Today is guitar genius Jean Baptiste “Django” Reinhardt’s 100th birthday.

Treat yourself and listen to some of this music. Django was incredible — and only had two usable fingers on his left hand (that’s the hand that makes chords). Django is on my short list of greatest guitar players of all time.

Seriously, take a few minutes and play some tracks below…

Underrated guitarists:

Bruce Cockburn – amid the pretentious sing-talking poetry about rain-forests and rocket launchers, this guy plays some fucking amazing acoustic guitar. His folksy stuff from 1970-1974 is some of the best acoustic folk guitar playing you can find from that era. Cockburn is of the caliber of the John Fahey Tokoma Records troupe, but rarely associated with the other finger-picking masters from the time.

Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) – Again, for his acoustic playing. Listen to the acoustic work on Aqualung (the album, not the song) — that’s all Anderson. He was great. Flute schmute.

Paul McCartney – the best guitar player in the Beatles.

Buck Dharma (Blue Oyster Cult) – I’ll let Casey tell everyone why.

Walter Becker (though Steely Dan had so many sit-in players, I’m never sure who’s playing what when).

whoever the guitar player in Ram Jam was. I just heard Black Betty on the radio and that guy rocked it.

You should do an overrated guitar player list!

• The Trouble With Twitter is another ill-informed anti-twitter pronouncement, this time from a journalism professor. The comment at 6:41 from “lisarosenthal” nails my reaction to the piece exactly.
• A realty company with a really bad PR sense is suing a former tenant for tweeting about mold in her apartment to her 20 followers.
• The movie is called Hot Tub Time Machine and it looks awesome!
• Kanye West needs a booster shot of self esteem. Poor guy.
• Could the World Cup come to the US in 2018 or 2022? Is soccer football fever catching on in the states?
• It’s already everywhere on the internets, but Shatner’s recital of Palin’s swan song is worth seeing if you’ve missed it.
• I have it on pretty good authority that I’ll be getting one of these for my birthday.
• I take this announcement from Marvel that they purchased the rights to Marvelman/Miracleman with a large and litigious grain of salt.

Wednesday 7/15:

• Flew from BTV to PDX. Arrived at 1AM local time. Sat next to ACM sisters and brothers from Great Neck and The Bronx, NY on the plane.
• There was little food to be found anywhere near the hotel. Had to scavenge.

Thursday 7/16:

• First day of the ACM conference. Pleased to run into Elliot Margolies right away, whom I remembered fondly from past ACM events (check out his interviews with PEG luminaries here).
• Attended a panel on the Denver Open Media Project, which was the buzz of the conference from my perspective.
• Lunch at a lovely Vietnamese place with Spine.
• Following the conference I met up with my (ex girl) friend Deb for drinks. Spine joined us after he got out of work. (Note: most of my old friends here have become athletes — planning for marathons and triathlons and talking about running/biking half of the time.)
• Ended the day by taking in the new Harry Potter film by myself (Bear elected to stay in), which was surprisingly good.

Friday 7/17:

• ACM day two. The morning session was about building sustainability through documentary work. It was an inspiring panel and I came away with lots of notes to try and implement at VCAM.
• Got interviewed by Elliot for his afore mentioned interview series. Talked about videoblogging classes at VCAM, social media outreach and New Media Office Hours.
• Lunch with Spine, Carolyn and little Jolie at an Ethiopian place.
• In the afternoon I went to a (literal) nuts and bolts presentation on video engineering. I left early because I was losing steam and not getting much out of it.
• Bear and I attended the Hometown Video Awards, at which Bear accepted RETN’s Overall Excellence award. We were seated at the same table with Bill Nolan, author of Logan’s Run.
• After the awards, We avoided the inevitable karaoke. Bear went back to the hotel and I hooked up with Daniell from Telvue and Forrest from Manhatten Neighborhood Network. Thus began my long evening with ACM 2.0 folks — the young guard of community media — comprised of Denver Open Media whiz kids and 20 & 30-something staffers from NY, MA and OR. A hotel room at the Ace Hotel in downtown PDX (coincidentally where I’m typing this post right now) was our locale, and as Daniell said the next day, what happens at the Ace Hotel stays at the Ace Hotel (but of course, I have video).
• I made it back to my hotel at 2AM or so and learned there was a shooting nearby and that Snoop Dog was apparently staying at my hotel (these two events were unrelated as far as I know). Spent 30 minutes relaxing with some ACMers in the lobby before crawling into bed for a short nap before morning.

Saturday 7/18:

• The tension between old guard ACM and the new young turks was palpable at the morning session on open source community media centers of the future, but the moderator (Tony from Denver Open Media) was really great at threading that needle (though his co-presenters were less diplomatic). There is some understandable fear of technological change from traditional CMC folks and some reluctance to embrace a new model of organizing staff and resources — particularly a model that so fervently eschews traditional relationships with technology. It may take some time to sink in, but the DOMP folks “get it” and some older guard folks just don’t quite yet… but they’re coming around.
• The 2nd session I attended was on copyright and creative commons. The presenter was funny and smart, but the information was mostly review for me.
• The keynote luncheon was a panel and I got some good leads there on possible relationships for VCAM to foster and I really think we should have a presence at NAMAC in August.
• Hooked up with Spine in the afternoon and picked up XJ3 and prepped for our excursion to a big outdoor rock show featuring Andrew Bird and The Decemberists. It was beautiful.
• We followed the rock show by heading to a bar where a friend of Spine’s and XJ3′s was celebrating her 40th birthday. I saw a few folks I’d met on previous trips out here and had some yummy mixed drinks.
• We ended the night at a fries cart where I randomly ran into my friend Craig from Amherst Community Television. I enjoy bumping into friends in other cities. It makes me feel connected to things.

Sunday 7/19:

• Slept in, playing catch-up on lost sleep from the previous couple of days.
• Went to brunch with Spine at a great place called The Tin Shed. Best veggie gravy and biscuits ever. Went shopping in a little bohemian district of boutiques and comics shops.
• In the afternoon we met up with XJ3 and Susan at an outdoor theater-in-the-park performance of the classic Trek episode Amok Time. We had great seats and I shot some video, which I’ll post later (it’s on a HD at Spine’s). It was a crowd pleaser. We met up with my old friend Laura there and made plans to reconvene at her place in SE PDX that evening.
• Laura and Adam hosted a lovely summer evening dinner of gazpacho, berries and greens with lots of yummy beer. Deb, XJ3, Spine and some of Laura and Adam’s neighbors enjoyed the cool summer evening together in the back yard. We called it an early evening because Spine had to work the next morning.

Monday 7/20:

• Slept in again (ah… vacation) and spent the day in St. Johns where Spine’s house is. Wandered the village a bit and made lunch in Spine’s kitchen. Read the first volume of Y The Last Man (purchased the previous day).
• Drove Spine’s car into town to meet Spine and take the train downtown to a showing of Moon with XJ3. It was excellent — better than expected even.
• Post-film dinner and discussion was fun and delicious. Said goodbyes to XJ3 and entreated he and Susan to visit Vermont soon.

Tuesday 7/21:

• Today Spine is having his bathroom redone so I left the house with him in the morning and I’ve been spending the day in downtown PDX. Thinking about a matinee, depening on start times.
• Bought a copy of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (finally) and read more than half of it at Powells.
• Our evening plans remain unknown.

I’m taking the red eye home tomorrow night. It will be good to be back in Vermont, despite the despicable weather there this summer (all the more annoying in comparison to Portland’s dry, sunny, breezy summer). See you All back east!

The first of these was called “Scrambled Eggs” and was about the simple joy of eating… scrambled eggs. The second one was an anthem dedicated to tangy, processed Velveeta cheese.

Audio cassette recordings of these gems existed at one point, though I’d be hard pressed to find copies now, but last night my friend Eric emailed me a link to a digital copy of a performance of “Velveeta” recorded sometime between 1994 and 1998. It brought me right back.

Click here to experience the delicious, drunken three-part harmony of this cheesy anthem.

Interestingly, I’m finding myself experiencing a tension around having and enjoying this music before I’m “Supposed” to — a tension I wouldn’t have felt several months ago. What changed? Twitter.

Because I use Twitter as part of my daily internet life, it’s now quite natural for me to type something like “Loving the new album from -insert band name here-!” Except I know that members of this band are on Twitter and I know that Google Alerts looks at Twitter, so there’s a real chance that such a tweet could make its way back to the band.

Make no mistake, I have no real fear of legal prosecution for this transgression. The tension I’m feeling is a social one. I actually don’t want this band — the members of which I respect and want to succeed, both financially and creatively — to know that I cheated and got their album before its release date. I don’t feel all that much *moral* tension — as I said, I have already paid the band for the music — it’s a social awkwardness that is changing my behavior. I’m censoring what I say on Twitter (and in this blog post) because I’m trying to avoid embarrassment and the possibility of this band thinking ill of me. How weird is that?

This tension did not prevent me from accepting and listening to the music, but who knows what the future will bring once we’re all totally connected and our lives are even more transparent. Maybe basic social pressure will come to bear more on these sorts of decisions as online social consequences increase with our connectivity.

Casey The Contrarian’s recent Twit-off with the Comcast Cares Twitter jockey is an interesting example of this. Casey’s (very reasonable) reaction to Comcast the corporation is extremely hostile. He’s suffered greatly as a result of their poor customer service and he’s been vocal about that. Comcast (smartly) has a person (a guy named Frank Eliason — poor sap) who monitors chatter about Comcast on Twitter and reaches out on behalf of the company, trying to resolve issues and improve customer relations. It’s more difficult for someone like Casey to be openly hostile to Frank Eliason than it is for him to be openly hostile to Comcast. Comcast sucks, Frank is just the guy they hired to deal with the haters. It’s very shrewd of Comcast to put Frank’s photo and real name on the Comcast Cares Twitter profile. It’s just harder to call someone an asshole to his/her face.

With widespread commenting on blogs the conventional wisdom has been all about how anonymity and a lack of consequences turns otherwise reasonable people into trolls (The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory). I wonder if we may someday see the opposite effect take hold — where all of this real time, searchable connectivity with real people will result in a new set of social norms where people online find themsleves shamed into being polite with each other — even occasionally choosing to purchase media rather than steal it.

I’m writing this post because I think I’m one of the luckiest guitar players in the world.

I’ve played a lot of guitars in my life. I’ve probably owned 15 of them over the years (of varying brands and types) and if you count guitars I’ve played in music stores and ones that belong to friends, I’ve played hundreds of the things. About 10 years ago I picked up an electric guitar that was the finest electric guitar I’d ever played. It was a Time guitar, manufactured in a small factory in South Burlington, Vermont sometime in the 80s. (Time made overly engineered and under-priced guitars and basses and were only in business for a short while — Phish played them early on and one of the luthiers at Time — Paul Languedoc — became Phish’s sound man and custom guitar builder.) I bought it. It cost me $525 used. I still own it and it is still the nicest electric (in terms of tone and playability) that I’ve ever plugged into an amp.

Owning the nicest electric guitar I’ve ever played makes me one darn lucky guitar owner. Not many players can say that. Well, as of a couple of weeks ago, I now own the nicest acoustic guitar I’ve ever played.

My brother Rob lives in Naples, Florida with a luthier named Donny Heyser (he used to have a web site but I can’t find it now). Donny makes crazy-beautiful guitars and for years, whenever I would visit Rob, I would inevitably wind up spending hours playing this one particular acoustic. I absolutely loved it. After a while, Donny and Rob just started calling it “Bill’s guitar.”

I have owned Taylors, Martins, Washburns, Ovations, Guilds… and I’ve played hundreds of acoustic guitars. I have never loved one as much as this. It’s tone is bright and balanced, it’s action is smooth, light and buttery (almost like an electric) and it is a gorgeous piece of woodwork.

This Christmas, Rob purchased the guitar for me. I now literally own the two best guitars I’ve ever played. I’ll never be a rock star (or a famous finger-style acoustic instrumentalist/folk singer), but few actual working musicians can make that claim.

Pictures are below. The top photo is of the three guitars hanging on my office wall. The Time is on the right, the Heyser custom is in the middle. The Batman guitar on the left was another gift from Rob — an electric he built for me in Donny’s shop. Below are detail shots of the Heyser…