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One night in front of the computer, Griffin was watching footage of a 1985 concert.

“And Mike Campbell, the lead guitar player from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, came out playing this really cool-looking guitar,” he says.

What he saw was a highly modified — and very red — Fender Telecaster that the band called “The Red Dog.” It’s the same guitar Campbell had used for the recording of its hit song “Refugee.” The Red Dog is a one-of-a-kind custom build.

“I knew right away I wasn’t going to be able to find it at a Guitar Center somewhere,” Black says, “so I figured I’d have to build it myself.”

So the Vienna, Va., teen re-created The Red Dog using parts from Ebay and rare instrument dealers.

He then managed to get word to Mike Campbell about what he had done and Mike asked to meet him backstage before their Philadelphia show this summer.

Campbell chatted with Black for a bit and then asked to see the guitar. Campbell remarked that it looked and felt similar to the original Red Dog, played a few riffs and then asked to play it.

“At first I was a little confused because he was already playing it,” Black says. “But then he said, ‘No, I want to play it onstage for ‘You Don’t Know How it Feels,’ and I just said ‘absolutely.’ ”

So for the second song that July night, Campbell grabbed the guitar and did something Black won’t soon forget.

“As I was playing it, looked out in the audience and I saw him,” Campbell says of Black, who was in the third row. “His face was lit up like a Christmas tree, so I was glad that I did it.”

Thanks to Josh for passing this on to me.

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From, via.

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Watch the full concert, filmed October 25, 2007 at Webster Hall, on Babel Music. (And buy their terrific new album Together if you haven’t yet!) The rest of the concert is much better than the song they’re offering as a representative clip (which is one of my least favorite in their otherwise illustrious catalog and which comes from their one relatively inferior album in their otherwise illustrious discography).

And thanks to Facebook for “invading my privacy” by providing an ad for something I told them I like in my profile list of musical interests.  More such “invasions” please!

(But, please no more of the kind where you change the settings of what is public and what is private without asking me or introduce new features which expose my information to the whole world as their default setting.  Oh yeah, and no more arcane and confusing methods required for actually controlling my information.)

But, ads based on my interests?  Super helpful on this and numerous previous occasions.  Keep it up!

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Dan Parent, the writer and illustrator of an upcoming Archie comic that will introduce the series’s first openly gay character, explains the approach planned for treating the new character’s sexuality and the philosophy behind it:

“To the kids at Riverdale High, Kevin’s sexual orientation is a nonissue, Parent said. ‘Their reaction is very nonchalant.’ It’s a reaction reflective of the real world, he believes. ‘My daughter is that age, she’s 16. I see in her high school that there are a lot of openly gay kids. It’s not even like a big deal.’”

“One character who quickly becomes Kevin’s friend is Jughead, but that doesn’t say anything about Jughead’s sexual leanings, Parent said. Kevin and Jughead are fellow foodies.”

“‘The reason they’re friends is because Jughead is the character you would befriend first, because he’s so accepting of everyone.’”

But don’t expect Keller to get involved in any hot action. Says Parent: “We don’t get into sexual situations with the straight characters, let alone the gay characters. It’s still a safe place for kids.”

Now lets see if the demagogues equate the mere acknowledgment of the existence of homosexual people to kids with graphic sexual discussion of homosexual sex acts with kids or if we have finally gotten beyond that offensive, reductionist trope.

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The Japanese company Blest has developed one of the smallest and safest oil-to-plastic conversion machines out on the market today. It’s founder and CEO, Akinori Ito is passionate about using this machine to change the way people around the world think about their plastic trash. From solving our landfill and garbage disposal issues to reducing our oil dependancy on the Middle East, his machine may one day be in every household across Japan.
While holding up a bag of trash, he states, “It’s a waste to throw away, isn’t it? This is a treasure.”

Imagine a future where we are so efficient with every resource and reconversion of all our materials is such an automatic part of our life style that the concept of “garbage” sounds utterly antiquated.

Thanks to Unreasonable Faith.

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