Media Bytes - Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking Edition

By Libby

Song in my head. I wasn't a huge Pink Floyd fan but I love Roger Waters solo work. It's been a crazy couple of weeks so I have an odd collection of links but we'll start with some reading even though it's not the weekend yet.

Dan wonders if the the Dems realize how risky their current strategy is.

Hart dissects a viral email from his Klanny Granny.

Cernig finds a most amusing jutxaposition in the news. You'll find it at the bottom of his post analyzing McCain's latest shell game, the Lexington Project.

Me, I'm still seeing helicopters on a regular basis. I have to collect all those links into one archive some day.

And HuffPo has a new project, FearWatch08.

In a lighter vein, I didn't know there was a Dickipedia but this may be the single best bio I've seen on McCain.

Moving on to multimedia, they're going to establish the Guinness World record for world's largest peace sign in Ithaca. No YouTube on this one yet but the link to the kid's other vid is good and I'm looking forward to what he does with this event. Almost 6000 people showed up.

Robert Greenwald has a new short in his latest series. I think it's the best one yet. Lieberman must go.

Following up on the AP boycott, here's Harvard Law's advice to bloggers.

And there's a new show being produced in NYC that looks promising. Shoot the Messenger. I haven't watched this interview with Paul Riechhoff yet but I hear it's good.

Also, the annual Cannes advertising awards have been announced. The Cadbury Gorilla ad didn't impress me all that much and neither did the clothing retailer that won the grand prize but I have to admit that there was something kind of hypnotic about the editing between the countdown clock and the girls dancing. I found myself watching longer than I expected and I guess that's the point.

Finally for this edition's eyecandy, I discovered Boston Public Libary has a Flickr site of historic photos. I didn't really look at many of them because I got caught up in the Tichnor Brothers postcard gallery.

I love vintage postcards and these are favorites of mine. I happen to own a few of them myself. They're printed on high quality stock and I love the art. My tastes run to the schmaltzy full moon over Cape Cod variety, but I found lots of them that illustrate my personal history in New England. The Western Mass seem to start here and I found it interesting that the Mohawk Trail still looks remarkably like this.

I also found some from my childhood in Connecticut. I went to many teenage dances here. In those days there were at least three dances a week between two churches and the Elks Hall. I spent summers on this lake for many years and this was unequivocally the best state fair in the world. Unfortunately, they tore the fairgrounds down and built a mall a long time ago.

I really liked this one as well, of one of the best rose arbors I ever frequented at Elizabeth Park in Hartford. I spent lots of time there when I lived in that city. Life seemed so much simpler then.

[h/t to Avedon as always and also to Marc A. Cantone who may be the Beatles number one fan. ]