Monthly Archive for May, 2004

And God said “Let there be television.” And it was occasionally good.

Published
by
Andy
on 5/25/2004
in Log
. 0 Comments

It’s not still Monday. It’s actually Tuesday, but this post should count for Monday. Then again, I might talk about stuff from early Tuesday, too. Anyways, I’m writing this from work, because I got really tired last night and just didn’t write. I sincerely apologize.

Yesterday was my second whole official Monday here in Jersey. It was a Monday to beat most Mondays. Actually, it was normal. I went to work. (Late, again. I MUST NOT get into a late habit here.) At work, I worked. In the next issue of tab I’m working on, the centerpiece is some sort of strawberry festival. Back home, we have a Blueberry Festival, but no strawberry festival. The page is due by Thursday evening. The photographers will not be shooting the art until Tuesday night (tonight.) That leaves me basically one day to get everything together. It’s not going to be impossible, just a little more on the line than I’ve been so far here. I tried throwing together an illustration, in the event that the photos fell through. It’s drawings of strawberries in colors other than that of strawberries. Speaking of, if anyone can find the perfect process color (you know, CMYK) combination for the color of strawberries, I’d love your input.

I suppose I should tell you about me last to nights. Law & Order. That’s what my last two nights have been. Sunday was an SVU marathon on USA, starting with Exile: A Law & Order Movie. Exile was about the two-seven precinct guys (the original show), except Det. Mike Logan had been “exiled” to Staten Island for a reason that was only touched on briefly in the movie. It wasn’t bad, but I would have expected more from a Law & Order movie. I actually didn’t catch the movie on it’s first showing, but after 4 episodes of SVU, they decided to show it again. So basically I watched 6 hours of Law & Order on Sunday. There really wasn’t much else to do. Monday was about the same. Except TNT has a marathon of regular L&O episodes a few times a week. I never plan to watch all of them. TNT has this mean trick, though. I’ve mentioned it before. At the end of an episode, the credits are smashed down at the bottom, while a new episode starts playing right away. It sucks you in. You can’t escape. And really, why would you want to. I mean, if you watched this show religiousaly, you could probably beat any law or criminal justice major all to hell in a trivia match. But back to TNT’s trick. I realized that by cutting out the credits, they’re not making each show longer, but increasing the amount of time during that hour that they can show commercials… It’s a conspiracy, but one in which I don’t mind being caught. Maybe I’ll get wise someday. Probably when they release every season on DVD. That could take ten years at the rate they’re releasing them now.

Well, I’ll not keep you with more boring stuff about my television habits. Maybe I’ll have more wisdom to impart later tonight. Stay tuned, and take care…

ON AIR: Kill Bill vol. 2 soundtrack

Andy dreamt of Yogi Bear.

Published
by
Andy
on 5/24/2004
in Log and Observations
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Sorry I didn’t write yesterday. I went to a huge mall, rented a movie, bought a pizza and vegged out. Not much to report. This post is a bit of a departure from my usual report. Here’s what I do want to tell you about:

Last night I dreamt of a lost part of my childhood. When I was young, my family frequently visited this cheesy resort park called Jellystone Park. Everything was Yogi Bear themed. It wasn’t in the best of shape. The park was a leftover, I think, from a generation of people who had loved it, but had moved on. I loved it as a child. My grandparents owned a lot with a small RV trailer permanently parked on it. It was a common summer destination for my family. It was usually a weekend trip, but sometimes we would stay longer. The park was perfect for kids with bikes.

My dream was just a collection of images. I don’t remember anything real events, more like moments. It was more like a tour of memories I hadn’t visited for a while. The place had been shoved into a corner room of my brain, like many a college kid does, I suppose, with those artifacts of his youth he chooses not to take from his parents house. The trailer RV is what I remember best. The fridge, the stove, the small table (it converted into a bed, where my parents usually slept) where I used to listen to the radio and play pick-up sticks with my brother and cousins. There were those funny trailer windows, complete with curtains made from a material that felt like burlap. There was a strand of those funny colored lights hanging from the canopy attached to the side of the trailer. On the front of the trailer was a wooden box that contained a collection of toys. One of them was a funny little brown metal van with a working back door. I wonder as I’m writing this what happened to that van. Down the gravel road was a dilapidated mini golf course that we played on with sticks and rocks. Near the mini golf course, there was great pond that I must have circled thousands of times as a kid. On the other side of a hill was a small beach at the end of what must have been a man-made canal. There was small general store that sold those coveted childhood items; ice cream bars, cheap plastic toys, those Styrofoam gliders that look like WWII planes. You know, kid treasures. I recall that on the other side of the park was a playground that we only went to occasionally. I’m not even sure I was allowed to go that far on my own. It wasn’t a dream resort, but it was good to us.

Toward the end of the dream I remember a campfire out in front of that little trailer. Everyone I loved as a child and who loved me was there. My parents. Both sets of grandparents. Both uncles, both aunts. All of my cousins. Everyone was as they were back then. Everyone was smiling and laughing, their faces lit by the campfire. I remember looking at every person, one by one. Each smiled back at me. As I went around the circle a second time, everyone had changed. They were older, as they are today. There were even a few empty seats. Everyone was still smiling, still talking, still happy. Thinking back, Jellystone Park is a laughable, almost sad little resort “town.” But as a child, the place was a source of joy for my family and me, and I’ll always cherish it. Call me sentimental.

As kids we’re in such a hurry to shuffle off childhood, and maybe do outgrow it. I’ve answered the call to grow up, leave home. To go Be Successful. Both of my grandmothers have died since then. The lot and trailer are long gone, sold because we stopped going. But I’d give a lot just to be back there again, just for a day, an hour.

What was the purpose of my dream? I don’t know. Maybe just to remind of how I arrived where I am today.

The last image I remember in my dream before I awoke was different from all the rest. Everything else had been from my own point of view as a child. This last image was more of a 3rd person view. I saw myself, maybe 7 or 8, walking hand in hand with my parents down one of those gravel roads. My mom was carrying my then-baby brother in her arms. We were younger, poorer, yet less bogged down by those Things that bog all families down. We were laughing.

My family’s been through a lot since those years, and I love my family as it is today, but it’s sad sometimes thinking about whole parts of your life that are forever over. Take care…

ON AIR: nothin’

More than just dinner and Law & Order!

Published
by
Andy
on 5/22/2004
in Log and Reviews
. 0 Comments

That’s right, folks, tonight’s adventures included more than just dinner and Law & Order (although those things weren’t absent).

After work I decided to hit this Chinese restaurant around the corner called Panda. It looked like a crappy Chinese food place, but I was kind of in the mood for cheap, greasy Chinese. I stopped in, ordered, and waited. As I waited, I noticed the giant wall mural. Now keep in mind that this place is roughly the size of my bedroom. Ever notice that in every Chinese restaurant, one whole wall is devoted to a giant stylized mural of the “old country.” There’s always tall mountains, trees, and a waterfall. And usually there are sailing ships about 100 yards upstream from the waterfall. Doesn’t look safe in my opinion, but that’s what’s usually there. Is this standard issue for every Chinese place? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Finally my food was ready, so I paid and went home. I won’t say I was disappointed with the quality of the food, but it wasn’t as good as it seemed it should be in my mind. I guess that’s just about the definition of disappointed.

The two episodes of L&O that I watched tonight were very good. Both were pretty complex, and it would take hours to explain, so I won’t. Just suffice to say they were both good.

But what then? My usual four episodes were cut short by some dumb NBA game. I didn’t know what to do with my time. Luckily, just then, my friend/coworker Toni called and asked if I wanted to catch another band at the Stone Pony. I said something along the lines of “sounds awesome!” or something. You know, something good. The band turned out to be the Von Bondies, whom I didn’t really know, but whom Toni really seemed to like. They played what seemed like a short set, but then again, we arrived just as they were taking the stage, so we missed all the openers, which can make a show seem a lot longer. The music was pretty damn good, except at a few points when they just started rocking out and my ears were overloaded and I couldn’t really make out any specific notes. Fortunately that was the exception and not the rule. The lead singer has an interesting voice. The really interesting thing was that both lead guitar and bass guitar were women. Often, at least in my experience, if a band has a woman, she is the lead singer. These women sang backup, but mostly they just played, and I thought it was really cool. The drummer must have had a fan of some kind under his set, because his hair was blowing straight up most of the time. All of their songs were about 2 minutes long I think. Apparently, the lead singer and Jack White of the White Stripes got into a nasty fight last year, so that was a cool connection. So the Pony was a good start to a Friday night.

After that, Toni and I met two other guys who were fellow coworkers at a bar in part of Jersey called the West End. The bar was called Mix is, as Toni put it, a euro-trash kind of place. You know, white leather seats, candles on all the tables, stripes painted in pastels of the ceiling. Cody and Mike, the guys we were meeting, also work in the art department. They had been there a while by the time we got there. I had a yummy apple martini, and just listened to the other three gossip. It was fun.

Oh, and another cool part was my wallet remained untouched throughout the night. Toni paid my cover at the Pony, because it was cash only and all I had was plastic, then they all bought my drinks, so I didn’t complain. I do feel obligated to cover Toni for something some time in the future.

On our way to the Mix, we encountered a DWI checkpoint, where every car was pulled over and had to atone for their sins to Jersey’s finest. Despite Toni’s having had a long island at the Pony, she answered the cop “no” when he asked if she’d had anything to drink tonight. I thought that was pretty balsy, bold face lying to a cop at a DWI checkpoint. She couldn’t believe it herself afterward. I don’t know what got into her.

I guess one I write it all down it doesn’t sound like much of an adventure, but it was better than the alternative: NBA on TNT. Actually, I probably would have read a book instead. I don’t know how many more games of solitaire I can stand.

Who am I kidding, I love solitaire!

Well, take care folks…

ON AIR: The Von Bondies - Poison Ivy

Mundane post about mundane day’s mundane events

Published
by
Andy
on 5/21/2004
in Log
. 0 Comments

I realized right before I say down to write this that I was planning on cataloguing my day much as I would keep track what I’ve done at work in a given day. Almost like accounting for myself to my boss. I realized that would be excrutiatingly boring. I mean, what do you care that I had popcorn fish sticks for dinner? I’m sure you don’t. So that means a rant is necessary… But about what?

Damn, saw my Cubs lost tonight. That’s always a bummer. But that’s not really a rant…

OK, so at the Daily News our proofing process is fairly simple. A black and white proof is made of every page. That proof is looked at by a few people, they mark corrections, the corrections are made and the Quark file is put into a folder, where an editor opens it, creates a PDF, and sends it to Richmond, where it’s printed on newsprint. Not so simple where I’m interning now. First, I make a proof for myself on the color plotter. I check to make sure everything looks all right. Usually this ends up being more like 4 or 5 copies before I get one that I’m ready to hand over to an editor, which is the next step. The editor looks at the page, marks corrections, and sends it back to me. I make the changes, and make another proof to give the editor. She usually has another set of corrections, then she sends it back to me. Then Harris comes along and convinces me that I should overhual my design and I repeat the above steps all over again. Then, once the page is done and approved by everybody, I have to split it into two files, because there are two editions with different page numbers. After I make the page number changes, I have to make proofs of both and run those by the editor again. If they’re OK, she tells me to go ahead and send them. Now, I’ve done the pages in Quark. At this paper, Quark is just a front end system. The backend system is this pagination software called Harris (just a coincidence it has the same name as my boss). Some of my pages can be sent straight from Quark. It involves a wacky file naming scheme, which I screw up a lot, and sending the page to a facility in another boro, who sends electronic proofs back which I check on a screen on the other side of the newsroom. I have to check all the separations and stuff like that. For those pages that I can’t send directly from Quark, I have to make an EPS of. Then I have to load that EPS into the content server, at which point I have to go to a PC terminal (Harris is PC only) and place the EPS onto a new page created in Harris. Then that goes off to the other facility just as the Quark files do, and I have to repeat the above described steps.

EDIT: The above described process is only for the weekly tab I do. The process for regular broadsheet pages is a little different. Sorry for any confusion.

Not that you care. Actually, you may have just skipped to this paragraph. I can’t say that I blame you. I did watch 3 consecutive episodes of Law & Order after work tonight. TNT has it down. They start playing the intro to the next episode while the credits from the previous episode are squished at the bottom of the screen. Michelle described a phenomenon to me that I didn’t believe was a problem until I experienced it myself. There is usually a commercial break right before the final trial scene in every episode. Then there isn’t another commercial until after the opening scene in the next episode. So there’s about 15 minutes where you can’t get off the couch, lest you miss anything. This is challenging when you have a particularly curious dog running around the house trying to keep you on your toes. I now know why this is a phenomenon that is worth noting. Not that I’d want them to do it any other way. Three episodes is awesome. I’m totally hooked on Law & Order, as I might have told you before. This Sunday they’re going to have a marathon on TNT, including a Law & Order movie. I can’t wait.

Again, stay tuned for another thrilling episode. Tomorrow I may have a surprise for you, my Constant Readers. Take care…

ON AIR: Fountains of Wayne - Bright Future In Sales

Frosted Flakes are my friend

Published
by
Andy
on 5/20/2004
in Observations
. 0 Comments

SOAP BOX: I’m beginning to suspect that my blogging service is inferior. I was very disappointed to see that Blogger released an image posting program and service that is PC only. It’s ironic, too, that the service uses Picasa, a blatant ripoff of iPhoto. I really hope these guys get with it, otherwise I might pack up and leave…

Now, on to my day. A typical Wednesday in Jersey, I suppose. (This post is going to be short and to the point.) Work was good. I actually got up in time to eat my Frosted Flakes. I love Frosted Flakes. I finished two projects today, just in time to get new ones tomorrow. I am also supposed to be ready to present some prototypes of the new tab I’m supposed to be helping develop on the 25. I’ve got very little done. The 25 is what, Monday? Cripes. I might need to work some this weekend…

After work, I went to Blockbuster and rented a film called “Amor Bandidos.” I don’t recommend it. As you can see, I’m participating in all manner of unique New Jersey activities. Actually, I might get to go see the Von Bondies at the Stone Pony on Friday. That would be pretty cool. Me digs the Stone Pony. I also want to go to this music festival, The Great Bamboozle. The legendary Patti Smith is going to be playing there. Talk about cool.

For those who work at newspapers: Every newsroom has different jargon for newsroom activities. One of my favorites is the term used for when a page is due or when it’s done. At the Daily News back home, we say a page has to “drop” but a certain time. Later we talk about when that page “dropped.” Where I’m interning now, we say a page has to be “off the floor” by a certain time. Anyone else have any interesting terms for this?

Well, like I said, a less eventful day calls for less blog at the end of it. I’ll try to spice things up as the week goes on. Take care…

ON AIR: The Weakerthans - A New Name for Everything