Patrick Cooper: Greetings from Evanston, Ill.

The 'Devil Wears Prada' thing is still a trip

Patrick Cooper — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:12:44 +0000

The "Shit [group members] Say" meme has finally arrived in Evanston. The university-created "Stuff Northwestern Students Say" video is not bad. It's not among the best. Casey is right for asking drama students to rise up and produce an unsanctioned take. But what Northwestern has now is a solid effort with some great lines. I'd [...]

Bacon and spam shouldn't go together

Patrick Cooper — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:15:09 +0000

The new brand of attempted spam on the blog this month is a topical comment coupled with last month's friendliness (and a Facebook URL). Certain attempted spams add bacon to the mix, which is evil genius: Eliminating trigger misspells: "We meant to ask about the bacon when we were there a couple of weeks ago. [...]

The fundamental things apply

Patrick Cooper — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:46:13 +0000

No other word for it: Friday night was cool. Lori and I went after hours to Smithsonian's American History museum, sipped champagne served by a man in a fez, watched the premiere of Warner Brothers' beautiful, digital restoration of Casablanca, and heard Bogart's son speak of dad. We happened to get tickets after colleague Erica [...]

If you have ideas for the American U paper

Patrick Cooper — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:12:27 +0000

Sitting in the newspaper offices in a university center is no adventure-sport film night with a Bogart, but I still get a charge out of it. Through friend and former colleague Anne, I've joined the board of directors of American University's student paper, The Eagle. Last week we had our first board meeting since my [...]

Worth watching: Civil rights, blizzards, Supermen

Patrick Cooper — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:11:05 +0000

I came across three great Web videos yesterday. All of them deserve a post. I don't have that kind of time. So, you get one post, three videos. 1. Via former colleague John, The Roots cover Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around. It's an early Rolling Stone listen. Powerful mix of clips, including footage [...]

You eventually get to the song, but until then…

Patrick Cooper — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:18:32 +0000

Yesterday at work, I ducked out of a demo to deal with time-sensitive issues flashing across my phone. A while later, when the issues were resolved, I skipped the rest of the demo and went to NPR's Tiny Desk. In the demo session, the friends leading the project had already taken me through key parts, [...]

Sometimes a stranger's search makes your afternoon

Patrick Cooper — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:18:10 +0000

An app regularly kicks out what randomness folks search on Google to somehow land on this blog. My favorite today comes from Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon: "holden caulfield red hunting hat deer hunting." This old post comes up fourth for the search on Google Vietnam. Cool. Also unexpected: Google's new privacy-policy alert box in [...]

Banff at Nat Geo: Ski, dive, climb, don't walk

Patrick Cooper — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:47:54 +0000

A group of us from work went last night to National Geographic to see a night of top films from the Banff Mountain Film Festival. Amazing stuff. Each of the Banff films, short and short-ish, took a high-definition leap into adventure sports and activities. You had extreme skiers, remote kayakers, scuba-diving Arctic researchers, ice climbers, [...]

Welcome to the new chair

Patrick Cooper — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:32:27 +0000

At work these days, we're evaluating desks and chairs for NPR's new office. With the chairs, I'm biased. One of the chairs we're considering is the chair I bought this summer for my desk at home. The arrival of the new chair, a Herman Miller Sayl, has meant the dismissal of my old chair, an old friend. [...]

June Foray going strong makes my day

Patrick Cooper — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:32:01 +0000

So, when people get ready for work in the morning, they usually think about a few things: breakfast, commute packing, the day ahead, and maybe plans for the evening. Me, I think about those things. But some mornings, like this morning, I think about things like the odds of June Foray, the voice of Rocky [...]

Orange you glad you asked

Patrick Cooper — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:59:45 +0000

Today's best conversation, prompted by orange-juice signs hanging all over Gallery Place: Which came first, the fruit name or the color name? An oddly well-cited Wikipedia entry answers. "The earliest uses of the word in English refer to the fruit, and the colour was later named after the fruit." Bonus etymology: "Before the English-speaking world [...]

There are moments I love the Internet

Patrick Cooper — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:31:31 +0000

Like, when I visit Facebook and find a colleague, a college friend of my brother, is friends with leading Philadelphia photographer Zoe Strauss, who is also friends with one of my favorite bands (where the leader is in a different tab in my browser, blogging about making an album with rubbing alcohol and razor blades) and [...]

In defense of how long I keep my phones

Patrick Cooper — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:12:49 +0000

People at work used to give me crap about my phone. They were not entirely unjustified. My phone was a four-year-old Blackberry Curve I'd owned for two-and-half years and only used full-time for the last year of its life. The phone wasn't good at maps, photos, apps, or the Web. But they should have seen [...]

Does everyone else's wireless keyboard do this?

Patrick Cooper — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:52:06 +0000

Mine blips and gets stuck on a character at least twice a week. I don't know whether all wireless keyboard do this or just my 2008-ish one.

Never change, Pat Collins

Patrick Cooper — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:48:20 +0000

Walking the new "heritage path" in the H Street neighborhood: “Hey that’s where my childhood bedroom was!” called out Pat Collins, who accompanied Lyons on the H Street walk. The descendant of Irish immigrants who lived and worked in the neighborhood is now a reporter for NBC4 Washington. He was pointing to a vast construction [...]

Where I'm conflicted about this winter warmth

Patrick Cooper — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:05:29 +0000

Like much of the mid-Atlantic region, the Washington area has seen an unusually warm winter. Temperatures haven't dropped below freezing often. A morning rainstorm last week brought a crack of thunder. Snow has been so rare and so light the Capital Weather Gang has measured effects on local people and traffic with a Lego man and [...]

The meta-ness of the 'This Is How We Do It' ad

Patrick Cooper — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:16:04 +0000

Fact: Montell Jordan's This Is How We Do It was one of the best songs of '95. Fact: The new Jackson Hewitt "Steve" commercial is one of the wackiest ads on television right now. Fact: Either you love or you hate it. Fact: The New York Times wrote a truly unwacky story about it. Fact: [...]

Unexpected luck with Springsteen, Ticketmaster

Patrick Cooper — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 20:31:47 +0000

Tickets for many dates on the new Springsteen tour went on sale this week. I was determined to get into at least one show. Of East Coast big-city, reasonable-drive concerts, Washington went on sale near the end of the Ticketmaster release stretch — New Jersey early on Friday, New York a bit later Friday, and [...]

Where I'm struggling with 'The Artist'

Patrick Cooper — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 04:09:48 +0000

I liked The Artist! A lot! Really! Lori and I saw it at the end of the long weekend we began by seeing a real, old-time silent film. The new-time near-silent film was surely one of the best movies of '12. No question. But I struggled with the idea of it being Best Picture — [...]

My favorite sentence today, so far

Patrick Cooper — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:38:50 +0000

I know it's only about 9:30 on the East Coast. But whether you are a Yankees fan or a Yankees hater, whether you think "annunciatory" is a word, whether you've enjoyed Ian Frazier's Radiolab find about Tic Tac Toe or his amazing New Yorker history of trans-Siberian van trips or a million other things, you [...]