Blogosphere: July 2008 Archives

I'm very happy to pass along the news that friend and top talk host Kevin McCullough is back on the air with his pale Stephen Baldwin (the conservative Baldwin brother). Baldwin/McCullough Xtreme Radio launches tonight from 8 - 10 p.m. Tulsa Time (9 - 11 Eastern) on 21 stations from Cape Cod to St. Augustine, FL, from New York City to Salt Lake City:

New York City - AM 970
Washington DC - AM 580
Salt Lake UT - AM 820
Jacksonville FL - FM 91.9
Charlotte NC - AM 960
Richmond VA - AM 580
Newark NJ - AM 970
Virginia Beach VA - AM 1010
Trenton NJ - AM 970
Greensboro NC - AM 830
Hartford CT - AM 970
Winston-Salem NC - AM 830
Cape Cod Mass - AM 970
High Point NC - AM 830
Roanoke VA - AM 910
Hackensack NJ - AM 970
St Augustine FL - FM 103.7
Danbury CT - AM 970
Statesville NC - AM1400
Mocksville NC - AM 1520
Bridgeport CT - AM 970

You can also listen online via Blog Talk Radio.

Here's what Kevin says we can look forward to:

Here's part of what we're hitting on tonight - so be by the radio:

1. If the top song in the country (especially for those 15-34 female) is, "I kissed a girl and I liked it..." we'd sort of love to get your idea as to WHY it is number 1. Some say it's due to the fact that society and culture have pushed the envelope right over the cliff. The pressure to be funky - the influences of where it comes from and how we respond to it...

2. Brooke Barrettsmith (www.brookerocks.com) is a rising star in the music world. Her new single "Farewell" has been climbing charts. She will join us LIVE to tell us the story behind the song. You may remember Brooke from American Idol season 5 - the most talented Idol class ever.

3. Kevin McCullough will go see it! But Stephen Baldwin has refused to see the newest Batman movie 'The Dark Knight'. The character of The Joker as played by Heath Ledger is a large part of the reason why. Some think Jack Nicholson intimated some sort of supernatural involvement with evil when he played the role years ago in the Michael Keaton/Tim Burton version. As you may know Heath Ledger committed suicide shortly after finishing work on film. Upon hearing the news Nicholson could only reply, "I warned him." We'd like to know whether you think Heath's death was influenced at all by supernatural evil. Which also begs us to consider how we intersect with the supernatural on a daily basis.

4. Music Guests tonight feature: Brooke Barrettsmith, Jonas Brothers, Pillar, Demi Lovato, Tenth Avenue North, Leona Lewis, Natalie Grant, and Duffy!

We'd like to thank our sponsors for making it all happen: Christian Values Network, Compassion International, GLYBooks.com, and Hit Me Energy Shots.

You can get a sense of the entertaining way Stephen and Kevin deal with serious issues by heading to the BMXRadioNow website and listening to their conversation with KISS's Gene Simmons about merchandising and child-rearing.

Many thanks to the readers of Urban Tulsa Weekly who have, for the second year in a row, voted for me as Tulsa's Favorite Blogger in the Absolute Best of Tulsa readers' poll:

Michael Bates, Urban Tulsa Weekly's own uber city news geek and pundit extraordinaire, is the man. With his encyclopedic knowledge of Tulsa's history and of the inner workings of city and county government and his piercing insight into the goings on of the city's elite, his weekly columns are often a source of both dread and delight to local leaders. The man is a machine, though, so a weekly column is hardly enough of an outlet for him to say all that he has to say, nor for readers to get their regular fix of his words and wisdom. So, there's always his blog at Batesline.com.

Congratulations to Tulsa World music writer Jennifer Chancellor for getting a "close call" in this category. Although many editors and writers at the daily have blogs, Jennifer is one of the few who is really taking advantage of the medium, updating on a near-daily basis. Most recently she's been posting lots of photos and video from Rocklahoma. I shall have to work much harder if I want a threepeat. (Or maybe lobby to have a separate category for music bloggers.)

I was also happy to see a win in the coffee house category for one of my favorite hangouts, the Coffee House on Cherry Street, with Shades of Brown, another favorite hangout, as a close runner-up. The two coffee houses set the standard not only for good coffee but for community gathering places.

(Note to PLANiTULSA team -- as part of your outreach to Tulsa's young people, hold some "bull sessions" at these coffee houses. Just plan to show up, hang out, and expect to have some great conversations about the city's future.)

I was also happy to see Callupsie win in the Local, Indie Produced Album for their recording debut:

No other established band in Tulsa is as hard-working as Callupsie. And their particular brand of indie jazz-punk is one of the most unique sounds to emerge from the city in quite some time. Produced by Stephen Egerton over just two sessions (the entire album took a total of several days to record), the debut is a ridiculously catchy collection of pop tunes (pop in the best sense) that is just waiting to be played on college stations across the country. To boot, they're four of the nicest musicians you'll ever meet. You all chose well on this one.

The ABoT issue includes some of the more interesting "fill-in-the-blank" responses to questions like, "If I were mayor," and "You are so Tulsa if you..."

My favorite: "If I were mayor... I'd build the Golden Driller a girlfriend." I know just the girl. She's somewhat older, but a lot better looking than the old roughneck. She's "The Goddess of Oil", a 1941 sculpture by Tulsa World staff artist Clarence Allen. The plan was to erect a 40-foot version of the sculpture at the next International Petroleum Exhibition, but the outbreak of World War II got in the way. The model was 19-year-old Marjorie Morrow. Although the full-sized version was never erected, the original sculpture stayed in Morrow's family, and her grandson, muralist William Franklin, hopes to see the original artistic vision realized. You can read all about it and donate to the project at goddessofoil.com.