“I took this vo-tech class in high school, woodworking. I took a lot of vo-tech classes, because it was just big jerk-off, but this one time I had this teacher by the name of… Mr… Mr. Pike. I guess he was like a Marine or something before he got old. He was hard hearing. My project for his class was to make this wooden box. You know, like a small, just like a… like a box, you know, to put stuff in. So I wanted to get the thing done as fast as possible. I figured I could cut classes for the rest of the semester and he couldn’t flunk me as long as I, you know, made the thing. So I finished it in a couple days. And it looked pretty lame, but it worked. You know, for putting in or whatnot. So when I showed it to Mr. Pike for my grade, he looked at it and said: “Is that the best you can do?” At first I thought to myself “Hell yeah, bitch. Now give me a D and shut up so I can go blaze one with my boys.” I don’t know. Maybe it was the way he said it, but… it was like he wasn’t exactly saying it sucked. He was just asking me honestly, “Is that all you got?” And for some reason, I thought to myself: “Yeah, man, I can do better.” So I started from scratch. I made another, then another. And by the end of the semester, by like box number five, I had built this thing. You should have seen it. It was insane. I mean, I built it out of Peruvian walnut with inlaid zebrawood. It was fitted with pegs, no screws. I sanded it for days, until it was smooth as glass. Then I rubbed all the wood with tung oil so it was rich and dark. It even smelled good. You know, you put nose in it and breathed in, it was… it was perfect.”
– Aaron Paul as Jessie Pinkman,
“Kafkaesque”, Breaking Bad
Late this afternoon (5:11 p.m. EST), the Circuit Court of South Carolina in Dorchester County (the Hon. Diane S. Goodstein presiding) issued a Temporary Restraining Order which declares:
No individual, organization, association or entity, whether incorporated or not, may use, assume, or adopt in any way, directly or indirectly, the registered names and the seal or mark of The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina as are set out below or any names or seal that may be perceived to be those names and seal or mark. The registered names and mark that are subject to this order are: the seal of the Diocese of South Carolina as described in its registration with the South Carolina Secretary of State; the name “The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina”, as registered with the South Carolina Secretary of State; the name “The Diocese of South Carolina”, as registered with the South Carolina Secretary of State; and the name “The Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina”, as registered with the South Carolina Secretary of State. Again, this seal and these names are those registered by this Plaintiff corporation [Bishop Lawrence’s Diocese of South Carolina] with the South Carolina Secretary of State.
The order was issued following an ex parte hearing before Judge Goodstein yesterday, and after Bishop Lawrence’s Diocese posted a bond set by the court at $50,000. A hearing may be held “ex parte” in cases of urgency, in order to prevent immediate harm from occurring. The opposing side does not need to be present; indeed, the Episcopal Church (USA) has not yet entered an appearance in the case, and does not seem to have been represented at the hearing.
This picture is from a game which took place between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Atlanta Falcons on December 18, 1966. It might not look like much at first glance, but there’s a lot going on in this picture.
First of all, Steelers QB Bill Nelsen is wearing the dreaded “Batman” uniform the team only wore for the 1966 and 1967 seasons. At the time, the Vince Lombardi-led Packers were dominating the NFL, and teams all over the league were copying not just their playbook, but their style as well.
Although owner Art Rooney was still firmly in charge of the team, he decided to slowly give more control to his son, current chairman Dan. And Dan didn’t want to copy the look of the Packers… he wanted something unique. At the time, the city of Pittsburgh had just completed a redevelopment project for the downtown area called the Golden Triangle. So Dan decided to incorporate this into the new uniforms. He really liked them, as did Steve Sabol of NFL Films, who said the unique uniforms really “popped” on the screen.
The players, however, hated them. Several said that the uniforms made them look like clowns or Batman, which is where the “Batman” nickname came from (the campy 1960s Adam West Batman series being popular at the time). The equipment manager hated them as well. Nowadays, Nike sends players new jerseys for every game. But back then, jerseys were washed and reused after every game, and it proved to be difficult to get grass and blood stains out of the jerseys without fading the yellow triangle.
I’m not sure who the Falcons players are since their numbers are obscured. The player about to tackle Nelsen has to be either Angelo Coia (48) or Bobby Richards (68), as they were the only two defensive players to have an 8 as the second digit of their number. Just from the stance of the man in the foreground, I’m going to guess that it’s Tommy Nobis (60), although if it’s not him then it has to be Richards, as they were the only two defensive players with numbers in the 60s.
Anyway, if you look closely at the Falcons helmets, you can just make out a thin band of gold on either side of the stripes. And that comes from a brouhaha over the Falcons colors.
There are two main college football teams in the state of Georgia: the “University” of Georgia (based in Athens, and whose colors are red and black) and Georgia Tech (based in Atlanta, whose colors are old gold and white). Although UGA has a much larger fanbase these days, back in the 60s Tech’s was much larger than it is now, especially in Atlanta. So it seemed like a total slap in the face to Tech fans that the new NFL team, based in Atlanta, would not only use UGA’s colors.. their road uniforms would be almost identical to UGA’s! A minor scandal ensued, and Rankin Smith – then owner of the team – hurriedly (and grudgingly) announced that gold would be added as an “accent color”. However, the stripes were removed for the 1970 season, and in 1971 the Falcons introduced uniforms that resembled UGA’s even more closely:
Claude Humphrey
The gold stripes have returned, however, in the Falcons’ throwback helmet.
And, for the record… the first picture is from the last game of the Falcons’ inaugural season, and this was the first time the two teams played each other. The Steelers won 57-33 in Atlanta. The Steelers are 12-2-1 all-time against the Falcons. Atlanta has never beaten the Steelers in Pittsburgh, but managed a 34-34 tie in 2002.
BONUS: If you’re any kind of sports fan, you’ve probably noticed that the “G” the Bulldogs have on the side of their helmets looks an awful lot like the Green Bay Packers’ “G”. What’s the deal? Why so similar? Well, the Sports Design Blog has the whole story (complete with lots of cool pictures) but it really comes down to this: in 1961, Vince Lombardi asked his equipment manager, George Braisher, to come up with a new logo. Braisher came up with a logo very similar to what the Packers use today, only taller and less oval than it is now. And in the early 1960s, UGA football was in a pretty sorry state. So when Vince Dooley arrived as head coach in 1964, he decided to overhaul everything, including the uniforms and logo. Georgia had used plain silver helmets for most of their existence, but Dooley played with the colors, even toying with white helmets:
As you can see from the picture, the helmets (both white, the one on the left with a red G and the one on the right with a black G) sport the Green Bay G. Before the season started, Dooley decided on red helmets, which required a stroke around the logo, something the Green Bay G lacked. The “Georgia G” was also not as tall as the Green Bay G, and was more oval…. which, Green Bay incorporated into their logo in 1980. To make matters even more confusing, Grambling asked for, and received permission from, Green Bay to use their logo in 1965. For what it’s worth, Grambling’s G looks more like the original Green Bay G than the Georgia G or the updated Green Bay logo.
Great news, Mad Men fans! The series returns April 7, 2013 with a two-hour premiere written by Matthew Weiner and directed by Scott Hornbacher!
The premiere airs at 21:00 on April 7, with following episodes returning to the show’s 22:00 time slot!
Sadly, I won’t be able to recap this season. Just as with last season, I have friends coming in from the Netherlands (actually the same friends from last year) and we’re going on a trip to Florida later that month. Although I’d only miss two episodes at most, I found that once I’ve fallen behind I just can’t seem to catch up. So I’m not even going to try this go-round. Sorry.
– I found a real, gen-u-wine bug in WordPress! Well, not WordPress itself, but rather JetPack, a collection of add-ons put out by the WordPress team. As you might recall, I added the “infinite scroll” feature from JetPack to my site not too long ago. This automatically loads more stories as you scroll down the page. However, I noticed that if you clicked on a category (say, “History Blog”), WP would load the first seven posts from that category and then start loading stories from the front page instead of continuing with posts from the selected category. I posted about the issue at the WP support forums, and Jeremy Herve, author of the Infinite Scroll plug-in, quickly replied and said that he’d fixed the bug! So if you use JetPack and have having the same problem, expect it to be fixed in the next update.
– Jeremy also suggested that I could fix the problem immediately by switching from the default permalinks structure to Pretty Permalinks. By default, WordPress links look like this:
http://example.com/?p-123
There’s an option to change this so that the links look like this instead:
I’d wanted to change the permalink structure for a couple of years now, but was afraid that it would hurt my Google PageRank and kill any internal links on my site. Jeremy told me that it wouldn’t, that WordPress would handle everything automatically. So I switched over… and he was right! So you’ll now notice that my links look like this:
– I also want to thank Jeremy for replying so quickly to my issue and reassuring me about switching the permalink structure. That was some FAST and FRIENDLY service, my man! Thanks again!
– I also ditched ShareThis for WordPress’s own JetPack sharing solution. There’s no real reason for this, aside from the ShareThis bar not appearing on occasion in some posts. I just figured that the WordPress solution would be more stable and robust. Try it out and let me know how it works.
– I’ve also done some work under the hood, mostly retiring plug-ins that do things that WordPress now does natively. I don’t expect any issues to come of this, but if you see anything unusual, let me know!
– Lastly, I’m going to overhaul the Contact Me page this afternoon, since I no longer use a few of the instant messaging services listed on that page. I’m also getting tired of the current round of header images, and will probably swap those out early next week.
“Kiwi” became THE nickname for New Zealanders and the national symbol of the country thanks to… Kiwi shoe polish.
At the start of the 20th century, there were several nicknames and symbols for New Zealanders, none of them dominant. Among others, symbols included the moa (another bird), the silver fern (the symbol of many New Zealand sports teams, including the famous All Blacks rugby team), the kiwi bird and the Southern Cross constellation, which is still on the New Zealand flag:
In 1906 an Australian named William Ramsay developed the shoe polish, which he named after his New Zealander wife, Annie Elizabeth Meek. There were other shoe polishes on the market, but Ramsay’s was one of the first to emphasize making shoes and boots shine, in addition to restoring their color and water-resistance.
Ramsay loaded several cases of the polish onto a cart and traveled to farms handing out free tins to farmers for their work boots. Kiwi rapidly became the best-selling shoe polish brand in Australia. But Kiwi’s big break came in World War I, when the British and American armies started distributing the polish to soldiers. Millions of men became familiar with not just the product, but the “Kiwi” name, too. Soon, everyone was calling New Zealanders “Kiwis”.
Today Kiwi shoe polish is sold in 180 countries and holds 53% of the worldwide market for shoe polish. But even more than that, it’s the only product to give a nation’s citizens their nickname!
“You weren’t anything to him but something that would grow big enough to bury him when the time came, and now that he’s dead, he’s shut of you but you got two hundred pounds of him to carry below the face of the earth.”
– Flannery O’Connor
“You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead”
According to Last.fm, here are my top bands of 2012. The number in parenthesis is the number of times I’ve played the band in the past 12 months:
#1: Marsheaux (1,041) #2: Saint Etienne (353) #3: The Raveonettes (280) #4: Ambra Red (278) #5: Washed Out (165) #6: Katy Perry (149) #7: Roxy Music (142) #8: Beach House (138) #9: Freezepop (97) #10: Blouse (96)
And here are my top albums by playcount in 2012. Note that unlike my Albums of the Year list (which was limited to albums released in 2012), the following albums may come from any year. The first number in parenthesis is the year the album was released; the second is the playcount:
#1: Marsheaux – Lumineux Noir (2009) (494) #2: Ambra Red – Electronic Creations For Special People (2010) (277) #3: Saint Etienne – Words and Music by Saint Etienne (2012) (227) #4: Marsheaux – E-Bay Queen Is Dead (2012) (175) #5: Beach House – Bloom (2012) (133) #6: The Raveonettes – Observator (2012) (113) #7: Marsheaux – Peek a Boo (2006) (91) #8: Marsheaux – E-Bay Queen (2004) (84) #9: Washed Out – Within and Without (2011) (80) #10: Freezepop – Future Future Future Perfect (2007) (79)
2011 was a great year for TV. 2012? Not so much. The first half was pretty decent, but the second half of the year was pretty much a strike-out. So while 2011’s list was a lot of work (because I had to whittle down a huge list to acceptable levels), 2012’s list was also a lot of work (because it was that hard coming up with a list of decent new shows).
And so… the list, keeping in mind that this is all about new shows, not returning ones. There’s also lists of shows that didn’t make it, shows that ended this year, the biggest disappointment of the year, the best news of the year and the best and worst moments of the year. Enjoy!
THE BEST NEW SHOWS OF 2012
Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23 (ABC) – The premise of this show is simple: June, a naive and trusting Indianan, moves to New York City after graduating college to pursue her dream career. But on her first day the CEO of her mortgage company is arrested for running a Ponzi scheme. Desperate, June becomes the roommate of Chloe McGruff (Krysten Ritter), an amoral scam artist, a swindler and party girl. Chloe is the worst person ever, and is only genuinely nice to her best friend, former Dawson’s Creek actor James Van Der Beek. Unfortunately, the ratings aren’t very good, the writing has taken a turn for the worse in season 2, and ABC is monkeying around with the episode order. I don’t expect it to last much longer.
Line of Duty (BBC) – Every year the BBC puts out a really dark police drama in which the police aren’t necessarily any better than the people they’re chasing. Be it my personal fave Luther or last year’s favorite The Shadow Line, there’s always some show about the dark side of police work. This year’s entry is Line of Duty, in which the young, idealistic Detective Sergeant Steve Arnott (Martin Compston) accidentally causes the death of an innocent man during an anti-terrorist raid. Arnott refuses to participate in a cover-up of the incident, and is ruthlessly ostracized by his colleagues for it. To get away from them he joins an internal affairs division led by Superintendent Ted Hastings (Adrian Dunbar). Hastings’ main target is Detective Chief Inspector Tony Gates (the great Lennie James). Gates’ unit consistently has huge arrest numbers, and Hastings knows that this is partly because Gates only takes on cases he knows he can solve, then piles tons of charges on criminals once caught. But Hastings suspects the corruption is far worse. Although family man Gates might not want to admit it, he has a mistress, and she just might get him in a world of trouble.
Copper (BBC America) – And speaking of dark police dramas, BBC America debuted its first original series, Copper, about Kevin “Corky” Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones), a rough and tumble Irish cop in 1860s New York City, specifically the notorious, crime and poverty ridden Five Points neighborhood. Like a lot of men at the time, Corky went away to fight the Confederates in the Civil War, and while he was away his wife and daughter were murdered. Much of the series is about his investigation into what happened to them. He’s helped by Robert Morehouse (Kyle Schmid) a wealthy industrialist who was his major in the Union Army, Eva Heissen (Franka Potente), a Prussian madam who knows a lot of secrets, and Dr. Matthew Freeman (Ato Essandoh), a black physician who seems to know more about forensic science than any other doctor in America at the time (one of my small beefs about the show). Many disliked the show, saying it was too slow, and the fact that it was set in a time-frame similar to the slightly more popular Hell On Wheels didn’t help. But if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded. It’s a well-done series with rich characters and well thought-out stories.
