January 2011

Ron

I never saw Ron Santo play; by the time I was born he was already long-retired. But for every year I can remember, he was behind the mic for Cubs games on WGN Radio, letting his Cubbie-blue blood on the air 162 days a year. Ron’s resolve was unparalleled, and if he could suffer through so many years of losing and misfortune, on the field and in the booth, through all the devastating Hall of Fame snubs, through the diabetes that took his legs, through the cancer that took his life, and still, after all that battering, radiate hope for the Cubs and the future, then certainly, no matter how dark the day, I could keep going, too.

I’ll always remember Ron, not because he was always insightful or witty on the air, because he wasn’t often either. No, I’ll remember his humanity, his wide-open heart, his unflinching courage, and his boundless faith in his beloved ball club.

A greater Cubs fan there never was.

Jan. 27, 2011 baseball cubs sports

Forever

Mandy Brown on digital permanence.

Jan. 17, 2011 perspective publishing webdev

Today You, Tomorrow Me

A nominee for Reddit’s best comment of 2010:

Just about every time I see someone I stop. I kind of got out of the habit in the last couple of years, moved to a big city and all that, my girlfriend wasn’t too stoked on the practice. Then some shit happened to me that changed me and I am back to offering rides habitually. If you would indulge me, it is long story and has almost nothing to do with hitch hiking other than happening on a road.

Read the whole thing; it’s a wonderful story. Let’s all just be nice to one another, OK?

Jan. 14, 2011 inspiration

Rekindled

I spend a good amount of time each day in front of my laptop, reading. For news and blog posts, the computer’s great, but for long reads it’s a terrible pain. Poor design and backlit screens wear on the eyes, and distractions abound. The result: I’d send many stories to Instapaper, but read few of them. In the evenings I’d reach for the book beside my bed, not my laptop.

Until the Kindle.

A recent birthday gift, the Kindle finally gives me the means to read the web’s bounty of long-form journalism, which I love so dearly, without wanting to gouge out my eyes afterwards. I can sit in bed with this tiny thing and have access to anything I want to read—be it books or Instapaper’ed articles—on a screen that looks awfully similar to a printed page. At last I can read whatever, whenever and wherever I want. That still seems like sorcery to me.

In the last few months, I’ve read more great stories than over any other span I can remember. And with so many Kindles, iOS devices and other reading machines now in the hands of consumers, I know I’m not alone. That bodes well for journalism and publishing, and a more promising future for both I can’t imagine.

Jan. 13, 2011 journalism kindle publishing

Bibliotype

Craig Mod:

Bibliotype is a (very) simple HTML, CSS and JS based library for rapid prototyping long-form typography and reading on tablets.

Launched in conjunction with his thoughtful A List Apart article.

Jan. 11, 2011 design ebooks publishing webdev

The Knothole

Witness the crush of people in front of the 10-foot-wide window into Wrigley Field. Where they congregated before 2006, when the knothole in the outfield wall was carved, I do not know. But they are together now.

A friend and I went to the Cubs’ home opener a few years ago. We had no tickets and no plan, just too much time on a cool, spring afternoon and a desire to be there. We jogged to the Purple Line and got to Wrigley soon after the first pitch. The oscillating hum of 40,000 hopeful fans flooded our ears. We circled the ballpark, past the Waveland ballhawks perched on their folding chairs, and, in the distance on Sheffield, there they were.

I counted a dozen as we took our place behind them. Like us, they were ticketless and wanted only to catch a glimpse of their heroes, their fleet-footed gods, through the chain-link fence. They crowded around the knothole, peering into right field with faces pressed close, and chattered about the game and their lives. Most were probably homeless. A tall, thin man sporting Cubs hat and unkempt beard alternated between bites of a McDonald’s burger and swigs of something pungent from a bottle swaddled in a paper bag. An older woman, silver-streaked hair in disarray, held a small battery-powered radio to her ear, listening intently to WGN’s Ron Santo and Pat Hughes. Another, a rotund man with twinkling eyes, crooned softly in his hoarse baritone, the songs absurdist and surely of his own devising. No one seemed to mind.

When a Cub swatted a hit, fanned a batter or did something similarly momentous, the onlookers traded celebratory high-fives and exclamations, even with us. We edged closer every inning, sucked in by their charm. When a Brewer drove a ball into the corner and against our gate, we all spasmed in excitement as Kosuke Fukudome, the Cubs’ rightfielder, ran toward us to retrieve the ball. We could hear the thunder of his feet on the warning track dirt, the grunt that escaped his lips as he threw the ball toward the infield with an audible whoosh of the arm. We were captivated; we were one.

Fukudome, a Japanese import playing his first game at Wrigley, stepped to the plate in the last of the ninth with two runners on and the Cubs down by three. The crowd roared and we rattled our fence, tingling from the electricity in the air. A home run was too much to ask for, we knew. Just get on base somehow, we prayed. Don’t let this end. The pitch hurtled toward home. Fukudome swung and the ball leapt from his bat, climbing high and toward the part of the outfield our little window would not allow us to see. It flew out of sight.

Then the crowd erupted. He had tied it! As Fukudome trotted around the bases, my friend and I celebrated with these eccentric strangers-turned-comrades, several of them dancing odd jigs, united by a brief but fantastic moment in time. One young man insisted on sharing a chest bump with everyone.

The game went into extra innings, but we had to leave before the conclusion. I had an evening lab and, the quarter having just started, I couldn’t miss the first class. We waved goodbye and walked to the El, still buzzing. The Cubs would lose a heartbreaker as I rode back to school, and the ballpark was surely filled with pained wails and moans. But for a few moments that day at the knothole, the Cubs brought us all pure, collective joy—and nary a bit of fatigue.

Jan. 11, 2011 baseball cubs slicedlife sports

True Grit

A great Western, and very funny, too.

Hailee Steinfeld and Jeff Bridges are getting plenty of well-deserved accolades, but the brief performances from a smattering of actors—like Ed Corbin, Joe Stevens and Barry Pepper—really made the movie for me.

Jan. 9, 2011 movies reviews

The Web Is a Customer Service Medium

Paul Ford:

I sometimes chat with people in the book- and magazine-publishing industries. They complain to me about the web. They worry about what is being lost. […]

The web, they are a little proud to admit, confuses them. They say: “We gave away all those short stories on our website but it sold no books.” Or: “We built a promo site for our famous author who does the crime novels and it was just a total boondoggle with no traffic.” Or: “The magazine can’t get enough pageviews, even after we hired the famous blogger. Now management wants to make people pay for access.”

“Look,” I say, “maybe you’re doing it wrong.”

“But,” they say, “we tweet.”

That’s when I tell them about the fundamental question of the web.

Jan. 6, 2011 community publishing webdev

Chris Ballard on Pop-A-Shot

For SI.com:

I have witnessed some unlikely sights in my day, but this was surreal. There on TV was Kobe Bryant, perhaps the most competitive man alive, losing a shooting contest. Not just losing, either, but getting his ass kicked. By a short, bald, middle-aged busboy.

Jan. 5, 2011 basketball sports

LOTR Unleashed

One of my sisters is a huge Lord of the Rings nerd. (It’s not as bad as it used to be, though; you should have seen her room in high school.) I’m just a casual fan of the series. So, as a gag gift for Christmas, I recorded an audiobook of Fellowship’s first chapter. Preceding the book were a few goofy trailers, which elicited both chuckles and horrified looks. A success! Here’s one:

LOTR Unleashed:

Jan. 5, 2011 audio humor lotr