31 for 31

This is post 31 in 31 days.  So there's that.  Nice to set out a goal and meet it.  That seems to happen less often now than in the past.  I only had one real miss.  The day got away from me once and I wound up posting after midnight.  There was one real punt - maybe two - posts that were pretty much just photographs.  At least four of the posts were essentially freebies: keeping up with the "Worth a Look" posts culled from the Greenpage.  Still, 31 for 31, that's nice.

This is post 3701 for the blog since its inception.  That's no small potatoes either.  Many, many of those are also "Worth a Look" and going back there were easily dozens if not hundreds of "shorties" posts: daily aggregations of Twitter posts.  I really miss those.  I've been looking for a way to use IFTTT to create my own Twitter to Blogger daily aggregator but alas to date there's no joy.  It likely includes some kind of Goggle Docs middle step:

1. For every tweet make a new entry in the doc
2. Each day create a Blogger post from the new doc data

The problem is I don't know how to get IFTTT to recognize new information from old.  I don't want to wind up having to do any of it manually.  That would defeat the purpose.

The run of posts have identified at least 3 unique readers, well two if you don't count Mrs. TANBI.  And FWIW Mrs. TANBI tells me that even though the site is in her RSS that the posts are TLDR for her.  So: THANK YOU VERY MUCH FRITZ AND ETHAN for reading.  I hope it is interesting.  The Blogger Stats page for the blog says that pretty much all days have more than 20 views, with many days topping 100.  So also: thanks to all of you that are reading that aren't Fritz or Ethan.

I really wish the reticence that has been a posting inhibitor for me wasn't.  I do have a lot to say, but it isn't worth this.  If you haven't read that, you should.  If after reading it you systematically delete all of your social media accounts I won't begrudge you that.  Don't forget your LinkedIn, and your MySpace, and your Pinterest, and...  It is amazing the number of online things that became social sites.  I guess there really is money to be made from social networks.

I'm pretty sure there won't be 30 posts in August.  But I will try to make it more than four crossposts.

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

IATSE Reaches Deal on New 3-Year Contract With Studios

Variety: Negotiators for the West Coast members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — Hollywood’s key below-the-line union — have reached a three-year tentative agreement with studios and networks.

Posted by David at 7/27/2018 01:55:00 PM 

Judge Dismisses ‘Shape of Water’ Copyright Suit

Variety: A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit alleging that the “The Shape of Water,” the winner of this year’s Oscar for best picture, borrowed heavily from a 1969 play about a dolphin held captive in a military lab.

Posted by David at 7/26/2018 02:53:00 PM

‘Insatiable’ Accused of Fat Shaming; Petition Calls for Cancellation

Variety: A woman’s petition to cancel Netflix’s upcoming dark comedy series “Insatiable” gathered more than 118,000 signatures on Change.org on Tuesday. Signatories have decried the project as a “tone-deaf” venture that encourages “fat shaming.”

Posted by David at 7/25/2018 12:09:00 PM

AIDS and Los Angeles Theatre

@ This Stage: The AIDS virus was not readily apparent to the Los Angele theater community in the early 1980s. On June 5, 1981, UCLA-based immunologist Dr. Michael Gottlieb published a report put out by the Centers for Disease Control, noting the unusual cases of five men who had contracted a form of pneumonia normally found only in those with severely weakened immune systems.

Posted by David at 7/24/2018 12:36:00 PM

Why I Fought the Sexist Gear Community (And Won)

Pitchfork: Last week, I signed an online petition and inadvertently opened a pandora’s box of misogyny. The protest was raised over a guitar effects preset called the “Pussy Melter,” released by TC Electronic in collaboration with the guitarist Satchel, whose band Steel Panther is often referred to as a hair-metal parody act.

Posted by David at 7/23/2018 12:54:00 PM

About the Money

If you are like me you get a handful of emails every day from political candidates asking for money.  I get emails from the DNCC, from Senators - almost never my Senators, from Congressmen - almost never my Congressmen; I even get emails occasionally from people running in other parties.  I must be on a whole lot of mailing lists.

First things first: I can't afford to give a meaningful amount of money.  Even in this booming economy things have yet to trickle down to my family in such a way that we can spend money this way.  Any dollar that I send to a candidate is one that is being diverted from something my family needs.  I can send a couple of bucks to a couple of folks, but all things being equal even if I wanted to support all of these candidacies I couldn't.  Occasionally I wonder if the fundraisers have some kind of closed loop feedback where they can tell who has already given.  I would assume they do, but my inbox would suggest otherwise.

Second, and this is perhaps a more salient point, I am under the impression you don't need my money.  There was no end of press around Citizen's United.  All that reporting drove home the idea that there was now a virtually unlimited source of funding out there from mega wealthy donors and corporations (and I guess from foreign governments funneling through third parties).

Why are you even asking me for my $50 when there's someone out there to give you 100 or 1000 times that amount and that can now do so legally?  Are the candidates soliciting my money just really bad at identifying high value donors?

I thought what you now needed from me was door knocking.  I thought you needed people to do registration drives.  I thought you needed people to drive voters to the polls on election day.  I thought the issue was no longer money, that it was all about turnout.  I guess I can see how money could drive turnout, but then we're back to what are you going to do with my $50 that you couldn't do with some mega-wealthy donor's $50,000.

Asking for these small donations can't be free either.  Sending an email is fairly cheap I guess, but you have to pay the firm that is sending the email and that can't come cheap.  I guess the ROI on such things must be positive or they would stop, but again wouldn't the resources be better allocated chasing huge donations than thousands of small donations?

I dug deep on the last round and was rewarded with losses across the board, and that view was against the backdrop of what I understand was the highest earning campaign in history.  I just can't get past the idea that it is no longer about the money - and every solicitation I get suggests to me that the candidates I would hope to elect haven't figured that out yet.  That can't be a good thing.

Dear MSNBC

When the election went the way it did I was a little worried about my go to news source.  The day to day of the churn of the current administration is just too good for TV.  I remember thinking that if I were a news director for one of the primetime shows that I would need to make some rules about content to make sure the shows just didn't tip over the edge.

The other night there was wall to wall, hour after hour coverage over what one particular witness - if he becomes a witness - might say.  That's not news.  I understand that it was potentially a big story, although maybe it isn't.  But even if it is, it hasn't happened yet.  At best this is speculation.  The people you have on commentating are really just making things up.  I can make things up myself.  Four hours of primetime to hype what someone might say is bad curating.

Even if he had actually formally said something that action would have happened under seal and we still would have had an army of pundits speculating on what they thought had happened and what, if they were right, it might actually mean.

And that was replaced with exclusive coverage of whether or not the special counsel and the President's son had seen each other in the airport.  That's not really news either.

There's lots of other things happening in the world.  There are people at war.  There are places we can't drink the water.  I am 100% that the time on the shows could be filled without dedicating it all to the circus.  Would it be asking too much to see something else on the news?  Whether I mean to be or not I am already voting a little with my feet.  The time I spend with this source is dropping and the editorial decisions are the reason.

MSNBC has a full primetime slate.  How about designating one show from each night and saying they won't cover the day's churn?  What if all the shows could cover anything in the top half of the hour but had to dedicate the bottom half of the hour to something else?  Maybe no single show should ever book the same guest on consecutive days.

We'd all do better if we could separate the news from the noise.

Applying to College Workshop

10 Resume Tips:

1. Proofread/Spellcheck
2. One side of one page
3. Reverse chronological order
4. Nothing smaller than 8pt type
5. Do not include things you don’t want to discuss
6. Three (3) references
7. Avoid large blocks of text
8. Consider the context
9. Avoid repetitive lists
10. Proofread/Spellcheck

10 Portfolio Tips:

1. The presentation is as important as the content
2. Practice with your items/know what is coming next
3. Be prepared for the interviewer to take it away from you
4. Proofread/Spellcheck
5. Be clear what is your work
6. Don’t include things you don’t want/intend to be seen
7. Think quality over quantity
8. Show the arc of a project
9. Show your thought/problem solving process
10. Try to demonstrate breadth & depth

10 Interview Tips:

1. Make a positive impression - dress the part, make eye contact, introduce yourself
2. Speak Up
3. Go through what you’re going to say ahead of time
4. Know your class rank, GPA, & test scores
5. Work with your portfolio items so you’ll know what’s coming next and are able to show items effectively 
6. Be conversant about the school
7. Be ready for questions about your process
8. Be ready for questions about your goals
9. Have questions of your own
10. Don't talk down other people, talk yourself up

Green

We talk a lot at work these days about greening the theatre.  Usually it doesn't take too long for that conversation to come around to the amount of possible waste inherent in the fabrication of scenery.  The scene shop seems to be where everyone thinks the biggest changes can be made toward a greener process.

This last year I went to a USITT session on this topic.  There were three TDs presenting their strategies for making their shops more environmentally responsible.  I was excited to hear what they had to say because this is an issue I have been wondering about myself.  Each of the presenters gave one substantive idea.  This is what they said:

1. Find ways of integrating stock.
2. Don't put anything in the dumpster.
3. Build less scenery.

Sometimes I wonder if I am in the same business as other people.  I thought that in this case because there are design considerations here that would be a tough sell to the artists I work with.

Integrating stock means getting a director and set designer to buy in to a scenic solution that fits that stock.  Even before that it requires a scene design that uses elements that are stock-like.  It isn't enough that the sizes and shapes be stock compatible, the design needs to need things that could come from stock.  That isn't a given.

Building scenery with the strategy that you will try to recover everything changes fabrication methods in ways that can change the engineering performance of the assemblies as well as create work for other departments.

Just doing less... again we're talking about a buy in from directing and design.

I don't mean to just be shouting "THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE" but there does need to be a recognition that the buy in to make these kinds of decisions goes beyond the TD's office.  There's enough challenge realizing a design when the constraints are budget and physics.  Layering in an environmental constraint adds a level of complexity that would require a mission level commitment from the organization.  Something that would let you explain at a production meeting that you will not be executing as designed because that choice doesn't comply with the environmental mission.

Even if that mission level commitment was there I wonder about the efficacy of these solutions.  I mean, I guess building less is unimpeachable, but the others have domino problems.

Integrating stock and using recovered materials are solutions that come with a need for storage space, additional labor, and additional transportation.  I wonder if the environmental cost of operating a storage facility cancels out the benefit of having the stock.   How does year round heat and light compare with a palette of plywood?  When I look at the issue that question comes to me fairly quickly, but I haven't seen any discussion about the costs - dollar and environmental - of additional infrastructure as part of the process.

The accounting would seem to be more complicated than we've made it to date.

I also can't help but wonder how changes in materials choices in the scene shop would compare with non-production initiatives that could be undertaken by an organization.  What about turning down the heat or the air 5 degrees?  How about a subscription series where all the patrons agree not to drive?  It's not to say that a company couldn't do both, but it would be nice to know what order of magnitude different kinds of solutions exist on.

There's a research project to do here, something that looks at the concept in a wider context.  There needs to be a real qualification of the level of commitment that would be needed for an organization to truly embrace this mission: something that speaks to the dollar issues - primary and secondary - and to the potential artistic issues.  A study that examines all the ways a company could try to make a difference and identifying the relative weight of the ideas.

It's easy to say "stop buying all that plywood" and it is a worthwhile idea.  We need to know what it really costs.

Ellipses...

I'm almost out of soda...  The stories around the detention of the undocumented just get darker and darker.  We should be better than this...  My mechanical keyboard is great, but it is also behind dozens of additional typos every day.  Or maybe I shouldn't blame the tool...  The new phone transcribes voicemail.  That's cool.  I hate listening to voicemail...  We have a medical outfit here advertising same day appointments.  I'd venture nobody that worked on that campaign ever tried to get an appointment...  Borrowing money from countries that are the target of tariffs in order to subsidize domestic industry hurt by those tariffs is the definition of biting your nose to spite your face...  Trying to go no brace/no vitamin I today.  The jury is still out...  I am trying to decide were I not watching the news how would I think things were going.  I'm pretty sure I would feel better.  Not sure that would be positive...  Always nice to see old students.  If you're around you should poke your head in...  Things are on the move in the shop.  New scrap rack position after more than a decade...  Pretty sure I can get across what is important about AutoCAD in less than three hours now.  That's probably them improving the program rather than my honing my message.  Although I guess it could be both...  I want to see MI:Fallout in IMAX.  That'll require some planning...  Just finished Company Town.  I think it got less interesting the more I read, but it was still a worthwhile read...  Yesterday I ran an errand that turned out to be confirming I didn't have to run an errand...  They keep saying the the President has a high approval percentage among Republicans, I wonder if there are still as many Republicans as there were a year ago...  I slogged through Shada.  Still haven't found the time to finish Sense8...

I Don't Want Another Streaming Service

Don't get me wrong, I am anxiously awaiting the total demise of cable TV.  That bill is one of the biggest sources of the sand in my gears.  I want to be a cord cutter.  But I am beginning to fear that at the end of the day I will wind up paying more for streaming than I do for cable.  The benefit of cord cutting is supposed to be a financial savings, not just a change in form factor.

I'm also a fan of streaming.  We were Netflix subscribers when it was a DVD by mail service and we were early adopters getting the streaming service on a TV using a WII.  We really make good use of Netflix.  Hours and hours of West Wing and hours and hours of DS9.  We watch a lot of Netflix original programs.  I do sometimes wonder why some things that I think should be on service aren't.  I'd love to watch the Speed Racer I watched growing up.  It's more likely they'll reboot it at this point than pick it up.

Ultraman, Space Giants, Superfriends, Doctor Who, Dave Allen...  Lots of titles that could be on Netflix that aren't.

But Netflix isn't the only game in town, and not the only stream currently in our lives.  We were also early Prime adopters.  And the more expensive Prime becomes the more I really want to love their video streaming service.  With a couple of exceptions I really don't.  Given a choice between Netflix of Prime I will almost certainly boot up Netflix.  That is almost certainly about the interface.  The Prime interface, at least on the Roku, pales in comparison to their competition.  I guess maybe it makes them feel like there are more titles, but the decision to list shows separately by season is really confusing.  Mixing Prime streams I've already paid for with titles they have but I will have to buy in confusing.  I am 99% certain I'm not going to see a title I need to pay for and then decide to buy it rather than watch something I have already paid for.  Mixing both of those with premium streams for HBO and Showtime is even more confusing.  One of the things that bugs me about cable is that it shows you channels you don't have in exactly the same way as things you do have.  Prime has emulated that same annoying practice.  If they cleaned up their interface they might get me to drop Netflix.

We've got streams for all the cable channels.  HBO, PBS, MSNBC, FX, TNT, TBS - all the networks, they all have Roku apps with streaming.  They vary in their utility but have one thing in common: they all make you authenticate with an existing cable subscription.  You can't cord cut, you have to have cable to stream.  Why does it seem so likely that will be the endgame?  Pay for it even if you don't really use it, it will just flip from being cable with supplemental streaming to streaming with supplemental cable, with the cost actually going up.  It'll be just like the landline I have to pay for even though I don't want it because somehow my price goes up if I drop the service.

Have you priced naked internet?  The biggest single requirement for true cord cutting?  When cable companies are the internet providers that isn't going to be a bargain.

We've already looked off Hulu - no Handmaid's Tale for us.  We also haven't existed in an iTunes video ecosystem.  That's probably about being a Roku home rather than an Apple TV home.  I haven't looked too hard at YouTube TV or Sling - and I've been a Sling hardware customer for years.

FWIW I also have, you know, antennas on a couple of our sets.  There are a dozen watchable channels there as long as you don't mind losing the DVR and guide functionality.

This week I saw two announcements that had me perk up only to wind up seeing dollar signs.  First was that DC was going to start up their Young Justice cartoon they abandoned three years ago.  This was a regular watch for me and seeing it was coming back was exciting.  Seeing it is coming back exclusively on the DC streaming service, a service that will be $7.99/month was less exciting.  There was also an announcement that there is going to be another season of Clone Wars.  That was another cartoon I used to watch pretty faithfully.  I would love to get another season.  But that show will air exclusively on the yet to be solidified Disney streaming service - no price yet, but any reason to think it won't be another $7.99/month?

I already made the decision to forgo the new Start Trek series exclusively available exclusively on the CBS streaming platform.

The writing is on the wall isn't it?  So you drop cable but keep internet - and they will need to provide more speed and bandwidth because you'll need multiple concurrent streams.  Which will mean that price will inevitably go up.  Then you'll need something from the YouTube or Sling world to pick up a bunch of channels and then Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney, DC, CBS, HBO...  I mean you don't need everything, but I have to believe in the end it will be more money.

Hey Amazon, want to disrupt cable bigtime?  Let me authenticate channel apps through Prime.  And clean up your interface.

I Delete a Lot of Posts

I was four graphs into a post today and then I did a ctrl-A delete.  Happens to me a lot these days.  I'll post something on Facebook and then delete it.  I'll post something on Twitter and then delete it.  We've become so polarized that I don't want the exposure anymore.

And then I deleted everything I had to say about that.  Here's a picture of my cat:

He just had his spring haircut (finally) and he has no political opinions at all.

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Statement from Americans for the Arts in Response to Rejection of Amendment to Cut Funding to NEA, NEH

Stage Directions: Americans for the Arts President and CEO Robert L. Lynch offered this statement in response to this afternoon’s House of Representatives vote rejecting an amendment to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities by 15 percent

Posted by David at 7/19/2018 03:33:00 PM

House to Consider Proposal to Cut NEA Funding By 15%

Variety: The House of Representatives may vote on Wednesday on an effort to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities by 15%.

Posted by David at 7/18/2018 12:10:00 PM

Mandalay Bay owner sues victims of Las Vegas mass shooting, claims it has “no liability of any kind”

Salon.com: The corporate owners of Mandalay Bay and the Route 91 Harvest festival venue have filed federal lawsuits against the victims of last year's mass shooting at a country music concert in Las Vegas, claiming that MGM Resorts International has zero liability in the deadly Oct. 1 incident.

Posted by David at 7/18/2018 12:10:00 PM

Men Outnumber Female Critics 2-1, Affecting Visibility, Study Finds

Variety: Male film critics outnumbered female critics two to one, an imbalance San Diego State University researcher Martha Lauzen argues can negatively affect the exposure and evaluation of female-led features.

Posted by David at 7/17/2018 09:42:00 PM

For theater community, finding ways to reflect societal diversity onstage is more urgent than ever

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Theater is often at its best and most powerful when it says to those who feel overlooked, misunderstood or invisible: You are seen.

Of course, theater doesn’t always manage to do that — either for audiences or for artists. For a form that can be so welcoming to fresh viewpoints and voices, it also has a traditionalist streak that in some quarters can serve to perpetuate (even unconsciously) dated ideas and attitudes.

Posted by David at 7/16/2018 09:40:00 AM

Thermostat

Sometimes I wonder why the temperature control in our lives isn't better.  For years I've wondered about the hot water in the shower.  It doesn't make sense to me why we can't set a temperature so that you turn on the tap and then nothing comes out until the water is at the temperature you want.  This seems to be well inside the capabilities of our technology.  Mostly it just seems like this doesn't happen because it doesn't happen.

But it could happen, yes?  If it did happen it would seem like many houses would waste a lot less water.  Right now you turn on the tap and then the cold water in the line has to run out the faucet and down the drain until you gauge the warmth - by touching the water - and then you get in the shower.  Alternately I imagine that sometimes people crank up the temp to try to make this happen faster and then wind up getting scalded when they check the temp on their hand.  That's an unfortunate result.

To fix this there would need to be a doubled set of pipes.  You'd need a return from behind the tap that ran back to the hot water heater.  Then there would need to be a thermostatic sensor and a diverter valve right at the tap.  The temp would be set on the sensor and until the water reached the desired temp the water would flow through the diverter and back to the tank.  Once the proper temperature is reached the valve opens and the water comes out the tap, with the first drop being the temp you are looking for.  The system could also have an envelope such that if the temperature got too high the valve would swap again and the overtemp water would recirculate to the tank.

So obviously there's more dollars here in the initial installation.  There's an extra sensor and a valve, and there's an extra run of tubing for every length of hot water tubing.  That's like a 50%+ increase in initial outlay.  With the price of water being where it is right now that is probably a fairly long ROI before you get to a break even.  But you get the convenience, and you waste less water.  It seems like something worth offering as an option anyway.  I don't think I have ever been in a home that works this way.

Lately I've been wondering the same kind of thing about my HVAC system.  The sensor package and the air sources don't seem to be the most efficient here either.  Often, because of the way our house is built we wind up running the air conditioning even though the outside temperature is lower than the inside.  Why does the system have to create cold air when there is available cold air outside?

Couldn't a system be built with inside and outside theremostats?  Something that combines traditional air conditioning with exhaust fans and exterior air inputs.  So if the desired temp inside is below the actual temp inside and it is also below the outside temp the traditional air conditioning runs.  If the desired temp inside is lower than the actual temp inside but it is higher than the outside air, then instead of running the traditional system the unit would draw in outside air and exhaust the warmer air from inside.

This seems like it ought to be less electricity.  You don't have to run the exterior chiller unit in some of the cases.  There is probably a humidity benefit from running the air conditioning that you wouldn't get just using exhaust fans.  The existing system would have a way to dry the air that the other wouldn't.  And there are probably extra mechanical dampers to facilitate bringing in outside air that would be vulnerable to maintenance problems, that's a downside.  But again, this seems to be well inside the capability of our technology - and in this case, doesn't feel a whole lot more expensive at the installation stage - and yet I can't recall ever being in a home that had such technology available.

It would seem like there are environmental reasons to develop both of these systems.  I wonder why it hasn't happened.

If the Dems Can't Win With That...

This morning on Morning Joe there was discussion about how the Republicans are giving the Democrats a great narrative by not really exercising any meaningful over-site of the administration in the wake of the President's inexpiable deference to Putin.  Their conclusion was that if Democrats couldn't win with that arrow in their quiver that they were really in trouble.  This neglects one very important detail.

The Dems did win.

Two of the last three times Republicans won the White House Democrats got more votes.  Talking about how inept the Democratic candidates are assumes that it is a fair fight.  It isn't.

The Electoral College makes votes for President in normally Republican states much more effective than in reliably Democratic states.  On top of that, voter suppression laws in many states tilt the floor under voters' feet undeniably in favor of Republicans.  There doesn't seem to be much likelihood of resolving the former issue, and the latter becomes more and more entrenched as Republicans add voices to the courts.  There are even calls to make the electoral issue more problematic by apportioning the votes by district - a proposal which seems to come up primarily where it will help Republicans.

Speaking of districts, somehow Republicans have the majority of Representatives even though the majority of votes in many states go to Democrats.  A decades long program of gerrymandering has helped to put a (seemingly) permanent slant to the House.  There seemed to be some momentum building to help allay this in the courts, but the current administration appears to have little motivation to pursue that kind of case.  Fixing the districts without the courts means winning the state houses and that is in the grip of the gerrymander too - and the voter suppression.

The only place it might be kind of a fair fight (if you don't think too much about voter suppression) is the US Senate.  Those races are straight up popular votes, no electoral college and no districts.  As it turns out this one is even more depressing.  Since the number of Senators is independent of population, and due to anticipated population trends these votes almost don't matter.  An overwhelming number of Senators will soon be elected by a marked minority of Americans.  Within the near future the majority of the people will live in 8 states, represented by 16 Senators. The remaining minority of the people will be represented by the remaining 84 Senators.  Care to guess which parties dominate which states?  I know the founders were smart, but that can't be what they had in mind.

I really, really hope Joe is right and that the narrative Democrats will have going into the 2018 election is a compelling one, but if they lose we need to remember that it wasn't exactly an even playing field to begin with.

Paper Catalogs

I got an email today asking what ought to be the criteria for determining what catalogs we should keep and which we should pitch.  We're doing like a once a decade clean up in the TD classroom and catalogs are a fairly obvious decluttering target.

So I start to type back: "you can certainly pitch any duplicates, probably anything that looks like it is more than five years old - but put the ones that are going to go into a pile so Kevin and I can see them first so we don't lose something special."  But I stopped myself.  I'm wondering if the answer ought not be different. 

I'm thinking maybe: pitch everything.

The way we do our job has changed, and I think maybe it has left hardcopy catalogs behind.  Going to an industry convention used to include lugging around a bag full of company catalogs, now you shoot a photo of the booth with your phone and do a web search when you go back to work. 

I have a class where I talk about purchasing where I talk about a lot of what could only be considered vestigial technical design resources.  Usually I tell them about the Thomas Register - a hardcopy, 20 odd volume industrial directory where the contact information was as often as not a snailmail address - not even a phone number let alone an email.

Sometimes I tell them about a thing called "The Yellow Pages" and how you had to be savvy about where to look for ads because they wouldn't always turn up where you thought they ought to be.  These days when I encounter a phone book I am usually wondering why the person that left it for me isn't being charged with littering.  There is a high probability that nearly all of my current students have never once cracked a phonebook.

There used to be these thick, spiral bound industry guides like "800 Chicago Production Resource" or some such thing, and annual issues of "Theater Crafts" that was a dedicated industry resource.  I haven't seen an updated version of either of those in a while.  Some of the Penton magazines that come into the school do still do an annual buyers guide, but I think that's more about publishing momentum or ad sales than it is about utility.

I can remember getting my first Grainger catalog and somehow finagling my first McMaster-Carr catalog.  I used to spend some time every month or so filling out a document request card from "Hydraulics & Pneumatics" magazine so I could get more catalogs.  I couldn't have done my job without catalogs from Outwater and McNichols.

The web pretty much ended all that, yes?  Maybe pitch everything.

Ellipses...

The saving grace of this post a day thing is that Wednesdays are Ellipses...  Three different people in my feeds today crapped on reputable news sources.  The other guys are winning...  I had to light up the old laptop to restore my new phone, so I am getting all TANBI retro and writing this post with it.  Next I'll use the iPad2...  It is possible I was a little bit rough grading my first batch of precollege assignments...  Another kid from Woodland Hills got shot.  I think that's 14 this year.  It should be a bigger story...  Today the boy's camp went to the carpet slide park.  Earlier this year he'd been there for a birthday and another kid broke her arm.  Apparently several parents told that story at drop off and freaked out all the counselors...  The news is so depressing I can't find things to talk about in the news...  The neighbors finally cut their lawn, for the first time this year, in mid-July.  They've actually been living in California and are just getting caught up...  If you believe for even a second that POTUS misspoke you are in some kind of willful disbelief...  I'm looking for someone to take a bunch of LPs off my hands.  If you know anyone that collects please send them my way...  Making the statement that maybe the US shouldn't come to the aid of other NATO countries is pretty scary...  The large chili at Wendy's is 300 calories.  That's important information if you are doing a 5:2 fast...  Mandalay Bay is suing the shooting victims.  We live in a strange country...  I got in a Facebook spat today about the President donating his salary.  I kind of feel like it is ultimately an empty gesture...  Jupiter has 12 more moons.  My son learns about a very different world than I did... 

Couple of Things

I'm writing emails to Pat Toomey's office on a pretty regular basis these days.  I mean probably not enough to get me on some kind of a watch list, but way, way more than I ever have before.  I don't often write to Casey or to Mike Doyle, but Senator Toomey gets more email from me than most people I know.  Every time I send in an email his office sends me, what I hope is an automated, response with a "Thank you for writing" header, absolutely no body text, and an attached image of his signature.  I'm not sure if it is his intent but what I get from that is "I didn't read it, and if I had I wouldn't care."

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Mrs. TANBI and I upgraded our phones the other day.  For a while I thought I had found a really slick way to get this done.  I discovered I could get new phones for miles.  Unfortunately that turned out to be a rabbit hole of striking dimension.  The issue was that the miles shopping site didn't list compatible carriers.  At one point a CSR for the miles shopping program told me I had to talk to a rep at the vendor's online store and that she could give me their number - which she did - giving me an 800 number with 8 digits.  Sometimes talking to people on the phone you just want to shout, something like "THAT ISN'T A PHONE NUMBER!!!"  Anyway, the new phones are nice, and I am still looking for something to buy with miles.

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The missus is away on a girls sleepover and I am alone with the boy.  Tonight I asked him what he would like to do for dinner and after some initial indecision he offered "You know where we haven't been in a while?"  Which seems like a fairly sophisticated construction for a four year old, followed by "Hokkaido."  He went on to say that he would enjoy a dinner of crab legs.  It is possible that we've created a little bit of a monster.  Turns out to have been a good decision, they comped him,  That won't last forever, but while it does it is a pretty good dinner deal.

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It isn't their fault, but now whenever I go into any health care provider I am comparing them to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.  Most of them don't compare all that favorably.  That might be their fault.  It is really disconcerting to know that there is an organization that understands how to do something well and yet that knowledge doesn't filter out to others providing the same services.  I guess maybe the assessment isn't fair.  When I went it took me out of the context of my life, which made scheduling SNAFUs unlikely, and I didn't really come in the front door.  But maybe that's the way it should be.

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The Sense8 finale movie has been available on Netflix for like a month now and I haven't watched it.  I brought it up on the screen the other night only to discover it is two and a half hours long.  That's more time than fits into my TV life right now in a single, uninterrupted sitting and it seems like that's how I want to watch this particular show.  I think that my delay is indicative of what contributed to the show being cancelled.  But it doesn't seem fair that if they remove the urgency to watch by putting all the episodes on a streaming service indefinitely that a show can be cancelled because not enough people are watching.  There's a lot to watch.  I've got things to do.  I'll get to it eventually

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Dancer Preserves The Work Of Black Choreographers, In One Video At A Time

NPR: When she was in her 20s, dancer Gesel Mason started emailing black choreographers she admired, asking them to create a solo for her. To her surprise, many of them said yes.

"I did not know I was making my life's work when I started it," she says. "I was just really interested in dancing with some choreographers."

Posted by David at 7/09/2018 12:20:00 PM

Perspective

It seems pretty clear that these days people see what they want to see.  I mean, things happen, and there is objective truth.  If you watched the whole thing you would form a given opinion.  The balance of the thing would leave a lot less latitude for impression than most of us are really used to these days.  It is a real shame the way people consume reality these days.

In practice now people don't see the thing.  They see coverage of the thing, or more likely they see commentary about the thing - or sometimes even commentary about the coverage of the thing.  We need more unfiltered thing, less commentary about the thing, and way, way less commentary about the coverage of the thing.

There was a hearing the other day with an FBI agent that has found his nuts in a vice over something he spelled out in text messages.  Folks on one side of the thing would have you believe that he was just boasting to someone he hoped to impress.  Folks on the other side would have you believe that he was the mastermind of a conspiracy to defame the President.

The American system has a belief that average people presented with facts can reach reasonable conclusions.  That's what "jury of your peers" is about.  Probably this is true.  Unfortunately life doesn't work that way anymore.

Mostly I listen to NPR and watch MSNBC.  I've always thought NPR was pretty close to the center in the editorial decisions about their coverage.  MSNBC is pretty clearly on the left, although at least from my POV they don't willfully misinterpret things or make things up.  Watching their coverage of the hearings you would think the committee members on the right were barely able to speak in complete sentences as they were rightfully put in their place by a career professional.

I have a minority of friends in my Facebook feed who watch FOX News and read Breitbart.  Fox is pretty clearly on the right and Brietbart... I don't know what Breitbart is, but it isn't news.  Looking at the articles these friends are reposting on their feeds you would think that the committee members drew and quartered the agent and exposed him to be a liar.

My own evaluation from the testimony I saw was that he was professional, unbiased, and foolish.

But the thing is, mostly, it doesn't matter what he was at all, or how the testimony went at all because the editors on either side of the argument edit what you see to tell the story they want told.  If the answers don't match the narrative they just show the questions, making the person posing the question into a hero regardless of the content of the discussion.  If the question does make the subject look awkward they pick the point in the questioning that looks the most unpolished and portray the questioner as a buffoon.  I even saw one commentator take time out to criticize a committee member's hair.

Facebook is a force multiplier for this kind of partisan editorialization.  Most folks never even see the skewed article.  What they do see is a splashy picture and sensational headline.  These things are great for energizing your team or putting a thumb in the eye of the other team.  What they don't do is get anyone any closer to understanding objective truth.  In a court of law anything like that would face an objection as prejudicial.  It isn't information to be evaluated by a jury of your peers, it is a cheer to be shouted from the sideline of the game.

Except it isn't a game.  We need better information.

The Last Six Boxes

As you may or may not know, I had to clean out my parents house a little while back.  Of the many things that made their way to Pittsburgh as part of that effort were what I think was like about a dozen bankers boxes full of documents.  In Chicago all that stuff had been in file cabinets in the basement.  Somewhere along the way I decided that I could manage getting rid of the cabinets - I took them to Goodwill - but I didn't have it in me to go through the documents.  So all the papers went into bankers boxes and made the trip to Pennsylvania.

I do think I made one effort in Chicago to deal with documents.  In what is probably an over reaction to identity theft I decided that much of what was there needed to be shredded.  I remember taking a couple of boxes of old checks to a Staples because they said they had bulk shredding.  I also remember being there for more than an hour because it seemed like I should be there until the shredding actually happened and that the person doing the shredding only worked on it when there were no customers, and the shredder wasn't really anything special so it kept getting gummed up just like your unit at home might do.  More than an hour for what must have been a large shoebox probably was what tipped the scales in favor of putting the rest of the documentation under the heading of "deal with it later."

I did make an effort to get through the stuff once it arrived at home.  I got through a couple of boxes.  There was a lot to dispose of, much of which seemed like it should be shredded.  If you've never gotten a cancelled check back from your bank - something they haven't done in over a decade - you are fortunate.  I started to accumulate a box of used office supplies: mostly file folders and binders, but also sheet protectors and paper clips.  The clips aren't particularly special, but they can go through the shredder, so they got set aside whether it made sense or not.  There was also a little bit of kryptonite - things with no real value but that also seem like a real shame to throw away.  That went into another box.

At some point work must have started again and I walked away from the project, and then life became a little bit of a roller coaster and I never got back to it.  There were six boxes left and they sat in the basement for years awaiting their disposition.

Recently I decided it was time to finish off the gig.  I brought the last six boxes up to the dining room figuring if they were legitimately in the way I wouldn't be able to ignore them.  Most of what was left was very much like what I'd processed already.  There was one box that was almost entirely kryptonite.  Some of the things I found:

• Parents first Passports
• Parents fist lease
• Bill of sale from the HP house in 1967
• My first CMU invoices
• Pictures of Dad with a bunch of people from the Nixon administration
• Mom's teaching certification
• Hardcopy of note from the Principal observing one of Dad's classes

But of all of it, the bit that was the densest kryptonite of it all was a stack of valentines from my mom to my dad from before they were married.

I couldn't find the wherewithal to dispose of everything.  So the last six boxes become 8 lawn bags of shredded documents and a single box of "family history."  Maybe I'll manage to pitch it later.  Maybe Leo will have to do it when he cleans out this house.  Anyway "last six" is a bit of a misnomer.  There are still three large boxes of LPs I don't know what to do with.  A couple of boxes of things that may or may not be antiques, and two or three more banker's boxes of loose photos.  I guess I still have at least one more push to make before I am done.

Or maybe it'll never be done.

I Owe an Apology

Not that long ago Mitt Romney was running for president.  During the campaign he got a foreign policy question as part of debate.  He was asked who represented the greatest threat to the United States.  His answer was the Russians.

At the time the answer sounded remarkably tone deaf.  The Russians had been in a decline for many years.   I am fairly certain this was before Crimea and the trouble in Ukraine.  I know for certain it was amid US conflicts in the Middle East.  We still had troops in Afghanistan.  This was, I think in the middle of developments in Libya.  Things were probably just getting wound up in Syria.  The news was all about the advancing of Al Qaeda and we were all wondering about Caliphate.

Even with all of that Romney said Russia.  Commentators on the news talked about how out of date that conclusion was.  I personally had the same thought and used it as a reason to think less of him as a candidate - not that it was likely he would have gotten my vote anyway.

I guess I couldn't have been more wrong.

What was it do you think that he knew that we didn't?  Would things be materially different if the news media, rather than dismissing him as being out of touch had followed up with him to find out just what it was that had him concerned?  I don't know if what had him concerned were the kinds of things that have come to light since, but even if they weren't I guess there was the possibility that increased scrutiny of the Russians during that period might have made them less bold down the line.

Syria, Brexit, the US 2016 election, the Russians apparently had their hands into all of these things and many more.  Did Mitt Romney know this sort of thing was going to happen?  At this point I certainly wish we had paid more attention.

Mr.. Romney, I owe you an apology.  I'm sorry.

Dinner Out

Tonight I had dinner with nine alums and a current student.

Saw two more during the day too.

They are all doing amazing work - bigger than I ever did.  It is really rewarding seeing their success.  I'll get a closer look at things at the shop tomorrow.

Ellipses...

Last night I watched the first AUDL game on TV (that I've seen) that was remotely close.  It was pretty cool...  The boy and I are supposed to be walking to camp in the morning.  Somehow the boy appears to have ended that practice...  The family separations being engineered by our government really need to stop.  It is possible that those responsible for the practice should resign...  Last month's electric bill was surprisingly moderate.  But then, the air is on again...  Things in the US are so cocked up right now I never got to be pleased the head of EPA resigned...  Between the "you should read this" posts in my RSS and using a Kindle reader I have now reached a point where I could not tell you the title or the author of the book I am currently reading...  Headed East to see alums tomorrow.  If you have any influence on the weather we could use a nice day...  I am beginning to think it is no longer enough to live according to your ideals, and that putting your money where your mouth is might not be enough either...  You can in fact squish the two and a half hour Marshmallow Workshop I have previously done into an 80 minute block.  It doesn't leave much time for discussion...  Contemplating a third compression brace.  That's too many right?  I thought so...  Guy emailed me today looking for a student to help with a job.  I almost just took it myself...  Is there a reason the designer we worked with on our house never returns my emails?  I am starting to wonder if we forgot to pay a bill or something...  Do you watch "Humans" on AMC?  You should.  It is pretty good.  Lately though a lot of really, really sad things have been happening...  Still haven't gotten very far on the book...

Bill of Rights

Earlier this week I got a distressed email from a student.  They were writing to tell me that they'd recently had a car accident while driving home from work.  The schedule was topping 80 hours per week and in the midst of that marathon they'd fallen asleep behind the wheel and hit a telephone poll.  The schedule for the next week wasn't any easier and I was being asked what they should do.

I let them know that is was reasonable to think the employer should look out for their safety.  It would be reasonable to expect that if the current schedule made travel unsafe that the schedule should change or the employer should find a way to get them home safely.  That in the event that neither of those things could happen that it would be reasonable to walk away.

Walking away from an early career gig is tough.  Students worry excessively that their reputation will be damaged in our small professional community and that a potentially good reference will be lost.  That pressure makes the decision to remove oneself from a negative situation difficult.  I tired to let this person know that I thought even if they were to lose a reference that there would be other opportunities.  It is likely that this place or this current supervisor probably wouldn't hire them again - but the community and range of opportunities are larger than one might think.

My time in summer stock - and professionally for that matter - hasn't had all that much in the way of terrible hours.  There have been overnight calls from time to time, but they were mostly about fitting things into a schedule rather than about working hour after hour.  There were a couple of really long days, but as a supervisor I always managed to get my crews reasonable time off.  When I was working in Vegas I did have several really long days strung in a row, but never in such a way that I felt really unsafe.  I had friends that worked places with unreasonable shifts.  When they told me what was going on I always found myself wondering why management wasn't building a schedule that didn't ask the unreasonable.  Theatre schedules just shouldn't have to do that.

You can't really say it isn't formative.  There are industry segments that do work this way "in the real world."  The LA film locals are trying to make it a thing in their next negotiation: Hollywood’s Grueling Hours & Drowsy-Driving Problem: Crew Members Speak Out Despite Threat To Careers

It does seem like there ought to be a solution to this for summer stock though.  That particular segment really leans on early career workers that don't have the financial security to walk or a union to look after them.  It feels like there's an opportunity for an organization like USITT, or ESET, or maybe SETC or KCACTF to establish some boundaries.

A third party organization might be able to come up with what would essentially be a "Good Housekeeping Seal" for theatre companies.  The companies could then post their compliance on their website and list it in their job postings.  The certifying organization could also maintain a directory of compliant companies that job seeking folks could search.

The certification would want to include things about working hours and time off, crew sizes, safety and training, housing and transportation.  Mostly though I think about hours.

There would need to be some kind of compliance hotline and when a company got x number of complaints against it they would lose their standing until some kind of re-certification process could be completed.

The problem here is that there is WAY more available workforce than there are gigs.  Even if all the top theatre schools in the country told their technical and design students to stay away - for every one of those folks there are five more at other schools.  I wonder if there'd be any way to get the impact the program would need.

Interesting thing: I am pretty sure all of this is actually illegal under the current law.  To consider someone an intern - legally - the services that person provides cannot be foundational to the function of the company.  In other words: if you need them in order to function then they aren't an intern - they're an employee - subject to overtime, OSHA, minimum wage.  Pretty much all these gigs, whether they call them interns or apprentices are central to the company being able to put work on stage.  Most of the companies would likely go under if they had to treat these people as staff.  I would think that would be a fairly strong motivator to treat them better.

Worth a Look

Here are a few posts from last week's Greenpage that might be worth your time...

Edgy theatre content sparks off-stage debate about trigger warnings

CBC News: If you want to trigger a strong response from theatre folk, ask them how they feel about trigger warnings: The debate about if and when to use them has the theatre community deeply divided.

These new type of audience advisories warn of specific plot points that may provoke psychological trauma in some audience members.

Posted by David at 7/03/2018 10:52:00 AM

‘Awakening: After Parkland’ Interview

www.vulture.com: Three months after the Valentine’s Day massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Sawyer Garrity and five of her peers performed in a local production of Spring Awakening — a show they started rehearsing before the mass shooting that claimed 17 of their schoolmates. Their rehearsals and performances were chronicled in Awakening: After Parkland, a short documentary that premiered Monday on Topic.

Posted by David at 7/03/2018 10:53:00 AM

Why calling women 'strong female leads' is degrading

www.usatoday.com/story/life: Good news first: Screenwriters are learning that not all 

women are downer wives, hot girlfriends or shrews. But in a knee-jerk reaction to the times, Hollywood is trying to make up for lost ground, trumpeting every female character as a "strong female lead," someone who's a pitch-perfect blend of tough resolve, intellect and conviction in a man's world.

It's not only grating, it's ... weak.

Posted by David at 7/03/2018 10:56:00 AM

Theater professionals of color decry the Muny's casting, unwelcoming culture

St. Louis Public Radio: The boos launched by a group of protesters mid-show at the Muny two weeks ago are continuing to reverberate. Actors and directors of color in St. Louis say it’s time for theaters to stop casting white actors to portray people of color.

Posted by David at 7/05/2018 02:37:00 PM

Disney Imagineering has created autonomous robot stunt doubles

TechCrunch: For over 50 years, Disneyland and its sister parks have been a showcase for increasingly technically proficient versions of its “animatronic” characters. First pneumatic and hydraulic, and more recently fully electronic, these figures create a feeling of life and emotion inside rides and attractions, in shows and, increasingly, in interactive ways throughout the parks.

Posted by David at 7/02/2018 02:17:00 PM

Freedom

I've been thinking a lot about freedom today.  Like "they hate us for our freedom" or that we here in the US have the most freedom - more freedom than other first world countries.  I'm not sure I buy it.  I mean I do think that we have a lot less government control than other developed countries.  There are a very few things I can think of that you actually have to do.  You have to file taxes.  You have to have car insurance if you want to drive.  You have to educate your children.  Most places you have to get your children vaccinated.  Most places.

Even that list starts to fall apart a little.  There are exemptions for vaccinations.  You can home school, with no accounting for what is involved.  So the list of compulsory activities is pretty short.  We have a lot of free reign in other areas - most areas.  My question though is what do we get out of it.

It seems like most of our freedoms eventually lead to the freedom to suffer.  You have the freedom to be ignorant.  Not sure what that's worth.  You have the freedom to not have health insurance.  That freedom can lead to economic ruin or death or both.  You have the freedom to choose your profession without any real guarantee that it will lead to a sustainable living.  You have the freedom to choose where to live without any assurance that there will be housing there you can afford or work there for you to do.

Is it possible that all this freedom isn't what it is cracked up to be?

Would it be better to have slightly less freedom but have a more solid chance of being happy?

Do we need to do a better job of protecting freedoms we have carved out?  You are free to have whatever gender identification you want, or whatever religion you want, or whatever sexual orientation you want; but you are not necessarily protected from discrimination for exercising that freedom.

That "have less freedom" sentence is a scary one.  It cuts both ways, and who it is that is making the decision really starts to matter.  There definitely is a yours ends where mine begins thing here.  someone's freedom to carry a weapon ought not diminish someone else's freedom to not get hurt.  Freedom makes for good sound bites, but the reality of it is much, much more complicated.  Like most things I guess.

FWIW, I am exercising my freedom to count this as Sunday's post even though it is going live at 12:06am Monday.  Oops.

Nice to also have the freedom to make mistakes.

Couple of Things

This posting every day is tougher than it used to be.  I don't remember the last time I did it but I venture it was before the boy needed all day, every day attention.  That kind of thing just eats up your day.  Blogging begins to seem like a bit of a luxury.  Still, I'm getting to the keyboard when I can, even if the entries seem a little labored.  Here's a couple of things that might turn into a complete post somewhere down the line...

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The time has come for me to write a book.  I mean it has been something I should have been thinking about since my academic career began.  Delaying has probably cost me a few possible titles.  But we're really to a put up or shut up moment as far as RTP.  I getting long in the tooth for my next step, and that step is going to require some kind of triggering event.  The one that seems to be the most under my control would be a book.  Much as I would like it to be a collection of TANBI blog posts it will probably have to be something else.  The front runner at the moment appears to be "Not So Standard Scenery."

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I had a terrible idea this morning about how the President could lock up majorities in both houses this fall - thereby forgoing any real possibility of numerous investigations or even impeachment.  Fortunately it is something he almost certainly won't do.  The idea is to let the Supreme Court seat sit open well into the election cycle and then as close as possible so as to finish confirmation before the election to nominate Merrick Garland.  It would put all the people who voted for him that are leaning left in November firmly in play.  But even if it would work for him, he'll never do it.

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I'm thinking I'm into a health phase that can only be described as a cascade failure.  One not serious but annoying thing seems to domino into the next not serious but annoying thing and then that one kicks off something else.  And just when I thought everything was going so well.  I've had this thought that every ten years people ought to be able to go to some kind of inpatient facility for a complete work up and overhaul: change the oil and rotate the tires.  I could certainly use it.  Probably not cost effective though.

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The other night we went to the movies during a rain storm.  When we got out and started to drive home we were stopped and turned around by a closed road.  Then we drove for a while in the other direction until we were stopped and turned around again.  That forced us to drive in completely the wrong direction passed several other roads that were closed, but killed enough time that once we got to the main artery leading where we wanted to go (which had been closed) it was open.  Which let us go for a little while until we couldn't make a turn we needed due to another road that was closed.  A 12 minute drive wound up taking almost two hours.

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I'm moving the Marshmallow Challenge from being a half day workshop into being a one class exercise.  That cuts the available time in half.  I still want to do the traditional scale and the video and then my version.  Each iteration is supposed to be like 20 minutes.  Doing the normal twice and mine once should then be an hour - meaning the 80 minute slot should have time for that and the video.  Normally we do the second version twice.  Technically even that should fit.  But every time I run it through in my head I come up short on time.  I guess we'll see.

Ultimate TV

Can I tell you how cool it is to be able to watch Ultimate on television?  So, so cool.  It would be overstating to say that having a sport of TV brings it into "the bigtime" or "the mainstream."  I'm old enough to remember the early days of ESPN and hour after hour of Australian Rules Football.  I don't think that sport ever caught on in the US even though it was on TV quite a bit.  Still, seeing the sport I prefer to play on a TV in my TV room is pretty cool.

This really isn't totally new.  I've been watching Ultimate on TV for a while.  Usually it has been either the open or collegiate national championships.  And mostly it had been on ESPN 3 or ESPN U and the only way to get it on the TV screen was to use the Roku or stream it on a laptop.  In most of those cases it was just the finals and the semi-finals that even got to those channels, with the earlier rounds streaming on the tournament website.

Lately though it has been different.  Now there's an AUDL - a professional Ultimate league - and they appear to have an actual TV contract.  The AUDL is showing up in my cable guide on Eleven Sports (which I don't get) and the Stadium channel (which I do).  Stadium is on a part of the dial mostly populated by the alternate digital broadcasts of our local TV stations - the world of MeTV and GetTV and Bounce and a half dozen PBS channels.  Not that anyone probably notices, but I checked and Stadium is actually available over the air in Pittsburgh.

So this is a different experience than the prior appointment viewing on ESPN.  This is channel surfing and coming across the Indy Alleycats vs. the Chicago Wildfire midway through the third quarter.  I've yet to stumble upon the Pittsburgh Thunderbirds - maybe that's because they're 3-10 on the season.

The production end of things is small.  Ultimate is difficult to show on TV.  Either you are too close to see what is happening or too far to be able to make out the details.  These telecasts are getting better though.  The people doing the play-by-play actually know something about the game and the players.  The camera angles are improving, and the instant replay is invaluable just like it is in football.

AUDL has some interesting rule variations.  The play to a clock rather than to a point total.  THat's probably better for TV.  They know how long the game will be and there's no soft-cap, hard-cap stuff (although I guess they lose the drama of universe point too).  There are referees - active referees - zebras, with whistles.  Some things that would just be a restart in the game I played are yardage penalties in the AUDL game.  But overall it is Ultimate, and it is on TV.

It does make me wonder if had it come along at the right time would I have been good enough to play professionally.  I guess the answer is probably no.  There was a time when I was probably one of the top 100 college players in the country.  I'm not sure I ever would have cracked the top 20 players in Pittsburgh.  The year after I graduated from CMU the Pittsburgh club team went to worlds and there's a chance I might have snuck on as the last or second to last man on their roster.

There appear to be on the order of 850 players in the AUDL.  I guess it is possible that at the very apex of my playing career I might have been one of the top 850 players in the country.  Although just as possible I wasn't.  I had great disc skills, but I never really had the all around athleticism or the hops or the physical size a professional league would require.  Good throws, field sense, and reading the disc will take you far but they don't get you there faster or let you soar over a defender.  Probably even if it had happened then I would have been watching on TV rather than from the sideline.

If you haven't seen it, you should check it out.