Tag: Apple

The Rewards of Playing Sports, A Diva Athlete List, and Ted Lasso Season 3, Episode 2

On this episode we discuss the Rewards of Playing Sports, Wild Card Athletes, and Season 3, Episode 2 of Ted Lasso. It’s the episode where Roy returns to Chelsea and Coach Lasso’s team goes after the mercurial fictional football legend, Zava.

For me, I took note that St. John’s won the Big East tournament since 2000, it’s NCAA selection Sunday. I have so far failed to pump the water out of the pond in my driveway caused by the blocked culvert, Season 3, Episode 2: (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea

  • The episode opens with a song from Pomplamoose. It’s a song that combines Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” and Bill Wither’s “Lovely Day.” Click here for info.
  • The first big news is that Trent Crimm is going to follow the team and write a book. This makes me think of John Feinstein, who passed away last week and wrote A Season on the Brink. Compare and contrast what Crimm might come up with compared to the book Feinstein wrote.
  • We get the news that a fantastic but maybe wild card, mercurial player is leaving his team. His name is Zava. Anne, I think you knew right away who the player was based on.
  • There is a lot in this episode related to luck or jinxes. We’re got mention of a psychic. Rebecca says Higgins jinxes it when he says there is nothing Rupert can do to get Zava. Ted wishes at 11:11 and so does Danny. I have never heard of that. In the pub, Mae tells the “boys” that their hats are bad luck. Would you say you are superstitious?

If Zava is a wild card athlete, what’s your list of wildest card athletes?

  1. Dennis Rodman – Did wrestling during the NBA finals. Tats. Wedding dress.
  2. John Daly, golfer. Pants. Smoking. What he ate and drank. Anger. Gambling.
  3. Mike Tyson. Biting off an ear.
  4. Ron “Meta” Artest.
  5. Terrell Owens. Sit ups in his driveway while holding out
  6. Lance Stephenson blowing in LeBron’s ear
  7. Chris Andersen “The Birdman” for The Heat. Mohawk and colorful tattoo.

Keeley is up for Zava because he has 50 million Instagram followers. I’ve got the top 10 people with the most Instagram followers. Want to take some guesses? Three strikes and you’re out?

Let’s see how many of the top 10 people with the most Instagram Followers:

  • Keeley and Roy have broken up. It becomes a thing that everyone knows Roy is the one who did it and everyone seems to think it was a big mistake.
  • Anne, Roy and Jamie are teammates. Any guidelines from you about whether Jamie can ask her out?
  • Keeley hires her friend Shandy Fine. Her CFO Barbara doesn’t like it. What do you think Barbara’s deal is?
  • Barbara collects snow globes of the places she’s been. Anne, would you say you collect anything?

What movies featured what could have been stalking but it wasn’t because the interest was reciprocated?

  1. Say Anything – the boom box
  2. Sixteen Candles – Michael Anthony hall the bus, the dance
  3. Sleepless and Seattle – she hears him on the radio
  • Roy and Trent make peace. Roy rips up the article. I thought that end scene was the best of the show. What was it like being back at Chelsea? Roy says it felt sad. Roy can’t enjoy himself. I guess that’s not who I am. Ted: Not yet.
  • Trent says sport is quite the metaphor. Ted says it’s a heck of a nickname too. Anne, what would you say were the rewards of sport?

How would I rank the rewards of my time playing sports?

  1. Go do my job with effort and enthusiasm.
  2. Keep going through failure.
  3. Learning to enjoy the journey.
  4. Ability to handle and use criticism
  • #TorgStories #We are Richmond @tedlasso tweeting

Thank you for checking out this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast!

Podcast on The Craft of Writing Memoir: Derek Owens’ Memory’s Wake

The craft of writing memoir and the subject of recovered memories and post traumatic stress syndrome were among the topics as I visited with St. John’s University English Professor and Vice Provost Dr. Derek Owens. His latest book is entitled Memory’s Wake and tells the story of an abusive relationship between his grandmother and mother. The book is part memoir, part biography, and part research project. Owens is also the author of a book about the teaching of writing I really enjoyed called Composition and Sustainability: Teaching for a Threatened Generation.

You can listen to the podcast below or via iTunes by searching for Prof. Torg’s Read, Write, and Teach Digital Book Club. Also, you can help the podcast attract listeners if you’ll take the time to “rate it.”  Link to iTunes and the podcast page here.

Derek Owens Memory's Wake William Torgerson St. John's University writing memoir

So that you can get a sense of our discussion, I’m including my questions below:

  1. Memory’s Wake is your telling of the abuse relationship between your grandmother and your mother. You also include a lot of the history of upstate New York and research about memory and abuse. So it’s part memoir, part biography, and part research project. Is that a fair description? As to the question, what’s Memory’s Wake about, would you have anything to add?
  2. I’ve latched onto the phrase, “Every Story Has a Story.” By that, I mean for every story we hear or read, that story has it’s own history of how it was written.  This book tells a story that began before you were born. When did you start messing with it in a way that you thought you might write about it?
  3. I want to talk about the rules that govern the conventions of this text. I don’t mean rules I’d find in a grammar handbook. I mean that this book has it’s own rules for how it was written.  To mention a few examples, the sentences don’t start with capital letters, you don’t seem concerned about complete sentences, sometimes you attribute sources and sometimes you don’t, and there’s a lot of play with margins.  I’m guessing you tinkered with that a lot.  The book doesn’t have chapters. Some pages just have one little black and white picture.  There’s heavy use of italics in places. Can you tell me about how you arrived at the published form?
  4. At what points in writing this story did you think it wouldn’t get finished or published? How did you push through those points? What was driving you to get it done and out into publication?
  5. Can you talk to me about how research works in this book?  I’ll tell you what I think I’ve inferred and you can correct me and add to what I’ve said. I think I see excerpts from your mother’s journals, stories told to you by family members, books or articles you’ve read, and visits to places in upstate New York.  I’ll dig in on a couple of these after I hear your answer.
  6. What was the result of writing this book? To you? What do you know/understand that you didn’t understand before? Is your take on memoir different than it was before?  Did the writing of this cause you to remember anything new or see your own childhood in a different way?

The podcast was recorded with a Blue Snowball mic via Garage Band and a MacBook. You can read more about the book and its publisher, Spuyten Duyvil, here.  You can also listen to the podcast below or via iTunes by searching for Prof. Torg’s Read, Write, and Teach Digital Book Club. Please take time to “rate it.”  Link to iTunes and the podcast page here.

Click here to listen

 

I'll Write to You if You Enter email Address Below

Trailer: For the Love of Books

For the Love of Books is my documentary film about Kathy Patrick’s Girlfriend Weekend.  I’ve entered the film in five festivals. If you don’t know Kathy, she’s the founder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Club, an organization which now has over 500 chapters worldwide. Each January, Kathy hosts a “Girlfriend Weekend” book party that brings over fifty authors and three hundred book club members to Jefferson, Texas. This film captures Girlfriend Weekend 2012.  I edited the film on Apple’s Final Cut Pro X and shot the video on a JVC GY-HM 150 U.

Please consider “liking” the post and sharing the link on Facebook. I think you’ll get a laugh out of Wade’s costume and from some very funny lines from talented Pulpwood Queen Authors. Thanks to Kathy Patrick for putting this event together!

Pulpwood Queen Girlfriend Weekend William Torgerson Kathy Patrick
At the Pretty in Pink Prom Party
Photo by Natalie Brasington

Podcast: Apple’s Final Cut Pro X: Making the Transition (podcast)

I first heard about Larry Jordan when I was taking a Pro Lab course at the Apple store on 14th Street in Manhattan.  Larry came up in conversation as a Final Cut Pro X guru several times. I think even the instructor of the course mentioned him.  Because I was working on a documentary film called For the Love of Books, I was trying to learn how to use the video editing software.

Larry Jordan William Torgerson For the Love of Books Apple Final Cut Pro X
Final Cut Pro X: Making the Transition

I bought Larry’s book Final Cut Pro: Making the Transition.  The word “transition” refers to all of those film editors who’d learned all the other editions of Apple’s Final Cut Pro.  I wasn’t transitioning; I was just getting started, but I found the book very helpful, especially when it came to color correction and work flows. I had a lot of trouble with freezes and crashes of Final Cut Pro X as I was trying to export my film.

In my conversation with Larry, we focus on his writing of the book.  You can listen to the podcast directly from this website, or you can download our discussion as an iTunes podcast from the Prof. Torg: Read, Write, and Teach Digital Book Club.

Click on the play button below to listen:

Take a Poll and Tell Me About You and Television?

I usually get to work before my colleague David Farley, and it’s become our habit that he stops at my office door and we talk about something related to writing, teaching, or family. This job we have teaching First Year Composition has carried me into digital writing, and David and I are often talking about digital texts in relation to the teaching of writing. I’m interested in the future of books, and I’m interested in how our internet habits will impact our reading, writing, and thinking. One day, David went over into his office and came back with Lawrence Lessig’s Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Wikipedia (I’m getting more obsessed with it) tells me that Lessig “is a director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a professor of law at Harvard Law School.”

Lawrence Lessig’s Remix

Here’s something I wouldn’t mind hearing about from you in the comments section: Have your television watching habits changed? In this book, Lessig writes about Read Only (R.O.) and Read Write (R.W.) culture. Taking television as an example, I think it’s been R.O. By that, I mean you just sit there and watch it. You consume it. You don’t interact with it. Reading a Facebook post isn’t like that. Reading a Twitter feed isn’t like that. You get to Tweet back. You get to interact.

Television watching, from what I can see, is becoming more interactive. You can vote for your favorite American Idol. You can Tweet along with everyone else as they watch the NCAA basketball tournament. You can read what people say about President Obama and Presidential hopeful Romney on Facebook.  As I understand from Lessig, back when people went down to the town square to see entertainment, they were in a culture that tended toward R.W. They were entertained and had a chance to interact, to sing along, to talk with others, and to go home and try out the songs on their front porch.

With the rise of television and newspapers, R.W. went on the decline. People just consumed content with little or no chance to interact. Now with Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other social platforms such as blogs, R.W. is on the rise. People read Harry Potter and go see the movies and then they write on fan fiction sites. All of these features of consuming and interacting seem significant to the craft of teaching and what it will mean to get an education.

Let’s consider for a second the teacher’s lecture.  Possibly BORING!!!! and most times heavy on the R.O. side of consumption.   I’d like to be as R.W. as I can when it comes to my teaching pedagogy. Perhaps I’m using the term wrong but for now, I know what I mean.  🙂

More on Lessig’s book and some Golden Lines in the coming posts. There’s a poll below for you and if you’d like to elaborate on your TV watching habits, I hope you’ll add them to the comments section.