YouTube Cover Theater on a new day. This has been an irregular Sunday feature which will now become a regular Friday feature. This is simply people taking the opportunity to use another outlet, and just more proof that there’s more talent out there than you realize.
First, since we’re covering BNL this week, we’ll offer up this tune, which was the first introduction for most American fans. These two guys jabber on for a minute or so, but then they really play:
If you watch Tyler Perrin here for a minute or two you get the sense that he’s got something. This video was recorded three years ago. He released his debut album earlier this year. But you knew him when:
Straw Hat & Dirty Hank is underrated. But this guy does it justice, and Ed from BNL gave him a nice compliment in the comments:
Here’s Ed, himself, in one of his famous Bathroom Session installments. These lo-fi recordings inspired the videos above.
Occasionally, when you wake up before the sun, you want to spend all day in sunglasses.
When you spend the early morning hours trying to figure out a particularly tricky issue that involves mathematics and then still wake up before the sun … well, it is best to reach for the welder’s eye guard.
Spent the morning discussing experimental designs to research media effects in class. The guy next to me brought strawberries. And because I had forsaken breakfast they smelled even 16 percent better than normal. He then returned to his coffee mug. And then he produced a bottle of water. Who knows what else was in his bag.
The class is a good one though. Our professor is internationally renowned, a very kind and engaging man. He has a deep stash of jokes and a very personable way about his seminar class. I suspect it will become an incredibly useful class by the time it is finished.
He’s also on my dissertation committee, so I’m doubly lucky.
After class I found my dissertation chair, another prolific and well respected researcher. We have nice conversations and he always has a handful of good ideas. We’re getting close to answering all the biggest questions and solving the largest fundamental problems with my dissertation idea. Ultimately it is making the whole thing a little bit easier, I think.
Had a meeting with my boss at Samford. We’re co-teaching a class together this semester. Should be a good class, now that the prep has been formalized. I will teach a bit about Strunk & White. Just doing my part to pass along the idea of omitting needless words.
I also met with the editor of the paper, who will hopefully omit many needless words, and the ad manager, who will hopefully add many paid words. It is the circle of news.
That’s about it for the day. Oh, and one other video. Did you know that Calera is, apparently, the fastest growing city in the state? The Oracle at Wikipedia says their population has tripled since the 2000 census. Here is a little snippet of town:
This time next week we’ll be visiting a new section on the site. I’m very excited for it. This time tomorrow we’ll be celebrating Pie Day. I’m always very excited about that as well.
Four pictures for you that didn’t find there way elsewhere on the site this week. First:
That’s Dr. Copeland, one of our talented and kind professors at Alabama. He’s on my dissertation committee, and I’m lucky to have him. That’s not his Emmy, but rather one of his students. That is, apparently, the first Emmy won by a former Alabama student and he brought it to be displayed in a trophy case somewhere in the building.
Allie got a care package from her grandparents. These are called Midnight Crazies, or some such upsetting thing. Allie doesn’t need help with the late night, early morning fun. She’s a yowler. It is a special grief to hear this for hours and for no discernible reason.
It was the Ale House. Very recently it became the Strutting Duck, which had moved closer into town. Just the other night we walked through the parking lot on our way to grab a burger and noticed the Strutting Duck sign. Now it is the Ale House again. Very strange.
This bird did not like me.
Also, three videos, all shot from my phone:
That’s from my Thursday morning drive. Nice, empty field, nice empty, country road. It has a good feeling.
We were at Petco, checking on kitteh food options when a big guinea brawl broke out.
I edited that while we were walking through the grocery store. This is the coolest thing ever.
I woke up, I turned on the television, and there was Julius Caesar, the 1970 version, starring Charlton Heston, Jason Robards, Sir John Gielgud and others. I wrote about it on Twitter:
Watching Julius Caesar, starring prototypical Roman, Charlton Heston. Great American cast reading English dialect about Italians. #globalism
Heston played Marc Antony three times. Unlike Caesar he accepted it thrice. People made Planet of the Apes jokes the second and third time.
Twitter News Alert: They just stabbed Caesar. In a related story, the music is odd percussion, reminding audiences of Planet of the Apes.
Marc Antony gives a stirring, populist speech for Caesar and the people riot. He then drinks from a wooden bowl that breaks like glass.
Robards and Johnson just tear up the big Brutus/Cassius scene. It is exhausting to even watch it. “Fret till your proud heart break!”
Cassius’ death scene was so bad that when Brutus arrived he looked around, as if were expecting to be Punk’d.
Exeunt Robards nee Brutus. Heston comes on to say “We finally really did it. You Maniacs! You blew it up!” Credits!
This film isn’t well received at IMDB, I suspect because of the understated power and hammy acting of Charlton Heston. There are times when he feels like he’s performing on a stage for a great audience, waaaay in the back of the house, but forgetting the camera is right there. It is, though, a terrific movie for a day when it is too hot to move.
In the late evening we went for a bike ride. The bike I was riding is, well, messed up. It won’t go above fifth gear. Half the time it won’t go below it. But I can pedal in fifth! So I can coast or ride that one speed, or try to force the chain. Doing that means an awfully big downstroke which creates the other problem: the seat won’t stay up. Every hill or so I have to stop and reset the height, pressing the little clamp down as hard and as far as I can, hoping it will hold.
And it does, for a while. And then, seemingly at random, the clamp gives way, the seat slides down into the tube on the frame and whatever symmetry I had is replaced by something more or less perpendicular to the road, with my splaying feet and knees feeling like they are inches from the ground.
So I only did about five miles like that. The Yankee came in too, it was getting a little dim. Guess we’d started too late.
That’s OK, because after we got cleaned up we made dinner and enjoyed a delicious spaghetti parmesan. We watched the Back to School marathon on USA, which featured Juno, the story of a precocious 16-year-old who gets pregnant and judges everyone in lines a little too dated for someone her age.
Got a one-liner, an adoptive family and everything turns out great! Your parents will support you and your friends will come around. Welcome back to school, kids!
Tomorrow, I’m dumping a bunch of pictures and things on you from the last week. Thinking of making that a regular feature, too. Anything to pad another day around here.
My day started at 5 a.m. for the second time this week. When did yours start? There are people who are already awake by then. I saw them on the road, biking, or at the gym, working out. These are disturbed individuals. I’d say something about waking up that early twice this week, but all of those people did too.
Of course it hit the mid-90s today, and at the early hour it was only 77 degrees with 94 percent humidity, so they are most likely just brilliant self-preservationists.
Another sporadic new feature, Today’s Mystery:
What do they make in there?
Had a class this morning, titled Researching Media Effects. It is taught by an internationally renowned scholar who is the new dean of our graduate program. He’s bringing about swift changes, the kind of things that make you wish he’d had the job a few years back.
Over the summer they’ve been renovating all of our labs, and there is a great deal of promise for future research and hopefully a little of it will help when I get to my dissertation, which is only just around the corner. This is my last class and I’ll be start preparing for comprehensive exams soon.
Time flies when you’re insanely busy, I guess.
Anyway, the class is about researching media effects and given the professor and the reading list it is already one of the best classes of the curriculum. I’m looking forward to the class, but I’d rather still be in the summer.
Visited Samford. Had lunch. We had a church media workshop underway today and I sat in a few of those sessions. I had a meeting with the boss to receive more marching orders for the semester. Had a nice long meeting with the new editor, who is a very collected young woman. I suspect that her staff will put out some quality stories and great papers before too long.
I sold a few cardboard boxes. We bought a few extras for the move and they went unused. The people that sold them will buy them back, making me think I might be in the wrong business. Glenn Beck wants you to invest in cardboard, but there is a humble income to be found in corrugated materials.
And then I headed home. The best thing about a nice afternoon drive:
The clouds. Or the cloud. That’s actually one cloud I chased for a good long while. The road turned just before I got under the thing and the curve never bent the car back underneath. But at least I caught some meaningless video.
We headed out to an owl release this evening. Turned into the parking lot with the crowd, and asked a police officer working the parking traffic what the event was.
“Band-o-Rama.”
So we left, having dodged a musical bullet.
The owl release was just up the road, because nothing motivates previously captive birds like percussion and low brass. Only the owl release had been postponed because of bad weather. But the weather was beautiful. It took three people to explain the delay and hand out fliers to the guests. “Fledglings No More” will take place in September.
At dinner I physically hit the wall. I stood up to get my drink, blinked and felt it. The 5 a.m. part of the day had officially won.
So I edited two videos, wrote this, had dinner and planned tomorrow. It’ll be another great adventure! Hope yours is even better!
