If you're reading this, I need to borrow some money

Gizmodo: The Tim Burton Batmobile is for sale

Quiz time!

Why is the LOVE Park fountain green?

1. To commemorate Earth Day by showing Philadelphians how much we pollute
   
2. Its green for "Go", as in "Go For It!", the marketing slogan for the 2008 Phillies. It narrowly beat out two of my submissions to the Fightin's, which were: "Fucking Go For It" and "Hurray Phillies!"
3. To symbolize the blood of innocent Iraqis on our hands
4. Cute ploy for our attention by the Eagles, who are cranky because the Sixers, Flyers and Phillies are all winning and thus no one is paying attention to the draft this year.
5. Ecto Cooler is making a comeback
   

Correct answer: fuck this quiz, I just got thirsty for Hi-C

Blogger, schmogger

Random thought: WordPress kicks the shit out of Blogger AND Joomla.

I've been using both for years, and I finally gave WordPress a go just to see what I was missing out on. Answer: a lot. I'll let fly what I'm working on in a few days, but I am now seriously considering moving this blog to sunnier locales because of this software.

The Overthrow of Everything

I'm currently engrossed in a book written by Howard Dean's 2004 campaign manager, Joe Trippi. I remembered Dean as being the first candidate for any office that I was really excited about, and it's one of the things that led me to follow politics as closely as I used to follow insignificant shit like the NFL off-season. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything is a chronicle of Trippi's career, technology in politics, and everything that went right and wrong on the failed Dean for America campaign. Someone recommended this book to me in a message board thread for Barack Obama volunteers, and the words they used to do that keep echoing in my head as I work through it each day on the train: Howard Dean's campaign pioneered the use of the internet to organize and fundraise for a presidential campaign, but we are witnessing the perfection of those methods in Obama's run.

Indeed, the parallels between the campaigns are incredible. I feel like I'm experiencing a second edition of Trippi's book being written in realtime by Senator Obama. In the book, for example, Trippi discusses the use of the website Meetup.com that allowed supporters of Governor Dean to organize rallies for the candidate by themselves, and how those in attendance at those rallies grew exponentially throughout spring and summer 2003. As I'm reading this, I keep refreshing the Facebook event I launched to notify WCU students about the episode of MSNBC's Hardball being aired live here with Senator Obama next week - and that number is growing just as quickly in front of my own eyes now. Although it's not a truly supporter-organized event open to the public, 500 people had jumped on this shit in the first 24 hours after it was posted. People continue to subscribe for updates even though it's open to current WCU students only.

It's long been my firm belief that the Internet will change the way our democracy works, but witnessing little stuff like this firsthand makes Joe Trippi some kind of Internet prophet to me. His articulation of these ideas are now four years old and are just starting to manifest themselves in the public sphere. The same concepts that propelled Dean to front-runner status in 2004 now allow me to help recruit hundreds of new volunteers and raise thousands of dollars for my candidate in 2008 as effortlessly as if I were just updating my list of favorite music on Facebook.

My recommendation: read Trippi's book, and set your TiVo to record Hardball live at West Chester University on Wednesday, April 2nd to see just one of the tangible results of his Open-Source Politics concept that will change the way government works for us.

Dumbest tip ever + music post

I brought 2 dead fourth-generation iPods back to life this week using this method, and taught another person to do the same with theirs. I feel like a genius for getting them to work, and at the same time I feel like quite the dope for letting these things sit on a shelf for months without trying anything. Three iPods that were as good as trash yesterday are now working just fine.

APPARENTLY, if you have an iPod with a clicking hard drive that gives you the sad face icon, the best course of action is to slam the shit out of it on a flat surface until it either breaks completely or it magically starts working again. If you kill it the rest of the way - oh well, it was garbage anyway, right? BUT, if you are successful, it will actually un-stick some of the moving parts in the hard disk and get it to stop clicking. No update yet on how effective this is in the long-term, but my plans are to repeat the fix as many times as necessary until I either kill it for good or help it achieve immorality.

A few other items that can be filed under the "music" category: my station, Y-Rock on XPN, is having their annual Modern Rock Madness (March Madness rip-off) this week. This one they've been doing since they were Y-100, and I remember it fondly - the only difference now is that bands like Weezer and Nirvana are killing other bands like Bloc Party and Rilo Kiley instead of Linkin Park and Creed. It's a lot of fun, and if you correctly fill in the blanks on one of our brackets, you have a chance to win a Wii. Wiis are fun - Wiis are part of the reason I only post in this blog once a month now. So you should listen and play along, I think. You can also vote, which makes it interactive. Round 2 matchups later today include: Nine Inch Nails vs. David Bowie, Flaming Lips vs. Smashing Pumpkins, Joy Division vs. RHCP, and Muse vs. Beck.

Also, I've resolved to burn some vacation time to visit one of these giant music festivals next year. It makes sense, when you think about it - I loved going to CMJ and MacRock while I was a member in good standing of WCUR. They're a great way to soak in a shitload of music in just a few short days, and some of my favorite all-time performances were seen while bumming around with my good college radio buddies.

However, I've decided that I want to up the ante next year, and go see one of these HUGE festivals - the kind that all the blogs go crazy over for a week. Lauren was surprised by this, as it seems that I've never expressed a genuine desire to travel before. But yeah - next year, I'd like to fly to Austin for SXSW, or maybe Austin City Limits. Perhaps we'll go to Coachella? We might go alone, or we might get a group together. Who knows? Anyway, if you've been to one of these big festivals, let me know. Do you have a preference between those three, or is there another big one that I should go to that I'm missing? Consider this post a solicitation of your sage advice here. I want to leave this area for a week to explore another city and see dozens of bands all at once.

Regional rail (and baseball!) to come to West Chester?

Came across this little item, buried in the middle of the latest entry on SEPTA Watch:

The suburbs turning to transit oriented development?
In a sign that suburban communities are getting more serious about transit oriented development, there have been several recent reports about communities looking to improve their regional rail stations.
...
Meanwhile, West Chester University, which last saw trains come to town in 1986, is begging SEPTA to restore service back to its town.

What? That would be awesome! I've spent many hours staring out the R5 window, concentrating my envy on little villages like Malvern that seem to be constructed around their train stations. I would kill to be able to walk or bicycle to a stop in West Chester, and it seems like there are plenty other people like me. Check out the petition going around WCU (via the Quad):

A petition has been started in hopes of convincing SEPTA to restore rail service to the West Chester area, a means of transportation that could change student commutes to campus and into Philadelphia.

Service was discontinued in 1986, a tough period for SEPTA economically, when rail maintenance was impossible to upkeep. However, over 20 years later, John Mckinstry, a faculty member of the Westtown Friends School, has begun a project to urge SEPTA to restore their rail service as times have changed since the 80s.
...
SEPTA is aware of the petition and the desire for rail service to be restored to West Chester and the surrounding area, but they are not the decision-maker in the situation. It is the county that needs to have the interest and therefore make a deal with Septa as the agent, according to Mckinstry.

Okay, fair enough. If we want the R3 to come back to West Chester, we've got to do it as a community. Personally, I'm down for however many borough council and town meetings that are needed to get this project off the ground. But wait, what's this other pressing tidbit of local gossip?

Mayor Richard Yoder of West Chester has interest in the petition, even as a part of making West Chester the home of a new minor league baseball team, and rail service would help in allowing fans to come to the games.

Zuh? Minor league baseball? Like, as in a Phillies affiliate playing down the street from me? Holy crap, I seldom agree with anything Mr. Yoder has done as mayor of this town, but if this is true, then allow me to be the first to jump on board this bandwagon. Hopefully, this is more than just a throwaway comment by Yoder to that Quad reporter, because it's the only place on the Internet that I can find mention of such a venture.

R3 stations and minor league baseball stadiums - if you build it, they will come!

Sign the petition!

Teddy Bear with Brass Balls

Unless you live in another area or you're living under a rock, you've probably heard quite a bit about the guy that shot and killed Philadelphia police officer Chuck Cassidy during a botched armed robbery last Tuesday. His name, they found out last week, is John Lewis, and they found him in a homeless shelter in Miami this morning.

I wouldn't have written anything about this, save for the revelation that Lewis was in the city as recently as Friday. With the largest police manhunt in Philadelphia history looking for him. Where was he before he hopped a bus for sunny Florida? Oh, hanging out in the Criminal Justice Center.

Wait, what? The Criminal Justice Center located two blocks away from LOVE Park? The same LOVE Park where Matt and I spent our lunch hour watching every politician in the city rain fire and brimstone down on this guy, imploring him to surrender himself to police. In what was supposed to have been an election rally, they instead spoke for roughly an hour about the shooting, the manhunt, and the level of violence in the city of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, every cop is combing the area, taking the wrong people into custody, harassing potential suspects three or four times a day, all while Lewis was hanging out picking his nose in the Criminal Justice Center down the street. Every description I've read about this guy in the newspaper and online has been that he's a big teddy bear - which means that either he has split personalities and one of them is this hard-ass killer that few people have met before last week, or else he's some super law-abiding citizen that shows up for his court dates even when everyone in the courthouse is out to arrest him.

Of course, that's not as ironic as this part: the commissioner of the Miami-Dade police department is former Philly commish and crime crusher John Timoney. His mug is on Philly.com now as his department looks quite good compared to that of current Philly P.D. Commissioner Sylvester Johnson's. Philadelphia cops didn't even know Lewis was on the bus to Miami until he was already halfway down the Eastern seaboard - and yet, Timoney's boys had the cuffs on Lewis within 48 hours of his arrival (yes, they were tipped by an employee at the shelter, but still.) A lot of people would like to see Timoney take his old job back here when Nutter takes office, and I can see that happening unless John is too attached to that warm weather to come back up north in January. Whatever the case, it's probably not good that a "teddy bear" like John Lewis was able to elude the largest manhunt ever administered by the Philadelphia Police Department last week, and one hopes that some sweeping changes will take place if they have a prayer of dealing with the crime problem around here in the near future.

My family is fucked up

Say hello to my niece, Tamara Rose Prozorov. A.K.A. "Gary".



Yes, the child has a movie trailer. No, not my creation. Yes, I'll be in line for tickets and popcorn come March.

Famous Logos updated for the Web 2-point-oh Era

Randomly found in a Google Image search...

Springsteen Fanboy Post

This is the new video from Bruce Springsteen's forthcoming record, Magic, which I just found on Stereogum. I'm quite surprised that I didn't get it from my dad first, although he'll probably email a link later today. Mike Nicolaides is quite the Springsteen fanatic, and in turn has raised his family to be Springsteen fanatics as well. This is why I pay the car insurance bills that I owe him by logging on to ticket websites at 10AM on a Saturday to see if I can access the site and snag some good seats. We're going to see the E-Street Band play next Friday at the Wachovia Center, and if I know my father, he'll be going on Saturday to the second show as well.

Seeing this video reminded me of a couple of my favorite Bruce moments. And, if I tell one of these stories, I start rambling and end up having to tell all of them. Here I go:

• My first concert ever was the Human Touch / Lucky Town tour, and it was a gift for my birthday that year. Bruce had broken up the E-Street band and was playing with a bunch of new artists, but I didn't care because he played "Santa Claus is Coming To Town" during the encore. Mom made me wear earplugs, even though we were in the furthest seats from the stage.
• Getting teased at school for wearing the t-shirt from said show the next day.
• My mother taught me to dance, except she taught me the Courtney Cox dance from the "Dancing in the Dark" music video. I suck at dancing now and whenever I'm not sure what to do at weddings or parties I always revert to doing this move: *snaps fingers, shuffles feet*
• Dad started collecting bootlegs the hard way before high-speed internet became common. (In fact, downloading shows was part of the reason he finally shilled out the money for cable internet way back in 2000. True story.) He would find other Springsteen fans with shows on this newsgroup and copy cassettes and later burn CDs to mail back and forth across the country. The walk-in closet that him and my mother share has almost an entire wall dedicated to shelves and shelves of these tapes and discs. If you've ever been to a Springsteen show, tell him the tour and the city, and chances are he can pull it out of his cabinet to copy for you.
• Last year, Lauren and I bought him a coffee-table book that sort of resembled a pop-up book for Springsteen fans. It had replica tickets from Jersey shows back in the 70's, concert photos, lyrics scrawled on notepad paper, the whole deal. He flips it open to see a photo of a setlist, which he examines carefully and then says, "Oh, cool. January 15th, 1987. I remember that show." When we flipped to the index, it turns out that he had successfully nailed that show date. Pulled it out of thin air. When he becomes a grandfather early next year, he won't pull quarters from behind the kid's ear, he'll just do this.
• We went to see the E-Street band reunion tours in '99 and again in '03. We had tickets to nearly half of the 20 sold-out shows at Continental Airlines Arena the first time. At the show that I went to, we were one of the first people to come into the arena and we were randomly selected by one of Bruce's road crew for a free upgrade to the second row. Second row at an E-Street Band show makes it pretty fucking difficult to top that as "best concert of all time" for me, and it still is. I didn't even mind the skinny 50 year-old dude that was wigging out in front of us for the entire 3-hour show.
• For the show in 2003, I was sick as a dog while waiting out in the Meadowlands parking lot to go in to Giants Stadium. I was dehydrated, I was running a fever, and I was hungover from the day before (and only 19 years old! Don't tell Mom and Dad!). It was 90 degrees on the asphalt and I was still huddled in a sweatshirt, shivering like it was freezing out. Determined to go in and enjoy the show anyway, I sat there and felt like crap until someone in the section lit up a joint during "Rosalita". Not sure if it was the song or the secondhand pot smoke that picked me up, but I felt like a million bucks for the rest of the week.
• I helped with the renovations to the basement addition when Dad was constructing "Mike's Tiki Bar." When the finishing touches were applied, Phillies and Eagles posters and bobbleheads adorned one wall, golf balls and pictures of the Three Stooges took up another, and the rest of this enormous space was transformed into a Springsteen shrine. Every piece of memorabilia my father owned that wasn't a CD from his collection is on the wall downstairs. It's sick.
• Dad was on the NJN Evening News, shown standing outside the Convention Center in Asbury Park while the band practiced inside before their '99 reunion tour. He was holding his cell phone up to the granite walls from his spot on the beach where dozens of other hardcore fans were gathered to listen. He was leaving recordings of the muffled music on our answering machine at home. The next week he took the entire family to Asbury to do it again; I remember being bored to tears in the freezing cold on that god-forsaken boardwalk.
  
• Nearly two years ago, Matt, Nick and Anthony jumped into my old Toyota ever so trustingly and let me cart them off on my own trip to Asbury Park to do some urban exploration. Hey- just because I was sulking in '99 doesn't mean it didn't spark an interest with me. Here are select photos from that trip:
  
  
  

So, I realize that I'm making my father out to sound like he's obsessed, but trust me when I say he's just enthusiastic. And I know I end up sounding obsessed too, but usually I try to keep it under wraps one way or another. For example, I'm now setting a once-a-year limit on Bruce Springsteen posts on Open All Night. See? Seriously, though, I wouldn't be as passionate about music without seeing the impact Bruce's music has had on my dad's life, his marriage, and his parenting.

Jesus, what sappy bullshit did I just write? I guess I just wanted to express exactly how excited I am about this album and this show next week. BRUUUUUUUUCE

Hee hee

Check out this wacko I found on Kissing Suzy Kolber:

I'm going to try to post more

There has been a lot of stuff on my mind lately, but I've been so busy at work and whatnot that it's been difficult for me to sit down and commit the ideas to blog format.

That anthrax post back there (or was it the YSP post? Probably the YSP post.) got 452 visitors to this blog in one day, which is a hell of a lot larger audience than I ever thought I'd have with this blog. Obviously, I must be doing something right, which means I ought to try to do it more often?

WYSP kind of flipping back to rock

Reports have been trickling out since yesterday afternoon that there's a format change in store for 94.1 WYSP today. According to this thread on Radio-Info, everyone at the station with the exception of Opie & Anthony and Kidd Chris were dismissed yesterday in a "bloodbath". Barsky, Matt & Huggy, Scotty & Alex, and members of Kidd Chris's show were reportedly shown the door as WYSP, which apparently saw the success of fellow former Free-FM station WXRK in New York (now K-Rock) and Philadelphia's WRFF 104.5 and decided the time was ripe to go back to playing music full-time.

The move comes at a good time for WYSP, as flipping formats in the middle of the NFL season will keep Philadelphia Eagles listeners aware of the change. In fact, their last true format change came almost two years ago in similar fashion, when the station originally switched to Free FM. Now, the gradual process of returning to the active rock format that existed when Howard Stern was the morning drive program is almost complete. The new format will be reportedly be almost the same as the old - except take out Howard Stern and replace him with XM competitors Opie & Anthony, and add Kidd Chris into the afternoon drive slot. The rest of the day will be filled with active rock again, which they had been playing in the early morning hours and on weekends. Check out a surprisingly detailed timeline of the shifting programming here on Wikipedia.

This will likely bring a temporary end to the identity crisis this station has suffered after losing Stern to satellite radio: in June they changed the logo to one that resembled the old "YSP Rocks" branding and completely eliminated the "Free FM" imaging from the airwaves, apparently in preparation for the moves they're making today. The new WYSP will, in all likelihood, be a hybrid of the Free-FM talk and the active rock -- a fusion of the new and the old. At least until they decide to cancel Kidd Chris, who must be pissed that he kept his job while his crew reportedly didn't. I vaguely remember hearing part of a show a few weeks ago in which Chris and his cronies cackled about all the stations they've been collectively fired from - and how Chris would never want to continue with a gig if the rest of his posse had been canned. If this part of the report is true, it will be very interesting to see what happens in the afternoons for the next few weeks.

The new/old WYSP will face stiff competition: when they flipped to Free FM, WMMR was the only modern rock station left in town, and they thrived because of it. Now, not only will 'YSP will have to lure back jilted "Mandatory Metallica" listeners, they'll have to hold their own against 93.3FM as well as a 104.5 alt-rock station that has seen quantum leaps in the ratings since they debuted. Maybe they'll take a cue from K-Rock, which played "Nirvana - All Apologies" as their first-song mea culpa when they ditched the Free FM programming.

More to come on this as we approach 5PM and have some definite answers. I've got some opinions on this move that I've learned to quarantine off into their own posts after the 104.5 debut post a couple months ago.

Links!
Opie and Anthony spilling beans... the rock returns today 5PM to YSP [ Radio-Info forums]
"Roots" Rock???? [ Radio-Info forums]
WYSP 94.1 FM BREAKING NEWS [ Radio-Info forums]
BREAKING REPORT: Barsky and others FIRED from WYSP 94.1 FM? [ Radio-Info forums]
WYSP - [ Wikipedia ]
WRKX - [ Wikipedia ]
WYSP set to announce a change in its format - [ Philadelphia Inquirer ]
WYSP eyes format change - [ Philadelphia Daily News ]
WYSP dumps talk shows, return to rock expected [ FMQB ]

Never Forget

9/11/01 was NOT the date of the last terrorist attack on U.S. soil.



Don't let any news outlet or politician remind you otherwise.

Reminder via [Atrios]

Kids these days

My little sister just notified the world that Lauren and I are going to be godparents for her first-born child, who is due in March.

Via myspace. No phone call, no email - a myspace bulletin was how we found out. It was question #38 on some silly survey for pregnant mothers-to-be that she filled out.

So, to get back at her for letting xXsxyAngelXx find out about it before us, I'm now blogging about it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mary!

I sincerely hope that the MySpace/Facebook/Friendster revolution doesn't ever completely replace organic human social interaction, but it certainly looks more and more like that's exactly what's going to happen, eh?

Karl Rove retires, just like Jay-Z

I don't quite understand the reaction I'm witnessing to the news that Karl Rove is "retiring" from his post as White House political adviser. That he's leaving the White House over a year before his boss's term in office is up should be no reason for excitement. Review a few basic nuggets of common sense with me:

1. Karl Rove's political career is not over. He's a relatively young person, and he orchestrated two elections for a group that has enjoyed notorious longevity despite their governing policies. Plus, remember that the public has a very short memory span, as evidenced by how many former Nixon administration officials have been a part of this White House. He will be back, and he'll probably be back with a few new filthy tricks added to his repertoire. The question, then, is when? He says he won't join any of the 2008 campaigns (and they probably can't really afford to have him since every GOP candidate has tried their best to distance themselves from Bush), but who knows how much stock we can put into that statement.

2. White House policies won't suddenly improve. Even if W. and Company packed their bags and left tomorrow, the damage they've done to the Constitution and to the Office of the President will be lasting. Because Karl Rove isn't around doesn't mean that we can begin to pick up the pieces from this Administration yet; it just makes this Administration that much less effective in peddling their messages and policies to their base. Plus, they've still got this Dick Cheney guy working for them...

Karl Rove has been a destructive force in American politics and government. Believing that his career is over at the end of the month is akin to believing that Jay-Z was really done rapping after 2003's The Black Album. We know we haven't seen the last of him, so therefore there's nothing to really get excited about as Rove returns to Texas to watch and wait.

Confirmation: Stu Bykofsky is, indeed, a whore

Shut the fuck up, Stu, you whore!

MY HYPOTHESIS last week that another 9/11 attack would unite America was wrong, judging by e-mail and voice-mail responses. When I stopped reading at 1,000 (lots more unread) roughly 65 percent disagreed with me, many violently and obscenely.

Published early Thursday, the column received moderate response until it was posted on Web sites from right (Drudge) to left (CrooksandLiars). Then my world exploded and I became the flavor of the day.

Interview requests rained in from radio (local, national and Canadian) and TV (Fox News, CNN Headline News.) I accepted as many as I could.

(emphasis mine)

The column is basically a very long-winded pat-on-the-back for having successfully stirred up so many reader responses. Stu then digs to the very bottom of the mail bag and shares only the dumbest, most insane, most off-topic conspiracy theories to make himself look better and smarter than his readers by comparison.

Stu Bykofsky must be an attention whore

In case you haven't seen this yet, yesterday Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky wrote this:

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

America's collective response: "Go fuck yourself, Stu!"

Reactions:
Philly Will Do
Atrios
Crooks & Liars
Digg
Kiko's House

I just can't imagine a scenario in which both Stu and his editors at the Daily News thought this topic might be appropriate. The premise is so aggressively stupid that I can only come up with one reason for it, and that's that Stu Bykofsky must be an attention whore. The headline for the story might as well have read "I'm an asshole that wants innocent Americans to die! Digg this!"

I'm continually amazed by people that write and say stuff like this, seemingly without a single thought as to what people's reactions might be. They just throw it out there, consequences be damned.

Right now: Brett Myers Entrance Music at the "Zo Zone"

In an ironic twist that must have Todd Zolecki shaking his head, this post from his Phillies baseball blog on Philly.com has garnered more attention in the comments section than any other post he's made about, well, baseball. This is not to speak ill of Zolecki's coverage of the Phightin's, which is top-notch. However, it must be kind of aggravating to see blogs like Beerleaguer and We Should Be GM's (two Open All Night faves) get all the reader love while Todd, the actual, honest-to-goodness beat writer for the hometown rag, gets none.

The reason for the attention today? He's soliciting suggestions for entrance music for Phillies closer Brett Myers to come charging in to. KC and the Sunshine band apparently doesn't do the trick for Myers (although you might not have been able to tell after the way he pitched last night).

Myers has used both White Zombie's "Children of the Grave" and The Outlaws' "(Ghost) Rider in the Sky" as his intro music this season. But neither has really stuck and Myers has thought about what else he could use. That situation came to a head during last night's 6-4 victory over the Florida Marlins at Citizens Bank Park, where neither White Zombie or The Outlaws were played before he struck out the side to earn his eighth save.

No, Myers got KC & the Sunshine Band's "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" instead.

"It (ticked) me off," Myers said.

"They need to do a poll in the paper to tell people to pick my dang song," he added.

So what are you waiting for?

What should the Phillies play for Myers as he leaves the bullpen?

I've already suggested Muse - Knights of Cydonia and White Stripes - Seven Nation Army to balance it out between all the chuckleheads asking for Bon Jovi and that "Let the bodies hit the floor" song. Go there and help out if you can. Also, let's start soliciting more baseball topics that are music-related for Zolecki to post about. Maybe if he does this every day, he can establish his own group of dedicated commenters.

For reference, here's this link. Is there anything that Wikipedia doesn't document?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_baseball_entrance_music

I have these ideas...

Every once in a while, I get these wacky brainstorms for an idea that JUST MIGHT WORK, but nowadays it's rare that one actually comes to fruition. One of my brainstorming missions over the past year since I left Webreseller was to come up with some solid ideas for how to make some dough to cover the fees that would keep my server online. One way to accomplish this has been to politely beg for a periodic stipend from some of the folks that keep their sites on my server, but I know that another untapped resource waiting in the wings is site ads -- and the only thing keeping me from swimming in that vault full of gold coins (Scrooge McDuck style) is the utter lack of user traffic coming to the sites I currently maintain.

Don't get me wrong, here. I know that I am capable of generating a steady stream of loyal readers: the proof of this is one of my first sites that was cofounded by myself and one Dany Sloan to congregate fans of the indie rock band Ted Leo & the Pharmacists. TimorousMe.org now has well over 1,000 registered users, and it gets around 3,000 visitors a month. That's not a huge pull, but it's significant when compared to the short amount of time spent actually publishing content and maintaining the site. But, because Ted has got his morals and I've got mine, I won't ever put ads up to try to profit from his work. Still, there are some things of value that I can pilfer from this site, which will be four years old next month: the knowledge that I am able to attract a significant number of users when armed with a broad enough topic of interest, and that I can successfully put those users to work sharing content with one another.

It's 2007, baby: user-generated content is where it's at. You need only look at the success of sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Digg to see that phenomenon. Obviously, I'm not a MIT programmer geek cooking up the next Google in my dorm room, but I know I can use some of the existing tools out there to cook up something of substantial interest and carve out my niche without working 14 hour days to keep site visitors placated. The following are some of those brainstorms I've had on the stove for the past few months: I'm posting them in the hopes that having them out in the open will somehow force me to take action.

Dub-Cee 2.0: The "Pulse" - Some of you may remember this ill-fated project we started shortly after Timorous Me, at www.dubcee.org. Aimed at West Chester students, the purpose was to fill the site with writers that lived in the borough and cared about their community, and to boost interest and participation in our other media organizations (the Quad, WCUR, and WCU-TV). Dub-Cee was supposed to have been the zenith of that whole collective, but it fell flat on it's face when I started asking people to contribute to the blog on top of whatever else they had going on at the time. It petered out after the mayor's race and that was that.

Turns out I was going about it all wrong. As we've seen, West Chester people are blogging - they just didn't want to write more for an online magazine that was getting them no additional attention. Granted, my enthusiasm for the project wasn't all there, either - so that didn't help. However, knowing what I know now, I'd go back and use the magic of tools like Yahoo! Pipes and Feedburner to cobble together a site that essentially updates itself. Similar in design to the Hype Machine, all that needs to be done is to find and enlist a legion of local bloggers that are already going at it, categorize their content, and bring in that content live via an RSS feed. That, combined with daily headlines from sites like the Daily Local, Philly.com, the Quad, WCUR, etc. would keep news coming in at a steady clip. Combine that with some forums and maybe a classified section, and here's a site that changes every minute according to what's going on in West Chester - hence, it's got its finger on "the pulse" of the borough. This kind of thing becomes a "one size fits all" solution, depending on where you live. If you're in a town with enough of a blogging presence (Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Boston, or maybe Millville?) then maybe YOU could be the proud owner of a "town-pulse" site.

Then and Now: Re-create an old snapshot - The inspiration for this came a little at a time as I worked on a few different projects - most notably, a 2004 video to help the Chester High School Class of 1954 celebrate their 50th reunion. For that short film, I was armed with a stack of old postcards and a digital camera, with a mission to try and recreate some of the scenes in modern-day Chester, PA for a side-by-side comparison. Obviously, the results were not pretty as Chester is a city in decay, but it gave me a taste for urban exploration. If you've ever been to West Chester Scoop Ice Cream on Darlington Street, you'll see by the photos of old and new West Chester up on the wall that I'm not the only one with this fascination with before vs. after.

Only recently did I find the tool that would help to accomplish this; I had previously planned on it being a coffee table book or something similar. Certainly an interactive site that allows users to search and contribute is much more engaging in this situation than a static medium like print. Using software like Google Maps API and MediaWiki (I actually had found a script that worked like Flickrvision, but I can't find it now to save my life...) users would be encouraged to post old photos and then position themselves and their cameras to recreate the scene for the 21st century. Wow, I didn't know there used to be a farm where that Bath & Body Works is now! An existing example of this can be found at phillyhistory.org, albeit without the "now" part. Is that Vince Papale I see jogging down underneath the El?

End Transmission: The "go-to" forum for college media moguls - This is another one of those ideas that's had it's roots in several places. Going way back to 2002, Dany introduced me to one of his friends in Iowa or Utah or some shit that had a blog and a message board dedicated to his misadventures and what I'm guessing had to have been KUOI. (Quick google search reveals that his name was Ben High, from Moscow, Idaho, and he's still online! I thought he quit blogging a while ago.) Anyway, the point here was that Ben graciously sacrificed his bandwidth to allow strangers to discuss college radio on his forums. When they went down, it occurred to me that there was no obvious alternative for college radio geeks to talk about low-power FM, student volunteers, or the Postal Service.

It later occurred to me that college newspaper, yearbook, and television staffers had a similar issue. These are folks that spend a lot of time in front of computers and procrastinating - I see it as a perfect opportunity to congregate them in one spot for a discussion of all things "college media".

This is one idea I've already acted upon, albeit with my traditional half-assed approach. The concept and spirit for a college media forum went hand-in-hand with the symposium / concert we put on in 2004 called End Transmission, so I sought to borrow from that and update it for 2007 when I bought www.endtransmission.org. However, I haven't gotten around to actually putting the forums together, designing the artwork, or even getting the word out about the place. And so it's just sitting there patiently, waiting for someone besides porn spammers to pay attention to it.

The common thread here for me has been to take topics that I care about (local stuff, nostalgia, and college radio, I guess) and find a way to bring other people together in a way only the Internet can. And then, of course, to post ads everywhere on those sites, profit without doing anything, and retire early.