Erik Moe: Critic at Large

Sally Grossman and Bob Dylan as featured on the cover of the 1965 Dylan album Bringing It All Back Home

Over the past couple of years my undying need to share with you, dear reader, has increasingly been occurring elsewhere. Facebook friends get updates targeted to a small audience. Google Reader users get shared articles and comment threads (links available on the front sidebar of this blog).

Both of these are indispensable in their own very specific ways, but the tool I turn to most often for sharing ideas and creative outbursts is Twitter. Easy mobile use and mandatory brevity have proven to be a powerful combination. As I near my 1,000th Tweet (née update) I’m realizing that a scary amount of my travel documentation, creative output, political commentary, and electronic shout-outs over the past three years have been taking place over there. Yes, most of these are nanostories of marginal interest given a few days’ (hours?) hindsight. Of the rest, I’m hoping a lightly-edited weekly Twitter digest will spark an occasional item of longer than 140 characters. If not, at least I’m archiving these ideas far from the reach of the hated fail whale.

Note: Many thanks to Alex King and his excellent Twitter Tools plugin for Wordpress.

Fire tears through long-neglected building at 4th and Rhode Island NE. Photo via Eckington listserve.

• "In the Loop" = highly recommended. Thx to @youngamerican for excellent TSOYA with director. #
• Preparing to dominate at Commonwealth pub quiz #
• Porch status: gimpy chocolate lab #
• Porch status: torrential downpour http://twitpic.com/bvfuh #
• Veggie bibimbap from cart at 14 & L = recommended http://twitpic.com/bxlnv #
• Porch status: muggy with vines starting to poke through the floorboards. #
• I shot a man in Reno http://digg.com/d1ysK0 #
• NextBus gave me just enough time to visit the new Chinatown Coffee Co. Intelligentsia beans! http://twitpic.com/c2o60 #
• DDOT is now twitpic-ing accidents so you don't have to http://ow.ly/iBu3 (and yikes!) #
• Pinkomag gets quite a tip, re: Obama's (alleged) birth: http://ow.ly/iC1Z #
• @emilysaysso lots of variables. My commute is 20 blocks and = 15 mins. in reply to emilysaysso #
• Long-neglected building on fire in Eckington, 4th & Rhode Island NE http://twitpic.com/c7dlm #
• …fire is under control. Oddly, the Eckington listserve just had a thread about this building's tax debt. #
• OBSERVED: Protagonist in Truffaut's "The Soft Skin" looks very much like @hodgman – This makes the film much zanier than it used to be. #
• Wishing Sen. Dodd a speedy recovery http://ow.ly/iHXz #
• Quality preventive care led to diagnosis. Expect Dodd to redouble his commitment to quality HC for everyone via @mbrownerhamlin @Taylor_West #
• Orlando Cabrera to Twins? Interesting. Wasn't expecting any deadline deals. #
• @Dave_WISC_olson Let's hope that's the difference between second and first! in reply to Dave_WISC_olson #
• Lovely evening with Indian food and old friends on Baltimore rooftop. Waiting for the train back in to DC. #
• Porch status: total silence alternates with extreme bass at intervals equal to those of left turn arrow at rhode island avenue #
• @bigbearcafe Exciting! But I wonder how well those mixing boards will hold up to all those spilled cups of coffee. #
• Mid-city cafe now open above Miss Pixies on 14th/R! Getting dizzy from all the new coffee options DC suddenly has. (h/t @bigbearcafe) #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Questionable approach to marketing. Found at Connecticut Ave. and Dupont Circle

• Nice. Bike lanes now painted on Eckington pl. #
• http://twitpic.com/b2kif – Awkward. Really hope this ad campaign for Phillips exhibit "Paint Made Flesh" comes in shades other than pink … #
• I know I've been busy folks, so maybe you should try this guy: http://twitpic.com/b4pjf #
• Did Michelle Bachmann's son voluntarily sign up for an Americorps "re-education camp?" http://bit.ly/10vuHK (via @BlueMojoWireMN ) #
• Apparently chose rainiest 12 minutes of the morning to bike from coffeeshop to work. Should have had one more cup of coffee. #
• Not perfect: http://twurl.nl/alf885 #
• Samuel Alito famously ate pizza here http://twitpic.com/beela #
• "We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population" http://twurl.nl/fp6rsj #
• You know a website's been around awhile when one of the navigation items is ASCII art http://twurl.nl/44cbro #
• …link to said art: http://twurl.nl/judula #
• Kennedy the dog knows the difference between bike maintenance and bike use. She hates bike maintenance. #
• Porch status: tall glass of water #
• Nice (probably fictional) follow-up to last week's visit. Coney Island and Freud: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/26/arts/design/26strau.html #

Somehow my consumer choices have made it possible for marketers to confidently address me as “Yankees Fan.” I’m not sure where it all went wrong. Was it the arugula?

P.S. Win Twins!

By request (and against my better judgment), you can now support my residential campaign by buying these buttons at CafePress.

The Sunday before an election is traditionally a time when newspapers make endorsements. In that spirit, here are a few notes in support of two candidates for this coming Tuesday’s primaries and caucuses: Illinois Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic Presidential nomination and Al Franken as Senate nominee for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party in my home state of Minnesota.

On the cold weekend morning when Sen. Obama announced his candidacy last winter, I had been living in Chicago for about four months. The widespread enthusiasm for Obama in Chicagoland seemed genuine, honest, and – despite constant fawning from media sources I tend to distrust – unmanufactured. As I worked on Chris Dodd’s campaign over the intervening year, I watched cable news dig into and tear apart every minute detail of the “top tier” candidates’ personal and political lives to justify their omnipresent “BREAKING NEWS” graphic. Amid this caustic environment, Obama has continued to turn out huge crowds and energize groups that have historically had little voice in the nominating process. His campaign has raised absurd amounts of money through small online donations, making him much more of a true “people’s candidate” than a candidate of corporations and the wealthy. His early decision to pursue community organizing in crime and poverty-ravaged neighborhoods of Chicago rather than the easy money of corporate law shows the kind of commitment to common good that should be at the core of a progressive Presidency.

Al Franken’s netroots-savvy campaign has similarly energized Minnesota progressives. Over the past several years he has done serious legwork across the state to prove that he is not a novelty candidate merely coasting on his celebrity. In his years as a comedian (sorry, “satirist”), author and radio commentator he has been a leading voice in the effort to reject the very framing of American politics: we do not live in a blue and red nation, but in a have and have-not nation – with the disparity growing rapidly. As a Minnesotan, I will be honored to have Franken take on Norm Coleman in November and add his name to the proud list of prominent progressive Minnesotans that includes Humphrey, Mondale, and Wellstone.

After much consideration, I am pleased to announce my candidacy for Resident of New York. Can I count on your support?

In a sign that the battle is indeed continuing, ex-Dodd über-blogger Matt Browner Hamlin and his always frequently sound commentary has a new home over at Hold Fast. Do stop by. While you’re visiting, complement him on his lovely tattoo-themed WordPress installation.

Image: Dodd concession speech at Temple for Performing Arts, Des Moines, Jan. 3, 2008

Thanks to all for the kind words on the Dodd campaign and our online efforts. I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to online campaigning and working with the netroots than I had with the Dodd internet team: blogger Matt Browner Hamlin, internet director Tim Tagaris, data dude Brett Schenker, and tech directors Aaron Welch and Tim Cullen. The real props, of course, go to Senator Dodd who stayed true to himself and showed real leadership in the Senate and on the campaign trail regardless of what the poll numbers said. If all campaigns fought that way, we’d be living in some kind of Star Trek future world by now.

Meanwhile back in the Senate, the FISA bill Dodd fought back just before Christmas is coming back to the floor.

Stay tuned – the fight goes on.

This morning I’m on my way to Des Moines to help with Chris Dodd’s final push for the Iowa caucus. I haven’t blogged at all really about my work for the campaign these past months (graphics, web design). With Christmas behind us and the caucus just seven days away, it is long overdue that I educate all twelve of my readers a bit about Senator Dodd and why he deserves your consideration. Thankfully, Mike Caulfield of Blue Hampshire has done the hard work and put together a timely endorsement post that uses a great series of clippings from throughout the Senator’s long career to make a case for Dodd as an experienced change candidate. Also, he seems to be the only candidate who’s participated in a “donut fight.” Off to Iowa!