I now have a loaner iPhone from Apple — an 8GB model with “AppleCare Service” embossed on the back. So far, I’d say Apple’s performance has been decent, but far from exceptional.

(more…)

Saturday was the warmest day in New York since I bought my iPhone. It was also the day when my iPhone developed a dead zone.

That means that right now, my iPhone is one step away from being a $500 brick. I can receive calls — if the touchscreen is locked, that is — but I can’t make them. Nor can I send SMS, check my email, or use the Safari browser.

(more…)

Cross-posted at the Bill Moyers Journal blog.

Imagine climbing a hundred-foot radio tower in the howling headwinds of a Category 3 hurricane so that you can stay on the air and keep your neighbors informed as catastrophe bears down. Or remaining at your post, on the mic and on the air, as floodwaters engulf the radio studio. Or pouring every cent of your income into the station to say on the air the aftermath, even though you’re living in a FEMA-issue trailer because you’ve lost your home and everything in it.

I can’t. But Brice Phillips has done every one of those things. And that’s why he’s one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met, and an inspiration to those of us who believe that community radio has the power to change lives — and save lives.

(more…)

I’ve neglected this for too long. Time to start posting again. Especially since we may get some incoming….

Calatrava’s fourth design iteration for the new Chicago spire has been approved by the city. It reminds me that the first time I ever saw a skyscraper was in Chicago. Bending my neck back and staring and getting vertigo type of skyscraper. Wow.

That’s my friend Ron Pyke’s variant punchline for one of history’s great anti-jokes.*

This is apropos of the ongoing New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest, which is significantly funnier than the real thing.

* Though I remain a passionate fan of John Cleese’s Frenchmen-in-a-bar-with-a-camel-bartender classic, but I can’t seem to find it online.

“We still have no clue how to make money in the new era, so we’ll bust the people who do.”

Maybe the RIAA can get the Bush Administration to name DJ Drama an “enemy combatant”.

I dare you to argue otherwise after listening to this. That’s rock, only with harmonies that most rockers wouldn’t attempt, even though more should.

That piece is the overture from his Kleine Dreigroschenmusik (”Little Threepenny Music”), the chamber suite he wrote from his music from the Threpenny Opera he wrote with Bertolt Brecht. Hearing it made me recall this song (”Song of the Insufficiency of Human Endeavor” in English) from the full … Opera, which is rock, too. Listen to the way it builds from concertina to small ensemble to larger ensemble, harmonies spiralling inevitably outwards.

My friend Matthew Neill Sharp, who records as Mathgeeks and is also a member of my musical group Box Set Authentic, is so prolific a songwriter and recordist that it’s hard to keep up with his output. Which means that every now and then, a truly great song of his slips through the cracks.

The other night, while going through some new material of his, I stumbled on an older song of his that had escaped my attention.

As the blogs digest George Will’s column on the Webb-Bush exchange, a number of writers are drawing parallels to Cheney telling Pat Leahy to f*** himself on the Senate floor.

These writers ask why some D.C. pundits castigate Senator-Elect Webb for his comments even though failed to take the VP to task for his. Is this the GOP message machine in action? Is this anything like the tut-tutting of the D.C. insider class when the Clintons “trashed” Washington?

Honestly, I think it’s much simpler.

Washington works top-down. Like a clique in your average high school. You have to know your place — suck up to those with more social capital, spit on those with less. The difference between Webb’s comment and Cheney’s has nothing to do with partisanship. To the D.C. gang, Cheney as VP has the right to piss on Leahy, who’s only a senator. Webb, as a lowly senator-elect, is supposed to show deference to the “higher-ranking” Bush.

That’s the kind of bollocks that made me hate life in Washington.