So, how did you do on last week’s quiz? That’s great.
Not only did we have pen-and paper quizzes in the classroom, but there were hands-on quizzes in the lab workshops. Remember a few weeks ago the crazy camera movement quiz Propel had on the floor of the television studio? That counted as a quiz. And even if that activity wasn’t a graded quiz, the material learned from it would be possible topics for a later quiz. Of course, the camera movement game would not have been undertaken only for show – there would have been a reason for us participating in it. Aside from some strange fancy of Dr. Propel’s, that is.
All our quizzes came back to haunt us at the end of the semester. That’s when we students faced the dreaded “Final Exam.” I learned early in my freshman year to ask – if the instructor did not make it abundantly clear – if the final would be cumulative or not. If it was cumulative then everything from day one in the classroom was fair game for the test; it not, then we knew to focus on material since the last major test.
Dr. Propel smiled and said cumulative, as if that were a surprise. It wasn’t that bad because a few of us that were both in the class and put in time doing radio news or sports got together and pooled our resources. We put together a fairly comprehensive study guide of vocabulary terms and list questions (e.g. name two of the five FCC commissioners) to prepare ourselves. Of course this sort of thing worked great for the classroom final exam.
Not as much for the lab final, where we corralled into Studio 3 and waited our fate with Dr. Propel. He had us sit in a row of numbered chairs along one side of the room, though either the third or fourth chair had been pulled out into the center of the studio. We took our seats but were told not to get too comfortable as we’d be up moving around a lot during the next 90 minutes (the length of time designated for each final exam). There was little surprise when Dr. Propel explained he had another “fun” activity prepared and, just as before, we were supposed to be quick and on our toes when participating.
Our final would be to prove our mastery of the audio and video equipment by both operating it and answering questions about its role in the radio and television environment. When we began, the first student in the row was called forward; Propel then instructed everyone to move up a chair (this meant the person who originally, and reluctantly, took the third chair in the middle of the room was now against the wall in the second chair, and the person in the fourth chair now sat unhappily in the center of the room).
The first student was directed to follow Propel into the control room. There he was to cue a record on a turntable and identify its parts (e.g. motor, cartridge, etc.). He or she was then sent back to the studio and took a seat at the back of the row; the next person in line was called forward. This next person was asked to properly thread a reel-to-reel machine and record his or her voice. Then the following person had to operate the camera and zoom in on the person seated in the center of the studio. Another person had to record something to cart. Then the next person had to mix his or her voice with music from a CD and record this to a reel-to-reel. The subsequent person had to move the camera according to Propel’s instructions. And so on.
Those of us in the studio were always moving from one chair to another. Sometimes we were in our chairs for only a few second (Propel had asked something either relatively easy or the task at hand took very little time) or sometimes it felt like minutes crept by slowly. Through this cycle each student would be tested on some aspect of each equipment, though it differed for each person (discussing it afterward, another student and I discovered that while I had to mix my voice and music from a CD and record to cart, this other person had to mix voice and music from the turntable and record it on the reel-to-reel).
At any rate, I still remember to this day the one thing I faltered on. I was able to get through most everything without issue except for the downstream keyer. After doing something with the video switcher, I was asked the name of the last, or final, keyer in the switcher. I choked. I had no idea. The only reason why I remember the answer all these years later is because Dr. Propel began giving me non-verbal clues. It was like a bad game of charades: he sat in his chair and pretended he was casting a fishing line. My mind went blank, mostly as I tried to figure out what on earth he was doing. He then moved his fluttering hand away from him; this, I could only guess, was supposed to be a fish.
I finally said I didn’t know the answer.
“Downstream keyer,” came his answer.
“Fine, now what were you doing?”
The clue was that I had to cast the line “downstream” to catch a fish. I would not have guessed that in a hundred years. But such was the final exam (which I passed) and such was the final time I interacted with Dr. Propel.
And yes, we also had to spell potentiometer.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Downstream
(Morris Gould)
Irresistible Force
From the album Global Chillage
1995
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Newsbreak: You know you’re breaking my heart and you’re taking me down
Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
That’s the news for this morning. Today is either Tuesday or Thursday and we’ve had to deal with the bothersome Bob and the Big Dog or laidback Mike and James.
About midway through the semester the news staff was asked by our director, Troy Meadows, to take our scripts into the newsroom when we were done. The idea was to allow the next newsreader to see what was used the previous hour and then “update” anything for the next hour. Apparently, for me to have all my scripts, I did not follow this practice, or I did and managed to still retrieve them a day or two later. I tend to think I just kept the scripts because nothing I read would ever need updated. All my stories were international and probably of little interest to those listening. I don’t think I ever met who did the news after me, either; on Mondays I was out the door to class and on T-days I usually wanted to get into Propel’s class a few minutes early.
Why? Probably to look over the last notes we took to prepare for a quiz. Yeah, we’d probably had at least one quiz a week, sometimes one on both Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Now it’s your turn.
Take out two sheets of paper...it’s time for a quiz.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Question
(Rick Johnson/Tony Pomilla)
Temper Scarlet
From the album The Crayon King
1996
Trade barriers among the Pacific Rim nations are coming down. Indonesian President Suharto says the leaders of the 18 Asian and Pacific nations gathered in his country for an economic summit have agreed to drop all trade barriers among themselves within the next twenty years. President Clinton was calling for the bigger industrial economies of the region to drop trade barriers by the year 2010 or earlier. Suharto said at the conclusion of the summit that human rights were not discussed.
Tropical storm Gordon is passing between Florida and Cuba as it heads for the Gulf of Mexico. Sustained winds are about 50 miles per hour and forecasters expect a lot more rain today. The storm hit Haiti over the weekend killing 100 people. Heavy rains yesterday disrupted telephone services, cut power to more than 200-thousand people, and force the space shuttle Atlantis to land in California.
Showers today with highs only in the 70s; cloudy and humid tonight with lows in the 50s. Currently it’s 66 degrees.
That’s the news for this morning. Today is either Tuesday or Thursday and we’ve had to deal with the bothersome Bob and the Big Dog or laidback Mike and James.
About midway through the semester the news staff was asked by our director, Troy Meadows, to take our scripts into the newsroom when we were done. The idea was to allow the next newsreader to see what was used the previous hour and then “update” anything for the next hour. Apparently, for me to have all my scripts, I did not follow this practice, or I did and managed to still retrieve them a day or two later. I tend to think I just kept the scripts because nothing I read would ever need updated. All my stories were international and probably of little interest to those listening. I don’t think I ever met who did the news after me, either; on Mondays I was out the door to class and on T-days I usually wanted to get into Propel’s class a few minutes early.
Why? Probably to look over the last notes we took to prepare for a quiz. Yeah, we’d probably had at least one quiz a week, sometimes one on both Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Now it’s your turn.
Take out two sheets of paper...it’s time for a quiz.
- Define broadcasting. [Sowing of seeds by scattering them over a wide field.]
- The pulling apart of thinning of vibrating air molecules, creating low pressure or partial vacuum? [Rarefaction.]
- The changing of energy from one form into another? [Transduction.]
- Anything that interferes with the communication of the signal from the source to the receiver? [Noise.]
- The height of a sound wave? [Amplitude.]
- A contest is a lottery if it involves what? [Chance, consideration, and prize.]
- Monaural literally means? [One ear.]
- The sound source coming closer to the microphone and increase of bass response? [Proximity effect.]
- Substance or device through which a signal is channeled? [Medium.]
- What controls the output level for each channel? [Potentiometer.]
- Which pick-up pattern is the most directional? [Hyper-cardioid.]
- The scale to measure the relative loudness of amplified sound, where 0 is used as a reference level for the proper audio output level? [Volume Unit meter.]
- What is the phone number of the FCC? [202-418-0200.]
- One of the biggest problems with carts and/or cart machines? [Don’t cue automatically.]
- What wave-form is a representation of the original signal? [Analog.]
- SESAC stands for what? [The Society of European State Authors and Composers.]
- The 3-pin cable and connectors used in audio? [XLR.]
- The laser in a compact disc player uses what substance? [Gallium arsenide.]
- Plug-in connector are also known as? [Jacks.]
- In Communication 136, if you had no absences you would enter the penalty area on which tardy? [Your eighth.]
- What is the variable electromagnetic field which affects the particles on a recording tape, thereby recording or erasing information? [Flux.]
- What is the address of the FCC? [1919 M Street, N.W., Washington D.C. 20554.]
- Which is vertically propagated? [AM Radio.]
- The Chairman of the FCC? [Reed Hundt.]
- What is the most common format of non-commercial radio stations? Second most common? [Classical. Religious.]
- How many classes of AM radio stations are there? [Four.]
- Radio stations are licensed for how many years? [Seven.]
- The process by which radio waves weaken as they travel through space? [Attenuation.]
- The FCC wants DJs to know what? [Know how to give/receive EBS test, perform station identification, read meters.]
- Announcing songs already played on the air is what? [Back selling. Come on!]
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Question
(Rick Johnson/Tony Pomilla)
Temper Scarlet
From the album The Crayon King
1996
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Newsbreak: Reach Around Rodeo Clowns
Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
After the Tuesday and Thursday morning newscasts there was just enough time to eat a cereal bar for breakfast, find the latest edition of the Screed, and head upstairs for 90 minutes of Dr. Propel’s class. Unlike M-days when my mornings were stacked with classes, T-days consisted of only two classes that were hours apart from each other.
Something called College Mathematics was my only other T-day class, held from 2-3:30 in one of the many similarly-named Academic Classroom Buildings (this one being dubbed ACB4). The instructor was the stereotypical college “prof,” an older, heavyset man with wispy gray hair and glasses who wore sports coats and vests but never ties. He went by the handle Dr. Cornelius Kirk – and yes, the pretentious phrase “by the handle” was very much the way he talked. But due to Dr. Kirk’s maturity and seniority, many students perpetuated a nickname they had been passed down from previous years: Captain. Therefore I had Captain Kirk for college math.
(I was actually surprised that midway through the semester that some of the smart alecs in class, two of whom I eventually likened to beavers, actually started calling Kirk “Captain.” This was a no-no. First off, throughout the semester Kirk corrected any student addressing him with a title other than “doctor.” He wasn’t Mr. Kirk, he was Dr. Kirk and had the degrees, the dissertations, and the domineering personality to back it up [he only used the first two examples in his clarification]. Secondly, it didn’t take much to irritate Kirk and after the third or fourth “Captain,” and the laughter and giggles that naturally followed, he peered over his glasses and pointed a pudgy finger toward the back corner. In no certain terms he told them to knock it off.)
Kirk’s class was essentially a cheaper, no-thrills version of the two algebra classes I had taken in high school. Most of the topics Kirk touched upon were familiar, though we had not gone into the same level of detail in high school; however many of the students had apparently not had a math class in a number of years and were constantly asking questions, often time about some of the simplest concepts. Like graphing a line. If anything stands out all these years later about Kirk’s class it’s that no one seemed to know how to graph a line. I won’t pretend to be an expert about algebraic equations – neither now, in Kirk’s class, or even in high school – but I thought this was one of the fundamental basics that everyone could muster. I was wrong.
The only other thing that stands out is Kirk’s penchant for ridiculous phrases (such as “by the handle”); hands down the one he used the most was “workhorse equation.” About midway through the semester we began a long, strung-out unit on matrices after, I assumed, Kirk gave up on everyone’s inability to graph lines. I forget the details but there was some basic expression that we all needed to know that would help us out later down the line. Weeks later, after we had flown by the easy lessons and were dealing with matrix addition, multiplication, transposition, or something, Kirk reminded us of this “workhorse equation” as the one that would solve all our problems. This “workhorse equation” was referenced frequently, with Kirk’s unabashed enthusiasm for it another target for the beavers.
I must have given the two class clowns the nickname “the beavers” when I failed to think of another animal to degrade. They were older than most other students, probably in their late-20s, and not at all a fan of Captain Kirk. One reminded me at the time as a possible beatnik: slicked-back black hair, pointy facial features like a jutted chin and sharp nose, and very outside-the-norm dress. Both lived for aggravating Kirk to no end, either by mocking his mannerisms, cracking jokes, or making him repeat something that he’d already discussed repeatedly. After going on about the rules of matrix multiplication for twenty minutes, one beaver would casually ask, “So you can't multiply a 2x3 and a 4x1 matrix?” An infuriated Kirk glared in their direction and barked back that “For the nth time – no! – I've said you can't do it!”
Even though the beavers irritated him Kirk was generally well-disposed with all the students and would go to great lengths to help them understand the topic at hand. While commendable, this generally led to extensive and drawn-out discussions that more often than not made Kirk forget what his original point was.
Besides the beavers, the only other student I remember all these years later was one I dubbed the Waddler. He waddled through the door and then waddled to the far side of the room, all the while that song by Dion played in mind with the lyric “he waddles around an’ around an’ around....”
Thankfully, this was the only math class I had in college and after this semester I never saw either the beavers or Captain Kirk again. However in my later years as an undergrad I did sort of miss courses like this – those with non-Communication majors. After seeing the same people day-in and day-out it was a nice change to see a bunch of students with different majors all taking a core class.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Beaver
(Quentin Jones/Wendell Jones)
Reach Around Rodeo Clowns
From the album Whip It Out
1997
Senator Phil Gramm said Sunday he would file this week as a Republican candidate in the 1996 Presidential election. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gramm said he would file papers with the Federal Election Committee this week to “put the legal structure in place,” although he does not expect to announce his candidacy until March.
OJ Simpson’s lead attorney Robert Shapiro is looking for ways to personally cash in on the media frenzy over Simpson. NewsWeek reported in its November 21 edition that Shapiro obtained a powerful Hollywood agent to field book and television offers. It later quoted the agent Ed Hookstratten as saying he sounding out writers to ghost write a book for Shapiro.
The English Channel tunnel – Chunnel – is open for trains now. Hundreds of people left Paris, London, and Brussels today in high speed trains that ride the rails of Chunnel. Round trip prices range from 152-to-311 dollars. The Paris to London trip is about three hours.
Cloudy this morning with scattered thunderstorms later today, highs in the upper 70s; the rain continues into the night with lows in the 50s. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 66 degrees.
After the Tuesday and Thursday morning newscasts there was just enough time to eat a cereal bar for breakfast, find the latest edition of the Screed, and head upstairs for 90 minutes of Dr. Propel’s class. Unlike M-days when my mornings were stacked with classes, T-days consisted of only two classes that were hours apart from each other.
Something called College Mathematics was my only other T-day class, held from 2-3:30 in one of the many similarly-named Academic Classroom Buildings (this one being dubbed ACB4). The instructor was the stereotypical college “prof,” an older, heavyset man with wispy gray hair and glasses who wore sports coats and vests but never ties. He went by the handle Dr. Cornelius Kirk – and yes, the pretentious phrase “by the handle” was very much the way he talked. But due to Dr. Kirk’s maturity and seniority, many students perpetuated a nickname they had been passed down from previous years: Captain. Therefore I had Captain Kirk for college math.
(I was actually surprised that midway through the semester that some of the smart alecs in class, two of whom I eventually likened to beavers, actually started calling Kirk “Captain.” This was a no-no. First off, throughout the semester Kirk corrected any student addressing him with a title other than “doctor.” He wasn’t Mr. Kirk, he was Dr. Kirk and had the degrees, the dissertations, and the domineering personality to back it up [he only used the first two examples in his clarification]. Secondly, it didn’t take much to irritate Kirk and after the third or fourth “Captain,” and the laughter and giggles that naturally followed, he peered over his glasses and pointed a pudgy finger toward the back corner. In no certain terms he told them to knock it off.)
Kirk’s class was essentially a cheaper, no-thrills version of the two algebra classes I had taken in high school. Most of the topics Kirk touched upon were familiar, though we had not gone into the same level of detail in high school; however many of the students had apparently not had a math class in a number of years and were constantly asking questions, often time about some of the simplest concepts. Like graphing a line. If anything stands out all these years later about Kirk’s class it’s that no one seemed to know how to graph a line. I won’t pretend to be an expert about algebraic equations – neither now, in Kirk’s class, or even in high school – but I thought this was one of the fundamental basics that everyone could muster. I was wrong.
The only other thing that stands out is Kirk’s penchant for ridiculous phrases (such as “by the handle”); hands down the one he used the most was “workhorse equation.” About midway through the semester we began a long, strung-out unit on matrices after, I assumed, Kirk gave up on everyone’s inability to graph lines. I forget the details but there was some basic expression that we all needed to know that would help us out later down the line. Weeks later, after we had flown by the easy lessons and were dealing with matrix addition, multiplication, transposition, or something, Kirk reminded us of this “workhorse equation” as the one that would solve all our problems. This “workhorse equation” was referenced frequently, with Kirk’s unabashed enthusiasm for it another target for the beavers.
I must have given the two class clowns the nickname “the beavers” when I failed to think of another animal to degrade. They were older than most other students, probably in their late-20s, and not at all a fan of Captain Kirk. One reminded me at the time as a possible beatnik: slicked-back black hair, pointy facial features like a jutted chin and sharp nose, and very outside-the-norm dress. Both lived for aggravating Kirk to no end, either by mocking his mannerisms, cracking jokes, or making him repeat something that he’d already discussed repeatedly. After going on about the rules of matrix multiplication for twenty minutes, one beaver would casually ask, “So you can't multiply a 2x3 and a 4x1 matrix?” An infuriated Kirk glared in their direction and barked back that “For the nth time – no! – I've said you can't do it!”
Even though the beavers irritated him Kirk was generally well-disposed with all the students and would go to great lengths to help them understand the topic at hand. While commendable, this generally led to extensive and drawn-out discussions that more often than not made Kirk forget what his original point was.
Besides the beavers, the only other student I remember all these years later was one I dubbed the Waddler. He waddled through the door and then waddled to the far side of the room, all the while that song by Dion played in mind with the lyric “he waddles around an’ around an’ around....”
Thankfully, this was the only math class I had in college and after this semester I never saw either the beavers or Captain Kirk again. However in my later years as an undergrad I did sort of miss courses like this – those with non-Communication majors. After seeing the same people day-in and day-out it was a nice change to see a bunch of students with different majors all taking a core class.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Beaver
(Quentin Jones/Wendell Jones)
Reach Around Rodeo Clowns
From the album Whip It Out
1997
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Newsbreak: Twenty-four Seven
Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
I’ll be honest: a few weeks dealing with Dr. Propel felt more like months. And months after the school year started it felt like a lifetime of reading, writing, listening, viewing, and being quizzed in Dr. Propel’s introductory class had flown by and I was more than ready for his class to end. Whatever happed in his class – anything discussed, anything written on the board, anything viewed on the monitor, anything hands-on we did in the introductory lab course – was fair game for what Dr. Propel lovingly called the “regurgitation.” This was, of course, the dreaded end-of-the-semester final test. And don’t think for a minute the test, much less this guy’s regular pop quizzes, were restricted to broadcasting.
What was one of the first things driven into our head far back at the start of the semester? Ah, yes: Dr. Propel’s office location and telephone number. This was not the sort of “memorization” that I had expected in college. Honestly the concept of office hours was new to me, as high school teachers had a designated classroom that served as an oversized make-shift office when needed. Not so here. Every instructor had his or her own office whose size and shape correlated to his or her position in the department. In short, the new guy got the three-sided room under the stairs and the head of the department got the spacious area with coffee maker and “secret” entrances.
The actual occasion when the instructor would be found in the office was also something lost on me – I really didn’t care when Dr. So-and-so or Dr. Whosis would be in their office. I was not making plans to stop by. But office hours were something nearly every student clamored about, though I found this comical. Many students circled or highlighted the days and time on the syllabus. It went without saying that many never utilized these office hours until late in the semester when, to be fair, obtaining an A was all but impossible and coming in to schmooze with the teacher wasn’t earning either of them (the instructor or the student) any brown-nose points.
Anyway, Dr. Propel was in office 247. He repeatedly bragged he was the only radio/television instructor on the second floor (the rest of the offices belonging to print journalism instructors), though how and why he ended up where he did was never discussed or mentioned. By what can only be called pointless coincidence his phone extension was 1365.
The importance of all these numbers was lost as we students read the syllabus (and later watched Propel read the document in character. This was always a hoot, watching a fellow of infinite jest recite “serious” class rules in his nasally sing-song voice). With his trademark half-toothed grin, he eventually asked one session early in the semester if any of us caught on to what made his office and phone number special or unique. Our answer, in unison: no.
He couldn’t keep the secret any longer. You didn’t pronounce his office “two forty-seven,” you pronounced it “twenty-four seven” – as in twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, we got it. And from there it didn’t take us long to bridge the “three-hundred sixty-five days in one year” mantra that was abbreviated by his phone extension. Dr. Propel was ecstatic about this fact and his attempt to hide it from his students erupted in giddy fashion that day in class.
You see, this is one of those trivial moments from college...this, the correct spelling of potentiometer, the inane theme song of Mentos candy, and on and on....
- - - - - - - - - - - -
24/7
(Gerald B/T.J. Jackson/Taryll Jackson)
3T
From the album Brotherhood
1995
Tom Foley lost twice election night: he lost his post as Speaker of the House, but it got worse when he conceded defeat to GOP newcomer George Nethercutt. Foley, a 15-term congressman, becomes the first speaker to lose re-election since the Civil War. Even if Foley had won had won his election in Washington State, the Republicans would still control the House, making Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich the pick for the speaker’s chair.
Today Jordan’s King Hussein makes his first public visit to Israel. His trip makes him only the second Arab leader to visit in full view of the world. The king will exchange ratified copies of the Israeli-Jordan peace treaty at a cultural center today with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Partly cloudy skies today with highs in the upper 60s; fair and cool tonight with a low near 44. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 50 degrees.
I’ll be honest: a few weeks dealing with Dr. Propel felt more like months. And months after the school year started it felt like a lifetime of reading, writing, listening, viewing, and being quizzed in Dr. Propel’s introductory class had flown by and I was more than ready for his class to end. Whatever happed in his class – anything discussed, anything written on the board, anything viewed on the monitor, anything hands-on we did in the introductory lab course – was fair game for what Dr. Propel lovingly called the “regurgitation.” This was, of course, the dreaded end-of-the-semester final test. And don’t think for a minute the test, much less this guy’s regular pop quizzes, were restricted to broadcasting.
What was one of the first things driven into our head far back at the start of the semester? Ah, yes: Dr. Propel’s office location and telephone number. This was not the sort of “memorization” that I had expected in college. Honestly the concept of office hours was new to me, as high school teachers had a designated classroom that served as an oversized make-shift office when needed. Not so here. Every instructor had his or her own office whose size and shape correlated to his or her position in the department. In short, the new guy got the three-sided room under the stairs and the head of the department got the spacious area with coffee maker and “secret” entrances.
The actual occasion when the instructor would be found in the office was also something lost on me – I really didn’t care when Dr. So-and-so or Dr. Whosis would be in their office. I was not making plans to stop by. But office hours were something nearly every student clamored about, though I found this comical. Many students circled or highlighted the days and time on the syllabus. It went without saying that many never utilized these office hours until late in the semester when, to be fair, obtaining an A was all but impossible and coming in to schmooze with the teacher wasn’t earning either of them (the instructor or the student) any brown-nose points.
Anyway, Dr. Propel was in office 247. He repeatedly bragged he was the only radio/television instructor on the second floor (the rest of the offices belonging to print journalism instructors), though how and why he ended up where he did was never discussed or mentioned. By what can only be called pointless coincidence his phone extension was 1365.
The importance of all these numbers was lost as we students read the syllabus (and later watched Propel read the document in character. This was always a hoot, watching a fellow of infinite jest recite “serious” class rules in his nasally sing-song voice). With his trademark half-toothed grin, he eventually asked one session early in the semester if any of us caught on to what made his office and phone number special or unique. Our answer, in unison: no.
He couldn’t keep the secret any longer. You didn’t pronounce his office “two forty-seven,” you pronounced it “twenty-four seven” – as in twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, we got it. And from there it didn’t take us long to bridge the “three-hundred sixty-five days in one year” mantra that was abbreviated by his phone extension. Dr. Propel was ecstatic about this fact and his attempt to hide it from his students erupted in giddy fashion that day in class.
You see, this is one of those trivial moments from college...this, the correct spelling of potentiometer, the inane theme song of Mentos candy, and on and on....
- - - - - - - - - - - -
24/7
(Gerald B/T.J. Jackson/Taryll Jackson)
3T
From the album Brotherhood
1995
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Newsbreak: Sold Out
Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
In mid-September I entered the Communication Building one morning and noticed the first signage of the semester announcing the impending Community Seven Charitable Auction. The slogan “Bids for Kids” featured prominently on the fluorescent-coloured posters, which was the popular and long-running catchphrase for the long-running program.
Being new to the department, I asked what this auction-thing was. I surprisingly received an earful.
The Community Charitable Auction began back in the mid-1970s – or so I was led to believe (it never failed to amaze me in later years that no one seemed to know any history about the Communication Department). While the method to the madness had evolved over the years, the concept was fairly simple: to raise money for the Morra County United Service League. To do this, every summer the Communication Department stretched its long tentacles out to local and regional businesses soliciting donations. For example, the local bakery might pitch in coupons for free cupcakes, City Coliseum might donate two season passes to their spring concert series, or local restaurants gave away gift certificates (I recall Señor Taco donated pints of their green sauce one year).
Anyway, here’s where the students came into play: we hosted the auction. (Well, they did – I never participated directly.) Sort of like the try-outs for news anchors, there were try-outs for emcees. Tradition stipulated that two males and two females be selected as “hosts” who would tag-team emcee duties throughout the four-hour program airing in mid-October. Those that did not make the cut received jobs answering phones, working behind the scenes, or “presenting” – which was little more than a cop-out to give students the face-time they thought they were owned.
There were about fifty people answering phones, including students and faculty from the Communication Department as well as other university and community leaders and officials (i.e. the provost and mayor). Viewers would watch until something they wanted came up for bid and then it was a mad dash to the phone. At the end of the given time, the item went to the highest bidder and the money went to the city’s United Service League office. Supposedly the department’s annual event was always one of the top five contributors to the United Service League (no one knew the history of that, either, though it was always touted as truth).
At least, that’s how I understood it went down. I wasn’t involved my freshman year, partly because there was little push in Dr. Propel’s class for us to participate in the behind-the-scenes work and partly because I had little desire to sit and answer phones for four hours (which, as a freshman, would have likely been my contribution). Nor did I get involved the next two years; it wasn’t until I was a senior and enrolled in the Special Events Programming class that I had to participate in the first-ever live television remote during the annual auction.
Like every other try-out for something on Channel 7, there were the usual two cliques: those that always auditioned and were awarded the role in question; and those that always sat in the nose-bleed seats and critiqued every move of those that got the role. I suppose like everything else there were those that were playing favorites and giving the visible role of emcee to friends.
Another friend, another evening spent listening to the auctioneer.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sold Out
(unknown)
Pocket Change with David Patt
From the album Intimate Notions
1991
Americans head to the polls today to add their voices to one of the most interesting off-year elections in recent political history. All polls show the races tightly knotted. Across the country President Clinton hopes to grab voters by the ears with seven radio interviews. The radio blitz follows an eight day campaign swing for Democrats.
In Los Angeles, O.J. Simpson’s friend Al Cowlings will not be charged in connection with the murder of Nicole Brown Simpsons or Ron Goldman. Prosecutors say they do not have enough evidence to charge Cowlings, who drove the Ford Bronco the day of the Simpson slow-speed chase. Selection of the 15 alternate jurors starts today. Yesterday, Judge Lance Ito decided to keep the court room camera that has brought court coverage to millions of Americans.
And in New York, a judge sentenced a teenager Monday to nine years to life in prison for luring a 9-year-old boy into the woods and crushing his skull with a rock. Eric Smith confessed in 1993 to leading the victim to an overgrown lot where he first chocked the child and then bashed his head with a 26-pound rock.
Partly cloudy this morning with highs in the lower 80s; partly cloudy tonight, too, humid and lows in the mid-60s. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 72 degrees.
In mid-September I entered the Communication Building one morning and noticed the first signage of the semester announcing the impending Community Seven Charitable Auction. The slogan “Bids for Kids” featured prominently on the fluorescent-coloured posters, which was the popular and long-running catchphrase for the long-running program.
Being new to the department, I asked what this auction-thing was. I surprisingly received an earful.
The Community Charitable Auction began back in the mid-1970s – or so I was led to believe (it never failed to amaze me in later years that no one seemed to know any history about the Communication Department). While the method to the madness had evolved over the years, the concept was fairly simple: to raise money for the Morra County United Service League. To do this, every summer the Communication Department stretched its long tentacles out to local and regional businesses soliciting donations. For example, the local bakery might pitch in coupons for free cupcakes, City Coliseum might donate two season passes to their spring concert series, or local restaurants gave away gift certificates (I recall Señor Taco donated pints of their green sauce one year).
Anyway, here’s where the students came into play: we hosted the auction. (Well, they did – I never participated directly.) Sort of like the try-outs for news anchors, there were try-outs for emcees. Tradition stipulated that two males and two females be selected as “hosts” who would tag-team emcee duties throughout the four-hour program airing in mid-October. Those that did not make the cut received jobs answering phones, working behind the scenes, or “presenting” – which was little more than a cop-out to give students the face-time they thought they were owned.
There were about fifty people answering phones, including students and faculty from the Communication Department as well as other university and community leaders and officials (i.e. the provost and mayor). Viewers would watch until something they wanted came up for bid and then it was a mad dash to the phone. At the end of the given time, the item went to the highest bidder and the money went to the city’s United Service League office. Supposedly the department’s annual event was always one of the top five contributors to the United Service League (no one knew the history of that, either, though it was always touted as truth).
At least, that’s how I understood it went down. I wasn’t involved my freshman year, partly because there was little push in Dr. Propel’s class for us to participate in the behind-the-scenes work and partly because I had little desire to sit and answer phones for four hours (which, as a freshman, would have likely been my contribution). Nor did I get involved the next two years; it wasn’t until I was a senior and enrolled in the Special Events Programming class that I had to participate in the first-ever live television remote during the annual auction.
Like every other try-out for something on Channel 7, there were the usual two cliques: those that always auditioned and were awarded the role in question; and those that always sat in the nose-bleed seats and critiqued every move of those that got the role. I suppose like everything else there were those that were playing favorites and giving the visible role of emcee to friends.
Another friend, another evening spent listening to the auctioneer.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sold Out
(unknown)
Pocket Change with David Patt
From the album Intimate Notions
1991
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Newsbreak: Writing on the wall
Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
I got a lot of strange looks from people when I said I had signed up for 8:00 a.m. classes my freshman year. No one in their right mind wants to get up early for class, I was told. My response usually echoed around the concept that it didn’t bother me, but also because one of the key classes I had to take (Introduction to Broadcasting) was offered at either 8-9:30 a.m. or 9:30-11 a.m. on T-days (Tuesdays and Thursdays). I suppose I wanted to get classes over with as soon as possible so the rest of the day could be mine.
This “get it done and over with” mentality also was why I stacked my M-days (Monday-Wednesday-Friday) with classes all morning. After four hours of classes I gave myself an hour for lunch – eaten with, of course, members of the Octumvirate – before heading off to final M-day class, English Composition I. There were little hesitations about this class as I had always done exceptionally well in high school literature and composition courses. I assumed this would be somewhat similar.
It turned out to be one of my least-liked classes that year for a number of reasons. First, the official text for the course was the Grandville English Primer, a hefty 1000+page text book compiled by the university English department in an assumed effort to come up with a book that did most of the work for them. The book had a little bit of everything in it, including long-winded chapters about sentence structure and grammar; how to cite sources, which seemed an almost verbatim copy of the Modern Language Association (MLA) handbook we also had to purchase; and finally some representative poetry and prose selections that would be discussed (or were going to be discussed) in the introduction English courses. My semester was the debut semester of the book, which featured an illustration that tired to look like a woodcut of the iconic 150-year-old Grandville Building on campus but failed and instead looked like a cheaply-created illustration.
Another thing to dislike about the course was the instructor, one Ms. Mona-Itza Getnam, best described as an annoying busy-body that was guided more by departmental rules and procedures than common sense. Some instructors had Ph.D.s and taught the upper-level courses and mucked about in bureaucratic issues, while others were graduate teaching assistants and worked in the writing lab and taught introduction classes during their studies to earn a master’s degree. Ms. Getnam fit into a second and thusly less fashionable group that had attained a master’s degree but was still regulated to instructing either introductory courses or English courses taken mostly by non-English majors.
Ms. Getnam’s syllabus for the class was the same one used by all the other Composition I instructors (something discovered and discussed with Lenny and Alan during mealtime). However I found out as the semester wore on that only Ms. Getnam paid strict attention to its details. The course outline was indeed very specific about what all classes should be doing each week of the semester; its major flaw, and that of the faculty panel that authored the text, was forgetting each class of students would act differently when presented with the lessons. Some classes would instantly understand the topic at hand, while other groups of students might need reinforcement about the concepts.
And the main “concepts” and “lessons” that Ms. Getnam and other similar instructors taught that semester were basic punctuation and capitalization skills. These were the same basic skills that my high school senior year English teacher had decided to focus on the year before, sensing that as seniors we could use a refresher to “wind down” our high school experience. Therefore I was subject to another year of a topic I felt everyone should have learned back in elementary school. There was refresher – which should have been one class sessions – and then there was overkill, which lasted two weeks too many.
Apparently Lenny and Alan were in English classes with students that far excelled the instructor’s expectations because they spent very little time on those subjects and moved into the writings found in the back of the primer. Even though a majority of the class mastered the subject and passed the countless end-of-day quizzes spring on us, we still had to spend time going over capitalization and punctuation because the syllabus said we had to.
There’s a note on the syllabus about the clock. Oh, yes..the clock on the back wall. Ms. Getnam got a huge kick in class the day she finally realized it was dead and that's why it was always ten minutes until three. Yes! How funny! Right in the middle of her reading an essay! But there was precious little else to remember about this class except those darn primers we had to spend upwards of $60 on at the start of the semester. When it came time to sell books back at the end of the year, the English Department, going through the motions of another brilliant idea, had decided to not use the books again. Bookstores were on strict order not to reshelve the book.
Plenty of reruns in class...no reusing the book. And that’s how Composition I became one of the worst classes that semester.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Writing on the Wall
(Pat Coil/Grant Geissman)
Grant Geissman
From the album Reruns
1992
President Clinton no longer wants his wife to lead the fight for health care reform. White House officials said Wednesday that two lesser known aides, Carol Rasco and Robert Rubin, will head the administration’s second attempt for health care reform. Officials also said Hillary Clinton recommended the change, feeling that the health care debate has moved to another stage.
Whatever happened to make American Eagle flight 4184 fall from the sky apparently happened too fast for the pilots to call for help. “There was no distress signal sent from the plane and no indication from conversation between the tower and aircraft,” Jim Hall, the chairman for the National Transportation Safety board, said Wednesday. However an NBC News report said that the cockpit voice recorder indicates that alarm after alarm suddenly went off signaling an emergency on Monday’s flight.
Back in Washington, a Colorado man was ordered to stand trial on charges he fired 27 bullets from a semi-automatic rifle at the White House last weekend. Francisco Martin Duran is charged with possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, destroying government property, assaulting a uniformed Secret Service agent and using a firearm while convicting a crime. If convicted on all counts he could face a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison.
Cloudy today with a high of 85; lows in the 70s, cloudy and humid tonight. Currently it’s 76 degrees.
I got a lot of strange looks from people when I said I had signed up for 8:00 a.m. classes my freshman year. No one in their right mind wants to get up early for class, I was told. My response usually echoed around the concept that it didn’t bother me, but also because one of the key classes I had to take (Introduction to Broadcasting) was offered at either 8-9:30 a.m. or 9:30-11 a.m. on T-days (Tuesdays and Thursdays). I suppose I wanted to get classes over with as soon as possible so the rest of the day could be mine.
This “get it done and over with” mentality also was why I stacked my M-days (Monday-Wednesday-Friday) with classes all morning. After four hours of classes I gave myself an hour for lunch – eaten with, of course, members of the Octumvirate – before heading off to final M-day class, English Composition I. There were little hesitations about this class as I had always done exceptionally well in high school literature and composition courses. I assumed this would be somewhat similar.
It turned out to be one of my least-liked classes that year for a number of reasons. First, the official text for the course was the Grandville English Primer, a hefty 1000+page text book compiled by the university English department in an assumed effort to come up with a book that did most of the work for them. The book had a little bit of everything in it, including long-winded chapters about sentence structure and grammar; how to cite sources, which seemed an almost verbatim copy of the Modern Language Association (MLA) handbook we also had to purchase; and finally some representative poetry and prose selections that would be discussed (or were going to be discussed) in the introduction English courses. My semester was the debut semester of the book, which featured an illustration that tired to look like a woodcut of the iconic 150-year-old Grandville Building on campus but failed and instead looked like a cheaply-created illustration.
Another thing to dislike about the course was the instructor, one Ms. Mona-Itza Getnam, best described as an annoying busy-body that was guided more by departmental rules and procedures than common sense. Some instructors had Ph.D.s and taught the upper-level courses and mucked about in bureaucratic issues, while others were graduate teaching assistants and worked in the writing lab and taught introduction classes during their studies to earn a master’s degree. Ms. Getnam fit into a second and thusly less fashionable group that had attained a master’s degree but was still regulated to instructing either introductory courses or English courses taken mostly by non-English majors.
Ms. Getnam’s syllabus for the class was the same one used by all the other Composition I instructors (something discovered and discussed with Lenny and Alan during mealtime). However I found out as the semester wore on that only Ms. Getnam paid strict attention to its details. The course outline was indeed very specific about what all classes should be doing each week of the semester; its major flaw, and that of the faculty panel that authored the text, was forgetting each class of students would act differently when presented with the lessons. Some classes would instantly understand the topic at hand, while other groups of students might need reinforcement about the concepts.
And the main “concepts” and “lessons” that Ms. Getnam and other similar instructors taught that semester were basic punctuation and capitalization skills. These were the same basic skills that my high school senior year English teacher had decided to focus on the year before, sensing that as seniors we could use a refresher to “wind down” our high school experience. Therefore I was subject to another year of a topic I felt everyone should have learned back in elementary school. There was refresher – which should have been one class sessions – and then there was overkill, which lasted two weeks too many.
Apparently Lenny and Alan were in English classes with students that far excelled the instructor’s expectations because they spent very little time on those subjects and moved into the writings found in the back of the primer. Even though a majority of the class mastered the subject and passed the countless end-of-day quizzes spring on us, we still had to spend time going over capitalization and punctuation because the syllabus said we had to.
There’s a note on the syllabus about the clock. Oh, yes..the clock on the back wall. Ms. Getnam got a huge kick in class the day she finally realized it was dead and that's why it was always ten minutes until three. Yes! How funny! Right in the middle of her reading an essay! But there was precious little else to remember about this class except those darn primers we had to spend upwards of $60 on at the start of the semester. When it came time to sell books back at the end of the year, the English Department, going through the motions of another brilliant idea, had decided to not use the books again. Bookstores were on strict order not to reshelve the book.
Plenty of reruns in class...no reusing the book. And that’s how Composition I became one of the worst classes that semester.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Writing on the Wall
(Pat Coil/Grant Geissman)
Grant Geissman
From the album Reruns
1992
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Newsbreak: Sold Out
Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
My freshman year was apparently one for the books as far as the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice was concerned. Early in the semester, tenured CCJ professor Dr. Henbane was arrested for lewd behavior at a highway rest stop and soon after a handful of students were arrested for credit card fraud.
An article in the student-published Screed quoted a law enforcement official who said the investigation had begun back in 1990 and it was only now, four years later, before any arrests could be made. It was the arrests that surely made the CCJ people happy: of the twelve students arrested, four were sons or daughters of police officers and CCJ majors. The other eight people were business majors, a fact quickly overlooked, so it seemed, by those who found CCJ majors being arrested delightfully ironic and, rightfully so, embarrassing.
This, though, was the tip of the iceberg, as further reports indicated there were as many as 50 people involved in what police dubbed a “pick clique” rather than organized scam. I remember this term – “Pick Clique” – being something that garnered some laughs from my peers. Why couldn’t the police just call this a “crime ring” or “circuit” and be done with it, instead of coming up with some artsy-fartsy rhyming term?
Members of this “Pick Clique,” which the paper said represented both sexes and several races, stole credit cards, checks, and student identification cards from cars, purses, backpacks, lockers, dorm rooms, and so on. There was little difficulty finding members of the clique that looked like the students who had been robbed, which made using the stolen items a cinch. Officials said that the clique then found their friends with jobs who would accept the stolen checks or credit cards, and later “forget” who used them.
Overall the story seemed to hit more emotions than the story of Dr. Henbane did, if only because it was current and past CCJ students. The general consensus of the students interviewed in the Screed and the Examiner was that these four people should be embarrassed for representing not just the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice – where it was said students should be held to a greater and higher moral standard – but the university as well. There were some students under the auspices that all the students should be removed from the university though I don’t think that came about. Chances are those arrested weren’t going to be receiving passing marks in their classes that semester anyway. I doubt you could do distance education courses from the county lock-up.
Besides being mentioned in our radio newscasts, this story, too, made for easy banter during DJs shifts just as Dr. Henbane’s ordeal had. I must admit that the DJs my freshman year really made a point of keeping their eyes and ears open to university news. In later years DJs mumbled through music shifts with scant interest in talking about something other than music or themselves. There was a goldmine of topics to find in the Screed. We just needed to take the time to find them!
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sold Out
(unknown)
Pocket Change with David Patt
From the album Intimate Notions
1991
Susan Smith was not present at the funeral of her two young sons this past Sunday. She remained behind bars and charged with the boys’ murder. Smith’s confession, which was obtained by CNN, reported that she too intended to go into the lake as well. “I wanted to end my life so bad and was in my car ready to go....” Smith said. About 300 people crowded into the church to attend the service.
One day after President Ronald Regan announced that he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, the pastor at the former president’s church praised him for making his condition public. Alzheimer’s is a non-reversible neurological disease that destroys the brain’s memory cells.
At least some of the alternate jurors yet to be picked for the O.J. Simpson murder trial are likely to play a key role in the trial, officials say. In the trial, expected to run six months, jurors may fall ill or encounter emergencies that will force them to drop out. Judge Lance Ito has asked for 15 alternates which is an unusually large number. Today Ito is to rule on whether to allow cameras to televise the trial.
Sunny today with highs in the upper 70s; lows in the 50s tonight with fair skies. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 57 degrees.
My freshman year was apparently one for the books as far as the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice was concerned. Early in the semester, tenured CCJ professor Dr. Henbane was arrested for lewd behavior at a highway rest stop and soon after a handful of students were arrested for credit card fraud.
An article in the student-published Screed quoted a law enforcement official who said the investigation had begun back in 1990 and it was only now, four years later, before any arrests could be made. It was the arrests that surely made the CCJ people happy: of the twelve students arrested, four were sons or daughters of police officers and CCJ majors. The other eight people were business majors, a fact quickly overlooked, so it seemed, by those who found CCJ majors being arrested delightfully ironic and, rightfully so, embarrassing.
This, though, was the tip of the iceberg, as further reports indicated there were as many as 50 people involved in what police dubbed a “pick clique” rather than organized scam. I remember this term – “Pick Clique” – being something that garnered some laughs from my peers. Why couldn’t the police just call this a “crime ring” or “circuit” and be done with it, instead of coming up with some artsy-fartsy rhyming term?
Members of this “Pick Clique,” which the paper said represented both sexes and several races, stole credit cards, checks, and student identification cards from cars, purses, backpacks, lockers, dorm rooms, and so on. There was little difficulty finding members of the clique that looked like the students who had been robbed, which made using the stolen items a cinch. Officials said that the clique then found their friends with jobs who would accept the stolen checks or credit cards, and later “forget” who used them.
Overall the story seemed to hit more emotions than the story of Dr. Henbane did, if only because it was current and past CCJ students. The general consensus of the students interviewed in the Screed and the Examiner was that these four people should be embarrassed for representing not just the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice – where it was said students should be held to a greater and higher moral standard – but the university as well. There were some students under the auspices that all the students should be removed from the university though I don’t think that came about. Chances are those arrested weren’t going to be receiving passing marks in their classes that semester anyway. I doubt you could do distance education courses from the county lock-up.
Besides being mentioned in our radio newscasts, this story, too, made for easy banter during DJs shifts just as Dr. Henbane’s ordeal had. I must admit that the DJs my freshman year really made a point of keeping their eyes and ears open to university news. In later years DJs mumbled through music shifts with scant interest in talking about something other than music or themselves. There was a goldmine of topics to find in the Screed. We just needed to take the time to find them!
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sold Out
(unknown)
Pocket Change with David Patt
From the album Intimate Notions
1991
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Newsbreak: History 101
Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
During that first semester my freshman year I always seemed to be on the move on Monday and Wednesday mornings. I was up and out of bed in Bowman Hall before 6:00, at the Communication Building an hour before my newscast as 7:00, at the Public Health Building at 8:00 for my first class of the day, and then I had to scoot over to the Business & Economics Building (or the “Bebe”) for a course on United States History at 9:00.
I remember thinking at the time that the schedule must be wrong – why was my history class in the business building? No, the schedule was correct (as usual). Eventually I was able to discern that the history department had no building of their own and was regulated to the basement of one of the academic classroom buildings, and the business building was used because it had a vacant auditorium at this hour of the day. The walk from the Health Building was short and I stumbled into the auditorium my first day surprised at the size of the class. It was easiest the largest class I had that semester.
Leading the hour-long discussion on American History (from its earliest perceived beginnings to 11:59 a.m. on Monday, May 25, 1863) was one of the most colorful and popular professors on campus, Henry Varvas. It was hard to say what made him so popular. He had taught on campus for twenty-some years, had published a couple hundred articles on various historic people and events, and despite his high intellect was known as a mildly easy grader. That is until he came across a student-penned essay on a test that smacked of stupidity; this set him off which resulted in stricter grading on the remainder of the exams.
One quirk of Dr. Varvas was his distinct way of walking – he had a somewhat comical bounce in every other step. Some may have laughed and thought this was all for show, but it wasn’t long before he explained the reason: he had lost a leg to cancer. He had made great strides in using his prosthetic leg (pun intended and, in fact, his words) but did not appreciate people recognizing him only because of his gait. He told the story of a woman approaching him while shopping and gushing that she had heard about how great an instructor he was from her husband who was a student “a while back.” Varvas looked at her calmly and asked how she knew he was in fact who she thought he was. The woman confessed it was because of the way he walked. This evidently pissed him off not just at the time of the story but when he told us the tale in class – he raised his voice and acted insulted with us in the audience. It seemed a bit much to get sore about but I don’t think anyone felt the urge to argue with him.
The one nice thing about Varvas’ class was that he made it no secret in that first session that he didn’t meet Friday; in layman’s terms that meant he didn’t hold class, have office hours, or as many believed even venture from his home to the campus. That, my friends, is called tenure. To make up for the required third hour each week Varvas had setup what he called “discussion sessions” supervised by his two teaching assistants (T.A.) (real names forgotten but let’s call them Rael and Brandine). These “discussions” were equated to “lab credit,” which meant the group of undergrads met once a week to take silly little quizzes about what we learned in class. Fortunately my “lab” was right after class on Wednesday and so I and a few others followed Rael and Brandine across campus to the makeshift history department headquarters. Neither T.A. seemed as intelligent as Varvas but they tried to explain some of the topics in a “not-as-hoity-toity” manner.
A year later, when I was a sophomore and involved more heavily in radio news, I spotted Dr. Varvas’ name on the list of experts the university had created. The directory served to connect the media or other interested parties with subject matter experts for commentary or analysis on varying subjects. Though his name was part of the directory, Dr. Varvas was not too keen on hearing his voice transmitted...that day or the other few times I tried to get his insight on something in the news.
I always found it odd that he couldn’t keep quiet in class yet he refused his voice on the radio.
Maybe he had microphone trepidations, too.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
History 101
(Mark Cardenas/Robert Charles/Charles Neville/Mark Smith)
Songcatchers
From the album Dreaming in Color
1994
The Colorado man who left a cryptic note about death will be arraigned today on property damage and firearm violations after his frightening shooting spree on the White House Saturday. The gun man, 26-year-old Francisco Martin Duran, remained silent at D.C.’s Central Cellblock, his motives still a mystery. The note he left spoke of affairs if he were to die, similar to a will than a suicide note. The note contained no threat against President Clinton.
Israel will being reopening Gaza Strip border crossings this week that were previously sealed after the deadly bombing of a Tel Aviv bus, the prime minister said Sunday. Yitzhak Rabin met with PLO leader Yasser Arafat on Sunday before the opening of a Middle East summit aimed at promoting economic development in the region.
Highs in the mid-80s with scattered thunderstorms later; tonight clear and cool with lows near 50. Currently it’s 63 degrees.
During that first semester my freshman year I always seemed to be on the move on Monday and Wednesday mornings. I was up and out of bed in Bowman Hall before 6:00, at the Communication Building an hour before my newscast as 7:00, at the Public Health Building at 8:00 for my first class of the day, and then I had to scoot over to the Business & Economics Building (or the “Bebe”) for a course on United States History at 9:00.
I remember thinking at the time that the schedule must be wrong – why was my history class in the business building? No, the schedule was correct (as usual). Eventually I was able to discern that the history department had no building of their own and was regulated to the basement of one of the academic classroom buildings, and the business building was used because it had a vacant auditorium at this hour of the day. The walk from the Health Building was short and I stumbled into the auditorium my first day surprised at the size of the class. It was easiest the largest class I had that semester.
Leading the hour-long discussion on American History (from its earliest perceived beginnings to 11:59 a.m. on Monday, May 25, 1863) was one of the most colorful and popular professors on campus, Henry Varvas. It was hard to say what made him so popular. He had taught on campus for twenty-some years, had published a couple hundred articles on various historic people and events, and despite his high intellect was known as a mildly easy grader. That is until he came across a student-penned essay on a test that smacked of stupidity; this set him off which resulted in stricter grading on the remainder of the exams.
One quirk of Dr. Varvas was his distinct way of walking – he had a somewhat comical bounce in every other step. Some may have laughed and thought this was all for show, but it wasn’t long before he explained the reason: he had lost a leg to cancer. He had made great strides in using his prosthetic leg (pun intended and, in fact, his words) but did not appreciate people recognizing him only because of his gait. He told the story of a woman approaching him while shopping and gushing that she had heard about how great an instructor he was from her husband who was a student “a while back.” Varvas looked at her calmly and asked how she knew he was in fact who she thought he was. The woman confessed it was because of the way he walked. This evidently pissed him off not just at the time of the story but when he told us the tale in class – he raised his voice and acted insulted with us in the audience. It seemed a bit much to get sore about but I don’t think anyone felt the urge to argue with him.
The one nice thing about Varvas’ class was that he made it no secret in that first session that he didn’t meet Friday; in layman’s terms that meant he didn’t hold class, have office hours, or as many believed even venture from his home to the campus. That, my friends, is called tenure. To make up for the required third hour each week Varvas had setup what he called “discussion sessions” supervised by his two teaching assistants (T.A.) (real names forgotten but let’s call them Rael and Brandine). These “discussions” were equated to “lab credit,” which meant the group of undergrads met once a week to take silly little quizzes about what we learned in class. Fortunately my “lab” was right after class on Wednesday and so I and a few others followed Rael and Brandine across campus to the makeshift history department headquarters. Neither T.A. seemed as intelligent as Varvas but they tried to explain some of the topics in a “not-as-hoity-toity” manner.
A year later, when I was a sophomore and involved more heavily in radio news, I spotted Dr. Varvas’ name on the list of experts the university had created. The directory served to connect the media or other interested parties with subject matter experts for commentary or analysis on varying subjects. Though his name was part of the directory, Dr. Varvas was not too keen on hearing his voice transmitted...that day or the other few times I tried to get his insight on something in the news.
I always found it odd that he couldn’t keep quiet in class yet he refused his voice on the radio.
Maybe he had microphone trepidations, too.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
History 101
(Mark Cardenas/Robert Charles/Charles Neville/Mark Smith)
Songcatchers
From the album Dreaming in Color
1994
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Newsbreak: Television Dork
Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
Must have been a slow news day. Anyway...
Shortly after the school year began in September – and not too long after the semester kick-off meeting for the radio staff – signs began to appear throughout the Communication Building reminding us students that we could try out to become an anchor for Community Channel 7. The cable-only television station was run by students and featured programs created by students, who in turn had hopes that more than just students watched. There was, however, little doubt that students, let alone anyone, watched the programs with any regularity.
The newscasts had, for years, aired under assorted titles all based on “Channel 7 News” (i.e. “Community News 7” or “Community Channel 7 News”) though this semester, and apparently for one or two years before my freshman year, the program had been dubbed “Cable 7 News” in a presumed effort to point out the obvious. Anchor try-outs were held early each long semester (non-Summer session) to pick two teams of four that would host the thirty minute program on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The cast was the usual stock characters: a male and female news reader, a third person to read sports scores, and a fourth person to point at maps.
Interested parties were to show up a week or so later, dressed as how they would present themselves on the air. This meant neckties, Sunday-best dresses, perfectly coifed hair, and a lot of alcohol-based perfumes and colognes that didn’t work well together. One by one each student was given a script and seated behind the anchor desk (or semi-circular table, as it was in those days) to face the music, or camera, as it were. Try-outs were held in Studio 1, which was the largest therefore most important studio the School of Communication had. There was a little bit of everything in the studio, including the news desk, two interview sets, a blue chroma key wall, a black wall, and then piles of junk stashed in corners or propping up set walls.
Did I go through with try-outs? Not at all. I didn’t feel 100% at ease behind the microphone on the radio yet and didn’t feel the need to allow people to see what I looked like on television. I did however ask Troy Meadows, the radio News Director my freshman year, if I could watch from the studio. It turned out that Troy had been a reporter for Channel 7 the previous year and now, as a senior member of the staff, would be helping with the try-outs. Troy said I could come in for a few minutes to see a working studio but that visitors were mostly frowned upon. This wasn’t show-and-tell after all, it was the news.
Well, sort of. A few weeks later I watched one of the first Cable 7 News programs of the school year and wasn’t that impressed. I recognized a few people on the broadcast: Troy had a story relating to students coming back to campus and Mike, the guy I knew from Thursday morning radio, showed up with another in his series called “Open Mike” where he interviewed people around campus on various topics (apparently Mike was just as familiar with television as he was with radio). I suppose what made me disinterested though was the “attitude” of the program with its anchors promoting stories with false urgency and reading scripts with bland energy. None of us were a professional in any of our roles in that Communication Building – we were all there to learn and some of us had more to learn than others – but it was clear we all needed practice in our craft.
Sadly, the one aspect of Cable 7 News that did not require practice was the promotions staff that turned out some of the most pretentious stuff I’d ever seen. Less than a week after the anchor teams had been decided upon, the new ads began to appear on other Community Channel 7 programs. There were probably a half dozen or so different spots but all on the same theme: shots of the anchors and reporters working at their “desk,” receiving a phone call, and then heading out to campus or somewhere in town to “cover” the story. What made the ads showy? First off, the “desk” the “news team” used belonged to the instructors; these scenes were taped after hours to give the illusion that each student had a room-sized office to his-or-herself. Intercut with shots of students receiving phone calls were shots of students grabbing an aspect of clothing (i.e. suite coat) and running with a photographer down the “news room hall” (the same hall everyone used during the day; now virtually empty because it was taped at 9 p.m.) toward the door. This was followed by shots of the student arriving at the story and preparing to go “live” (really live-to-tape) with what they’ve learned.
At the end of the 30-second spots the scene faded to a shot of the news team talking with each other as they walked down a hall in the Communication Building. The students had that air of crisp seniority or mock forcefulness in their walk, as if they were seasoned authorities on whatever it was they were doing; you know, sort of like in the opening credits of Law and Order. But there were various shots used to make different promos: one scene was of the four-person Tuesday night broadcast team, one scene was of the four-person Thursday night broadcast team; there was one of the four news anchors from both nights, one of the two weather anchors, and one of the two sports anchors. All permutations ended with someone trying to sound like Bill Kurtis or Gary Owens announcing “Cable 7 News.”
Community Channel 7 was almost the polar opposite of the radio station in numerous characteristics. Where the radio station staff had set directors with a chain of command of both students and faculty, the television staff was a jumbled mess of students vying for command amongst each and with the department head. There were, as the saying goes, too many chiefs. There was also a flawed sense of importance that I noticed in my four years as a student: a lot of communication majors looked down in disgust at the radio station. Radio, it seemed, was the bane of the department. I never really understood this attitude. Even though our broadcasts were far more immediate – we were on five days a week with numerous newscasts compared to Channel 7’s one thirty minute program twice a week – television on the other hand was supposedly a more creative medium. It’s also the medium where people got to be seen and always figured a lot of people got into this field to boost their ego after being bashed down in high school.
Needless to say, I found radio far more rewarding but it didn’t take long my freshman year to realize that television would be in my future as a student.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Television
(Dork)
Dork
From the album Other White Meat
1997
The Muslim militant group Hamas said Monday it will launch a terrorist attack this week during President Clinton’s visit to the Middle East. The leaders of Hamas say the attack will be in revenge for Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reported orders to assassinate Hamas leaders on sight. Clinton arrives in the Middle East Wednesday for the signing of the Israel/Jordon Accord ending forty-six years of war between the two countries.
U.S. Special Forces teams are tracking two small bands of anti-government gunmen through southwestern Haiti but after weeks of searching only 64 weapons and one man were found. In a raid a couple weeks ago, Green Berets seized 33 weapons and took one man into custody. In another raid 31 weapons were found.
Highs in the mid-70s with early showers and scattered thunderstorms later; tonight more showers and cool with lows in the 50s. Currently it’s 69 degrees.
Must have been a slow news day. Anyway...
Shortly after the school year began in September – and not too long after the semester kick-off meeting for the radio staff – signs began to appear throughout the Communication Building reminding us students that we could try out to become an anchor for Community Channel 7. The cable-only television station was run by students and featured programs created by students, who in turn had hopes that more than just students watched. There was, however, little doubt that students, let alone anyone, watched the programs with any regularity.
The newscasts had, for years, aired under assorted titles all based on “Channel 7 News” (i.e. “Community News 7” or “Community Channel 7 News”) though this semester, and apparently for one or two years before my freshman year, the program had been dubbed “Cable 7 News” in a presumed effort to point out the obvious. Anchor try-outs were held early each long semester (non-Summer session) to pick two teams of four that would host the thirty minute program on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The cast was the usual stock characters: a male and female news reader, a third person to read sports scores, and a fourth person to point at maps.
Interested parties were to show up a week or so later, dressed as how they would present themselves on the air. This meant neckties, Sunday-best dresses, perfectly coifed hair, and a lot of alcohol-based perfumes and colognes that didn’t work well together. One by one each student was given a script and seated behind the anchor desk (or semi-circular table, as it was in those days) to face the music, or camera, as it were. Try-outs were held in Studio 1, which was the largest therefore most important studio the School of Communication had. There was a little bit of everything in the studio, including the news desk, two interview sets, a blue chroma key wall, a black wall, and then piles of junk stashed in corners or propping up set walls.
Did I go through with try-outs? Not at all. I didn’t feel 100% at ease behind the microphone on the radio yet and didn’t feel the need to allow people to see what I looked like on television. I did however ask Troy Meadows, the radio News Director my freshman year, if I could watch from the studio. It turned out that Troy had been a reporter for Channel 7 the previous year and now, as a senior member of the staff, would be helping with the try-outs. Troy said I could come in for a few minutes to see a working studio but that visitors were mostly frowned upon. This wasn’t show-and-tell after all, it was the news.
Well, sort of. A few weeks later I watched one of the first Cable 7 News programs of the school year and wasn’t that impressed. I recognized a few people on the broadcast: Troy had a story relating to students coming back to campus and Mike, the guy I knew from Thursday morning radio, showed up with another in his series called “Open Mike” where he interviewed people around campus on various topics (apparently Mike was just as familiar with television as he was with radio). I suppose what made me disinterested though was the “attitude” of the program with its anchors promoting stories with false urgency and reading scripts with bland energy. None of us were a professional in any of our roles in that Communication Building – we were all there to learn and some of us had more to learn than others – but it was clear we all needed practice in our craft.
Sadly, the one aspect of Cable 7 News that did not require practice was the promotions staff that turned out some of the most pretentious stuff I’d ever seen. Less than a week after the anchor teams had been decided upon, the new ads began to appear on other Community Channel 7 programs. There were probably a half dozen or so different spots but all on the same theme: shots of the anchors and reporters working at their “desk,” receiving a phone call, and then heading out to campus or somewhere in town to “cover” the story. What made the ads showy? First off, the “desk” the “news team” used belonged to the instructors; these scenes were taped after hours to give the illusion that each student had a room-sized office to his-or-herself. Intercut with shots of students receiving phone calls were shots of students grabbing an aspect of clothing (i.e. suite coat) and running with a photographer down the “news room hall” (the same hall everyone used during the day; now virtually empty because it was taped at 9 p.m.) toward the door. This was followed by shots of the student arriving at the story and preparing to go “live” (really live-to-tape) with what they’ve learned.
At the end of the 30-second spots the scene faded to a shot of the news team talking with each other as they walked down a hall in the Communication Building. The students had that air of crisp seniority or mock forcefulness in their walk, as if they were seasoned authorities on whatever it was they were doing; you know, sort of like in the opening credits of Law and Order. But there were various shots used to make different promos: one scene was of the four-person Tuesday night broadcast team, one scene was of the four-person Thursday night broadcast team; there was one of the four news anchors from both nights, one of the two weather anchors, and one of the two sports anchors. All permutations ended with someone trying to sound like Bill Kurtis or Gary Owens announcing “Cable 7 News.”
Community Channel 7 was almost the polar opposite of the radio station in numerous characteristics. Where the radio station staff had set directors with a chain of command of both students and faculty, the television staff was a jumbled mess of students vying for command amongst each and with the department head. There were, as the saying goes, too many chiefs. There was also a flawed sense of importance that I noticed in my four years as a student: a lot of communication majors looked down in disgust at the radio station. Radio, it seemed, was the bane of the department. I never really understood this attitude. Even though our broadcasts were far more immediate – we were on five days a week with numerous newscasts compared to Channel 7’s one thirty minute program twice a week – television on the other hand was supposedly a more creative medium. It’s also the medium where people got to be seen and always figured a lot of people got into this field to boost their ego after being bashed down in high school.
Needless to say, I found radio far more rewarding but it didn’t take long my freshman year to realize that television would be in my future as a student.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Television
(Dork)
Dork
From the album Other White Meat
1997
Sunday, October 26, 2008
At the no go show you could stay all day, you didn't know...what to say
First all aboard the A bus
Then to B Bus we all switch
But mixing using cheesy wipes
Gets Propel in such a stitch!
Each of the three television studios in the Communication Building had an associated control room located nearby, usually a room next door that was viewable through a thick pane of glass. Student directors could see and communicate with the talent on the floor not only via the equipment but also by simply turning their head, looking through the glass, and sticking out his or her tongue. This action conveyed such a rich spectrum of emotion and was used more than it should have been. There were no rules in place to prevent such things from repeating.
The control room for Studio 3 was a respectably-sized room and probably could have had more going for it had it not been made into a junkyard. And really, not even a good junkyard – more like a walk-in closet that needed emptying. One corner of the room contained equipment for Studio 3; surely there was an audio board and maybe a cart machine, too, though neither had been top-of-the-line merchandise in years. Opposite this was even more archaic equipment but regulated to boxes or stacked vicariously in strangely-shaped piles that wobbled when someone stomped or sneezed or even spoke.
Between all of this was a towering contraption about three-feet-square, maybe five-or-six-feet tall, and on wheels. I laugh when mentioning the wheels as I vividly recall someone trying to move the monstrosity to retrieve a fallen paper and having no luck: the wheels were either jammed, worn down, or just for decoration. The reason didn’t matter. This was the video switcher.
There were two main components of the switcher, or mixer as it was sometimes called:
Cue talent.
In the simplest of mixers, whichever bus the fader is delegated to is active and directed toward the output source, or program monitor. On the switcher the A bus is active and the monitor shows Brad. Brad asks Rachel a question. The director instructs a switch to camera 2; this is done by the switcher operator moving the fader bar down to the B bus. Now the B bus is active; the monitor shows Rachel.
The program then continues going back and forth and viewers are subject to some sappy story of Rachel and Brad trying to rekindle their relationship. Or something like that.
The transition between the two busses varied, as it could be a swap between the two inputs (i.e. a “cut” or “take”) or something a bit more elaborate, such as dissolves or fades or the dreaded wipes. Wipes came in numerous forms: star-shaped, heart-shaped, or iris-shaped, which was a growing or shrinking circle. In all the studios in the Communication Building, as well as in all the television production rooms, were graphics machines that enabled text, basic graphics, and a compendium of wipes.
Dr. Propel hated wipes to the point that he instructed to write down one of his cardinal rules: “Wipes are cheese.” Wipes were nothing more than cheesy effects that were overused and perpetuated by those incapable of original thought. Our wipes were pretty cheesy: there was a cow wipe (the image of a cow grew to fill the entire screen with the second input), the rolling dice wipe (two die are rolled from the center of the screen, grow larger, and the second input image is seen in the dot as the cube comes closer), and the mildly-popular Peeping Tom wipe (a woman walks by an open window, is shocked to see someone peeping in, and she pulls down the curtain that reveals the other input).
In short, wipes were as cheesy as some of Propel’s jokes and mannerisms. That, and the switcher was relatively easy to use.
Now we just had to take what we learned after using all the equipment and apply it to usage outside the classroom.
That meant the radio station. Fun times were just ahead.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Switch
(Engine Alley)
Engine Alley
From the album Engine Alley
1994
At the no go show you can stay all day
You won't know no no what to say
If it's a radio show it might be better that way
There's too many people with nothing to say
You can go, you can go
Radio show Radio show
You can go, you can go
I switch on the rayjo (at a quarter to 12)
And then I switch off the rayjo (at a quarter past 12)
When I switch on the rayjo switch! switch!
I have to switch off the rayjo
At the no go show you could stay all day
You didn't know no no what to say
It was a radio show and it was better that way
There's too many people with nothing to say
You can go, you can go
I switch on the rayjo (at a quarter to 12)
And then I switch off the rayjo (at a quarter past 12)
When I switch on the rayjo
And when I switch off the rayjo
Switch! Switch!
When I switch on the radjo
I have to switch off the radjo Ho Ho
Then to B Bus we all switch
But mixing using cheesy wipes
Gets Propel in such a stitch!
Each of the three television studios in the Communication Building had an associated control room located nearby, usually a room next door that was viewable through a thick pane of glass. Student directors could see and communicate with the talent on the floor not only via the equipment but also by simply turning their head, looking through the glass, and sticking out his or her tongue. This action conveyed such a rich spectrum of emotion and was used more than it should have been. There were no rules in place to prevent such things from repeating.
The control room for Studio 3 was a respectably-sized room and probably could have had more going for it had it not been made into a junkyard. And really, not even a good junkyard – more like a walk-in closet that needed emptying. One corner of the room contained equipment for Studio 3; surely there was an audio board and maybe a cart machine, too, though neither had been top-of-the-line merchandise in years. Opposite this was even more archaic equipment but regulated to boxes or stacked vicariously in strangely-shaped piles that wobbled when someone stomped or sneezed or even spoke.
Between all of this was a towering contraption about three-feet-square, maybe five-or-six-feet tall, and on wheels. I laugh when mentioning the wheels as I vividly recall someone trying to move the monstrosity to retrieve a fallen paper and having no luck: the wheels were either jammed, worn down, or just for decoration. The reason didn’t matter. This was the video switcher.
- The bus, essentially a row of buttons indicating various inputs (e.g. camera 1, camera 2, VTR [video tape recorder], etc.).
- The fader bar, what was used to create transitions between the two busses.
Cue talent.
In the simplest of mixers, whichever bus the fader is delegated to is active and directed toward the output source, or program monitor. On the switcher the A bus is active and the monitor shows Brad. Brad asks Rachel a question. The director instructs a switch to camera 2; this is done by the switcher operator moving the fader bar down to the B bus. Now the B bus is active; the monitor shows Rachel.
The transition between the two busses varied, as it could be a swap between the two inputs (i.e. a “cut” or “take”) or something a bit more elaborate, such as dissolves or fades or the dreaded wipes. Wipes came in numerous forms: star-shaped, heart-shaped, or iris-shaped, which was a growing or shrinking circle. In all the studios in the Communication Building, as well as in all the television production rooms, were graphics machines that enabled text, basic graphics, and a compendium of wipes.
Dr. Propel hated wipes to the point that he instructed to write down one of his cardinal rules: “Wipes are cheese.” Wipes were nothing more than cheesy effects that were overused and perpetuated by those incapable of original thought. Our wipes were pretty cheesy: there was a cow wipe (the image of a cow grew to fill the entire screen with the second input), the rolling dice wipe (two die are rolled from the center of the screen, grow larger, and the second input image is seen in the dot as the cube comes closer), and the mildly-popular Peeping Tom wipe (a woman walks by an open window, is shocked to see someone peeping in, and she pulls down the curtain that reveals the other input).
In short, wipes were as cheesy as some of Propel’s jokes and mannerisms. That, and the switcher was relatively easy to use.
Now we just had to take what we learned after using all the equipment and apply it to usage outside the classroom.
That meant the radio station. Fun times were just ahead.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Switch
(Engine Alley)
Engine Alley
From the album Engine Alley
1994
At the no go show you can stay all day
You won't know no no what to say
If it's a radio show it might be better that way
There's too many people with nothing to say
You can go, you can go
Radio show Radio show
You can go, you can go
I switch on the rayjo (at a quarter to 12)
And then I switch off the rayjo (at a quarter past 12)
When I switch on the rayjo switch! switch!
I have to switch off the rayjo
At the no go show you could stay all day
You didn't know no no what to say
It was a radio show and it was better that way
There's too many people with nothing to say
You can go, you can go
I switch on the rayjo (at a quarter to 12)
And then I switch off the rayjo (at a quarter past 12)
When I switch on the rayjo
And when I switch off the rayjo
Switch! Switch!
When I switch on the radjo
I have to switch off the radjo Ho Ho
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Living Room Camera
Zoom, Truck, Tilt, and Dolly
Now Pedestal and Pan
Silence in the studio
For the dancing camera man.
Midway through the semester, the Introduction to Broadcasting course switched gears and the focus went from audio to video. I remember a few people later commenting that they “liked the radio portion” of the course better “than the television.” This was sort of a misnomer, as that part of the class really didn’t focus on “radio” more than it did on “audio.” The idea, of course, was to use the lessons learned from audio production and apply them to video production. As Propel noted, “Unless you’re going into silent film, then the audio portion of the class was a waste.” Typical Propel humor.
Then, too, the discussion changed in our hands-on lab course...though I just noticed, all these years later, that the class maintained the name “Radio Workshop” even though we now met in Studio 3.
Ah, Studio 3 – such an appropriate name. You’re familiar with the comparative list “good, better, best” I’m sure. Studio 3 in the Communication Building would be the “good” of this list, though the loosest sense of the word “good” and the epitome of “third best.” I don’t know if it had been built for anything other than a training area because it was too small and too under equipped to serve in any other role. When we walked in the first time I was amazed at just how little there was: two studio cameras in the center of the room, a semi-circle of chairs around one wall, a small table that held the light controls, and decorative squares of soundproofing. Master Control for Studio 3 was in an adjoining room and was just as a sparse – some rudimentary machinery and a few more of that hard plastic swivel chairs similar to the ten or twelve in the studio.
Learning how to move the camera was the obvious lesson. To that end, our off-the-wall instructor had taken the time to put together a game in the studio that looked similar to dance steps one finds on the floor or a flowchart. I don’t know if this was something he prepared for earlier this semester or if it was a holdover from previous years, but I quickly got the impression it was not something new.
The rules were simple: there were between 40 and 50 circles fastened to the floor. One circle was green and this was where the student operating the camera would start. Another student, acting as director, sat in the control room and instructed your next move. The goal was to get the camera to one of the red squares on the floor. That seemed easy enough except Dr. Propel had changed four of the circles from white to yellow and you had to maneuver the camera to each of these four circles before you could touch a square (the yellow circles were interchangeable such that every student had a different path each time he or she played the “game”).
The instructions given by the director were either “to dolly” or “to truck” the camera.
What instruction was given to get the user from Circle 3 to Circle A?
At the yellow circle (Circle A) Dr. Propel took over with the instruction:
So the student director trucked and dollied the camera operator to another yellow circle where again Dr. Propel would bark through a series of orders. The idea was to give the instructions and make the movements as quickly as possible, as if we were shooting an action scene of some sort.
It made for some interesting classes at first, but, as one could imagine, it got old fast – especially when we all expected Propel’s incorrect instruction and moreso his giddy laugh when we were on to him.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Camera
(Jerry DiRienzo)
Cell
From the album Living Room
1994
Now Pedestal and Pan
Silence in the studio
For the dancing camera man.
Midway through the semester, the Introduction to Broadcasting course switched gears and the focus went from audio to video. I remember a few people later commenting that they “liked the radio portion” of the course better “than the television.” This was sort of a misnomer, as that part of the class really didn’t focus on “radio” more than it did on “audio.” The idea, of course, was to use the lessons learned from audio production and apply them to video production. As Propel noted, “Unless you’re going into silent film, then the audio portion of the class was a waste.” Typical Propel humor.
Then, too, the discussion changed in our hands-on lab course...though I just noticed, all these years later, that the class maintained the name “Radio Workshop” even though we now met in Studio 3.
Ah, Studio 3 – such an appropriate name. You’re familiar with the comparative list “good, better, best” I’m sure. Studio 3 in the Communication Building would be the “good” of this list, though the loosest sense of the word “good” and the epitome of “third best.” I don’t know if it had been built for anything other than a training area because it was too small and too under equipped to serve in any other role. When we walked in the first time I was amazed at just how little there was: two studio cameras in the center of the room, a semi-circle of chairs around one wall, a small table that held the light controls, and decorative squares of soundproofing. Master Control for Studio 3 was in an adjoining room and was just as a sparse – some rudimentary machinery and a few more of that hard plastic swivel chairs similar to the ten or twelve in the studio.
The rules were simple: there were between 40 and 50 circles fastened to the floor. One circle was green and this was where the student operating the camera would start. Another student, acting as director, sat in the control room and instructed your next move. The goal was to get the camera to one of the red squares on the floor. That seemed easy enough except Dr. Propel had changed four of the circles from white to yellow and you had to maneuver the camera to each of these four circles before you could touch a square (the yellow circles were interchangeable such that every student had a different path each time he or she played the “game”).
The instructions given by the director were either “to dolly” or “to truck” the camera.
- “To truck” the camera meant moving the camera tripod or pedestal to the left or to the right. The camera mounted to the tripod or pedestal does not move. The instruction “truck 1 to the right” would take the camera from Circle 1 to Circle 2 on the graphic.
- “To dolly” the camera meant moving the tripod or pedestal forward or backward. Like trucking, the camera itself does not move. The instruction “dolly in 2” would take the camera from Circle 2 to Circle 3 on the graphic.
At the yellow circle (Circle A) Dr. Propel took over with the instruction:
- Pan: the horizontal left-and-right movement of the camera; the motion was comparable to someone shaking their head “no.” The tripod or camera mount remained motionless.
- Tilt: the vertical up-and-down movement of the camera; the motion was comparable to someone nodding their head “yes.” The camera mount also remained motionless.
- Pedestal: the vertical up-and-down movement of the camera tripod; the motion was comparable to someone standing on tip-toe whilst looking straight ahead.
- This leaves zoom, a control on the camera itself that allowed us to “zoom in” to obtain a closer view of something or “zoom out” to obtain a wider, more distant view.
So the student director trucked and dollied the camera operator to another yellow circle where again Dr. Propel would bark through a series of orders. The idea was to give the instructions and make the movements as quickly as possible, as if we were shooting an action scene of some sort.
It made for some interesting classes at first, but, as one could imagine, it got old fast – especially when we all expected Propel’s incorrect instruction and moreso his giddy laugh when we were on to him.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Camera
(Jerry DiRienzo)
Cell
From the album Living Room
1994
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Flawless Microphone Check
You want to be in radio
It’s what you claim to like
But shy and silent students – no!
Best step up to the mic!
Let’s cut to the chase on the microphones (which hipster DJ-types in the know refer to as “mics”). There were three types that Dr. Propel made a big deal about early on: moving coil, ribbon, and condenser. This generally confused those who thought there was one type of mic: the hand-held.
Now it doesn’t take a genius to realize that if you’re majoring in communication or trying to make a career in radio then you’re going to have to use a microphone. I say this because I think there was at least one person each semester that I was aware of that didn’t want to speak into the microphone. Really, now...you (or your parents) have paid a substantial sum of money to get into this course, you’ve gotten this far into the introduction class, and you appear to gab away with friends before, after, and during class...so why can’t you get on the mic?
Let’s see...there was this kid named Stephen Cornell my freshman year. We were both in Propel’s class – and may have been in the same Friday lab section – and he had also signed up for news. While I was on in the morning, Stephen somehow got one of the top notch afternoon “drive time” newscasts that I thought were more for students with seniority. I got the impression he thought he knew more than he really did – he may have been the one who bragged his high school had a radio station, which someone said was probably nothing more than reading off “morning announcements” a couple days a week.
I also got the impression he wasn’t as high-and-mighty as he made himself out to be: during the second or third week of my newscasts I had a visit from Troy Meadows, the news director. He was making the rounds to check in on his staff and, after giving me some pointers on the broadcast, mentioned he was glad I wasn’t one of those who had to have a reader – especially pulling a 7 o’clock shift. I was unclear on the term “reader.” Turns out there were a few freshmen that got in a little over their heads and were so nervous that they froze when it came time to read their copy [news script]. It was revealed that Troy had actually done over half of the newscasts that first week. I can understand the students being timid: this was going to be their first time speaking on the radio. No hour-long lab practicum in front of the equipment can set you up for the realization that your voice is being beamed across the city, county, and beyond (well, not that far beyond – our tower’s radiated power wasn’t that effective...).
Most people that I knew that stressed out about speaking into a microphone had their issues early on; after a few weeks this panicky mentality was gone (“weeks” sounds excessive but bear in mind most of us had weekly music shifts).
Granted I didn’t say they got better with age.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Station Question Box
Topic: Equipment, usage of
Question: Should I talk into the microphone when I’m on the air?
Answer: Radio is one of the most amazing and creative broadcast mediums in that it requires no audio to operate. This station tries not to break the “Dead Air” law of the FCC which states that “radio stations that broadcast dead-air are providing a community service.”
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Microphone Check
(Hollow Tip)
Hollow Tip
From the album Flawless
1998
It’s what you claim to like
But shy and silent students – no!
Best step up to the mic!
Let’s cut to the chase on the microphones (which hipster DJ-types in the know refer to as “mics”). There were three types that Dr. Propel made a big deal about early on: moving coil, ribbon, and condenser. This generally confused those who thought there was one type of mic: the hand-held.
- In moving coil mics, electricity is formed by moving a conductor through a magnetic field. A thin diaphragm vibrates in response to sound energy. An electrical current is created with a pattern corresponding to the pattern of the original sound.
- Ribbon mics have a thin metal ribbon suspended between the poles of a magnet. Sound energy causes vibrations of the ribbon that move through a magnetic field to produce an electrical current.
- Condenser mics use an electrical element called a capacitor which stores a charge. The charge is applied to the back plate of the condenser. Movement of diaphragm varies the electrical pattern on the back plate. These mics used a battery-operated power source to create the charge on the back plate.
Let’s see...there was this kid named Stephen Cornell my freshman year. We were both in Propel’s class – and may have been in the same Friday lab section – and he had also signed up for news. While I was on in the morning, Stephen somehow got one of the top notch afternoon “drive time” newscasts that I thought were more for students with seniority. I got the impression he thought he knew more than he really did – he may have been the one who bragged his high school had a radio station, which someone said was probably nothing more than reading off “morning announcements” a couple days a week.
I also got the impression he wasn’t as high-and-mighty as he made himself out to be: during the second or third week of my newscasts I had a visit from Troy Meadows, the news director. He was making the rounds to check in on his staff and, after giving me some pointers on the broadcast, mentioned he was glad I wasn’t one of those who had to have a reader – especially pulling a 7 o’clock shift. I was unclear on the term “reader.” Turns out there were a few freshmen that got in a little over their heads and were so nervous that they froze when it came time to read their copy [news script]. It was revealed that Troy had actually done over half of the newscasts that first week. I can understand the students being timid: this was going to be their first time speaking on the radio. No hour-long lab practicum in front of the equipment can set you up for the realization that your voice is being beamed across the city, county, and beyond (well, not that far beyond – our tower’s radiated power wasn’t that effective...).
Most people that I knew that stressed out about speaking into a microphone had their issues early on; after a few weeks this panicky mentality was gone (“weeks” sounds excessive but bear in mind most of us had weekly music shifts).
Granted I didn’t say they got better with age.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Station Question Box
Topic: Equipment, usage of
Question: Should I talk into the microphone when I’m on the air?
Answer: Radio is one of the most amazing and creative broadcast mediums in that it requires no audio to operate. This station tries not to break the “Dead Air” law of the FCC which states that “radio stations that broadcast dead-air are providing a community service.”
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Microphone Check
(Hollow Tip)
Hollow Tip
From the album Flawless
1998
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Turn up the radio
Mix and route the audio
Through channels on the board
And if you’re running in the mud
Your pot can’t be ignored.
If I had been under the impression that I would only see Dr. Propel on Tuesdays and Thursdays then I was sadly mistaken. I would not escape the zany humor of the Introduction to Broadcasting instructor on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays because those were the days I was required to attend Communication 105.04, officially known as Radio Workshop on the class schedule, and best known to us students as “lab.”
The good thing about this “class” was that soon after the semester started Dr. Propel announced that for a majority of the semester we only had to come to lab one day a week. Each of his four sections of COM 105 was divided into three and the students reported to one of the first-floor production rooms on our designated day. The word “Friday” is scrawled in a freshman hand upon my syllabus so I assume that was my chosen day. That actually worked out okay with Dr. Varvas’ history class not convening on Fridays.
These labs pretty much ran congruent with what we were discussing in our class; if the class were discussing the audio console (or board) then chances were good that our next lab would consist of some hands-on practice with the console.
Sadly, there were a lot of people in the lab and that I met over the next few years who found operating the board a daunting task. I think they were frightened off by the perceived complexity and convinced they were going to break something if they pushed the wrong button or something. Hardly. In fact, the consoles in the smaller practice production rooms were about as complex as the rooms themselves, which were more like small closets with barely enough room for two people let alone the equipment. Inside, and wired into the board, were a microphone, reel-to-reel machine, a cartridge machine, a turntable, and a CD player. All the good stuff.
One of the first things we learned about the board was its function: to mix, to route, and to amplify. Mixing seemed the obvious concept, what with the various inputs that the board operator could mix together (such as voice and music). The key thing to know was that each signal could be controlled separately to prevent, in this case, the music from drowning out the announcer.
Routing allowed the board operator to determine the path of the signal: was the signal sent out over the air (as it was in the main studio) or was it sent into a cue channel, which let the operator hear the audio source but without going over the air. The signal could also be turned off or on.
Amplification is the boosting of the audio signal to a broadcast-quality level. For example, the signal from a turntable is too low to broadcast over the air and therefore the board operator must use the console to amplify that medium’s signal.
Controlling the volume of each signal on the board – the mic, the turntable, the CD player, etc. – was a potentiometer, or pot. My notes indicate it was officially called a variable resistor but in layman’s terms it was nothing more than something to control the volume. All the older model consoles we had when I started had pots that were round knobs that the user rotated; newer model consoles had bars that performed the same function when raised vertically (these were mostly called ‘slide faders’ but were none the less potentiometers of the first order).
Part of Propel’s shtick was his frequent use of the word potentiometer in lessons and in quizzes. One of our earliest quizzes – proceeded with the direction to “take out...two...sheets...of pay-pah” – started off with the instruction to “spell potentiometer.” For the rest of the semester most pop quizzes involved the potentiometer.
I never knew Propel’s reasons for making us memorize the spelling and definition of the component but it obviously worked:
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Turn Up the Radio
(L.A. Greene & Roger Scott Craig)
Harlan Cage
From the album Double Medication Tuesday
1998
Through channels on the board
And if you’re running in the mud
Your pot can’t be ignored.
If I had been under the impression that I would only see Dr. Propel on Tuesdays and Thursdays then I was sadly mistaken. I would not escape the zany humor of the Introduction to Broadcasting instructor on Mondays, Wednesdays, or Fridays because those were the days I was required to attend Communication 105.04, officially known as Radio Workshop on the class schedule, and best known to us students as “lab.”
The good thing about this “class” was that soon after the semester started Dr. Propel announced that for a majority of the semester we only had to come to lab one day a week. Each of his four sections of COM 105 was divided into three and the students reported to one of the first-floor production rooms on our designated day. The word “Friday” is scrawled in a freshman hand upon my syllabus so I assume that was my chosen day. That actually worked out okay with Dr. Varvas’ history class not convening on Fridays.
These labs pretty much ran congruent with what we were discussing in our class; if the class were discussing the audio console (or board) then chances were good that our next lab would consist of some hands-on practice with the console.
One of the first things we learned about the board was its function: to mix, to route, and to amplify. Mixing seemed the obvious concept, what with the various inputs that the board operator could mix together (such as voice and music). The key thing to know was that each signal could be controlled separately to prevent, in this case, the music from drowning out the announcer.
Routing allowed the board operator to determine the path of the signal: was the signal sent out over the air (as it was in the main studio) or was it sent into a cue channel, which let the operator hear the audio source but without going over the air. The signal could also be turned off or on.
Amplification is the boosting of the audio signal to a broadcast-quality level. For example, the signal from a turntable is too low to broadcast over the air and therefore the board operator must use the console to amplify that medium’s signal.
Controlling the volume of each signal on the board – the mic, the turntable, the CD player, etc. – was a potentiometer, or pot. My notes indicate it was officially called a variable resistor but in layman’s terms it was nothing more than something to control the volume. All the older model consoles we had when I started had pots that were round knobs that the user rotated; newer model consoles had bars that performed the same function when raised vertically (these were mostly called ‘slide faders’ but were none the less potentiometers of the first order).
Part of Propel’s shtick was his frequent use of the word potentiometer in lessons and in quizzes. One of our earliest quizzes – proceeded with the direction to “take out...two...sheets...of pay-pah” – started off with the instruction to “spell potentiometer.” For the rest of the semester most pop quizzes involved the potentiometer.
I never knew Propel’s reasons for making us memorize the spelling and definition of the component but it obviously worked:
P-O-T-E-N-T-I-O-M-E-T-E-R
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Turn Up the Radio
(L.A. Greene & Roger Scott Craig)
Harlan Cage
From the album Double Medication Tuesday
1998
Sunday, September 28, 2008
It's your life, it's your party...let's start a fire, let's start a riot!
What? You think I’m going to bitch and moan about how awful graduate school was for the fourth straight week in a row? Come on now – there were some good things about that school year.
I was still working in radio. That’s why I sought out graduate school. A surprisingly large number of people told me the summer before I started that graduate school was a time in their life when they found out just how much they enjoyed what they were studying. “You’ll get to see your interest from a whole new angle and find new ways to appreciate it,” or words to that affect, were how I whisked off to Allaphellan. But after that school year I really didn’t want to “do” radio anymore.
I now had the ability to teach others. Back at my undergraduate station, training was often looked at as an inconvenient necessity – we had to make sure the staff knew what they were doing but so many came across dumb as bricks or just as hard-headed that the novelty wore off quickly. Perhaps sensitive to the psyche of some students, I attempted to not talk down to them or use too much jargon early on or even scare them by reminding them that their audience was everyone in Morra County and beyond. Because of my method, I remember being thanked for spelling out complex issues in simple terms or making the new student feel at ease in their first few weeks. But after that year of graduate school I didn’t really want to try to make students understand anymore – especially those that didn’t want to learn.
Hmmm....
I guess when all was said and done, that school year didn’t turn out the way I expected.
Was it a waste of time, of money? Some might say so. I didn’t. I still don’t think it was. I think some of what I took away from the coursework and my lessons from interactions with students and faculty has come to serve me in later endeavors. Goliard’s management course was a nightmare at the time but I’ve often found myself thinking back to some of what was discussed and some of the lessons Goliard shared with us (his number one nitpick was to never hire someone who smokes...).
Then there was Merle O’Brien’s class where we had to draw up assessments of ourselves and business and then create improvement plans for each entity based on those assessments. Over the years I’ve found myself assessing and thinking of ways to improve the circumstances I find myself in. Mind you, I don’t go all out and create a multi-page, spiral-bound document detailing the minutia involved...but I’ll be honest there have been times that I thought it would help....
And while the lessons of the communication theory, ethics, and research classes don’t really come into play anymore, I smiled a little when I heard George Gerbner had died a few years ago.
It was an interesting year and, while it may have been a bit a painful at the time, I think I would go through with it again if I could do it all over.
Still, it’s hard to believe it’s been ten years.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Awful
(Auf der Maur/Erlandson/Love/Schemel)
Hole
From the album Celebrity Skin
1998
Swing low sweet cherry
Make it awful
It's your life, it's your party, it's so awful
Let's start a fire
Let's start a riot! Yeah it's awful
It was punk
Yeah, it was perfect now it's awful
They know how to break all the girls
Like you
And the rob the souls of the girls like you
And they break the hearts of girls
Swing low, cherry, cherry
Yeah it's awful
He's drunk, he tastes
Like candy, he's so beautiful
He's so deep like dirty water
God, he's awful
You're lost, oh, where's your daddy -it's so awful
And they royalty rate all the girls like you
And they sell it out to the girls like you
To incorporate little girls
Hey, run away with the light
Run away its divine
Let's run away, yeah, tonight, and
We'll steal the light of the world
Swing low, sweet cherry, yeah its awful
You're gonna ripe for the picking, it's so awful
You've got your youth
Don't waste your money
Yeah its awful
I was punk!
Now I'm just stupid
I'm so awful
Oh, just shut up you're only 16
If the world is so wrong
Yeah you can break them all
With one song
If the is so wrong yeah you take
It all
With one song
Swing low sweet cherry
Make it awful
They bought it all, just build a new one
Make it beautiful...yeah
I was still working in radio. That’s why I sought out graduate school. A surprisingly large number of people told me the summer before I started that graduate school was a time in their life when they found out just how much they enjoyed what they were studying. “You’ll get to see your interest from a whole new angle and find new ways to appreciate it,” or words to that affect, were how I whisked off to Allaphellan. But after that school year I really didn’t want to “do” radio anymore.
I now had the ability to teach others. Back at my undergraduate station, training was often looked at as an inconvenient necessity – we had to make sure the staff knew what they were doing but so many came across dumb as bricks or just as hard-headed that the novelty wore off quickly. Perhaps sensitive to the psyche of some students, I attempted to not talk down to them or use too much jargon early on or even scare them by reminding them that their audience was everyone in Morra County and beyond. Because of my method, I remember being thanked for spelling out complex issues in simple terms or making the new student feel at ease in their first few weeks. But after that year of graduate school I didn’t really want to try to make students understand anymore – especially those that didn’t want to learn.
Hmmm....
I guess when all was said and done, that school year didn’t turn out the way I expected.
Was it a waste of time, of money? Some might say so. I didn’t. I still don’t think it was. I think some of what I took away from the coursework and my lessons from interactions with students and faculty has come to serve me in later endeavors. Goliard’s management course was a nightmare at the time but I’ve often found myself thinking back to some of what was discussed and some of the lessons Goliard shared with us (his number one nitpick was to never hire someone who smokes...).
Then there was Merle O’Brien’s class where we had to draw up assessments of ourselves and business and then create improvement plans for each entity based on those assessments. Over the years I’ve found myself assessing and thinking of ways to improve the circumstances I find myself in. Mind you, I don’t go all out and create a multi-page, spiral-bound document detailing the minutia involved...but I’ll be honest there have been times that I thought it would help....
And while the lessons of the communication theory, ethics, and research classes don’t really come into play anymore, I smiled a little when I heard George Gerbner had died a few years ago.
It was an interesting year and, while it may have been a bit a painful at the time, I think I would go through with it again if I could do it all over.
Still, it’s hard to believe it’s been ten years.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Awful
(Auf der Maur/Erlandson/Love/Schemel)
Hole
From the album Celebrity Skin
1998
Swing low sweet cherry
Make it awful
It's your life, it's your party, it's so awful
Let's start a fire
Let's start a riot! Yeah it's awful
It was punk
Yeah, it was perfect now it's awful
They know how to break all the girls
Like you
And the rob the souls of the girls like you
And they break the hearts of girls
Swing low, cherry, cherry
Yeah it's awful
He's drunk, he tastes
Like candy, he's so beautiful
He's so deep like dirty water
God, he's awful
You're lost, oh, where's your daddy -it's so awful
And they royalty rate all the girls like you
And they sell it out to the girls like you
To incorporate little girls
Hey, run away with the light
Run away its divine
Let's run away, yeah, tonight, and
We'll steal the light of the world
Swing low, sweet cherry, yeah its awful
You're gonna ripe for the picking, it's so awful
You've got your youth
Don't waste your money
Yeah its awful
I was punk!
Now I'm just stupid
I'm so awful
Oh, just shut up you're only 16
If the world is so wrong
Yeah you can break them all
With one song
If the is so wrong yeah you take
It all
With one song
Swing low sweet cherry
Make it awful
They bought it all, just build a new one
Make it beautiful...yeah
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Takin' a spin through the neighborhood the neighbors scream “whatchya talkin' bout?”
I think one major part of my demise in graduate school was the culture shock.
I had spent four years in a Communication program that tended to treat each other as family. The students worked side by side on numerous projects, the instructors were tough but fair and approachable, and in the end you sort of knew who you could rely on for assistance, be it in or out of the classroom. Each of the instructors had their ticks and quirks, true, and we respected them in the classroom, but we also had the chance to see them outside the Communication Building at events or once-a-semester department social functions. That’s when we really got to see what they were like outside a classroom; sometimes it was pretty, sometimes not.
That spirit seemed to be lacking when I went off to graduate school. Granted, I had spent three or four years with these people and was now far away and as new as a Freshman on their first day of college in my role of graduate student and station manager. I knew I wasn’t going to fit in with either students or faculty on my first day. The problem was that it was nearly impossible to want to fit. Sure, the students were the easiest to work with; I was close in age to many of them and could relate to some of what they were going through as far as being college student (grades, graduating, etc.).
The faculty was another matter. Schmoozing has never been my forte and so I may have come off a bit aloof. Still, I did try to meet everyone and assist whenever it might be needed (such as proctoring a test or assisting a professor in the classroom). But it was hard to want to work with some of these people. Like Dr. Goliard, who would call you aside just to tell you he was busy and couldn’t talk to you about your degree plan but then would sit in his office with the lights off. Or Mrs. Shelly Yarbrough, the radio station faculty advisor, who dismissed my write-up of the student who mouthed EBS tones instead of running an EAS test because the student “plays such good music.” Or Theodore Siamun, the kindly but tired department head, who I perceived as ready to retire at the drop of a hat. Yes, maybe if I stuck around longer than a year I would have gotten to know these people better. Perhaps I would have figured out how to overcome their oddities and allow them to see me excel.
Another problem I had was the excess baggage from my undergrad years. In four years I had built myself up to be a respectable and trusted member of the radio station staff and through this trust was named Program Director for my final semester. I also had gotten to be pretty good at editing (both analog tape and digitally) and I thought I might be able to apply some of this talent in my role as station manager.
Wrong. I knew going in to this role that I would be on the opposite side of the chasm than I had been the previous school year. Students would still be running the station and doing all the things I had done, but now it would be me standing stand back to monitor and guide them along the path. I didn’t get a regularly scheduled news or music shift; I sat in an office and worked at the public file or coordinating event with the school or public. I didn’t get to go out on remotes and make wry observations about the people I saw; I taxied the equipment from my office to the remote site and made sure the students didn’t have any problems. I didn’t have office hours to sit in room and listen to new music; I had office hours to read and formulate thesis topics that would be of interest to graduate instructors that seemed cold and disinterested in everything else I did.
The whole town of Allaphellan seemed cold and distant or just plain bizarre for my own liking, too. It was smaller in population than where I was as an undergraduate, but yet students stayed in town for the weekend. And what was there to do? Driving around there were a number of strange sights to behold: the phallic-shaped Veterans monument across the street from the courthouse; an old Rock Fort that had been a mercantile, hostel, church, jail, speakeasy, trading post, post office, and now some sort of museum; and a bulbous water tower you could see from campus with a series of strange blinking lights on its top and statue of Omphale at its base. And that’s not even taking in the campus itself. Plus who could forget that high school rock band that was all the rage that year...ugh.
This town was a strange place and I was all but glad to fly away after the school year was completed.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Last Stop: This Town
(Eels/Michael Simpson)
Eels
From the album Electro-Shock Blues
1998
You're dead, but the world keeps spinning
Take a spin through the world you left
It's getting dark a little too early
Are you missing the dearly bereft?
Take a flight
and you could be here tomomorrow
Take a flight,
well, you could get here tonight
I'm gonna fly on down for the
last stop to this town
What?
I'm gonna fly on down and fly away, well alright
Get down
Takin' a spin through the neighborhood
The neighbors scream
Whatchya talkin' bout?
'Cause they don't know how to
let you in
And I can't let you out
What if I was not your only friend
in this world
Can you take me where you're going
if you're never coming back
I'm gonna fly on down for the
last stop to this town
i'm gonna fly on down then
fly away on my way
Get down
Why don't we take a ride away up high
through the neighborhood
Up over the billboards and the factories
and smoke
i'm gonna fly on down for the
last stop to this town
Yeah
i'm gonna fly on down then
fly away on my way
Fly away
Get down
I had spent four years in a Communication program that tended to treat each other as family. The students worked side by side on numerous projects, the instructors were tough but fair and approachable, and in the end you sort of knew who you could rely on for assistance, be it in or out of the classroom. Each of the instructors had their ticks and quirks, true, and we respected them in the classroom, but we also had the chance to see them outside the Communication Building at events or once-a-semester department social functions. That’s when we really got to see what they were like outside a classroom; sometimes it was pretty, sometimes not.
That spirit seemed to be lacking when I went off to graduate school. Granted, I had spent three or four years with these people and was now far away and as new as a Freshman on their first day of college in my role of graduate student and station manager. I knew I wasn’t going to fit in with either students or faculty on my first day. The problem was that it was nearly impossible to want to fit. Sure, the students were the easiest to work with; I was close in age to many of them and could relate to some of what they were going through as far as being college student (grades, graduating, etc.).
The faculty was another matter. Schmoozing has never been my forte and so I may have come off a bit aloof. Still, I did try to meet everyone and assist whenever it might be needed (such as proctoring a test or assisting a professor in the classroom). But it was hard to want to work with some of these people. Like Dr. Goliard, who would call you aside just to tell you he was busy and couldn’t talk to you about your degree plan but then would sit in his office with the lights off. Or Mrs. Shelly Yarbrough, the radio station faculty advisor, who dismissed my write-up of the student who mouthed EBS tones instead of running an EAS test because the student “plays such good music.” Or Theodore Siamun, the kindly but tired department head, who I perceived as ready to retire at the drop of a hat. Yes, maybe if I stuck around longer than a year I would have gotten to know these people better. Perhaps I would have figured out how to overcome their oddities and allow them to see me excel.
Another problem I had was the excess baggage from my undergrad years. In four years I had built myself up to be a respectable and trusted member of the radio station staff and through this trust was named Program Director for my final semester. I also had gotten to be pretty good at editing (both analog tape and digitally) and I thought I might be able to apply some of this talent in my role as station manager.
Wrong. I knew going in to this role that I would be on the opposite side of the chasm than I had been the previous school year. Students would still be running the station and doing all the things I had done, but now it would be me standing stand back to monitor and guide them along the path. I didn’t get a regularly scheduled news or music shift; I sat in an office and worked at the public file or coordinating event with the school or public. I didn’t get to go out on remotes and make wry observations about the people I saw; I taxied the equipment from my office to the remote site and made sure the students didn’t have any problems. I didn’t have office hours to sit in room and listen to new music; I had office hours to read and formulate thesis topics that would be of interest to graduate instructors that seemed cold and disinterested in everything else I did.
The whole town of Allaphellan seemed cold and distant or just plain bizarre for my own liking, too. It was smaller in population than where I was as an undergraduate, but yet students stayed in town for the weekend. And what was there to do? Driving around there were a number of strange sights to behold: the phallic-shaped Veterans monument across the street from the courthouse; an old Rock Fort that had been a mercantile, hostel, church, jail, speakeasy, trading post, post office, and now some sort of museum; and a bulbous water tower you could see from campus with a series of strange blinking lights on its top and statue of Omphale at its base. And that’s not even taking in the campus itself. Plus who could forget that high school rock band that was all the rage that year...ugh.
This town was a strange place and I was all but glad to fly away after the school year was completed.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Last Stop: This Town
(Eels/Michael Simpson)
Eels
From the album Electro-Shock Blues
1998
You're dead, but the world keeps spinning
Take a spin through the world you left
It's getting dark a little too early
Are you missing the dearly bereft?
Take a flight
and you could be here tomomorrow
Take a flight,
well, you could get here tonight
I'm gonna fly on down for the
last stop to this town
What?
I'm gonna fly on down and fly away, well alright
Get down
Takin' a spin through the neighborhood
The neighbors scream
Whatchya talkin' bout?
'Cause they don't know how to
let you in
And I can't let you out
What if I was not your only friend
in this world
Can you take me where you're going
if you're never coming back
I'm gonna fly on down for the
last stop to this town
i'm gonna fly on down then
fly away on my way
Get down
Why don't we take a ride away up high
through the neighborhood
Up over the billboards and the factories
and smoke
i'm gonna fly on down for the
last stop to this town
Yeah
i'm gonna fly on down then
fly away on my way
Fly away
Get down
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Professors muddled in their intent to try to rope in followers
After I had been accepted to graduate school it became necessary for me to visit the campus and apply for an assistantship. This meant that I would pay for graduate school by accepting to work 20 hours a week at the campus radio station as Station Manager. It was a sort of vicious cycle but it was something that made sense: I wanted to keep my hand in radio and there was a station in search of a sucker...er, station manager (right).
It was during the previous spring semester that I first visited the campus to meet with the graduate school coordinator. Perhaps that encounter should have tipped me off about this wild idea of mine. The man I was introduced to was Dr. Oliver F. Goliard, Ph.D. Yeah, that’s how we were introduced, too. He seemed like a nice guy, albeit one who might have been in the throes of academia for a bit too long. Or, as one of my fellow graduate students reflected later, he had “his head up his ass” too long. True, Goliard had been at the school for many years, and was the first faculty advisor at that radio station, a position I was to believe he had only relinquished in recent years. Of course first impressions said otherwise at the time and I left campus feeling confident that I would return that fall to not only begin work on an MA but have a job lined-up for the foreseeable future.
Dr. Goliard was, to put it bluntly, strange...strange looking and strange acting. He looked waxy. He didn’t have a hard, chiseled face but a loose, floppy one; the skin seemed to ripple each and every time he smiled, which we in class soon learned was not often. Topics that usually made him smile were his education, his career, and his ability to come up with long drawn-out responses to questions he alone knew the answers to. In short – the guy liked to talk. He also liked taking off his glasses and striking studious poses when confronted with questions, though he usually deflected these inquiries back to the students. I suppose this was a teaching method.
His mannerisms were also legendary, or so claimed some of the graduating undergrads. I eventually took to calling him the “Artful Dodger” because of his wildly successful ability to dodge questions and interactions. One of my earliest memories was shortly after the start of the fall semester and I happened by his office, he inside with the door open. “Good morning, Dr. Goliard,” I said, walking by on my way elsewhere. He hollered out to come back – “What? Who goes there?” – he had missed who it was. I walked back and again said, “good morning” and added a “how are you” out of courtesy. His brow wrinkled and he hissed in a short breath of air as if this was a major distraction from whatever the hell he had been doing. “Well, yes it is a good morning but I’m afraid I’m a bit busy right this moment and not able to sit and talk with you, Marty. If you want to come back later and schedule something then....”
After a few interchanges like this you can imagine how hard it would be when you were required to talk with the guy.
At the time I didn’t know...and it’s a theory I never got back to exploring later...if this attitude was something that was to be expected in all graduate schools or if this was a persona he had adapted to give him that superior-like quality over his peers. Was this talking down an intentional quirk of professors to determine how tough first-year students were, or had the few of us in Goliard’s class found a rare specimen of academicus pompous? Was it his job to act like this or was he simply doing what came naturally? Yes, some of the other graduate professors were a bit aloof, too, but they could at least be approached and were known to crack a joke or two now and then. You know, in other words, appear human. Did Goliard feel superior because he had been there longer than everyone else?
I don’t know, but it got to be a sad state of affairs very quickly.
There were probably other sad professors out there and I found it droll that R.E.M. released an album that same year semester that could have almost been Goliard’s anthem.
Or maybe my anthem...because I was starting to hate where I wound up, too.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sad Professor
( Peter Buck/Mike Mills/Michael Stipe)
R.E.M.
From the album Up
1998
If we're talking about love
Then I have to tell you
Dear readers, I'm not sure where I'm headed.
I've gotten lost before.
I've woke up stone drunk
Face down in the floor.
Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a bore.
Everybody hates a drunk.
This may be a lit invention
Professors muddled in their intent
To try to rope in followers
To float their malcontent.
As for this reader,
I'm already spent.
Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a sad professor.
I hate where I wound up.
Dear readers, my apologies.
I'm drifting in and out of sleep.
Long silence presents the tragedies
Of love. Not the age. Get afraid.
The surface hazy with attendant thoughts.
A lazy eye metaphor on the rock.
Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a bore.
Everybody hates a drunk.
Everyone hates a sad professor.
I hate where I wound up.
I hate where I wound up.
It was during the previous spring semester that I first visited the campus to meet with the graduate school coordinator. Perhaps that encounter should have tipped me off about this wild idea of mine. The man I was introduced to was Dr. Oliver F. Goliard, Ph.D. Yeah, that’s how we were introduced, too. He seemed like a nice guy, albeit one who might have been in the throes of academia for a bit too long. Or, as one of my fellow graduate students reflected later, he had “his head up his ass” too long. True, Goliard had been at the school for many years, and was the first faculty advisor at that radio station, a position I was to believe he had only relinquished in recent years. Of course first impressions said otherwise at the time and I left campus feeling confident that I would return that fall to not only begin work on an MA but have a job lined-up for the foreseeable future.
Dr. Goliard was, to put it bluntly, strange...strange looking and strange acting. He looked waxy. He didn’t have a hard, chiseled face but a loose, floppy one; the skin seemed to ripple each and every time he smiled, which we in class soon learned was not often. Topics that usually made him smile were his education, his career, and his ability to come up with long drawn-out responses to questions he alone knew the answers to. In short – the guy liked to talk. He also liked taking off his glasses and striking studious poses when confronted with questions, though he usually deflected these inquiries back to the students. I suppose this was a teaching method.
His mannerisms were also legendary, or so claimed some of the graduating undergrads. I eventually took to calling him the “Artful Dodger” because of his wildly successful ability to dodge questions and interactions. One of my earliest memories was shortly after the start of the fall semester and I happened by his office, he inside with the door open. “Good morning, Dr. Goliard,” I said, walking by on my way elsewhere. He hollered out to come back – “What? Who goes there?” – he had missed who it was. I walked back and again said, “good morning” and added a “how are you” out of courtesy. His brow wrinkled and he hissed in a short breath of air as if this was a major distraction from whatever the hell he had been doing. “Well, yes it is a good morning but I’m afraid I’m a bit busy right this moment and not able to sit and talk with you, Marty. If you want to come back later and schedule something then....”
After a few interchanges like this you can imagine how hard it would be when you were required to talk with the guy.
At the time I didn’t know...and it’s a theory I never got back to exploring later...if this attitude was something that was to be expected in all graduate schools or if this was a persona he had adapted to give him that superior-like quality over his peers. Was this talking down an intentional quirk of professors to determine how tough first-year students were, or had the few of us in Goliard’s class found a rare specimen of academicus pompous? Was it his job to act like this or was he simply doing what came naturally? Yes, some of the other graduate professors were a bit aloof, too, but they could at least be approached and were known to crack a joke or two now and then. You know, in other words, appear human. Did Goliard feel superior because he had been there longer than everyone else?
I don’t know, but it got to be a sad state of affairs very quickly.
There were probably other sad professors out there and I found it droll that R.E.M. released an album that same year semester that could have almost been Goliard’s anthem.
Or maybe my anthem...because I was starting to hate where I wound up, too.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Sad Professor
( Peter Buck/Mike Mills/Michael Stipe)
R.E.M.
From the album Up
1998
If we're talking about love
Then I have to tell you
Dear readers, I'm not sure where I'm headed.
I've gotten lost before.
I've woke up stone drunk
Face down in the floor.
Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a bore.
Everybody hates a drunk.
This may be a lit invention
Professors muddled in their intent
To try to rope in followers
To float their malcontent.
As for this reader,
I'm already spent.
Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a sad professor.
I hate where I wound up.
Dear readers, my apologies.
I'm drifting in and out of sleep.
Long silence presents the tragedies
Of love. Not the age. Get afraid.
The surface hazy with attendant thoughts.
A lazy eye metaphor on the rock.
Late afternoon, the house is hot.
I started, I jumped up.
Everyone hates a bore.
Everybody hates a drunk.
Everyone hates a sad professor.
I hate where I wound up.
I hate where I wound up.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
No, don't say a word: leave while you still can, put out your light
It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years.
It was just over ten years ago that I decided that it might be “fun” to pursue a master’s degree in communication and that it might be “fun” to use my combination of education and experience and teach students about the basics of audio production. Yeah...that just sounds like a hoot. Really now, come on – I was just fresh out of undergraduate classes and knew firsthand the attitudes and aggravations that we caused. Why on earth would I want to put up with it on a regular basis?
Why indeed.
The catalyst for my desire to attend graduate school seems to have been lost to the ages. I do remember working alongside John Fletcher (of “What’s New Wednesday?” fame) during what would have been my junior year and discussing our futures. He was originally from Lima Valley, a town about an hour’s drive west, and commuted a couple times each week to a radio station he’d been with for close to a year. This was to be his after-college future: getting his feet in the door with commercial radio work all the while knocking on doors to cater his audio production know-how. My future wasn’t as clear as that, nor was that a future I totally wanted to chase, either. I remember being somewhere with my parents around this time and the salesman asking what I was in college studying. When I said “radio communication,” he answered back quickly with the comment, “ah, goin’ to be a DJ – that’ll be cool.”
No, it wouldn’t. It would be moronic to think that I would spend four years of my life gazing giddily at the stars so I could be one of those knee-biting shills. I didn’t want to settle for that sort of mediocrity and knew I could do something more with my talents. But there was the looming question of what it was I would be doing once I graduated. The answer was painfully obvious: I didn’t know.
I also knew I didn’t have any problems leading classroom discussions, as I found myself doing a few times my senior year. For example, during the fall semester I took the required Program Planning course whose final project was doing the necessary “legwork” to put together some sort of television program. We didn’t actually produce our programs but instead learned what all it would take to put something together (i.e. budgets, rights, scheduling, scripts, etc.). However my project must have hit a nerve with the instructor because he invited me back the following semester; instead of the class putting together their own programs, we would all work together to accomplish the program I envisioned the prior semester. On more than one occasion that instructor turned the class over to me to discuss our mission and what we needed to do to meet our goals. It wasn’t teaching per se but it gave me a chance to be in the shoes of those that led and figure out some of what it took to be in that position.
So it was through these and other channels that the idea slowly formulated in my head that “you know, this graduate school thing would give you the chance to teach and allow you to stick around a university setting.” On paper it sounded like a grand idea; perhaps not an easy one, but I had come out road tested on other challenges so I wasn’t too hesitant at this point.
It was just that my expectations collided with reality in the worst way.
Speaking of other mistakes, Better than Ezra put out a quite contrary album in 1997 called How Does Your Garden Grow?. My undergrad station practically had the core singles from Deluxe and Friction, Baby in constant rotation and they were always well received. And then came this album...one that no one seemed to know what to do with. We put the first single in rotation but its sound was not “Good” or one that was “Desperately Wanted.” We were disappointed. Apparently we weren’t the only ones: Elektra Records dropped the group and it would be three years before their subsequent album surfaced, Closer (2001).
Of course, I don’t consider my year of graduate school a mistake....
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Beautiful Mistake
(Kevin Griffin)
Better Than Ezra
From the album How Does Your Garden Grow?
1998
photo stills
in your wallet with the unpaid bills
and you show it like it means something
you could never know the pain it brings
and here you are
standing in our drive
(when absence suits you best)
letters and your cards
with no return address
now you come around
now you come around
your familiar sounds
we are your beautiful,
we are your beautiful mistake.
waiting for this day
well i memorized the things i'd say
how you broke her when you disappeared
how i hear her say,
"you'd make your father proud."
it echoes through the years
as if i could forget all a mother's tears
no, don't say a word
leave while you still can
put out your light
now i guess you're going
a figure through the door
and your taillights faded
like twenty years before
It was just over ten years ago that I decided that it might be “fun” to pursue a master’s degree in communication and that it might be “fun” to use my combination of education and experience and teach students about the basics of audio production. Yeah...that just sounds like a hoot. Really now, come on – I was just fresh out of undergraduate classes and knew firsthand the attitudes and aggravations that we caused. Why on earth would I want to put up with it on a regular basis?
Why indeed.
The catalyst for my desire to attend graduate school seems to have been lost to the ages. I do remember working alongside John Fletcher (of “What’s New Wednesday?” fame) during what would have been my junior year and discussing our futures. He was originally from Lima Valley, a town about an hour’s drive west, and commuted a couple times each week to a radio station he’d been with for close to a year. This was to be his after-college future: getting his feet in the door with commercial radio work all the while knocking on doors to cater his audio production know-how. My future wasn’t as clear as that, nor was that a future I totally wanted to chase, either. I remember being somewhere with my parents around this time and the salesman asking what I was in college studying. When I said “radio communication,” he answered back quickly with the comment, “ah, goin’ to be a DJ – that’ll be cool.”
No, it wouldn’t. It would be moronic to think that I would spend four years of my life gazing giddily at the stars so I could be one of those knee-biting shills. I didn’t want to settle for that sort of mediocrity and knew I could do something more with my talents. But there was the looming question of what it was I would be doing once I graduated. The answer was painfully obvious: I didn’t know.
I also knew I didn’t have any problems leading classroom discussions, as I found myself doing a few times my senior year. For example, during the fall semester I took the required Program Planning course whose final project was doing the necessary “legwork” to put together some sort of television program. We didn’t actually produce our programs but instead learned what all it would take to put something together (i.e. budgets, rights, scheduling, scripts, etc.). However my project must have hit a nerve with the instructor because he invited me back the following semester; instead of the class putting together their own programs, we would all work together to accomplish the program I envisioned the prior semester. On more than one occasion that instructor turned the class over to me to discuss our mission and what we needed to do to meet our goals. It wasn’t teaching per se but it gave me a chance to be in the shoes of those that led and figure out some of what it took to be in that position.
So it was through these and other channels that the idea slowly formulated in my head that “you know, this graduate school thing would give you the chance to teach and allow you to stick around a university setting.” On paper it sounded like a grand idea; perhaps not an easy one, but I had come out road tested on other challenges so I wasn’t too hesitant at this point.
It was just that my expectations collided with reality in the worst way.
Speaking of other mistakes, Better than Ezra put out a quite contrary album in 1997 called How Does Your Garden Grow?. My undergrad station practically had the core singles from Deluxe and Friction, Baby in constant rotation and they were always well received. And then came this album...one that no one seemed to know what to do with. We put the first single in rotation but its sound was not “Good” or one that was “Desperately Wanted.” We were disappointed. Apparently we weren’t the only ones: Elektra Records dropped the group and it would be three years before their subsequent album surfaced, Closer (2001).
Of course, I don’t consider my year of graduate school a mistake....
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Beautiful Mistake
(Kevin Griffin)
Better Than Ezra
From the album How Does Your Garden Grow?
1998
photo stills
in your wallet with the unpaid bills
and you show it like it means something
you could never know the pain it brings
and here you are
standing in our drive
(when absence suits you best)
letters and your cards
with no return address
now you come around
now you come around
your familiar sounds
we are your beautiful,
we are your beautiful mistake.
waiting for this day
well i memorized the things i'd say
how you broke her when you disappeared
how i hear her say,
"you'd make your father proud."
it echoes through the years
as if i could forget all a mother's tears
no, don't say a word
leave while you still can
put out your light
now i guess you're going
a figure through the door
and your taillights faded
like twenty years before
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