I've noted before that lots of social-thinking types believe art is good for what ails society (namely: stasia), and I agree. When it's good (and by good, I usually mean transgressive), it gets us considering things from new perspectives. Sometimes it just makes us happy. I'm not opposed to either outcome.

Anyway, I especially love when art takes to the street and actually intermingles with people, and that's what's happening this Saturday from 12:30 to 1:30 in lovable Kensington where three pillars of any community, creative design, bikes, and outlandish costumes will meet at the corner of Trenton and Norris Streets for the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby. It is, as the official site says, "a design competition and parade celebrating art and human powered transit." It proceeds all the way down to Penn Treaty Park and back again, so you could pack a picnic if the weather's nice.

(While you're at the park, remind yourself why a casino belongs nowhere near there.)

Like the beloved Fringe Festival, it's an event that transforms the city, if only momentarily, into some scene from a sweet surrealist fantasy dreamed in the heads of local artists. Who could ask for anything more?

But wait, there is more! Hang around Trenton and Norris after the derby for the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival that locals Levanana Levandecker and Steve Hatch report will be better than ever this year. If you wander over to a Kenzo or Fishtown establishment to sip the new and wonderful Philadelphia Brewing Company's Kenzinger or Rowhouse Red, word has it that no one will stop you.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and support the community.

One reason this year's election seems so long is because it really began when the 2006 election ended. That contest, which saw Democrats unexpectedly sweep both the House and the Senate, finally turned in favor of the good guys—after distractions over relatively minor issues—because it finally became a mandate over one sweeping, presidential issue: George W. Bush. The electorate, of course, mandated a change.

That’s where we started. Now, with Democrats battling longer than expected, and voters again getting distracted by relatively minor issues like whether Barack listens to his ex-minister or Hillary listens to economists, Philly For Change is launching a new campaign to focus attention back to the BIG issues: Bush, his policies on war, healthcare, Social Security and the environment, and the one man who stands in the way of changing them.

That’s why from now until November and in more ways than one, Philly For Change is Philly Against McCain.

CALLING ALL PROGRESSIVES! While you were visiting and revisiting YouTube for one of the great speeches of modern American politics, you may have missed the big news in local elections.

West Philly Machine State Rep Tommy Blackwell (Jannie’s stepson) got knocked off the ballot. What does that mean?

That means the amazing, super-positive, and super-inspiring community activist Vanessa Brown—for whom great speeches with touching personal stories are par for the course—can become our next great progressive representative in Harrisburg.

Who is Vanessa?

Get out and check out the Fringe Festival over the next few days!

Can I speak in broad generalities for a minute?

I don't think it's a coincidence that so many artists are progressives.

Sure, the fact that so few of them have decent healthcare probably contributes, but I thinks it's more than just the Moore Factor that accounts for progressivism among artists. I think that art, when it's interesting, opens up the observer or listener (if I were feeling materialist, I'd say the arts consumer) to new and different ideas and sensibilities. Interesting art often encourages empathy or sympathy, really does reveal new points of view, sometimes even radicalizes audiences to outrage and action. Sometime it provides release in ways that are impermissable outside of art.

A funny thing happened on the way to the slam dunk that was supposed to push a massive casino through the city's planning hoop and onto the Delaware River...for, as basketball observers in Philly (and yellowcake plutonium observers everywhere) have learned, a slam dunk is not always a sure thing. So in a move Sixers fans might call a "Dalembert," the casino's slam dunk hit nothing but rim over the last few days, as plans to move the South Philly Foxwoods project forward were first slowed by a surprise tabling by the city's planning commission, and then the whole process of turning the Delaware riverfront into a gambler's paradise hit what may prove to be a totally unanticipated wall: the city-commissioned Penn Praxis waterfront plan was finally unveiled Monday, and it proved to be a a big, bold reimagining of Philly's growing popular, prosperous neighborhoods organically, right down to its historic riverfront, with NO SIGNS OF CASINOS--OR EVEN WAL-MART--visible anywhere.

Should politicians be nice guys? My stock answer for a long time has been that it doesn't matter. Some very driven, aggressive, nasty people actually make effective and useful public servants, and some nice guys end up being very corrupt or inept.
But having thought about city politics more intently this year than any before, I'd like to amend that.

Given the job he or she must perform, an At Large Councilperson should be a really good person.

That's one reason why the first At Large vote I'll cast will be for Marc Stier.

And we intend to change life in the city as we know it!

Will we vote on endorsing a mayoral candidate?

OH YEAH!!!

Vote on a District 5 Council candidate?

You got it!

****

YOU WILL:

1) hang with progressive hotties, drink, enjoy reasonably-priced good food

2) find out more about the BEST DAMNED COUNCIL SLATE EVER!

3) MOST IMPORTANTLY whip out the cell and call the boss and the babysitter so you can...

TAKE THE DAY OFF TUESDAY MAY 15 and work to elect the WHOLE PFC BALLOT!!!

That's right: PFC will be manning and womanning the polls E-Day, handing out the hottest city ballot since Dilworth said NO to the Republicans once and for all.

THE UNEXPECTED IS ALREADY HAPPENING!

THIS COULD BE THE YEAR WE DREAMED OF!

LET'S WORK TO MAKE IT HAPPEN!

See you there,

Sam

Tritone is on the 1500 block of South Street.

(4/29/2007) The pink cherry trees blossom late outside the long windows of Chapterhouse coffee house that opened around this time last spring. I'd admired them then. Now, only the blue-with-a-line-of-red ANASTASIO sign in a window across the street (elegant Italian simplicity, I'd call it) signals that we're in a different year.

But other things are starting to change outside those windows.

This just posted at philly.com:

In what he described as the most difficult speech he ever had to deliver, Sen. Fumo acknowledged minutes ago on the Senate floor that he would be indicted as part of a federal investigation this week and said he would temporarily step down as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

If you're wondering what that tremor was this afternoon, it may have been the electoral landscape shifting...

I'm not normally much of an opera person, but I have a thing for the crazy, the indulgent, and the vulgar, which is a pretentious way of saying, despite his HORRIFYING flaws as a human being, I'm a fan of the art of Richard Wagner.

Wagner's greatest work is a tetralogy of operas about gods, kings, and heroes and a magic ring that stands for power (yeah, Tolkien apparently ripped him off, but I never smoked enough pot to get into him). The epic Ring Cycle ends with the burning of Valhalla, when the gods, kings, and heroes have so thoroughly debased the heavens with their mad power-grabbing, that the only way they can preserve the halls of power is to have a good, gigantic, all-encompassing, CLEANSING FIRE.

Must be a bitch to stage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6tterd%C3%A4mmerung

I believe Wagner's opera has something to teach us about the current situation in Philly politics.

So what's that burning smell?