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Damn Yankees Broadcasters

Let’s stick with television a bit longer. As a New York Yankees fan, I watch a fair number of televised games on George Steinbrenner’s otherwise unimpressive YES Network. Part of watching those games means grinning and bearing my way through the commentary of regular team broadcast voice Michael Kay, whose gift for inaccurate, specious and scowl-inducing narration deserves a designation of its own among the many, many things that annoy me. Like nails on a chalkboard.

So I’ve been wondering if there’s a good reason why we can’t have alternative game commentary via the Interweb? Why shouldn’t Major League Baseball — or any professional sports league — let anyone who wants to provide a commentary track for any given game — using the same basic digital audio tools that hundreds of people are using to create podcasts already — do so easily?

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And the Answer You’ve Been Waiting for Is —

The SopranosIf you watched the series finale of “The Sopranos” tonight, then you know by now that creator David Chase has the sense of humor of some kind of sadistic auteur. The heavily anticipated denouement was startlingly, almost hilariously abrupt and unformed. If you haven’t watched it, no need to worry: there are no spoilers in this post — as if spoilers would have made any difference with this episode, anyway.

The only interpretation of the events that I can muster after recovering from my dumbfounded shock is: life goes on, and a series finale, while tremendously weighted with the audience’s expectations, is nevertheless only an arbitrary stopping point. The series ended just where it happened to end, outside of dramatic logic. Or at least, it ended according to the logic of Chase’s final, defiant assertion that this show was an artistic endeavor, not an entertainment enterprise — and in accordance with no other agenda.

That this complex and engrossing series could end this indiscriminately is undoubtedly a let-down to millions, but at least someone had fun. That someone was Chase, who in the final minutes seemed to delight in sending up the idea of nail-biting suspense, of an operatic climax that would bestow meaning on much that had gone before. We all wanted that, but it’s clear that’s not what Chase wanted at all — tomorrow’s New York Daily News might as well read “Chase to Fans: Drop Dead.” Me, I happen to think he got a huge kick out of sending countless people home from “Sopranos” finale-watching parties all over the country in a state of stupor, disappointment, even anger… if you ask me, that’s the kind of behavior that suggests the guy could use some therapy.

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Thinking About Syncing About My iPhone

iPhoneDid you hear that Apple Inc. is planning on releasing a new product that combines the features of an iPod and a mobile telephone in one device? It’s true, and they’re calling it “the iPhone.” Looking at the commercials they created for it, I’m even thinking that I might want to buy one for myself when they’re released at the end of this month. Crazy, right?

We might even see some more news about the iPhone next week when Apple kicks of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. There’s no telling what announcements if any that the company will make, but if there’s one iPhone-related thing that I can point to as being at the very tippy-top of my list, it would be to improve .Mac.

That product, a collection of Web-based tools and services available to consumers for an annual subscription fee of about US$100, has been long in need of help. In fact, I’ve written about it before, and as many of my friends know, it takes only the barest of conversational provocations to get me to launch into a tirade on my frustrations and disappointments with it. Oh, too late, you got me started!

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Design Advice for Your Personal Life

There’s a good interview with Erik Spiekermann over at the design blog Ideas on Ideas. Spiekermann, the famous designer, typographer, co-founder of Meta Design and now principal of Spiekermann Partners always has something interesting — often divisive, frequently inspiring — to say about our profession.

There’s one quote from the interview that caught my attention: “I have a bad history of neglecting my private life. One of the main reasons my first wife divorced me was the fact that business always took precedence over anything else. I have often had to leave her and my son in the middle of a vacation and go to see a client.”

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Nudge Your Elements

For those who haven’t come across it already, earlier this year I made a fairly complete summary of my approach to designing online with a grid, presented in conjunction with Mark Boulton at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. There’s one crucial idea buried in that slide show, though, that I felt was important enough to pull out into its own blog post, if only so that I can have a URL to which I can point people when I’m explaining it. Here it is…

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Managing Mail Imperfectly

MailWe’ll never be able to defeat the onslaught of email. At least, that’s my impression. We’ve essentially signed on for a world in which we can be regularly assaulted by communiqués from anyone at any time, and in which those communiqués pile up more quickly than we can address them. As much as we can try to develop coping methods for better managing that continuous inflow, I just don’t seriously see a way for us to ever fully tame it.

In spite of the basic futility of the idea, people will feel compelled to try to tame email. Creative Good co-founder Mark Hurst, one of the smartest people I know, advocates aggressive management of one’s email store in his new book, “Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and Email Overload.” His advice is to “empty the in-box at least once a day,” arguing that a full in-box “demoralizes users with feelings of overload.” The ideas that each email represents can be relocated to more appropriate contexts — to do lists, or folders in your email client — where they’re less obtrusive.

That’s great advice for many folks, I’m sure. In fact, about a year and a half ago, it was my practice to dutifully empty my in-box regularly, filing away emails in a complicated hierarchy of folders labeled with clients, projects, subject matters, or groupings of some sort. But, I soon came to realize that, for me anyway, it was more work than reward.

Today, I use Apple’s Mail program to manage my email, and I keep everything in my in-box, regardless of who sent it, what it’s about, or in what future context I might need it. And I’m much happier.

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Countdown to Finale

The SopranosDepending on how “The Sopranos” concludes its eight-year, six-season run in next week’s series finale, it will rank somewhere in the top three of my list of the best television shows of the past decade. Which is to say that it’s up there for sure, just not necessarily in that top spot that so many television critics almost reflexively assign to it.

I’ve been watching “The Sopranos” faithfully for years, enjoying it the vast majority of the time, and remaining highly invested in the show’s motley band of indelible characters throughout. But I admit that, over the course of its eighty-five odd installments, it’s had its share of digressions, missteps and shark skipping, if not outright shark jumping. Let’s not mince words: there have been awful, tone-deaf episodes and ill-advised plot lines (though the good ones have far outnumbered the bad ones).

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You Got to Move It, Move It… to Brooklyn

If you live in Manhattan and you work in media, new or old, then chances are decent that at some point you’ll move across the East River and take up a nicer, more spacious residence in Brooklyn. The environs are cleaner, the life less hectic, the population friendlier and the real estate generally more affordable. I’ve watched lots of my friends do that over the years. More power to them, I thought. But at the same time I quietly told myself that I liked it so much in Manhattan’s East Village that I’d never be one of those folks. Not me.

Except, sooner or later if you live in the East Village, chances are decent that you’ll get tired of the East Village, too. After eight-plus years, I’ve grown intensely weary of that neighborhood’s overripe scenester vibe, its unkempt landscape, and mostly its Friday and Saturday night massacres: crowded sidewalks full of drunken fraternity boys, desperate sorority girls and tragic hipsters, raucously enjoying their youth — as is their right, I admit — late into the night. Pesky kids!

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Get Fresh Tonight

Folks, just a reminder: Fresh Dialogue 23 is tonight at the Haft Auditorium at F.I.T.. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, this year’s theme is “Designing Audiences,” which will examine how designers and design consumers are both getting all up in each other’s faces and what not.

We’re going to be showcasing some great talent that you’ll be hearing lots about in the coming years0 designer and illustrator Stefan Bucher, Eric Rodenback of Stamen Design and game designer Katie Salen. And, of course, the event will be moderated by the amazing Ze Frank who, if you haven’t seen him in person before, is worth the price of admission alone. There are a few seats left available (Haft Auditorium is relatively huge) so you can show up at the door tonight at 6:30p. Don’t miss it, just don’t!

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Drawing for Memory

One of my most annoying shortcomings is that I have a terrible head for names. The moment someone is introduced to me, I’ll say something to the effect of “Very happy to meet you,” and then focus almost immediately on some detail of his or her physical appearance — a hairdo, or a singular quality of the face, or some interesting wardrobe minutiae. Almost always, this leads me to distraction, such that the person’s name never fully registers; in fact, it usually disappears from my memory immediately, like a swipe of rubbing alcohol evaporating tracelessly on the skin.

This is bad. It’s a horrible practice, especially for someone, like me, who works in a large company, where I’m meeting new co-workers all the time, as many as three or four a week. The problem is compounded by the fact that I might meet a colleague for the first time today and not see that person again for weeks or even months… Usually not until some inopportune moment, when it becomes achingly inconvenient to be so forgetful. Like waiting for an elevator together, or finding myself face-to-face with that person in a small meeting; times when not addressing a person by first name is conspicuous and awkward. As often as not, the victim of my interpersonal amnesia demonstrates that, unlike me, he or she has courtesy, grace and mental stamina enough to remember my name. Makes me feel like an ass.

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