For a week now I’ve drafted and deleted various posts about the election, and how increasingly angry and disenchanted I’ve become with it. It all boils down to this: I believe in Obama’s attempts to elevate the political discourse in the country, and was impressed by how on-message his campaign had been for so long. I think that has all but disappeared now, thanks largely to the fact that the Clinton campaign can’t discern the difference between an opponent and an enemy, and Obama has, perhaps inevitably, succumbed to it. It’s disappointing and disheartening.

So I’d rather just watch a video like this (turn off the sound, the commentary is annoying, or, maybe, that’s just reflective of my current mood):

I got stuck on a CTA train this morning for two hours. In a tunnel. So we got out and walked. In the tunnel. I wrote the whole thing up for Time Out Chicago, the quote below will take you there:

I’m as big a fan of visions of post-apocalyptic America as you’ll find, but what I learned today is that being a part of one isn’t that fun.

Downtown brethren: I’m reading at 5pm this Wednesday night. Come straight from your workplace!

Shoot the Messinger’s pager has been blowing up lately, thanks to attention from some bigger fish. First Maud Newton linked to the Tournament of Books post, then Gossiperia mistook the post about the TOC April Fool’s issue for actual celebrity news, and yesterday ESPN’s TrueHoop grabbed yesterday’s Celtics volley.

So welcome to any newcomers. Book and basketball fans, take heart: I write about that stuff fairly often. Celebrity gossip lovers, not much I can help you with. Except to say that Rahzel dumped his girlfriend over the phone while riding in the backseat of my car, about nine years ago. Hope that helps!

UPDATE: I shouldn’t be so glib. The onslaught knocked the site off its axis, but it’s all better now. Phew.

I’m on record as both a Celtics and Bulls fan, but like all of my sports loyalties, Boston comes before Chicago. So I was interested in this story over at the Kane County Chronicle, which raises the question of whether John Paxson, GM of the disintegrating Bulls, could take a lesson from Danny Ainge’s transformation of the C’s during the last offseason. It made me wonder how often Ainge’s action will be trotted out as a best-case scenario option for fans of woebegone teams.

Trouble is, Ainge caught lightning in a bottle. I don’t think this sort of wholesale rejuvenation could happen again unless—and this of course is a possibility—the NBA is in as much disarray as it was in the summer of ‘07. The ingredients for the C’s were just too perfect. They had a high lottery pick in one of the deepest drafts in years (fifth). They had a productive player they could live without (Delonte West) and an often-injured, but valuable-when-healthy player with an outsized contract (Wally Szczerbiak). That’s not exactly a recipe for landing a star, but combine that with the mess going down in Seattle, where an impending move has ownership actively discouraging fan interest by letting loose marquee players and pleasing investors by cutting costs and going young. That’s the sort of environment you need to flip a fifth pick and two middle-of-the-road players to land a perennial All-Star like Ray Allen.

Then there’s Kevin Garnett. You have to have a guy like KG at the end of his rope, desperate to make a run for a championship, and see that something is suddenly happening with your team. Then, you have to have a marquee young player (Al Jefferson), another solid guy (Ryan Gomes), an enormous expiring contract to make the cap work (Theo Ratliff), and (this doesn’t seem essential, admittedly) two young players loaded with potential, who likely will never reach that potential but make for tantalizing bait (Sebastian Telfair and Gerald Green). It also seems necessary for the other team’s GM to be something of a modern-day miracle, in the sense that no one can figure out how he still has a job (Kevin McHale). This will bring you an MVP like Kevin Garnett.

Back on the homefront, it helps if that first acquisition (Allen) makes your team all that more desirable to the second pick-up (Garnett). But you should also have another mystery ingredient: A superstar who somehow hasn’t been traded in all of this (Paul Pierce). I still think Pierce is the lynchpin of the C’s, and is the main reason all of this worked. How many teams could trade for two superstars and not have to trade away their best player? Not only that, but your team needs to be deep enough in young talent to have young legs join with your vets. The Celtics didn’t have to trade a solid, young center (Kendrick Perkins) or an exciting, emerging point guard (Rajon Rondo). Yes, every GM stocks up young talent with the idea that, when it’s time to make a run, you can flip them for immediate help. But it seems impossible that you could trade away a ton of young talent, but retain key pieces and a superstar. The Bulls can’t do that.

So just to recap, here is what you need to remake a team the way the Celtics did: Cap flexibility, young talent, expiring contracts, a high lottery pick in a deep draft, serviceable role players you can live without, jerkface owners in another town summarily dismantling their team, an inept front office in yet another city, a superstar who wants to win badly and knows it won’t happen on the team he’s given his career to, more young talent you can somehow not trade in the process, a hometown hero to anchor the whole process, and the two acquisitions, along with that anchor, should be at the tail ends of their prime where they’re eager to lead, teach and win. Piece of cake, right?

Last year, The Dollar Store and the wonderful Third Coast International Audio Festival partnered up for Dollar Storeys, a short-form audio competition that asked professional producers and first-times to make pieces inspired by junk, just like we’ve done at the show for a few years.

Third Coast’s weekly show Re:Sound took a look back at the project this weekend, and you can hear it by clicking on that link. I had a blast going into the studio and hanging out with the public radio cool kids, and even recorded and old Dollar Store piece, “Aquapad,” for the show. It was such a great experience, and a real honor to be a part of Re:Sound, which I maintain is the most interesting show on ‘BEZ.

And for the record: I wish that every time I read something, I had one of the Third Coasters there to provide the outro music.