Generally we hear and read about "older folk" pooh-pooing blogs, websites, and Twitter. So it's refreshing to find someone 71 years old taking to New Media with all the zest of a 20-something. That is the legendary Jane Fonda. I literally stumbled over her blog post as I'm one of her 45,000 (as of this writing) followers on Twitter and had to take time to check it out.
Ms. Fonda's site and blog also contain her videos, Twitter updates, and other information. You can even buy her famous fitness tapes. But I think she needs to go a step further and have video channels on YouTube, Blip.tv, and other services to better distribute her images. Also a page of Mp3's of interviews and music, and a widget like the one I have would be cool, too.
That way her fans can have her content on their blogs!
In her 70s it seems the Atlanta dweller has rediscovered her youth but isn't trying to be young. Indeed, Fonda says that "sex gets better with age" and is coming out with a book detailing her views on this called "The Third Act: Entering Prime Time". Trouble is she's so busy living life she's behind schedule with the book! I can't wait to see what she does in her 80s!
Now that the long-awaited Lake Chalet is open, one would think everyone in Oakland's happy that it's done and the boathouse is restored. But no. I'm told some Oakland councilmembers are still upset over a vote that took place three years ago. So much so they won't even set foot in the Lake Chalet!
Let's go back three years to 2006, when San Francisco restaurateurs Lara and Gar Trupelli, known for the Beach Chalet and Park Chalet restaurants, were selected over the always good and very popular Everett & Jones Barbeque, in Jack London Square. The Oakland City Council was deadlocked four in favor of the Beach Chalet proposal and four against it.
Specifically, Nancy Nadel (Downtown-West Oakland), Oakland Councilmembers Larry Reid (Elmhurst-East Oakland), Desley Brooks (Eastmont-Seminary), and Jean Quan (Montclair-Laurel) against the Beach Chalet proposal. Then Oakland Council President Ignacio De La Fuente (Glenview-Fruitvale), Vice Mayor Jane Brunner (North Oakland), Councilmember Patricia Kernighan (Grand Lake-Chinatown) and then-Councilmember Henry Chang Jr. (At-Large) voted for it.
It was left to then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown to cast the tie-breaking vote, selecting the Beach Chalet proposal. Why? Because the Trupelli's proposal called for them to spend $2 million of their own money to create the new eatery, a sum Ms. King could not match at the time (her proposal called for $1 million in spending.
The City of Oakland's plan was to use $12 million to refurbish the boathouse; some councilmembers believed that expenditure should be coupled with "capacity building" an Oakland business, in this case, Everett and Jones.
The controversy also helped to cause the petition drive that caused Ron Dellums to run for Mayor of Oakland. Because De La Fuente voted against King, it was believed by some that he would not be supportive of African American business interests. He lost to Dellums, who's now Oakland's mayor.
King was not notified of the competition
King said she learned about the restaurant competition after seeing it advertised at the boathouse and called Mayor Brown. The submission deadline had past, but the process was restarted to give her time to submit the appropriate documents and review her proposal. In all, 10 proposals were considered; the Trupelli approach won.
It's over; enjoy the result
It's sad to learn that some councilmembers can't even bring themselves to visit the Lake Chalet and congratulate Gar and Lara for the work they've done. It's an incredible place with great food at the right price. We've always talked about increasing investment in Oakland, but when it happens, some of us seems to take pleasure in finding something wrong with the result.
If those councilmembers are so concerned with building the capacity of women and minority businesses in Oakland, they need to set up a program that does just that. But what's happened historically is Oakland gives out loans - not grants - to such businesses then makes public examples of them when they can't pay them back.
The City of Oakland needs to put its money and effort where its mouth is rather than pay lip-service to a problem that needs to be addressed and indeed should have been a long time ago.
When I learned the Oakland Raiders hired John Marshall to be the defensive coordinator, I held out hope that he would repair the Silver and Black run defense, which was 24th in the 32-team league against the run in 2008.
In preseason so far, the Raiders have given up 5.1 yards per rush, and made 49ers rookie runner Glen Coffee look better than he may really be. That's too much already. The objective is to be at or below 3 yards per rush average per game. (If you say, "Well, it's preseason", that's doesn't make a difference. Formation structure and technique remains robust through preseason and regular season. What may change is what's done out of the formation.)
In the past three years, the defense has been gouged by several elite NFL runners, most notably LaDainian Tomlinson of the San Diego Chargers.
And who's up first on the Raiders' 2009 schedule? The same Chargers.
The problem with the Raiders defense is not with personnel. They have two capable defensive tackles in Tommy Kelly and Terdell Sands. Their linebackers are swift to the ball, led by Kirk Morrison and Ricky Brown, who had an interception in the 49ers game yesterday. No, it's not people; it's scheme.
The NFL's best defenses were all known for a special approach. 1985 The Chicago Bears used the then-new "46" defense. The 2000 Baltimore Ravens employed a hybrid of that system to keep offensive lineman off Ray Lewis, their talented middle backer. The Dallas Cowboys under Tom Landry used the "Flex Defense", a kind of zone defense against the run. The Tampa Bay Bucaneers under Tony Dungy as their head coach used a variation of the Steelers Defense under Head Coach Chuck Noll and Defensive Coordinator Bud Carson.
Defensive experimentation wins even in high schools. This is the 46 "Gambler Defense" by Coach Steve Calende at Conrad Weiser HS, Robesonia, PA.
I think you get the idea. The best defenses have innovative design approaches to accomplish the objective of stopping the run. Not so the Oakland Raiders defense. The 2009 Raiders' four-man-front defense spreads the linemen out leaving giant bubbles that can be exploited by a smash mouth offensive team. That's what the 49ers did on Saturday and even what the Cowboys did in their loss against the Raiders a week ago when they averaged 4.4 yards per rush.
Fixing the Raiders Defense
To stop this problem, the Raiders need to go back to the basic 4-3 "over" and "under" alignments but with a twist. This is where one defensive tackle is over the center, and the other is over either the strong or weakside guard. But the "twist" is that the other defensive tackle would angle toward the center rather than the guard thus double-teaming the center with the other defensive tackle. The defensive end would fill the guard-tackle gap on that side; the opposite defensive end would maintain a position outside the offensive tackle.
The objective is to stop the strong or weakside off-tackle run and force it to the outside. Of course, getting the right defensive call requires homework on opposing offensive tendencies, but with this, even if the running play is to the opposite direction, the placement of the defensive tackles will allow the middle linebacker to flow to the ball and make the play and the defensive end stationed outside the offensive tackle will place him in a position to get the runner or funnel the runner inside to the middle backer. The outside linebackers remain in their positions to stop the runner from going around the end.
Another adjustment here would be to bring the strong safety up to a place on the opposite side of the defensive tackle double-team and essentially give the defense a "four-four" (four linemen and four linebacker) look. We would blitz the safety from that set.
This defensive design would immediately solve the Raiders run defense problems. Right now, the Silver and Black don't seem to be concerned with defensive design and it shows up in the terrible post game statistics we've seen over the years.
Last night I saw the incredible sci-fi movie "District 9" at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland (and the line for it was out of the door and around the building). Without giving too much away (and that's a matter of opinion) for those who've not seen it, the movie produced by Peter Jackson (of Lord of The Rings and King Kong) and directed by Neil Blomkamp, concerns a giant alien spaceship that has parked itself over Johannesburg, South Africa.
Over the course of the last 28 years - over a generation - over one million aliens, called the derogatory name "Prawns", were placed in an area of the city called "District 9", and that zone became a giant slum.
Some say District 9 is the best science fiction movie of 2009 if not the best one ever made. That question will be the focus of my poll below, but let's focus on the movie more before we get to the survey.
The story concerns what happens to a common human (Wilkus Van De Merwe played by Sharito Copley) who works for a government organization that is directed to evict the aliens and move them to a new location said to be better than District 9 and called- in an obvious set up for a sequel - "District 10".
During the eviction process, Wilkus finds a harmless-looking metal vial that when he turns it sprays a "fluid" into his face that causes him to go through a gradual transformation from human to human / alien. That, and how the World reacts to his change, is the central story of the movie.
The movie has two incredible story archs, the first one is how Wilkus changes from kind but bumbling government worker to awakened activist for the aliens in the process of trying to find a "cure" for his problem. The other is how humans go from being the one's putting up with the weird and threatening habits of the aliens, to the ones who are actually being weird and threatening to the aliens. As we learn more about them in the movie, we find they are just like us: concerned with family and wanting to just go home.
What I love about this movie is it shows front and center man's inhumanity not only to man but to other life forms and throws it right in one's face. I came away with the idea that the United Nations needs to craft an international plan for alien visitor protocol just to make sure we don't allow the violation of alien life forms.
District 9 Best Picture?
Julian Scanton of Vanity Fair thinks District 9 is best picture material, and I have to agree with him, especially now that we will have ten movies to pick from at the 2010 Oscars. But is it the best science fiction movie ever?
That's a tall order of a question as their are so many to chose from. Here's one comprehensive "Top 10" list posted in Popular Mechanics in 2008:
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey
9. Short Circuit
8. Soylent Green
7. Blade Runner
6. The Running Man
5. Destination Moon
4. The Truman Show
3. The Road Warrior
2. Minority Report
1. Gattaca
This blog post is to be filed under "hedging my bets" because it's based on a tip from a very good friend who texted me that Ret. General and Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was to be named as Deputy Commerce Secretary under Gary Locke.
But Dennis Hightower - who's referred to as the "Colin Powell" of business and serves on the Howard University Board of Trustees with Powell - was sworn in to that position August 11th.
So either there will be two deputies, or my friend's source (who's a friend of General Powell) got it wrong, or Powell's headed to another high level post, or some hybrid possibility's afoot.
But since my friend is not in the habit of calling or texting me with this kind of tip (or any kind for that matter) and remained firm that the news was certain when I fired off questions , I elected to pull the trigger on issuing this rumor. Moveover my friend and I both worked for several years on the Obama campaign and gained a lot of well-placed contacts, so the chance my friend's correct is pretty high.
But to be sure, I just called the White House and The Department of Commerce for confirmation - no "yea" or "no" but a promise to "check and call me back" as of this writing.
Powell the focus of many appointment rumors
Since Barack Obama became the 44th President of The United States, Powell, who endorsed him even though the General's a Republican and Obama's a Democrat, has been rumored for a high-level post. Last December it was Mid East envoy, before that it was defense secretary, and for a time education secretary. And while Obama has stated that Powell would have a role within his administration, he hasn't made that happen. Meanwhile, Powell has taken to the airwaves to express concern with the President's economic strategy.
Powell appears on CNN's Larry King Show three weeks ago to talk about the Gates / Crowley issue and said he was concerned with how much money the Obama Administration was spending and where it was going. On King's show, he said:
"And the greatest concern I'm hearing -- and I see as a citizen and I hear from my fellow citizens as I go around the country -- is, my gosh, where is all this money coming from? Doesn't this mean more taxes? And we have to do -- what the administration, I think, and the Congress, has to do a better job in helping the American people understand some of these most complex issues, health care being number one.”
So it may be that Obama's planning to put Mr. Powell in a position to help him focus on the health care issue, or the economy in general. Regardless of the direction, it's clear that President Obama wants Colin Powell in his administration in some kind of way.
Last week, 16-year old singing sensation Miley Cyrus performed a song and dance number using a stripper pole at the Teen Choice Awards as she introduced her new single "Party in the USA."
The controversial production was the focus of much discussion and even outrage in some quarters. But according to US Magazine, Miley's father Billy Ray Cyrus defended his daughter's actions Thursday at the Hellman's/Facebook Feeding America event in New York City.
"You know what? I just think that Miley loves entertaining people, She loves singing, songwriting. I always tell her to love what you're doing and stay focused for the love of the art and not worry so much about opinions."
On the matter of opinions, the poll I ran asking what you thought of her dance presentation has drawn 1,763 votes with 38.84 percent preferring she had not used a pole and another 30.46 percent hating both the pole dance and Cyrus too.
What I find interesting is that people don't understand that even a negative online reaction is an endorsement of Cyrus in that it's additional content about Cyrus.
As I will present in a a future post, Miley Cyrus has a remarkable worldwide online search reach I've never seen before, reaching three continents. There's a marketing formula here that seems to tap into our basic primal instincts and generates buzz, traffic, ratings, and sales. ("Party In The USA" opened this week at number two in the Billboard Hot 100.) In effect this approach actually uses society against itself.
Last night, Wednesday, August 19th at 6 PM (well, I got there ay 6:38 PM) Paul Grabowicz, the Associate Dean and New Media Program Director at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, hosted the second meetup of local bloggers in the school's library. It was a great event.
The idea of these meetings is, as the email put it, ...
"so people can get together to socialize, share ideas, solve common problems and explore ways we might collaborate.
We also want to find out what kind of training people might be interested in through the UC Berkeley J-School's Knight Digital Media Center"
And really that's what happened. The meeting itself, which I did not video as some people don't want to be on camera, started with the idea of breaking into groups around "editorial" concerns and "business" issues, but that was jettisoned because the free-flowing conversation the group established was going really well.
The meetings drew about 25 people, including such luminaries as Scott Rosenberg, who wrote the book "Say Anything" about the history of blogging (and which I'm reading now), Mark Haas who's partner in business is the legendary Dave Winer (also featured in Scott's book), Dave Cohn of Spot.us which raises money for stories that journalists and bloggers want to cover, and Martha Ross who has a blog called Crazy In Suburbia, and George Kelly from the blog "All About George".
There were a large number of ideas thrown out during our talk session. One of them was a kind of Bay Area Advertising Network, which was Susan Mernit's concept for a way to tie together local bloggers into one "place" online that can draw better ad dollars. The other was a directory of news and blogging tools, to which Grabowicz directed us to the website NewsInnvotation.com.
(A momentary aside here. NewsInnvotation.com features new business models for news and is a kind of online think tank created by the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. It's worth a visit. What are some of those "new models"? The "hyperlocal" blog site - like Oakland Focus or Oakland North - the new news organization, publicly supported journalism like Spot.us, and "the ecosystems framework" which brings together individuals to join as one, which is something like what Susan's proposing.)
The talk part of the meeting ended with in all about 20 different ideas. Teaching workshops are one of them, and something I want to do as few people know about vlogging (I was the only vlogger in the room). Another one that was talked about at length was just getting more people to these events. Kwan Booth said that there were about 175 bloggers in Oakland and only a handful of them were there: about six. So we resolved to reach out and tell you all about these meetings; Booth wants to twist arms to get more people there. Seriously.
(But don't worry about having your arm broken. The next meeting is to be determined in September and then we're planning another gathering in Oakland in October.)
Then the meet-and-greet restarted and I took out the Flip Video Camera to get the impressions of the attendees (well, those who didn't mind talking to me with my camera on). In general, everyone was very happy.
I agree with Paul Grabowicz who said that he felt as if he was at the ground level beginning of something big. Media is going through a massive upheaval as more sites come online, ad revenues are spread around, and large media companies are being cut down to size, and all of this is really fun to be a part of for me.
But in all of this change, it's foolish for anyone to go it alone, even those with large media companies. (Er, heck, especially them!) Being a part of a group like ours - well, join our group - is the way to go. I went to meet other bloggers and just listen and it was cool to meet the other African American bloggers in this area. It was a lot of fun.
If you want more information, contact Paul Grabowicz at 510-642-3892 or grabs@berkeley.edu
