NEWS
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Jockey Pat Day shares his testimony By Julianne Wyrick Senior News Writer
The Coop Show By Erika Graham Layout Editor When “Seinfield,” a hit sitcom billed as “the show about nothing,” aired, a national audience sat down for twenty minutes on a weekly basis to enjoy watching four friends stumble through daily life. Recently, the Asbury student body found their own local “Seinfield” through a weekly YouTube series called The Coop Show. Zachary Cooper, Nathan Wagner, Taylor Dekker and Shelby Watson, media communication students who live on the same dorm hall, began filming the show after an unexpectedly lucky roll during The Dice Game, a game where participants will assign dares to numbers on a die and the player is forced to complete the dares based on the roll. According to the group, Wagner thought of the idea to do a weekly YouTube video during the game, and Cooper played for it. “I thought the idea was awesome, so I just kept rolling for it,” Cooper said. Originally, the show was filmed as a funny video for the group’s hall to enjoy.
Photo by Riah Lawry Nathan Wagner, Taylor Dekker, and Zach Cooper look over footage on set for “The Coop Show.”
“The thing is, I just wanted it to be some kind of blog where he would tell funny stories,” Wagner said. “I just thought it’d be something funny for our hall to laugh at. I never thought anyone outside of the hall would see it.” One month and five episodes later, the show had received over 2,500 views on YouTube. “I think just word of mouth and Facebook is how it started to spread,” Cooper said. “I keep trying to tweet Conan about it too, but he’s not tweeting me back.” The attention raised through social media sites ended up attracting audiences inside the classroom as well. “I first heard about it while checking Facebook,” communications professor Stephen Hillis said in an email interview. “I brought it up in class because I was talking about mediated communication and the fact that historically and by definition mediated or mass communication is produced by large and complex organizations. It is now possible, however, for an individual with a camera and laptop to produce something that is available for large numbers of individuals to see.”
Syria Up to 90 people were killed Monday in Syria as the violence in the country continues to rise. The incident happened after Syrian troops began firing at civilians. The attack soon escalated out of the government’s control, leaving both civilians and soldiers dead. (source: Associated Press)
Although Cooper and Wagner were the original creators of the show, Dekker and Watson joined the group early on to produce animations and music for each of the episodes as well as help out with creating the episode topics. “We all bounce ideas off each other, which I think really helps,” Wagner said. However, there isn’t an actual script produced before filming any of the episodes. “It’s just really basic ideas,” Dekker said. “Like, let’s make a rap about girls.” In the future, the group plans to continue posting episodes on a weekly basis, even though it’s not always an easy accomplishment. “Fall break really did a number; we did that episode in a day,” Wagner said. “That’s why that episode is called ‘The Apology.’” Regardless of how the sketches are created, the final product has garnered laughs from many different audiences on campus. “My roommate loves it and she introduced it to me,” freshman Katie Pittman said. “I think that it’s really silly, and it brings joy to a lot of people.”
Italy Italy’s Prime Minister designate Mario Monti met with the Italian president yesterday to unveil his plan for the new government. (source: Associated Press)
Hall-of-fame jockey Pat Day visited Asbury on Tuesday, November 8, to be a part of a panel discussion organized by the Health, Physical Education and Recreation Department. Day and the other panelists spoke about their health, physical education, or recreation-related careers. Day has had more than 8,800 victories and has won the Eclipse Award for leading jockey four different times. Day’s talk centered around how he became a jockey and how a conversiontype experience 10 years into his career changed his outlook on life and his career. During the panel discussion, Day said that after high school he went to different rodeos around the western United States because he wanted to become a world champion bull rider. Through a series of events, he ended up working for a man who owned racehorses and discovered his natural talent for being a jockey. “I was tailor-made to be a jockey … As you can tell, I haven’t grown up a lot; I’m still 4 foot 11,” Day said during the discussion. However, success came too fast, according to Day. “At the end of the day, I was looking for higher highs,” Day said. He said this caused him to become involved with alcohol and drugs. Ten years later, Day was still looking for something as a source of satisfaction. “I’d won several individual race meets, but I didn’t have any national acclaim, and as I’m creeping up on the national riding title I’m believing that that is going to satisfy the longing in my heart,” Day said. According to Day, he won the title but discovered that the feeling of success was temporary, which sent him searching again. One night in a hotel in Miami, he woke up sensing a presence in the room with him. “I walked over, turned the TV set on … [a televised crusade of] Jimmy Swaggart was still on TV … he was having an altar call,” Day said during the panel discussion. “At that moment it was like the scales were removed from my eyes. I recognized, realized the presence there with me was the spirit of the living God and this was my personal altar call.” Day said after that experience he was ready to go straight into the ministry. “As I prayed about that and sought godly counsel, the Lord revealed to me that he had sent me to work within the racing industry, not to leave it,” Day said. He became involved a ministry, the Race Track Chaplaincy of America, and continued this involvement even after his retirement from racing in 2005. “All the races I’ve won and all the accolades I’ve received—all the trophies I’ve acquired all pale in comparison to being a part of leading one into the knowledge of the saving grace of Jesus Christ,” Day said.