"and that little boy who nobody loved grew up to be ... roy cohn."

bloch bros., wheeling, w.va., originally uploaded by pr9000.

One of my favorite memories of growing up in the Ohio Valley was listening to WWVA. I think my love affair with AM radio started there -- that, and my pop having two transistor radios on the front porch at dusk, listening to the Indians on one, the Pirates on the other ...

WWVA was something special. It was 50,000 watts of pure power. I could see the broadcast towers from my front yard. When I was older, dad was forced to add extra phone jacks upstairs. His homemade wiring brought more than phone calls -- WWVA broadcasts came over the wires, and any calls I made after 7 p.m. was accompanied by hellfire and damnation from its religious broadcasts.

Two things about the station stick out. First is the afternoon mine report, where someone from WWVA's mighty news team (and it was mighty back in the day) read out the shifts at local mines that were working. It would be an anachronism today; nobody would understand what a McElroy or a Powhatan #6 is.

The second (and probably most important) thing: the daily ritual of listening to Paul Harvey at lunch.

I would make myself a bologna sandwich and turn on Paul Harvey precisely at noon, at which time I would stand by for news! He had the smoothest baritone in the business and a decidedly midwestern sensibility. You could hear his eyebrow raising as he read the latest bit of political news from Washington. It was different than Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather or Walter Cronkite. He allowed opinion to color his reporting, but not so much that you'd call him a shill or a partisan. He was down to earth, translating what happened on the coasts into language a midwesterner could understand.

Paul Harvey's word was bond. If he endorsed a product, it was as good as Moses bringing down the tables with "Neutrogena" as the Eleventh Commandment. As we were cleaning out my grandfather's house last summer, I came across a desk drawer full of Wells Lamont gloves. Wells Lamont was one of Harvey's best sponsors.

Why? Because Wells Lamont is stuuuuuburrrn about quality.

See? I remember that. I remember all of it. I dare you to name me anyone else in radio who colors kids' memories 30 years later. You can't do it, probably because you're not a radio nerd like I am.

Imagery

Imagery, originally uploaded by pr9000.

I missed the non-State of the Union speech last night. Oh, I'd heard that Obama was speaking to Congress, but nobody called it the SOTU and I try not to miss those, so I ended up watching some "Criminal Minds" we had on the DVR, and then -- much to my shame -- "Real Housewives of New York" with Amina.

I know they tape that show a few months before it airs. I can't wait to see what happens for next "season" -- some of those morons have to have been involved with Madoff.

Anyway, it's a sign of my continuing disgust and exhaustion with politics that I can't even bear to read the morning-after analysis of Obama's speech last night. None of it matters because whatever he says he's going to do he won't do anyway.

Somehow the photo above is fitting. I wish they all would just put a cork in it.

prostrate before God

originally uploaded by pr9000.

As I was walking into church today -- I had to park the car far away because we were a bit late -- a thought hit me: What's it going to take for me to lay prostrate before God?

(Well, originally I thought "lay prostate" but looked it up when I got home.)

I'm in a phase right now where I'm almost willfully refusing His help and guidance with what's going on around me. I don't recall ever being this stubborn ... I've never had a problem with allowing God the credit for guiding me to where I am today, and yet over the past few months I have fallen silent toward Him.

Dave Ramsey was the speaker today; I didn't know this beforehand, so it was quite a shock to hear that he was going to be speaking. Apparently he was instrumental in the formation of Journey Church and has been a friend and adviser since the very beginning. Of course, being so new to the church, I'm sure there's a lot I don't know.

(I can hear Amina thinking of several jokes right now.)

Dave had a fantastic, amazing, so-relevant-it's-scary message today about, of all things, hope -- where to put it and why -- and some lessons that we could take away from the insanity going on in the world around us right now.

I truly believe God got us here to Franklin for a reason; too many boulders were moved out of the way in Minnesota to just be good luck or great timing. It's amazing to watch, and I think today I was reminded that, if I just open my eyes to it, He's doing it even now.

Yesterday, my stubbornness was at 11. Today, I think it's a few notches lower.

a warning from the past

It was a glittering time. They literally swept into office, ready, moving , generating their style, their confidence. … It was an extraordinary confluence of time and men, and many people in the know quoted Lyndon Johnson’s reactionto them at the first Cabinet meeting. he, the outsider, like us, looked at them with a certain awe, which was no wonder, since they had forgotten to invite him to the meeting.

… They were all so glamorous and bright that it was hard to tell who was the most brilliant…

What was not so widely quoted in Washington (which was a shame because it was a far more prophetic comment) was the reaction of Lyndon’s great friend Sam Rayburn to Johnson’s enthusiasm about the new men.

Stunned by their glamour and intellect, he had rushed back to tell Rayburn, his great and crafty mentor, about them, about how brilliant each was, that fellow Bundy from Harvard, Rusk from Rockefeller, McNamara from Ford. On he went, naming them all. “Well, Lyndon, you may be right ant thye may be every bit as intelligent as you say,” said Rayburn, “but I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.

From The Best and the Brightest, chapter 4, by David Halberstam (1969)

wright street

wright street, originally uploaded by pr9000.

American Express just sent me a piece of junk mail. I think the first sentence says a lot about the financial crisis we're all suddenly up to our necks in ...

"As a valued American Express Business Cardmember, and someone who deserves premium travel benefits when traveling ..." (emphasis added)

Why yes, American Express. I'm different from the rabble. I am entitled to be treated as a superior. Thanks for noticing!

images from the big easy

Open window, Royal Street



811 1/2 Royal Street ... I think it was on Royal. Google maps isn't helping.

krugman's a hack

Another brick in the wall here ...

i might be the man for this job

From a Nashville craigslist job description:

* Someone who can do less with more! We need team members that don’t need constant supervision ...

Forget the incorrect use of "that" ... An employer who will give me more, and yet expect less? That's brilliant!

"It'll probably turn out to be a very simple thing ..." or, One Man's Ascent into iDVD Hell

In all of written and recorded history, few pieces of music have risen above the commonplace and ascended into the pantheon of cultural favorites -- and of those, even fewer can be identified by only a few notes.

Such is the case with, for example, the introduction to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. At first instantly recognizable and yet still stirringly fresh and new, these four notes have symbolized the power and majesty of music, and even brought succor and comfort to the Allies during World War II, serving as the audible equivalent of "V for Victory."

And yet I'd like to nominate another piece that, though lacking in age and refinement, moves men's hearts, lifting them to sun-dappled autumn afternoons, the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass wafting across pastoral fields of green, as another sort of victory is fervently wished.

I speak, naturally, of "Heavy Action," by the famed British composer Johnny Pearson.

What's that, you say? You're not familiar with the song? Of course you are.

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At the Time
I was lucky enough to watch Super Bowl XLIII at the home of a client of mine. She had many people over, but reserved the big plasma HD room for "the adults." I was among them, biting my nails, cursing at referees until the glorious end ... and once it was over, my first thought: I've got to get that game off my DVR and onto some DVDs.

My second thought: It should be easy!

My third thought: I'll have it done by Tuesday!

And I finally did it. I am the proud owner of a two-disc set with the entire Super Bowl broadcast, sans commercials and the halftime show, with chapter markers and a cool opening menu.

What's that? You want to see the opening menu? You're in luck!

That music makes me cry.

What It Took
I don't want to get in trouble with my cable provider; nor am I looking for them to close this particular loophole. I'll just say this: it's a federal law that DVRs must have a port available for consumers to use to transfer data off the DVR. I think the common one used is FireWire. If you've got a Mac with FireWire 400 ports, you're halfway there. Google around to find the other pieces you'll need -- a FireWire cable and some software that is free, easy and readily available.

So I hooked my laptop to the DVR and pressed "Play" -- and the entire HD broadcast streamed to my laptop. The .m2t file ended up just a hair under 40 GB. I then used MPEG Streamclip to convert the .m2t file to something I could edit -- a 1280x720 QuickTime movie (encoded HDV 720p25, whatever that means) that topped out at 38 GB. From there I put the movie into my favorite near line editor, chopped out the commercials and was ready to go.

Except -- the 3.5 hour broadcast was too long to fit on a single layer DVD. Solution: get a spindle of dual layer DVDs. Which I did -- and my Mac spit out every single one of them. So I had to go back to my editor and make two files -- one for the first half, and one for the second half.

Then I tried to master the DVD using some professional-level software I have lying around. A big mistake, because I really have no clue what I'm doing with professional-level DVD mastering software. So I went to iDVD, which is Apple's gee-ain't-it-cute consumer DVD software. It hasn't been updated in years, because Apple's apparently realized that there are only several million DVD players in the world, and because it doesn't control the market on DVD players, it's only a matter of time before people throw them out the window and go with ... AppleTV boxes, I guess.

iDVD takes its time, and often crapped out five hours into the burn. Yes, I said "five hours into the burn," because each disc took around seven to complete. Each subsequent one took only 20 minutes, but there were crashes aplenty. By the time Sunday rolled around, I'd managed to burn a few copies of the disc.

The Horror ... The Horror
Remember when I said I'd have this done two days after the game? The Sunday mentioned above was two weeks after the game. It took me fourteen days to make about as many DVDs, during which time I had to change strategy a few times, reassess whether it would even work, and ignore that NFL.com is probably selling the damn thing on one disc for a lot less money than I'd have earned if I had a job -- and one that would let me spend two weeks wandering through my own personal "Heart of Darkness" adventure.

I'm not blaming Apple, because they make some pretty good software. iDVD is very slick and easy to use, and the editing and authoring software also comes from Cupertino. I shouldn't be allowed to know how to edit or build a DVD but thanks to Apple, I don't have to know everything. I just need to know enough to be dangerous.

I'm not blaming my cable provider, because they actually did a pretty cool thing -- they made it just hard enough to get shows off my DVR that piracy isn't running rampant, but not hard enough that a little elbow grease and a subscription to the Google can't teach you. It's not big corporations' jobs to make it easy ... it's nice when they make it not so hard, though.

No, I guess I'm forced to blame myself, because I had no earthly idea what I was doing. I distinctly remember thinking "Hey! It's 2009. This sort of thing ought to be possible by now."

Dangerous thoughts, because on projects like this, there are two ways you can go: a victory parade in Point State Park, or muttering "Rosebud" while your snowglobe crashes to the floor.

"boom! roasted" this isn't

A friend (and former coworker) and I were discussing the guy who, at least on paper, runs the company for which we toiled. Apparently he's not very good at following through, which lead to this exchange:


I'm a bit embarrassed, because (1) of the "unino" typo, and (2) I think it's "as a good comeback should," not "like" ... it's the old Winston cigarette ad debate.

I like that look on him

009, originally uploaded by beths96.

My nephew, Ryan, decided to decorate himself for Valentine's Day. He has the fashion sense of his uncle, that's for sure.

top secret project

, originally uploaded by pr9000.

I've been devoting a lot of my waking hours lately to a top secret project, about which I'm not currently at liberty to discuss. Needless to say it's something that's (1) totally unimportant and, therefore, (2) completely sucking up all my extra brain waves, in a vain attempt to make it happen.

All will be revealed, eventually, but until then, I just have to say that sometimes, what you have in your head won't translate to the screen, and when that happens it's insanely frustrating.

what "bipartisan" means

I'm still trying to figure out what bipartisanship means, because the way it's been framed by the administration and the press is that it means the party in the minority should suck it up and go along with the president and the party in the majority.

The Beachwood Reporter is a must read for me, each day ... I'm guessing Steve Rhodes and I would disagree about a lot over the past eight years, but I think he's spot-on correct about Obama, the press and why we might have made as bad a decision last November as we did in 2000 and 2004. And I say that admitting that I voted for Bush twice, and that it was a mistake (at least the first time).

Maybe in a political sense Obama can't afford "the usual political games." But in a financial sense, we're the ones who can't afford it. We're not just getting the money; we're the ones who are spending it.

This "porkulus" bill will have the same consequences for the United States that the Iraq war has ... and I'm frightened for my country as I type this, as there's no real way to stop it from happening.

Sir Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl at the Grammys

So tell me this: How amazingly awesome is Dave Grohl? The best part of the performance (besides McCartney's surprisingly young-sounding voice) is watching Grohl sing along in the background. I'd be screaming at the top of my lungs if I were in his shoes ... I heard tell that he tried to get McCartney to play one of those top-secret-unannounced shows on Saturday night, but McCartney didn't like the idea.

And what a great song choice, too. I know I'm the biggest Beatles homer in my area code, and I'll readily acknowledge that their music doesn't make everyone get all misty or goose-bumpy ... but "I Saw Her Standing There" is one of the best pop-rock songs ever written. What makes it more impressive to me is that it came from "Please Please Me," which is (1) the Beatles' first album, and (2) was recorded in one day, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Listen to that disc now and you'll probably not believe it could be done in one day, so tight and professional was the band, even in its "early" days.

I'd put "I Saw Her Standing There" on the top five best McCartney bass tracks, too. It's very melodic and pushes the song forward in ways that surprised me when I first heard it. You think "Love Me Do" represents how the early Beatles played -- it's very simplistic, not much imagination. To think that only a few months separate "Love Me Do" from "I Saw Her Standing There" ...

avocado salad

I've lost my cooking mojo recently. The past two "complicated" meals I've tried to make have both turned out to be disasters. Last night, I attempted to sear scallops, to go with a garlic-olive oil sauce with linguini and grape tomatoes ... and that part turned out just fine, though the garlic did come a bit too close to being burned in the skillet.

See, I let the tomatoes, oil and garlic kind of marinate over extremely low heat for about 15 minutes. I tend to use the Emeril-esque "let the flavors mingle" theory, and it normally works out, but sometimes the garlic gets a bit too warm for its own good. Amina commented a few weeks ago that it smelled like burning rubber in the kitchen -- that definitely was a garlic emergency.

The real problem: the bay scallops. I normally go to Whole Foods to get my scallops (both sea and bay) and this time there were none to be had. Not to worry, I thought; I can get them frozen at another grocery store -- which I did, and I thought my problems were solved.

Turns out that even after careful thawing and drying, there was a ton of water in the bay scallops. My carefully created butter and olive oil mixture in the pan turned to a thin, white soup once the bay scallops hit the pan. Thus everything had to cook a lot longer to get the sear I wanted, which meant gummy scallops ... which are definitely not Good Eats.

(Couldn't resist.)

A few weeks ago, I roasted a chicken, following Anthony Bourdain's directions. I lovingly chose a chicken from my local butcher's. I dutifully mixed my herb butter. I treated the inside of the chicken's cavity. I did everything right -- being careful not to tear the skin as I patted the butter under it ...

I followed the directions. The chicken skin was golden brown, the veggies fragrant with the sweetness of the white wine. I pulled the bird out and let it sit while I made the sauce ... which turned out quite well, let me say, though not at all what I was expecting.

I assembled all the parts and started to carve the bird. Hmmm, I thought. There isn't much meat on the breasts. In fact, I couldn't even find the breasts. I called Amina over for advice. She also had trouble. I was amazed -- a plump, juicy bird was really lacking for meat.

Then it hit me.

I prepared and roasted the damn thing upside down. What I thought was the breastbone was actually closer to the business end of the chicken. The chicken roasted upside down. The part that was supposed to be the crowning glory was just an afterthought.

But my, what a tasty chicken ass dinner we had that nght.

Steelers Honored by Congressman Jason Altmire

fittynooooo

oh, this is too funny.

random thoughts on last night's game

all images courtesy si.com



Did the better team win? Most certainly.

Did they win it the way I would have liked? Maybe, maybe not, depending on your stress tolerance.

But did the right team win? Hell yes.




"Steeler football is 60 minutes. It's never going to be pretty. Throw style points out the window. But these guys will fight to the end." – Mike Tomlin

And fight they did. I was not surprised by the success Arizona had in the second half, though, because it was pretty obvious that the underneath passes were the price the Steelers were willing to pay to stop Fitzgerald and Boldin from torching them. What did surprise me was the shoddy tackling from Polamalu and the rest of the secondary. I counted at least two, maybe three, times when Troy had a receiver lined up and totally whiffed on the tackle.

All week I was telling everyone who'd listen that the Cardinals could easily win the game, because the Steelers had emphasized pressure on the quarterback over insanely tight coverage on receivers. The plan seemed to be "If we knock out the quarterback's teeth, we'll dislocate receivers' jaws instead." That's not a bad strategy -- obviously -- but when you can't get to the QB enough, and you can't tackle the receivers ... well, that's a recipe to allow a team to stay in the game, or even win.




Having said that, I think the gentleman (ahem) whose lungs are collapsed here could have been the MVP had he not sucker-punched a blocker on that last Arizona punt. That was just classless, and it really devalued him in my eyes.

Does a 100 yard interception return for a touchdown -- the longest play in Super Bowl history -- negate it? Not really. It's a violent game, but throwing punches like that is really bush league.



That's just too weird for words.

perhaps the sweetest email i've ever received

perhaps the sweetest email i've ever received, originally uploaded by pr9000.

football memories, part I

All you need to know about how insane Steelers Fever is back home ... they're adding a two-hour delay to Pittsburgh-area schools tomorrow morning.

To be honest, I'm not "from" Pittsburgh; I grew up about an hour west, in far eastern Ohio, right on the Ohio River, in a depressed area thatlong ago had its own identity but now has nothing of significance to which it can cling. It's always been Steelers Country, or at least since the mid 1970s ... the Steelers love is pretty strong, but it's just a degree less so than in Pittsburgh proper. So there won't be any two-hour delays in my old school district, but that doesn't mean students (and some teachers) won't be dragging tomorrow morning.

My first memories of Steelers' football go back to the third week of January 1980. My aunt Cindy had joined the Air Force, and the whole family took her to the Pittsburgh airport to see her off to boot camp. There were Steelers banners all over the place. It sure seems like we went dahntahn before we went to the airport, because I recall the tall buildings and the black and gold banners hanging from lamp posts and street signs.

(Later, as city fathers found fewer and fewer surfaces from which to exclaim the city's love of its fooball team, they graduated to dinosaur skeletons.)



So I remember celebrations after the Steelers beat the (then) Los Angeles Rams, and the loud cries for "One for the Thumb" that opened the 1980 regular season. What I don't remember is any of the years leading up to that season, which means that I totally missed the "glory years" of my favorite team. My first real football memory? Crying uncontrollably after church, on the last day of the 1980 season, because the Steelers didn't make the playoffs. But they have to play every team twice! They still have time! I was pissed. How could this happen? To me? To my team?

Dad patiently explained that not every team is played twice -- just the teams in the division. But I was royally pissed off. As I was a few years later, when they were destroyed by the Chargers in the first round of the playoffs. And the next year, when the Raiders -- the Raiders! -- knocked them out in the first round. And the next year, when they made it to the AFC Championship game but were vivisected by Dan Marino -- whom we had a chance to draft, but stuck with Mark Malone instead -- and the Dolphins.

I could go on -- 15 years of heartbreaks in the playoffs. The only "good" year was 1995, when they went to the Super Bowl and were two backbreaking Neil O'Donnell interceptions from defeating a very beatable Dallas Cowboys squad ...

My point: since I was able to understand football, the team I loved more than words could describe always managed to tease me with hints of its former glory, but in the end it let me down -- sometimes valiantly, sometimes with a Hindenburg-esque collapse ... but always and forever disappointing me.

In Part II: My love is vindicated!

football memories, part II

In late 2005, Amina and I found out that we'd be taking a trip to Maui. She made her president's club at her new job, which meant we'd be going to Hawaii with some of her coworkers. We found this out in early December; two weeks later, the Steelers won their final three games to nab a wild card playoff spot.

Problem: according to the itinerary, we'd be in a DC-10 on our way back home during the entirety of the Super Bowl.

Amina promised that, should the Steelers make it to Detroit, we'd stay a few extra days. I went along with it, because (1) it seemed like a good deal, and (2) there was almost no way that they'd make it that far. These were the Bill Cowher Steelers we were talking about. A first round exit was almost preordained.

But, as we all know, fortune shined on the 2005 Steelers. First was the win in Cincinnati, which to be honest was a far better team that year. It's never good to root for injuries, but Kimo von Oelhoffen injured Carson Palmer at the beginning of the game and the Bengals weren't really the same team. The Steelers went into Indianapolis -- because they were the wild card team, the Steelers had to play every game on the road -- as the underdogs ... but again, fate intervened. Ben's tackle on the fumble return deserves to go down in Steeler history, right next to the Immaculate Reception, and ...



There's a reason this is one my most-viewed posts on Flickr. "Idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off" -- couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

The Steelers went to Denver. This was it -- win this game and I get two extra days in Maui. But that wasn't on my mind. All I could think was How will Cowher screw this one up? Because, you see, I'd been tempered to expect failure. There was no. way. in. hell. the Steelers would win this game.

And Ben came out and, with laser-like accuracy, took the Broncos' defense apart in the first half. I was downstairs, watching the game, and Amina was upstairs, doing whatever it is that women do when football games are on. She was in the bedroom at halftime and just turned on the TV to catch the score.

"Sweetie! Looks like we're staying an extra" --

"SHUT UP!" I screamed with more emotion than I'd expected I could muster. "DO NOT JINX THIS! THE GAME IS NOT OVER!"

That's how paranoid I was, and still am, about Steelers games. We were not going to talk about staying extra days because the Steelers had not won the game yet because there was still time for Cowher to screw things up and we were not going to tempt fate by assuming the game was over when there were still two quarters to play.

The Steelers hung on to win; it was a classic Cowher game, where a second half lead was nursed by conservative play calling, and the secondary failed just enough to make it seem like Denver could win, but in the end, the Steelers were celebrating at midfield.

Here we go ... Steelers ... here we go.

football memories, part III

Maui was amazing. I'd never been before, and Amina and I were looking for legitimate jobs we could do while living in Lahaina, because neither of us wanted to leave. And for me -- well, think about it: I was in paradise for a week, all expenses paid, and the end of the trip was a Super Bowl in which my favorite team was going to play.

I was a nervous wreck.

That's the kind of fan I am ... or had been conditioned to be, thanks to 25 years of failure and disapointment and heartache. I'm in paradise? Girls in bikinis, great seafood, sandy beaches and perfect weather? SOMETHING WILL GO WRONG.

On Super Bowl Sunday, most of Amina's colleagues had gone back to the mainland. There were a few stragglers, refusing to admit that their real lives were nestled in a frozen wasteland of snow and road salt. We were one of them, but I almost would rather have been back in my living room, free to bite my nails and swear and throw pillows and spank Fletcher whenever I was super angry ... I'm not the easiest person to get along with during a game.

But Amina's CEO was one of the stragglers, and he implored us all to join him at a little beachside bar/restaurant for the game. We couldn't say no -- he was the man whose signature was printed by a computer on all the checks -- but my wish was to order room service and quietly panic all by myself.

Why? I knew I was going to cry. I just knew it. It wasn't going to be a small sniffle, either -- it was going to be a full-on waterworks if the Steelers won. And I didn't need to have the executive team see Amina's husband act like a teenage girl.

Well, we went to the bar and gathered around a table and watched the game on a small screen high above us. I don't remember what I ate or drank, though I was careful not to drink much alcohol -- if I was going to get all emotional, a few beers would only make me more into that "I love you man" man. And I didn't want that to happen.

I don't remember much about the game, to be honest. I had to watch it on DVR when I got home, because I was a wreck the whole four hours. But I do remember getting up to leave the table when Cowher got his Gatorade dunk, because ... well, there must have been some pollen or smoke or sand that got into both of my eyes at the same time.

I'd lived to see my team win the Super Bowl.



And so here we are, the day of Super Bowl XLIII, and I'm not terribly nervous. I've lived to see my team win, so while I'm excited for the prospect of what lies ahead, I'm not in a panic or biting my nails or anything like that. The game will be what it will be.

But if they win, it's because I didn't wear a single Steelers logo on my body the day of the game. Others may claim their mojo sways outcomes, but I know the truth. It's all about me -- unless the Steelers lose, in which case I'll blame everyone and everything else.