We all scream for imeem

Well, I guess I might as well sit down and blog for a few minutes, it is the least I can do. Big jump in the change meter to report, we are up to $14.36 after a particularly profitable change meter span (at least profitable by change meter standards).

Not too much going on on the home front. Pittsburgh is slowly becoming a tourist destination, compliments of a rather uncanny run of just impeccable weather. In the first 15 days of this month we received rain once, the rest of the time has been mostly sunny, temps in the 70s (though today I think it cracked 80) and not that much humidity, which is good because usually when it is warm here, it is accompanied by rather muggy conditions.

I did have a rather big guest on the radio show today, one that I failed to mention with a radio update as we had Howard Fineman, political correspondent of Newsweek magazine and NBC News. Doug was supposed to have Hitchens on today, after I gave him the contact info for booking him, thus I have been helping out both radio shows I guess. Part of me wanted to listen, but by the same token, I don't want to suffer Hitchens burnout, nor to I want what Doug says to influence how I would approach the same interview. I do that from time to time, while the hosts are interviewing guests, I map out in my head how I would have approached the interview, making mental notes of where I might have gone that they didn't and picking up on things that maybe they thought were relevant that I might have just passed over. I do read some of the material as well, so when we do have Hitchens on our show, I have read the most recent book as well as his previous book on Thomas Jefferson and I am familiar enough with his writings that I think I could hold my own if I were the one doing the interview. For me, and I don't know how this works for other people, but the trick is, when having a guest, the best interview I can do is to get the guest to tell the story on why I found them interesting. When I interviewed Luis Urrea, I wanted to get across just how hard it is for illegals to get into this country and how they have to, in many instances, risk their very lives. It is a far different story than the one that many of us get to tell, that being we were winners of the genetic lottery, we just happened to be born here. Likewise, when I interviewed local blogger David DeAngelo, I wanted to get to what it means to be a blogger, because unlike the rather mundane stuff I put out, he tries to be relevant in a local/national, political sort of way. I will jump into that water from time to time, but less from a news type perspective than an editorial one, so I wanted to understand what makes that type of blogger tick. My job is just to get to the story and let the guest tell it.

While I am speaking of radio appearances, I am tentatively scheduled to be on Doug's show on Memorial Day, he is doing another episode of "Doug and the Producers" so it will be Doug, Greg Darryl and myself. I may also be hosting for Lynn next Friday, I still need a producer to sit in my chair. If I can get one of the part timers to work, you will get three unfiltered hours of me, if not, then you will get a "Best of Lynn Cullen" in my place.

Thanks to anyone who may have dropped by the imeem page. I will add more music as time allows, and may even play with their video features and I may even upload my radio appearances at some point. In the end, it may end up being my audio/video dumping ground. I just want to limit my embedding on the blog page, simply because too much audio on the blogs tends to run together, as evidenced by my embedding both a music playlist and a game in the last 5 posts. It is an audio myspace disaster of sorts, too much crap going into the ears at the same time.

Greg and I did some cleaning of the studio today. This was good because I got to empty out the on air studio cabinet. This is where all of the press copies of books go to die that the hosts don't want to interview on the air. I got three new reads for myself, all non fiction, but all looked good to me. The rest of the books I just threw in the break room for coworkers to take if they found them interesting. It would have made a decent sized box of books, but most didn't pique my interest and I had no desire to lug them all over town to sell them at the used bookstore, even though most were in good to mint condition and hardback to boot. I snagged "Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States", "Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism" and "Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America". Needless to say, I will be reading for a few days. I started with "Dishwasher" today, I am a little over 100 pages into it. I would be further along, but I felt the need to push along in my quest to find a second job. As a result, I was out grabbing applications again today that I have to fill out tomorrow and then drop off at the respective businesses.

Let's not forget, I also did my civic duty and voted today in the primary election. Nothing too exciting for us city folks, just selecting people to represent the party (in my case Democrat) in the upcoming general election. Such exciting offices as mayor, judge, sheriff, and county executive were on the ballot and many of them were running for the party nomination unopposed, which cuts down on one's selection quite considerably. I still wrote a name in in one of the races where the candidate was running unopposed, that being for mayor. As you may remember, I blogged previously that the mayor violated the city charter and should have been removed from office. Well I don't have that kind of sway around these parts, so he is still the mayor, I just opted not to vote for him. I wrote in Peter Leo instead, a columnist that just recently retired from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. I figure since he now is unemployed, he could use the work and it kept me from voting for our sitting mayor, so all the better.

I suppose I should say something on the passing of the Rev Jerry Falwell. Well, let's revisit Falwell's quote post 9/11 shall we........."I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians ... the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

-- Jerry Falwell, September 13th, on The 700 Club about last week's terrorist attacks

This is where I am glad I am not of the religious sort, because if I were, I would only say that Rev Falwell, maybe your passing is a judgment from God as well and I can only hope there is a very special place in hell with your name on it.

On that pleasant note, I think I will go back to reading now, have a nice evening everyone.