Blow by blow deconstruction of Palin's speech by Roni Deutch

http://ronideutch.blogspot.com/2008/09/palins-speech-filled-with-inaccuracies.html

The above link is a great fact checking blow-by-blow of Palin's speech at the RNC. Seems much of what she said, though perhaps exciting (for some) and applause garnering, was simply incorrect.

Way to go, Roni.

And thanks, Michael, for the link.

Palin: this is what the Republican Party thinks of women?

Screw the glass ceiling, this woman is going to set women's rights back a hundred years.

Yes, I know the photo is Photoshopped, but it's funny (and fairly accurate) nonetheless.

Erika is so furious about this lady, she can barely even speak (and that's saying something). The day McCain announced his running mate, was a dark, dark day for women across the globe.

This lady doesn't "believe" in evolution. While even I have been known to question some of the specifics and gaps of the chain, I'm not pushing to replace it with hocus pocus. Evolution is at least science, based on facts and evidence. She wants creationism taught in schools. What year is this?! Yeah, science is probably a foolish thing to be teaching our nation's children. We're plenty ahead of that whole education game anyway.

This is a woman who in May of this year announced she would sue to block Washington from listing polar bears as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act (NYPost.com). Are you freaking kidding me?! Just so we can ignore the fact that we are screwing the hell out of the flora and fauna on this rock we call home?

Don't even get me started on the whole pregnant daughter and this woman's burning desire to reverse Roe v. Wade. The debate is not about life; the debate is about privilege. The fact of the matter is that privileged white people don't have to worry about Roe v. Wade being over turned because they'll have access to clean and safe procedures whether it's legal or not, because they've got money.

Hilarious that McCain chose Palin to win over Hillary votes. Surely (please, god) Hillary voters can see right through this transparent puppet. Just because she's got boobs and could be VP doesn't mean she's advancing the position of women in the country and the world.

She will, in fact, do the opposite.

And what's up with the Republican party continually touting Palin's ability to kill moose (who in the f*ck cares?! ...other than Bullwinkle fans).

I'll leave you with a list of books Palin wanted banned from the Wasilla city library (the list is from the city board meeting's minutes). Yes, that's a DICTIONARY at the end of the list.

[Sept. 7, 2008] Turns out the list was a fake, but the quote from Mayor John Stein about Palin wanting to ban books from the library is legit; here's the quote:

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor. (Time)

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals (Gregg Gillis is a hard workin' thief; nothing wrong with that)

what's playing: Feed the Animals by Girl Talk

Me likey the mashup. Whereas medleys used to lift my skirt, technology and the MTV short attention span has paved the way to simply inserting snippets here and there.

Anybody who's seen me live knows I tend to pepper my originals heavily with bits of music and lyrics from other artists (Prince, The Cure, John Denver, Paul Simon, Twisted Sister, Tom Jones, Burt Bacharach, Quiet Riot, etc...).

I even gave the "real deal" a shot last year when Trent Reznor made files from "Only" available for a radio remix contest. I remixed, but also added snippets of "Head Like a Hole," "Closer," "Down In It," and "Hurt." I personally think it's better than the original, but then again I'm kind of a pompous bastard. Have a listen if you'd like. [Only (Used to Be Somebody remix) by Cats or Cars]

However, Gregg Gillis has taken it all the way, by creating an entire album of mash-up, putting things together that you'd never dream of. It's sooo much fun. A couple years ago I was loving Danger Mouse's Grey Album, but Feed the Animals goes the extra mile and sources from literally hundreds of songs spanning the decades in a genre meshing meet-and-greet that would make Dr. King proud.

Rod Stewart just morphed into Flashdance's "Maniac" super-high-speed rim shot and then subtly transformed into Procul Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale" ...all while serving as a base for Jay-Z, 50 cent, Ludacris and various other hip-hop/rap artists I should know but don't (white boy living in Colorado needs to expand his horizons).

Listening to this album is one "oh, man! are you freaking kidding me?!" after another (as I type this, Ace of Bass just paved the way for "Footloose").

Every song goes straight to the next, so clear your schedule and get ready to listen to the whole thing straight through (again and again). You'll thank me later.

Click the (rather lame) album cover image in this post to be taken to the Illegal Art (Girl Talk's label) download page where you can name your price. Put in whatever purchase amount you want and you're taken to a page with two links... one is the link to the album's Zip file (320 Kbps mp3's) , the other is a link to send moola via PayPal to Illegal Art.

Do it.

Indie Music Promoting (just listen... please?)

The last post was about booking. This one is about promotion.

Both are chores that "back in the day" a label would have taken care of. Nowadays, in the age of indie, the tasks are most often taken up by the musician. Both can be more than full time jobs. So what's a bard to do?

Getting people to listen to the damn music is so much harder than writing good songs! You can have album upon album of great songs, "hits" even, but if nobody's listening it doesn't matter.

The advent of home recording has made it extremely easy to record your own music (though simply having the tools doesn't mean the product will sound good). This age of the musical everyman has its good and bad points. The great part is that people who previously couldn't afford to record albums now can. The awful part is that people who previously couldn't afford to record albums now can. Anybody who's spent any time sifting through myriad unknowns looking for an indie gem knows this is true.

It used to be, you at least had to prove yourself in some way to get to the place where someone was going to pay to cut vinyl. Now literally ANYONE can get their music listed along side Top 40 bands on iTunes. I know Top 40 doesn't mean "good," but it does mean marketed. And people are buying it. And that's what I'm talking about. People are being told to listen to your music (and they do).

How do you get your stuff into the hands of people who will love it?

I think most people think that if a song is good, it will float to the top and people will hear it, but you'd be surprised how many great songs are out there that no one knows about. You'd probably also be surprised by how long it takes some songs (or bands) to see the light of day. It astounds me that so many of the musical friends/acquantainces I've made over the years have never "made it big." see: Earwig, Arthur Yoria, Bel Auburn, The Old Ceremony, among many, many others (like ME!)

My most common complaint these days is that it's so difficult just getting people to listen. You'd think that if someone stumbled upon an old college or high school buddy, that person would at least be curious about what that persons music sounded like, maybe even buy an album or two... drop a line and say, "Hey, I heard your music!" You might be surprised at how little I get that.

I'm not looking for sunshine blown up my ass, I just want to know that some of my efforts are at least being noticed. The "lazy musician" label gets old really fast, especially when you're working sooooo freaking hard.

I'm always baffled when a good friend says, "I've never heard that song [of yours] before." I want to scream: "I SENT IT TO YOU A YEAR AGO!" But that would make me appear psycho, so I rarely do that (well, probably less rarely than I'd like to think).

I know the fact is that people are bombarded with garbage in their inbox (and tv, and radio, and etc., etc.) all the time. I understand it's easy for things to slip by.

So how do you get people to listen?

I'm convinced that somebody else has to tell them to listen to it.

So I spend hours upon hours putting together press packs to send off to radio stations, magazines, blogs, local media outlets, etc... Between writing and recording music, booking shows, playing shows, and promoting, it's a wonder I have time to breathe, let alone hold down another job to try and bring in actual money to pay the bills.

I post photos and music on Facebook, MySpace, LastFM, the "official website," and a million other places. I spend hours contacting people, making friends, asking them to listen to my songs (how humbling), trying to get them to tell other people.

You begin to wonder if anyone is listening. And then somebody does.

Somebody like Bill, who came across my YouTube page the other day looking for a cover of The Ramones, which I just happened to have... "I Wanna Be Sedated." You heard it?

Well he posted a comment, and I wrote him back, and it turned into a multiple day conversation. It was great knowing that someone out there stumbled upon the music, took the time to really listen to Amplifier, and then took the time to let me know he was enjoying it and that my efforts weren't going unnoticed.

Sometimes it's just nice to know that people are listening after all.

Now if only one of those people worked for Geffen and could sign me up.

[smile]


In closing, I don't want this post to upset those people who I know listen all the time. I soooooo appreciate you guys. You rule. Your loyalty (and tenacity) constantly make this all worth it... I just wish you would rub off on the rest of the people I know (and then, in turn, the other 6.8 billion people wandering around this planet).

Rock. And, as always, thank you for your support.

...

And so it begins (building Leading Ladies)

After three years of hard work, Erika has finally finished writing her screenplay with her friend Jen.

It's fantastic (and those of you who know me know I'm a pretty tough critic when it comes to stuff like this).

So now I guess we're gonna make this thing! We talked it over for quite a while, and decided making the film would be more fun (?!?!) than just selling the screenplay, so here we go. If you'd have told me a year ago that we'd be shooting our own feature film in the summer of 2009, I doubt I'd have believed you, but here I am, starting work on a set so we can shoot our first teaser, to help us garner some funding to shoot the actual film.

Here you can see how it begins:


I used my superior thrift shopping techniques to score some materials to put together a bathroom vanity with double basins. I'm constructing the walls so we can remove individual panels to get various camera shots.

Brian and Tim of Imperial Sport Bikes have been extremely generous and are letting us use their bike shop as a sound stage (they're even offering up their trailer to help me haul this stuff around, and Brian's going to grip for the first shoot). I drove down last week to check it out, and I think we're a go. 28 foot ceilings, no windows... should be perfect.

We contacted a dancer that Erika met in Chicago, and she kindly agreed to a screen test, so we plunked down the cash to fly her out for the shoot. She and one of Erika's students will be our principal actors. Erika has already choreographed the scene, so we are pretty close to being ready to go.

Our DP, Jeff McCutcheon sent out the film equipment, and it arrived today (Xmas!).

We've also got storyboards coming together from our good friend Troy Carlson. We may have some of those available for viewing soon (if you're lucky!).

Keep an eye on the blog for further developments.

Gmail and Multiple E-mail Accounts: the New Definitive Post for the Best Way to Set Up a Single Log-in E-mail Solution

what's playing: "Still" by Ben Folds

A while back I created a post called "The Definitive Thunderbird - Gmail Set Up For Retrieving From Multiple E-mail Accounts." Since then I've realized that Thunderbird is not the answer (for me).

My goal is to be able to keep tabs on my 20+ e-mail accounts (I know, a lot, but I have many different entities and business ventures that I like to keep separate) from anywhere there is a computer for me to use. I thought Thunderbird Portable was going to be the answer, but after using it from a thumb drive for several weeks, the speed limitations took their toll upon my patience. I was monitoring too many e-mails and downloading too much material for that system to be efficient. It may be something that works for you, especially if you don't have a slew of e-mail aliases, but for me, it was no good.

It might also work for you if you aren't actually downloading your messages (using IMAP or whatnot), but for me, I then ask, why use dedicated e-mail software at all? Why not just use web mail so you've got it wherever you are?

I also tried switching Thunderbird Portable to my system hard drive to speed things up; then I would copy my Thunderbird Portable folder to a thumb drive only when I traveled, but I still ran into the same problems (sticky and slow) when I was away from home.

So I'm back to just Gmail. And I'm setting up most of my clients with similar setups, tweaked to their specific needs (see an example after the "gripes").

First, my gripes with Gmail:

1. They look at your stuff.
   Granted, they claim elves and monkeys are the only ones scanning your private messages, and they're doing it "only" so the little adds (you barely notice them) in your Gmail interface are targeted specifically at things that matter to you (what's in your e-mails). Still, I'm not thrilled about anyone or anything going through my personal communications.
   
   
2. There's no whitelist.*
   After literally YEARS of griping about this (I wonder how many times I wrote in to "suggest" this), Gmail finally implemented "Never send it to Spam" to their weak list of filter options. So now, you can set up a filter using "has the words," enter a domain name, and check "Never Send it to Spam."
   
   It's about freaking time, Google.
   
   *settings>filters>create a new filter>(fill in info)>(check "Never send it to Spam")
   
   
3. The Spam filter is too voracious.
   The effects of this have been somewhat minimized by the new "Never send it to Spam" option, but I still find myself having to go through my spam box to find e-mails that people claim they've sent me. It sucks when someone contacts you for the first time about wanting to cut you a record deal or having you build them a $10,000 website, only to have their offer or inquiry go straight to spam.
   
   All my social networking notifications used to go straight to spam, so I wasn't getting clued in when I had 10 new Event Invitations from MollyMcCheesie or when 84 people had sent me Instant Karma on Facebook. Gmail seems to have laxed (did you know that technically "lax" can't be used as a verb?) some of their kung-fu grip on these notifications, but you can also just set up a "Never send it to Spam" filter with a portion of the "from" address for notifications from these sites.
   
   The other group that so often goes into the spam box, is in fact, mail sent to groups. If you're on a list, chances are the mail is in your spam box. This is OK if it's a list you receive from regularly, once again, just set up the "Never send it to Spam" with the people's addresses who are also on the list. But when someone decides to have a cookout and puts your name in amongst others on a list that has never existed before... chances are it's going into your spam box.
   
   
4. The damn "sent on behalf of."*
   If you use Gmail as a catch all, your central depository for all your mail to route to, any time you send from there, the recipient can see "sent on behalf of." This might not sound like that big a deal, but if you're trying to broker a deal with Sun Trust Bank and you think you're sending from your "daniel@myimportantdesignfirm.com" address and instead the President of the company receives mail from "SteamPunkLovinGeek@gmail.com"... it's just not cool.
   
   Yes you can set up multiple accounts to use from within Gmail, but everything is still "sent on behalf of" your Gmail account. This is especially true when people are receiving your mail with Microsoft Outlook, which most business suits are.
   
   *Google Apps is the best workaround at this point. You can set your MX servers for your domain to use Gmail instead of your own server, thus mail is actually being sent from your domain address, instead of "on behalf of." If you're still using one central account, you'll still be using aliases, but I think setting up a domain with your name is the best solution here. That way, mail sent from aliases are sent "on behalf of" yourname@yourname.com, so there's nothing really suspect or weird about that. Also note, unlike a regular Gmail account, you can be logged into multiple Google Apps accounts at once (no logging in and out to send from each account).
   
   
5. At any given point, you may lose all your messages.*
   About nine years ago, before Gmail even existed, I was using Hotmail. At the time I had just started dating the most wonderful girl on the planet. She is now my wife (woo-hoo!). I was corresponding with here incessantly via e-mail. I planned on printing up all those e-mails and binding them into a book of our correspondence (awwwww...), but before I could, Microsoft pulled the plug on the account for no apparent reason. Wham. Vanished. No hope of ever getting any of it back. I've hated Microsoft ever since.
   
   *The simple solution to this is simply backing up your e-mail every now and then by using Gmail's Pop Mailbox function to download with any number of e-mail applications. Lesson learned.
   
   [August 12, 2008, update: It wasn't losing everything, but many, many Gmail users reported not being able to access their accounts for hours yesterday. I don't know if it was related, but one of my accounts' passwords had to be reset. Just saying... Gmail is not without fault.]
   

So, on to an examples of what will work...

In a nutshell, this example shows how to have all your e-mail download to your computer, while also making all e-mail available on your central Gmail account (without using IMAP, which is another solution you could use).

The client has a main domain (e-mail and website hosting), an alias domain which he uses just for his "secret" e-mail communication, and a Gmail account for when he doesn't have his laptop with him. He definitely prefers using his MacBook Pro (with Entourage) and it's important to have all his e-mail messages actually on his laptop. He travels a lot and is often in remote locations with no Wi-Fi, and he needs to still be able to access the information in his e-mails.

The important thing with creating his setup was to make sure any e-mail downloaded directly to his laptop was also accessible via his Gmail account (for when he only had access to someone else's computer, and not his own). If you're setting up a central Gmail account, I think it's important that you be able to access all your e-mail there, as well as on your personal computer.

The solution:

steve@mainaccount.com (downloads with Entourage; forwards to Gmail)
othersteve@mainaccount.com (only forwards to steve@mainaccount.com)
steve@mysecretdomain.com (only forwards to steve@mainaccount.com)
undercoversteve@mysecretdomain.com (only forwards to steve@mainaccount.com)
sara@mysecretdomain.com (only forwards to sara@hotmail.com)
account@gmail.com (forwards to gmail@mainaccount.com)
gmail@mainaccount.com (only downloads with Entourage)

There are two main "tricks" with this setup.

One is to set up the gmail@mainaccount.com (the Gmail catcher) and the other is to set up a filter on the Gmail account which states "to: account@gmail.com forwards to gmail@mainaccount.com". This way, only mail addressed directly to the Gmail account will forward to the Gmail catcher. This is important so that you don't set up a loop that will cause an e-mail to continually forward back and forth from Gmail to the main account.

Obviously you still have the problem of the "sent on behalf of" discussed in #4 above. Again, the best way around this is to use Google Apps so that the Gmail account is actually an address with your name (see #4 above), or resign yourself to the fact that people will see your Gmail address, and just don't make the address too dorky.

The other issue you'll need to address is having a copy of your "sent" mail available on Gmail if you've sent from your e-mail program. The workaround to this would be to set up your e-mail program to blind copy (bcc:) your Gmail address on everything you send out from your e-mail program. You'll also need to blind copy your gmail@mainaccount.com address to have "sent" mail created from your Gmail account available on your local machine.

Don't forget to set up your aliases in Gmail.
Settings>Accounts>Add another e-mail address... and then make sure to select "Reply from the same address the message was sent to."

There are obviously other ways to set this sort of thing up with your specific needs. The important part is to avoid creating loops, and the cleanest way to do this is to set up the filter on your Gmail account that forwards mail addressed directly to the Gmail account (not forwarded there) to an account on your server that is used only for catching Gmail (not forwarded anywhere else).

If you don't need "local copies" and aren't concerned with Gmail's overzealous spam filters (don't forget to archive though), your setup is much simpler. All your e-mail accounts should just forward to your Gmail account (make sure they delete from your server or you'll clog up your system), and then you can download using Pop from Gmail.

For those of you asking: "Why not just have everything forward to Gmail and download via Pop from there," I point out again Gmail's crazy spam filter. If you're only Pop-downloading from Gmail, chances are you're missing e-mail that's been erroneously directed to your spam box.

Hope this helps anyone looking for a good, solid, single log-in e-mail solution.

Leave a comment with questions if you have any.

Don't forget to listen to (or better yet, buy) some music while you're here.

...

I Really Am Working On It

what's playing: "Each Coming Night" by Iron and Wine

Why is it so hard to make time for music?

100 degree heat doesn't help. It's so hard to motivate when you can't breathe.

Anyway... I'm trying to get my shit together to get these albums pushed out.

Here's proof (sort of):