Thursday, March 25, 2004

Micah Sifry quotes erstwhile Dean webmaster Nicco Mele on the imperative to continue what the Dr. started: "We all felt the muscle flex of this new progressive movement and were stunned by it. Everybody wants to carry that forward." He cites Zephyr Teachout, too: "The power of the MeetUp model is that it generates these steering committees and draws out volunteers with talents, something that never happens with canvassing operations or direct mail." 7:59:01 PM    comment []

Scott Yost on the front page of The Rhino Times re Billy Yow: "Yow may have gone too far-- leaving other Republican Party members little choice but to distance themselves from Yow and his theater of the bizarre." (3/25/04  issue, online Monday). Better late than never. Meanwhile, Yow fans abound in the paper's call-in Sound of the Beep pages. 2:03:15 PM    comment []

Political Wire opens a section for different flavors of blog commentary called Southpaws and Wingers. You might need to break this down further, by issue. That seems more in tune with blog-logic. Do you put Jeff Jarvis on the Wingers page when he's writing about Iraq, and on the Southpaws page when he's writing about free speech? Glenn Reynolds one day on one site supporting gay rights and the next on the other site supporting gun rights? 1:49:24 PM    comment []

I have a terrible tape of this show by the Jerry Garcia Band. Had it forever, don't know where I got it. If I tweak all the settings on my car stereo I can make the music sound OK, although the treble is still painfully bright sometimes, and there's nothing to be done about the raggedness of Jerry's voice, which is not the pleasing raggedness one sometimes heard from him but the limited-vocal-ability raggedness of which he was all too capable. But it's worth listening to for the guitar-and-piano breaks in the middle of "Second That Emotion" and "They Love Each Other." Each solo/jam session is several minutes long -- yesterday the good part of "They Love Each Other" took me all the way from Patterson Ave. to PTI on I-40 as I drove to pick up the Mad Genius for lunch, and last night at the tail end of rush hour the middle of "Emotion" took me down N. Elm from First Pres to Buffalo Lake. Each is emblematic of a particular style of Jerry solo: "Emotion" his happy, rambling, lyrical sound, "Each Other" the kind of dramatic build and release he practiced on the Europe '72 version of "Morning Dew." In a better world, cleaned-up versions of this show, or at least the good parts, would be available on CD and played before major sporting events. UPDATE: Kismet. You know those really cute girls that used to come out for Dead shows? I married one. Lisa was at the late show at the Capitol the same night my tape was recorded -- I imagine her a month before her 18th birthday, too bohemian to be jappy but too hygienic to be a twirler...wow, now I've got this huge crush on a vision of my own wife long before I met her... 8:46:28 AM    comment []

King Kaufman: "I'm not such an expert on college hoops that I can't learn something from Billy Packer once in a while."   Packer is a sourpuss, but he knows the game. Praise from Packer means something -- when he says something nice about Rashad McCants, I pay attention, as opposed to Dookie V, who says nice things about everyone all the time over and over and over again. Plus, when Packer takes himself too seriously, natives of ACC-land can just picture him standing beside Jim Thacker in a checked sport-coat, hum a few bars of "Sail with the Pilot," and laugh... 8:11:09 AM    comment []

Tristan Taormino responds to criticism of her visit to UNCG. Says modestly she's not a porn star -- she's only been in three movies! "Calling me a porn star is like calling Michael Jordan a baseball legend. It's not only a gross, inaccurate exaggeration, but it devalues all the hard work actual adult performers do each and every day to create films that entertain and arouse people in a $10 billion-a-year industry..."   Somewhat more compelling is her argument in favor of frank sex ed: "Our culture is saturated with sex, but it's all image, no information. Especially when it comes to college students, I believe I must talk to them in a way they can relate to. If I got up in front of a room full of twentysomethings with one-dimensional anatomy charts and went on and on about how abstinence is the only real safe sex, they'd fall asleep..." 7:51:14 AM    comment []