I have always been a big baseball fan. Until I reached the awkward years of puberty, I wore a Seattle Mariners uniform to every game I went to. It had my favorite players number on the back and name, Scott Bradley, no. 9. He was the backup catcher, but he always came through in the clutch and he he also had the same name as me. I skipped many school days to go to the Kingdome to watch my team play the first time they went to the playoffs. I cried in 1994 when the world series was canceled, and I’m not sure if the joy I felt when we beat the Yankees in the ALDS in 1995 has been equaled. The summer of 2001 in Seattle was boring because all the Mariners did was win, I didn’t know what to complain about. Baseball was my first love, before the other loves of my life; my wife and music.
That being said, Major League Baseball’s blackout policy on mlb.tv needs some serious help. In the year 2009, content providers should be agnostic in their delivery method. I would gladly pay twice the amount to mlb.tv to be able to watch my Mariners play every night at Safeco, or whereever they are, over the internet. I could watch games in my cubical, on the road at a coffeeshop, or at home. You can still generate ad revenue subscription fees through mlb.tv. Instead, with your current policy, you’re leaving out a whole generation that believes you should pick what you want to view, where you want to view it, and how you want to view it.
I don’t subscribe to cable. It’s not because I wouldn’t enjoy watching cable or because I can’t afford it. In fact, both of those statements are very true. I don’t subscribe to cable because I know I would enjoy it too much. So, instead I get all of my viewing over the internet. I can choose what I want to pay for, ala carte.
Please take a lesson from CBS Sports in their presentation of the 2009 NCAA tournament. Games were available for viewing through an iPhone app, streaming over the internet or on the plain ole’ television.
I saw people doing this on Facebook … Music has been such an integral part of my first 27 years, it seemed like fun to pull together. It was way harder than I thought it would be. So, without further ado; here are the 22 albums/symphonies that have effected me.
R.E.M. :: Automatic for the People / Monster – my first favorite albums
Phish :: a Live One / Billy Breathes – my first musical obsession
Miles Davis :: Kind of Blue / Sketches of Spain – my 1982 datsun in hs had these two albums on a tape, listened every day for 3 months … two classics
Miles Davis :: Live Evil – Michael Henderson’s bass is unreal on this … incredible playing by Miles
John Coltrane :: Blue Train – Lee Morgan’s solo on Blue Train is unreal
John Coltrane :: a Love Supreme – the absolute best expression of spirituality I’ve ever heard/seen/felt
MMW :: Combustication – didn’t know jazz was going to progress to modern times until I heard this
Radiohead :: Amnesiac – late to the Radiohead train, this was my first. I’m obsessed now.
Wilco :: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot – a band I’m looking forward to getting old with
Stravinsky :: The Rite of Spring – Listened to this obsessively in the spring of 03 … reminds me of the strange tension and lies that brought us to an ill conceived/illegal war.
Mahler :: Das Lied Von Der Erde – Nobody ends a symphony like Mahler. The end of the final movement is breathtaking. I stop whatever I’m doing now and stare at the wall when I hear this.
Bartok :: Symphony for Orchestra – intensity
Black Star :: Black Star – my first introduction to hip hop …
Joni Mitchell :: Blue – grew up with this album. This album defines beauty and the disappointments of youth.
Van Morrison :: Moondance – the other album I grew up with. a classic
the Beatles :: Rubber Soul – My first Beatles album. Any self respecting person ought to remember the first time they heard the Beatles.
Clifford Brown :: with Strings – he recorded this at 24, just a year before he died. He played it with the maturity of a grown adult … a shame.
Lee Morgan :: Sidewinder – Lee Morgan has the technique of a high flying gymnast.
Flaming Lips :: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots – A modern classic
The Roots :: Things Fall Apart – I had no idea hip hop could sound like this before I heard it.
Elliot Smith :: xo – I remember walking around Fremont smoking after work to stay warm while I waited for the bus to get home in the cold. This was the soundtrack.
The newspaper industry has had a steady decline in recent years. The internet has flattened the industry, no longer do you need to live in San Francisco to easily read the San Francisco Chronicle, just go to their website. Also, if you’re looking to buy a new car or rent an apartment, you now turn to Craigslist, where listings are free and up to date.
The next phase of the local news is going to be neighborhood specific reporting. I live in West Seattle, and we have a fantastic local blog called WestSeattleblog.com. Despite the poor design aesthetic, the site is awesome. They understand the ways to leverage the internet, not as a single layered resource, but as the multi-layered resource that it is. They are available through Facebook, Twitter, email, and their own website. It is the first place I turn when I hear a weird noise, see a new sign, or get stuck in traffic. Just about every time, they are faster and have more news than every other local news resource for the simple reason that they rely on neighbors looking out for each other. Don’t get me wrong, they are always on the news path, covering obscure and non obscure events.
I dread the day when we have no local newspapers. Their place in a functioning society is paramount. Without them, we all lose. Regardless, the new generation of local neighborhood sites springing up is a good sign.
Today was a tough day. I was spared, but many of my compatriots were not.
A couple of weeks ago I was at one of my favorite grocery stores, PCC co-op, and noticed that they had one of my absolute favorite seasonal beers, Sierra Nevada’s Big foot Barleywine Style Ale. Damn it’s good. Barleywine Ale’s are known for their high alcohol content, and this one is no slouch at 9.6%. The balance of sweetness to hoppy bitterness is divine. Like most high octane beers, it sits on your tongue for quite some time, this one has one of the most pleasant aftertastes. The sweetness if followed by this fantastic fruit taste.
I like big tastes in general; aged Indonesian coffees, Cabernet Sauvignon wines, and big bold beers like IPA’s, barleywine ale’s and winter ales. I also like loud music, motorcycles, and Jackson Pollock paintings; controlled chaos is best.
The other thing I really like about it is it has a lot of alcohol. 9.6% goes a long way.
An encore run with the Mariners would be phenomenal. The Cincinnati Reds came to town two years ago and the Mariners sold out every game, Junior got a standing ovation all three games. I was lucky enough to have great seats for the Sunday afternoon game. He hit two solo home runs, and the Mariners won 3-2. It was easily one of my favorite Mariners games that wasn’t in the playoffs or pennant race. It reminded me of being a kid again in the Kingdome.
With Junior in the lineup, it didn’t matter if we were losing in the ninth inning, or if we were down by 5 games in September; things happened and they would find out a way to win. It was exciting to watch. There is nothing more pure than watching his effortless swing drive a pitch into a gap.
My Freshman year of college, he was traded to Cincinnati. Baseball in Seattle never felt the same after that.
Seattle has been hurting lately. Our sports teams have all fallen on hard times, we lost the Sonics, and every big company is laying people off.
He hasn’t been the same since he left Seattle. He has spent most of the decade injured, his stats have fallen off dramatically.
I want one more season. I want a reason to show up early and watch batting practice again. I want to see him hit a couple more out of the park that he built, but has played too few games in. I want him to play his last game in a Mariners hat. I want him to go into the Hall of Fame as a Mariner.
The lineup came out this morning. I’m a wee bit impressed. From top to bottom it’s awesome. I’ll probably go for Phish, cause I’m a sucker. The rest of the lineup is crazy good, to boot.
I’ve been waiting to see this on my utility bills for a while. If we can tap into Americans competitive spirit, and get them to turn off their lights when they leave the room, or unplug the cell phone charger when it’s unused, we would save a lot of energy. If my bill told me I was wasteful compared to my neighbors, I would second guess my energy use. Fortunately, I live in a fairly new house, so my utilities are efficient. Plus, Seattle’s moderate climate doesn’t drive my bills up too much.
I know this would work brilliantly.
The district had been trying for years to prod customers into using less energy with tactics like rebates for energy-saving appliances. But the traditional approaches were not meeting the energy reduction goals set by the nonprofit utility’s board.
So, in a move that has proved surprisingly effective, the district decided to tap into a time-honored American passion: keeping up with the neighbors.
Last April, it began sending out statements to 35,000 randomly selected customers, rating them on their energy use compared with that of neighbors in 100 homes of similar size that used the same heating fuel. The customers were also compared with the 20 neighbors who were especially efficient in saving energy.
I just signed up for an account on 12seconds.tv. It is exactly what it sounds like, you are limited to 12 seconds of video. Kind of like Twitter for YouTube. It’ll get some traction, but I’m not sure just how useful it is. I love Twitter because I can read it in meetings, on the bus, at a green light. I’m not sure if 12 seconds of video can be viewed in all those situations. Maybe it’s a little ahead of it’s time.
My question is this: I have yet to find a business that is using it. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough, but I don’t think it’s happening right now.
The online world has changed quite dramatically in the past 5 years. It has grown from a single track, bull-horn and a soapbox world, to a conversation. The advent of YouTube, Flickr, Friendster, and Myspace we’re all predictable. People like taking videos, photos, and talking to each other. These first wave social networks paved the way. Flickr and YouTube were purchased by Yahoo and Google and have been smart enough to integrate and open their api’s. This was been the key to their early success. Recently, an argument could be made that Twitter has been so successful because it’s api is so accessible (I’ll start writing this article).
The success of new/social media has happened because people like sharing content with their friends and family. They like talking about their lives or their friends lives or watching other peoples lives. It’s no surprise that these online worlds became fodder for college kids to share the previous nights keg stands and bong hit pictures with each other, as younger generations are quicker to adapt to new technologies. It’s no surprise that these things became popular, very quickly.
Some things have surprised me. Twitter has surprised me, immensely. It makes total sense when you look at it now. The world is so connected, and so eager for information and human dialog. It was genius to build a service that makes it so easy to write short 140 character. It was genius to create a service that was so open and available, that most any developer could build an application to use it. They recognized that if a service that only allowed 140 character posts was ever going to succeed, it was going to need a lot of entry points.
What’s also surprising to me is that brands of all kinds have been able to get into this world and participate too. These days, you can’t just build a website and hope for everyone to visit. If you want to make an impact online, you must go to where your users are. I would guess that most of the time, your users aren’t on your flash powered microsite. I’m sorry. It’s probably really neat, probably has a lot of nice graphics, and probably cost a lot of money. Truth be told, they probably aren’t visiting your site every day. You know what sites they are visiting? Ask your kid in college, and it’s probably the same: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Myspace, and every other site that you think are just for college students.
Take Starbucks–or, as I should say, Brad from Starbucks. Considering that over 30,000 people follow Brad, he does an excellent job answering questions and talking to people. His tweets aren’t overly clever or exceptionally charming. But then again, neither are Barack Obama’s, and quite a few people seem to think he’s fantastic at Twitter.
The Mariners need to bring back Griffey. 