OK, people, let’s consider this a virtually delivered pep-talk.  I’m all about tradition.  Tradition is great; some of the very best events in the Southern Tier are based on tradition: The Spiedie Fest; JulyFest; the Chris Thater Memorial (which, I should add, I will be huffing and puffing my way through this coming Sunday… and if you take a picture I swear to God I’ll rip the negatives or flash chip or whatever it is right out of you damn camera and then stomp on it until it’s dead dead dead.  And then I’ll give you the stink-eye.)  Anyway, tradition is good.  And we have a lot of it.  And we take pride in it.

BUT

The world doesn’t run on tradition alone.  Part of my mission at BingPop has been too highlight the hot; the new; the trendy.  And to point out that some pretty traditional charities/organizations/venues in town are testing the waters with some brand new attention-grabbing adventures.  So without further ado… I present to you… (And I didn’t even need a rhyming dictionary for that brilliant little wordplay…)

REALLY COOL CRAP THAT PEOPLE ARE DOING TO GET YOU TO NOTICE THEM, BINGHAMTON!

COW CHIP BINGO
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF NORWICH
OK, to be fair, this tradition isn’t that new.  It’s 12 years old.  But it’s cool as crap.  Pardon the pun.  Get it?  Cool as crap?  Cause it’s cow chips?  (God, I’m good.)

You can probably figure out what this is all about.  The cows are fed.  Very well fed.  And then released onto a giant board filled with numbers and, well, grass.  Which is the perfect place for cows to, well, “go”.  To the bathroom.  And once the cow has, well, “gone”, the resulting “mass” is examined to determine exactly which numbered box it landed on.  Contestants purchase the numbered boxes in advance for a chance to win cash money prizes.

Cash for poop.  Now THIS is sport.

Well, come on, it’s more interesting than soccer.  Or paint drying.  (Equivalent.)

Now I’m perfectly willing to concede I might only find this event “fascinatin’” ‘cause I’m a “city boy”.  Like cow tipping and the idea that cows give milk—cows give milk, can ya believe it?!—it’s one of those things that you don’t learn about when you buy all your chicken from street-corner pushcarts or in styrofoam fast food containers.  PS, now that I’ve realized meat comes from nature and isn’t grown in a lab, it DOES seem odd that it can come in kid-friendly shapes.  Way to go, Perdue!

Now here’s what I think could make this event a BIT more interesting: urban cow chip Bingo.  COURT STREET is roped off from River Read Books to L’aveggio Roastera, spectators can watch from the sidewalk—maybe the sidewalk seating at Sake Tumi—and egg the cows on like contestants on the Price is Right…  Or better yet: Bird Crap Bingo!  In Bingo!  Just release a fleet of pigeons downtown and the numbered squares could just be peoples heads.  The possibilities are limitless.

OK, let’s move on…

WARP SPEED WEDNESDAYS
THE ROBERSON CENTER

If you’re a Star Wars fan, go away.  Any halfway intelligent human being clearly realizes that Star Trek is superior to Star Wars.  Like that time that Geordi from Star Trek: The Next Generation got trapped on a ship full of stupid people that only kidnapped him because they were too damn stupid to fix their own stupid ship—that’s what I feel like when I’m trapped in a room full of people who like Star Wars better than Star Trek.  And if you’re offended: Hab SoSlI’ Quch!

(That’s Klingon for something terribly insulting.  I’d translate it here but I’ve got too much class.)

Anyway, the reason this is so important to establish is because the Roberson Museum folks have oh-so-wisely chosen Star Trek (over Star Wars) to show before planetarium shows during Warp Speed Wednesdays.  I’m going to assume that’s it not JUST because Hyperspace Wednesdays sounds dumb.

Here’s out it worked: every Wednseday during the month of August, Roberson projected a Star Trek episode on the ceiling of the planetarium.  Besides making you very, very sleepy (from the reclining seats) and slightly injuring your neck (I doubt this is permanent), it was a great hook to get total dweebs like me into the museum.  I gave it a go this past Wednseday, walking into the museum about 5 minutes after the start of the episode—which is a bit tragic, because I was totally looking forward to the warble of the original Star Trek Theme (which, if you’re curious, is best sung by uttering the words “wah, waaaaah, wah wah wah wah wah” over and over again).

The episode shown was “All Our Yesterdays”.  It goes a little bit like every other episode of Star Trek: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam to a clearly dangerous planet with wild, reckless abandon.  The three get separated, usually in a configuration that allows Spock and McCoy to do lots of knee-slappingly funny bickering.  Kirk almost has sex but doesn’t.  Some kind of time travel accident occurs that involves the screen flickering and somebody vanishing—(that was apparently the only special effect available to all of science fiction in the 60s).  And then an alien with a weird head is defeated.  Occasionally the alien with the weird head is also the one Kirk tries to have sex with.

The showing was populated mainly by moms or dads with their kids; I was actually pretty impressed to see how many 8-year-olds sat fascinated, wordless, watching 50-year-old television. That is, until a late-arrival family sat down in the row right in front of me.  The young boy with them, exuberant, immediately exclaimed, “It’s Star Trek!”

Apparently he knew that I missed the opening credits. 

It was pretty cute.  The first time.  The 5th time, it stopped being so cute.  Luckily, his parents silenced him after a bit.  So I didn’t have to move forward my hastily constructed emergency plan to silence him by shouting , “Three of the original cast members are dead, you hear me?! DEAD!”  See how exuberant you are after that, little punk.

Not long after Star Trek ended, the planetarium show began.  I hadn’t been to a planetarium show since I was, like, 5, so I didn’t really know what to expect.  Basically, what I got was a rundown of that night’s sky, narrated by the museum’s expert.  Although I wasn’t immediately inspired to become on astronomer, I did pick up on a few facts I hadn’t known before: 1) If you look the haze of the Milky Way with binoculars, you can actually make out more distant stars (cool).  2) The little dipper is fainter than the big dipper because it’s further away (not as cool, but something you can tell people at parties so they think you’re smart than they are).  3) Children will immediately fall silent and become fascinated by laser pointers and will not speak again until the laser disappears (useful, see above).

PS: Children will also become immediately fascinated by the ENORMOUS Nintendo Wii screen that’s part of the current Roberson Champions exhibit.  And the rest of us will find it to be a fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon if we’re too cheap to buy our own Wii.  Which I am.  See you at the Roberson…

BTW, I e-mailed the Roberson’s new marketing director Jason Fuime at 4:45 PM on a Thursday afternoon because I wanted to find out more about Warp Speed Wednesdays.  Also because I’m a bit sadistic and like making good-spirited, hard-working folk work late.  (Thanks for doing this on short notice, Jason.)

* So why Star Trek? Why not, say, Star Wars? Battlestar Gallactica?
Star Trek is a household name.  No matter what age you are, you’ve likely seen some form or version of Star Trek in your life.  Our planetarium guys also have a great interest in Star Trek and helped develop the name Warp Speed Wednesdays.  They were certainly thrilled to showcase some of their favorite episodes during the promotion. 
 
* How’s the attendance been? And who’s coming? Big dorks like me or everybody?
Attendance has varied during the month we’ve offered the free shows, some days busier than others.  We’ve had some positive feedback for providing a show to weekday visitors, since Roberson does not have scheduled planetarium shows Wednesdays or Thursdays.  As far as who’s coming — all kinds of people including the Trekkies.  We saw a bunch of families with younger kids stop in for the show as part of their visit to the museum.

* Any plans to do this in the future… (We hope so.)
It’s too early to say if we’ll do a similar promotion in the future.  But we are hoping to make some upgrades to the planetarium in the near future, which may result in new shows and more fun offerings like this one.

THE DONNER SUMMER DANCE-OFF
FLASHBACKS

Radio DJs, generally speaking, are meet and greet whores.  I myself am no exception.  It’s not that we actually care about meeting the famous person in question (most of the time).  It’s just that we really like posting the photo on our Facebook and have admiring acquaintances say things like, “OH MY GOD, YOU MET ENGLEBERT HUMPERDINK?!”

I, for the record, have not met Englebert Humperdink.  But I have met KC form KC and the Sunshine Band.  Which is awesome.

And if a meet and greet whore tells you he doesn’t count the number of minutes he gets to spend with said celebrity, he’s a dirty rotten liar.

I got to spend 45 seconds with Rob Thomas.  And spend a good 45 minutes figuring out the optimal photo crop to make it look like there WEREN’T 15 people in this photo.

The reason I’m telling you this is because the Donna Summer meet and greet at next week’s Anderson Center is a hot ticket to get.  APPARANTLY her management is demanding that it NOT be a “cattle call meet and greet”.  Which is really nice for the people who can actually win and/or sleep their way in.  It means you might get to spend a full 46 seconds with her.  And maybe the only person cooler to meet and greet than KC from KC and the Sunshine Band is Donna Summer.  Or maybe Elvis.  But that’s just because he’s dead.

Now the reason I’m telling you this is because you have ONE LAST CHANCE to win your way in to the meet and greet.  Tonight.  At Flashbacks.  The Donna Summer Dance-Off.

The other thing you should know about radio DJs is we take a certain delight in making people do fabulously embarrassing things for prizes.  And if there’s anything more embarrassing than wearing bellbottoms and go go boots to a club in 2010, please let me know so I can make it a radio contest.

The action starts at 9.  And if you know what’s good for your sense of superiority, you’ll be there.  In normal clothes.  (If you want to meet Donna Summer though… AND sit in the front row, you’d better be in costume—preferably drunk out of your mind.  I’m still trying to decide if I’m feeling that desperate: stay tuned.)

The DJ running the contest is Q107’s own Heather Black.  She’s a nicer person than I am, so I don’t think she revels in other people’s embarrassment, but I asked her for a quick e-mail interview just to make sure…

* So the poster says to impress with your "groovy moves". What exactly must one do to impress? Are there PARTICULAR Groovy Moves that will be required?
None in particular. One person actually visited a local store and asked for a copy of "Saturday Night Fever" on DVD to do his research! Anything disco, flamboyant, fun, and groovy!

* Costuming: How all out to you expect people to go. Any tips on where to shop around town?
It’s up to the participant. Obviously, we will be basing part of the contest on how retro and fun the costume is, so I recommend bringing out your inner polyester party!

Lots of people have asked if I have ideas on where to shop. I say find a relative who just can’t get rid of anything (even from the 70s!) and raid their closet, or hit up your nearest thrift store. You can always find fun stuff browsing secondhand racks, and you can’t beat the price!

* Will you, in fact, be in costume for said event?
Let’s just say I plan to "dress to impress!"

As you can imagine, I’m very proud to make this major announcement that I stole from Chris Strub’s blog on pressconnects.com which he stole from Melissa Bykofsky’s article on bupipedream.com:

Third Eye Blind is coming to Binghamton.

You remember Third Eye Blind, doncha?  Their bubble-gum-punk-pop-sounding singles got oodles of radio play because it took three or four listens before anyone realized that the songs were actually about suicide, blow jobs, and crystal meth.

Yes, Third Eye Blind is back with a whole new album: “Ursa Major”.  You can listen to their latest single, “Don’t Believe a Word” below.  Just make sure nobody with epilepsy is in the room while you watch the video.  And when you figure out why one of the band members changes outfits on-screen at 1:38, drop me a note and fill me in.  Thanks.

PS: You should actually all go support Third Eye Blind because they graciously agreed to do the ribbon-cutting at the 2007 Southern Tier AIDS Walk in Rec Park.  And A LOT of bands wouldn’t have done that.

Two "interesting" facts about Third Eye Blind:

• During concerts in the mid 90s, they would drop candy from large piñatas above their mosh pits.
• Lead singer Stephan Jenkins decided to swap out the candy for live crickets when they played a showcase for record execs.  (Not sure what makes this a good idea, but hey, they got signed.)

Tickets for the October 11th show go on sale to us townies on September 15th (for 29 bucks).  Students can now buy tickets online too because—and this is the actual stated reason—they won’t have to cut classes this time around to make sure they see the show.

Third Eye Blind last played Binghamton in April of ’07.  You can check out a review of their Magic City Music Hall performance from the Pipe Dream.  I especially like how it highlights the “intense muggy heat” you could feel in the venue that night, as if the air conditioner actually worked most other nights…

*Sigh* I actually really miss that place.

Yeah, OK, Melissa Etheridge is a gay icon.  And an environmental awareness icon.  And a breast cancer survivor icon.  And a rock chick icon.  And a songwriting icon.

Jesus Christ, Melissa, leave room for somebody else to have a cause, would ya?

But more than all of these things, she’s a brilliant live performer.  I had never known that till last night, and I suspect I’m not the only one who discovered it at the Anderson Center in Binghamton.  Well, OK, Vestal; but she said Binghamton.  “Are you ready to rock, Vestal?!?” doesn’t have the same ring…

See, what’s unique about going to a concert in the Bing is this: we get so damn few of them; we’re a lot more willing to go see a show from an artist that we maybe kinda liked just a little bit in college because their single was stuck in our broken CD player.  So Bing concerts are filled with the unconverted—not the hooting, hollering, crying, shrieking, (maybe even) tripping concert-goers you’d find in the “big city”.

It took me a while to realize this; beforehand, I just thought that we were all f*cking lame.  And I’m not convinced that some touring performers don’t feel that way when they show up here.

BTW, I heard one set of concert-goers last night scream at another set of concert-goers to sit down because they weren’t as excited about the show and they didn’t think that anybody else should be either.

On another BTW, I pretty much suck at listening to new music; what do you want from me?  I work in radio.  And if a lyric hasn’t been drilled into my head every four and a half hours before being used as the underscore for a Toyota commercial and the theme song for an Amy Adams romantic comedy, I have a difficult time sitting through its live performance.

But that’s what separates a really really really great live performer from, well, Britney Spears.  Because while we all want to have sex with Britney (even the gays; it’s OK, you can admit it), we pretty much just tolerate her singing on the off chance that she may lose her sh*t on stage and rip her clothes off for no particular reason.

This is not true for Melissa Etheridge.  (OK, maybe it’s true for some of the lesbians reading.)  I, for one, am not sure quite why I liked her live show so much last night.  More than 70% of the show was tunes I didn’t know.  But it didn’t matter.  It might have been her voice—which was in perfect form and didn’t sound any different from what you’d hear in a studio recording.  It might have been her laid-back vibe: you felt like she could have been playing a bar as small as Frankie’s or a space as big as the Broome Arena, she’d be having a ball either way.  I actually think, more than anything else, it was her chemistry with the audience.

She’s an engaging storyteller, and every lyric seemed vitally important when delivered live.  Message songs like “I Run for Life” (her breast cancer anthem) and “I Need to Wake Up” (her Oscar-winning environmental anthem) which before seemed to me like “charity jingles” when they first came out, suddenly just worked.  It’s impossible to deny that’s she’s genuine when you see her in the flesh.

I can’t tell you for sure if I’ll buy Melissa’s next album—I’ve never been blown away by her CDs; but I can tell you I won’t miss her next concert.  Unless Britney Spears is in town.  And having a breakdown.  Half-naked.

Now that’s entertainment.

PS: We interviewed Melissa on the Star Morning Show.  She was just as cool to speak to by phone as she was live in concert.

CLICK TO LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW