Samadee stopped reading about Hillary and Obama when the coverage was reduced to bombast. Bowling and elitism. Guns and beers. The campaigns, if not the candidates, were no longer extolling the potential for brave new worlds, but rather falling back on the traditional exploitation of whatever fears appeared current. He got to the Y early Monday to be able to watch Rev. Wright’s entire presentation to the National Press Club on MSNBC. The couches in the television room emptied before the speech began, with low level grumbles echoing the sound bytes from his speeches that had been repeated so often they could be quoted verbatim.
Samadee, always suspect of sound bytes, wanted context. What he got was performance. Wright opened intellectual and ended funky...

CATEGORY: General Society

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Samadee sat outside Anthony’s on the southside of Hanover Square with the Has Been and the Wannabe, listening to the latest streetcast edition of Landlords Gone Wild. Citing resident complaints, building owners seemed to be steamed about music, music putting a rhythm to the streetscape from speakers outside taverns, and music rattling the rafters from bands inside. On the northside members of the Hanover Square Association squabbled about the image of the bands booked for summer concerts on the stage, in relation to the amount of beer sold during their sets...

CATEGORY: General Society

TAGS: Jim Walsh,Sweetland,Samadee,

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For people who hadn’t seen each other for five years, or maybe decades since junior high school, Old School night at Eastwood’s Palace Theater brought memories of clubs downtown, safe, with no knuckle heads hanging in the parking lots. For U.A.D., who hadn’t played together for five years, it was more than reunion. Although the lay off rendered some of their trademarked Motown steps imprecise, and lack of rehearsal strung several songs into an abbreviated medley with abrupt stops, the group produced the most soulful set seen in the Salt City since the Blacklites put the exclamation point on Show Time! on Hanover Square two summers ago. Actually, the Blacklites had planted the seeds for Old School at the Palace...

CATEGORY: General Society

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Remember? Two weeks ago, we’re talking, although in the unrelenting drone of the Democrat’s presidential primary chase it seems like two lifetimes ago. In the wake of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries the New York Daily News front page blared “Dem bosses admit game is up for Hil and now IT’S HIS PARTY.” The New York Times, characteristically more subtle, suggested, “For Clinton, Options Seem to Dwindle,” just above the front page fold. Other papers throughout New York State reflected loyalty to the relocated homegirl, focusing on Hillary’s vow to stay in the race despite mounting pressure from party leaders to submit to then perceived insurmountable odds and ring the bell for party unity...

CATEGORY: General Society

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Samadee could not admit that he had become bored with politics. It would be, he knew, only a temporary state. There was the open mayoral race coming next year, and, in the beginning at least, it would be way open. But after failing to find a way to be taken seriously in the County Executive race, a way to access the Presidential primary debates, or an appropriate occasion to announce his Congressional intentions, he knew he would become, again, an observer of the process, giving up all hope of realizing the mythical potential of every young boy to grow up to be elected. He would, however, maintain the sacred tradition of the secret ballot, not telling anyone how he would vote...

CATEGORY: General Society

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