Tom Watson

Postadelic

I've never been called blogalicious before, but if the shoe fits...

This Time and Place

There are sites out there where the callous bashing of others down deep in the comments goes without notice, where voices are cut off and censored and bullied; this little site is not one of them.

This presidential race is a tough one on the left - a very tough one, to use a weak but available modifier - and passions are deeply stirred. Anger builds and spreads and steams over the side of the cup. And folks who might normally converse pleasantly about the general state of the world fling vituperation a bit too casually. At least for my taste.

So let's go open kimono on a few things around here. We haven't done that for a while, and there are lots of  welcome newcomers - some of whom are passionate Hillary backers, while others adore Barack. (Still others dig McCain or no one at all).

First, this is my blog - it's entirely an iconoclastic view, my own perception of reality. No one pays me to write it, and all editorial judgments are mine. You don't have to agree; indeed, agreement here is kind of rare. But let's try to argue about it with civility.

Secondly, I support Hillary Clinton for president. It's been that way around here for a year. I'm not part of her campaign, have never been paid a nickel for what I've written, and have nothing material to gain from my support. Further, that support is based on my judgment on who'd make the best president. I've tried to make the argument agreeably - sometimes, I've failed. Sometimes my candidate and her campaign have let me down. Many times, her grace and stamina have amazed me. And as of today, I believe she's the best candidate.

Third, that may change.

Fourth, I admire Barack Obama and have said it here many times. He is accomplished, a fine writer, and his heart's in the right place, as best as I can tell of a talented politician running for national office. Just because I'm pro-Clinton doesn't mean I'm anti-Obama. (By the by, I don't despise Senator McCain, either - more about that at some future date). If I fail to fall out in ecstasy over a particular political speech, don't count me as the enemy of hope. If he wins the nomination in Denver, I'll support the Senator for President.

Finally, about those comments. To my way of thinking, comments are the life's blood of a good blog. My posts are starting points for the conversation; sometimes they're full essays, other times the barest throat-clearing tarted up with a few links. I'm interested in what the small community of users has to say. I ask that you keep it civil, and generally you have for more than four years. (Though I've lost it a few times myself). I don't really police the comments, but I do wade in as much as I can. Let me repeat: keep it civil. Try to keep the name-calling off the forms (a little cussin' is a-okay with me). No libel. No threats. No bullying. There are some long-time regulars here, so if you're new, treat 'em like you'd treat Norm in the corner seat at that neighborhood bar you just walked into.

The rough-and-tumble of politics is welcome - I fairly revel in it. Indeed, I've taken vicious body blows here from some of my closest friends and relatives - and lived to respond. Across many of the more popular political blogs, the level of discourse has dropped to some rat-infested subterranean slime. Let's keep the drainage level higher here. Now let's get back to it. I'll start: Obama sucks. McCain's the anti-Christ. Go Hillary.

A Pity Beyond all Telling

This harsh race for the Democratic nomination has boiled well beyond the melting point of igneous rock, and today's meltdown - by the erstwhile king of the netroots bloggers, no less - is no cooler. Indeed, the intemperate screed launched by Markos Moulitsas, founder of the DailyKos, singed every Democrat who read it and had to give those of us who battle it out online a reason to pause (or in one case, to purr at a pat on the head). Put on your asbestos suits and read what Kos said about the campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton:

She is willing -- nay, eager to split the party apart in her mad pursuit of power.

This sad embarassment has me eager, nay, desperate for another path. I'm sick of fighting nasty Democrats 'round here. Besides, it's St. Patrick's Day and as MA Peel reminds me, "something in the Celtic soul that has a natural affinity for the complex and the poetic."

So we need a third way, and I don't mean Al Gore at the convention (though, for the first time I might welcome a compromise candidate in this mess) - I'm talking culture. The fab Ms. Peel, good Irish lass that she is, has a great up over at newcritics titled Irish Altered States. She plumbs the film Kings from Tom Collins, and the play The Seafarer, by Conor McPherson. Here's a taste, but head over and leave your thoughts:

Can all these Irish souls be in such constant pain that they need to be continously anesthetized? I don’t know if that’s how McPherson and Collins see it. Some of the characters dance around stereotypes, but then become more dimensional. As for the cosmic root of the drinking–the centuries of oppression idea is not so far-fetched. It’s certainly part of what created the Irish epithet: “their wars are happy and all their songs are sad.”

To someone on the outside, it’s hard not to see an underlying sadness in these daily lives, yet you admire them for getting on with it all, as best they can.

To those on the outside of this political blogging whirl, those of us engaged in the warfare of words must also feel some of that underlying sadness - the Irish of it. I do. Hence, the salve of skippy - the moral equivalent of a pint of Guinness on this fine evening.

Four More Years! Four More Years!

It was a cold January day four years ago when this blog was born. Warren Zevon (gone only four months) was on my mind when I added "My Dirty Life & Times" after my own name and conceived this space as a place to share what was on my mind, regardless of anyone else's interest. As it turns out, there was a fair amount of interest - in politics, media, baseball, music, and general observations of a verbose middle-aged guy from New York - and many of you have shared the ride. My view then, confirmed since, was that life holds many twists and turns, that most of what we see and think and pretend to know is written in shades of gray. I give you my version. You knock it down (or agree, or add some detail), and we have a conversation.

This community has been very important to me over those four years, but I'm taking a bit of a break - and it's for a good reason.

I've signed to write a book that's due to my publisher later this spring. The book is called CauseWired, and it explores the collision of media technology with social, charitable, and political causes. My experiences here will figure prominently in the book, which will identify the major trends in wired social causes and seek to draw some key conclusions. So who'll want to read it? I'm hoping it will appeal to a wide group of people in business, in the nonprofit world, in politics, and even in the general reading public.

I hope the timing is good. The business pages are filled with stories of start-up companies and massive valuations. Google grows ever more rapidly into a global powerhouse. And the reach of social networks like Facebook stretches every day. Americans are living more of their lives in public, creating vast lists of online “friends” and professional colleagues, sharing their experiences, their taste in music, their political choices, and even their personal lives.

No trend is hotter than the rush to create social networks, the vast intertwined next generation of the web that promises real-time connection and communication. Americans of all ages are taking part, but no group is more enthusiastic – and more empowered – than the so-called “millennials,” that demographic slice of our society that has never known life without the Internet. These young men and women now entering the workforce for the first time have lived much of their lives online, and they bring with them in their introduction to the national economy – and our society – great expectations for lightning-fast communications, openness and transparency, and the ability to change the landscape quickly.

At the same time, the world is a smaller place. Genocide in remote villages in the east African nation of Darfur is covered by Google maps that show the devastation and religious cleansing, while hundreds of bloggers write about the terrible story – not merely passing along links from mainstream media organizations, but urging action and placing a premium on their own opinion. On Facebook, the fastest-growing online social network in the world, hundreds of thousands of people – students, young professionals, political action committees, and even gray-haired CEOs and captains of industry – signal their support for stopping the slaughter and helping the victims by placing badges on their individual profiles. Video sharing brings the story home, and thousands of digital photographs are trade and posted on blogs and social networks. Keywords and tags allow anyone interested in the topic to explore a massive cultural document – the living expansion of the topic in public consciousness – through blog networks and search engines. Darfur becomes more than a yellowing news-clipping down in the backroom of the public library, more than a research report, more than a news story from far away. It becomes a cause. More accurately, Darfur becomes "CauseWired."

Yes, it's a term of art - and what business book these days would be complete without a blog. Some of you may have noticed that I've been very quietly blogging about this subject at CauseWired.com over the last month or so. Well, I'm going public today - the fourth anniversary of my personal blog - and I hope to see you all over there.

A note: this blog is not going dark - it will remain active, but I just won't post as often as I have been (this presidential race is confounding my attempts to beat the book deadline, I can tell you). And as I've said in each of the last three "anniversary" posts: I owe you all a hearty thanks for your time, your attention, your loyalty, and your vicious mud-slinging.

Rock Those Holiday Blues

Regular readers may occasionally detect a case of Christmas jaundice around the edges of this normally ruddy blogospheric mein. But I really do enjoy the most Wonderful Time of the Year™ . Sort of, in small doses, all involving the observation of a certain childish delight I no longer possess. Lucky for me, my friends Neddie Jingo and Blue Girl groove to a more authentic holiday beat. In what's become a Yuletide tradition, they've once again bridged the digital miles in song with a brilliant musical mash-up of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. That's the Nedman on guitar and all other instruments, and Blue Girl on lead vocals. Ned's production is great, and the girl can bring the sing. The graphic's pretty groovy too, thanks to the Skimmer. Oh, and here's last year's number, Christmastime is Here, a wonderful recording. Pass the eggnog, this Christmas is looking up.

Scene and Heard: Campaign Edition

The lure of three-dot journalism is so strong, I can no longer fight its siren song. Besides, the pickings are rich indeed - so it's not laziness, really. Call it canny curatorial expertise, if you must but just enjoy the posts.

Lance Mannion takes on the loose tongue of Bob Kerrey, who the foaming lips of Chris Matthews and the like would have you believe is a simple agent of the evil Clinton campaign, doing the bidding of the anti-Obama forces. Lance thinks Kerrey erred, but not out of spite. Still, he notes: "Listen, folks, if saying Obama's middle name out loud is dirty pool, we've got a real problem if he gets the nomination.Because, guess what, the Republicans aren't about to keep quiet about it. Or about his skin color. Or about his father's religion.Or about the madrassa."

Mark Green defended Kerrey tonight on MSNBC's Softball for Obama, but the spewing Matthews and poor radio host Ed Schultz, apparently miffed that Hillary Clinton hasn't appeared on his show, tag-teamed the grand Clintonion conspiracy theory. Who else but Taylor Marsh to pick up on the hijinks, which could have passed for a spoof: "Matthews' desperation for relevancy, especially in the face of Keith Olbermann's brilliance and ratings power, seems all the more pathetic given the stakes. If Mr. Matthews understood the urgency of vetting the Democratic candidate, especially his legislative record, or really cared what candidate Democrats serve up against the Republicans he would do his homework before spouting off. But he doesn't care about Democrats, or that he's trying to destroy the first viable female candidate in U.S. history." Exactly right.

The creampuffery laid before the annointed candidate of hope has been in stark contrast to the Beltway media's open hostility toward Senator Clinton, according to Washington Post media critic Howie Kurtz. Quite so. As Kurtz writes: "Journalists repeatedly described Obama as a "rock star" when he jumped into the race in January. His missteps -- such as when his staff mocked Clinton's position on the outsourcing of jobs overseas by referring to the Democrat not as representing a state but as "D-Punjab" -- generated modest coverage, but rarely at the level surrounding Clinton's mistakes." Bill Moyers agrees.

And Josh Marshall laughs aloud at the Obama campaign's hilarious suggestion that he's received tougher scrutiny than Senator Clinton: "I really hope the Obama camp is kidding when they say Barack is the most scrutinized candidate in the race. If they're not, they're living in a fantasy world that makes me question whether they're up to the rigors of a national campaign. ... .. Then there's the collective assault that constitutes modern press 'scrutiny', especially for a Democrat who generally has to deal with the tag team of the national political press and the regrettably much more able and ruthless GOP oppo research cadre, which has an established feeding operation mainlined to most national political reporters. ... .. It ain't fair; it ain't right; but it's the reality. And if he thinks he's already gotten that, well ... what's he been smoking?"

Then there's Digby's priceless reaction to Rush Limbaugh, who wondered if America could stand looking at a 60-ish female age before their eyes as President - this after Drudge's massive play to a photo of Clinton that showed (gasp!) some campaign trail fatigue and (omigosh!) a few wrinkles. Said the Digster: "I don't think aging women should even be allowed out in public, personally, much less should anyone have to look at their revolting faces on television. There is no reason that handsome, virile chick magnets like Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain should have their aesthetic environment polluted with such hideousness." Ah, the joys of this sexism-free campaign.

Professional Clinton Hatred (Not the Republican Variety)

Back in the 1990s, there was good money to be made - and certainly fame to be won - in the boom market for Clinton hatred among conservatives. Many a media career was launched on the simple business premise of attacking the President and First Lady with whatever could be found (legitimate and plain old crazy), and then repeating the process over and over and over.

Fast-forward. Clinton hatred still pays, and right now it's playing for certain media figures on the left. Certainly, Markos Moulitsas and Arianna Huffington and Chris Matthews simply cannot stand Senator Clinton. They just don't like her, and they wear that dislike on their sleeves. When she slipped late in the Philadelphia debate, they went public with their hatred.

But let's face it, they have an economic interest as well. I'll plainly say what many on the left have been quietly suggesting for months - that DailyKos and Huffington Post and Hardball make more money when there's a real, close, tense race for the Democratic nomination for president. They get more eyeballs, their traffic goes up, and ratings are bigger. It's pure reality programming; what will draw more people - a relentless and  inevitable march toward the nomination next summer or three months of vicious infighting with Senator Clinton as the target.

Hell, I'd watch more of the latter and I endorsed her.

So if you're pro-Clinton and your blood pressure leaps when you see Chris Matthews go on and on and on about her strange clapping habits or the so-called gender card or how she'll be a "pariah" in the White House without the majority support of married men, don't think "blond, male Democratic Lucianne Goldberg on steroids." Remember, it's profitable schtick.

And if you love Barack Obama and get all crazed with hope when Arianna Huffington leads her mega-blog with the Illinois Senator's incredible performance in this speech or that debate, don't think "the lefty Drudge knows all." Remember the page views. And when Markos goes wild over a missing-not missing-maybe missing tip in an Iowa diner, don't necessarily think the Captain of All Netroots is onto the big story of the campaign. Remember the comments and the links and the BlogAds.

Look, their evident dislike of Hillary Clinton is real. But it also happens to line up perfectly with building a bigger audience. And perhaps that's what accounts for the sheer repetition, for the prominent placement of links and headlines, for the repetition (I said that already).

Over at OpenLeft, Chris Bowers knows what's happening here - and why (whatever mixed motives the big liberal media outlets may have) the coming out of those with Clinton hatred is dangerous to the cause of electing a Democrat:

I imagine most people reading this blog are either happy that Clinton is     somewhat down, or at least not disappointed. However, they should be careful     what they wish for. In this case, what appears to be a Clinton drop in the     polls was largely fueled by the same media machine that, most of the time,     happily reinforces Republican narratives as conventional wisdom. The lesson     here, I think, is to remember that the corporate, established media is still     very good at creating national convention wisdom as they see fit. While in     this case that conventional wisdom might make many people in the netroots     happy, most of the time it won't. It is still a powerful institution that     Republicans and conservatives are better able to control than Democrats and     progressives, and we shouldn't forget that. After the fact re-branding of     debates remains of the biggest reasons George Bush is President instead of     Al Gore, for example.

 

In Which He Takes It All Back...

A month or so ago, I threw up a snarky little post that leaned heavily on my own 1990s experience in New York's media technology sector in slapping the new Silicon Alley Insider blog. The gist was basically grow some attitude: "Nobody needs TechCrunch East."

Well, I'm here to tell you that I've been reading SAI for a month and it's no Techcrunch - it's far better. Mssrs. Blodget and Ryan have created a blog that goes inside the numbers, challenges conventional wisdom, and smacks suspect business plans upside the head. I said:

Go for personality, go for analysis, go for the jugular. Or people won't care. Poke a few holes in business plans. Question a few financings. Rattle some cages in midtown and find some under-capitalized talent out in Brooklyn or the South Bronx or Hoboken.

I think Silicon Alley Insider is doing just that. It's not 100% New York, but it's the media technology business from a New York point of view. I'd still like to see some art and media and content - the "gee, that's cool" coverage about two guys in a dorm or some crazed artists experimenting with code - to go with the finance and people stuff. But count me in, jaded as I may be about "Silicon Alley." It's a good read.

Scene and Heard

Back to school tomorrow in this household, so there's the usual last-minute scurrying and read-list panic. I've been catching up on my reading as well before the school bell rings - here's a few links.

Jeremiah Moss has an excellent post on the imminent demise of Yankee Stadium and its famed field - the same turf trod on by Ruth and Gehrig, Berra and DiMaggio, Scooter and Reggie. Bloomberg from Boston cut a deal to teat it down. He points to an essay by Pete Hamill, arguing that New Yorkers "shouldn't have to remember what used to be, as limousines deposit sleek strangers on their journeys to the skyboxes." [I've been saying this for a while: tearing down Yankee Stadium is a cultural crime against New York].

Lance Mannion scares me. Oh, it's not just the sheer personality of the man or his prolific blogging. No, he really scares me. I'm just waking up to the Iran insanity threat, I guess. Between Lance and Hootsbuddy, I swear...

Some terrific stuff over at newcritics lately - Dan Leo has a great piece on Ricky Gervais and Extras, MA Peel sees a cultural link between Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, and Bob Stein takes on Brian DePalma. Tons more too, including my summer reading.

I very much enjoyed Fred Wilson's take on the big Times Magazine profile of record producer Rick Rubin, in which he argues that even with mushc-spotter Rubin at the helm, the pieces for saving the record business are far, far from being in place.

No fashion expert am I, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Sassy Curmudgeon's brutal take-down of the fall fashion looks. Here's a taste: "I never thought that it was an evil empire until the arrival of the skinny jean." Hee hee.

Steve Bowbrick has a piece on the future of television news - or rather, where'd he'd like to see the future develop. Transparent editing, no fake passage of time. Fascinating.

Neddie Jingo witnesses a police action in Gettysburg - and is Johnny on the spot with his camera. Citizen journalist alert!

The Case for Old Comments

Fred Wilson is  thinking about closing off his older comment streams to help adapt to a new technology that will make his well-traversed blog's comments a bigger part of the clickstream. I understand the rationale - comments have been buried in blog architecture for too long - but I think it's a mistake.

I love getting comments on old posts, and I get them all the time. My Guitars R Us post from way back in 2004 is great case in point. It's become the de facto public commons for Guitar Center employees (current and former) to dissect the company's management practices, compensation structure, and business plan. My original thoughts have been long since cashiered to mere background status; the commenters have been going at it for years. The most recent post there is from August 19th - indeed, that single post has almost reached full-blown blog status on its own.

There are others. I got a comment from a friend of Marina Lakhman just the other day. In the spring 02 2004, I wrote about Marina, a terrific young woman who died tragically young. It was a short remembrance of a colleague and a friend who didn't live to see Web 2.0, but would have embraced its social aspects in all fullness. I get comment on that post a couple of times a year. Last week, I got this from Manny:

I agree with the poster who said she is one of those people that when you hear they're dead, you go "what the..." One of the saddest days of my ife is when I found out she died.

And, of course, it brought Marina to my mind. That's a good thing. I still get comments on some of my Mukhtaran Bibi posts from awhile back. And punk rock fans of a certain vintage are always liable to drop in and defend Johnny Ramone's politics or mourn untimely demise of Johnny Thunders. That's great. Over on Fred's blog, commenter Shannon Clark nails it, I think:

There is indeed value to the comments in certain old posts - I know of many bloggers whose old posts on a given topic have sparked a small community in the comment threads for a given post (usually on topics hard to find elsewhere online).

Exactly.

We need to open comments to the distributed media model; our posts go everywhere, but comments stay home. And comment spam is an incredible annoyance. But I'd hate to see Fred close off comments to older posts - his is an influential blog and it may lead others to take the same step. and I think he'll miss the little late-arriving gems that can really pick up an old post.

Been There, Done That?

I'll admit it: the new Silicon Alley Insider slipped beneath my vacationing, blogging, media-obsessed radar since its beta launch a month ago. And I have to be honest. I don't think in terms of "Silicon Alley" any more, and don't know too many people who do. There's an archaic, historic quality to the term and it goes nicely mixed with two full jiggers of "back in the day" around the better media watering holes.

Silicon Alley Insider. That was me about a decade ago. I was described as exactly that many a time, and I remember it all moderately well.

Feverishly tracking mezzanine rounds while swilling free booze and picking at  massive sushi boat centerpieces while girls danced in cages to the sounds of third-rate Moby knock-offs and hungry headhunters, pr guys, and investment bankers circled the silicon slam dance just waiting for the moment when a bunch of money-sucking startups led by guys who kept their dogs in the office started to throw off cash.

In other words, that was then. That ain't now. Web 2.0 and the ever-churning media circus of New York does nothing to capture that scene, which was powered by art as much as money, by driven  free-wheeling invention and the knowing waste of overcapitalization by leering, good-time trust-funders and hungry bridge and tunnel kids.

Still, Kevin Ryan's new venture proceeds from a feeling that New York's wired and entrepreneurial community is under-represented in a world that makes Michael Arrington relevant. He may be right. And he's got some interesting partners: investor Dwight Merriman,and  former Forbes scribes Dan Frommer and  Peter Kafka. And who better to report on the post-Henry Blodget era in technology than Henry Blodget himself - he of former cheerleading Prudential analyst days, more lately a quieter, more thoughtful analyst.

I have some advice, fellas - having co-created the original Silicon Alley insider with Jason Chervokas in 1995. A wire service of deals and hirings involving New York new media companies large and small won't cut it. Nobody needs TechCrunch East. We don't have the deal-flow, to be honest about it. But we do have the brains, and we do have the advertising. Go for personality, go for analysis, go for the jugular. Or people won't care.

Poke a few holes in business plans. Question a few financings. Rattle some cages in midtown and find some under-capitalized talent out in Brooklyn or the South Bronx or Hoboken. Tell me what the kids are doing, what the artists think. Tell me something new. I want a reason to get exited about new media in this town. Give it me, and I'll keep you guys around the feed reader forever.

Emergency Broadcasting System: Mad Men Live-blogging is Here

Once upon a time in the west - and in gritty noir backlots - rough and ready men carried guns, drank hard liquor, and made violence a part of their daily lot. That's the way they were portrayed, at least. And the idea of "real men" inhabiting a cushy mid-town Manhattan office building was a ludicrous as, say, Cary Grant's Roger Thornhill being a secret agent in North by Northwest. See, Hitchcock got the joke. But as David Hinckley points out in today's Daily News, our idea of tough guys has changed.

"Mad Men" also reflects something else that's been brewing on TV for quite a while, however: a long-term shift in the professions to which we look for swagger. Once upon a time, American swagger was largely defined by physical guys like cowboys, G-men, explorers and soldiers. Think John Wayne. Sure, there's always been swagger in other fields of endeavor. While Wild Bill Hickok was galloping through the West, robber barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan were accumulating insane levels of wealth simply because there was no one to stop them. But in general, swagger once had a blue-collar aura, reflected in the Westerns that dominated early television.

Live-blogging of the frustrating and fascinating Mad Men continues tonight. [Note: our hosts at Yahoo appear to be on the slow side tonight, so bear with us and dump that crappy YHOO stock.]

Thanks to Yahoo's server troubles, I've moved newcritics live-blogging of Mad Men to my trust old-school Typepad blog. Comment away! Back in a few...Cool credits about to roll.

Love the Hudson Line shots - North by Northwest in reverse! Big error, though. "Mount Kisco, next." In yer dreams. Knew there was another name in Draper's past - Dick Whitman.

"Who put the Chinamen in my office?" Ha.

Some hilarious "oriental" humor. We get it. 1960 was a different time. Now can these guys do something?

"Part of this job is doing things you don't want to do." Welcome to that strange place known as Workland.

So how accurate is Mad Men? Burt Helm from Business Week wondered the same thing:

So last week I picked up the phone to ask a couple of these allegedly overpaid, creative, glib and self-destructive ad guys from the 60's what they thought of the show. AMC courteously agreed to send them screeners. I got two very different opinions of the show itself, but some agreement on how accurately it portrayed Madison Avenue in 1960.

"What a miserable piece of garbage," said Irwin Warren, who was a copywriter for Doyle Dane Bernbach in 1965. "It's a kind of a poor man's The Apartment". Jerry Della Femina, who was in the mailroom of agency Ruthrauff & Ryan in 1960 before becoming a copywriter and a founder of his own agency, loved the depiction. He had recently participated in a panel discussion at Michael's about the show. "It’s a pretty fascinating as a study of the 60’s."

But how accurate is it? For those who haven't seen it, the show is a parade of constant smoking, near-constant drinking, casual sexual harassment and anti-semitism. Warren admitted that much of that was spot on.

A miserable piece of garbage? Seems to describe what  I've seen of the firm's work so far. Man does Sterling Cooper blow. They don't even get the VW ad!

OK, we get that it was a sexist period - now make something happen. "Rib-eye in the pan...with butter....ice cream." That's not a plot.

The cheesy Yonkers Raceway commercial for slot machines and a legal sports book on my local cable system is far better than anything Sterling Cooper has produced.

This scene as a Breakfast at Menken's quality to it.

I'm a total sucker for the commuter train scenes, probably because I spend half a life on 'em. But didn't they have monthly passes in 1960? Does he buy a ticket every night? Any experts out there?

WWeek's Daniel Carlson has a snarky post: AMC is "TV for people who would like to think of themselves as movie people but lack the energy." Is that us? More:

"...if half the show is just the cheap thrill of watching people play dress up, the other half is watching those people act out a fairly rote melodrama. Weiner's time on The Sopranos means that Mad Men is inevitably being forced into that same mold of darkly lit offices, slick hair and commonplace adultery, and while Weiner certainly knows his material, the fact that he's so willing to stylistically rehash it is a disappointment. Mad Men lacks the sheer fire and energy of The Sopranos, and not simply because AMC won't let you get away with nearly what HBO does (AMC after dark consists largely of the same boring content as AMC daytime). It's also because while The Sopranos was a complex and original show, Mad Men wants to be all things to all people, offering the same aesthetic and stilted drama—unhappy philanderers, ambiguous mistresses, depressed housewives—that have marked too many series before it. It's as if Weiner wants his show to be just edgy enough to be noticed but actually safe enough to be digested by even the most casual viewer; no one has to think too hard here, and no one is asking you to.

Jason Calacanis Has Fallen (And He Can't Get Up)

Jason Calacanis reminds me of those television actors who suddenly find their lives as popular series regulars too confining, too empty, too common. You know, like when Henry Winkler found Fonzie to be limiting his artistic brilliance, and lit out for the big screen.

My old Silicon Alley friend (and yes, we tangled, but that was long ago) throws up his hands today and bashes Facebook, Web 2.0 applications, friend requests, blog comments, and blogs in general. He basically says blogging is over. This from the man who made his fortune launching a successful series of niche blogs that AOL found compelling enough to fork over their millions for.

"Feels like the blog format is lost and adrift," he complains today on his own blog, where he's switched off comments and ended his years-long conversation with the common man. Jason's really steamed about comment spam, impolite posters and most of all, the insane number of requests for everything imaginable that he gets on Facebook.

I don't blame him, and I did notice from his Twitter stream that he's been bed-ridden with some hideous ague. That can make a blogging mogul cranky, fer sure. And comment spam is insidious and horrid. Facebook is in its learning phase as a platform; it is hard to take it all in.

Yet, who better to try than Jason Calacanis, a former New Yorker who went west and made his fortune; once a little guy himself from Brooklyn handing out xeroxed fanzines, an occasionally demented promoter who never took no for an answer. Now that gutty, driven guy (who beat the hell of out me a time or two) is too big for blog comments? Facebook requests annoy him? Geez man, let the antibiotic work before you go on a misanthropic posting jag, will you?

What really ticked me off about Jason's posts, though, was his utter dismissal from poolside about the possibilities of what I call "Facebook philanthropy" - which has tremendous promise in linking the net natives to real and compelling causes. I've written about it here and here. Quoth Jason:

Also, I've got my own causes that I don't have enough time for, so no, I really don't need the guilt trip of telling you I don't want to be in your group that's going to stop the suffering of [INSERT THE NAME OF YET ANOTHER GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO ARE SUFFERING TOO MUCH]. It's brutal. No one human can solve the problems of all humans but based on social networking I'm going to be presented with just such a challenge. What?!?!?! You are not going to join my group to clean the water, support free culture, stop the killing of INSERTSPECIESHERE, etc.

What a cold, rotten rant. I know for a fact, because I'm watching it happen, that people connecting other people (and generally, they're much younger and certainly more idealistic than either Jason or myself) is driving support to world-changing causes.

C'mon Mr. Calacanis. I know you really do believe in philanthropy and the power of the great networks to change the world. Don't make us ask what's Hawaiian for "cold-hearted miser?" A wiser man than either of us once wrote:

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Inside the Frozen Zone

Things have returned to near normal here in Manhattan after last week's fatal steam pipe explosion on 41st Street, a block and a half from my office. And yet yesterday, I was once again propelled into the frozen zone by a massive infrastructure failure.

Well, at least it wasn't a block away - it was 3,000 miles away in San Francisco, where a transformer explosion took out power to a good swath of downtown, including the data center 365 Main - which just happens to be the "home" of this blog. No data center, no Typepad, no blog. (Okay, you can save the snark about this author's summer doldrums and his rather occasional posting of late).

The outage occasioned a good post by the always-incisive Om Malik, once he was freed from the gloom of a stranded elevator car.

Whatever the reasons behind the failure might be, yesterday was a rude reminder of how fragile our digital lives are.

The seemingly invincible web services (not to mention the notional wealth they signify) vanish within a blink of the eye. It was also a reminder, that all the hoopla around web services is just noise - for in the end the hardware, the plumbing, the pipes and more importantly, the power grid is the real show.

Malik points out  - as Lindsay Beyerstein has here in New York to any bloggers who care to listen - that the nation's aging infrastructure is a decided competitive disadvantage, and one that the politicians never seem to  focus on (who can forget Mayor Bloomberg's sigh of relief at the podium that last week's paralyzing and fear-inducing in midtown was only our pesky infrastructure again).

Blackout veterans in New York know well the relative age of our power grid, but it's the same story across the country, even in the high-tech mecca of the wired universe. Yet, as Malik says:

...we continue to bet our future on this creaky house of cards. That’s like building a Taj Mahal on quick sand. And that is one sinking feeling - the same one I got in the 100 odd seconds I found myself stuck in the elevator to nowhere this afternoon.

Which clever Presidential candidate will propose an Eisenhower-like public works super-project to modernize the power grid (and improve its environmental standards) while protecting the American position in high-level Internet development and business creation?

Random Bits and Pieces

Some catching up is due, so here goes:

• I did radio bit on NPR when I was in Washington last week, and enjoyed the brief sit-in with Neil Conan on his Talk of the Nation show. An Imus replacement, I wasn't. But if you'd like to hear a discussion of social networking and its potential as a philanthropic instrument, click here and turn it up.
• Kudos are long overdue for the redesign of Joe Gandelman's seminal The Moderate Voice blog. Looks great, Joe!
• I was tagged as a somewhat intelligent blogger by Kid Sally over at Nightbird's Fountain. "Thinking Blogger," rather. It is now my turn to nominate 5 others for the Thinking Blogger Award (see the rules here.) I hate picking five because those not picked will, of course, hold it against me - nonetheless, I'm the "Thinking Blogger Award" on to: Claire, Brendan, Grasshopper, MA Peel, and the Siren. There, done.
• Can you believe it - newcritics is six months old. If you regularly visit here, you should also hang out there. I have a short post up, a virtual suggestion box of sorts. So fill it up!
• Congrats are due to the Right Honorable Tom Watson, my parliamentary namesake and long-time blogger. He's back in government as a whip under PM Gordon Brown. When he took me on a gracious tour of Parliament this spring, several members hinted (one with a wink!) that Tom would return. And so he has.
• Congrats are also due to the prolific blogger Barbara O'Brien, who makes five - count 'em, five - years of the must-read Mahablog.
• Sadly, condolences are due to our blogger friend Lindsay Beyerstein on the sudden passing of her father. They're also offered to the readers of the Rittenhouse Review, an old school blog whose founder-editor Jim Capozzola died this week after a long illness.

An Irrational Fear of Hippies

There's something in what the newly-unmasked Digby (and I pictured her so, and just as eloquent) says about the reaction the progressive blogosphere stirs in mainstream media and Beltway consulting types. We are an enigma, she said yesterday, that stirs an irrational fear of passion and discourse - and freaky hippiedom - in our economic rivals, which is to say, those whose livelihoods are threatened by an unwashed horde of hemp-wearing, knuckle-dragging English lit types with free lovin' access to mind-bending drugs and keyboards.

Digby's unveiling yesterday as a charming, reasonable, erudite woman in her middle years from Santa Monica (but didn't we already know this?) was the most dramatic event at a conference of liberals marred only by the offensive booing of the likely Democratic nominee by Republican operatives who had infiltrated the hall. Okay, some may have been Naderites - or Bloombergers as they're more currently known - erstwhile liberals who don't really give a damn about electing more failed conservatives as long as they have their say. [The catcalling cadre apparently wore Give Back America buttons - so clever.]

Digby believes that so many insiders think of progressive bloggers are an intolerant, tightly-knit brigade of control freaks marching in lockstep with whatever they believe to be the conventional wisdom of the moment. Funny how that's what we think of the mainstream media, in general.

I'm an unabashed Digby fan. I read her blog most days, and it rarely fails to get me thinking (or writing, for that matter). Here's a quite from her speech at Take Back America yesterday, which I'm lifting from Glenn Greenwald:

We may argue about tactics and strategies, or the extent to which we are partisans versus ideologues. And believe me, we do.

But there's no disagreement among us that the modern conservative movement of Newt and Grover and Karl and Rush has proven to be a dangerous cultural and political cancer on the body politic.

You will not find anyone amongst us who believes that the Bush administration's executive power grab and flagrant partisan use of the federal government is anything less than an assault on the Constitution.

We stand together against the dissolution of habeas corpus, and the atoricities of Abu Grahib and Guantanamo.

And we all agree that Islamic terrorism is a threat, but one that we cannot meet with military power alone.

And yes, a vast majority of us were against this mindless invasion of Iraq from the beginning, or at least saw the writing on the wall long before Peggy Noonan discovered that George W. Bush wasn't the seocnd coming of Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we also all agree that the mainstream media is part of the problem. Democracy sufferes when not being held accountable by a vigorous press.

Jules Crittenden Is a Coward

Shakes has the details. Cowardice here.

My Hat's Off

Sometime in the middle of the latest Slappy-Tom K. dissfest, we've passed 5,000 comments (lifetime! as Bob Murphy would say). In short, you've written several times more here than I have. And as I've said before, there's not a chance this blog would still be published without ya. So my hat's off to all you who write. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled slapdown.

Nashville is Talking

The tagline of WKRN-TV's Nashville is Talking blog is "creating a dialogue with the world." Well, they've got a whole lotta dialogue goin' on in the home of country music these days after blogger Brittney Gilbert, "working inside the News 2 newsroom," (how dramatic!) quoted a hateful blast about our dearly-departed brother Steve Gilliard. She posted this filth (don't read this next bit if you're easily offended) without comment and under the headline Teaching Libs a Lesson:

It goes without saying that the term “house negro” gets bandied about with great frequency against anyone of seemingly African descent when they are on the Right. Be you Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, Michael Steele, or J.C. Watts, you can expect a Harry Belafonte, a Danny Glover, or yes - even a Steve Gilliard to call you out for being the race traitor that you are. The sell-out, Oreo cookies who do Whitey’s bidding and put a black face on racist policies that would otherwise be rightly called out for what they are. Uncle Thomas and Aunt Thomasinas alike.

But really, who is doing whose bidding in those situations? Can Howard Dean call Condoleeza his “do right answer mammy who be smart”? Can James Carville call out Clarence for collard greens?

Which brings us to today’s marquee morbidity. The tragic, untimely death of Donk House Negro and all around bigot Steve Gilliard. Who knew that boiling bacon grease in a spoon and mainlining it into the neck vein was bad for your health?

Now, I found myself wishing Gilliard was still around to do battle with the racist-quoting-sans-comment Gilbert and her quotee, Smantix. Gilbert gave her handkerchief-wringing, fainting couch routine - "I can't win for losing!" - but it doesn't play. This is a blog that comes from "inside the News 2 newsroom" as we're told countless times, yet she quotes Smantix straight up. Like a reliable source. Like she's balancing the ticket.

Obviously, she reads Smantix, who calls Chuck Schumer a Nazi, blasts President Bush and the GOP for being too liberal on social issues, runs a good 'ol boy white supremacist video endorsement of Fred Thompson, and carries a picture of a waiter in a Mexican restaurant with this caption: "Ok, now who order the tuberculosis and tamales?  Hot plate."

And that's in one quick scroll.

This is how Brittney Gilbert's blogroll buddy feels about immigration:

As waffle-haired crooner Cyndi Lauper once said, “we see your true colors shinin’ through.” And they look a lot like that dark brown color that you get when you mix all the colors in your paint collection together. Not only that, but the newly-created clump of paint smells a lot like burrito-laden fecal matter.

Yet despite her low linking libel of a brilliant dead guy, she still works for the station, according the website today. And Gilliard's funeral isn't even till tomorrow. Hey Steve, get to work on that lightning strike.

Note: Want to complain to management and advertisers? Jesus' General has the skinny. Want to help Steve's family with funeral expenses? Click here and follow the PayPal link.

UPDATE: Brittney Gilbert, the WKRN-TV blogger who posted the tacky link has resigned - mayhem followed. Her reaction seems extreme, though apparently she'd been under pressure before. The original post was a mistake; just editing it a bit would have changed everything.
 

Scene and Heard - Sunday Edition

Did any readers see the Democratic "debate" this week from South Carolina? I saw some of it and made a point to watch some video highlights as well. And it's early, there were eight voices, and Mike Gravel is still in the race - so it doesn'tcount for much, I guess. But I must say I was shocked - by how well Hillary Clinton did, how well Joe Biden did, and how poorly Barack Obama and John Edwards performed: almost the inverse of my debating/style expectations going in. You know I lean mightly towards Hillary, but don't expect a clear win on the debate trail - she's a brilliant woman and a wonk's wonk, and she learned how to grind it out in New York State. But trouncing all those fellas? That was impressive.

In any case, here's a trove from my occasional remainders bin - links and notes:

First, my own stuff elsewhere. I covered the Milken Global Conference in LA last week, and my onPhilanthropy.com mainbar is here (look for the sidebar links, too); a slightly different take for HuffPo is here. While I was there, I had the pleasure of listening to Kirk Douglas and meeting him briefly - an event I described at newcritics. At 90, he's a beautiful old man.

Glenn Greenwald wonders why the Beltway media is so far behind what is an obvious story to him: "When is the last time Democrats were so unified in their defiance of Wise Beltway Wisdom, which endlessly warns them not to adhere to their beliefs too steadfastly or to defy Republican decrees, especially on foreign policy?"

When a certain ex-mayor said this, "America will be safer with a Republican president”...Keith Olbermann systematically took the argument apart, piece by piece. Devastating.

Jim Wolcott bemoans the loss of Rosie on The View and somehow finds some insight into the "post-Imus era" and what it means to the Republican presidential hopefuls. Now that's media criticism.

Like Greenwald and Wolcott, Lance Mannion also sees major woes for the national Republican Party - "If you are an honorable young conservative who believes the rules ought to apply to everybody, there simply is no place for you in the Republican Party."

Over at the increasingly-impressive new Shakesville, Melissa McEwen wonders if Fox News has finally hit rock bottom - "The fact that Fox News’ 'facts' generally aren’t true means that they are regularly sending, with no compunction whatsoever, their ready-made terrorist brigade to harass, intimidate, and threaten people for no reason whatsoever.

In a nice post on academic qualifications in mid-career, I discover that Gara LaMarche and I have something very specific in common: "I am happy to have gone to Columbia because the Ivy League degree allowed a small-town Catholic boy with no connections to be taken more seriously, particularly when I was starting out.  But what I learned or didn't learn there (sorry, Lee Bollinger) has little to do with my subsequent career." Me too!

Neddie Jingo has another one of his wonderful Northern Virgina history/archaeology posts - I love when blogs like Neddie's go hunting in the past.

Lastly, M.A. Peel finds Shakespeare references in Sabah El Kair Iraq—an Iraqi morning show from Al Iraqiya. And we thought they hated us for our cultural freedom.

Oxford - Turl Street

Oxford - Turl Street, originally uploaded by Tom Watson.

This was the view last evening as I took a short stroll after the opening session of the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship here in Oxford. I'm blogging the conference at onPhilanthropy, where I'm the publisher. Some tremendous ideas and personalities, so please tune in.

The Richest Man in Town

Steve Gilliard has been dealt a lousy hand, but he's still in the game and for that his friends - real and virtual - are thankful. For those who may not know Steve: he's a voluble and iconoclastic blogger, a New Yorker with a deft writing style and a strong sense of justice. I've met him only once or twice, but Steve's voice has been part of my day for years now. He and his blogging partner Jen run the prolific News Blog, a tough, front-of-the-cab view of politics, war, culture, media, business and technology.

To call Steve outspoken is to call Kansas flat; his voice is millions of square miles worth of attitude and opinion. I'd venture that none of his readers agrees with everything Steve writes - just when you think you've got him pegged, he'll smack you. On race relations and New York politics, there are few keener observers than Gilliard. He knows food, roots for the Mets, despises the political status quo, hates blowhards and phonies, and is a hell of a military historian besides.

So news of Steve's medical crisis hit his readership hard, indeed. Jen's updates have had us all on edge now for a couple of weeks. There has been some slight improvement of late, but the big man's not out of the woods. Today, Jen worried that Steve will be angry when he wakes up and reads all the medical updates and comments on his health - that most personal of subjects.

But I don't think so. I think Steve will realize with a certainty that few of us are ever so privileged to feel that he is a highly-valued member of his community, that his virtual family is huge, and that his work is worth all the long hours and sleepless nights. Read the comments over at his blog, where volunteers are writing posts and handling tech duties to keep it running. The dude has atheists lighting candles.

The other night, we had a little gathering under the newcritics banner - where Steve gave me a couple of guest posts right before he fell ill - half a dozen bloggers, a few libations, and plenty of talk at a midtown bar. After a while, the conversation turned to Gilliard. We ordered a new round and raised our glasses to Steve. So here's the toast: to our blogging brother, the richest man in town.

Twitter Poetry

The digerati are all agog at another distributed social web service we never knew we needed and didn't ask for. Twitter is something of a cross between instant messages and text messaging, by way of blogging - tiny status reports that users share with the world. Having received several invites over the last two weeks (which seems to be the total history of this red-hot little venture), and being curious about these things in general, I signed on.

And now I know about Howard's travels, and Jason's workouts, and Fred's Blackberry, and Jason's listening habits. That's, er, nice, I guess. I mean, I do want to stay in touch. Really. But I don't need alerts sent to my cell phone every time a buddy is watching Mayberry RFD on cable and wants to alert his network. Not necessary. And frankly, given the pace of my days of late, it doesn't rise to the level of must-see networking.

So I was about to pass on Twitter. And then, this message flashed across my Twitterstream:

Driving down to West Cork used to be a quiet pleasure.
Now it's a melancholy chore.
Still, the sky is absolutely full of stars.

Wow. Poetry. Quite possibly the best social networking post I'd ever read. And I thought, hmmm - this Twitter thing may have legs, but not in the way its founders or a few self-obsessed wired wonksters may think. See, Twitter is a poetry machine.

That beautiful entry above, by the way, was written by Steve Bowbrick, a friend of mine from the crazy Internet bubble days in London - the first bubble, people. We're talking '96-97. Steve's one of our guest authors over at newcritics, and one of Britain's original digital entrepreneurs. But he'd just lost his father and was journeying back to Ireland to be with his mother. And in his three-sentence Twitter post, written on his mobile phone, Steve told such a human story.

So I started to pay more attention, and found myself reading the Twitter posts of strangers on the service's general feed. I didn't really care what they were doing; this wasn't a voyeuristic journey. And it really wouldn't be, unless you had a big-time jones for the mundane. No, I went looking for words to stitch together. Because although Twitter is seen as another cool social networking tool - a way to stay plugged in, as if that's what we really need - I saw it as a way to plumb the common mindset, to see what communal wisdom and beauty and insight the group of geeks could register with their thumb a-flyin'.

These lines are taken from Twitter posts today, many of them simply "texted" to the Twitter website (which limits each post to 140 characters). The assembly is mine.

One
Pouring another cup of coffee and trying to get motivated.
Revelling in playing the Clash at inappropriate levels of volume.
Napping is seriously heaven.
Rip, mix, burn.

Two
waiting for my clothes to dry
today is not starting well. at least i didn't spill the coffee on my pants.
underway. crying as usual. i hate this part.
ate sandwiches at lunch.

Three
Making coffee
Finally awake
Mmm, pie!

Four
Emailing Dr. Kapp
None of your business
Getting there
Packing
Packed

Five
nothing wrong with scooby do
but it wasn't even
like
to help starving kids with cancer
or something

This can become addictive: the slight relationship between the words and their original writers. The scrolling collective stream of consciousness. I may do more - please contribute your own.

UPDATE: Steve Bowbrick has a moving elegy to his father up on his blog. It's entitled A Dictionary of My Dad and it's well worth a full read; here's an excerpt:

Knowledge – proper, factual knowledge – stood, for my Dad, for freedom. Freedom from ignorance and poverty and the arbitrary nature of existence. We shared that love of knowledge but I think the difference is a lack of urgency: I guess I can take it or leave it. For him it was life or death.

Keeping E'm Runnin'

No one smokes 'em out and gets 'em runnin' like Steve Gilliard, so we wish Steve a speedy recovery and send good wishes to Jen, who's holding down the venerable News Blog while Steve's in the hospital. Healing RSS thoughts beaming Steve's way. Watch out Repblicans, he'll be back.

The Big Oscars Bash

The Academy Awards are more about celebrity than film-making these days, but they do force the collectuve consumer consciousness to focus once a year on the "best" of the movie business. Best, of course, in a subjective, in-the-monent manner. Best in terms of - often - of popularity, and politics, and box office. Fresh off our wild night covering the Grammys, the newcritics crowd will be live-blogging the Oscars this Sunday - but we'll also be putting together a package of special commentary on Oscar moments past and present, favorite films and actors and directors. And a personal story or two. Our host, of course, is the prolific one-liner diva Blue Girl. As Lance Mannion says, we're a bunch of "hipsters, aesthetes, effetes, artistes, critics, and pompous know-it-alls.." Well, yeah - self-proclaimed culture critics. No engraved invitations. No monkey suits. Heavy on the banter.  . It's gonna be a a blast.

John Edwards' Loss...

...is newcritics' gain! Well, the correlation isn't exact, but we're proud to have the notorious Melissa McEwan over at our culture blog. No comment yet from William Donohue, but we will not be moved. No-sir-ee.

Scene and Heard

More three-dot journalism from the master of cut and paste, and quick hits (short enough for you, TK?):

• If you're interested in the immigration issue as I am, the DMI Blog has a continuing must-read series of round-ups by Amy Taylor on where the major 2008 candidates stand, based on their own words. It's fascinating reading, and immigration is one of those issues where there are real differences not only between the two major parties, but among the candidates of those parties. Today's installment is John McCain.
• Glenn Greenwald has moved his must-read blog to Salon and frankly, while I understand the move, but there are some inherent problems related to losing his place at the center of political debate. Salon's web-magazine architecture is ok for blogs, but not stupendous and Glenn's stuff can get lost. For one, comments are called "letters to the editor" and the system is confusing. Worst of all is the feed - instead of getting Glenn's whole post, Salon allows only a tiny summary that often doesn't include his entire first sentence. This is a travesty - I read blogs mainly in Bloglines, and click on the links to comment. So Glenn now has to sell me on that click with about 10 words. That's a high bar. Too high. All because Salon sells web-based ad clicks.
• Steve Gilliard's in the house! Along with M.A. Peel, the Viscount LaCarte, Matt Browner Hamlin,  Maud Newton, Dan Schneider, Neddie Jingo and a bunch of newly-added authors - all over at newcritics.com, where my little anamolous experiment seems to be working. It's not politics - it's all culture: film, television, books, theater, art etc. The idea is to create a vivid conversation around the kinds of things we all like to talk about - and speaking of conversation, go read Blue Girl's Grammy-a-thon from Sunday night, a far better deal than the telecast and no weasel-like handicam shots of Justin Timberlake's nose hair.
• Why hasn't DailyKos run any items on recent Democratic polls? Just askin'.
• Finally, I haven't posted on the Edwards blog controversy since my initial reaction last week. I sensed it had a sad and predictable course to run. Melissa McEwan's letter about her resignation from the John Edwards campaign is a model of restraint and tolerance, unlike the words of the boors who drove her from the Edwards blog. Some are portraying her resignation as a victory for the haters who attack and divide and spit in the name of the prince of peace. I don't think so. I think this rebounds on them, with all the disgust that follows a lynching. And this is a long election cycle, folks. Melissa will have her day. All hail Shakespeare's Sister.

Bits and Pieces

From around the travels and travails of this humble bloggery, come a few tidbits worthy of note:

My particular friend Andrea Batista Schlesinger was named to Crains' "40 Under 40" list of hot, young, up-and-coming New Yorkers this week and no one deserves it more. Andrea captains the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a progressive think tank that focuses on middle class economic issues (I swab the decks as a board member). Many of you have gotten involved in DMI either virtually or in person through me, so I though I'd pass this along to readers. Be sure to watch the video.

Mysteriously, my blogging buddy Pete Townshend has taken his personal journal down from the web. This does not make me happy, as Pete is the rare "mega-star" who writes about his real life, takes chances, and desn't pull punches. It could be that the UK celeb press was forever taking a long thoughtful post of Pete's and turning it into headlines like this: Pete Townshend Says His Dogs Talk To Him. Hopefully Pete'll be back soon.

Another UK blogging mate, the RH Tom Watson, also known as "the other Tom," has redesigned his site and it's quite snappy. Go take a look (and quietly ask him to restore his blogroll).

Finally, everyone's favorite ringleader Shakespeare's Sister (aka Melissa McEwan) has been hired by the Edwards campaign as netroots coordinator. What a catch for the former Senator, whose odds for the nomination just went up.

Scene and Heard

Last night, we had the perfect sunset over the Gulf of Mexico after flying away from a nine-degree morning in New York. A true marvel, this travel thing. So we're down for a few days' R&R in the Congressional District of former Congresswoman Katherine Harris, but catching up on some feeds nonetheless. A