philly

Politics is everywhere and living in Pennsylvania, I'm in the middle of it more than ever. The Democratic National Convention, which took place from Monday through Thursday was packed with some truly great speeches. I thought the best of the best were…

Monday

• Bill Clinton's - has he ever given a bad speech?
• Jimmy Carter's - this elder statesman of the Democratic Party came out swinging tonight.

Tuesday

• Barack Obama - this speech was my personal favorite. It's just sooo good and on point.
• Teresa Heinz Kerry - this lady is 65 years old and slammin.

Wednesday

• Rev. Al Sharpton - this speech was his greatest to date and spoke to everyone.
• John Edwards - he's really got that trial lawyer closing argument thang down.

Thursday

• John Kerry - his best speech to date. Yes, he is stiff at first, but after he got warmed up, he really go going and actually opened up and showed his emotion, FINALLY.

And let me say that Alexandra Kerry's got one nice body.

When John Kerry is elected to be our next President, he'll be the second non-WASP to be elected to the Presidency and Teresa will be the first African-American First Lady [she was born in Mozambique and is also Portugese by blood].

I've never given any money whatsoever to a political campaign before, but I really wanted to give to this one. It is very important to me. Thursday was the last day to give directly to the Kerry campaign and it was also payday. I was supposed to receive my bonus and a commission from my new promotion, but I did not receive either because of some clerical errors. So, after bills, I'd only have, maybe $30, for the next 2 weeks or so. So, I sucked it up and used my credit card to give $10 to the fight, Lady added another $20. At this point, you can't give directly to the Kerry campaign, but you can still support organizations like MoveOn.org, the Democratic Party, GLEAC which will help pay legal fees if there is another fiasco like Florida in 2000 and many more that I can't think of off the top of my head.

Give what you can, $5, $10, or more if you can spare it, it all helps. I've been going to Meetups just about every week, but I gotta do more. I'm going to help out at voter registration drives and maybe man the phones at a phone bank. Whatever I can do to help. AK, living out in Chitown, took it upon himself to drive to Iowa during the caucuses. We can all do things like this. We can get Kerry-Edwards into office and get Dubya and his band of cronies out.

Need help winning an argument with a stubborn Dubya supporter? Listen to Air America Radio, read up on Talking Points, read some unbiased commentary by Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, see the truth the Conservative Media hides from you every day, here and here.

Be active. Make a difference. Register to vote and vote Kerry-Edwards.

Here are a few photos I took while looking at the place last week. I'm already thinking of ways to make it "ME" or whatever. Where to put the bed!

Sweetness. I got the call today around 2pm from my new landlord telling me that the credit check came back just fine. I went over to his place [around the block from my new apartment] after work to give him a check for the deposit [1 month rent] on the apartment so that he'd officially take it off of the market and stop running ads in the paper. I'm moving into my own now. The job is going well and I've got a new place. The lease officially starts on Sunday August 15th, but I'll see if I can start moving my stuff in on Friday the 13th - oooh, I just noticed that. Maybe I shouldn't! Hehe.

Now, I gotta save up some money to start buying stuff for my new place. Like a bed! That's gotta be the #1. I'd also like to get a futon as a couch/spare bed. That always comes in handy. BoBenna has one down at her pad in DC and it is much more comfortable than I had imagined one to be. Believe it or not, I've never sat/slept on one until last year. And I'm gonna need me a TV. Methinks I'll use my BestBuy card for that, 18 months interest free financing is the best! The place is cable ready so I'll be getting my Comcast switched over pronto. It'll be funny to have the cable person come by on that weekend to hook up my cable and modem with no TV and just a laptop. S/he's gonna think I'm some kind of complete nerd or something. But I need's my interweb!

OK, time to brainstorm on my new site to come and get some shut eye before another harrowing day at work where I assume several diffrerent roles.

So on the right here is what may be the front door to my new apartment! I took a look at this good sized studio after a hard day's work today. It is on the second floor in the rear of the building. It is very clean and the bathroom is good sized, but with a stand-up shower, not that I take baths or anything, I do like to have some elbow room in the shower. The landlord is cool too, he's this older Italian guy who runs marathons all the time. We chatted while walking over to his apartment to sign application papers and he revealed that he has run a marathon in every U.S. state, pretty cool, eh? I filled out the application and gave him a check for the credit check and tomorrow morning, he's gonna give me a call as to whether or not I got the place. So, keep your fingers crossed for me!

Also, this place is right up the block, on 16th St, from me, about a block closer to work! I'm sad to be leaving this great place with its great deck, but a deck won't be of much use to me in the coming winter months. Maybe another time I'll be able to live in that penthouse with a gigantic deck. I may have to keep living in Illy for awhile until I can afford one because I sure as hell won't ever be able to afford one in NYC.

Did everyone watch the DNC? Bill Clinton's speech made me remember the good ol' days when we had an intelligent, intelligible and able leader. Not this idiot Dubya with his puppeteer Dick. Get out the vote, go out and vote. When there is larger turnout, Democrats win. When women vote, Democrats win. Vote! My vote, in this swing state of Pennsylvania counts a lot and I'm sure as hell not going to sqander it. Nothing short of contracting the Bubonic Plague is gonna stop my ass from voting for the Johns.

This coming weekend is the big trip to DC to see off 80oz. as he gets ready to go back to school, back to school up in GORGEous Ithaca, NY at Cornell's Restaurant Management graduate school. I think I got that right. He's all growns up now and he's headed back to school to date girles for 3-4 months at a time. I wish his ass well.

Here are a few photos of the trip to NJ to see my newborn neice Emily.

Check out Lady's site.

I got back from the visit with my new baby neice Emily around 11pm and I haven't had a chance to go through the photos and edit them and make them presentable to the masses. I'll try to sift through them on Sunday. Check back for photos! And I've completed phase 1 of my new photo site: the logo. Hopefully, by the end of the summer, I'll have something to show for my work with Go Live 6.0 in terms of a photo site.

5 more pics of the new baby. I'm gonna head up to NJ with Lady and see her this weekend, I shall take many photos for all. So, the lease on this great place is up in a bit and I've started the apartment search. And let me tell you, it is sooooo much easier to search for an apartment while living in the city in which you are searching. After looking for a place to live in DC and Illy while living in NY, simply picking up the paper and looking through the Rentals section and making a few calls then seeing the place during your lunch break - amazing. I checked out 4 places today. 1 was horrible, 1 was decent and 2 were nice. Lady and I also just took a late night walk around the neighborhood and I was taking down numbers of buildings with RENT signs in front so tomorrow will be a day full of calls. The most amazing deal I've seen so far? I saw it here on craigslist. Here's the description: "$1550 / 1br - penthouse living at an affordable price!!! 1BR in Society Hill Towers: PENTHOUSE in West Tower facing the city. 15 ft windows throughout. All utilities included (HBO too). Parking available in building (approx. $130 mos). Available mid August. NO FEE." And I Googled Society Hill Towers and what do I find out? I.M. Pei's firm designed the place! The 31st floor with a city view! That's crazy. Anybody wanna move to Illy and split it? It's tough to find a 1 bedroom in NYC for $1550 let alone a penthouse! Crazy. I'm now obsessed with it. Oh well. I can always dream. I think I'm gonna bike by the building in the next few days to torture myself. Thursday night is drinks and tapas at Cibucan's 4th Anniversary Party. It should be fun. I have only eaten Spanish food once at SUBA in NYC where I took Lady out for her graduation dinner. It was great food, expensive, but great. It is also a great space. Cibucan is Cuban fare, but still tapas stoyles. 6 more days until I go see Alegria for free. Hate mail here. ***UPDATE*** So, I didn't end up going to see Alegria on Tuesday night. I wasn't feeling up to it so I gave my ticket to my new landlord who was very happy to take it off of me. Hopefully this will be the start of a good relationship with my landlord!

So, in addition to all the movies I've listed already, there are a few others I forgot to mention. First off, I also saw The Bourne Identity on Encore the other night. It was surprisingly good. I remember when it initially came out, I was turned off because I had just seen Minority Report with the horrendous Tom Cruise. I was hoping that Speilberg's magic would overcome Cruise, but it wasn't enough. That bastard just kept on smiling and ruining every line with his patented [over]acting.

I was very happy to see Franka Potente in Bourne Identity. What a crush I have on her. Ever since I saw her in the indie classic Lola Rennt, aka Run Lola Run, back in the day. Oddly, her English has a slight French accent and not a German accent. Matt Damon was eggcellent in the movie. It's his first action movie and he fit into is surprisingly well. Quite the change in role from Good Will Hunting, Rounders or Ocean's Eleven to name some of his past larger roles. I always liked him more than Ben Affleck.

Lady and I also saw The Corporation last night with the free pass from my office [we're launching our new website at midnight!]. It was great. It's a documentary on how corporations used the 14th Amendment, implemented to give blacks the same and equal rights as whites, to declare their entities as "legal people." For more info on what the film is about, check out this page.

What movies are you watching?

Also, I'd like to welcome AK to the blog world. Take a look at his neighborhoodie site and tell him what you think.

And one last thing… It's official - I'll be going to see Alegria again on Tuesday the 27th. Sorry!

Sunday night, Lady and I went next door to attend an Outfoxed houseparty. It was a good documentary. It laid out, in clear and simple terms, just how fishy an organization Rupert Murdoch has created over the years. Director Robert Greenwald's useage of former Fox employees was just great. He highlighted the Fox affiliate in Washington, DC WTTG and the transformation it took in the mid 80s when Murdoch took it over. A pretty chilling tale. Directives ordered down from the top. Talking points handed down the chain of command. Topics to stay off of. Everything we see now on Fox and many other channels, but this was the start. Murdoch left WTTG alone at first because it was a successful news channel, but he moved in and quashed that to remodel it along with the rest of the Fox family.

And tonight, after we got back home, we watched Spiderman on HBO On Demand. Digital cable - I don't know what I did before you. It's like trying to remember what I used to do before I had a cell phone a few short years ago. How did we do it? I dare not think of it anymore… the horror. Well, Spiderman was not such a great movie. It was just so cheeseball. I can't stand Toby Maguire. I will say that he fits the role of Peter Parker as Keanau fits the role of Neo, but The Matrix had much more going for it. The opening sequence of Spiderman looked like a rip of X-Men which turned me off immediately, but I kept on going. And then there's Kirsten Dunst, who's acting career began and ended with Interview with a Vampire. I really can't stand her at all. The two of them combined, in one movie, was almost unbearable.

The only comic book movie that I've liked so far has been the X-Men series. I just hope that Bryan Singer doesn't get too full of himself and start to tinker with this magic he's created. I also hope that they include the Phoenix Saga into the next one, in some shape or form. I don't think they could do it full justice, but a few minutes of it would be pretty cool.

One last thing, anybody wanna play some fantasy football this coming season? Lemme know.

So, yesterday, I came home and noticed that somebody tried to steal my bike. Luckily, I had a pretty good lock and they couldn't snip through the inch thick braided and sheathed cabling. But I wasn't about to leave a partially broken cable lock on my bike that I've already sunk a good amout of money into. It was off to City Sports to buy a new U Lock for my bike. Let's hope this one deters some would-be takers.

Today, I got to get out of the office from 2pm to about 5.30pm. I biked all around town from Broad Street all the way to 39th Street between Walnut and Spruce trying to convince store owners to let me hang up posters for Concerts in the Park. I did a pretty good job getting a ton of posters up and I left a trail of stacks of postcards all over Illy. We'll head back out for another blanketing attempt in a couple of weeks as we near the start of the actual concerts.

And finally, I urge everyone to attend an Outfoxed screening near you! I'm headed to one 2 doors down from me on Sunday and I'm excited to meet some more people from Illy who want Bush out of office. So bring some food, drinks and a sponge-like brain to soak up some info and discuss matters with others.