Rowdy Record Release Party

Oh man, I'm excited. Everyone needs to come down to Off Broadway on this Wednesday night for what will probably be the party of the season.

The Vultures and Johnny O and the Jerks are having a concert to release their new split 7 inch album.

These two band are throwbacks to when rock n' roll still rocked and didn't involve dying your hair black and piercing your lip.

Their music is true to the Spirit of St. Louis and is performed with a love only the city could inspire.

It's also dollar Stag and PBR night.

The concert will also feature Pokey LaFarge, a Louisville, Kentucky, native, who plays mandolin and sounds a lot like Dylan.

Starts at 9 p.m.

$5 at the door.

$1 per beer.

It's gonna be cheap.

It's gonna be a party.

You should come.

PR Assignment: American Idol and Social Darwinism

Bill Carter of the New York Times just wrote this article about the strength of "American Idol" in the television market.

His question is whether or not it's alright for a single media to have so much power. After all other networks have completely changed their programming in order to avoid being squashed by this giant.

It is a pertinent question because the show now runs three times a week for a total of five hours and other networks can no longer schedule their hit shows around it like they have in the past.

I don't watch "American Idol" but I've seen it a few times and I don't really understand why 30 million people would watch it three times a week.

In general I believe in Social Darwinism when it comes to this kind of thing. But I also recognize when that things can get out of hand and there are points when the government needs to step in and disregard laissez-faire.

This is not one of those times.

While Carter brings up some good points, the situation is not nearly as scary as he makes it out to be.

It's a show about people singing, it's not 1984.

Uncertain Future for St. Louis Journalism Review

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, I've been a little busy.

Webster University has recently decided they don't care about academic prestige, journalism or the City of St. Louis.

That's a bold lead but it's true.
Just read on.

The St. Louis Journalism Review was founded in 1970 by Charles Klotzer. In 1995 Klotzer turned over ownership of the Review to Webster University.

The basic function of any journalism review is to monitor and critique the news media. Reviews keep journalists on their toes and make sure that they operate in an ethical manner. This is important because a democracy cannot function properly without an efficient press, hence the First Amendment.

However reviews don't make a lot of money. In fact they have a tendency to be a financial burden. So it probably wouldn't surprise you to find out that very few journalism reviews are in print in the United Sates.

The actual number is 3.
The Columbia Journalism Review, The American Journalism Review and The St. Louis Journalism Review.

So the City of St. Louis is home to one of the last remaining journalism reviews in the United States. That's something to be proud of.

You'd think that Webster University would be more than happy to support the Review. It puts them in the same league as the prestigious Columbia University, a school that Webster can't even compare too.

You thought wrong.

Webster had been subsidizing the journal between $35,000 and $50,000 every year for the last 11 years. They decided that the best way to cut that cost would be to take the Review out of print and make it solely available online.

The Board of the Review thought this would destroy the credibility of the journal and refused to cooperate.

That's when Webster cut the funding and ownership of the Review was returned to Klotzer.
The future of the Review is now in question.

I think that Webster has made a bad decision.

By ending their relationship with the Review they have sacrificed academic prestige and have also taken away a point of pride for the City of St. Louis.

That's just a shame.

National Budget Proposal

I usually avoid discussing politics. Not because I don't like to think about them, but because political conversations usually end up with people getting angry and never reaching any sort of enlightenment.

But today is different.

Yesterday President Bush gave Congress his budget proposal for the next couple years; it included a military budget of $624.6 billion.

$141.7 billion of the total is allocated for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is North St. Louis.

This is New Oleans

This is Detroit

Just something to think about...

PR Assignment: Too Damn Cold

This PR assignment involves discussing how the recent cold weather has affected my day to day living. Frankl,y I'd rather not dedicate an entire post to just complaining about my life because there are plenty of other blogs that handle that far better than I ever could.

But it's homework so I guess I'll do it.

It's really cold in St. Louis right now. In fact the majority of the country is feeling an arctic blast. Minnesota recorded a -42 degrees today. That's ridiculous.

The past few years St. Louis has had some mild winters, the worse usually coming around February but only lasting about a week.

However this year is different.

It has been below 35 degrees for about an entire month now and I'll be blunt, it sucks.

My 1992 Geo Tracker has spun out of control 3 times.
I had to break icicles out of my hair twice.
I cut my hair and now my ears are freezing.
I've spent roughly $15 on chap stick.
It only snows after I've left my house with my suede jacket on.
I've had various head colds.

That's a little of how my life has been affected.

Not everything about the weather is bad though.
We all have a great conversation starter for greeting strangers.

Thank God baseball starts in a month.

Woes of the St. Louis School Board

I'll just come out and say it, The St. Louis School Board is an inefficient, backwards cluster-fuck.

I apologize for the obscenity but it really is the perfect prose for the given situation.

Last Tuesday, January 30 about 1,200 parents, teachers, students and ordinary citizens packed into the Harris-Stowe auditorium to protest the proposed takeover of the St. Louis Public School District by the state of Missouri. People lined up as early as 7:30 a.m. to make sure that their voice was heard.

In theory their opinion made sense. If the School Board was appointed by the state and not elected by the voters then the voters lost all say in the education system.

Sounds like a legit complaint but there's one main problem with it.

The voters are terrible at selecting members for the School Board.

Here's a list of things that have happened recently in the School Board:

1. The cash strapped School Board had 2 Apple iPods and 4 MacBook Pros charged onto it's credit card. The iPods and 4 of the MacBooks are sitting at the office unused. No member of the Board has claimed responsibility for ordering them. One former employee said that School Board President Veronica O'Brien ordered them for her children. O'Brien says former liaison to the Board Chip Clatto ordered them. Clatto says that O'Brien told him to order them and the circle of blame continues.

"Where are the other 2 MacBooks?" you ask. Oddly enough no one on the Board seems to know.

2. About six months ago O'Brien refused to sign ten board approved contracts that would allow for the purchase of needed desks, textbooks and even a heating bill. So children in several schools went without heat in November and December due to the lack of a signature. O'Brien claims that superintendent Diana Bourisaw failed to send the contract to her. Bourisaw says that she did. The Board backs Bourisaw's story.

3. On January 16 the School Board voted down an investigation into how successful a state run board would be. This was just a study to see if a state run district would improve the schools, not an actual choice to hand it over to the state.

4. On January 3 O'Brien barely held on to her job. In what has become routine in the School Board the last few years the president was nearly ousted but kept her position in a 4-3 vote.


These are recent events yet the dysfunction and incompetence goes back years. Board members have been caught on camera calling for God to curse other Board members.

And these people were elected.

Anyone that's against a state run School Board needs to ask themselves one question,

"Could it be worse than what we have now?"

No. Not a chance in hell.

St. Louis Music Scene

Anyone that's interested in good music should go listen to Casey Reid tomorrow night at the Way Out Club around 8 p.m.

Casey is one of the most talented musicians to come out of St. Louis in years and plays amazing live sets.

His trashcan blues embody the grit and grind of St. Louis in a way that only truly good music can.

He was selected by the Riverfront Times as St. Louis' best songwriter of 2006.

Here's what they they think of him over at the RFT

You should seriously consider checking him out.