Twenty five years in the making

I first came to know Cait Brennan about twelve years ago, through our Live Journal accounts. Her writing was intelligent, creative and incredibly funny. I added her to my feed, she added me back and we commented on each others posts. She kept me awake and entertained over the late night hours when my infant son stayed awake, which was many nights. As I have still never met Cait Brennan, I am guessing she remains as witty as ever.

Over the years, we do not have the long threads we used to, but we make occasional comments or click “like” on our Facebook posts. There have been many changes in our lives over the past decade, some of them quite profound.

Cait has been working very hard on her music the past few years. Even harder because she has reasons to. You can almost call it a race against time. As she says, "She was Cait before being Cait was cool." She’s trying to maintain her health while writing and playing at such places as the International Pop Overthrow Festival. A couple of years ago she released a neat little ditty called Madame Pompadour.



It became one of my favorite songs of the year and remains on my iPod.

Recently, she recorded a whole record of songs in five days. She still needs a bit of help getting the record finished and that’s where we come in. Her Kickstarter was completely funded in a couple of days. The goodwill she has developed from friends and strangers is awesome. Here’s the link for you to click on and read.

Full disclosure: I’m in for the vinyl.

With the project fully funded, any additional money will help promote the record to a wider audience, get her to possibly go on tour to do a few shows and more. I admit to being the biggest cynic about crowdfunding but this one means so much to me. The background of why this record is being made is an important part of this story. As many people as possible need to hear this record. Keeping the momentum going would be incredible.

As longtime record industry maven Marc Nathan says, “because every 40-something person with a catalog of great songs and limited resources to record them the way they were intended needs a gentle shove into the loving arms of the unsuspecting general public…”

I believe in Cait Brennan.

Potato salad and circuses

I'm down with some trends. I've seen plenty of crowd funding projects in my day. I've seen millions of dollars spent to develop an app that just says, "Yo."

The outrage of the day, which we will all forget about next week the way we love Ani DeFranco or Bryan Singer again is that some dude in Columbus wanted to make some potato salad.

(if I was not so lazy, I'd download a picture of a pop culture icon eating some potato salad at a picnic in this space)

The dude's from Columbus, I do not know him. I'm sure he's a fine young man. I have nothing against him.

(Here's where I'd make a meme linking Game of Thrones to potato salad)

The dude started a Kickstarter in which he would accept donations from people to make potato salad.

(Here's a picture of James Dimon eating potato salad, or maybe drinking a smoothie)

The fund link went viral and the guy at one point had raised over twenty thousand dollars. Not bad for a guy who just wanted to hang out, maybe watch the World Cup and chow on a side dish.

(here's a shot of Lebron James from his Ohio days, at a picnic)

Meanwhile other people who have begun their own Kickstarter campaigns for their own business dreams are struggling to comprehend how some guy is raking in much more coin than they.

(put Marlon Brando from Streetcar Named Desire on the curb staring up at a window with Lana Del Rey photoshopped in place of Vivian Leigh)

Meanwhile food pantries are struggling to stay stocked while people donate to a man's quest for a potato salad recipe.

I'm not hating on the player, the guy found a niche and is running with it. The game though, it's a mess.