(FILED 3:52 pm ET)

I think this is blog number  42. The truth is that I have no idea.

Right now I'm at JFK getting ready to fly to England for the last show of my summer euro-tour, which will be at Wembley Stadium with Pendulum and Carl Craig on Sunday. Come by if you're in London.

I'm writing this last convention blog (even though the convention is over and I'm far from Denver) because the nice people at Blender asked me to write a 'wrap up' blog about the convention.

So, to wrap up, politics are:

1. like sausages, less appealing when you know how they're created

2. like sports for people who don't really care about sports (like me and my effete, nerdy, limousine-liberal friends)

3. like an old hooker, more attractive when you're looking from a distance (and/or drunk).

I've always been politically obsessed. I was raised by politically-obsessed family members, and I grew up playing in hardcore punk bands, where a big part of the hardcore ethos/credo was political engagement. Another big part of the hardcore ethos/credo was being loud and confrontational, which has pretty much only gotten me into trouble since I left the hardcore scene. Eh, whatever, I'd probably be annoying even if I wasn't loud and confrontational. I'd just be quietly annoying.

I love politics. Well, I love politics as long as I don't actually spend too much time with politicians or their underlings. Politics is fun from a distance, and it's great conversation fodder when you're drinking beer in a shitty bar and you don't want to talk about sports. But if you've ever spent time around the lower echelons of the political hierarchy you learn pretty quickly that politics isn't/aren't exactly glamorous. Less glamorous than the music business, even, and that's saying something, as the music business is about as glamorous as a foot. And not even a sexy foot, more like an accountants foot on day 3 of his vacation hiking through the Adirondacks.

I had fun in Denver. I saw some wacky left and right-wing protesters (I'm still trying to decide if it's healthy to be so angry about issues that are utterly beyond your control), I ate at this great restaurant called Watercourse (with fantastic art depicting herbivorous bunnies going on a killing spree, and a giant buffalo sharing a tiny canteen with a squirrel), I saw some great art at the Shep Fairey gallery event, I saw some more wacky protesters (now I'm trying to find out if the anti-bird porn movement is real, or just the work of someone funny like Tom Sachs), and I got to DJ, which I love.

I also watched a bunch of genuinely moving speeches, and I realized that the Democrats have more politico-rock-stars than the Republicans. At the DNC convention you had Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and a ton of relatively young and smart and optimistic people. At the RNC convention they're going to have cross-dressing Rudy Giuliani and only-kept-alive-by-the-blood-of-baby-ducks Dick Cheney and GW Bush and...who? Dark days for the Republicans.

Plus it looks like New Orleans is about to get hit with another hurricane, right as the Republican convention is getting underway. And plus John McCain's VP nominee is a novice who lists 'ordering chinese food' as the bulk of her foreign policy experience. It almost makes you feel sorry for the Republicans. Well, it would make you feel sorry for the Republicans if they weren't a bunch of  fear-mongering lunatics who are primarily interested in making sure that every child in America learns that dinosaurs and humans co-existed 5,000 years ago and that embryonic stem-cells are best respected by being thrown into dumpsters.

OK, time to go to the U.K. Thanks for reading my inane convention blogs. And, as always, I think that 'blog' is a disgusting word.

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White House DJ Battle: McCain and Obama Reveal Their Top 10 Songs

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Moby Does the DNC: Late-Night Tuesday: Booze, Karaoke, and Angry Wrestling

Moby ("Our Dumb Musician in Denver") Does the DNC: Fried Bananas, Hippies, and Celebrities Everywhere

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(FILED 4:45 pm ET)

RELATED POSTS/LINKS

White House DJ Battle: McCain and Obama Reveal Their Top 10 Songs

Moby Does the DNC: Going to Church, Contemplating Gregory Peck, and Green Beer

Moby Does the DNC: Late-Night Tuesday: Booze, Karaoke, and Angry Wrestling

Moby ("Our Dumb Musician in Denver") Does the DNC: Fried Bananas, Hippies, and Celebrities Everywhere

Moby Does the DNC: Rich Politicians: YES. Angel Dust: NO.

Moby Does the DNC: John McCain, Cocaine, and Hookers 

(FILED 2:30 pm Mountain Time)

Blog 5, written with thumbs.

So last night (yes, that's the name of my new record, shameless plug. And Blender gave it a terrible review, but here I am blogging for them. I must be a masochist. At least the blogging pays well. Wait, it pays nothing? I'm an idiot) I went to the Shep Fairey/MoveOn.org event and, at the risk of being un-ironic and not even slightly cynical, the art was great. 
 
My favorite piece had been done by a 71 year old artist from L.A. who until recently had been sleeping in his car. When Laura from MoveOn.org called him to say that his piece was one of 3 winners, he said What? She then said it again, Your piece is one of the 3 winners, to which he replied, I think you have the wrong number. Eventually she was able to convince him that he won.
I think he's happy. The show was/is great, thanks to Shep Fairey and Laura from MoveOn.


I left before the party started and apparently it was a big, crowded, drunken, fun clusterfuck.
I'm sorry I missed it. Zooey Deschanel and Death Cab For Cutie and a bunch of other people played an acoustic set at midnight that was, apparently, both good and inaudible, unless you were 3 inches from the stage. Note to aspiring acoustic performers: Playing an acoustic set in between hip-hop DJs to 1,000 drunks at midnight might not be the best idea. Acoustic sets are great in living rooms and hushed concert venues, but less so at a huge party in between hip-hop DJs in a room full of manic drunks.

After leaving the Shep Fairey party I went to The Church where I DJ'ed until they kicked me out.
I still don't understand bars/clubs that have to close at 2 a.m. It’s uncivilized, barbaric, even. In America you can buy automatic weapons and fight and die in foreign lands, but in most places you can't but a beer at 2:05 a.m? It’s like we live in a Victorian nanny state.

But the 1500 people at the church (interesting mix of ravers, club kids, delegates, journalists, politicians, etc.) seemed to be having a good time until the house lights came up.
The best moments of the night were the breakdown in “Anthem” by Miles Dyson, and an AC Slater track whose name I can't remember.

Oh, The Church is a church. An old church, now a nice club. I felt a bit like Gregory Peck in the Moby Dick movie, suspended 30 feet above the crowd in my little disco pulpit.
Ironic, as Gregory Peck was playing Ahab in the movie, bent on killing Moby Dick.
My self-loathing hasn't quite reached the point where I want to kill myself with a harpoon. Operative word being 'quite.' Thus the vague irony.


Today everyone's trecking out to the local enormo-dome to hear Barry O give his victory speech.
I might trek out, as well, or I might opt to be a sissy and watch his speech on TV in the comfort of my hotel, or possibly in the weird Irish pub around the corner (Green beer all year round!, who can resist?).
I know, what sort of jerk has the chance to be up close and see history in the making and instead chooses to sit in a hotel room or weird Irish bar watching history on TV?
Well, me, possibly.

See, to get to the enormo-dome you have to take a shuttle bus and wait in line and I'm pretty sure they won't have green beer at the enormo-dome.
You can see my dilemma.

RELATED POSTS/LINKS

Moby Does the DNC: Late-Night Tuesday: Booze, Karaoke, and Angry Wrestling

Moby ("Our Dumb Musician in Denver") Does the DNC: Fried Bananas, Hippies, and Celebrities Everywhere

Moby Does the DNC: Rich Politicians: YES. Angel Dust: NO.

Moby Does the DNC: John McCain, Cocaine, and Hookers 

White House DJ Battle: McCain and Obama Reveal Their Top 10 Songs

(FILED 8:35pm Mountain Time)

OK, blog? I've said it before, but blog is probably the least attractive word in the English language. Like blech meets clog. And doesn't blogging sound like some weird Dutch fetish practice involving cheese? Maybe there's a section on Craigslist: 'd&d free bbw into blogging and other cheese-play. Must send picture.'

But I digress.  

The people in the Pepsi Center just gave Bill Clinton the biggest rock star reception I've ever witnessed. It was like he was Bono mixed with the Pope mixed with Jenna Jameson mixed with a guy driving an ice cream truck on the hottest day of summer. These palpable waves of love flowed from the delegates to Clinton, and he seemed happy but vaguely annoyed that they wouldn't sit down and let him speak. His speech was spot on, pointing out that after 8 years of running/ruining the country, the GOP probably don't deserve another 4 more years, and he also very clearly endorsed Obama. Nice.

Earlier in the day I went to an event at Brown's Palace, which sounds like some weird Berlin club for shit fetishists, but is actually the fancy hotel in Denver where the big-wig politicians are all staying, and I spent some time watching the political machine while drinking coffee. (Yes, I used to own a tea shop in NYC, but I love coffee. I often joke that I like my coffee like I like my women, cold and bitter. Ha ha. It's a joke. I don't really like cold and bitter coffee). The lobby at Brown's Palace of scat fetishists was filled with, well, lobbyists. How fitting.

People from the conservative Tory party in the U.K. were there watching the American political process up close, and everyone else was either a friend of Obama or a Kennedy or a fundraiser or a friend of a fundraiser or a movie star or a politician. I don't know what pheromones are released when professional politicos meet up to eat fried bananas and drink Coke, but the Brown Palace lobby was rife with them. Them being the pheromones. I guess that's the sound the king of Egypt made when he was stinky: pheromones. Sorry. That was a terrible pun. Mea culpa.

One of the strange things about the convention is the disparity between the actual convention and how it's being covered on TV.  Friends write to me about images on TV of contentious demonstrations and taser-wielding police and unrest and etc.

The truth is, Denver's kind of peaceful. But I guess peaceful Denver doesn't exactly make for good TV coverage, whereas a couple of hippies getting tasered makes for good ratings.

There are cops and security guards everywhere, but more often than not they look bored, standing around wondering whether the skinny white kid in the Iowans for Obama t-shirt is a potential terrorist. No, he's probably just a kid from Iowa in an ill-fitting t-shirt. Lots of cops. Lots of security. And they all seem bored. Which might explain why they're jumping at the chance to taser hippies and wrestle ladies to the ground for not having security badges.

To make my blogging (what a disgusting word) more interesting I should probably write about some celebrity sightings since I've been here, but celebrity name-dropping makes me uncomfortable.  How about this: there are celebrities here in Denver and they're really famous and interesting and they have great lives and get free clothes and have way more fun than the rest of us can even conceive of and when they're not attending political conventions they're having phenomenal orgies on their private planes that are also yachts made out of a new type of alloy that makes gold and platinum look like old dirt. Yes, celebrities are here. Hanging out.  Eating fried bananas. Hosting events. Being celebrities.

I'm sure that more respectable journalists are happily documenting the movements of celebrities in Denver, whereas I write about angel dust and cheese fetishists and bad puns. That's why I'm not a professional journalist. I'm just a dumb musician with a computer and an internet connection and too much time on his hands.

OK, I'm getting long-winded. And I have to head out to a Shep Fairey/Moveon.org party where Death Cab For Cutie and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and a bunch of other people are playing. It should be fun. A crowded clusterfuck, but a fun clusterfuck. And Shep Fairey is awesome. And then, later, I'm DJ'ing a DMC/Obama fundraiser at a church, where I'll stand onstage and play other people's records and take credit for them.

I'll write more later, and I'll try not to be such a verbose windbag.
Operative word being try.

thanks,
moby

RELATED POSTS/LINKS

Moby Does the DNC: Late-Night Tuesday: Booze, Karaoke, and Angry Wrestling

Moby Does the DNC: Rich Politicians: YES. Angel Dust: NO.

Moby Does the DNC: John McCain, Cocaine, and Hookers 

White House DJ Battle: McCain and Obama Reveal Their Top 10 Songs

(FILED 2:30am Mountain Time this morning)

The DNC convention is, simply, spring break for Democrats. Denver in August is like Cancun in March, minus Señor Frog’s and wet t-shirt contests. People come here to drink. And drink. And when they're done drinking they network for a little while. And then they start drinking again. It's a convention lubricated by sweet, sweet liquor, the cause and solution to all of life's problems (to quote Homer). (Simpson).
 
The speeches have been great. Well, the ones I've seen. The Governor of Montana's speech was like an awesome late night infomercial for Democratic policy initiatives. And Hillary's speech was just great. She clearly endorsed Obama, and clearly stated that for the Democrats to win in November they need to unite behind Obama. That was nice. Although her orange pant suit was odd. It looked like something a Japanese traffic cop would wear in a Beastie Boys video.
 
But back to the liquor...
 
We were just stuck in a traffic jam on a side street at 1 a.m because people were running across the street going from bar to club to karaoke bar to bar to club. More power to them. Go to Denver. Have fun. Talk politics. Get drunk. Have sex with a stranger in a seedy hotel room. I mean, why not?   
 
Should politics solely exist in a platonic, rarefied, patrician environment? Or should politics at times involve beer and bad hotel sex for government employees and lobbyists? Even the most noble and well-intentioned Democrats need to have bad, beer-fueled hotel sex every now and then, right? I do think that the high altitude (5,280 feet above sea level--at least that's what the sign on the highway said) is making convention-goers a bit crazier than usual.
High altitudes enhance the effects of alcohol and make people drunk (or, to employ contemporary parlance, crunk). So, people are running around crunk. Again, good for them.
 
An aside: The security at the convention is fucking nuts. A friend  of mine (a petite blonde woman who works for a progressive organization) was wrestled to the ground by 6 cops/security-people because she had left her credentials in her hotel room. Maybe the cops in Denver should lay off the caffeine/meth/diet-pills/sugar-cereals while they're working the convention? When my friend said, truthfully and innocently, I left my credentials in my hotel room, the cops yelled, Shut up and keep your hands where we can see them!

Er, I appreciate the need for heightened security, but I don't know if it takes 6 storm-troopers to wrestle a petite blonde Democrat to the ground to find out that she left her convention pass in her hotel room.
 
OK, more tomorrow.
 
moby

RELATED POSTS/LINKS

Moby Does the DNC: Rich Politicians: YES. Angel Dust: NO.

Moby Does the DNC: John McCain, Cocaine, and Hookers 

White House DJ Battle: McCain and Obama Reveal Their Top 10 Songs

(FILED Tuesday 9pm Mountain Time)

Just got to Denver. Which reminds me: The last time I was in Denver I ended up smoking angel dust in the basement of a house party with some local kids. It gave me the most intense hallucinations of my life. Not fun, mushroom-style hallucinations, but insane I've just smoked synthetic animal tranquilizer style hallucinations.
 
I guess that it's probably not such a bad idea to avoid smoking synthetic animal tranquilizers while I'm in Denver this time. Otherwise I might find myself on the roof of the hotel convinced that space aliens are talking to me via the Pentagon and that the Pentagon is actually a giant lizard farm and that my skin is actually made out of tiny magnets. For instance.
 
In other news, Denver's nice.
 
OK, politics. Do you know about the PUMAs? It's an acronym that stands for Party Unity My Ass, and the PUMAs are, for the most part, disgruntled former Hillary supporters who are now claiming to be McCain supporters. Personally, I think they've been McCain supporters all along. I mean, is someone really going to vote for a candidate (John McCain) who believes the exact opposite of what their chosen candidate (Hillary Clinton) believes just because their chosen candidate (again: Hillary Clinton) didn't win the nomination? I doubt it, unless they're really cranky from smoking synthetic animal tranquilizers with homeboys in the basement of some house in Denver and you don't even remember how you ended up in the house but you're not in a hurry to smoke angel dust ever again, thank you.
 
Speaking of John McCain, Monday night on Jay Leno he responded to a question about his multiple houses (he apparently is so rich that he doesn't know how many houses he owns) by talking about his time as a prisoner of war. Yes, Senator McCain, we all know that you were a prisoner of war and it was awful. You have our respect. But using your experiences in Vietnam 40 years ago as an excuse to  not answer uncomfortable questions is pretty fucking lame, Mr. Straight Talk. Answer the question.
 
Your 2nd wife inherited buckets of money and is loaded and she bought you, roughly, 800 or so houses. You're like a pimp, so maybe you should take some pride in the fact that you're a civil servant with a government paycheck and your wife is loaded and she lets you ride around on her private planes and she buys you houses and $700 pairs of shoes. You're a kept man with a cool job and 3,000 houses. You should revel in your good fortune.
 
OK, time to go to soundcheck. I’m playing at an acoustic fundraising concert tonight. Soundchecks for acoustic shows are really difficult.  You plug in your acoustic guitar and speak into the microphone and the whole soundcheck lasts about 45 seconds and then it's done.
 
Oh, before i go, Mark Warner is giving tonight’s keynote speech. I like Mark Warner. I like rich politicians like Mark Warner and Michael Bloomberg, because they pay for their own campaigns and don't have to do favors for the special interest groups who normally pay for political campaigns. And Mark Warner’s smart. I hope he wins his Senate seat.
 
Talk to you later,
 
moby

RELATED POSTS/LINKS

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Moby Does the DNC: John McCain, Cocaine, and Hookers 

White House DJ Battle: McCain and Obama Reveal Their Top 10 Songs

It's the second day of the convention, and I'm in New York, getting ready to head to Denver. The big stories seem to be: 1) Hillary Clinton's delegates not going gently into the good night, 2) Obama and Biden wooing swing voters in the Rust Belt, and 3) who might end up being John McCain's V.P. But the really big story for me: Daddy Yankee endorsed John McCain yesterday for McCain's work on immigration reform.

Ahem.  

I'm not sure if Mr. Yankee is familiar with the work that McCain's other Republicans have done on immigration reform, but the prevailing feeling among most Republicans towards immigrants seems to be: build a fence and keep the brown people out. Senator McCain quietly championed immigration reform for about an 1/8th of a second until he realized that his fellow Republicans might not be so keen on supporting the candidacy of anyone who's not a rabid xenophobe.

And my second "ahem": I'm not sure if Senator McCain and his fellow Republicans are all that familiar with Daddy Yankee's oeuvre. Mr. Yankee had a huge hit single called "Gasolina" (which is exceedingly infectious and sounds fantastic in a disco in Bogota at 4 a.m). My question is: Do John McCain and his GOP friends know that "Gasolina" is, er, uh, cocaine? It's couched in subtle and nuanced metaphor (instead of saying "she loves cocaine" they sing/rap "she loves gasolina"), but "Gasolina" seems to be about ladies who love to do fuckloads, assloads, boatloads, etcetera-loads of cocaine.  

Maybe McCain and the GOP think that it's actually a song extolling the virtues of petroleum products? I guess that you couldn't really have a thriving cocaine trade without petroleum, so maybe the GOP and the cocaine cartels have found common ground. Ah well, politics makes strange bedfellows.  

Speaking of which, I wonder whether there will be more hookers in Denver for the DNC or in Minneapolis for the GOP convention? Everyone knows that hookers travel for conventions, right? And I wonder who pays better, Republicans or Democrats? And who asks for stranger shit?  

I'm assuming that would be the Republicans, as they are the party of Ted Haggard and Larry Craig and Dick Cheney (who we all know is surely into the nastiest things his cadre of dominatrices can cook up. "Have you been a naughty Vice President?" "Yes mistress, I have." "And do you need to be punished, Mr. Vice President?" "Yes mistress, I need to be punished." And etc).

OK, more from Denver when/if I finally get there.

- moby

RELATED POSTS/LINKS

Moby Does the DNC: Late-Night Tuesday: Booze, Karaoke, & Angry Wrestling

Moby Does the DNC: Rich Politicians: YES. Angle Dust: NO.

White House DJ Battle: McCain and Obama Reveal Their Top 10 Songs