He speaks truth to power, with a smile.

Case in point:

We’re all hearing that Obama has the youth vote nailed down. Evidently, the McCain camp agrees; their student support is in the single digit. (If you are that student and want to order, click here.)

Thanks to Chris Wojcieszyn for making me aware of this.

You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I promised a free iTune song to the person who suggested the best song I should be have but don’t. (And if you don’t remember, click here.) Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. But first, a little about the process.

Someone named “Niv” wrote “I love ‘Bring Me To Life’ by Evanescence. It is a very powerful song. If you have not heard it you should.” Niv, I thank you for the recommendation, and I did check that out. I can see why this song speaks to some people, but for me I have to say the goth/Christian collision skews a little younger than my demographic. (We’ll see if the Christian part becomes more interesting to me some day on my death bed, but I doubt it.)

My good friend Barry Rowell recommended “Lazy” by David Byrne. I am indeed a David Byrne fan, but here’s the problem with “Lazy” on iTunes — the full “preview window” of the song is orchestral instrumentation. Meaning that I would have to actually BUY the song to see if I wanted it for the reasons Barry gave. I decided not to, but I do have to say this piqued my interest in an album I wasn’t aware of and may go back and buy some day. (Without being able to listen to it first.)

Another good friend, Paul Crist, took to quibbling over rules like a Republican precinct captain working to suppress the rural black vote. First, he asked, “How are are we to know if you already have the song we are suggesting?” To which I responded, “You are to post — and then find out.” Then he proposed this: “I am going to try a different angle, instead of suggesting a song to get I am going to suggest a song to stay away from.” And he proposed that we not listen to bad remixes of “Werewolves of London.” Job done, Paul, I won’t — but that doesn’t tell me what I should listen to with my download voucher. So you’re disqualified.
Chris Wojcieszyn recommended This Mortal Coil’s cover of the Talking Heads song “Drugs.” Hm. That was interesting; thanks for alerting me to it. The original benefits from Brian Eno’s production and the queasy paranoia lurking beneath the entire album. The remake (and, again, I get to hear only 30 seconds) has a great slap and tickle in the bass, but overall it sounds overproduced. Still, Wojcieszyn being a man of taste, he has captured my attention with this. I wonder if he would lend me the album?

My mentor Rich Roesberg blew the deadline, but wrote: “But in case you win ANOTHER couple of songs, how about the theme from BLADERUNNER by Vangelis? I love themes from movies I love. You might also check the one from Robert Altman’s version of THE LONG GOODBYE.” Note to Rich: If you win some songs, redeem them on the soundtrack to “Grizzly Man” by Richard Thompson and compadres (with a DVD bonus feature of “Grizzly Man” showing Werner Herzog inserting himself into the proceedings). But even better, if you ever want some music so bleak and depressing that Angelo Badalamenti would have to turn it off, check out the soundtrack of “The Farmer’s Wife” by premiere David Bowie guitarist (and former bandmate of Soupy Sales’ sons) Reeves Gabrels. The documentary is concerned with a farm family struggling to make ends meet; I heard this precisely once, and about 10 years ago, and the music is still etched into my brain, like the scratches left by a drowning man. Truly depressive. And the parents in the film got divorced.

Finally, we come to Werner Trieschmann’s suggestions. Plural. Werner emailed no fewer than six (6!) suggestions, and gave as his rationale, “they’re great.” I know what you’re thinking, because it’s what I was thinking at first: Hey, he cheated. But in fact, a quick check of the contest rules reveals that I never limited entrants to one submission. Nor did I say that the rationale had to be compelling, clever, or even well-written. So what Werner has done here, in the time-honored American tradition, is show initiative. I know, we kinda hate it but we kinda love it, like having so much hubris that you say you’re not going to slum around with just one gold medal, no, you’ve got to be the Man from Atlantis and seize eight of them, helping to ensure that, say, Canada, comes away with absolutely nothing. And then doing that.

In addition to taking advantage of the slack rules so that he can carve through the water this way, Werner has assembled a compelling list of oddities. Look at this list and ask yourself about at least half of them: “Who?”

• “I Need Some Fine Wine and You need to be Nicer” by the Cardigans
• “Enough Rope” by Chris Knight (depressive but great)
• “The Sound of German Hip Hop” by Clem Snide
• “Cath…” by Death Cab for Cutie
• “Not Ready to Make Nice” by Dixie Chicks
• “Don’t Know Why” by Fleet Foxes

If I want depressive, I’ll go get that Reeves Gabrels soundtrack (see above), so that leaves out Chris Knight. “Don’t Know Why” isn’t available on iTunes. Dixie Chicks is just not me. “Cath…” is pretty good, but the Cardigans song and the Clem Snide song both really grab me. (I’m thinking Werner and I should do one of those music compatibility tests on Facebook.) It was almost impossible to choose, but here’s the thing — I’d already heard the Cardigans (anyone near a radio since the 1990’s has heard “Lovesong”), but Clem Snide was a discovery! I love the twang in the guitar, I love the offbeat lyrics, and the overall sound. I even love the name of their other songs, like “Joan Jett of Arc.” I found myself listening to more of their songs, going to the website, checking out tour dates — and learning that I had just discovered a band that had just broken up! How poignant. How like a Paul Auster novel — falling in love with some offbeat art and then almost getting to know the artist except he’s just died. (This recurring theme of something almost attained is the subject of Book of Illusions in particular.)

So I have redeemed my download on “The Sound of German Hip Hop” by Clem Snide, and awarded Werner Trieschmann the free download, I thank thank him and everyone else who entered.

Now only one question remains: What should Werner download?

Tonight I attended a convention party to listen to Barack Obama accept the Democratic party’s nomination for president. Twenty or 30 people were expected; instead, about 60 showed up and crowded the condo at which this was held. (There could have been more, but the hosts shut off the online invite at 60.) The mood of the crowd left little doubt that this was an early indicator of the level of excitement, at least in these circles, for the candidate.

I thought Obama’s speech was superb.

On the one hand, I was impressed by the way he stole all the ground from the Republicans: To listen to Obama, all problems can be settled somewhere in the middle between left and right, and to the satisfaction of all parties (except, well, al Qaeda). I doubt this is true. Every day in every way, the world forces hard choices on us. But the notion of compromise is spot-on, and the concept that right-wingers aren’t unpatriotic, but simply wrong, threatens to dampen the fire under the opposition, as does the notion that their ideas will at least get a hearing. The only skilled way McCain can go after this is to cut the knot by saying that you can’t have it all, and that in a time of hard choices we need someone capable of making them. In what almost all of us hope will be a post-Decider age, I don’t think this will carry him far.

On the other hand, what truly impressed me with Obama’s speech was the deft way he wove his positions that are unpopular with his base  into the overall tapestry of his speech. To wit:  Obama endorsed nuclear energy. I know, you probably didn’t hear it, especially if you sneezed or blinked or thought about something else for a nanosecond. But he did. How did he do it? As part of (I’m paraphrasing) “releasing us from dependence on foreign oil within 10  years.” (And by the way, if he can do that, he can probably also cross his arms, nod his head quickly, and reappear inside a magic lantern.) So nuclear energy under Obama isn’t an anti-environmental position, as it has always been, but is now a national-security issue, and a pro-environmental issue because it relieves us from global warming. That’s smart. Even moreso because he buttressed it with a call for “clean coal energy,” which last time I checked doesn’t exist. While I’m skeptical about “clean coal energy” and an early parole from oil dependency, I don’t doubt his sincerity in working toward these things. He is indeed a man with hope you can count on — or, at least, a man you can count on to hope.

That’s what I’m going to start saying to the supporters of Hillary Clinton who keep telling the press they can’t bring themselves to vote for Barack Obama this fall.

“Then don’t.”

Just think how much whining and complaining would mystically go away if more often we adopted this response to the many free-floating objections we hear from people on a daily basis, whether it’s about significant others, traffic, politics, or your crummy hairdresser.

“I don’t think I can take much more of this.” “Then don’t.”

It really has a put-up-or-shut-up quality to it.

Now that I’m reading and hearing about the ongoing outrage by the Hillaryites, who for some inexplicable reason think their candidate was robbed of an honor to which she was entitled, and who therefore say they won’t vote for Obama, I’m ready to deploy it. So here it is: “Then don’t.”

Don’t come out and vote for the Democratic candidate, who by the way, fairly and squarely beat your candidate within the rules (never requesting that discounted or uncounted delegations suddenly regain their votes, for example).

But then, if you wind up with another White House Administration you don’t like — one that thinks the Iraq War should go on for another 100 years, one that thinks Antonin Scalia is a model Supreme Court Justice, one that thinks $5 million in annual income is the upper register of the middle class — don’t complain about it.

Just move to Canada. And start your complaining there.

We know Joe Biden uses Amtrak to commute home. Let’s just hope he doesn’t rely on it to meet with voters this fall. We don’t want his campaign running out of gas.

Just as I suspected, my color laser printer has been lying to me and saying it’s “out of toner” long before it is. This piece on Slate explains all — and how you can get extra mileage out of your toner.

(By the way, my suspicions had been aroused because 25 years ago I sold auto parts, and most auto sensors work precisely the same way:  By going off at a prescribed time whether or not there’s something wrong with them. You might want to bear this in mind the next time you have a sensor light come on and  the mechanic tells you you need a new EGR valve or thermo fan switch.)

A few minutes ago, the Associated Press and then just about every news agency decided that they had enough corroboration and announced Joe Biden as Barack Obama’s selection of a running mate. For two reasons, I hope that’s true.

The first reason is that I’ve been predicting it since almost the moment Obama nailed the nomination (which — seriously — was February). It’s not just that I’d like to be right in this case; it’s that I’d like to stop being so wrong with political predictions. (Although in this case not so wrong as Mark Evanier.) Here are a few I’ve made and lived to regret:

• 2004, to a neighbor with an anti-Bush sign on her door: “Kerry’s way ahead, no way he’s going to lose.”
• Election night 2000, early in the evening: “Gore’s already won.”
• Election night 2000, later in the evening: “They just called Florida for Gore — he won.”

OK, so I was right about the last one. (Nobody predicted theft.)

The other reason has to do with the ugly whisper spoken in homes all across the country, but never dared to be uttered in public: “If Obama wins, somebody’s going to shoot him.” You may recall that Hillary Clinton was roundly hissed for seeming to even allude to this idea. But it is out there. This summer I’ve been all up and down California, and traveled to Omaha, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and Washington DC and I heard that sentiment every single place I went. Last weekend we had a backyard party and I told a local Democratic operative that I was sure Biden would be the v.p. pick.

“Think like Obama,” I said. “He’s young and new, so he needs someone to counter his youth and relative inexperience. We’ve got foreign policy problems, so he needs a foreign policy expert. McCain wants to paint him as elitist, so he needs someone lower-middle class. And he’s black, so he needs someone white. All of that equals Biden, a guy who looks like what a president looks like to people.” (Until, that is, we got (in)Curious George.) And my friend and objective analyst Doug Hackney called Biden the best qualified for president this year.

We’ll see if this story holds up in the morning. I hope so. Biden adds a lot to the ticket. I’m not just tired of being wrong with predictions; I’m tired of the GOP presidency.

There’s still time to suggest what I should download from iTunes and win yourself a free song in the bargain.

C’mon, guys. iTunes has more than 1 million songs (and that’s just counting cover versions of “Yesterday.” Surely there’s something on there that you think I should hear and that I probably don’t have.

The deadline is today.

I just got two “free” songs from iTunes.

“Free” because getting them means I first spent $150 on two tickets to see David Byrne in October at the Greek Theatre. (With, one fantasizes, Brian Eno in tow.)

So now I leave it to you: What song should I download (for “free”) from iTunes, and why?

I will indeed download the best suggestion and rationale, comment on the song — and reward the nominator with the other “free” iTunes song download (which actually will be free to him or her).

Offer expires this Friday, August 22nd at 6 p.m. Winning nomination must be a song I don’t already have.