Category: University of Iowa

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Below Zero on the Pentacrest

Bitter, Cold Day on the Pentacrest
A yearly visit back to Iowa City isn’t complete without a shot of this gorgeous, gold dome

When you go to the University of Iowa, this is a central point of many undergrads. If it’s not on your tour route, you have classes on the Pentacrest at some point.

I crossed this area many, many times. Some good memories, some not so much.

The one mantra that always comes back to me is my 20th Century Crisis professor that would often say, “Sometimes it pays to be a nerd.”

It took a number of years, but once you grasp that ideal, you block out the naysayers and carve your own path. Be a nerd about what you love to do and everything else will follow.

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Filmspotting interview on Podcast411

An episode of Podcast411 came through recently that really caught my attention. Filmspotting is a podcast that I stumbled onto about a year ago, and the host’s name of Adam Kempenaar stuck out to me.

He was the host of the show Burn Hollywood Burn during my days at KRUI, a brilliant, popular program about movies. Two hours a week with more phone calls in one night than most other shows would pray for in just one semester. The guys were good at what they did, and Adam has taken the formula to the podcasting realm as well as a once a month spot on WBEZ in Chicago.

You can listen to the MP3 directly or check out the show notes for the episode. And if you dig movies, check out Filmspotting for yourself.

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They Might Be Giants – the sun

A little something for your Friday, especially if you are enjoying the summer sun like we are (trying to) in Vancouver. I know they say this song is called, “The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas”, but I’ve always called it “The Sun”.

I used to co-host a weekly morning show at KRUI on Wednesdays called “In The Middle”. Clever, eh? Well, every week at 9:30AM, we poked fun at the surrounding FM, rock stations and their “mandatory Metallica” with our own, “Mandatory They Might Be Giants“. Yes, they are near and dear to my heart.

Forever will be the experience of John and John doing a live, acoustic performance in our little studio be remembered, then throwing on our station t-shirt at their encore that night. If Muffin is watching this post, which you see him perk up here from time to time and was my co-host of said show, he’ll agree about that. Knowing that he was a huge fan, and still is, I got him to do that interview in the studio, if not fulfill a lifetime dream. Rock.

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The royal treatment of college radio

Let’s be honest. The greatness that was once college radio is wanning. I have this deep, passionate feeling that it will rise up once again to be a driving force to make the rest of the world take notice. It might also be safe to say that it’s never been a spectrum of the medium to really be noticed in the first place. The brilliance gets harvested for its potential and profit.

I’m still a firm believer in the sanctity of college radio. Like it or not, it has an important role to play, and that mantra was my driving force during the years I put into KRUI.

I find the following story really funny, and I’ll explain why after the excerpt.

UI officials hope to raze an old laundry building that is adjacent to where a new campus recreation and wellness center’s future home on the southwest corner of Burlington and Madison streets.

Currently used as storage for campus landscaping and maintenance equipment, that space could be used for parking and holding materials and equipment during the construction of the recreation center, and could save the university money. It is not immediately clear how much it would save.

Regents gave approval for UI to look into the feasibility of relocating the equipment currently stored there. [presscitizen]

The KRUI that I came to know and love started out in a house that was tucked away on campus. But the university kinda saw it as a bastard child, pushing it into a handful of various locations in its just under twenty years of existence. Within just a few months of my three years of being a director, the news came that the station would be forced into another relocation. Continue reading “The royal treatment of college radio”