Just whatever is on my mind.

Things that got me rocking today
1. This text message, from a friend returning from Egypt.

2. Lawrence, Kansas

Mass. Ave. Better than the Best Street in Houston

My brother lives in this college hamlet, a worthwhile 12 hour drive from Houston (the ride back can be brutal, however). He’d always raved about it, but I couldn’t get my childhood impressions of West Kansas to reconcile against his steadfast steadfastidity to stay there. It took just hours to clear that all up. It’s an emphatically walkable city, right in the midst of some of the richest farmland in the country, with the local produce pride and countless community gardens to testify. It’s downtown, Massachusetts Avenue, is a five blocks of storefronts over lofts (un-gentrified, it should be pointed out) full of bars, restaurants, live music venues, record shops, music stores, antique dealers, coffee houses and only a smattering of national chains.

Think of Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg but cleaner and with understated Midwest charm replacing gritty hipster ennui; better food, better vinyl and a higher concentration of table-top video games are also on order. It was in the 70s while I was there – and after I left a slew of great bands are doing dates at the surprising number of full-size venues on the ave. I mention that only because last time I checked, all of them were skipping Houston on their tour. There’s a lot I love about the 713, but while I was sitting on a patio, feeling cool in the sunshine, and watching the bar next door build a pirate ship stage in the middle of the street to celebrate their birthday, I dabbled for more than a minute in one of our favorite past-times: why can’t we get our act together and do stuff like this?

3. Houston Underground Social Hour

Unfortunately, Matt will be neither playing, or sliding down the banister, or sliding down the banister while playing at this Happy Hour.

Matt Brownlie, Bring Back the Guns frontman and former organizer of the occasional Down W/The Scene events, has a new series starting this evening. It’s called the Houston Underground Social Hour, or HUSH – clearly an attempt to parry favor with the I-10 West Superclub. In this interview with 29-95.com, Brownlie lays out the details (including what’s up with BBTG) and makes absolutely clear which is his favorite curse word. Gets started tonight at 6pm at Rudyard’s on Waugh. Lineup includes multi-instrufantastic Benjamin Wesley, alleged punks The Takes and the often Merlin-attired noisist Muzak John. $5. Benefits Planned Parenthood of Houston.

4. US Journalists Solidifying the Kim Dynasty

The Glorious Leader: Deck or Finn?

There’s been plenty of back and forth regarding whether President Clinton’s trip to North Korea to secure the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee ‘legitimized’ the current regime. I have Wikipedia to break to you: no one was questioning the legitimacy of this regime. I may not exactly be Joe Kimchee, man on the Pyongyang streets, but I would be willing to bet that between the rampant starvation and Bollywood-eclipsing pageantry of state, the citizens there are kind too worn out to insist someone else is supposed to be the ruler.
It’s not like there’s a contested election clunking around in the closet somewhere (note the distinction between “legitimate” and “good” being made here – I am an ass, not an asshole).

Whats really up for stakes here is the Kims as a legitimate dynasty. Kim Jong (do you mind if I call you Kim Jong?) is sick, on the losing end of a stroke and has indicated which of his sons will be his heir. That’s just the thing though. The current Glorious Leader is only the second Glorious Leader, and the only dissent you ever read a whisper about coming out of the country is from those in the military (you know, the ones with the nuclear weapons and all those missiles they keep shooting around) who aren’t particularly stoked about marrying Authoritarianism with Dynasticism. So what do you do if you’re KJ (do you mind if I call you KJ?) and you need to shore things up before you head to the great Party Committee Meeting in the sky?

Dang, that’s hard. Dang, if only there was a way you could get some next level propaganda shots of one of the most recognized and cherished former leaders of the most powerful nation in the world (your sworn enemy no less) sitting down to negotiate with you.

Dang, if only there was a way you could get one of the two of you doing something social too, like having dinner.

Kickass! Now you just remove any context, which is easy to do because you have one of the most tightly controlled media mechanisms in the world at your disposal and VOILA. The people see how powerful, influential and feared you are (you think North Korea told their citizens he was there to bail out some journalists? Dollars to Shipley’s they were told he was there to negotiate out of fear of their nuclear weapons). Surely only Glorious Leader could pull such a thing off. Surely he is wise and we are blessed to have his son waiting in the wings.

So, to Laura Ling and Euna Lee I say GOOD WORK. You’ve likely tipped the scales to keep the Kims right where they are. And while the forthcoming Sweedish-educated Glorious Leader is surely to be just as LOLtastic as his father (I admit to being stoked regarding the forthcoming integration of Swiss Miss girls and Ricola horn blowers into their May Day Celebrations), it does kind of dim the corners a bit to think it’s going to be at the expense of all those people who are being oppressed, starved, disappeared and generally denied parsecs of their humanity. But hey, no story isn’t worth ineptly wandering into a hostile country while tensions between them and the US are at a all time high! Who could possibly have predicted you’d get caught and used as a pawn by a regime who likes to catch people and use them as pawns? Oh well.

PS – Remember how those journalists were there to research a story about Human Trafficking? By helping entrench even further the Status Quo, Ling and Lee have helped keep the slavery-a-rollin’ on.  How about that for activist journalism?

Hello.  I am doing some cleaning and redecorating and will be back looking proper soon.  In the meantime, please forgive my mess.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar stopped by The Daily Show with John Stewart the other night.  Have a watch.

Now, it is my greatest desire in the world to completely avoid politics on this site. And anyone who reads the trade press or stops by the keynote speakers at our collective luncheons and conferences knows that Secretary Salazar does not work for an administration particularly favored by the non T. Boone Pickens of our industry. However, I found the following things interesting about this particular, if brief, intersection between between the industry and a the Katy Freeway of pop culture and I wanted to take a minute out to talk about messaging strategies:

1. Salazar, for all his colorful getup, was a surprisingly un-compelling guest.
2. This exchange is probably the greatest amount of information that the average viewer has ever had regarding Oil and Gas leases, how they work, and what the role of the MMS/BLM is in all that.

It’s the second point that got me musing, as I think it could represent one possible shift in populist messaging against the industry. If you’ll recall last year (and who doesn’t, wistfully), when folks were pumping record amounts into their tanks while, at the same time, many of us in the industry were pumping out record profits, there was a brief, if traction-less, call for windfall profits. But think about if the wider population was aware of the fact that some of that profit was coming from land that was being leased from them. What would happen if, while standing there pumping an angry Benjamin into the tank, Joe Public was thinking “I can’t believe I’m paying five bucks a gallon for something that belongs to me. I’m gonna call my congressman and give them a piece of my mind about this.” That’s a story that’s worth re-telling. And the internet is full of examples of stories worth re-telling, misguided, uninformed, well intentioned or indifferent, that catch fire faster than a gusher next to a gun range. It also has the virtue of being able to fit on a t-shirt or a bumper-sticker which, unfortunately, is still important in public discourse.

Now, on the one hand, IPAA and kin could use the argument “if you lowered the royalty rate, prices could come down.” But I don’t think that’s the message that would ultimately win out. The perspective in this piece is very much one of “the industry was getting sweetheart deals that didn’t pass the smell test,” and that pretty much perfectly lines us with the public perception of the industry, unfortunately (again and eternally). This is a message that interest groups should both be on the lookout for and have a straightforward, frank and honest response to.

Sloganeering won’t work here. Remember, the guy that chanted “Drill Baby, Drill” lost out to the guy who drove the hybrid Ford. Fuel for thought.