Thursday, December 13, 2007

Led Zeppelin to Headline Bonnaroo?


Bonnaroo, the quaint, annual music and arts festival held in Manchester, TN, has announced it's 2008 dates: June 12-15, but not the artists scheduled to take the stage.

Could it be that they're preparing to drop the biggest, baddest, rockinest bomb since the 11th US Tour in 1977?

The preliminary scuttlebutt, from a source of mine with ties to concert promoter AEG Live, is that Led Zeppelin, co-billed with Metallica, will be headlining Bonnaroo this summer.

I don't try to be a rumor-monger, I just really want this to be right.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Good News - Led Zeppelin Still Rocks


Rolling Stone's David Fricke's got the full review here. And the takeaway is that it was an awesome show in London last night.

However, no solid word on a tour. Fans are clamoring (including this one) and rumors are swirling and of course buckets of money are begging to be made. Come on lads, one more show.

Monday, December 10, 2007

A Further Word on SnowForecast and WTF Ron Paul Thinks He's Doing There

The advertisement for advertising on SnowForecast.com claims "a huge ski and snowboard audience" which can help drive "more interested visitors" to your site through targeted placement of your ads.

For most of my experience on SnowForecast.com that made sense - I was seeing ads for skiing-related products and services such as Sun Valley Resort and REI. As a visitor to SnowForecast.com, I expect and even appreciate this kind of advertising. It just might prove useful, meaning the publisher and its advertisers are gaining a better sense of me and my kind as consumers and sponsoring the things we like. When a site I like has advertisers I like, there is a kind of harmony on the Interwebs and I surf on worry-free.

Then you get something like what I saw yesterday, with Ron Paul's shit-eating grin daring me to continue enjoying my content, compliments of gun-toting, pro-life Republicans.

I can't figure out which is worse: that a hard-right Texas conservative thinks he has an audience among people who ski? Or that he may be right and SnowForecast.com is playing to his base in permitting this kind of 'targeted' advertising.

Chances are Ron Paul's cloying mug wouldn't be here if it weren't getting clicks and here's what troubles me the most. Is he courting the swing voter or motivating the base? My in-group ideal of skiers and snowboarders as being left-leaning, open-minded environmentalists with a splash of humanist hippie sensibility, is taking a beating at this dissonance in advertising.

Then I think of my connection through Dallas a few years back on my way to Vail from the East Coast. It seemed every fat cat oilman in Texas was on that flight (less the super elite, Ken Lay-level that eschew the riffraff for their private/corporate jets) tan and coiffured and decked out in knee-length shearling, fur and sheepskin like the Clan of the Cave Bear, and I'm reminded of the new demographic of skiing now that it truly is a past time for the rich.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

More Signs of the Snowpocalypse

The gruesome imagery above is a screen-shot of Squaw Valley's High Camp Cam today, December 5, 2007. And while the Rockies of Colorado, Idaho and Utah got crushed in the past week with early season-saving amounts of snow, we're still high and dry out here in California.

Fortunately, good news is on the way according to a sweet website I found, SnowForecast.com (which I'm not claiming to have discovered, but fully endorse).

Their forecast for Squaw is predicting up to 18 inches by Saturday. Keeping my fingers crossed.