Well, we’re getting down to the wire now and I’ve officially run out of my screenprinted South Side for Obama tees. I’ve been so busy selling these the past week or so at The Royale that I haven’t even had a chance to post an update lately on how well they’ve been selling (sorry ’bout that). Anyway, there is a silver lining to this cloud, and that is you can now purchase a shirt with the above design through a new online store that I just set up at Spreadshirt.com, and there are even more shirt styles to choose from (including girlie tees)!
The best news about all of this is that I was able to raise over $1,600 for the Obama campaign from this little experiment! Thanks to everyone that bought one!!
UPDATE: Spreadshirt is offering free shipping on orders of $30 or more now through Nov. 24. Just use this coupon code when you place the order:
This episode kicks off with a Rudy Ray Moore (RIP) tribute, then features a song for Obama (Barack the vote on November 4!), plus some demented country from Eddie Noack and Porter Wagoner, broken blues courtesy of the Bassholes, as well as selected cuts from the Dirtbombs, Cheater Slicks, Compulsive Gamblers, Apache, King Khan & the Shrines, Yussuf Jerusalem, Pierced Arrows, the Lyres, DMZ, the Sorrows, Eddy Current Suppression Ring, and more. Much more. Maybe even TOO much more. But I’ll let you be the judge. It’s well over an hour’s worth of your typical Savage Kick fare, and true, there are some creepy numbers included, for sure, but no real “Halloween Special” this year (sorry, kids!). The real horror will set in later anyway if we let John McCain win this election… SO VOTE!! Need more proof why you shouldn’t vote for that douchebag? Click here. OK, I’m done. Enjoy the show!
Saturday, October 18 at the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis:
Barack’s right. It was a spectacular sight. We were standing about 50 feet in front of the large American flag hanging off in the distance on the left, way up the hill there. Yes, we were very far from the stage, but thanks to the video screen and the great sound system they had set up, we could see and hear everything just fine.
People are saying the photos of the event were faked, and there weren’t actually 100,000 people there (actually, there were 90,000 on the Arch grounds and 10,000 outside along the peripheral). Well, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police issued reports on the size of the crowd as it gathered (just as they do for any large event that happens downtown); it wasn’t an Obama campaign press release or that “liberal media” trying to blow things out of proportion. The Secret Service estimated the crowd at 80,000. So no matter how you slice it, there were a helluva lot of people there. By the way, the city police are pretty adept at estimating crowd figures as they do this all the time at the annual Fair St. Louis, so I’d give them the benefit of the doubt on this one. By the way, McCain drew 3,000 at a similar rally in St. Charles on Monday… just sayin’!
And regarding the photos being “faked”… well, photos aside, you should also take into account the video that was shot, which also clearly shows that very same expanse of people… so I guess that was all faked, too? And every photo from every photographer/videographer at the event (and there were a LOT)? Please. Also, the Interstate highway (I-70) that some right-wing nutjobs are stomping and screaming about that was supposedly “photoshopped out” of those pictures? You know the one… I-70, that runs directly in between the Arch grounds and the Old Courthouse? C’mon. It wasn’t “photoshopped out,” people. Maybe if you actually were FROM St. Louis, you’d know where it is. Trust me, the highway is indeed there, alright, but it runs below ground level, and it’s actually on the other side of the peak of the hill that leads down to the Arch. No, I-70 does not go through a TUNNEL (which is why you can still see the highway with satellite photos), but via depressed lanes that just so happen to be open to the sky. So you can’t see the highway in the photos because it’s just hidden, that’s all.
I read on another site that “there just wasn’t anything else going on in St. Louis that day” to explain why so many people would come out for this, as opposed to, you know, going to Wal-Mart or a Cards baseball game or something. This person has obviously never been to the Saint Louis Zoo, Six Flags, Grant’s Farm, the Science Center, the Art Museum, Missouri Botanical Garden, or any number of other very popular (and ALWAYS very busy) public attractions on a weekend. They’re always packed, especially on Saturdays. And I’m sure they were just as packed this past Saturday. Plus, I think people also tend to forget that 2.8 million people live in the area, so an event drawing one hundred thousand people isn’t that unlikely. That’s only about 3.5% of the population.
Let’s face it, this was HUGE. Not only for the campaign, but for St. Louis. I take great pride in knowing that my hometown was host to the largest gathering for Obama in this campaign to date. I think it speaks volumes for St. Louis and the fact that we are a “blue island” in a “sea of red” (consider that, in 2004, John Kerry won St. Louis City by 62 points (that’s 81% of the vote) and St. Louis County by ten points. And don’t hold your breath, but Missouri, that old “red state,” may just go BLUE this time after all. We can HOPE, can’t we?
So far I’ve printed up 220 shirts and have sold 179 of them. The last remaining ones are either up at The Royale as I type this, or will be up there within the next few days. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Unless I get a big last-minute request for a bunch of one size or something, I doubt seriously that I’ll be getting any more printed up. Right now the fundraising total for my South Side for Obama personal fundraising page is sitting at $987… not bad! I hope to have another $400 or so added to that total very soon, and more if people want to be especially generous and chip in more to the cause of helping to get Obama elected. So thanks to all of you who have purchased a shirt so far, and to those who haven’t, if you’d like one, you’d better get down to The Royale on S. Kingshighway in the next day or two or risk missing out completely.
Oh, and by the way, I updated the design slightly to include the Obama “O” logo and went with a navy blue screen on nice white/navy ringer tees. The first 128 were the Carolina blue Hanes shirts, and the other 92 were the white/navy Anvil ringers that look something like this:
A good friend was suggesting we ditch our land line and just use our cell phones to make calls. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t stand the way conversations sound on a cell phone. First of all, half the time the connection is so poor that it’s difficult to either hear the other person, or vice-versa. Secondly, I hate the way you can’t overlap talking. You do this, I do this… EVERYONE does this in normal conversation, and on normal telephones, but on a cell phone? Nope. You have to wait for a complete break in the other person’s speaking before you can get a word in edgewise. I hate that. Not that I like to interrupt people, but sometimes you might just want to agree with what they’re saying or maybe just elicit a long “nooooo…” to show you disagree so they hear it over what they’re yammering on about. Not on a cell phone, pal. And you know those goofy dropped-calls ads you see on TV? Well that happens to me quite often, too… on my cell phone. I’ve yet to have a call dropped on a land line. And then there’s the issue with them being just awkward to handle. They’re small, they slip out of my hand, I can’t stick them on my shoulder while I’m typing on my keyboard, etc. They’re fine to use when you’re out and about, to receive and make personal calls at work, etc., but aside from that, I rarely ever use mine. So I’m sorry if I’m being extremely terrestrial here but I don’t think I’ll be doing away with my land line anytime soon.
Obama:
Columbia University - B.A. in Political Science with a Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude
Biden:
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)
vs.
McCain:
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899
Palin:
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism
A couple of weeks ago our friend Michelle dropped in on us from Seattle. It was at Michelle & David’s place that we stayed during our brief trip there this past May. Anyway, Michelle and David live in Ballard, and she brought with her a gift for us: “Ballard for Obama” T-shirts! “Wow, what a great idea!” I thought. Then I told my wife, “We should do something like this for south St. Louis.” So I did. I whipped up a design featuring Barack Obama’s official Senate profile photo and put the Bevo Mill and a fleur-de-lis on it. At first, I had “South St. Louis” for Obama, but then changed it to “South Side” on the recommendation of a friend, neighbor and Obama supporter, Ed Martin, because, as he put it, it’s more colloquial. OK, can’t argue with that! “South Side for Obama” it is. House of Eight Legs screenprinting is printing them up and have done two rounds of shirts for me thus far. If you’d like to order one, please use the PayPal button on the official SS4O Myspace page or shoot me an e-mail if you just want to drop by my house with a wad of cash (they’re $12 each). They are also be available at The Royale on S. Kingshighway.
Here’s the design:
And here’s a Photoshopped mockup of what it looks like on a shirt:
Note: If you pay via PayPal, you’ll need to get the shirt directly from me. If you want to pick one up at The Royale, just pay your server there.
Despite being distracted all week by politics and baseball (hey, us podcasters have other interests besides rock’n'roll, ya know!), I managed to squeeze out another episode of this well-weathered program shortly after the the conclusion of last night’s big, overblown “debate”… and, well, if you’ve ever heard this show before, you pretty much know what to expect. This time out you’ll be hearing some new music from Jeff Dahl, Knuckel Drager and The Urges, as well as more great hard-hitting favorites from The Sonics, Sugar Shack, The Drags, Hank IV, Demon’s Claws, The Revelators, Q65, The Remains, Jerome Kidd, The Satelliters, The Dwarves, John Schooley and lots more. Once you’re done listening to this one be sure and go out and register a couple of voters, would ya? Then flip on the ballgame and watch the Cubs succumb once more to the Curse of the Billy Goat.
