Blog By Night

Shot another event for CCHF on Friday night. They are group dedicated to protecting your freedoms and rights in all matters health care. This event was a little different. First of all, I got the call the morning of the event asking if I was available. It’s nice to be wanted, but advanced warning is always nice. This meant running home on my lunch break to get batteries charging, and delaying our trip up north by a few hours. Last minute planning aside, this was more of a party than a typical political fundraiser. The venue was crazy: “Retro Tonic” was the name given to this space that used to be six apartments. The building owner has converted it to an interconnected collection of party rooms, all with different themes. Everything from giant chess pieces, tiki huts and an up-north cabin room to a replica of the inside of the I Dream of Jeannie bottle. Every room was small and very dimly lit… and I was told that they wanted a bright look to the photos. So lots of flash, but we kept if off the camera and bounced it all around the room to keep it from being too harsh.
There was the obligatory speech block with Twila Brase (the force behind CCHF); radio personalities Sue Jeffers and Jason Lewis; MN State Senators David Hann and Gretchen Hoffman; and MN State Representatives Mary Liz Holberg, Mary Franson and Kathy Lohmer. They kept the speeches short, and then got back to the party, which featured Beatles tribute band Rubber Soul. Those lads rocked the house, er, apartments.
The highlight of the night was when Jason Lewis got up on stage and sang lead for the lads from Liverpool the Twin Cities to dedicate a song to our own Governor Dayton: “Back in the U.S.S.R.” After that, the band convinced Jason to do one more number and he sang again on “Get Back.”
The photos are now online. You can find them in our photo gallery under events.

The 2010 Hutch project.

Another event for AM 1280 The Patriot. The photos are now online. You can find them in our photo gallery under events. This one featured Hugh Hewitt, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Dennis Prager. Appearances were also made by MN gubernatorial hopeful Tom Emmer as well as several other state and local candidates.

Photos from Wednesday night’s AM 1280 The Patriot event are now online. You can find them in our photo gallery under events. It was a great night for conservative thought. One message was clear from Mr. Medved: we must stay focused on the message of small government and personal freedom and not get distracted by fringe issues. MN Governor Tim Pawlenty made a great point that very soon, it will not be a matter of liberal vs. conservative — it will simply be an issue of elementary school math. Our nation is spending more than we are taking in, and increasing taxes on the working class (and those who employ them) is not the answer to that problem. Hugh weighed in with his usual witty and concise legal knowledge, framing many of the current issues and pointing out what we can expect from the courts in the future.

My latest project for HHS.

Just random speculation here (I have NO inside info), but I think Apple is done with their AT&T honeymoon. Apple is a company that prides itself on great customer service and creating rabid fans that do more promoting than their ad agency. AT&T doesn’t share that great reputation and for the last 2 years, Apple has had it’s flagship cool product shackled to a service with a less than stellar image. We hear rumors of AT&T wanting to extend their exclusive contract this and Apple wanting better terms for it’s customers that… and even rumors of Apple talking with other carriers, who’s names start with V. I don’t think the relationship is working. I believe there is some tension behind the scenes and the bitterness is starting to spill out. Three separate times during the WWDC keynote, it was blatantly pointed out that the iPhone has a cool new feature… that AT&T would not be supporting right away in the US. Apple could have just said that MMS and tethering required carrier support and not every carrier would support it right away – then left it up to the press releases and reporter questions to disseminate the details of who and when. But no, they specifically touted the number of carriers in the number of countries that would be supporting these features, and either flat-out stated or left it blatantly obvious that AT&T in the US was not on that list.
I believe that negotiations are not going well and Apple used the WWDC keynote to say to AT&T, “See, people don’t like you and they think you are being a dick. They would love it if we offered them another choice.” I don’t know exactly what kind of leverage Apple is hoping for. Do they want a bigger chunk of revenue sharing from AT&T? Do they really want to extend the exclusive contract? Or are they preparing their consumer base for the impending switch? “AT&T was not able to offer the services that our iPhone customers demanded…” kinda has a familiar ring to it. Now, where did I put that 3GHz G5 processor…?

…and a right good captain, too!
Well, for the first time in quite a while, I went to an audition last night night. And today I got a call asking if I wanted to join the cast of Woodbury Community Theatre‘s An Evening with Gilbert & Sullivan — and I even get to sing the Captain’s Song. The revue will feature songs from Trial by Jury and other G&S favorites. The show isn’t until September, but there are only 2 performances on the 12th and 13th, so mark your calendars now! Looking forward to working with old friends and being on stage again.

Just a quick update to let anyone interested know that the photos from Tuesday night’s AM 1280 The Patriot event are online. You can go directly to the gallery here. Guests can download low resolution files for sharing via email or posting online for free, and you can also order prints directly on the site as well.

Tuesday night I worked an event for local talk radio station AM1280 The Patriot called “Obama: The First 100 Days” with radio hosts Bill Bennett, Dennis Prager and Hugh Hewitt. It was a discussion of how the first 100 days of this historic presidency have gone, and how it will effect this greatest nation on God’s green earth, if I may borrow a catch-phrase from the absent Michael Medved. An outsider might expect this to be an evening of Obama bashing, but that would be discounting the sheer intelligence and wisdom represented by the three gentlemen pictured above. Every criticism they had was backed up by logic, common sense and even history. These guys know their stuff. And they even had some points on which they commended Obama, usually something that didn’t go quite as he campaigned, but rather showing that the president is either more level-headed than we feared, or that perhaps access to higher-level intelligence and advisors have changed his tune. It was great to see people that I have listened to and hold in such high regard, in person.

More photos of the event and portraits of the VIP dinner attendees with the hosts will be available online by the end of this weekend.

Photos from Second Harvest Heartland‘s Dish event are now online. You can view them here, under “Events.” It was a great evening supporting a great cause: ending hunger in the heartland. They really are a fabulous organization. For every $1 donated, they are able to distribute $9 worth of food to a family in need. An astonishing 96% of their budget goes directly to programs. If you’ve done any research on non-profit groups, you know how awesome that is.