Well… it’s official. Everyone has lost their minds, their cool, and their sense of humor. Furthermore, CBS has lost the largest ratings they may ever see.

What I have to say has no bearing on pretty much anything, but I can’t help myself: this Don Imus controversy should have either happened a long long time ago, or not at all.

But that isn’t really what is on my mind. What’s on my mind is someone I used to work with. Jason Whitlock.

For three years I worked with Whitlock on his afternoon sports radio program on KCSP 610 Sports. Our show was good, but our management didn’t know what to do with it. Part of the reason the show was so entertaining is that Jason is the master of launching himself into the middle of the controversy du jour.

Wouldn’t you know it, this morning I wake up to coffee, Kashi Heart to Heart cereal, and my wife exclaiming, “Eric! Jason Whitlock is on T.V.!” I don’t typically find Whit being on t.v. all that surprising, he’s often on t.v. However, he’s not often on the Today Show on NBC talking to Matt Lauer about Don Imus, Jesse Jackson & Al Not-So-Sharp-ton.

See, what I mean; the master of launching himself into the middle of the controversy du jour. Of course, I watched. I couldn’t help but snicker to myself as I could see Jason snickering to himself as if to say, “I can’t believe these people took the bait and I’m in the mix now!” I can believe it, though, because Jason is the first person I’ve heard make any sense of this whole thing. Just read the first few lines of Jason’s column this week:

Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again. Read the rest.

I can only respond with a phrase Jason made famous on The Doghouse: “Ihmm!”

Place your bets, XM or Sirius… who will pick up Imus’ wildly successful show?

Finally, a quick, public heart-to-heart to Jason: dude, couldn’t they have found a better back drop for the set you appeared in front of? Looked like a law office scene the ripped from an Olan Mills studio. I can almost guarantee you don’t have one of tose green lamps in your pad.

Less than 24 hours before I jump into the new job, but that’s another blog. Sets up this one though.

With my time off yesterday I picked up Jen and we met M.O.M. for lunch at The Mixx on Main behind the KC Library Plaza Branch. If you’re local, and you haven’t been there, then you’re not really local. They’re “the best Jerry, the best!”

While ordering a man walked by me in a suit and a ball cap. I always notice people dressed that way because it’s a bold move (he must drive a Ford). Anyway, he had on an Obama ‘08 hat, but it wasn’t one you can buy from BarackObama.com. In fact, the swag you can buy at the Obama.com store is actually pretty lame in terms of design. So, I stopped him, “Hey, where’d you get that hat?”

I made it!

Really? That’s great. I don’t like the ones on the Obama site.

Oh, they suck. That’s why I made these. Making shirts too, they say ‘Me and Momma for Obama!’

I love it!

It’s a coalition I’m helping start here in Kansas City.

Then he wrote down the website for me on a napkin, www.meandmommaforobama.com. I chuckled at the name and thought it was just a clever rhyming name like Obama-rama and the others that people are using to be clever. But I was wrong.

While it is a clever name, it is an actual coalition with a fantastic purpose and mission and I am proud to see it forming here in Kansas City. Me & Momma for Obama is a Midwestern coalition of Obama supporters targeted at single women who are heads of households. How I understand it, MAMFO intends to intricately involve these women and people from the “Brown and Black Community” (the sites phrase, not mine) with the issues that are primary to they and their family’s survival (healthcare, education, jobs, job security, etc). Furthermore, MAMFO has committed to raising voter turn out by 15% in poverty stricken census tracts of MO, KS, NE, IL & IA.

I love this! What I am noticing more and more is that for the first time since maybe the ‘92 Election people are actually excited about candidates. Of course, in ‘92 people were excited about candidate, singular. This time the excitement is on both sides, and I think it can only be good. The fact that people are paying attention and truly pushing for great options says something about America and where we are and where we want to be.

Back to MAMFO. Watch their site, check there updates, and if you feel so inclined, when their store is implemented (sometime this week, I’m told), buy some of their product. You’ll be helping good people and helping to elect a great man!

I felt compelled to pass this flammable little morsel on to my faithful reader (big ups M.O.M.). You can follow the same trail I did from Blankbaby to Al Nye to be reminded once again why McDonalds still sucks.

Turns out the secret ingredient that keeps McDonalds Chicken McNuggets so fresh and so clean is butane. That’s right: lighter fluid. A gram of which, by the way, has some wicked side effects; ingest a mere five grams and you’re partying with Anna Nicole!

The worst part is that the FDA approves of Ronny McD’s use of butane… on our food. Really?

So, who else is using lighter fluid as a preservative?

“Would you like fries with that?”

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I have so much to write about right now, but there just isn’t enough time. Real quick here’s a rundown: Steve the cat has competition for fiercest predator in the hood, Jayhawks gonna run the table, new job update, some movie thoughts, and a goofy photo shoot that I was asked to be a part of. I’ll have to get to all of those over the next week or so.

Right now, though, it is the eve of St. Patty’s day! My buddy Carson Swisher is partly responsible for this wicked funny video involving a drunk leprechaun. Funnier thing is that he and his friend held auditions for the production in his house, and from the looks of it filmed it in his house that he had closed on three days earlier. You can see Carson in the back at one point with a cam in front of his face trying to get out of the way.

I checked on YouTube, the video is up to nearly 5,000 views and the reviews are pretty great. Have fun with the video, made me laugh.

OH! And if you need video production work for anything, you gotta go with Carson. Dude’s p.i.m.p. When you talk to him ask to see his Urban Wakeboarding and Urban Snowboarding videos.

Words I had to look up in this post: Leprechaun, predator and Your Mom.

If you’ve been reading this blog for more than six months then your name is probably M.O.M. and you probably recall my committment to take on 30 with a vengence. I am making good on that committment every day.

My friend Peter Inzerillo once told me that 30 is “the age of clarity.” The age at which so much comes in to focus. I am beginning to understand what he means.

I started looking at what I value the most over the last five months. It just started happening. I didn’t decide, “I’m going to examine what I value most out of life.” It just kind of happened.

Funny what I found. I wonder if these types of values change, too? Still, I’ve come to determine that I value stability (believe it or not), my community, and opportunity. General items I know, but in the interest of brevity and being thought provoking I’m going to leave it at that.

Armed with these new found revelations I began job hunting and am happy to say that my search was relatively short compared to some. This past week I accepted a Web Producer position with uclick the online division of Andrews McMeel Universal. After tieing up some loose ends with my current job and a few days rest I’ll start later this month.

To say that I am excited is a vast understatement! If you only knew the killer things going on inside that company, and if you only knew some of the amazing people that make everything happen you also would be elated. Plus, I’ll be working with comics and games… what could be better?

Check out uclick when you get the chance. We’ll be taking over the world soon.

Wow, it’s amazing what a Thursday evening without The Office will do to your head! Whilst watching television tonight three things occurred to me. They are as follows.

1) What up America? Seriously, you leave that kid Sanjaya on American Idol… really? This kid is a dweeb. He needs to give Julia Roberts her mouth back.
As if keeping the pubestach on wasn’t bad enough, America, you kept Antonella “NSFW” Barba. I’ve seen your pictures Antonella (who hasn’t, they were even on USA Today’s site I believe) and they are about as hard to look at as your singing is hard to listen to.

2) Hello Black Donnellys. Good bye Sopranos! Please please please do not run away from us like the goodfellas on HBO.

3) Finally, how big are these rolls of toilet paper going to get? Charmin is actually offering rolls of tp that are equal to four normal sized rolls. That must be the size of an orange Gatorade cooler! Save a tree why don’t ya.

Steve Wilson is one of my dearest friends in the world. We came up through college together.

After college Steve married Sarah and they moved to Nashvegas so that he could pursue his dream of being a record producer. To make ends meet he cleaned water coolers, picked up trash and various other manual labor type jobs before finally getting hooked up with some of the right folks.

He now produces records full time and I’m very proud of him. Today, though, I couldn’t be more proud of him as I learned that he’s been nominated for a Dove Award!

Dove Awards are given out to those in the Christian music industry who have demonstrated a level of excellence that is well above average in the past year. He was nominated for his part in writing the song “Sound of Melodies” (iTunes link) as performed by the group Leeland in the category of Rock/Contemporary Recorded Song of the Year (run on sentence?). He says it’s a little thing, but in truth it is a great honor and he should hold his head high (but stay a little humble, bro!).

Congrats man! You deserve this more than anyone I know. I’m more proud of you than you’ll ever know.

All I can say is that it is about time higher education started living up to their designated name.  Came across this from a blogger on TUAW.

A university in Wilkes-Barre, PA will remove every PC on campus over the next three years and replace them with the PCs superior counterpart, the Macintosh.  All in all, Wilkes University will replace 1700 computers.  Think Different.

When I was in college there were maybe six Macs on campus.  They were excellent, but neglected by the IT department because frankly they didn’t need any attention.

Kudos to Wilkes University.  I know where my kids will be going!

I can’t wear contacts. My eyes are too dry or something. Good thing I don’t mind wearing glasses.

I had an eye exam for the first time in years – like seven, actually – and it turns out my eyes have more than doubled in suckiness. So, I took the opportunity to update my frames also.

I made the mistake of first looking for frames I would like on the Country Club Plaza at the Optical Shop of Aspen. I should have remembered the simple equation Plaza + Aspen = Unaffordable, but I didn’t. Thank the Lord for the interweb.

Enter modernglasses.com, while they won’t ever be nominated for a SXSW Web Award, they do offer a great service: boutique level and designer eye frames at great prices. I saved well over $300 on a pair of frames and lenses (with Crizal, no less).

Whilst searching for a new frame my friend !jon asked if I was getting “a pair of glasses like all the ska-kids wear?” Well, I guess so, I told him. “Oh man… those are so lame! They look like your trying to hard to be cool!” Hard to hear your trying to hard to look cool from this guy!

Trying to hard to look cool? Really? Do I come across that way? I always feel like I’m trying to hard to suppress my coolness. Seriously, I have to dial it way down all the time.

I wonder if my friend !jon feels this guy is trying to hard to be cool?

Yesterday I received an email from someone who was a part of the Barack Obama pre-campaign informing me I should log onto BarackObama.com today to watch an official announcement. I say was because today that person is now a part of the official Barack Obama 2008 Presidential campaign.

Obama made his announcement and intentions official this morning on the steps of the courthouse in Springfield, Illinois.

I’m just going to say this up front: I will unashamedly campaign for Obama on this blog. I think the man has the right idea about politics and how they should be used, first and foremost for the betterment of this country and its people as well as the betterment of the rest of the world.

Furthermore, as much as I now like President Bill Clinton and what he was able to accomplish in office, I think it is time for a fresh face and name in D.C. Seems to me Hillary will only bring more of the same old politics and legislation. I certainly don’t want to see another Bush or anyone affiliated with he or his family in the White House.

Who knows what will play out over the next year and a half of campaigning. I am sure at times it will disgust us all as campaigns tend to do. My hope, though, is that there will be more “A-ha!” moments than the same old “whatever…” feeling.

If you don’t know much about Obama, you should learn. I for one am happy to see someone running with an actual chance that seems to represent my thoughts and feelings without weighing them down, or padding them with platforms of appeasement (gay marriage, stem cells, etc.).

On a completely superficial note, Obamas website is boss!