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I wanted to share a few of the more powerful words and images created in the light of Al Gore’s incredible achievement, and humbly add a thought or two of my own.

First, Josh Marshall:

There are several layers of irony and poetic justice wrapped into this honor. The first is that the greatest step for world peace would simply have been for Gore not to have had the presidency stolen from him in November 2000. By every just measure, Gore won the presidency in 2000 only to have George W. Bush steal it from him with the critical assistance of the US Supreme Court. It’s worth taking a few moments today to consider where the country and world would be without that original sin of this corrupt presidency.

And yet this is a fitting bookend, with Gore receiving this accolade while the sitting president grows daily an object of greater disapproval, disapprobation and collective shame. And let’s not discount another benefit: watching the rump of the American right detail the liberal bias of the Nobel Committee and at this point I guess the entire world. Fox News vs. the world.

And not to forget what this award is about even more than Gore. If half of what we think we know about global warming is true, people will look back fifty years from now on the claims that “War on Terror” was the defining challenge of this century and see it as a very sick, sad joke — which rather sums up the Bush presidency.

In spite of what the Republican right wants us to believe, this herculean effort was never about personal glory for Al Gore. It is a selfless act, born of a deep commitment to the truth, and a dedication to the health and well-being of all on Earth. But since they cannot fight the facts, which as Stephen Colbert once said “have a well-known liberal bias,” they must counter with outright slander and the most personal of smears…

Speaking of which, along with the great Media Bloodhound, I too was appalled to see the New York Times give prominent placement to such worthless garbage. Contrast that with the simple and understated treatment on the Apple website:

Al has put his heart and soul, and much of life during the past several years, into alerting and educating us all on the climate crisis. We are bursting with pride for Al and this historic recognition of his global contributions.

Yes, Gore is a member of the Apple Board of Directors (he’s on Google’s Board as well), but he’s also an American icon now recognized for his efforts by the global community, and that feat alone is worthy of acknowledgment. But we can’t give him too much glory, or else some people (even make-believe ones like Fake Steve Jobs) will look to Al for even more…

Now it is time. You must run. Not because you want to run, but precisely because you don’t want to run. That, Al, is your strongest point. You don’t want it. You don’t need it. You dare now to be yourself. No artificiality, no stiffness, no falseness. You are who you are. And we need you. We, your fellow Americans. We need you. Now more than ever. Our nation’s soul, hurt by this foolish war, cries out to you. We’ve been wounded by an administration so obsessed with so-called “terrorists” that they don’t notice the earth’s temperature rising at an alarming rate — nearly a tenth of a degree in just the last ten years. So blinded by fear of Iran that they don’t see the snowcap receding on Mt. Kilimanjaro, and icebergs melting and breaking apart in Antarctica. For nearly eight years we have suffered under this madness. This must end.

I don’t often admit it, but I voted for Bush in 2000. I was warned repeatedly by a close friend, but the overwhelming media bias against Gore (especially at the local level in Ohio — the Columbus Dispatch was ruthlessly brutal) had me so thoroughly snowed that I pulled the lever for Bush instead. I still recall a distinct sorrow and shame for my decision at that very moment, knowing in my heart that I was making a grave mistake (obviously that regret remains with me to this day, and even voting against him in 2004 brought little relief). Luckily, there is a silver lining, as Andrew Sloat so eloquently reminds us of the beauty in the 22nd Amendment…

Clearly, these two men and their causes will forever be linked, and their fortunes intertwined. We know now the many differences and the immense gulf between them. Look no further than these two images for confirmation…

Here is Al Gore. He is consumed with his life’s work, immersed in his passion, actively at play in his mind, and truly unencumbered by his modest office:

On the other hand, here is George W. Bush. He is an empty suit in an empty office, seen here casually bullshitting with Nouri al-Maliki on the phone, obviously fidgeting as his imagined power to wish away an inconvenient truth proves ineffective yet again. It always seems that he is consciously trying to look the part of President, all the while mistaking ceremony for reality:

Clearly one man is a leader, the other is a farce. History will not be kind to Bush, nor should it be, but that is the least of our worries now. And no, this is not about the election in 2000, it is about the future of America and the fate of the world. We must find a way to move forward, together, and only one person can do it.

So please, Al, run. Run for President of the United States in 2008. And don’t take any shit from anyone when you do. Stand tall. Stand proud. You were right then and you are right now.

All it takes is one commercial for the Apple iPhone and I’m right back where I started: salivating at the idea of owning it, and fretting at the thought of having to justify $600 for a phone. Damn you, Apple. Then again, this is no ordinary phone…

I absolutely love the way Apple features San Francisco so prominently, and of course the new Google Maps treatment is astonishingly beautiful. For more eye candy, see the other two commercials at Apple (they’re in high res too).

I promised myself I wouldn’t be swayed by the coming onslaught of media coverage (two articles in the New York Times alone tonight) nor weakened by the Steve Jobs (FSJ or RSJ!) reality distortion field, but there’s no point in pretending otherwise. We all know that I will be standing in line on June 29th to buy an iPhone, just as I did on November 10, 2001 to buy the first iPod, though this time I sincerely doubt I will be standing alone.

I can’t wait. Much more soon.

I have wanted to write a quick post on the new Good Shoes song, The Photos on My Wall, for a while now. The two of you who read this little endeavour of mine may recall that I posted on their previous All in My Head track in August of 2006, and both of you know I was hooked on their sound from the moment I saw that video on YouTube.

I waited an absolute eternity to get my mitts on that first cd single, something like five weeks if I recall correctly. I had it on my Amazon wishlist, though I figured I would find it here rather than waiting the month plus for it to ship. Thankfully, Kevin bought it for me on my birthday last September, and I counted the days for it to arrive. That nine minute cd (just long enough to get Abby to work in the morning) was on constant rotation in the A3, and the third track became a bit of a rallying cry for both me and Abby. Everything surrounding this cd is very near and dear to my heart.

Now Sterling likes to pretend that I wrote about OKGO’s infamous Here it Goes video (no link for me, thanks), but we all know I’m too much of a snob to dirty my blog with such a blatant gimmick. Fact is I prefer something a little less on the beaten path. Good Shoes has next to no awareness in America, no plans to tour the states as best I can tell, and no real publicity engine outside of the UK at all. bleep has their stuff but not the rights to sell downloads in North America. So I’m waiting yet again for Amazon to ship me the import release of their new album…

At any rate, though it’s just shy of two minutes long, this song is nothing short of epic. I love the way it builds, completely breaks down about 80 seconds in, then comes back with a furious burst of energy at the end. Plus those woodpecker-like clicks during the chorus make me shake my booty as fast as I can (and no I can’t keep up, but watch that stop me!). The video is clever, especially the scene with the boxes, and the lackadaisical approach to the crescendo at the end is a perfect way to end it. Oh, and, have you ever seen a more pristine video on YouTube?

It has been tagged twice on Last.fm, and I wanted to point them out since I absolutely love both of them: ‘so good you’ll put a foot in a bucket‘ and ‘songs on mixtapes i make my mum and she quite likes them‘. That pretty much sums it up for me.

So here it is, clocking in at a full 1:54…

I can’t complain about a thing; I listen to this song over and over again, and haven’t tired of it yet. And what I have heard on the new album is just as good. I can’t wait.

Okay, I tried to resist it, but damn if this isn’t the second funniest thing I’ve seen all week. Andy Samberg is a genius.

And while I’m on the subject, I’m thrilled that even stodgy old NBC has realized that I won’t sit through 90 minutes of SNL to find the three minutes worth watching (I’d rather let my friends on the internet do that for me). Not only that, but they even released the uncensored version (appealing to my laziness and my crude sense of humor?!!).

This is the future of ‘television’ (we’ll know it has arrived when we call it something else), which is why Google’s acquisition of YouTube will go down as one of the shrewdest moves of this decade. I rarely watch the tv anymore, but I see just about everything I want to see online. But I’ve been saying things like this for years now… It reminds me of when Abby and I ditched our landline and went with cell phones only back in 1999. Now, who has a landline anymore?

Google paid $1,650,000,000.00 for YouTube today. For their investors, that’s a 41x return in less than two years. For the founders, well, damn. Word is they each pocketed between $100,000,000 and $200,000,000. Yes, each. In less than two years.

YouTube is truly brilliant. It, or some variation on its trailblazing theme, will be the way we experience media in the years to come. The interface itself, where the entire video is a play button, puts even Apple to shame in simplicity (and while I’m thinking of Apple, do I really have to use iTunes for everything?). Perhaps more important is the power of immediacy.

Think about what you have to do to watch a dvd: find it (assuming the disc still lives in its original case), power on the dvd player, sit through a ridiculously long and unskippable warning message, plus the studio intro, only to come to an unusable interface (where’s the damn remote?!!).

YouTube is instantaneous. All you do is press play. While searching on the site itself is somewhat painful, I expect (hope) Google will solve that riddle in short order. What ‘Tooble’ then becomes is a jukebox of our collective memory. What was once forgotten is now only a click away…

Think about how many things you want to watch but don’t own. Or can’t own. Stuff no one owns, but we all own in our hearts and minds.

In many ways, YouTube is the new MTV. Or maybe I am, on a much more intimate (and immediate) scale, because of it. So where to begin?

The Unicorns in 2004:

versus The Dead Milkmen in 1993:

If I wasn’t so tired, I would tell you any number of detailed stories attached to these songs (such as, hearing the Unicorns for the first time at American Apparel on Haight Street, asking the heavily sedated / ridiculously stoned staff ‘who sings this song?’ to which they reply in unison ‘the Unicorns’ to which I reply ‘oh, obviously’; staying late after work to send AIMs about unicorns from Sterling’s computer: ‘I love unicorns and rainbows’; seeing the Dead Milkmen perform live, not once but twice, with Mojo Nixon as the opener for the second show; and on and on). Or maybe I could tie this post together with a word about being young, precocious, and not at all afraid to run with it, much like subjects of this post: the Unicorns, the Dead Milkmen, and YouTube.