VA. Syracuse. Albany. Ithaca. Brooklyn. Portland. Chicago. Washington D.C. Hoboken. Chicago redux. Philadelphia. Cleveland. Des Moines. Las Vegas. Indianapolis. Baton Rouge. Camden. Scranton. Erie. Back in Brooklyn...
I leave for Philly tomorrow morning to look at apartments and try to nestle a bit before I settle into my job for the rest of the year. As a believer in signs and omens and the ability of early results to predict overall success, I am very happy that Philly 2006 gets kicked off the right way on Friday night with a Beef and Beer Pong party some friends are hosting to benefit the American Cancer Society. Good times, good cause, good people...hopefully the campaign shakes down the same way.
In unrealted news, I've been reading a lot of science magazines lately. Nothing clinical but the latest issues of Scientific American and SEED are at my disposal for the subway ride home tonight. I've been saving a post about how my mind is completely blown by these things called mirror neurons. El Stence first hipped me to the article in the New York Times about them and stories of developments in the field seem to be popping up in every science mag I see. Until I get around to publishing the post you'll just have to trust me that these things are amazing parts of our brains that have evolved to help us learn language, develop empathy and infer the intentions behind peoples' actions. Oh, our amazing brains!
I also think that my recent fascination with these science mags has to do with the joy I get from reading about people that are intellectually curious and believe in science for science's sake. Obviously, those tendencies stand in stark contrast to those being espoused by our political leaders but it seems like American society as a whole has lost the spark for discovery and exploration. Not surprising I guess given the heaviness of recent times but dammit America! Snap out of it! There's a great big universe out there!
And giant oceans and microscopic creatures and bending strips of time near the speed of light! Not to mention all the cool stuff going on inside our own heads! There's so much we don't know yet - about our planet, about our solar system and about ourselves. What do you say, team? Brand new era of scientific discovery on Three! 1-2-3!
Enter the psychedelic swirl to the New Enlightenment
Are we there yet? No? OK, fine. So, it's gonna take a little bit more magic than fractals to get our exploration engine running. But if you're looking for some news that doesn't involve administration snow-jobs, alleged rapist student-athletes or nuclear-fueled nationalism, get yourself some science reading and nerd out.
Here's something to tide you over until I get the mirror neurons tribute ready. It's not a new discovery but still very cool: Mind-Controlling Wasps! In the meantime, I'm off to discover and explore in Pennsylvania. If you have any other cool science tales, please pass them on.
Cloud fractals: what the sky looks like in the New Enlightenment
Hello friends, apologies for the lack of fresh goodies the last week. Life's been taking up a lot of my time lately - working, travelling, celebrating birthdays and weddings, etcetera, etcetera...
The week started with some time reviewing reams and reams of polling data, voter databases and analyses of previous elections to start putting the state plan for PA together. Trying to make sense of all the data to figure out where the votes are going to come from is an intimidating deal but I've never been involved with this aspect of campaign planning before so I'm pretty psyched. I'm supposed to be heading up the Keystone State this week to start laying some groundwork and then before I know it it's gonna be June, then August, then I'll blink and it'll be November. Crazy. You know what time it is...
On Friday, I left D.C. to start making my way up to Albany. One of my good friends from college was getting married on Saturday but Friday was this old boy's birthday so a layover in NYC Friday night was in order. Hit the usual places with the usual gang and a good time was had by all.
Famous people born on April 21st:
Charlotte Bronte, John Muir, Queen Elizabeth II, Tony Danza, Iggy Pop, Andie McDowell, Robert Smith of The Cure, Charles Grodin and Catherine the Great. Can I get a hell yeah?
Tony flashing that winning Taurean smile
I manage to get one hour of sleep before up and at em in a car up the NYS Thruway to Capital City. Maria got married in the giant Catholic cathedral right next to Empire Plaza. The service was beautiful but as an M.O.T. I have many questions. For starters, who's really in charge of this thing? The guy with the white hat or the guy with the red hat? The guy in the red hat tells everybody when to sit and stand but the guy in the white hat keeps raising his arms up and singing loudly. In the name of brevancy I'll digress but it's a good thing the bride was a good friend of mine because organized religion on an empty stomach and an hour of sleep make Ben something something...
After the wedding comes the reception and when the Cuse is in the house with an open bar you know the good times are bout to flow like liquid gin..pictures and more posts coming soon.
4. Apologies for the quality of the graphic below but the NYC subway rag AM Metro doesn't cater their online version for the blogosphere yet. If you can't read it, it's worth a download, which you can do here.
Thanks to Capitol Jester for practically writing today's post.
Lesson #1: A late-night swim in the outdoor pool at the Quality Inn in Somerset, PA is an excellent pick-me-up after spending 20 out of 48 hours behind a steering wheel. Heading back to DC for some meetings that'll hopefully finalize where I'm spending the rest of 2006.
Lesson #2: Ben Gordon is a baller. The ex-UConn Huskie and Mos Def look-a-like tied an NBA-record by drilling all 9 of his 3-point attempts against the Wizards tonight. Playoff seeds on the line and Benny comes up big in front of the hometown crown. Respect. The rest of the Chicago Bulls basketball organization, especially Tyson "Kwame Brown brings out my A-Game" Chandler and Andres "Thug Life" Nocioni, can eat a bag of you-know-whuts.
Lesson #3: 1840 Haight is the place to be in San Fran tomorrow night. Caps and Jones flash the bat-signal over the Bay Area, calling all crusaders to Milk Bar Saturday night. B.Y.O. capes, heroes...
Little-known fact: Beast and Cyclops were the dudes posing in the original Tommy Boy record logo.
With the spectre of employment casting its dark shadow upon my coming days, I'm doing my best to veg out via books and movies while I still can. Some hits and some misses - all of which are profiled below.
Now Reading:
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - NERD ALERT - the adjectives "wicked" and "awesome" alone would not suffice as descriptions of this wicked awesome sci-fi novel. I read all 324 pages for the first time between 4pm and 2am yesterday and it FU@%ED me up! I couldn't get to sleep afterwards and laid in bed wondering if it's true that we can't truly hurt somebody unless we understand them completely; and that the only way we can truly understand someone is if we make the effort to love them as they love themselves. Love as the only conduit to truly harm someone has been a theme of pop music for decades, but the thought of learning to truly love someone as they love themselves so that you may destroy them is CUCKOO. What's really gonna bake your noodle is thinking about what if Jesus understood that. Oh dip...
Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo - Meh. I haven't read any of DeLillo's other novels. Perhaps I started with the wrong one. I found the characters unengaging, the dialogue hard to follow and the narration very unfriendly. Perhaps that was the artistic intent of the author though - to create a reading atmosphere resembling the cold, calculating persona of a post-modern king of finance. Whatever, I don't like it when authors do that. Hulk Smash.
Law School Confidential by Robert H. Miller - Yeah, yeah, yeah, I will admit publicly that I'm still thinking about it. I've been doing some research up here in St. Paul, hanging with a law school pal and taking it all in. Granted, law students in their second semester of their third year don't set the best examples of the rigors of studying law but I get the picture. The advice from the book is clear: either commit to law school early and don't look back or don't do it at all. At this point, I think I'm willing to pledge to commit and not look back until I see my LSAT score. Baby steps...
Conversations with Tom Petty by Paul Zollo - OK, so if you're a really, really big Tom Petty fan and you dream of one day sitting down with the man himself in order to chronicle his thoughts on every song he's ever recorded and will accept "Yeah, I really love that song, too" as an insightful response - I'm sorry to break it to you, but Paul Zollo has already written your book for you. To be fair, there are many great stories peppered throughout the book, including Petty's gushing recollections of the Heartbreakers touring as Bob Dylan's back-up band and what it was like being a Wilbury (Answer: super-cool and freakin' awesome, respectively).
Guns, Germs and Steel, A Brief(er) History of Time (Books-On-CD versions) - I have a long ride from Minnesota to Philly ahead of me and I discovered I have little to no recall of the stuff I learned when I read these a few years ago. AKA I'm not the guy you want to help you remember the combination to your bike lock. I am gonna be wicked smart by the time I get back to the East Coast though.
Now Watching:
The Aristocrats/Comedian - For those living in bubbles impenetrable by all things humorous, The Aristocrats is a documentary dedicated to the telling of a single joke. The initial set-up and punchline vary slightly according to the teller but the narrative that connects the two ends is completely up to the person telling the joke - and it's completely filthy everytime. Comedian is a lesser-known documentary that follows Jerry Seinfeld's on and off-stage efforts to build an all-new stand-up routine. The best part of both movies for me was getting to watch professional comics talk about their craft; about what makes "funny". I could watch Carlin, Seinfeld, Cosby, Drew Carey, Colin Quinn, these "comics' comics" talk about what works and what doesn't for hours. And I did. The other interesting thing I noticed though was that there was absolutely no overlap in comics between the two movies. There must have been easily a hundred comics featured between the two movies and not one appeared in both. It's as if there are two comedy "camps" - the "Seinfeld" camp and the "Penn from Penn and Teller" camp. That's obviously not the case but it's fun to imagine.
The Fog of War - Rent it. It's like someone gave Robert McNamara truth serum. You'd hate to see the same thing happen to Rumsfeld - too soon.
Paycheck - it's not often that a film title can also sum up the apparent motivation of all creative entitiess associated with it. Good for the first hour and then it everyone on both sides of the camera said, "Eh, who gives a shit" and went pants-optional from there on out.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Opposite of Paycheck. Really disappointed until the Tri-Wizard Tournament started. Kinda disappointed that Fleur was not hotter or that Krum didn't have a unibrow you could rest pencils on. Also, the actor playing Ron needs to pop in a tape of the VH1 Corey Feldman Behind the Regrettful Career Decisions and see what happens to kids that are too cool for school and lack talent. Apologies for not posting a NERD ALERT at the start of this review.
Chapelle's Block Party - More funny than Aristocrats and Comedian combined PLUS the greatest hip-hop concert ever recorded. ?uestlove did a helluva job putting the music together. The marching band playing Jesus Walks and Lauryn Hill tearing up Killing Me Softly made my eyes well up. No joke. I'm a sucker for magic moments. Like that part in The Natural after Hobbs shatters Wonderboy and says "Pick me out a winner, Bobby"? Killer.
John Crave drops some new maple syrupy gold for those pancakes in yer ears, kiddos. Come hott hotties, mighty children and everyone to kneel by Crave's fountain of liquid gold. Soak up your aural fill...
Gold Buick the early nominee for anthem of summer 2006
In a hypothetical, stream-of-consciousness, self-interview, where I ask for an autobiographical Ipod playlist; the response:
It would probably start out with some comedy bits. I remember listening to comedy albums before I started listening to music. Cosby, Carlin, Jonathan Winters, Tom Lehrer, Allan Sherman, Mel Brooks, Bob Newhart, some real random stuff, like this one my grandma had called Laugh of the Party and she would do this routine where two women with proper accents get talking about going to Ceylon and get smashed on port. That stuff had a huge impact on me. Huey Lewis would be in there, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, early HipHop : Rob Base, Heavy D, B-Boys, De La Soul, Tribe, Public Enemy.
Then Bob Dylan. I probably discovered Bob Dylan like teenagers discovered Dylan thirty years ago. Vinyl record alone in my bedroom. There's probably not any other way to discover Dylan, once you hear him for the first time it's all the same, BAM, either you're in awe or you're looking for something completely diffferent. It was Like a Rolling Stone, over and over again, it was literate, it had timing , his words weren't arbitrary, it was like the comedy albums. Tomorrow is a Long Time, All Along the Watchtower, Idiot Wind, Isis, Tambourine Man, Masterpiece. Then the Band - my Dad was a huge musical influence on me. Everything up to now was from my Dad - the comedy albums, the Motown, Dylan, everything. Mom's stuff was always sort of playing in the background: Billy Joel, Elton John, Daryl Hall and John Oates, I know all that shit.Then, one day, I remember being in the car when Chest Fever I think came on the radio and my dad turned it up and afterwards gushed "man, it just doesn't get any better than that" and I thought "what, who? What have you been holding out on me?" Long Black Veil, Atlantic City, Country Boy, Basement Tapes. That's my bread and butter. That's where I'm home
I remember seeing Dave Matthews Band in the fall of 95 and I got super into them for about two years and then I just jumped headfirst into the Grateful Dead. Someone gave me a bootleg of theirs in high school and I remember it being too mellow for me at the time, then i saw them the summer after I graduated high school at RFK stadium, in 95 and I got progressively more into them until my sophomore year in college when exploring music became a group effort and we all needed a steady diet of music to smoke weed to: Dead, Phish, The Band, The Allmans with some Tupac, Talking Heads and Steely Dan thrown in for good measure here and there, reggae, etc. That musical scene proved hard to get out of and I picked up on some non-jammy shit here and there but at the time that scene was still pretty good: MMW, Strangefolk, Percy Hill, DBB, Viperhouse, etc. HipHop reappeared for a brief second with Mos and Kweli's joints but I mostly stayed immersed in jam world until I heard Wilco.
I was living in Ithaca, in a cabin about 8 miles outside town, when I picked up Being There on a complete fucking lark. I can tell you exactly where I was the first time I heard jeff tweedy's voice - in my car at the intersection of Buffalo and Rt. 13 heading East, on my way back from Best Buy where I bought the album. It's been as torrid a love afffair with a band as I've ever had ever since. They opened me up to a whole new scene of music which I've been happily sifting through ever since. That's where it would wrap up.
Nevermind the proper sounds a bus makes! It just got a lot more dangerous to be an ex-Steeler, son! Or someone who's had a frothy mixture named after them. You're both going down, cousins, it's clobberin' time!
Well gang, this one is sure to cause a stir but there've been some big things underfoot here at the home office, you might want to sit down. Many of you know my girlfriend Allison. Many of you do not. And for those that don't this is going to come as an especially big shock but Ms. Fisher, with the permission of Mr. Fisher, has finally agreed to marry this old boy.
I asked for her hand on the shores of Lake Michigan, last weekend, in front of a large crowd of bystanders, including her parents and several hundred pigeons, just like in that Zales jewelry commercial. It's all very exciting and we couldn't be happier and we wish to direct all of you to our registry at Dick's Sporting Goods. Spend generously and promptly. Some of you will be recieving invitations in the near future.
1. An old take on an old Administration tactic but a good read nonetheless. A newer take on West Wing happenings from dear Mr. Fineman.
2. Celebrating the man, the school: George Mason. Who was he? How close is GMU to my high school? Go Patriots.
Nuff respek to G-Mase
3. Twin Cities treating the old boy well. The sun is shining, the birds are back in town, threat of catastrophic frostbite subsiding. Back on the road soon though. Gone til November, i'll be gone til November.
1) B. Peppers. As in, "B. peppers little children with pieces of caramel to lure them into his van." His weird, gruesome, bug-eyed minivan.
Strike Sparks Anywhere Joke Original:
Q: What's the difference between B. Peppers and his weird, gruesome, bug-eyed minivan?
A: The van doesn't have a busted grill.
2) Can't remember if I posted this before but it's one of the funniest things I've seen on the web this year. Leeroy has no patience for gameplanning, he just wants to do this, no matter the cost.
For the first time in five races, I will not embark on a post-election Wilco/Jeff Tweedy tour. The band is still touring but there's no way I'm going to Arkansas. In lieu of a live performance, I've been enjoying the webcast of a recent show Jeff Tweedy played all by himself here in Chicago. For those that haven't had the chance to hear Tweedy unplugged, do yourself a favor and allow yourself the time to let his songs win you over.
1) D.C.-area college hoops had only one "George" team for a very long time. The Georgetown Hoyas, along with the Maryland Terps, dominated the local hoopscene and some years fielded better teams than the Washington Bullets/Wizards could muster. Then in the early 90s, another "George" school, George Washington, started making some noise under head coach Mike Jarvis and some help from Yinka Dare, Shawnta Rogers, Alexander Koul and others. This year GW fielded it's best team ever, was ranked in the AP top 10 for the final five weeks of the season and established itself as a program worthy of being discussed in the same breaths as the Hoyas and Terps.
This weekend, the D.C. "Georges" became a triumverate. On Saturday, George Mason knocked off #1 seed Connecticut in the NCAA tournament to earn itself trip to the Final Four, some national recognition and a place atop this season's D.C. "George Triangle". The GMU campus is also a ten-minute drive down Braddock Rd from the house I grew up in in Fairfax, VA. While demographic shifts in my old neighborhood have resulted in a much-improved basketball team at my old high school, back in the day, our team was something to not only sneeze at, but dunk mightily on as well. A lot of the dudes that played ball for the LB Bruins when I was a freshman and sophomore wound up playing for the GMU Patriots after graduation. Big ups to those guys. It's nice to see Fairfax getting some love on Sportscenter.
"The lord can make you tumble, the lord can make you turn; the lord can make you overflow...but the lord can't make you burn." - Randy Newman
Sorry for the delayed posting folks. I know a lot of you were keeping tabs on the race and waiting for some news but it's taken me until now to find the time to clean up some old thoughts and make sense of what just occured but here goes: what follows is actually a composite of thoughts typed out on two separate days: the day after the news hit and the day after the day after we lost. You'll see what I'm talking about. Comments welcome...
Well, that's all folks. Once again the lightning didn't quite make it out of the bottle here in the Windy City. With 100% of precincts reporting, it's the hospital bed-ridden incumbent over the shimmeringly vibrant insurgent by 4 points or roughly 20,000 votes out of some 600,000 cast. Turnout sucked out in our base and as the GOTV director I kind of take that shit personally. But when I consider our Election Day operation consisted of 300 odd volunteers spread out across 5000 precincts and the fact that we were up against a team comprised of the most powerful labor unions in town, thousands of county workers and a nosy ex-president I realize that 48% is nothing to sneeze at.
All in all it was a great experience. Great people, great candidate, great city, great opportunity. The roller-coaster ride of a race captured the attention of the New York Times here and again here. Professionally it opened up some doors for me and let's face it, there are worse places than the Chi to make a name for yourself in if you're looking to step up inside the world of Democratic politics. Which I am. More later...
The real excitement of this race came about a week out and it turned the race inside out. Here's what I wrote about it then:
First things first:
Gerry Mac is a pimp. The Cuse has most definitely been in the house this past week: knocking off the #1 team in country while taking out three other ranked teams on their way to successfully defending their Big East conference tournament title and earning a 5 seed in the NCAA Tourney. The Aggies of boo-ass Texas better watch the eff out: you are about to be definitely set on fiyah.
I haven't actually been able to pay all that much attention to Syracuse's incredible run due to this nagging job of mine. It requires my attention on nearly a daily basis and doesn't seem to provide me with much but delicious pastries and cakes to snack on while I try to overthrow the sitting county president here in the Chi.
It's amazing how quickly a campaign's fortune can go from good to bad to something completely different within 24 hours. As an example, here is my abridged attempt at a Google-Monkey dodging recap of the past 24 hours:
6 pm Monday night:
We're doing our thing in the office, awaiting the results of a Chi Trib poll that's supposed to be made public around 9pm. Now, it's a well-known fact that endorsements from respected or well-known local figures during the last weeks of a campaign can help solidify your base and generate the much-sought after BIG MO right before Election Day. You just hope those who have it within their power to annoint with a simple photographed handshake or an arm-in-arm stroll in a parade walk will either come out for you or stay out of the race altogether. In the Windy City, there are those that pull water and there are those that can make it rain. The water pullers operate mostly on the local level: aldermen, retired judges, some sitting state state senators, and so on. But in the Chi, there are only three undisputed rainmakers that, like Prince or Elvis, need only go by one name.
3) RDM Yes, the son of that RJD. He's the mayor and he's on the record for our opponent, but as my guy is his former Chief of Staff, he's not exactly yelling "Mush!" to the Chi GOTV machine.
2) Junior J3. As in Congressman for the heavily-African-American southside of Chi. Well-known for serving his constituency well, well-respected for his earning of a place outside of his father's shadow (though he's not afraid to wield the clout his name brings him through genetic default), he is THE MAN to the southside African American community, though still second to the Chi's #1 dude.
1) BHOJ AKA Daddy Fatsacks AKA The skinny kid with a funny name with peoples in the red states AKA O'Bama to the city's considerable Irish population AKA AKA AKA AKA...The list goes on. Dude gets the Evanston liberals starry-eyed over lattes then takes the red line down to 95th St and goes "Number one in the hood, G". Even the fishes of Lake Michigan slap fins when he walks by. One hug from King Midas is all it takes to get a seat next to the throne. The campaign's been in constant contact with his peoples and so far he's stayed publicly neutral but one word, one flake, one crumb of love from BHOJ means this thing's over.
However... there is another.
If one were to take a poll in any black community outside the Chi, and ask the people who they would wait in line the longest to see speak, who they would take four trains just to get a chance to touch or just chill and drink some drink with, there's only one dude who cuts a wider swath than Barack. And his name is Bubba. And Bubba just slapped his big ol thing down on the table here in the Chi.
"Come on man, bring it in for the real thing"
Oh no he didn't. Around 6pm we get word that our opponent has snagged a recorded endorsement from Bubba himself. There are many reasons why this turn of events is surprising but nonetheless Bubba is right now up on black radio and on the answering machines in the homes of both black and progressive voters asking them to support his good friend, the incumbent. Oh yes he did.
Time passes quickly as we're scrambling to confirm the message's existence and measure the impact on motivating and suppressing our respective base constituencies when the Trib poll hits. Their dude 47%, our dude 37%, 15% undecided with a 5% margin of error. Not as close as we would have liked but it's much closer than the last poll had the campaign two months before and the high count of undecideds this late in the campaign only helps us.
I go out late that night to drink and catch The Books show at someplace downtown and eventually crawl into my bed at 3am convinced that if only we could get all of Chi-town to listen to more found-sound cello compositions we just might have a chance at this thing.
9am, Tuesday morning:
I arrive at the office with a pouch of stale bourbon where my inspiration used to be. There's a crowd around the television and I learn that around the same time I was passing out the night before our opponent was waking and complaining of feeling weak in his left side. He's rushed to the hospital for tests and while his press officer is saying he's just feeling tired and the visit is a precautionary one nobody with a medical degree is saying anything just yet.
The incumbent is a 76-year old African-American with diabetes and a recent survivor of open heart triple-bypass surgery. He's a visibly unhealthy man and when word hits that he indeed did suffer a stroke in the middle of the night an unsettling feeling sweeps through the office. Mixed feelings of concern, worry, relief, shame and general nervousness are exchanged as two new teams trot out onto the field for fresh set of nine innings. AKA it's a whole new ballgame .
6 days to go...
OK, back to the present day. This may sound silly but in the end it came down to not enough people voting for us. While that's always the case for one candidate in every race it's particulary helpful as an illumination of what worked and what didn't on this particular campaign. It's one thing if the universe of voters you've been trying to persuade doesn't come out in droves for you. You can blame their decision to stay home on any number of factors: not targeting the right campaign themes or messages to encourage the crossover, your direct mail pieces not having enough bite or resonance visually, poor choices in empowering surrogate candidates to politic on your behalf, the list goes on. These people weren't with you in the first place so it's harder to create a compelling reason for them to go to the polls and easier to forgive them nor turning out. But when your base, your core group of consituents, doesn't turn out it's usually due to a larger fundamental flaw in your GOTV plan.
In this case, I think it's pretty clear the missing piece was a legitimate knock-and-drag effort in our base. Knock-and-drags are a long-standing component of urban campaigns, especially for Democrats, and the importance of these types of operations is well-articulated here. The candidate can blame voters for not showing up all he wants, but the fact remains this was a county race with no compelling primary battle at the top of the ballot to bring voters out and some money set aside to hire half-a-dozen buses worth of high school kids to knock on doors in our base on Election Day wouldn't have been a bad idea. But wtf do I know...
As for me, I'm taking my ass up to Minnesota for a little fresh air. Longtime readers are well aware of my last journey (scroll down about halfway until the pictures start) to the frozen north country and I pledge to keep my jacket with me at all times to avoid further late-night goodbye phone calls.
In the meantime, there's much more non-campaign stuff that I've been putting off writing about so I've got some catching up to do. In the meantime, please accept ths following as a fitting farewell tribute to one of the greatest players to ever don the Syracuse Orange. I was wrong about the Cuse-Aggies matchup but only a Final Four run could have topped the Big East Tourney run as a proper send-off for Gerry McNamara. Not that he'd need me, but if dude ever runs for mayor of Scranton, I'm there. You da man, Gerry.
I wrote a very long analysis of this very interesting 24-hour period in our campaign but am holding off on posting it for fear of the Google Monkeys. Will post more, much more, very soon...
1. Hip Hop is Dead: What's the difference between a counter-culture and the mainstream? How about the difference between Ice-T doing "Copkiller" and "Law and Order".
Chuck D once famously called hip-hop the black CNN: a direct line of communication comparing and verifying the universal urban plight of African-American youths in the 1980s. Many, like MistaChuck, took it upon themselves to use hip-hop as more than just party music. They recognized the potential revolutionary power latent in hip-hop, evident in it's inventions in language, fashion and attitude. As a "movement", Hip-Hop was seen as not only a response to, but a natural, unavoidable result of the demoralizing urban conditions inhabited by its artists. Hip-Hop, properly channeled, was seen by many as a vehicle for promoting some tenets not yet fully embraced by the urban African-American culture, such as political action, unity and an awareness of its own history .
But if Hip-Hop's visionaries sought to use Hip-Hop to plug some of the gaps in the societal net that they had argued had been essential to its creation, is Hip-Hop, as a movement, sustainable? The back cover of Bomb the Suburbs posed the question thusly: "Is the ultimate goal of hip-hop to eliminate itself?"
Well, Hip-Hop may not have eliminated itself but as of yesterday it can be found in the Museum of American History. Artifacts and symbols of potential power never made kinetic now under glass.
2. Chicago
Been on the ground five days, nineteen to go. Is it a bad sign that I'm already counting? I've heard people say there are only two ways to run for office: scared or unopposed. This group is neither but there is a sense that the time is right for the incumbent (our opponent) to lose. The dynamic of this operation is very different from ones that I've worked on in the past and as a result I'm forced to maximize non-traditional means to arrive at traditional ends. The method of measuring our support goes against my training (if you can't count it, it doesn't exist) but the folks with a much better grasp of the local political landscape than me are optimistic and that's what I'm going on, for better or worse.
Enter the psychedelic swirl to the New Enlightenment
Cloud fractals: what the sky looks like in the New Enlightenment
