Friday, April 20, 2007

A Game to Remember.


If you haven't heard yet, Noah came out here on Tuesday as part of a surprise anniversary thing from Kristi to go to the Jazz game with tickets that cost $900 a piece. Kristi got them from her friend Sherry, who got them from her boss who wasn't using them. So she surprised Noah and flew him out for the game, then me and Noah surprised Mom and Dad and took them to the game. We started off by going into the "Lexus Club" the club for the people that buy these ridiculously expensive seats. They are new this year, big corporations buy the seats and then use them to wine and dine clients. Anyway, we started off with the incredible gourment buffet meal there in the Lexus Club room complete with Tequila Sunrises and beauty food. Then they come and take your order for what you would like to drink after the first and third quarter that they conveniently bring to you at your seats. Then at half time we went back in the room there on the court level for sweetness gourment deserts and drinks and every sweet you could imagine.


We had passes to go along with the seats so we could walk around on the court, and watch the players warm up and stuff. This is Noah talking to Hafa, one of the players on the Jazz that Noah played with here at BYU. It was so cool though, we were just right there by them. I almost accidentally kicked one of them in the head as I walked past while he was stretching.


These next two pictures are me with some of the tallest men on earth. That is Yao Ming in the background, a guy from China who is 7'6". He seriously looks like a freak, it is mind boggling as to how tall he is.


Here is me with Dikembe Mutombo. An awesome guy that plays for the Rockets from the Congo. He wasn't playing in the game so I walked up behind him here and tapped him and asked if I could take a picture with him. Well, either he didn't understand my english or he was just in shock that someone would ask him to take a picture right there on the bench. He just stared at me for like 5 seconds, it kind of scared me, then one of their assistant coaches yelled at me for trying to talk to the players. It was hilarious though and Noah got it documented. I think this is a pretty funny picture. Anyway, it was such an awesome night, me and Noah, as well as Mom and Dad had the time or our lives, and if was free, it don't get much better than that. Keep scrolling down for more pictures of the game, as well as some pictures of me here in provo, and the poem I wrote, my Ode to Provo. Love you all. Go Jazz. You can click on the pictures to make them bigger if you want.
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For the record, Yao Ming is a freak of nature. That guy on his left is Tal's height... Yao is 7'6"


Memo the money man. There is no zoom being used, he was about 3 feet from us. They would come check into the game right there in front of us. Dad went out with Ron Boone and talked to Memo before the game about Mehmet the Conquerer from Turkey, who this guys is named after. Dad suggested that Ron Boone (the Jazz' anouncer) should start calling hime that. But Memo had never heard of that and said he likes it when they call him money (becuase he makes a lot of big shots).


Right there in front of us.


Boo ya
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A game to remember... continued


"A gentle push and a mount arc and the cowhide globe hits home." Hot Rod Hundley
Well, Boozer dunked this so that didn't really happen, but I wanted to say that.

Check out how only Rockets are red and everything else is black and white, cool eh? Also a sign that the Rockets are toast in the playoffs.

I don't think we could have been in better seats. Holy Cow. Look at the little TVs in front of us in case we wanted to watch another game or get the latest stats or something.

Aren't mom and dad awesome. It was so fun to surprise them and go to this game with them and Noah.
You all better be routing for the Jazz, playoffs start on Saturday.


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Hiking the Y


Well, I figured I should hike the Y once during my time here at BYU. So me and some friends hiked up there on a particularly beautiful spring day last week. It was beautiful, 75 and sunny. (it snowed the next day, gott love Utah). The land of the Cougars is particularly beautiful. A breathtaking view from up there, and that's not just the strikingly beautiful BYU campus, but the whole valley, with Utah Lake straight ahead, Timp on your right and Mt. Nebo and some other big ones down to the left.

This is me hugging the Y on the mountain. It was about as comfortable to lay on as it looks.


Ode to Provo....

After all of these years
I now leave you with tears
The buildings, the people,
and the temple's beautiful steeple
All peculiar in their own way,
I guess that it what makes people stay

But now I leave you,
My dreams and aspirations to persue
Even though I'll be taking the drive of shame,
I've had so much fun, I must proclaim
The friends, the roomies, the girls
I always found myself living in a whirl

The games, the classes, and the dances
All make me glad I took my chances
And now I go forth, my future unknown
To make a name for myself, to make myself known


That's the Y if you didn't catch it.


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Sunday, April 15, 2007

A man walking down the street pushing a shopping cart full of manicans.


Hey you all. How the heck is everyone? It is my second to last Sunday here in Provo as a Coug. I can't believe that in a week and a half I am going to graduate from College! That just seems so weird to me. I am so excited though. I love this place, but I am ready for the next chapter of my life. Well, mainly I am just excited to go to Jerusalem. Oh baby. Looks like I will be taking the drive of shame out of Provo, (that is what you do when you go to BYU but don't get married while you are here) but it's all good. Below is an update from the trip to New York, and intermingled in here are some of my favorite pictures. I have been working this weekend on my final capstone paper for my major. Kind of like a mini thesis. It took me many long hour, like 15, but I got it done and I am excited about it. I will try to post it online, so you all can have a read if you would like. I would if I were you. It's pretty sweet. So tomorrow is my last day of classes and then I have just 3 final tests to worry about and I am home free. College=Over. Crazy, I guess I will have some stuff in Jerusalem as well, but it is basically over. Crykee j. 500 5th Ave. I went up there by myself, beautiful spring day, though a bit cold, wrote and a letter to my future wife and successfully secured it up there with some wire and an empty prescription bottle. She's gonna love it.

Guys, I tell you what, I am so excited to go to Jerusalem and be where the Savior was. I was reading in the New Testament today and it got me so excited to be there where it all happened and gain a greater understanding of it. I know it is true, but I don't know it, the doctrine and stories near as well as I should, that is what makes me so excited to immerse myself in it. I am really excited to learn the Old Testament stuff too. Two weeks from Tuesday I will be on my way. Sadly I won't get to see Char though cause she is prancing off to Europe. But it sounds like she left some cool stuff and some scavengar hunts there for me.


It's not everyday that you see a man pushing a shopping cart full of naked manicans down the street.


Little Mac is so awesome. Kristi introduced bubble to him while I was there and he was so ecstatic to say the least. He loved them! I will try to post the video of him with them too. He is quite the cute little kid. A trooper, walking around the streets of New York. My favorite thing is that everytime he rides on the subway he makes the hand gesture opening and closing his fist until he gets to stand by and hold the pole on the train. Keep reading on for an update on my trip to New York and the job interviews.
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My Favorite City


Well, had an awesome trip to New York last week. Me and Noah touched base with our thug side. I particularly like the girl that is right between us in the background. This was right after we saw the new broadway play called the Pirate Queen. It was pretty good, and it had some really awesome Celtic dancing that Noah and I were pretty excited about. (that isn't a joke). The music was done by the Les Mis guys, while the dancing was done by none other than the riverdance people.
We really had a great time though. Spent Thursday-Saturday in the dust whole working and destructing. Crow bars are a great invention. We got the kitchen all ripped out and ready to be raised up, so the plumbing could run under it as they relocated the sink, in prep for the pictures Noah sent over the last couple of days. We did a lot of mudding and sanding getting the walls ready to paint. Old buildings have really crooked walls if you didn't know that. We worked on the baseboards and crown moldings and just had a good time talking and laughing as we did it. Noah is such a good guy, such a good brother, and now husband and father to Kristi and Little Mac. It was fun to talk about everything from the Jazz, to jobs, to our future business we are going to start someday, to which angle would be best to cut for the moldings. Oh man I wish you all could have seen us when we were carrying lumber back from the lumber shop. We had two huge 8x5 pieces of plywood that were very awkward and like 8 10 foot 2x4s and then some baseboards. We we had to walk 10 blocks with the stuff. We started out with just one on each end, but only made it about a block, it was way to heavy. So we were sitting there on the side of 2nd Avenue with all this wood balanced on a garbage can. We finally came up with the idea of putting the 2x4s underneather the plywood pieces, they stuck out a bit as they were 2 feet longer than the plywood, so we put them under, then crouched down and made it so there was a piece of plywood on each of our shoulders and then lifted the whole thing up. Image the ancient times when people would carry the kings around, you the men would hold the thing that the king sat on on their shoulders. I hope that made sense, it was harder to explain than I thought. Nonetheless, we got some really funny and weird looks from people as we were walking down this really busy New York sidewalk. We were laughing so hard too. I was really excited to get to Noah's though, I thought my back was going to break.

So these are pictures of the office in which I had one of my interviews. This builiding is Chelsea Market. Over on the west side of Manhattan around 14th street and 8th and 9th Ave. there are a lot of old warehouses that are being turned into offices. A lot like Gordon's office for those of you who have been there. It was an awesome building though, the first floor was all little restaraunts, boutiques and bakeries, then the above floors were offices. The offices are really cool kind of contemporary on the inside, but they just picked to leave the outside, grafitti as it was. Anyway this was a really cool marketing company that I am pretty interested in. The problem though is that they are hiring for a job that will start on June 1st, with a new account they are starting. So that kind of sucks. But they guy told me they may have something going in July as well when I get back from Jerusalem. So I will stay in contact with him. The other interviews went well also, they were companies that were a little smaller and not exactly what I saw myself doing. More sales stuff than marketing.


The interviews were great experiences though, hopefully something will materialize out of them, but if not, I am content with the experience. I will just have to keep on looking. Oh baby, life is interesting. This buiding here below is just one we passed on the train out to Queens for one of my interviews. Quite a city. That is one thing I noticed in particular this time as I was there. The diversity. Me and Noah were on a train and I just marveled as I looked at the people...there was someone on there of every race and culture it seemed like. Awesome stuff. So, I am hoping and praying something will work out and I will be able to live in that great city for a while. Oh ya, last thing is that on Easter Sunday we went to the singles ward where Noah is in the Bishopric. He was the only member of the bishopric there, so he conducted and everything, it was awesome. He did a great job, the members of the ward really love and respect him, I could tell. There was also an awesome Easter musical program they put on that blew us all away. Good times. Sure love you all, hope the springtime is treating you well. Now I embark on my last week and a half of college!!

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Sunday, April 08, 2007

RIchard Eyre - Oral History

Richard Eyre Oral History Project
Interview with Richard Eyre
Date of Interview: 25 March 2007, Salt Lake City, Utah
Interviewer: Eli Eyre
Transcriber: Eli Eyre

Eli: This is Eli Eyre here with my father, Richard Eyre. We are going to do an interview reflecting back on my father’s life and his experiences with media. Thanks for doing this dad.
Richard: No problem
Eli: Okay let’s start with your family; tell me a bit about them.
Richard: Well, I grew up in Logan, Utah and was the oldest of four brothers and we had a little sister. While I was born in Baltimore and then lived briefly in other parts of Utah, I grew up and most of my childhood was in Logan, Utah.
Eli: And you were the oldest of the kids?
Richard: That’s correct.
Eli: I want to hear about you experiences with the media in your childhood. My life has been different I have had the internet and now things like HDTV. Tell me about your first experience you ever remember with media.
Richard: Well, when I was a little boy even before I started school. I used to love to listen to radio programs; radio adventure shows if you will and I would go in and lay down on the carpet in front of the big console radio, the radio must have been, I would guess it was as big as a standard cabinet today. Forty-five inches across and maybe three feet high and it has some big knobs up near the top of it and the speakers were down by the floor. I would lie on the floor and listen to some of my favorite shows, some of my favorites were Sky King, a cowboy who flew on an airplane to catch the bad guys, then there was Batman, there were a lot of sort of comedy shows like the Howdy Dudey show. I think the interesting things about listening to radio for a child is that you had a monitor but the monitor was in your own head Eli, it was in your mind, and you would see it. I would see the cowboys, I would see Sky King get in his airplane or getting on his horse, I would see Roy Rogers and Dale Evert and Trigger the Horse and Bullet the Dog. I’d see the Lone Ranger and his loyal sidekick Tanto who called the Lone Ranger Kimosabe, but I would see them in the monitor of my mind.
Eli: It’s interesting that you remember seeing all of those names without ever even actually seeing them. Did you ever used to listen with your family, with your brothers and sisters? Or did you like to do it on your own?
Richard: I don’t ever remember listening to the radio with my family, but what I do remember is later in life when they had some of the same shows on television I remember looking at them and saying to myself, “Well that’s not how the Lone Ranger looked, that’s not how Kimosabe looked” because I had a different picture in my mind than what they put on the T.V. and invariably I liked mine better, I liked what I imagined them as better than what I saw on T.V.
Eli: Do you remember a lot of your friends being into radio? Would you go and listen together with them?
Richard: Well those earliest memories were by myself but, as I got older, what I remember listening to most was baseball games. And as a third or fourth grader I had two favorite teams; I had the Cleveland Indians in the American League and the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League. That’s when there were only eight teams in each league, and I would listen to baseball games all the time. I would sometimes listen to them with my friends. We also had baseball card, and our visuals in those days of radio were baseball cards. So we would have baseball cards there as we listened to the radio. So if Stan Musial was batting, I would have his baseball card there and I could see his picture and I could turn the card over and see his batting average and how many home runs he had hit. I would trade cards with all of my friends and we would compare notes on having listened to the games. And the announcers then in the days of radio were much better than the ones on television, because of course they would describe everything they would only say “here comes the pitch, it’s a ball the count is two and one,” they’d say, by the way “so and so is up warming up in the dugout and here is one of assistant coaches on third base giving the sign to steal second.” So they would tell you about the whole baseball game, all of subtleties as they were your eyes. They had to tell you everything you couldn’t see.
Eli: That’s fascinating. Okay, so you had the radio, and then along comes the television. Do you remember the first time you saw a television and where you were?
Richard: I think the first time I ever saw a television or at least paid any attention to one was at my friend Craig Peterson’s house. He lived through the block and we were friends, and I remember going to his house one day and there they had a television. It was one of those really old ones with a round screen and a very snowy picture. He was over there watching Howdy Dudey on TV and I thought it was pretty amazing, everyone thought it was amazing. A couple of years after that, maybe less than that, we got our first TV and it was a little bigger as they had progressed a bit, it was maybe 10 inches wide and they were starting to try to make them into a square. The top and bottom were straight and then the sides were still round. It was like a round picture with the top and bottom cut off. And then my family started watching together. We would get our dinners, we thought the coolest thing of all was getting our dinners on TV trays and go in the living room and sit with our TV trays and sit and eat, sometimes we would even have TV dinners and they called them, which were dinners that you could, it was before microwaves of course, but you could put them in the oven and warm them. I remember we always used to watch the “Lawrence Welk Show”, that was a variety show that would bring on different singers and acrobats and different things and we would sit there and watch and I remember they had a bubble machine on the show. When Lawrence Welk would come out he would say “turn on the bubble machine!” and bubbles would come out and across the stage and then he’d announce his first act.
Eli: So it was kind of like a talk show of today?
Richard: No, not a talk show a variety show. He was just the announcer who would bring on singers, dancers, trapeze artists. I remember he had one singer that I really liked who had a very deep voice, his name was Larry Looper. And he’d say “please welcome Larry Looper,” then Larry would come out and sing a song about to octaves lower than anyone else could sing. Then there was another comedy show called the Red Skelton show, he was like a Bob Hope type of guy only much earlier. He would basically come out and tell jokes.
Eli: So you mentioned you liked baseball on the radio, do you remember the first time that you saw it on TV?
Richard: Yes, it wasn’t long after that, maybe a couple of years after I first saw TV. You would occasionally get a baseball game on TV. I think it was only the World Series though. I don’t think we saw much of the regular season. When TV started there were only three channels. In those days it was ironically the same channels as the network channels today in Salt Lake, there in Logan. It was channel 2, 4, and 5. And they each had their own lineup of shows. They were CBS, ABC, and NBC. And they started producing baseball games once in a while, but really only the World Series. It was kind of hard to see the game though because don’t forget we are talking about black and white TV with a lot of snowiness. In Logan, where I lived rabbit ears wouldn’t do it; you had to have an antenna on top of your house. And you couldn’t control it from inside the house. So you had to set it the best you could and some stations were clearer than others. I remember you could not actually see the ball. You could see the players pitch the ball, or the players running, but you couldn’t see the ball because it was too small and it was white like all of the snow on the TV.
Eli: When the TV came out did you find yourself going away from the radio or did you still go back and listen to the Lone Ranger every once in a while?
Richard: That is a very good question, I think that the TV did kind of pull kids my age away from the radio, although like I say, especially with the unclear pictures of TV, the monitor in my brain was vastly superior to what I saw on the TV screen but you know how technology is, when there is something with a picture on it everyone wants to see that instead of using the radio. Probably the only kids who would listen to radio by then were the ones who didn’t have a TV.
Eli: What did you parents think about TV, did they allow you to watch? When I was growing up I never got to watch until I was done with my homework.
Richard: No, in those early days when TV was so new that I don’t remember any rules, it was like they would watch it with us.
Eli: So nowadays in people’s lives, especially in kids it seems like they are consumed by television to the point where it is degrading. Was it like that at all?
Richard: No I think that the interesting thing about early radio and TV is… of course radio, going back to radio for a minute, before television people listened to the radio a lot and they would listen actively. Now we think of radio as something that can go on in the background. We’ll have it on while working, reading or studying. But in those days radio was something that you gave full attention to. You would sit down and listen to the whole baseball game or the whole adventure show, or you would sit down and listen to music and you would just sit there and that would be the thing you do. And there were a lot of radio stations, well not tons, but they were all AM so you couldn’t get them from very far away. So each town only had a couple, maybe only one if it was very small. Logan finally got two radio stations so they had to put a variety on. You couldn’t have a station that was just country music or another station that was just sports or something. They would have to program a large variety so you would get the schedule which often was in the newspaper. And you would say “Okay well here is my favorite sports show, or Sky King or Lone Ranger” and you would find out what time they were. They would usually be on at the same time each day. But I don’t think parents were too worried about content because it was just a variety of things they didn’t care if you listened. Television was the same way in its early days, three channels that didn’t broadcast all day. Some of the stations only came on from like five in the evening until ten at night and I remember watching the end of the news and then there would just be a test pattern on the TV and it would be over for the day. So there wasn’t enough on there to be specialized or to have stuff that parents would worry about. Now maybe some parents were worried, but not many because the parents would be right there watching with them.
Eli: Interesting. So here’s a question. You were a little boy; you remember seeing a baseball game on TV for the first time. What do you think your reaction would have been if you saw a game on in HD when you were that age?
Richard: Ha ha. Well I do remember the first time that I saw color television, and I was like “whoa! What is that?” I was actually up in another town. I was a newspaper boy and I was out in the evening trying to get new subscriptions to the Logan Herald Journal, we were up in Preston, Idaho of all things. And somebody had a color TV, a really early color TV. And these early color TVs were really horrible color, but were very bright, you couldn’t miss one. I went in to this house and saw the TV and these yellows and blues and stuff on there and I couldn’t believe it. I thought that will never take off, it was too exotic and colors were too hard, so I was really amazed the first time I saw color TV. So if I saw HDTV as a kid I would have gone nuts.
Eli: A lot of historical events have occurred during your lifetime, do you remember any one of them in particular that you first heard about via the media? Something that really amazed or surprised you?
Richard: Well, see most of these things I have been telling you about happened in the 50’s. And in the 50’s the Korean War was going on but I do not remember any news casts. I am sure TV got started on news casts then, but on radio there was always news. If you wanted to see visuals of news then you would actually go to the movies. Did you know that at the movies in those days before the movie would come on you would always have a cartoon and then a newsreel? And the newsreel was filmed news footage from the Korean War or wherever the news was taking place. Why didn’t they have more news on TV in the early days I am not sure, but I think perhaps in those days film and television were pretty separate. In the TV shows you would see like Lawrence Welk, they were not filmed, they were live shows that the TV would pick up out of the air. And I don’t think they had figured out how to use film and send it out over the air. I do remember a little later, news getting started on TV; Walter Cronkite and other newscasters that you would watch on TV. But still most people got their news from newspapers and not from the electronic media at all.
Eli: That’s very interesting. The last question I have is… I know you have seen a lot of things on the media in your life, TV, radio, all sorts of media, but is there one particular thing or innovation that has happened that really just stands out above all the rest?
Richard: Well, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon…and it was televised. That is the amazing thing. We are talking about 1969 in the summer and by then I was a college student almost to get married by the way. And we watched on live television as Neil Armstrong stepped out of a spacecraft and put his foot down on the moon and said live, we could hear him say this live on TV. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” And it was like a moment like none other because not only was it the most amazing thing that I had seen, but I was actually seeing it as it happened. And so that was pretty amazing.
Eli: So everyone was just blown away?
Richard: Yes, and I don’t know the numbers, I don’t know if they tracked numbers there, but I bet everyone in America with the exception of people who were sick or blind, they were all watching Neil Armstrong.
Eli: Well thank you, that gives us a picture of what media was like for you as you were growing up, and how it has evolved up until today. It will be great for your grandkids and my grandkids as well to listen to and hear of your experiences.
Richard: They’ll interview you and say “What was it like when all you had was some silly high definition television? When you didn’t have virtual reality.”
Eli: Well, thank you very much.
Richard: You are welcome.