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