by David Burn | Sep 10, 2005 | Nebraska
Frank Solich, the Nebraska head coach who was fired after decades of service to his alma mater by a brash young AD, is back. And the new head coach of the Ohio University Bobcats has the town of Athens, OH abuzz. There’s real excitement in the air, and with only two winning seasons since 1982, the Bobcats haven’t had much to cheer about, gridiron wise.
Billboards around town declare, “Got Frank!”—an emphatic play on the dairy question. Solich is probaby embarrased by the media coverage, but it must feel good. The guy went 9-3 in his final season and had the Huskers in the Rose Bowl national championship game a few years before, and he gets tossed out. Things have changed in Lincoln in more ways than one. The program has a glossy feel now, a certain smugness. Whatever it is, it feels foreign. It’s not Nebraska.
Right now, I’m watching Solich’s team on ESPN2, and they’re tearing into Pitt. The players believe and the fans believe and that type of positive thinking can work wonders. Pitt’s down 10-7 at the half.
Solich grew up in Cleveland and spent a lot of time recruiting Ohio players while coaching in Lincoln. My guess is he’ll do even better getting these players to come to this classic college town to play in front of 24,000 psyched fans. Yes, it’s an intimate setting. But that’s what I’d want as a player. The chance to learn first-hand from a coach who helped Eric Crouch and Mike Rozier win the Heisman Trophy.
Go Bobcats!
by David Burn | Aug 9, 2005 | Nebraska
USA Today is running a favorable piece on my hometown in today’s edition.
Omaha has tremendous wealth, industry and influence for being in the middle of nowhere. It ranks eighth among the nation’s 50 largest cities in both per-capita billionaires and Fortune 500 companies. San Francisco is the leader in billionaires per 1 million people, even after the dot-com bust trimmed the list. Atlanta is the leader in Fortune 500 companies per 1 million people. But no city, not even the major coastal giants, can claim a ranking as high as Omaha on both lists. Not San Francisco. Not Los Angeles nor New York — nor Houston. Philadelphia and Baltimore haven’t a single billionaire between them, nor do 15 other cities in the top 50 by population. Honolulu has no Fortune 500 companies, nor do a dozen other cities among the largest 50.
by David Burn | Jul 27, 2005 | Literature, Nebraska
Metafilter picked up on a SF Weekly article on writer and artist, Weldon Kees.
During the 1940s and ’50s, Kees was a moderately famous artist, known mostly for his poetry, who quit the New York literary scene in 1951 and moved to the Bay Area, where he played piano in San Francisco jazz bars, wrote newsreel scripts, and produced a North Beach poetry and music revue before disappearing in an apparent Golden Gate Bridge suicide 50 years ago this past July 18.
One of Kees biggest fans is none other than Dana Goia—music critic emeritus of San Francisco magazine, former General Foods marketing vice president, opera librettist, laureled poet, translator of Latin, Italian, German, and Romanian literature, university instructor, widely published literary essayist, and current president of the National Endowment for the Arts. Gioia has published essays on Kees, edited books on and by Kees, written poems fashioned after Kees’ style, and discussed Kees at symposiums, in classrooms, and with journalists.
1926
by Weldon Kees
The porchlight coming on again,
Early November, the dead leaves
Raked in piles, the wicker swing
Creaking. Across the lots
A phonograph is playing Ja-Da.
An orange moon. I see the lives
Of neighbors, mapped and marred
Like all the wars ahead, and R.
Insane, B. with his throat cut,
Fifteen years from now, in Omaha.
I did not know them then.
My airedale scratches at the door.
And I am back from seeing Milton Sills
And Doris Kenyon. Twelve years old.
The porchlight coming on again.
Of course, I was interested to note to that Kees is another in a long line of famous writers from my home state, Nebraska. Kees is a native of Beatrice, atttended Doane College and graduated from Univ. of Nebraska at Lincoln.
University of Nebraska Press has been instrumental in collecting and distributing Kees’ work and keeping his flame alive for future generations.
by David Burn | Jan 29, 2005 | Nebraska
Thwenty-three year old entrepreneur, Darren Johnson, recently got to spend some quality time in Omaha with the world’s second richest man, Warren Buffett.
On his blog, Johnson outlines five key areas Buffett addressed.
No. 1 – Be Grateful
Warren spent about an hour talking about how grateful we should all be for the circumstances we were born into and for the generous ticket we’ve been offered in life. He said that we should not take it for granted or think that it is the product of something we did – we just drew a lucky ticket. (He also pointed out that his skill of “allocating capital” would be useless if he would have been born in poverty in Bangladesh.)
No. 2 – Be ethical & fair
No. 3 – Be trustworthy
No. 4 – Invest in your circle of competence
No. 5 – Do what you love
Thanks to Seth Godin for the pointer.
by David Burn | Jan 15, 2005 | Advertising, Film, Food & Beverage, Nebraska
“Virginia Madsen’s character (Maya) has a radiant paean to wine: she leans forward in her chair, has a soft light on her face and proceeds to share her passion for wine, how it is expressive of the place from which it came, how the tastes move her, and how it changes over time in the glass and in the bottle. Honestly, any wine marketing budget for TV should just clip this soliloquy since it will intrigue and possibly convert the most stubborn of beer drinkers.” –Dr. Vino
My homeboy, Alexander Payne, has a new movie out. Sideways is his first feature that ventures beyond Omaha for a setting. About Schmidt takes place partly in Denver, while Election and Citizen Ruth are solidly set in eastern Nebraska. Place is still critical to Payne’s cinematic style, however. The place in this new film is wine country. The lead character, Miles (Paul Giamatti) is a wine snob and didactic talk about wine dominates several scenes in the film.
How guys relate to women is the other territory this film explores. And it ain’t pretty. One of the more riveting scenes in the film is when Stephanie (Sandra Oh) savagely beats Jack (Thomas Hayden Church) with her motorcycle helmet for his infidelity and lying, while Miles looks helplessly on.
by David Burn | Oct 5, 2004 | Literature, Nebraska
Ted Kooser, the nation’s new poet laureate, is another in a long line of Nebraska wordsmiths* to find respectability outside da Corn.
Selecting A Reader
by Ted Kooser
First, I would have her be beautiful,
and walking carefully up on my poetry
at the loneliest moment of an afternoon,
her hair still damp at the neck
from washing it. She should be wearing
a raincoat, an old one, dirty
from not having money enough for the cleaners.
She will take out her glasses, and there
in the bookstore, she will thumb
over my poems, then put the book back
up on its shelf. She will say to herself,
“For that kind of money, I can get
my raincoat cleaned.” And she will.
*Nebraska’s famous writers include Ron Hansen, Loren Eisley, John G. Neihardt, Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz, Wright Morris, and Bess Streeter Aldrich. Essayist Megan Daum recently made rural Nebraska her home. And Lincoln native Ana Marie Cox, a.k.a. Wonkette–now working from suburban Washington, DC–is clearly one of the nation’s hottest bloggers.
by David Burn | Sep 18, 2004 | Nebraska
After a nine win season last year, Nebraska’s A.D. fired the head coach and went to the NFL’s Oakland Raiders for a new one. His name is Bill Callahan and he brought his West Coast offense to town with him. Right now Coach Callahan has young Joe Dailey–a qb from New Jersey recruited to run the option–running his high flying system. Which may explain why Dailey has thrown so many interceptions in his first three games.
I can see where the players will adapt in time, but we fans of Husker Nation must also adapt. Today, against Pitt we threw a pass on first down from our own end zone. It worked. But it was shocking. Faced with that type of field position in the past, we would have relied on the farm boys up front to make a hole large enough to drive a John Deere through.
by David Burn | Jun 19, 2004 | Nebraska
Omaha’s Rosenblatt Stadium plays host this week to baseball’s College World Series for the 55th year in a row. My grandpa took me to CWS games there when I was a boy. More recently, while living in Omaha as an adult, I saw what a big party the CWS is and what a boost it is for the city’s image, as well. Watching on ESPN from my apartment in Chicago, I see my hometown the way it truly is—as a great place for baseball and sports in general.
Rosenblatt is also home to the Omaha Royals, KC’s triple A farm club.
by David Burn | Jun 14, 2004 | Chicago, Music, Nebraska
Jeff Tweedy, alt-county superstar and leader of the Chicago-based band Wilco graced the cover of the Chicago Reader this week and news of his rehab for addiction to pain killers has been recently in the news. He’s also been top of mind this week due to our viewing of the band’s documentary, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, a revealing look at the creative process and the business end of the music industry.
Tweedy also has his first book out, Adult Head, a collection of poems released in March by Omaha’s Zoo Press and distributed by University of Nebraska Press, the nation’s second largest university press.
