Wednesday


11
Jan 17

Notions of time

I was going to write more, but the day got away from me. The days all get away from us from time to time, even as we know the days are always going some way or another. That’s the thing about us, we can seize the day, occasionally, if we are so inclined. But we can never grab the day and hold onto it. Not for very long anyway. I assume this has something to do with how our brains perceive time. We’re flowing through it, or it is flowing around us or some thing or another and the net you are holding isn’t woven with small enough mesh. Or some such.

But, hey! I did entirely rework a page on the site you’ll never see! And I found two or three things there that I need to fix. It is an administrative thing and you don’t care at all. I might not, either, but I started it long ago for reasons that probably didn’t make much sense then and probably mean less now. But I have it under control. For a time.

Also, I have added new images to the top and bottoms of the blog, here. As you might have noticed those are rotating images, built with a bit of code that offers the viewer a random image based on numerical sequence. Presently there are 81 headers and 81 footers. They all have varying heights and they are all 900 pixels wide. So I’m staying with this format for a long time, I suppose. I’ve been with this format for a good long while, as well.

I’ve been watching HBO-produced biopics. There was an Lyndon Johnson movie based on a play and then a two-parter on Winston Churchill that I’ve started. They are both interesting and probably have some accurate anecdotes, and they compress years of civics lessons into two-hour capsules. But try as I might, I see Anthony Mackie and Frank Langella rather than Rev. Martin Luther King and Sen. Richard Russell. Bryan Cranston fills out LBJ pretty well.

But I don’t know that you can really portray LBJ’s in a PG environment. The trailer was really good, I felt, so I watched it. The movie was worth seeing if you like political pieces or period pieces. There were a few really quite powerful moments. I think it captured the best parts of the worst parts of a hard, challenging time.

Stephen Root was J. Edgar Hoover. He is great in everything and there’s one little moment he has that nods at all of the things the cinematic audience we’ve learned about Hoover in recent years. Which makes me think of this in much the same way as we do comic book universes. Except, of course, this was real life. The most fake thing was the makeup they put on poor Josh Lyman to try to turn him into Hubert Humphrey. Should have spent more time on that.

I was half-listening to the Churchill story (turns out this is a BBC-HBO co-produced project) when I heard Lena Headey. Nothing takes you out of the 1940s like an accidental Game of Thrones reference. The problem is that these sorts of films always come off as cartoonish, either in a harsh way or in a soft focus, after school special sort of way:

I’ve been running indoors. Someone left the door open and Canada is cooling all of outdoors so we’ve been at the track. The track is a fine three-lane affair. Eight laps to a mile, only slightly better paces. It is made from special grade painful cement designed to hurt old joints, I think. But it looks like this outside:

outdoors

So it is a trade off. Eighteen miles in the last couple of days. And now it’ll be a few more days before I set off again. Hopefully outside, where my stride is sometimes better.

The nicest part about being inside, after avoiding hypothermia, I mean, is that my running app can’t cope. For the first three miles or so it things I’m running at a world class pace. I am not running at a world class pace. Also, it thinks this is my course:

map

That is not my course. My app is just going through a modern art phase. It takes no time at all to imagine that is an aggressive effort.


4
Jan 17

Back to the office, then

Back at the office, where things are slow, but productive. They’re moving around a few editing bays and I’m dealing with email and various administrative things like deadlines and deliveries and purchase orders and its all great fun.

My watch beeps and I have to walk around a bit. I discovered that someone brought their foosball table. Not sure who, or if there is an expectation that it will be played, but it is in a common area, and does make that particular room feel something like a startup:

Students will be back next week. I bet it sees some use.

I made this video as a quick experiment. I wanted to see which version looks better when it is embedded. There are three versions of the same below, but more words following that.

My mother-in-law always gives me a few office supplies at Christmas …

A video posted by Kenny Smith (@kennydsmith) on

I think the last one has the best quality and look. What do you think?

It was 11 degrees outside, so we went to the gym. I joined the gym. Now I have to see what all they have. They do have a nice track, though:

Eight laps equals a mile. The place is newer, cleaner, brighter and has people on it, which is an improvement from the track I was running on last year. That was 10 laps per mile and about 55 years old and I’ve only just realized how drab and lonely that track was.

But indoor running anywhere beats 11 degrees outside. And laps, when you find a rhythm, go fast. I got in six miles tonight. Six miles before a salmon dinner. Salmon is good, but it fills me like an empty lecture. I’ll be snacking again in an hour, I bet.


28
Dec 16

Travelling again

We are now in Connecticut where it occurred to me that Dunkin Donuts never has any publicity problems with holiday iconography …

… It’s almost enough to make you think that another chain drawing ire is just an elaborate, and yet thinly veiled, earned media campaign.

Also, no matter how big you make it – this is supposedly 20 ounces – the large hot chocolate will never be large enough.

From earlier today:

Video from today in A Short Film Of No Comsequence. #AShortFilmOfNoConsequence

A post shared by Kenny Smith (@kennydsmith) on


21
Dec 16

Keep ’em separated

At the vet, picking up the special food our special cat demands, I saw this sign:

I assume these signs are meant to keep them from living together. Or maybe it’s some other joke.


14
Dec 16

People, right?

Look, you don’t have to be nice, or even hospitable, like some people are fond of saying. But I’m not asking too much for a little situational awareness. Yes I am, situational awareness has been directly tied to common sense and you can only get that if you’re willing to pay premium prices. I get it.

But still:

The guy stood there, on his phone, for about four minutes. No one else in the restaurant was thirsty, and it wasn’t his concern anyway.

Except for me. I just stood there, watching, waiting, wondering, more and more impressed by his obliviousness. Phones are a too-powerful intoxicant for some people.

Here’s another example today:

This elevator services three floors, you’re not on it for long. How is it that you take off your headband, hang it on the handrail and forget about it by the time you’ve gotten to where you need to be? I don’t bet on anything, but it is even-money that this was another phone-related distraction.

If that thing belonged to the same guy, it would be perfect, but I don’t know that there’s serendipity enough for that sort of thing, an hour and a city block removed from one another.