The Westerman Way

By Scott Westerman

We’ve watched them rise and fall. Jaku and Pownce to name two, have tried.. and failed to unseat Twitter as the dominant micro-messaging application on the Internet.

Now, perhaps, there’s a new contender who may get some traction.

Many of us have come to love Twitter. I have north of 500 friends I follow over there over four different identities. As @comcastscott, I’m learning a ton from Comcast customers about how we can improve our service. And with cool tools like Summize and Twitterbot, Twhirl and TweetLater, I’m able to maximize the value of the service.

But Twitter can also be a royal pain. For whatever reason, and there are many proffered, Twitter is easily overloaded. It’s often down when I need it to be up. And sometimes my Tweets end up lost in the ether and I have to enter em twice.

And my biggest Twitter beef is that it’s not open source. Sure you can mess with the API a bit. But we can’t attack the very limitations that drive us nuts by getting down into the code.

Enter identi.ca.

Identi.ca feels a lot like Twitter. You can send 140 character messages. You can follow your friends. You can disseminate your information via RSS feeds. You can set up your jabber account (GoogleTalk for example) to regenerate your pings on IM. And unlike Twitter, it allows you to share your OpenID if you so desire.

Today, thanks to one of those viral moments that initiate tipping points, people are starting to discover identi.ca. A FriendFeed serach turned this up. And the bloggers are writing about it too, here, here and here.

identi.ca is still in its infancy. You can’t hit a reply icon to easily respond to a post. There is no search engine yet, so you can’t parse the timeline. You can’t search for users on the site. No ability yet to selectively follow someone without sending their stuff to your IM. No SMS messaging of your idents to your cell phone. No bots developed yet to auto post from other RSS feeds. And there’s always the question of how the service will respond when a critical mass of users all get active at once.

But the coolest thing about open source is that everyone can be a developer and if the cards are rightly played, all of these features, and many more, could quickly evolve.

Those of us with adult ADD early-adopt these things like crazy. We have a cynicism meter that is easily pegged by new stuff like this. So many applications launch with promise, only to crash and burn when they can’t adapt to user demands. I’ve seen more than a few skeptics out there who are dipping toes into identi.ca with the “show me” attitude of a Missouri patriot.

But we’ll try it anyway.

I’m already on identi.ca as @comcastscott. It’s another browser window to keep open for now (no twhirl app yet). But I have a sense that this iteration may actually have a shot at assailing the Twitter brand.

Time will tell.

Update:
Identi.ca early adopter tips

By Scott Westerman

With Colleen traveling and a rare rainstorm inundating Albuquerque, I’ve been cleaning up my home office. I found a piece I wrote in 1989, about my un-spectacular start in radio. Looking back at it from almost 20 years later, the writing isn’t as good as I’d like, but since the detail is starting to fade, I’m glad I put it down on paper.

In a 1974 interview with the Michigan State News, I told Michael Savel that, throughout my life, I had only considered three real careers: Railroad engineer, Percussionist, Radio Announcer.

As a kid growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I used to have great adventures on my bicycle. During summer vacations, I would bid my Mom farewell after breakfast and crisscross the streets of the city for the entire day, usually ending up at the old Ann Arbor train station at 5PM to watch the Wolverine come into town.

I still recall the Beemans Gum vending machines, the never changing list of trains that passed between Detroit and Chicago, and unique railroad smell of the terminal. Although steam locomotives had been 15 years replaced by the diesel electrics, the bricks retained the smell of coal. The underside of the Broadway Bridge still carried the signature of the smoke belchers. I would stand on the platform next to the railway express agency office and watch the silver snake slide majestically into the station.

I dreamed of putting my foot on the dead man’s pedal and moving the throttle ahead to full. I could hear the diesel electric prime movers respond to the call and feel the juggernaut lumber beneath me toward important destinations.

That dream started to fade as my Dad and I tracked the downward trend of New York Central railroad stock. By then I had different desires. Radio! Read the rest of this entry »

By Scott Westerman

I rarely write here in my day-job role as a Comcast exec. The family blog expresses a few of my other passions. But I saw this post over at the Consumerist today and felt like sharing another opinion. I posted the following in the comment section, but since some folks don’t get all the way to the bottom of the chain, I’ll repeat it here.

Speaking as one of the 100,000 employees here at Comcast that serve our customers, I can tell you that the document does not reflect the attitude of the vast majority of our team members.

I’m proud to work with a great group who is dedicated to improving the customer experience. In an organization as big as ours, we’re bound to make mistakes. But the goal is to deliver a superior customer experience the first time and every time.

Size makes us an easy target. It’s easy for people to throw rocks. If you look hard enough, it’s just as easy to find uncomfortable customer experiences in our competitors houses. See here, and here, and here, and here, and here. But all of us want to provide excellent customer care. At Comcast, we’re listening to the blogs and engaging on FriendFeed and Twitter to learn where the areas of opportunity are. We try to put out the fires but at the same time seek to understand the root causes.

And we’re making progress. Over the last 12 months, we’ve made significant investments in additional human resources, training and technology, all focused on improving customer care. Our customers have asked for more price points, more HD and faster Internet speeds. We’re delivering on all of those promises and there is more on the way.

The world changes and we’re changing with it. The choices we have today are light-years ahead of what anybody envisioned when I got into the cable business 27 years ago. We’re operating in a competitive environment that keeps us all focused on innovation and continuous improvement.

But at the base of it all is our desire to build great customer relationships, one at a time. That’s our common passion at Comcast.

If you have an unresolved issue, we want to hear about it. Our local teams are the first best resource. 1-800-Comcast will connect you with the office that serves your area. But if the chain of command isn’t working, you can directly connect with us, via email at we_can_help@cable.comcast.com or @comcastcares on twitter.

We’re listening.

Scott Westerman
Area Vice President - Comcast
scott.westerman@comcast.net
@comcastscott on Twitter

By Scott Westerman
TweetLater is one of the growing number of support applications that can help us leverage twitter as a messaging machine. Here’s how to use it.

Signup for a free account at www.tweetlater.com

You’ll see a dashboard where you can add one or more of your twitter accounts to the system. Adding an account is as simple as inputting your twitter identity and password. You can also set up some preferences to auto-follow anybody that follows you. While there’s some debate about the pros and cons, I like to follow everybody who follows me.

Once you’ve set up your account, you can click the “Manage Tweets” link to set up future Twitter tweets. Click “New Tweet”. You will be able to input your 140 character message and set a specific delivery date and time. At the appointed hour, your tweet will propagate across the Twitter network, just as if you had manually input it at that moment.

Tweetlater doesn’t interfere with your normal Twitter activity. You can still type tweets to your hearts content on your normal Twitter home page.

The benefits: You can input a week’s worth tweets in one sitting (I do this with daily almanac data for www.keener13.com). You can send a post out at a special time, even if you won’t be in front of your computer. You can schedule posts to hit when you want folks to see them.

Imagine Tweetlater as a friend that calls you to tell you about something cool that’s happening right now. “Hey, I’m gonna watch When We Left Earth on Discovery HD tonight. See it at 8ET!” or.. “About to watch Steve Jobs WWDC keynote on UStream.”

As you schedule, remember that Twitter is like a river of information which people generally consume in near real time. Internet users are more prone to ADD and generally take action when they see something. Set up your tweets to fire at times when you think your audience will be watching and ready to act. For example, avoid sending your stuff out at 8 in the morning, unless it’s associated with something hot that’s happening at that time.

Remember that your success in attracting and keeping Twitter followers is subject to the same rules that apply to all good Internet content. It should be interesting, relevant and timely.

Feedback or additions? Ping me @wscottw3 at www.twitter.com

By Scott Westerman

It rarely rains in Albuquerque, but this time of year precipitation is regularly the order of the day in Chicago. That’s why I usually try to fly east via the southern route. But being a Southwest Airlines fan, and wanting to get those magical 14 flight segments so I can get “A” seating, I took my chances today… and am paying the price. It’s pouring at the moment at Midway and I’m doing the T-Mobile hotspot thing while waiting for my connection to Philly.

If you’re a T-Mobile customer, travel a lot and don’t have the Internet option, you should get it. I can surf with a USB connection on my Dash, or login via Boingo using my T-Mobile hostpot credentials. Works great. Midway is one of the better airports for laptoppers. There are soda fountain stools and thin computer tables in the gate areas, complete with USB power to charge your cell phone and plenty of 120 AC outlets.

Another interesting thing. The poor Southwest gate agents are the last to know when things change. I’ve been an AvWeb Flight Explorer customer for years and was watching my flight circle over southern Illinois while the thunderheads blinked around Chicago (The best radar app on the web, by the way, is WeatherTap). When it turned back toward St. Louis and started to descend, I asked the agents for an update. It was another 15 minutes before flight ops caught up with them with the latest information.

On my dashboard now: Twhirl, with my three Twitter accounts percolating away. I love @BreakingNewsOn. They seem to get the hot stuff out first. I retweeted the AP story that Barack had clinched the nomination and beat @acarvin over at NPR by 22 minutes (he said he was in a meeting and couldn’t tweet) ;). Firefox has Gmail, Summize (with Comcast in the search box), Meebo - where all of my instant messenger accounts are aggregated, and FriendFeed. my current favorite way to share cool stuff with others.

Cool sites of the day: Ping.FM allows you to hit one or more of your social network, blogs and or microblogs at once. ChaCha.com - Ask a question here and you’ll get an answer. I don’t know how they do it, but the two questions I asked to test it, “Will Hillary concede tonight?” and “When will Southwest flight 1843 arrive in Chicago?” brought cogent answers to my cell phone within two minutes. This YouTube video, entitled Social Network Wars, cracked me up.. and gives you a good feel for the fleeting nature of our love affairs with websites who get the attention today and get the boot tomorrow.

Web heroes of the day: For the heads up on the new new things, check out Robert Scoble - Everybody knows Scoble. When he tweets about a new site, their followers immediately increase. It’s his disarmingly direct, opinionated world view that so often parallels mine. Here’s an example. But my #1 customer service hero of is Frank Eliason. My buddy at Comcast HQ is trolling the blogs and monitoring the Twittersphere as @comcastcares. He listens, learns and solves a ton of customer problems, making friends and earning a ton of respect in the process. Other companies have identities on Twitter, but Frank and my beloved Comcast are writing the book on how to do it right.

By Scott Westerman

Those of us who have been geeking for many years have built a portfolio of memberships that sometimes become unwieldy.

I have six instant messaging accounts: AOL, GoogleTalk, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN and Jabber. Same story on email. Gmail is my primary, but I get stuff through Comcast.net, Yahoo, MSN and my half dozen websites, all of whom have custom addresses associated with the domains.

Then there are the social networks. I jettisoned MySpace, but still visit Facebook, Twitter, Joost and Pownce. I monitor a ton of blogs, mostly in search of feedback about work, but check in regularly with my favorite thinkers, too.

If I had everything running at once, my desktop would be crammed with windows and the sound card would be spitting out dings and pings of every shape and size as each app updated.

So how to pull everything together under one roof? Here are some suggestions:

Digsby.com - Aggregates all your IM and email accounts and has hooks into Twitter, Facebook, et al. It can be a resource hog but seems to work well. It’s an application, not browser based and has versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Orgoo.com - Many of the same features as Digsby but is browser based. Still in beta and has some limitations on the email side.

Meebo.com - One of the first browser based IM aggregators. Also gives you chat room functionality and a widget so you can have folks IM you from your webpage. One of my current faves.

Google Reader - With RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds becoming the foundation of content distribution on the web, feed readers like this can make it easy to keep up with your favorite bloggers and any other content source that spits it’s info out via RSS. This one’s been around and through a couple of enhancements and works well. If you have a Gmail account, you’ve already got a Google reader account, too.

FriendFeed.com - Goes a step beyond, allowing you to aggregate and share your favorite content with ease. Some say that this elegant little application is “the next Twitter”. The jury is still out but features like topical discussion Rooms and the ease with which you can follow and be followed, it’s definitely something to watch.

Summize.com - The leading Twitter topic search out there at the moment. Plug your favorite search term in and you can get the most recent tweets that address it. For me, it’s turned out to be one of the best customer service tools around.

So here’s how my desktop looks at the moment. In a single Firefox window I have tabs for Gmail, Twitter, Summize and FriendFeed. I have a separate window for Meebo which is where all my IM’s come and go. I find myself checking Facebook less and less over the course of the day. A lot of that info gets to me more quickly on the Twitter network. The only application I run is Twhirl, which aggregates my two Twitter identities and is more easy to use than the web interface.

That’s how I’ve been pulling it all together. Any apps I’ve missed? Ping me @wscottw3 on Twitter. I’ll post updates here.

Update:

Via Twitter - @emilymcdonnell says: Another aggregation app - www.fuser.com. Add all email accounts - not just pop or imap, soc nets, and twitter.

Via FriendFeed - There are some good suggestions here for getting control of your online activities. I haven’t YET installed Digsby because I’m trying to stay away from apps so I think that I’ll just wait for Orgoo to “grow up”:-) - Thomas Ho
Digsby is the way to go, they’re a great team and I’ve been a long time user of Trillian Astra and as soon as I found this product, I uninstalled Trillian and moved all my account to Digsby because it supports not only IM networks but social networks. BTW, They only have a Windows client right now Mac and Linux are coming soon. - Aaron Myers

By Scott Westerman
Maybe it’s the middle age, but I’m getting pretty picky about my tunes. I’ve written here before about my disdain for the state of my beloved radio business and how my constant complaining motivated The Queen to tell me to “shut up and make your own radio station”. I did and we have a pair of computers here at the Westermanation that stream our faves to a Sonos box and to my beloved Chumby.

For example. When I first heard “All Right Now” by Free, it was on an A&M Record DJ 45. One side had the airplay edit and the other had a brilliant longer version, complete with that great guitar riff, panning from left channel to right. The two bar, four chord hook we’ve came to love was tight and the entire production had that A&M trademark just-right compression that sounded great on a car radio speaker.

When the album came out, my buddy John Schumacher, bought it immediately and we retreated to his music room to hear “All Right Now” in it’s full LP glory. It wasn’t the same. For whatever reason, the group re-recorded the tune for the album and, over the years, that’s the version that has found it’s way into radio rotations.

There’s no comparison. The original 45 rocks in an entirely different universe. I know that first hand because during my DJ years, I played both of em at record hops and the original always got more people on the dance floor. But we never hear it, and nobody seems to care.

Except Dick Rosemont.

Back in the mid 70s, I was doing my best to matriculate through Michigan State University with enough of a grade point average to motivate my parents to continue to write tuition checks. But my true passion was on the air and, along with Jeff Smith, Steve Schram, Jim Marshall, Mark Bashore, Dennis Kauff and Katy Baetz, spent way too much time over at WMSN, the student station that broadcast over the campus electrical system from the bowels of the Student Services Center.

Vinyl was king then and when Mark Westcott came to visit us from CBS records, he fed our addiction with the DJ copies of 45s and LPs that the record companies passed around to incite airplay. It was a system that worked well and, along with the thousands and thousands of records that the students bought each term, there was a robust market for favorites, both old and new.

Now as then, vinyl is Dick Rosemont’s passion. Any of you who fit my demographic can instantly remember the sights and smells of the used record store. The album artwork, the posters that expanded album overs to wide screen (Remember that incredible shooting-star cover on the Weather Report “Mysterious Travler” LP? What I wouldn’t give to have that baby framed in my home office!), the hint of cannabis that was a subtle aromatic undercurrent throughout the store, and the inevitable eclectic tunes that spun on the Fisher turntable and rumbled out of a pair of Sansui speakers, carefully placed for maximum stereo sensation.

Dick’s store, “Flat, Black & Circular”, was the center of music culture in East Lansing. You could find out where Josh White, Jr. was playing and get the line-up of bar bands at the Alley Eye, Dooleys and The Stables. For a time, when we distributed our own WMSN record surveys, they had a place on Dick’s front counter. But what made the place special is the huge variety of black plastic that filled rack after rack. Looking for “Take Off Your Muddy Boots” by the Graheme Edge Band? Dick could find it for you. He had Beatles Parlophone imports before the CD versions became cool. And true enthusiasts looking for true originals still seek out Dick Rosemont for his encyclopedic knowledge and worldwide connections. If it’s out there he can find it.

Flat, Black and Circular is in it’s fourth decade. While other record stores have closed and CD sales continue their free fall, Dick’s niche continues to thrive. His audience continues to grow in part because his web presence at flatblackandcircular.com has expanded his market worldwide. If you visit the site, be sure to check out his link list. It’s there that you’ll find a connection to The Originals Project. Like me, Dick chases down the earliest versions of popular and hit songs… often the best renditions, the ones that should be getting the airplay now. And he’s got the rarities, too. I play Albert Hammond’s version of “I’m a Train” on my personal radio station, but never knew that it was originally recorded in 1968 by The Colors of Love. I gotta get a copy!

Drill down on the link list over at The Originals Project, and you’ll find a connection keener13.com. The WKNR tribute site has been my labor of love for over 5 years and recently Dick made a contribution to our archives. I was looking for a couple of rare WKNR News albums and threw out an all points bulletin on the site. Of course, Dick Rosemont knew about these originals, and has pristine copies in his collection.

As music continues to evolve from albums to MP3 files, we’re losing much of the magic that we felt in the days when records were flat, black and circular, had five tracks per side and boasted cover art that at times approached museum quality. Dick Rosemont is one of the few conjurers who can take us back to those times. And the world is a better place as a result.

By Scott Westerman
It was a sad day when Ken R. got out of the jingle business.

I first met Ken Deutsch in 1971 when we were both part timers at WPAG in Ann Arbor. Even then, he was a fascinating guy. We shared a love for well executed radio and a passion for jingles, those short 8 second logos that provide the audio image we all associate with our favorite stations. He was way ahead of me as a collector and generously made me reel to reel tapes of the hottest PAMS jingles, along with customs he had made for WCBN, the campus radio station at the University of Michigan.

By 1973, I was at Michigan State University, and he was in Toledo, continuing to amass his collection and work his on-air magic. Although he downplays his skills, Ken was one of the best technical jocks I knew. Radio, at its best, is like a symphony. The various program segments ebb and flow an harmonious whole, keeping the listener connecting and re-connecting with the elements that, together, constitute the brand. He knew how to put the pieces together and it was inevitable that he would do so in the studio, adding his own interpretations to the classic PAMS library.

But that came later.

I was editing and remixing my favorite jingles so they could find life on WMSN, the flagship student station at MSU, and when I found professional work at WILS and WVIC, one of the first things I did was to make dubs of every jingle package I could find.

My favorite was the 1970 PAMS series that Jonathan Wolfert dubed “CLYDE” - Cool Logos You Don’t Expect. Originally conceived for my favorite radio station of all time, WKNR, CLYDE was, to me, the best jingle package ever made. It had all the stuff I loved: horns, electric guitars, driving percussion, and the tenor quartet that Steve Schram and I dubbed “The Keener Boys”. We got our hands on a demo and literally wore the oxide off of the tape memorizing every nuance.

Fast forward to 2005. In the intervening years, I had escaped radio for a long cable television career, built my own production studio and had a small hand in some jingle production of my own. Whenever I had a question or got stuck, I wrote to Ken. He was always patient and generous with his answers. His company, Ken R. Productions, had a license to re-sing the PAMS library, and he had discovered a worldwide appetite for CDs of old radio jingles, which he sold by the thousands to collectors and jingle fans. Naturally, I bought the entire WKNR library, most of the other Detroit stuff he had, and went as far as to have his singers record a WKNR CLYDE Jock Shout with my name at the end. Steve and I built the Keener13.com tribute site and my lifelong dream of actually working a shift on the old WKNR facility came true for two summers when we recreated the Keener sound for the Woodward Dream Cruise weekend.

I couldn’t imagine Ken ever retiring. His commitment to excellence in jingle creation was physically taxing and as he stepped away from production, I assumed he would continue to market his now huge collection of CDs forever.

So I was stunned to his call from him in 2006. He was retiring for sure and was looking for a home for a nearly complete back-up collection of his jingle library. I had no idea how to value such a priceless artifact, but somehow we agreed on a number and in a few days several huge boxes arrived at my studio. There were 332 disks in all, each with over an hour of jingles, re-mixes, out-takes, sonovoxes, and work parts that stand as an incredible tribute to Ken’s contribution to the history of the art.

I keep them in a small bookshelf that stands just to the right of my recording station, always in my peripheral vision. Knowing Ken’s continual forward motion, I wasn’t surprised that he never fully cataloged the cuts. Perhaps thats something Norman Barrington or I may do at some point. My guess is that Norman B owns the only other complete copy of the entire collection.

But not knowing the details isn’t bad. There is many a late night when I grab a random CD from the shelf and pop it into the player. I’m instantly transported back to the golden age of rock radio with pristine cuts from KFRC, the Beeb, KHJ, WBZ, WABC, etc., etc., etc., etc.

And yes, I still listen to CLYDE.

There were hundreds of talented jocks, programmers, salespeople and executives who contributed to the magic we remember as 60s rock radio. But as I look at my bookshelf, I’m grateful for extraordinary people like Ken R., who made it possible for us to keep those memories at the front of our consciousness… Four decades later.

Saturday night in Alamogordo, New Mexico. It’s 7:15 PM and the house at the Flickinger Center is filling up. It’s not a movie, a rock concert or a stand-up comedian. The Spencers are in town and people are coming from White Sands, Las Cruce and Cloudcroft to see a magic show.

It’s a field that The Spencers have almost to themselves these days. David Copperfield occasionally takes his gig on the road, but most of the better known magic acts, Penn & Teller, Lance Burton, Mac King have semi-permanent homes in Las Vegas.

And magic almost never comes to Alamogordo.

John Christopher and I are students of the art. He’s light years ahead of me as a practitioner. But my fascination centers around the mechanics of illusion, the subtle ways the performer misdirects our attention. And I’m fascinated with the alchemy of theatrics and personality that still draw the curious to the land of torn-and-restored newspapers, hand cuffs and materialization.

Our host tonight is Keith Barber. He and Andrew Payne produce a podcast dedicated to the conjuring arts. There are other shows in the genre that may have more listeners, and with their own burgeoning careers, Keith and Andrew’s appearances on the Internet are sometimes infrequent. But the Go Magic Go Podcast remains one of the few that is dedicated to those of us who carry a deck of cards and silver dollars in our coat pockets wherever we go.

Keith is the road manager for the Spencers. He graciously alerted us to their proximity to my Albuquerque base and the Queen and I arranged to spend the weekend at John and Ruth’s breathtaking James Canyon cabin so we would be close.

The house is nearly sold out and the demographics are a marketers dream, a smattering of just about every age group and gender.

I thought back to my earlier encounters with itinerant magicians. I had seen Penn & Teller when they took their Broadway show on the road. I marveled to the classic vaudeville that Harry Blackstone, Jr. continued in his famous father’s footsteps. And there was a major traveling production called the World’s Greatest Magicians, where Lance was cutting his teeth with Mac and several other acts working their way up the recognition chain.

But except for Vegas and the Magic Castle, it’s hard to find truly good magic that’s faithful to its roots, yet connects with an audience who has an Internet attention span.

We were about have just such an experience.

The Spencers pay attention to detail. They travel with their own sound system, lights and theater dressing. It’s a collection that used to fit in the back of Kevin Spencer’s car, but has grown to fill a semi.

The pre-show music skews modern and I couldn’t find a flash of recognition among the silver hairs, but the Ipodders knew the repertoire and were suitably focused as the lights dimmed and music swelled.

Kevin came on stage dressed in black. He pulled a tarp off of the mountainous effect that had been on the dark stage as we took our seats, revealing his wife, Cindy, and we were off.

Over the next 90 minutes the program surfed from large stage illusion to mentalism and parlor close up. Kevin took us back to revisit his first show when the bug bit him in the single digits. There were two excellent Houdini renderings. The baffling “walk through the wall” and Kevin’s spot on performance of the “milk can escape”.

There was audience participation. Even though I know the secret of the guillotine, I always hold my breath when they push the blade home. Kevin’s version of the classic was fresh, funny and engaging. Having been on the performing end of effects-gone-wrong, it was fun to watch Kevin manage his spectators, guiding us all do a common solution to a nine square geography problem and divining the thoughts of three random strangers.

But in the end, what makes or breaks the act are the entertainers themselves and Kevin proves that he’s ready for prime time. Those who have the gift are able to transcend the effects and make a personal connection with the audience. Kevin did this almost at once. He is self effacing, smart, funny, a great story teller and genuinely appreciative of the opportunity he and Cindy have to live their dream.

After overcoming the suffocating danger of Houdini’s Milk Can, Kevin talked with us about dreaming big dreams, how it’s ok to color outside the lines and create your own magic, even if it doesn’t necessarily fit into your parents’ definition of “a real job.”

A few minutes later, he had shed his escape attire and was dry and dressed, meeting another new cadre of admirers in person at the edge of the lobby.

You don’t see stuff like this anymore. Carefully crafted, elegantly executed live entertainment that doesn’t pander to the ever lowering common denominator that TV’s so-called reality programs target.

John and I calculated the costs of taking Kevin and Cindy’s show on the road. It takes more than a grand just to gas up the truck one time and moving the magic from their home base in Virginia along the circuit is increasingly expensive.

Here’s hoping they can continue to make a go of it, not only for those of us who know the effects by heart and enjoy Kevin’s unique twists, but for new generations who deserve the same opportunity to feel that same sense of wonder we all first felt so many years ago.. first hand.

Colleen’s video tour of the back yard. April, 2008.
Click the video to start - 3MB Flash - 1:09