Another Delco Guy In South Jersey

Friday Fantastic Four

I was fascinated this week but the outpouring af emotion over the death of Steve Jobs.  I had always considered him marketer, an organizer and not really a person of great substance.  On his death though, I found the sheer volume of his quotes from speeches and essays to be astounding.  My brother noted, "You have to wonder how he had the time."

Obviously, in retrospect, I was wrong on Jobs.  He was one of the most influential people of the last 50 years.  He made tech cool, revolutionized industrial design, was a game-change for the music industry and so much more.  The world will be a much duller, less beautiful, less classy place without him.

So, here's a Fantastic Four suggested by a loyal reader:

What Four People Accomplished More In The Last 50 years Than Steve Jobs?

1. Nelson Mandela - crushed apartheid, founded a new nation, changed the world.  A mega inspiration for Africa and the world.
2. Bill Gates - the anti-Jobs, created the operating system most of the world uses, uber geek now doing amazing work though his foundation.
3. Oprah - created a media empire, brought books to the masses, world is waiting for her next move
4. Mikhail Gorbachev - perestroika, glasnost, what more can you say? Had the courage to realize that the communist experiment was doomed and moved to free millions.

Jobs did a lot, but these folks did more.  Who are your four?

On Change and Facebook

Come on people.  Are you frigging kidding me?

From looking at most of the web today, and certainly at Facebook, the only thing that people did all day was bitch about the new changes coming at FB.  The first part of the day was spent complaining about the changes to the Facebook feeds that were rolled out yesterday.  Legitimate news organizations devoted entire programs to the changes and the complaining.  The second act in the Day of Facebook Change was the rapt attention paid to FB founder Mark Zuckerberg's unveiling of the real changes coming.  After an intermission of rejoicing that the 'Like button' survived the update, the final act of today's drama was a wave of whining and moaning by people who don't want others to see their comments or 'likes.'

It's not like nothing else happened today.  The stock market crashed.  The Republicans continued pandering to the lunatic fringe.  REM broke up.

But everywhere you looked today, or listened or read, it was all about Facebook.  I know most of the world is addicted to Facebook, heck I know I spend too much time on it, but this is insanity people!

A Legend Passes - Remembering Greg Greenday

I grew up a sports-crazed kid in Delaware County, where my grandfathers taught me all there was to know about the Phillies and Eagles and my dad talked about watching games at The Palestra in the heyday of the Big Five.  It was a heady time to grow up, with every one of our teams in the hunt for the playoffs nearly every year of my childhood. 

Some of the greatest sports voices of a generation were on the air then.  Bill Campbell, Whitey, Harry Kalas and Merrill Reese's rich voices were the narrators of the great sports moments of my childhood, both broadcast live and mimicked from the backyard.

And the newspapers!  I remember days when I had four papers to read, from the urbane Bulletin to the gritty Daily News to the local flavor of the Daily Times.  It was the height of the sports columnist in Philadelphia as well, with names like Frank Dolson, Bill Lyon and Bill Conlin adding color to the players I idolized.

But in Delaware County, one guy was a legend above the rest.  Greg Greenday was a local boy from St. James who lived in Brookhaven. Seemingly every day, he was filling in the detail from a Big Five game or the NFC East or setting the line for the epic high school football battles of my teenage years.

Greenday took me places I could never go, inside the Villanova locker room or to Amen corner at Augusta.  He taught me, by example, that writing was a ticket that could take a kid from Delaware County just about anywhere he wanted to go.

Sadly, last weekend Greg Greenday's journey ended after 61 years.

When I was working at Widener and coaching at Cabrini, I got to know Greg as more of a person than a mythic figure.  I found that the beautifully written game stories and columns came not just from immense talent, but also from a caring person with a diligent research ethic and vast memory that is so rare in journalism today.

Greg was one of the best questioners I ever saw work.  He would pause after an answer, make his notes, think for a moment, carefully considering how to approach the next point.  Greg was able to ask gently probing questions after losses that gave readers (and young coaches) insights into the game that would have been missed by most. He also brought great humor to an interview, laughing and joking, comfortable among men being boys. 

We were always happy when we saw him at the table for a game. We knew we would get a great story the next day, sure.  But we also knew he would have something positive to say, along with a funny inside story for us from somewhere he had been that week.  He had a perfect sense of the moment, always able to put you at ease or to let you go when you had nothing more to say.

There were a lot of great things written about Greg Greenday this week.  One thing that I think did not come through clearly enough is what a great writer he was.  He wrote with elegance and poetry, with a style that let you know he loved every minute of what he was doing.  But there was no self importance to the work.  He had a reverence for the games and the people he covered and he did every thing possible to let you know that.  He could cover the Eagles, sure, who couldn't?  But Greg made BOWLING interesting enough for me to read his weekly column in the 80s.

When he left the Daily Times a few years ago, I tried to explain to Greg how important his writing had been to me as a young person.  I stammered something about him making me want to be a writer.  He brushed it off, saying that it was nothing, he was just having fun doing his job. 

I am sure there were dozens of other kids like me, Greg.  Thanks for writing sports like no one else did.

On Facebook

Apparently Facebook is the new place to announce your engagement

I've been thinking a lot about Facebook lately and social networking in general after I announced my engagement on the site in December. The flurry of congratulations from random people I have not seen in months or years was stunning. My childhood babysitter, a guy I coached baseball with for my son's team, some folks from college and high school. It all seemed a little bit odd. These are good people, all of them. And I love to see what is going on in their lives, but it did make me stop to think.

Why do people (myself included) who rarely buy birthday cards for people they see every day suddenly start posting birthday wishes for that cute girl from grade school who now lives in Montana, the wife of the guy who used to play in a band I like or the kid's teacher from 3 years ago? I get that it's convenient and way easier than a card and a stamp and writing and mailing and all, but really, why bother?

Three basic reasons, I think.

One is that Facebook helps us be the people we'd really like to be. You know the ones, the people who send cards for all the major holidays, keep up with what old friends are doing, know the ages of all their cousin's kids, make the best guacamole for parties and always seem to have great photos of the kids in the Christmas card. We can't every really be that person. He (more likely she) is a freak of nature akin to folks who can bench press cars and are 7 feet tall.

But yet, with a minimum of effort, Facebook lets us pretend to be that person, even in the most diluted way.

The second reason is that Facebook is all about helping us connect with who we used to be. It's a lot less about who we are today than who we used to be, or even who we wanted to be back then. It opens up a lot of windows into the past, where we see ourselves 15 pounds lighter with 80s hair and a goofy smile on our faces. Some of those windows are best left closed, like the ex who was kinda weird and stalkerish or the former boss who drunkenly hit on you once but never mentioned it again. Best to just click ignore on those folks.

We still seem to end up with an army of people we sorta remember from high school and people we didn't really hang out that much with in college to go with the people we don't talk to much at work, the assistant coach's wife and the contractor that did a lousy job on the door. Facebook is the way the geek from chem. Class gets to talk to the star quarterback or the hall monitor gets to chat it up with the hot cheerleader, albeit 20 years too late.

Bottom line is that it's a continuous class reunion, with all the fun chatter, awkward remembrances and naughty possibilities running 24/7 on your netbook in the living room while the kids do homework and your spouse is on the Wii Fit.

The final reason that we all say happy birthday to the jerk father of the jerk kid from the soccer team and join causes we could care less about is that Facebook easily fulfills our basic need to just belong to something, to connect with others and be somehow larger than the person in the existence we have today. It's a pretty basic human need. Facebook is the bridge club and afternoon corner tavern of this generation. None of us bowl anymore, but we all play Farmville and tell the world about our latest Bejeweled score.

And in the pale blue light of the LCD screen, that is what passes for connection and human bonding as we move into the second decade of this millennium.

Who's Got The Time Anymore?

Obviously I write a blog.  And I have a Facebook page too.  And a Twitter feed.  I have a disused Tumblr site, an abandoned MySpace page (remember MySpace?), a LinkedIn Profile, about 8,000 images on Flickr and an entire website I manage at work.   I've got a pile of places on the web I try to get to every day and there are more than a few places where I used to post regularly and rarely get to anymore. 

My instant messaging platform aggregates my AOL, Yahoo, Google, and MSN instant messaging identities along with keeping me updated on FB status changes, Tweets and new email.  This was suppose to make my life easier.  Sometimes I just turn it off so the world doesn't seem so overwhelming.

I can post to my blog, Twitter or Flickr from my Blackberry as well as sent IMs, emails from all 4 of my accounts and also send photo and text messages.  I also occasionally use it to make phone calls.

I've got 2 kids, a new house, a significant other (not my laptop), a job, and a pile of other things to do that are not i- or e- or tech- or anything like that.  It's not like time is infinitely available to me.

I freely admit that I often find myself pecking away on my Blackberry posting from a cool restaurant or a kids' birthday party, with the nagging thought of "I HAVE to get the post up!!!!"

Recently though, I have been having that thought and then another right on its heels of "Or what if I don't?"  What would happen if I didn't? Would I become suddenly less relevant to the rest of the world?  Will my already meager posse of followers and readers dwindle to nothingness?

Would it matter?  Do they feel, as I sometimes do, that they "must" visit my site or comment on my latest status change lest they somehow be found guilty of not being an appropriately interested 21st Century Friend?

I am going to spend the next week or so thinking about my online media presence and usage as well as how it has changed in just the 3 years I have been blogging.  If you've your own thoughts on the topic, feel free to chime in!

Jody Mac Signs off at 950 WPEN

Jody's Last PM Drive Show
Originally uploaded by Cavalier92

I kinda saw this one coming, but it still stung when my brother Matt called me and told me that Jody MacDonald, perhaps my favorite sports talker in the business had just signed off for the final time on his WPEN 950AM show.

I've listened to Jody for 20 years, first catching his overnight show on WFAN when I was working overnights. Later, when he was hosting mid-days on 610 WIP, we met when he came to the college radio station I worked at. I still caught his show a good bit when he departed for WFAN, but I was thrilled in 2005 when WPEN made Jody the centerpiece of its switch to sports radio and put him on afternoon drive against Howard Eskin.

As much as I love listening to the guy, he was never the brash, confrontation host that radio GMs and PDs seem to want these days. Wry and funny and full of substance, his shows are for the serious sports fan. So it came as no surprise when the station brought in Mike Missanelli and moved Jody to mornings.

When the move to mid-days came after his heart bypass surgery and he was paired with Harry Mayes, the writing was on the wall. Jody was playing out the string here in Philly and even his most frequent listeners knew it.

I will say here today that I am about done with 950. I used to be a big Misanelli fan, but his show seems sophomoric and silly. The station that said it would never insult its listeners and would be a different kind of sports talk is now just a poor second rate imitation of 610, the much-diminished giant of Philly sports talk.

My best wishes to Jody MacDonald and his family. I will be listening on Sirius and on 1050AM.

The Best Blog Post Ever

Every time a Philly sports team makes the playoffs the sports fans of this town are forced to endure a national cliche fest that paints us all as grade school dropouts who threw snowballs at Santa, booed Jesus in the manger, wear white sheets and pointed hats to games and hate anyone not named Rocky Balboa.

This week's drive by assassination of Philadelphia sports fans comes to us courtesy of Fox Sports' Ian O'Connor.  This pretentious ass gets his though from an anonymous blogger named Gimpy von Hogaknocker who takes apart O'Connor's overwritten bag of BS on a line-by-line basis.

It's not just the best Philly sports blog post every (sorry E and Matt), it's not just the best sports blog post ever.  It's the best fucking blog post ever.  Period.

Nice work Gimpy!

Some Really Great Writing

I'm pretty quick to jump on journalists when they mail one in, so I thought I'd take a moment today to compliment a stunning piece in today's Inquirer.

Melissa Dribben brings light to the sad story of Zal Chapgar, a young man who most of us knew only as the person who threw himself from the Lowes Hotel in Philadelphia earlier this month.  Her prose is warm and empathetic, but also weighty with resolve to tell the tough parts of the story as well.

I'm not going to do a capsule here, I can't possibly do it justice.  Just go here and read it.  It's Dribben's best work in years.

Quite a Surprise

I have to say I was a bit shocked to discover my daughter on the cover of the local paper today!

Some of you may know that my children live partially with me and partially with their mom.  When they are there, they live on a farm in the middle of the Pine Barrens with about 130 acres of cranberries.  When they are here, they live in a modest twin house on our half acre of happiness in Moorestown.

In another phase of my life I helped out at the farm, first as a field manager for the blueberry operation starting in the summer of 1991 and eventually running the cranberry cleaning machine that took the cranberries out of the bog, cleaned them and loaded them onto trucks.  I took a few weeks off from work each October and we all pitched in to get things wrapped up for the year.

The harvest always drew in folks who came down every year, or who just pulled over on the side of Route 563 to watch.  The media came every year, from the Food Network, to Good Morning America to the little local paper.  At least a part of the job was handling the visitors, the media and doing public relations.  The deep reds of the berries and the golds greens and yellows of the trees make for great photos and vivid memories.

Cranberry farming is a difficult business and this group takes it seriously and do it well. They go out of their way to tell their story carefully and to craft it to include many of the traditional touchstones of American agriculture: family, legacy, hard work.

So I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised to see the beautiful photo of my daughter with her grandfather on the front page of The Burlington County Times today, or to see her clapping and having fun and her brother wearing waders and pushing berries in the video posted to the AP today. 

But still I was a bit surprised because it's a part of my life I have left behind and that I don't hear about from them much.  There's a lot of family-values PR in the video, but I watched it with some real happiness for the window it offered me into this other portion of John and Emma's life.

I'm on the road today, so thanks to everyone who helpd me get the media together to post this!

On Tim Russert

RIP Tim Russert
Originally uploaded by timothypedersen

I met Tim Russert last May in Buffalo, New York as he spoke as the home-town guest to a conference he attended. It was a few weeks before father's day and he spent most of his 40 minute speech talking about his dad, Big Russ. He also spun some fun yarns from the set of Meet the Press and took us inside what his day is like.

Afterwards, he stood around the makeshift conference bar with a few of us political junkies and had a beer, talking about the possibilities of the 2008 race that was still a year away at the time. He was down-to-earth, extraordinarily well-informed and generous with his insights and time.

I chose the image today from the 244 on flickr because it was not your standard headshot and seemed to capture the guy I met over a beer in his hometown.  Thanks to Timothy Pedersen.

For quite some time I really didn't think that much of Tim Russert's work on NBC. For some reason, his style and I did not connect and I generally avoided Meet the Press, which I considered a poor competitor to This Week.

Then came the White Board Moment.

On a night when seemingly no one on television was able to explain just what was happening, Tim Russert threw aside the technology and the maps and the millions of dollars of stuff at his disposal and communicated directly with the American public. He clearly showed us what was happening and how important Florida had become.

With a $2 white board.

In that moment I felt understood this guy and how well he connected with the US populace. Last year, I was gratified to find that my analysis was correct, but more gratified to get a chance to hear him talk about his dad and his son, to thank his wife for all of her time spent helping him and to thank those of our group for helping students like his son Luke go to college.

Last week he got to see Luke graduate from Boston College. Russert had done an awful lot in his career, but I am glad that "Little Russ" got the chance to see that moment before the screen went dark yesterday.

DUH!

I learned the hard way a few years back to always make sure I log off my email when I step away from the computer.  The FBI seems to think that Larry Mendte didn't learn that lesson until this week. 

A Philly.com story today notes that the FBI was called into the Larry Mendte - Alycia Lane email case when a CBS3 staffer found a computer logged into Lane's Yahoo Mail account months after the station had fired her.  The staffer let Lane know.  No one is saying WHO exactly called the FBI, but Mt guess is the station wanted to make sure it wasn't on the hook for this one and made sure it was covered by getting the feds involved.

All this to see the bikini pix, Lar?

Delco Guy Mendte is in trouble here.  The feds have been on this for months.  He's off the air until it gets cleared up.  His wife is still on the air over at Fox29, but my guess is that she is SERIOUSLY pissed.  I'm not thinking 29 is going to pick Mendte up to fill the Huddleston gap.

A Whole Different Delco Guy in Hot Water

  Bob and Larry 
  Originally uploaded by Irish Philadelphia Photo Essays

Fellow Delco Guy Larry Mendte, anchor on CBS3's evening newscasts and husband of Channel 29 anchor (and super hottie) Dawn Stensland, is in hot water with the FBI.

Philly.com is reporting that the FBI is investigating Mendte for possibly reading former co-worker Alycia Lane's private email.  On Thursday, FBI agents seized Mendte's personal computer at his home.  His lawyer confirmed it.  You might remember Alycia Lane from her own e-mail scandal where she sent racy pictures to sportscaster Rich Eisen, whose wife found them.  Oh.  and that incident with the NYC cop.

This looks bad.  First, the feds do A LOT of homework before they make a move.  They're darn sure they have Mendte here.  Secon, he's a journalist and they took his personal computer.  That's a pretty touchy area and I've got to think that the judge issuing the search warrant gave this some careful review.

Why do I care beyond the obvious prurient interest?  Mendte grew up in Lansdowne, Delaware County and went to nearby Monsignor Bonner High School. He's always seemed like a good guy to me.  I can't imagine why a guy like him would get involved in a mess like this.  He's off the air at CBS3 right now, but his bio is still up on the website.  So was Alycia Lane's for a week or so before she got her walking papers.

On Newspapers

In a desperate, if misguided, attempt to bolster subscriptions, The Philadelphia Inquirer drops a free paper on my front walk each Sunday.  At least I think that's the motive.  Who knows.  No one from the Ivory Tower has let me in on why the free newspaper appears.  Maybe the paper delivery guy likes me. 

I have to admit I have used most of the papers as fire starters.  This past Sunday, I actually attempted to read it.  And I found that I couldn't.  I didn't have the patience to flip through the pages.  The text was too small and I had already heard or read most of what was in the paper.  Sitting at the dining room table I came to the stunning realization that I have moved so far from the media that made me want to be a writer and the my habit as a 20 something of reading 3 papers a day that I am basically unable to figure out what to do with a newspaper in my hand.

Then tonight come the stories about Buzz Bissinger losing it on Will Leitch of Deadspin while they were both on the Costas HBO show.  Bissinger is about the best writer going these days and I can't imagine him ever writing a word I would not want to read, but the man went nuts on Leitch, basically accusing him of dumbing down the written media through writing a blog.  Nothing Leitch writes is ever dumbed down, and Buzz was way off base here but the incident does give one pause.

I'll admit that I think it's news websites, blogs, personal websites, RSS streams and IMs that have destroyed my ability to read a news paper.  I think on that point Bissinger is right.  But I won't say that the content is dumber.  It may be more narrow, but it's also far more accessible.  I can read what i want when I want to.  And I can link and search for similar or opposing thoughts about the same topic.  I can put a single article in the context of the many and I can do it on mt phone, at my desk at work, or even as we all have done with a paper, on the toilet.

Some of the best writers around are guys like Leitch, who do it from a perspective that is just different than the mainstream media.  Others are folks with day jobs who post blogs for friends, family or the world as a whole.  Some, I dare say, are as good as Bissinger.  A lot of the rest is crap, but then so much of what we read and have always read in newspapers is crap too.

So I have to note the clay feet of one of my idols today and say that perhaps, in his fervent desire to hold onto the past, Bissinger has missed the talent of the present and the promise of the future.