infamous fire. Not the government’s best moments.
Something brighter then! Remember 1991? I don’t recall specifics of this, but I clearly remember when the Gulf War began. But on this day, 20 years ago, President Bush declared victory, seemed destined for a second term — if Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf didn’t swoop in — and life was grand. Oh, sure, some folks wondered about Baghdad and why the good guys didn’t march on in, but other than small details like that, life was good.
A few others wondered how they could spell Schwarzkopf and make it count on write-in ballots. So beloved was the general from New Jersey that even Madonna had a lyrical fling.
Can’t imagine that these days.
In 1983, there was the M*A*S*H finale. I don’t remember seeing it then. I wasn’t even in kindergarten yet, but I do remember the intro from the original airings. It was years before my mind could convince my eyes the helicopters weren’t flying backwards. Optical illusions are tough, I guess. It was longer still before I would see the finale. And I worked for a year or so at a television station that aired M*A*S*H constantly.
It is still in the top five, ratings wise. There are four Super Bowls and the farewell. I wonder how that show would do, today.
And, finally, in 1958 a school bus rear-ended a wrecker on a foggy morning in Kentucky. The bus fell off into a ravine and, ultimately, into a flood-swollen river. Twenty-six kids escaped. Twenty-six more, and the driver, could not get out of the bus and drowned. This is the worst school bus disaster in American history. The other worst bus disaster in the country was in 1988, also in Kentucky, also killed 27. (That one was a drunk driver hitting a school-turned-church bus, causing a vehicle fire that the victims could not escape.)
Because of these two incidences Kentucky requires buses to have more exits (nine) than anyone in North America.
The drunk driver that hit that bus in 1988, incidentally, received a 16-year sentence as a repeat offender on 27 counts of manslaughter. He was considered a model prison and was released after 10 years. (He declined an offered probation.) The church members, those most profoundly impacted by what was a truly national story, largely forgave him. The profound amount of courage that must take will always mystify. Now he lives just a few miles from the crash site.
You’d think you would get as far away from that as you can.
And now, for no particular reason, Dilbert:
I went back 20 years (more clicking) on this date. Dilbert has said exactly five things on February 28th. You’re welcome.
So I walk in and there she is, hoping onto the counter and sliding into the sink like she’s always there when we aren’t around.
You want video?
Found these at Piggly Wiggly in Tuscaloosa while spending four days there taking my comprehensive exams. This made me happy.
Shadows on nets. Sounds like a poorly titled romance novel, no? That was from earlier in the weekend, but Auburn won 2-0, on the strength of Derek Varnadore’s dominating 13-strikeout game.
This is at the farmers market in Opelika, using my iPhone’s Lomo app. Have you seen the LOMO blog yet?
Spartan effort, to be sure, but it has been a tired, empty day. So we’ll just get straight to the YouTube Cover Theater, where the talents of anonymous people are shared online because they have a camera and somewhere to host their artistic abilities. This week’s featured cover artist is indie-favorite Gillian Welch. I spent all of Tuesday night studying listening to her music, so it seemed a fitting way to wrap up the week.
First, there’s this incredibly solemn version of I Dream a Highway:
Sam and Sue play around with a song you might have heard here or there:
Catrina Rogers handles Gillian’s standard, Time the Revelator, with a lonely AM vibe:
And since many people may not know Gillian’s work aside from that tune and a few movie appearances, I’ll include a video of her covering a song herself.
One day someone will invent an instrument even my talentless hands can master. And I’ll start a band, and we’ll find another band that likes to do ensemble pieces. And we’ll play medium-tempo stuff and swap out the leads. Somewhere along the way someone will come up to me and say “Why don’t you play The Weight?”
I will say “Because it has already found perfection.”
