I hate malls. I hate shopping. So why am I at Concord Mills? Well the plan was to hit the outlets in Blowing Rock, but then we heard that today is App State’s homecoming. The only thing worse than shopping is shopping in the vicinity of a bunch of drunken homecoming folks from a school that is not your own. Thus we made the trek to the home of more than one million square feet of retail. I’ve gotta qualify for some sort of husband-dad award for this, right?
Here's a very interesting article about the NHL's R&D program:
The truth is, such a mess would be improbable at best on Bettman’s watch. Under him, the NHL, sometimes under fierce criticism, has become perhaps the most research-friendly of the major professional team sports leagues in North America when it comes to the conduct and rules of the game. It wasn’t always so. In 1998, when the league had a Fox TV contract and arranged for a Las Vegas IHL game to be played in a four-quarter format, the experimentation was met with catcalls. The improvised research and development camp held toward the end of the 2004-’05 lockout was viewed as a desperation measure.
But the more carefully planned R & D camp held last month has mostly been welcomed and applauded. The scrimmages, held at the Maple Leafs’ practice facility on Aug. 18 and 19, featured some jarring, Martian-looking innovations. The players—who were, in an attention-getting wrinkle, mostly top junior stars eligible for the 2011 draft—road-tested everything from two-on-two overtime to shallower nets to having the second referee view the play from an elevated off-ice platform. On day two, viewers were confronted with the bizarre spectacle of the traditional five faceoff circles being replaced by three, running up the middle of the rink.
Such an exercise is unique among the staple North American sports. If major league baseball’s powers-that-be ever got a notion to play experimental games using five bases and four strikes, they would surely do so on a closely guarded Pacific atoll.
My roommate in college once stated that the NBA would be infinitely more interesting if they put circles on the floor at various places between the three point lines and were rewarded with higher points the farther away the circle was from the basket. So if you hit a shot from beyond half court you'd get six points. I laughed at first, but the more I thought about it the more I liked it. Actually I thought that you could set up zones in between the three point lines (circles being a little to easy to guard). I really think it would bring about the rise of the "designated heaver" which might keep some old guys in the league much like the designated hitter does in baseball.
Oh, and don't get me started on baseball. Anything they can do to keep me awake past the third inning would be welcome.
I have no idea what the future holds, but I have an inkling that technology is going to unleash the creative types. I know, I know the changes being wrought upon the publishing industry are well documented, but sometimes it's hard to grasp what's going on until you see small examples of those changes. For instance, yesterday at lunch my Mom handed me a "proof" of a book she's been editing and was written by a fascinating man from the Blacksburg, VA area. The proof was as professional-looking a book as you're going to find and a publisher wasn't involved; it's being self published via Amazon. (FYI,when it's ready for sale you'll find it here).
But the sea-change that's occurring in the world of the arts really hit home with me when I saw this short done by an amateur Russian filmmaker that's described thusly by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing:
A Russian amateur filmmaker called Alexander Semenov produced this 2.5 minute bootleg Transformers short with a couple of sub-$1,000 cameras, two hours' of footage and a month in the editing suite. It is insanelybadass: a perfect vision of an alternate universe where shirtless Russian thugs go bot-to-bot on dusty distant roads; more fun that the big-budget Hollywood equivalent.
Transformers from repey815 on Vimeo.
I'm really very excited to see where this explosion in artistic availability will take us.
and you run the risk of rain. Looks like it’s clearing up though. Fingers crossed.
Driving home from work on 421 on Friday I saw a guy in an Escalade get cut off by another guy in a Honda. On a scale of 1-10 in crappy driving I’d say the move was a 4, but the guy in the Escalade acted as if the other guy had stolen his man-purse. He tailgated him for a couple of miles and then pulled up next to him and made all kinds of interesting gestures. The guy in the Honda remained blissfully ignorant, or at least he did a great job ignoring the dude in the Escalade.
Eventually they both passed me and I got to see the license plate on the Escalade. It read “Am Saved.”
The only retail place I know that Celeste and I both enjoy, thus its threat to our bottom line.
The oldest giving his younger brother a serious hair cut. All that’s missing is the bowl.
St. Simon’s Island, Charleston, SC
Befuddled 