Category: Uncategorized

I was such a huge fan of Terrell Owens last year…now, I am just sick of his antics. Here is the latest in the T.O. vs. Eagles saga.

Why must it hurt so much to be a Philly sports fan?

When longtime ABC News anchor Peter Jennings passed away from lung cancer Sunday night, it was a huge loss for the journalistic community. However, at another level, Jennings’ death turned out to a tremendous missed opportunity for my alma mater and employer, Rider University.

While talking Monday morning to my colleagues about Jennings’ passing (he and my boss shared Canadian roots), it was mentioned that Rider bestowed upon Jennings an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1968. That inspired a Google search for the terms “Peter Jennings” and “Rider.”

One of the results was Jennings’ entry on Wikipedia, which contained this passage:

Although a member of the class of ’57, Peter left in 1955 to pursue broadcasting. Jennings also attended Carleton University, University of Ottawa, and Rider College in New Jersey. He never graduated from high school or college, preferring to begin his radio career.

I shared this with my boss that afternoon and she called some people to check on it. Sure enough, iconic ABC news anchor Peter Jennings took classes at Rider and NOBODY EVER MENTIONED IT to the alumni relations, public relations and publications offices. Obviously, if Rider had maintained a relationship with Jennings, it may have been been beneficial to the university from a financial standpoint…it just feels wrong to talk about that part now.

[UPDATE: OK…after talking with somebody who is basically the historian of Rider, it turns out Jennings most likely DID NOT take classes at Rider…but the fact that this degree was bestowed upon Jennings — a high-school dropout — in 1968 makes it very likely the Rider degree was the FIRST Jennings ever received.]

However, there are a number other examples where Rider missed out here. For starters, how great would it have been if Jennings came back to campus to speak to the communication majors (as a Rider journalism grad, I definitely would have enjoyed it)? Also, since I work on Rider’s alumni magazine, it would have been an honor to have had the chance to talk with him, or at least meet him for a feature on Jennings’ brief time as a Rider student (I’m sure my boss would have assigned herself that story…but she wouldn’t have stopped me from tagging along).

But now Jennings is gone and so is the chance for Rider to reconnect with him. Here was this man that so many people turned to for so many years…and Rider somehow turned away. Sure, maybe Jennings wouldn’t have had time for Rider in his life. The shame is that we will never know.

The stage at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park
Originally uploaded by rubronc014.

Well, Thursday was an eventful day…around 2 p.m., I learned that I am no longer a part-time employee of The Sports Network…long story, which I won’t share here.

I felt bad about what happened, but a good ol’ Ben Folds show Thursday night in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park really hit the spot. Unfortunately, the train to Newark, NJ, ran late and I didn’t get to Katie’s apartment in Lower Manhattan until about 6:30 p.m. We took the subway to Brooklyn (took the 2 up to 14th St. and switched to the Brooklyn-bound F train, which lets you off at a station just a couple of blocks from the park’s bandshell…oh, Katie and I saw our first NYC subway rat while waiting for the F train…very memorable moment) and didn’t get to the park until after opener Ben Lee performed. I would have liked to have seen him, but it just didn’t work out.

So we got on the ridiculously long food line, but what was good about it is that there really was no gouging going on. A hot dog was $2 and a bottled water or Snapple was $2 so that was cool of the nice people of Prospect Park. Rufus Wainwright was next with his hour or so set, which was entertaining. I like Rufus as a songwriter, but he can be rather depressing…and I was already somewhat depressed by The Sports Network stuff. Well, some of the set was down, but he did a fair number of “up” tracks so that was nice.

Ben Folds came on last and it was evident a few measures into “Bastard” that something was a bit off. Well, Ben revealed that he woke up that morning with laryngitis, but that there was “no way (he) was going to cancel a New York show.” So he pressed on with his set…what a trooper! Even though he still sounded fine except for a few vocal parts he couldn’t reach and a few missed notes on the piano (which I’m chalking up to the laryngitis throwing Ben off his game a bit), Ben must have felt bad about his sub-par performance and said, “You know what? I’m coming back to New York later this year to play Radio City Music Hall and I’ll play a shit-load of songs that night.” He threw in the comment “I’ll play for three hours,” a promise of which Katie and I will remind him when that night comes (I’m hoping that Radio City show includes some classics like “Jackson Cannery,” “Where’s Summer B.?” and “Alice Childress”).

At one point, since his voice was so shot, Ben decided to do a Tom Waits-inspired jazz improv thing midway through the show…very cool.

The fun part of the evening was when Ben shot scenes for the “Bastard” video. The premise of the video apparently will have Ben going on his 25th anniversary comeback tour…as a metal act. Some Spinal Tap-looking guys came out and pretended to be Ben’s band while the audience did its best impersonation of the crowd in Motley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home” video…just without the breast flashing 😉

Watch the short video I took of Ben with his “reunion metal band.”

Ben left the stage after “One Angry Dwarf…” and some of the house lights came on, but it became apparent Ben was going to soldier on and come out for one more song. After a few minutes, Ben appeared on stage alone and proceeded to perform “Underground” with the crowd helping him along with the vocal parts with which he was struggling.

Ben’s set list:

Bastard
Consider You Gone
Zak and Sara
Jesusland
You To Thank
Still Fighting It
Jazz Improv feat. Ben’s new “Tom Waits voice”
All U Can Eat
Landed
Bitches Ain’t Shit
Late
Philosophy
(Video Shoot)
Not the Same
One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces

Encore:
Underground (Ben solo)

Of course, thanks to a “police action” on the PATH lines, I missed the 12:59 a.m. train back to Hamilton, NJ, out of Newark Penn Station and had to sit around there for almost an hour for the next one. As a result, I didn’t get home until nearly 4 a.m.

Hopefully, that won’t happen Monday night when I return to the city to see Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Glen Phillips and Marc Broussard at Webster Hall.

I’m so glad Katie (I won’t even say what she was doing in that picture) is back on the East Coast…she’s been in NYC for less than a month and — after Monday — we will have already been to a Carson Daly taping and three live shows!

Well, I hope that’s not the case, but Thursday night Katie and I are going to see Ben Folds & Rufus Wainwright with Ben Lee at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.

And then we have another show on Monday night at Webster Hall in NYC. That one features Marc Broussard with Glen Phillips (Toad the Wet Sprocket).

I love a good live show! I’ll try to get some good pics in Brooklyn.

…like this one (of course, AP will probably notice it and fix it):

NJ.com: NewsFlash: “Philly exibit salutes ‘Mavericks of Color'”

Dawn C. Chmielewski of the San Jose Mercury News reports that Bram Cohen, the author of the popular file-sharing application known as BitTorrent, is meeting with Hollywood film studios in hopes of legitimately distributing major motion pictures using BT’s technology. Yes, you would have to pay to download a film, but the BT distribution model is about as good as you are going to get at this point in time.

For those who don’t know about BitTorrent, what sets it apart from peer-to-peer, file-sharing apps like the original Napster and Limewire is that instead of downloading one file from someone else’s computer on the service’s network, BT breaks the file apart and allows you to grab different these segments of the file from anywhere on the network to speed up the download. Basically, the more popular a file, the faster the download. A better explanation can be found on BitTorrent’s introduction page.

I used BT to download the entire 2005 season of “Doctor Who,” which was the only way I was able to watch it since no U.S. network bothered to buy the broadcast rights : (

Anyway, I love the promise of BitTorrent and I hope the movie industry figures out a way to embrace the technology that will be beneficial to all parties involved.

BitTorrent moving uptown

…but I don’t think I like where this is going:

UPDATE (8/3/05; 9:30 a.m. ET): Well, the repair job was a success. Now, we just need Discovery to get home safely.

NASA to conduct spacewalk to mend shuttle

8/1/2005, 7:34 p.m. ET
By MARCIA DUNN
The Associated Press

” />SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) — NASA announced Monday that an astronaut will perform a spacewalk to fix two worrisome pieces of filler material protruding from Discovery’s belly — a high-stakes operation to repair a problem that could threaten the shuttle during re-entry…

…it will be a largely unrehearsed operation, with the risk that the astronauts might accidentally damage Discovery’s fragile thermal shield and make matters worse.

“The biggest thing that everybody’s concerned about is doing no harm,” said Mission Control spacewalk officer Cindy Begley.

Nevertheless, she said she was not overly concerned about the potential repair.

“It’s not actually that bad,” she said. All spacewalks are risky, she said, adding, “It’s just new stuff we’ve never done before.”

Before space shuttle Discovery took off on this mission, I told people I had a bad feeling another disaster might take place…I’m starting to think it might actually happen.

Again, I hope I am wrong.

Hmm…here’s something interesting from NASA…Gap Filler Repair Techniques

I was changing my photo on my OurMedia.org music site when I noticed a pair of buttons under the listing of media files I have on the site. One button said “XML” and other said “mRSS.”

Now, I had seen the XML button for the blog part of the site, but I had never noticed the feed option for the media section. This means after talking about trying to get a podcast going for months, it turns out I already had one through the OurMedia site. Granted, it was only the three songs on the site, but anybody who subscribed to the feed using the XML or mRSS buttons was able to download those songs as podcasts.

So if anyone is interested in subscribing to my podcast, just follow the instructions of your podcast client (i.e., iPodder, the latest version of iTunes) and subscribe to the feed using the URL http://www.ourmedia.org/mediarss/user/4764.

And that’s it…whenever I upload media to the site, it will be downloaded automatically by your podcast client.

So now I’m thinking of coming up with a format for a 20-minute program to publish on the site. I would like to do something that focuses on art and technology since most of my friends dabble in both. It would be easier to get ideas and, hopefully, guests 😉

Sigh…now, I just need some time to develop the concept into an actual show. Oh well, hopefully, the issue of Rider University magazine now in production doesn’t hang over my head for too long and I can get working on a treatment for the podcast.

Well, my VUE had to get towed away today, marking the second time in two months that has happened. Here is the sequence of events:

– On the way home from an excellent Mike Doughty show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken with Katie (even though from her blog entry, you wouldn’t know I was there…yes, I know I was mentioned in the previous posting, but who got your camera working so you could take that craptacular pic of Mike?), I fall asleep on the NJ Transit train.
– About 20 minutes from the Hamilton, NJ, station, my head is jolted off the edge of the seat, creating a mini whiplash scenario (my neck was already giving me problems, by the way).
– I get to my Bucks County apartment at about 2:45 a.m. and realize my neck is going to give me problems. I take some advil and apply a hot towel to my neck (since I keep forgetting to buy a heating pad).
– I wake up and can’t move my head too well…actually, I can barely move it at all.

OK…fast forward a few hours. I go to start my car…it starts…and quickly dies. I try again…and again…and again. Same thing.

Out with the AAA card and my cell phone…I tell them I need assistance and that — and this is key — my vehicle is all-wheel drive. This should tell AAA to make sure a flatbed tow truck is sent to my location. However, I learned from the last time my car was towed, that is not always the case. Back in May, it took three tow trucks for my car to finally get hauled away for repair. This time, only two…but why did I waste my time giving AAA every detail of my car and its location when the right tow truck wasn’t sent anyway? However, I waited nearly three hours between the first and second tow trucks, which was just absurd.

But the car finally got taken away (as you can see in the photo above) to the repair shop…which closed at 5 p.m. The car didn’t get there until 4:45 p.m. Hence, it hasn’t even been looked at yet. Ugh.

This is the third major problem I have had with this vehicle in the past four months — after going nearly three years without a significant problem that didn’t include tires (I have this incredible tendency to drive over objects capable of puncturing tires…in a car and on a bike).

I’m thinking it’s time for a change of vehicle. 😦

OK…my boss just returned from a trip to her native Canada and brought me back my favorite candy bar, Coffee Crisp. Made by Nestle, Coffee Crisp is rather hard to find in the United States, but can be found everywhere in Canada. However, that is just the start…there are the tasty Smarties (not to be confused with our sugary Smartees), which are better-tasting M&Ms, and Aero bars that are Canadian favorites that don’t get marketed here in the States.

But today my boss shows me a bag of Lay’s potato chips she brought across the border…the flavor? Fries n’ Gravy (of course, it was also written in French on the bag). Now, why don’t we have an interesting flavor like that here? I’m tired of companies keeping the good junk food out of American hands.

OK…that silly rant is over.