Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling / memories / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
30
Mar 26

First outdoor bike ride of the year!

Late Saturday afternoon the light came in a southern-facing and I just happened to catch it’s delicate double-pane dance. No idea why it does this. Whenever I do see it, which isn’t every day, I find myself staring at the glass to see if there’s something there. There’s nothing there. Just an abstract ghost in the machine, a surrealist glitch in the matrix.

It reminded me that I needed to wash my car. The winter weather is behind us, surely, and I can now get the salt and sand off the body and frame. So I drove to the nearby car wash, sprung for the you-do-this-twice-a-year package and drove on in.

Drive-through car washes fascinate me. It’s a ridiculous trip down memory lane, a demonstrate of the bites and bytes that your noggin is storing for no reason. I recall, as a kid, we used to go to one car wash that was for some reason quite popular. Long lines. Hand dried fenders. Maybe that’s why. I recall once when the driver of the car ahead of us panicked. The big fan at the end of the tunnel had a large wheel that descended and rolled along your windshield, over the roof of the car and so on, as the blower did it’s job of pushing the water back inside the collection and retention system. I guess the driver didn’t know that, or had a bad experience with airplane landing gear. He jammed the brakes and we tapped his bumper. Everyone was fine. No body damage, no physical damage. Two clean cars, one weird incident, one embarrassed driver. I recall having a car where the passenger door window didn’t seal well. It was fine in the rain. Never had a problem in the rain. If I was going through the car wash I had to take a towel. I recall someone I knew who did a destroy-her-wedding-dress photo shoot, when that was a thing. She had people throwing cans of paint on the dress. Silly online trend, colorful photos. The better ones, though, were when she went to one of those manual car wash places and they sprayed down her dress to get the paint out. I saw those photos and thought, “Ahh! Finally! A reason for these types of car washes!” No one ever wants to go to those if there’s a proper drive through car wash in town. I recall washing cars in the driveway. But I don’t recall the last time I saw someone doing that. Maybe no one wants to wash their cars at home if they can pay eight bucks, drive through the soap and get their ride almost clean.

You remember a lot of things in a car wash for no reason at all, other than that you’re there with the soap and the noise and not much else.

The experience also allowed me to take a bunch of windshield photos and create a new front page for the site. Go check it out. Stick with it for 60 seconds to see them all. Go on. I’ll wait for you here.

[…]

Wasn’t that fun? Different? Memorable? Will I remember that the next time I go to the car wash? Probably late this summer? Will it be worth remembering? How many times will I change the art on the front page between now and then? Don’t worry, I’ll always keep you updated about those changes. Keep reading this space and you’ll never miss a thing. A thing on this site, anyway.

The weather is finally cooperating on several fronts, and so we had our first outdoor bike ride of the year today. We just did an easy 10 miles around the neighbor to see if the bikes were working (they are) and see how it’d feel (weird) and to see who is going to be faster this year (she is).

I didn’t ride a lot in the basement this year. It’s just been mentally difficult to go down those stairs and I’m not sure why. We have a terrific basement space. One day we’re going to finish at least part of it. Right now it’s cinder blocks and shelves and great storage and a lot of floor space for activities you don’t want to do outside or can’t put in the living room. But, still, I haven’t gone down there that much this winter.

Probably will when it gets hot, though! It is always a little cooler in the basement.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?

That’s Aasleagh Falls on the River Erriff.

Friday / Ireland / memories / photo / video — Comments Off
27
Mar 26

Not every idea is marketable

I didn’t step outside, or even poke my head up from the computer, until the sun was going down. Meetings and emails and work and such. Here’s the view from the front porch. We face the west, but we turn wherever the best views are to be found.

A home on a lazy Susan. There’s an idea. I imagine one person standing out at the corner, squatting low, putting their back into it, slowly spinning the house. It’d be like a pushing a dead car, difficult at first, but you’d build a little momentum. The trick would be stopping at the right time. You wouldn’t want to overshoot the sunset or whatever you were aiming at.

The next trick would be managing the electrical connections. There are a lot of wires and pipes and things.

OK, so we build in some flexibility. Use that silly straw technology.

We’d need giant ball bearings. I suppose we’d need a giant ball bearing plant. The plant, itself, would need to be rather large. We’ve also got to figure out a way to transport those. That’s certainly doable, but would be costly. And replacing those, when the time comes, would be a chore.

Then you’ve got to keep leaves out of way of the things. This is starting to become a rather involved idea.

But only a few steps after we’ve invented a giant ball bearing plant.

This million dollar idea might need a little more work.

This was one of the windier places you’ll be that doesn’t involve a storm. I left in the nat sound to prove it.

That is the view from Sky Road.

Ireland / memories / Rowan / video — Comments Off
26
Mar 26

Sports and sheep

We discussed sport consumption as a ritualized practice today in Rituals and Traditions.

It is a focus on entertainment value, collective group influence, and self-enhancement, but we overlook the ritual aspects, which potentially offer individuals a chance to maintain and to celebrate cultural meanings embedded in the consumption. There is a formalism to all of this, and also symbolic performance. For example, what do you do at tailgates? We also talked about the social interactions.

Ritual, I reminded them, is a means through which individuals embody the power, authority, and value of society. And we talked about research that shows that consumers cherish ritual experiences because securing cultural sense from mass-marketed consumer goods is not straightforward. Ritual makes it real for us, basically.

We talked about “ritual specialists” which is a concept I love. These are the elders, cheerleaders, band, media, supporter groups that have socially recognized authority to judge the importance of ritual and the performance’s correctness. These are the people who can legitimize the social importance of the ritual and give us the correct way of performing it. Then I got to use one of my favorite lines. “Because this is a communication studies class I have to occasionally sneak a theory in on you.” And I talked about disposition theory — basically our enjoyment is driven by our evaluations of the characters involved. This is part of why you think the traditions you like are good and important and the stuff that other people do is dumb. (You’ve evaluated them and found them wanting.)

In Criticism we watched It’s Time. For my money, it’s one of the best bits of storytelling you can get in a sport documentary. It’s also quite intense.

The only problem with it is that the runtime takes the whole class and we’ll have to wait until next Tuesday to discuss it. That’s a long time to wait, even for such a gripping and emotional story.

We won’t talk just about the emotion, though, but also the media aesthetics, like the music and some of the shot selections, and a few of the quotes from the people that were there.

I miss the roadside sheep already.

Ireland / memories / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
25
Mar 26

New book alert

Phoebe would like to let you know about a book that you should add to your bookcase. Look carefully at the authors.

It’s nice living with an expert. Her consultation fees, however, are rather steep.

It was cute how she played this off. I told her she’d gotten a delivery today. “Oh? Hmmm. What’s in that box? I don’t recall ordering anything. Oh! This came out! And ahead of schedule!”

How do you think I should play it, when I read this book? Should I pretend like I found a typo? Take issue with some key point inside? Say they spelled her name wrong somewhere inside? Carry it door to door? Talk about it in every class next semester? So many choices.

Trá an Dóilín.

Ireland / memories / photo / Rowan / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
24
Mar 26

Back to campus

Back to school today. Last week was spring break for the students and we’re all now trying to figure out how much enthusiasm everyone still has for the rest of the term. There’s a bit of rah-rah involved in that, but the weather is warming up, sporadically, and the days are getting longer and summer is calling.

Today in Rituals and Traditions we talked about sport as spectacle. This would be the aural expressions, the songs and chants, the visual displays, the stadium choreography and performances. This is about how seating works, fireworks, the music that’s played for us, the fancy digital court that we’re seeing in some college basketball tournaments, and so on.

In Criticism we talked about MLB labor: How fight over salary cap will shape negotiations:

There was something about the four-year, $72 million contract given to left-hander Tanner Scott in January that infuriated fan bases in every market outside of Los Angeles — even the only one that dwarfs it.

“It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things they’re doing,” New York Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner told the YES Network a week after the Scott deal.

That the Yankees — the most valuable franchise in baseball, the game’s foremost revenue machine, owners of the highest payroll each of the first 14 years this century — had joined the chorus typically reserved for smaller-market teams questioning the game’s fairness was no accident. Even if formal discussions about Major League Baseball’s next collective bargaining agreement are half a year away, the campaign to capture the hearts and minds of the paying consumers has already begun.

And also this story, Watershed moment as Russia’s sporting exile ends. These are both explainers, the latter is like a richly done FAQ, and so it worked out well that the class picked these two stories to discuss this week. Sometimes the stars lineup, where we can discuss complimentary themes.

At home, the sun is coming in through the back door. It’s just a plastic cat toy, but I like that we have enough attention to detail to see it casting a shadow.

Poseidon is fascinated by light, shimmering and reflecting light. If I ever need to move him in the evening a shadow puppet always does the trick. But they never notice long shadows in those parts of the day.

This was from Silverstrand Beach.