Freiberger beer, ya!

So this is my first dispatch from Germany during a two-week trip for a journalism exchange program known as Atlantik-Brucke, a post-WWII program that was initially designed to improve relations between the United States and Germany by shipping U.S. journalists to the Fatherland for a tour of the country’s political and business elite. Anyway, I took off from Bismarck for Germany on Friday, flying to Chicago, to Frankfurt then to Dresden ultimately taking a bus to Freiberg, a sleepy socialism-loving mining town in the eastern part of the country where they make solar panels and very pink hotels that only a 6-year-old girl could enjoy. (We’re staying at hotel I linked to.)

We’re going to be spending the next 10 days meeting with government and business leaders in Germany, which will culminate in a stay at one of the best hotels in Berlin (and maybe the world) the Hotel Adlon. I’m on this trip with more than a dozen journalists from around the nation who work for BBC, the Washington Times, the LA Times, the Guardian, and the Center for American Progress as well as freelancers in Washington and Atlanta and journalists from regional papers like me. It’s an impressive group of journalists I get to share these two weeks with, me being the youngest in the group.

Volker Schlegel on our first night in Freiberg.

This is  is Volker Schlegel, a former ambassador for the program, which is more than 50 years old. He’s showing us around the country over the next two weeks. He also took us to a restaurant near Freiberg for our introduction to German cuisine, which is as carb-heavy as it is delicious.

My first meal included German toast, which is toast, pinapple, cheese, Mandarin oranges and jelly, layered in that order.

For the main course, wild boar roast with dumplings.

And then finally, ice cream with raspberries

Jon Stewart emerged this year as an effective critic of CNBC’s coverage of the economic meltdown but played a slightly different tune in 2006 when former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan stepped down. In its “irrationally exuberant” tribute to Greenspan, Stewart ironically lauded the former fed chief’s policies, namely lowering the fed’s interest rate, a policy many now consider a leading contributer to the ultimately unsustainable housing bubble and subsequent credit crunch.

Regardless, the show’s skepticism of the fed’s policies emerge when resident expert John Hodgman took out a crystal ball to see into a post-Greenspan future. In it Hodgman sees a shack in the middle of a dusty field: It’s New York City after the housing bubble burst, he says.

This is from a blog post I had posted to my former Blogger account. Figured it was relevant now that Jaydiohead (a NYC DJ named Max Tannone) dropped a second round of mash-up tracks today:

After all the writing I do about politics, I sometimes forget how much I actually love to write about music/pop culture. (Seriously, the daily drum beat of tax figures and political rhetoric can drive a man insane). Anyway, a friend of mine introduced me today to the newest in a long list of DJs ripping off Jay-z by mashing his tracks with another notable rock band. Everyone, meet DJ Minty Fresh Beats. Simply put, dude has done us all a favor by combining the best from Jay-z’s requiem album with some of Radiohead’s greatest songs (Optimistic, Paranoid Android, etc…)

Listen here for his newest tracks. For the original album: Jaydiohead :: Listen

Sick, huh? I’ve written about the changing nature of music and how independent agents out there can make long-lasting sonic impressions, usually to the chagrin of the original artists. But what’s usually surprising, especially when these mash-ups work – evident with Jaydieohead and DJ Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album – is that it makes the original creative piece that much better. Here’s to EMI having a sense of humor…

So this is from a paper I wrote for an American Music and Literature class I took in 2007 while at the University of Nevada. Figured it was slightly relevant:

Some call it the most important technological revolution to occur in decades. It is fundamentally changing American culture – from the way Americans read the news to the way they listen to music.

They are calling it Web 2.0, a word associated with phrases such as “blogging,” “user-generated content,” and the “democratization of the media.” And this so-called revolution is having a profound effect on a multi-billion dollar music industry that has enjoyed continuous success throughout most of the 20th century, that is, until a college freshman by the name of Shawn Fanning decided to make a pesky file-sharing program called Napster in 1999. The rest is history.

This digital revolution (another one of those phrases) is also taking place just as one of the world’s youngest musical genes, hip-hop, is picking up momentum and coming into its own rite around the globe. The music industry is fiercely trying to figure out how to maintain profits in light of the mass exodus from the record store to the digital store – amid an ocean of digital pirates who steal and swap songs in the Internet’s underbelly. And as music becomes easier to share, through Internet mediums like online radio, YouTube, and podcasting, artists are sprouting up all over the world –such as overnight success and underground hip-hop producer DJ Danger Mouse – all becoming new-media Horatio Algers. Bands are figuring out new ways of marketing themselves, like rock outfit OK Go’s self-produced YouTube music videos, by avoiding the muscular (and expensive) marketing power of the major record labels.

The next big thing for music isn’t white rappers or multi-million dollar pop-princess machines. No. The next big thing is the way Americans – and the rest of humanity – will produce, obtain and listen to music for years to come, all of which will fundamentally change the type of music everybody listens to.

Read the rest of the paper here if you’re interested.

It’s no secret that newspapers, from coast to coast, are struggling. The industry even got its own congressional hearing last week in Washington about the future of journalism to prove it.

Amid this digital transition,  newspapers, blogs and talk shows have reported the various cuts newspapers have endured to stay afloat over the past three years. In my young career I’ve already seen many veteran reporters and editors – some of them mentors of mine – at other newspapers leave the industry, sometimes not on their own terms.

The latest casualty of these “cost-saving” measures is a colleague of mine at the Capitol, Janell Cole, who covered state government and politics for the Forum and its parent company for the last 10 years. Her position was eliminated last Saturday.

Cole’s knowledge about North Dakota government and politics is deep, respected and will be sorely missed. With that, thank you, Janell, for helping a newbie find his way around the Capitol.

Now that its is well into its 35th season, Saturday Night Live finally looks to be crawling out of its post-Ferrell funk without the aid of a presidential election to give it relevancy (note: Will Ferrell is hosting the show on May 17). The show’s most obvious strength is its Digital Short segment, which usually features cast member Andy Samberg of “Lazy Sunday” fame. It’s probably fair to say that Samberg’s work on the weekly sketch put SNL in a position to capitalize on the viral video culture (One rendition of “I’m On a Boat” has more than 23 million views on Youtube, for example). Also, NBC should consider making Justin Timberlake a full-time cast member. Another win from Saturday: “Motherlover” (for whatever reason, Hulu or NBC videos won’t embed in my blog).

While the SNL Digital Short  has evolved into the show’s weekly strong point, it should be noted that Kristin Wigg has also emerged as a key to most weekly sketches. Anyway, here’s what happened five months prior:

If there is something most journalists have in common it’s this: we love donning awards among ourselves (from state newspaper associations to the Pulitzer Prize) and then getting rip-roaring drunk after award ceremonies.

I got to continue this tradition last night at the North Dakota Newspaper Association annual convention dinner, where I was awarded the Rookie Reporter of the Year award. It was a nice evening, complete with a free steak and three hours of fellow newspaper folks patting each other on the back.  But the best part of the night wasn’t the award, or the steak (too well-done), it was the booze-soaked conversations we journalists had at the bar following the dinner. If you really want to know what we reporters and editors think about politics, religion, or whatever, simply visit the nearest bar by any hotel hosting a journalism conference in the nation and eavesdrop. Regardless, cheers to the fellow reporters and newspapers that earned their honors this year.

The monolith!

So if you weren’t a fan of the popular dramedy “Scrubs,” then you missed out on Wednesday when the series finally came to its well-deserved close (or not, depending on if ABC decides to do a spinoff). Still, it was, in my humble opinion, top notch television for a show about 20-somethings dealing with the challenges that come with professional and adult life. If you’re not sold on the sitcom/drama, then check out the Star-Ledger’s Alan Sepinwall’s review of “My Finale.” 

Below is the final scene of the show, which has probably generated a sudden surge of interest in Peter Gabriel music:

If you need more convincing that the show was among the best/underrated shows of the double-aughts, then look no further than Dr. Cox’s top five rants:

I’m often asked what I thought about living through my first North Dakota winter. My usual response: it sucked. No need to go into more detail, because honestly, the memories are painful. My car died three times and I’m pretty sure I almost got frostbite while trying to dig out my car that became stuck in a snow bank one cold night after work. And by cold I mean it was painful to breath – especially when it drops to 20 below zero.

But I survived and I’m stronger now than I was before. Winter in North Dakota is difficult to explain, but I’m told its never as bad as you think – except when it actually is. Unfortunately for my inaugural Nodak winter, it was one for the record books: Bismarck was a mere three inches short of setting an all-time snowfall record this winter (about 101 inches) and nearly broke the all-time low temperature: 44 degrees below zero. And that doesn’t even cover the flooding disaster around the state. Welcome, Brian Duggan. 

But the harsh weather of winter, which started on Nov. 5 when the town got it’s first blizzard of the season and didn’t let up until mid-April, gives way to other activities. Like curling.  And drinking. Lot’s of drinking. I didn’t know what to expect before coming to North Dakota, no thanks to a pervasive stereotype caused by the movie “Fargo“. North Dakota really isn’t that bad. Sure it’s cold, but it’s winter. And people still do stuff – including two friends and I driving to Fargo in the middle of January over ice-slick roads to see AC/DC live. For the record, as I write this in May, the summer looks like it will be beautiful here. People are out on bikes, starting softball leagues and populating the local golf course. Still, I find it funny how people continue to perceive this state as a frost-bitten, hellish wasteland. North Dakotans notice the insults. Some say the winters keep the riffraff out, but deep down many natives here are a little raw about the unfair treatment. It’s often the last U.S. state visited by many travelers, including former First Lady Laura Bush. All I can say is don’t believe the hype and come to the state and see for yourself what it’s like. I’m positive that you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

If you haven’t seen the movie “Fargo” then look no further than the following Youtube gem to get the gist of the movie in 100 seconds:

So I’m moving my blogger activities to this new, nice and shiny WordPress site. So before I start spouting off about this or that, enjoy the following for a quick intro post: