Blogatology

I’d been wanting to go to the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City since its current exhibit, on the works of legendary sports photographers Walter Iooss and Neil Leifer, opened late last year. But I might not have gotten around to it, particularly right now, if not for a Facebook posting Wednesday from Jessica Mendoza.

Mendoza, who is unquestionably one of my favorite people, not just favorite athletes, from my 25 years in Ventura County sportswriting, noted she’d be participating in a Thursday night lecture at the Annenberg. I messaged her back to ask when it was (6:30 p.m.) and she graciously offered to add me to her guest list (which was good, since the lecture was fully booked), so I decided it was time to visit the Annenberg.

Not knowing how much I’d be able to see the exhibit in connection with the lecture, I went down in the late afternoon — the Space is open until 6 p.m. — and spent about an hour taking in the exhibit, which includes a short video and projected works by the two sports-photo icons, as well as a number of absolutely spectacular prints.

For a sports fan, this exhibit offers a little bit of the same feeling an art aficionado experiences when walking into the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and seeing Michelangelo’s David for the first time. You’re going to encounter very familiar that which have a whole new power when experienced in person.

The best example of this will most likely come when you encounter the beautiful print of Leifer’s most famous photo, the one of Muhammad Ali glowering over Sonny Liston after knocking Liston down in their 1965 fight in Lewiston, Maine. You know the image, but when you can stand in front of it and appreciate the vivid colors and its remarkable depth, with the people standing and looking on at the other side of the ring, you appreciate it like never before. The power of the young Ali is all the more stunning when compared with a nearby Iooss portrait of the stern, weathered visages of Ali and Joe Frazier taken in 2003.

The perfection of composition of some of these photos is breathtaking. There’s a Leifer portrait of jockey Steve Cauthen on the jockey-room scale at that falls somewhere between a Norman Rockwell illustration and the work of an old master in the way the details surrounding Cauthen only enhance the appreciation of the subject.

The cliché, of course, is that a picture is worth a thousand words. But while 10,000 couldn’t do some of these photos justice, one might: Go. You have until March 14. (For details: http://www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org/)

After visiting the exhibit and walking down the street for dinner, I came back for Thursday’s lecture by Mendoza and photographer Marla Rutherford, one of a series related to the Iooss-Leifer exhibit. (I noted with regret that I missed an earlier lecture by L.A. based photographer Lucy Nicholson of Reuters, who is both a remarkably talented shooter and a very sweet person I was fortunate to get to know during my years as a columnist.)

Ostensibly, Thursday’s subject was last year’s Body Issue of ESPN The Magazine — featuring nude photographs of a wide variety of athletes — when Rutherford did a group shoot with Mendoza (then 8 ½ months pregnant) and Olympic softball teammates Cat Osterman, Natasha Watley and Lauren Lappin.

While that was certainly the starting point, it turned out to be a wide-ranging 90 minutes. The endearingly quirky Rutherford talked, for example, about the challenge of getting people to do things they normally wouldn’t, and of finding the “in-between moments” when people are actually themselves, rather than just responding to instructions. Mendoza — the force of nature who moves from athletics to broadcasting to a variety of causes while retaining energy and enthusiasm for all of them ­— brought along some of her favorite action photos from her career, emphasized her desire to see female athletes photographed in ways that emphasized their athleticism, rather than treating them like runway models.

The term “lecture” implies a formality that clearly was not the case here. This was more like a conversation; not necessarily the most cohesive presentation, in some ways, but no less interesting, enjoyable and informative for that. Rutherford was extremely funny, and Mendoza was as she always has been — perhaps the finest female role model I’ve known in athletics, given her mixture of composure, personality, enthusiasm and commitment.

The lecture has come and gone. The exhibit continues a little longer.

You missed out on one. Don’t miss both.

At 12:50 p.m., I was a veteran sportswriter.
Shortly after 1 p.m., I was an unemployment statistic.
And so, as I drove off from the paper that had been my professional home for half my life, I was feeling physically ill and emotionally stunned.
Before I was a block away from the office, I had my brother on the phone. Told him the news. He couldn’t quite believe it, either, even though we’d certainly discussed the looming threat over anyone at a newspaper. We didn’t talk long — it’s amazing how little there is to say at a moment like this — which was probably good; I needed to force myself to pay attention to driving, while my mind was going a thousand miles an hour.
I didn’t drive straight home. I had, occasionally, thought there was one place I might approach if this ever happened, to see if they might be able to create a position for me. The person I needed to see wasn’t there, but I reached him on his cell, and talked very briefly about my idea. (Sorry to be nebulous about this, but really, I don’t think it would be fair, or in anyone’s best interest, to be specific.) My friend was receptive, but wasn’t sure the idea would work. He said he’d float it to his superiors the next day.
From there, I did go home. Reached one friend on the phone as I was driving, and cried for a little bit — for the first time, but not the last.
Tried to reach a handful of other close friends; we’ve shared our joys and sorrows for most of our adult lives, and this definitely fell in the latter category.
In keeping with the day, I got nothing but voice mail.
I e-mailed the Lakers to cancel my seat request for Thursday’s game with Boston, one of four assignments that had already been on my schedule. The other three were high school playoff games — exactly the kind of thing that are supposed to be crucial to the “hyperlocal” strategy that is the buzzword of most newspapers, but that would no doubt go uncovered now, because there was one less person to cover them.
And then I went on Facebook. The reactions had started rolling in — some of them shocked, some of them angry, all of them supportive.
The Facebook post would prove to be the saving grace of the day. People said amazingly complimentary things, and they came from everywhere: People at the Olympics, at newspaper jobs all over the country, at web sites, in the media relations offices of sports teams.  There were Facebook posts, private messages, IMs, e-mails, phone calls, and they just kept coming, all day long.
I was, to be honest, stunned. And moved.
Newspaper layoffs aren’t really that big a deal any more, in the grand scheme of things. There’s not anyone in the business who hasn’t seen a friend downsized, or a face-of-the-paper veteran summarily dismissed, even though those are the kind of people that give papers their distinguishing features, make them unique in a corporatizing climate of sameness.
I made that post mostly because I knew the paper wasn’t going to publicize what it had done, and I knew there were a lot of people I was used to seeing — and enjoyed seeing — that suddenly weren’t going to be seeing me at the Lakers, or the Dodgers, or the Angels, or the Kings. I wanted them to know why.
Reactions? I suppose I expected a few, but layoffs are so closed to home for all of us that I thought it was more likely people wouldn’t want to dwell on the subject.
Instead the messages kept coming, and they’ve kept coming well into the next day, as someone sees the post for the first time, or learns about it from a friend, or sees yesterday’s blog post, which has been linked by a few friends. (Thanks for that, guys. And welcome, those of you coming here from one of those links.)
It hasn’t just been sympathy. It’s been pep talks, phone calls, and real, solid, meaningful advice — freelancing leads, tips on dealing with unemployment, people I should call.
I received a call from someone on a break from covering an Olympic event; she’d just heard the news from another writer. She offered condolences, and the possibility of some work. I heard from the Lakers’ beat writer, Mike Bresnahan, as he drove home from Tuesday night’s game. At midnight, after going through the deadline wringer. I don’t even know how he got my phone number.
It’s been incredibly uplifting. If my employer didn’t appreciate me, my professional peers did. That may not mean anything financially, but boy, is it fulfilling. I’ve always gotten along with all these people, but I never really knew they, well, cared.
It was a long, hard, awful day. When I left the paper after getting the goodbye envelope, I felt incredibly alone.
By the end of the day, I knew that wasn’t the case. And there is no way to explain how much that means.

Facebook is now accepted by even the most minimally tech-savvy people, which means it’s clearly far too popular to remain cool, hip or cutting-edge. (There are people out there using it to communicate with their grandparents, and it doesn’t get much less cool than that, except maybe to use it to communicate with your accountant.)

 And so, inevitably, some sort of replacement is going to have to rise up so the cool people can migrate away from the rest of us and tell us how unhip we are.

I’m guessing the next wave will be more specialized networks, to avoid that awkward Facebook blend of actual friends, acquaintances and people you once kinda knew, and somebody who once stood behind you in the 15-items-or-less line at Trader Joe’s.

And so if you’re an online investor, I’m willing to take your money to sell you these concepts:

 Faceplant — the network for skateboarders and snowboards.

Disgracebook — For Bernie Madoff, AIG executives and former members of the Bush administration.

Defacebook — For taggers and vandals.

FaceLift – For Beverly Hills and Upper East Side socialites.

FaceCard — for gamblers (and their loan sharks), with a sister site, AceBook, for people who think poker on TV is actually compelling viewing.

FacePaint — For guys who like to get drunk and make spectacles of themselves at sporting events.

WeGottaGetOuttaThisPlaceBook — For ‘60s rockers.

Casebook — Lawyers, who will find a way to charge by the hour for visiting it.

YourSpace — For hackers.

And finally:

Lacebook — for lingerie models (probably the one most likely to succeed).

I’m really not all that enthused about learning what country people should live in, and so ….

The Top Ten least appealing Facebook quizzes:

10. Which section of the tax code are you?

9. What kind of mollusk are you?

8. Which North Korean opera singer are you?

7. Which dental procedure are you?

6. Which character from “Homeboys In Outer Space” are you?

5. What kind of roadable farm implement are you?

4. Which plumbing tool are you?

3. What kind of radish are you?

2. Which member of the George W. Bush administration are you?

1. Which social disease are you?