My Dinner with Andre Barack

So my friend Bruno sent me this invitation to have dinner with Barack Obama. Well, not really, but Obama's campaign came up with this amazing idea to ask for donations on their website (could be as little as $10) and then you are put into this drawing for a free dinner with Barack Obama. If you win, they fly you in, and you and three other lucky folks get to have dinner with Obama -- he even pays for dinner. It's brilliant. The catch is that you have to enter before midnight tomorrow -- that's Wednesday, June 13 -- in order to be in the drawing. He even has a little video on the site where he explains the whole thing. I love it. I even gave $25, because, you know, I'm rich. ;)

Bloomberg to Worrywarts: Get a Life!

Bloomberg took a while to make a statement about the foiled JFK bombing plot revealed over the weekend. And his comments yesterday took some people by surprise. I loved what he had to say. So nice to have a reasonable guy in government and not the fear mongering crew we've got in Washington.

"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life." - Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Read more of what he said in this story by the local CBS affiliate.

Update: Good article in the Times about this today.

New York Mystery

I just got off the MUNI after a LONG ride (why does it stall inexplicably for 15-20 minutes before entering or leaving the Van Ness tunnel EVERY TIME I ride it?! good grief!) where I enjoyed reading my new issue of New York magazine and wanted to blog about this great article which detailed the story of the "Splasher." This guy/girl (no one knows who it is) is going around the city and painting over revered street graffiti art with (the theory goes) a supersoaker paint gun. I'm so out of it here on the West Coast that everyone in New York probably already knew about this person, but I hadn't heard of it before — and I found the article totally fascinating. Along with the paint splash, the Splasher also posts a manifeso diatribe against the commodification of the graffiti art form.

At first I was really bummed about someone going around destroying art like that, but in the end, I wasn't so sure I hated the Splasher. I can't say I agree with what s/he's done, but the whole debate that it's stirred up is an interesting one. I'm too tired to post more now, but I'll post some more thoughts later in the week.

You can see more images here on the streetsy blog, which I also didn't know about and will bookmark for future viewing. Some discussion of the piece here. Was I duped? Is this an insider joke?