jake lovett

The next time someone asks “Hey, do you want to do a...

Sun, 19 May 2013 23:55:02 -0500

The next time someone asks “Hey, do you want to do a 10-page special section on an 8,000-participant marathon?” you should kindly decline. I did not. This is what I ended up with.

Ah, the wonders of InDesign. This would have been, let’s...

Sat, 04 May 2013 00:01:52 -0500

Ah, the wonders of InDesign. This would have been, let’s say, difficult in CCI.

Another day, another NFL Draft page.

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 23:37:35 -0500

Another day, another NFL Draft page.

This one did turn out as I’d hoped. Last one for awhile. I...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:40:00 -0500

This one did turn out as I’d hoped. Last one for awhile. I hope. I’m tired.

Oh, look. More pages. Didn’t turn out quite like I’d...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:05:21 -0500

Oh, look. More pages.

Didn’t turn out quite like I’d initially planned, but it got done, all the same.

Well, here’s what I did tonight: The Press-Gazette’s...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:08:40 -0500

Well, here’s what I did tonight: The Press-Gazette’s recap of the Packers’ first round pick in the 2013 Draft.

I’ve been busy the last week, or so, working on a series...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 00:29:00 -0500

Part eight of eight, in which the Press-Gazette's Pete Dougherty predicts the Packers will select Alabama running back Eddie Lacy with the 26th pick.

Part one of eight, breaking down a deep defensive line class.

Part two of eight, analyzing the draft prospects of Manti Te'o.

Part three of eight, analyzing the Packers' options at the safety position.

Part four of eight, a look at Menelik Watson, the top offensive tackle prospect likely available when the Packers pick at No. 26.

Part five of eight, analyzing the prospects of Jordan Rodgers, the brother of Packers All-Pro quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

Part six of eight, a look at the potential running backs available at No. 26.

Part seven of eight, breaking down the possibility of Notre Dame's Tyler Eifert being available for the Packers.

I’ve been busy the last week, or so, working on a series of centerpieces for the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s annual position-by-position NFL Draft preview.

The little things

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 18:24:55 -0600

I’m not what anyone would consider a frequent flyer.

My family doesn’t do much traveling, and what little they do is done on tire and pavement, leading to my first time setting foot on an airplane not coming until December 2009 at the ripe old age of 20.

Having never taken to the sky before, I had little idea what to expect. I overpacked, arrived too early and was, admittedly, a bit of a nervous wreck (it is still, to this day, no small stretch of my imagination to visualize that metal bird plummeting from the sky somewhere in the middle of Kansas with me inside it). It’s an experience I’d like to think is not unlike that of most first-time fliers.

In the years hence, though, I have started to figure out how to travel and pack more efficiently, I barely arrive outside the TSA-suggested window and usually fall asleep sometime between settling into my seat and the captain rolling the plane onto the runway, nerves about a catastrophic crash be damned. But even with my increased exposure to the air, one thing has yet to change or diminish from that first time I flew: my fascination with watching the world beneath me from several thousand feet above.

I suppose it could be fair to say that rural-dwelling Iowans, as I was for the first 18 years of my life, have simple tastes.

The majority need only their tractors, pickup trucks, comfort foods and light beer. The idea of a night’s entertainment for most consists only of a case of beer and a few laps up and down Main Street.

It’s nothing complex. It’s nothing expensive. It’s just what they have and what they know. It’s simple.

For awhile, I thought my child-like wonderment watching the field and homes shrink below me was born in the fact I had spent 20 years on the ground before experiencing anything like it. But the more I flew and the more I thought about it, the more I came to believe there might be something wrong with me — that I might just be a small-town simpleton who’s just entirely too easy to entertain.

Now, I am sure to keep my wonderment to myself. I sit quietly and stare intently out the window at the ground below us. And it does not matter if I’ve flown over that particular skyline or swath of ground once, twice or tens of times, my curiosity is always piqued, because no matter how many times I’ve seen a place from above, I always notice some new building, shape or other thing that I hadn’t the last time.

It’s a view of the world I don’t get every day, and I eat it up every chance I get.

It’s a little, simple thing, but most days it gets me through otherwise boring flights.

And then there was the man seated across the aisle from me today on flight 4887 from Atlanta to Des Moines.

He looked to be in his mid-60s, with a long, scraggly beard hiding much of the face that was tucked beneath a hat that, somehow, looked to be even older than he was. I didn’t speak a word to him, or him to me, but I knew him, he was just like so many old men who have lived in the communities I’d grown up in: He lives a simple life.

He was traveling alone, just as I was. He traveled light — only a ragged red backpack to carry on in sight, with no other bags to check or stow away. And he was an experienced air traveler, I knew, because he’d told stories to a young couple at our gate during our hour-long delay about numerous flights he’d taken and the mechanical difficulties (our specific delay-inducer on this day) that had caused him so many delays in the past.

I didn’t pay much mind to him at the gate or in the air — save noticing some of his appearance and overhearing some of his stories — until it was time to descend through the clouds.

Just as the pilot announced it was time to start our descent, he got noticeably excited. He shifted and shuffled in his seat, and then, as the plane banked to the west, it began.

“Oooh wheee, here we go, here we go,” he said to no one in particular.

“This is gonna be awesome.”

The next few minutes were, initially, quite strange. He made noises and said things you’d expect a parent or grandparent to say to his or her young child staring out the window in amazement for the first time. But there was no one with him, no one beside him. He was loving the view, and telling anyone who would listen how awesome it was, even if it was just to himself.

We descended into the clouds, and he let out a bit of a giggle.

I noticed myself wondering what could possibly possess this man to be so giddy and engrossed by what was outside his window. Then, as I stared out my window over the opposite wing, studying the waterlines and roadways dividing the Earth below me, I realized his interest was the same as mine, only more outward and excitable.

It was just a simple man finding a little joy from a simple thing, a little thing. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that.

“Oooh whee,” he said again as we dipped below the clouds. “Lookit that. This is awesome.”

“Oooh whee,” indeed.

Barbara.

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 17:05:15 -0500

She taught the first class I took at Iowa State.

A graduate in a class of 18, I walked into her Journalism 101 class on Aug. 25, 2008, and was intimidated enough by the 400 plus students crowded into that Hoover Hall auditorium.

Then Barbara Mack walked in.

As if she flipped a switch, this larger-than-life personality silenced the room, and set out to teach us all about the foundations of journalism in cuneiform, Johannes Gutenburg’s invention of moveable type — by her count, the greatest invention of all time — and the absolute basics of the complex field that is journalism.

She joked with students, she was jovial and easy going while she taught and yet she was never shy about getting students’ attention with a shout. Or even just a stare. Barbara Mack commanded attention.

Her physical presence was intimidating enough, once you added in her personality — and what you’d heard from other students unfortunate enough to bear her wrath at one point or another — and it’s as if you were in the room with a god.

But then, if you were lucky, you got to know her.

I got to know her when I sheepishly walked to her podium after class one day in what must have been September.

“Professor Mack?” I said, barely audible, to the presence in front of me.

“Yes, dear?” she said, smiling, but not looking away from her work.

“I work at the Daily, and …”

“Oh you do!? Good for you!” she interjected. Loudly. As she always interjected.

“Yeah, and we’re having a guest in to our staff meeting Friday, Ken Fuson.”

“Oh, Ken! I love Ken. That will be wonderful.”

“That’s what I hear. Only thing is, our meeting is right at the same time class ends. Any chance I can skip out a few minutes early to head over?”

“How about this,” she said, turning her giant eyes to me. “Why don’t I drive you over after class is over. I need to see Ken, as it is.

I had no idea what to say. This giant, this worldly, accomplished professor was going to go out of her way to take me, a tiny, scared-to-death freshman, across the length of campus just so I could get to a meeting close to on time? Professors didn’t do that.

Not the professors I always heard about.

Friday came, and I can’t tell you a thing about that class period but my being nervous thinking about the 5-minute ride with her. Once class ended, though, and I climbed into her run-down Honda, she melted those fears. She talked to me. Not like I was a student, but like I was a person.

Almost as if I was a friend.

I learned more in that 101-level course than I dare say I learned in any other course I took in four years at Iowa State — the lone exception being the 400-level course I took with her three summers later.

I learned more about US history in that Journalism 101 course than I dare say I’ve learned in any US history course offered me.

That’s the thing about Barbara: you always learned more.

If you misspoke, she was quick to correct you. If you used the word “like” in any other form than to say you enjoy something or to compare one thing to another, she was quicker to smack you upside the head — only sometimes figuratively — and, somehow reassuringly, insult you for having such poor speech techniques. Her knowledge spanned so far beyond journalism or grammar — she’d travelled the world, she was a lawyer by trade and was by all accounts the most accomplished foodie on either side of the Mississippi — that conversations in her journalism classes were almost never about journalism.

I was lucky enough to have Barbara as my academic adviser, but for no more than a month when news came that she was retiring shortly after the 2009-10 school year.

I was heartbroken then, just at the thought of not having her advice to rely on for my three years.

My interactions with Barbara were limited from the end of that first semester to the summer of 2010. I met with her twice — maybe — to discuss my academic future. I passed her in the hallway or saw her in and around the Daily offices, never sure if she remembered who I was.

Then I took her Media Law class that summer, and I was sure she remembered who I was.

She knew me, because she picked on me. She called on me for answers, examples and anecdotes about the topic at hand in class that day. She talked with me before and after class — whichever I was actually there for. She made me feel so much different than professors in my other classes did. She made me feel special.

I went on from that class to work with her at the Daily — my year as Editor in Chief (2011-12) was her final year as a member of the Daily’s Publication Board. Any meeting she was in, it seemed, the crowd would always turn to her, at one point or another, and ask “Barbara, what do you think?” Her answers were always right.

The day of my graduation from this school — thanks in larger part to her than she would ever know — she sat and talked with me and my family for what seemed like hours. Not about my impending graduation or immersion into the real world, but life on the farm. And bacon. And whatever else was going on that impossibly sunny day in May.

My final day in Journalism 460, Mack’s Media Law class, was a day before the class’s final day.

I was heading off for a study abroad in Greece and Turkey over the course of the next four weeks, and I couldn’t be bothered with rushing home the next day to pack for my excursion. She prepared a separate final a day earlier than she needed to. It seems like such a small thing.

I stayed after class that day, a Thursday, and as she gave my exam to me, another one of her almost trademarked — I only know it’s not actually trademarked, because she taught me what a trademark is during that class — tangents, as far from that test as a conversation could’ve been.

“So, you’re going to Greece?” she asked, fully knowing the answer.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lucky son of a bitch.”

She went on to tell me all about her trips to Greece; about the amazing views from the cliffs and the seas; about the amazing food I absolutely must try while I was there. On and on, she went, about the beautiful sand, water and men, about the delicious olives, lemon and tzatziki sauces. On and on, she went, about everything but that test.

I remember now thinking I wished she’d just let me take my test.

She finished talking, and after only 10 minutes of my test time — a time I’d figured would be an hour and a half, if not more — she started packing up her things.

“Well, I’m going to leave you to finish that test,” she said. “I need to be getting home and not distracting you.”

“Oh,” I thought. “How oddly trusting of her to leave me here alone with my books and my test.”

It was a strange feeling, knowing that she knew me well enough to trust that I wouldn’t pull out my book — sitting not more than two feet from me inside my bag on the floor next to me — and look up every answer to every question she posited on that impossible exam.

It was a far stranger feeling knowing that I’d maxed out my educational time with her.

She taught me more about life — as cheesy and cliche as that could sound — in those two journalism courses I took with her than I think anyone else has in my 22 years. I’ve never felt so comfortable to make a mistake while still having the dread of letting her down inside my heart. I laughed when she was around, even while she was correcting me or telling me what an idiot I’d been.

She was like a second mother to me. And, much like my mother, she always expected great things from me and pushed me to be better than I’d ever been.

Before she left, she said there was a Greek dish I absolutely must try while I was there, and if I didn’t I’d be as good as dead to her.

“It’s this fried cheese dish,” she said, and I could almost see her mouth watering. “You drip a little lemon juice on that thing, it will melt as soon as it’s in your mouth.”

“I’ll find it,” I said.

“You won’t regret it.”

It was a week into my trip, in the town of Thessaloniki that I finally tried that cheese dish.

I looked away from our cafe table to a beautiful Greek beach on the Aegean Sea as I took bite after bite of that delightfully fried cheese.

It was then I knew that Barbara Mack was right about everything she’d told me about Greece.

It took her leaving for good for me to realize that she was right about everything.

littleleaguecomic: Little League #9 by Yale Stewart Characters...

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 22:21:50 -0500

littleleaguecomic:

Little League #9 by Yale Stewart

Characters © DC Comics. Creative content © Yale Stewart.

This is me almost all of the time.

Also: Read this comic. It’s fun. It’s light hearted. It’ll make you laugh. It’s family friendly… IT’S SUPER HEROES. It’s perfect.

markcoatney: noahkalina: Ghislain RamageCyr Wheel This is...

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:57:07 -0500

markcoatney:

noahkalina:

Ghislain Ramage
Cyr Wheel

This is unbelievable.

My days are impossibly less cool than this guy’s.

siphotos: This week’s SI cover focuses on the Penn State...

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 18:26:12 -0500

siphotos:

This week’s SI cover focuses on the Penn State scandal and whether the school can ever recover. (SI)

An amazingly powerful design to illustrate an awful, awful situation at Penn State. The headline, the quote above it, the simplicity and darkness… It sums up the entirety of a dreadful situation.

siphotos: This weeks’ SI cover features LeBron James skying for...

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 16:28:53 -0500

siphotos:

This weeks’ SI cover features LeBron James skying for a dunk during Game 2 of the NBA Finals. Although Serge Ibaka would wind up blocking this attempt, it makes for a great cover. (Greg Nelson/SI)

One of my favorite SI covers in recent memory. That’s a sexy magazine page.

Huffington. is the newest magazine hitting the tablet market

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 18:27:48 -0500

Huffington. is the newest magazine hitting the tablet market

"What ever happened to Shwayze?"

Sun, 27 May 2012 21:25:33 -0500

““What ever happened to Shwayze?””

- No one ever. And Jessie Opoien.

thedailyfeed: popculturebrain: Character Posters: The Dark...

Tue, 22 May 2012 17:59:52 -0500

thedailyfeed:

popculturebrain:

Character Posters: The Dark Knight Rises | Coming Soon

OMG.

!!!

Want.

In which no one uses Google+

Mon, 21 May 2012 20:53:19 -0500

Me: Hey, does Skype allow three-way chatting?
Me: Nevermind. I can't log in, anyway.
Jessie: Why not?
Me: Just won't connect.
Jessie: You know, Google has video chat, too.
Me: We could all hang out on Google+. :P
Jessie: Hahahahaha.
Jessie: That's the funniest thing i've heard in years.

In which I'm no longer a lame duck...

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:08:09 -0500

Spoon: New shirt?
Me: Nope. Worn it a couple of times.
Spoon: Looks like it hasn't even been washed.
Me: That's just because you don't pay attention to me.
Spoon: That's because you're a has-been. You're not a lame duck anymore, you're a has-been.
Me: See, Katherine? See how they throw you away as soon as they're done with you? Be ready for that.
Katherine: Yeah, but you're done done. I'll have another year to stick around.
Katherine: I'll be just like Jessie.
Me: So you're going to linger?
Katherine: I'm going to linger.
Katherine: And sleep on the chairs.

We had some things happen this year, and we at the Daily tried...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 03:06:15 -0500

We had some things happen this year, and we at the Daily tried to tell some stories about those happenings. It was a tremendous year at Iowa State. We had change and chaos, records and loss. It was unlike any of my three others on the ISU campus. So many new faces, so many new stories…It’s been quite the adventure, and this last 12-month stretch made it so. (Taken with instagram)

Secrets & Happiness of Digital Publishing: Adobe InDesign CS6: Workflow improvements for Digital Publishing

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:24:03 -0500

Secrets & Happiness of Digital Publishing: Adobe InDesign CS6: Workflow improvements for Digital Publishing:

digitalpublishing:

Today, Adobe announced the new InDesign CS6, as part of the new Adobe Creative Cloud service, where you can get all of Adobe’s desktop tools from the Master Collection, all Touch Apps and a bunch of web services and storage for a around 50 Dollars, monthly.

There is a pretty …

CS6! Get at me!

(The author begins weeping, realizing he’ll be long gone by the time the Daily upgrades to CS6.)