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©: Tony Webster

In case you live outside the US or you live under a rock, you probably noticed last week the Republications held their quad-annual national convention last week in St. Paul. Being close to all the action definitely revealed some insights.

After the 35W bridge collapse last August, estimates came in for the rebuilding project and I was surprised to see they were all anticipating completion by December 2008. Considering that I’ve had to deal with construction in the 35W/62 commons area for over a year, I figured it might be a couple of years before the new bridge would be finished. The schedule was obviously influenced by the extra spotlight that was going to be on the Twin Cities the following September.

The months leading up to the RNC saw much back and forth between government officials and those intending to protest the convention. Protesters were denied routes that brought them anywhere near the Xcel where the convention would be held. Lawsuits were filed, but I never heard of them going to court before the convention. There were some compromises on both sides with the routes and lengths of protests though. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much to result from the protests These things always seem to have a louder voice than their numbers suggest.

A big news story leading up to the convention was the installation of security cameras covering all of downtown St. Paul. This was made possible by a $50,000 grant from the federal government. I’m not denying that a major event like the RNC is cause for extra security, but these cameras will remain in operation following the convention.

September finally came and the Republications flocked to the Twin Cities. So much so that you couldn’t find a vacant hotel closer than 50 miles away. Between 3,600-3,700 additional law enforcement officers were brought into the city. St. Paul went into lockdown. Over 600 people were arrested over the 4 days the convention was in town. A third of those arrests came on the first night of the convention. Interestingly, at the Democratic national convention there were less than 200 arrested.

Why were the numbers so much higher at the RNC? If I had seen the numbers without context, I might have guessed because this country is sick of what the Republication run White House, Senate, and Congress have done. That is no doubt partially the reason. However, I think the real reason is that the increased police presence provoked it. The usual atmosphere around St. Paul is much different from the one I felt during the convention.

I was lucky enough to score tickets to a taping of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Of course this meant going into downtown St. Paul during the convention. Finding parking was hard because half the parking ramps I saw were barricaded with police vehicles. Once I found a suitable place to park, I walked to the theatre where the taping was being held. You couldn’t go half block without seeing some kind of law enforcement. Forget about talking to one of them or asking for directions. The only phrases the zombies knew were “Move along” and “Get on the ground, you’re under arrest.” I heard a few stories of innocent people who got trapped in raids or were merely prevented from getting to where they parked their car. My friends and I were able to make it in and out without a confrontation though.

On the third night of the convention, Rage Against the Machine played a show in Minneapolis. Following the show, 100 people were arrested. Now if that’s all you heard, you might be inclined to think that a bunch of radical extremists were incited by RATM who is known for their political dissidence. However, you might change your mind if you knew a few facts. First of all, the show was in Minneapolis, not St. Paul. The two metro areas are separated by several miles. All of the protesting and any clashing between police up to that point had been in St. Paul. Second, Zack de la Rocha, lead vocals for RATM specifically told the crowd NOT to cause a disturbance. There are videos of him urging people to show more restraint than police. Third, concert goers were greeted with a line of police in full riot gear when exiting the arena.

UPDATE: An investigation into how police handled arrests after the Rage Against the Machine show will be done.

Now, someone going to a Rage Against the Machine show is probably the type that is going to be more inclined to protest. I highly doubt they’re going to turn into a violent, dangerous person merely by going to a politically charged show though. That’s why I see the riot squad as provocation. It’s like putting a hungry lion across the street from a bunch of zebras and expecting that it won’t kill any of the zebars. Why couldn’t you place a team or two a block away ready to be called in? Why did they need to be lined up directly across the street? The only word that comes to mind is overreaction.

It was inevitable. That lovely little friend known as my iPod kicked the bucket last week. I was trying to sync it up so I could listen to some recent podcasts on the road and it was fighting me the whole way.

First it synced about 4 of the dozen or so that I wanted. After a few more attempts at getting it to sync the rest, I got fed up and decided do a full reset. It meant having to re-sync every song in my library (6500 songs takes about 3 – 4 hours), but in the past, it’s fixed my issues.

Well, I think the reset was about as much as it could take. Shortly after plugging it into AC power, it stopped responding entirely to button pushes. I plugged it into my PC, it recognized it, but still wouldn’t transfer. I’ve had drive problems since a few months after I got it. It would randomly freeze and the only fix was a hard smack against the palm of my hand. I’d also done a self-install of a new battery after the original stopped holding a charge and the warranty was up.

Yesterday, I stopped by the Apple store and picked up a 160GB Classic. I’d been planning on only getting an 80GB, but I remembered Apple’s recycling program. Bring in any iPod, working or not, and they’ll give you 10% off any iPod purchase the same day. Not only did I get rid of the old brick, but I got a nice little discount. When it was all said and done, I got double the space for only $40.

My biggest complaint is that they no longer include an AC adapter in the box. Something that’s not a problem for me because I still have my old one. The other minor annoyance is that the backlight now stays on the entire time the iPod is connected to a PC or in my car whereas the previous version turned off after a few seconds.

Update: Yesterday, I got a Griffin Reflect case for my iPod too. It’s shiny!

Being the good Mac fanboy, I was anxiously awaiting Apple’s announcement today. With a title like “The beat goes on,” you knew it was going to be new iPods. Having just taken it all in, I have some reactions.

Well the word is out and so are the new iPods. New colors for Shuffles. Blah. New “fatty” nano. Don’t care. New iPod “Classic.” Interesting, nice price point. iPod Touch. I was hanging on every word until they got to the size, 8GB and 16GB. Wifi enabled. Sweet! Wifi iTunes Store. Also sweet! Starbucks partnership. *silence*

I was all ready to go to the Apple Store after work to buy me a new iPod Touch until I found out they were only going up to 16GB. I can’t live with 16GB. I’m the kind of person who likes to be able to hear a song on a whim. The only way to do that is to carry my whole collection around with me. I reached the point where I could no longer fit all my music on my 60GB iPod not long ago. I deal with it by only putting the stuff I listen to somewhat often on it. That reduced collection is somewhere between 25-30GB. Why couldn’t you have made a 32GB version, Apple? Charge me $499 for it. Everything else about it is sweet, but if you have a device that’s supposed to hold my music, video, and photos, it’s going to need to be larger than 16GB.

I finally found some time to go at my photos from Warped Tour last week. I only photographed 2 bands as Rick got the only media braclet slapped on his wrist and he didn’t bring a camera. The ones I did take turned out OK.

My last post contained a little foreshadowing about the content of this post. I figured I had a lot to say about Warped Tour and it was too much to cram into one post; especially for the negative content. Sorry to say, but I’m still on the rant. It’s really sad that the overwhelming feeling I got from Warped this year was that I was being sold to. Maybe I’m just getting older and wiser.

Anyway, the next thing I ran into at Warped was the religious zealots. You can count on them showing up every year. For some reason, you only ever see them inside the halls of the Metrodome. I think they’re afraid if they go outside, they’ll have to actually listen to the artists that are there. Their tactics are always the same. They walk up to you and say something like “Do you want to hear something that will change your life?” Smoothly, they slip you a book with catchy titles like “The Truth, You, and Your Future.” To those people, let me clue you in on something: while Warped Tour was on Sunday, no one goes to Warped Tour to find God! If they did, they’d be in church instead. So leave the kids alone and go hole yourself up in some compound in Texas.

I also take exception to the whole ticket system for food. First of all, you can’t bring any food in save for a single open bottle of water. When the majority of people are jumping around all day expending energy, it’s a safe  bet they’re going to need to eat. Apparently punks only like to eat fried junk food because that’s the only thing you can buy. Hamburgers, corn dogs, brats, fried cheese curds, nachos, french fries, gyros, and ice cream are the only things on the menu. When you do decide to give in, you can only buy blocks of 10 tickets for $5 each. It usually works out though because everything is so over-priced, you’d have a hard time spending less than that. For instance, a 20 oz bottle of Gatorade is 8 tickets: the equivalent of $4! Bottled water, 6 tickets ($3). A gyro sandwich, 14 tickets ($7). To top it off, you almost never use up all your tickets so end up wasting that money.  Fortunately, the Metrodome is open, so you can use the bathrooms and water fountains for free water.

This past weekend, I attended the Warped Tour as it rolled through Minneapolis. This won’t be a show review, rather a rant on the rampant commercialism I was witness to.

Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t really care if I made the Warped Tour which has practically become a summer tradition for me. I took a second look at the band list, and Burns decided he wouldn’t mind going. I figured it would be worth my money to go. $37, I had a ticket. Of course this is after Ticketmaster tacks on $7 in fees per ticket. It kills me to pay those fees every time. I understand Ticketmaster is a business just like any other and requires money to opperate, but somehow a 25% fee seems excessive.

Now as Burns, Rodney (Andy’s step-brother), and I show up to wait in line for Will Call (it would’ve cost me another $11 to ship the tickets to my house as I ordered them a week before the show) I heard some music. At first I thought it was a soundcheck, but as we came around the bend and down the slope, there was a small tent set up with a band playing to the line-waiters. This was new. There wasn’t much else to do besides watch the “tent bands” in our hour wait for the gates to open.

As I mentioned previously, the first band was already playing when we got there and they didn’t sound like anything special. There’s a reason they were playing in a tent to the line instead of on one of the stages inside and the reason isn’t because they’re undiscovered. Of course they had one of their buddies walking around and selling their CD for $5. Far more annoying, however, were what I call the “groupie bitches.” The whole time the band, their name was Allura by the way, were playing, they were bouncing up and down, cheering, and snapping pictures. The groupie bitches also walked over and told us we should buy that band’s CD which kicked off the following exchange:

Jared: Which one of the band members is your boyfriend?

Groupie Bitch 1: He’s not my boyfriend! We flew here all the way from Southern California. (As if it was the most wonderful far away paradise in the world)

Groupie Bitch 2: Do you want to see our tickets?

J: I don’t doubt you flew here. I’m not going to buy your boyfriend’s CD so you can go hawk your shit somewhere else.

GB 1 & 2 (with a look of disbelief while walking away and giving me the finger): Hrmpf!

Rodney and Andy thought it was hilarious as did I. I guess I’ve seen one too many ads with pretty girls in them trying to sell stuff they’d never be into themselves. I’ve got a few more rants to go on about crazy religious people and big ass sunglasses, but I’ll save those for another post (possibly later today). I also took a few pics that I’ll post when I get around to processing them.