While we were driving thousands of miles all over 5 states on our crazy tour we ketp saying we have to get a ticket to the inauguration. We needed this go full circle. There was one other too, be on Oprah. Who wouldn’t want to meet Oprah.

How did we get tickets??? Well Lisa, with her amazing ability to make things happen, managed to manifest a ticket and then shortly after I ‘won’ a ticket as well. It was really all her doing because I had sort of given up. After 3 months of traveling I was burnt. Lisa had just taken time out of her life to help me move myself and the Stealth Van back to Seattle. Taking another trip seemed nuts even for a nomad like myself. But when you get the call and you have Lisa on the other hand freaking out because she actually made it happen, its infectious. Next thing I know I’m on a place to DC for the ride of a lifetime.

I want to take a second to make something clear…there are friends and then there are friends who will take off and drive over a thousand miles through, snow, rain, ice and madness to help you move home. Now that’s another catagory all together if you ask me. I’ve said this to her several times but no words could convey how grateful I am to have such a great friend. Lisa and I  just met at and Integral conference in August 08 in the Bay Area so it says a lot that in those few short months it feels like we’ve been friends for a lifetime. We fight like brother and sister sometimes, having a twin myself I find that to be a good sign. You know a friendship, or any relationship, is going to push you somewhere good when it brings up shadow shit you never thought you had or you rarely ever see. So, again, thank you to the Universe for bringing Lisa and all her craziness in to my life!  I now have a partner in crime who’s always down for whatever adventure we can cook up.

Lisa doesn't take any shit

Shea Van Horn our host and Lisa

Yogini's for Obama

So we hit the Inauguration which my friend Harold called the Inaugulypse, so true.  Anyone who wants to catch up on our adventures can check out the posts we did for www.popandpolitics.com or link to it this way, here’s Lisa’s or here’s Jared’s.

It was the most brilliant spectacle I’ve ever seen. I probably wouldn’t do it twice but as a life experience I’m grateful, the people were beautiful, civil, sweet, openhearted and amazing.

Thanks to my friend Shea Van Horn we had a great little pad to call home and we got to reconnect after not seeing each other for 10 years.

We’ll be evolving Obamarama to be a part of the ongoing push to keep up the pressure. We need to pay attention and participate more than ever now. We have a real chance to make some big changes if we choose to. Lisa and I will be hitting the road again at some point with some new ideas we’re cooking up so stay tuned. Thanks for all the support!

We Finally GAVE BUSH THE BOOT!!

Last night we played the final show of our tour at the ‘Silicon Valley for Obama’ election night celebration. Approximately 1,500 volunteers attended this event held in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. These volunteers, like so many that we met all across the western swing states, are the ones who did the heavy lifting of this campaign.

Cumulatively hundreds of man-years were devoted to phone calls, walking and knocking door to door, and organizing and hosting gatherings and fundraisers. Thank you EVERYONE for all of your dedication and hard work! What is even more amazing than Obama’s landslide victory is the awakening and realization of empowerment that has just occurred for America. We did this. We got involved. We made it happen. YES WE DID!!! Now that we know we can do the impossible, what else shall we do?

It was more than a landslide – it was a loveslide! Barack Obama himself bridges many divides, Black-White, Christian-Muslim and he won across traditional race, gender and generational divides. How extraordinary to have a uniter instead of a divider leading our nation, someone who has inspired not only America, but the WHOLE WORLD. This morning looking at images from the Huffington Post of people celebrating around the world, I was moved to tears. My dear friend Anna from South Africa called me to say that people were celebrating in the streets tonight and that it had the same feeling as when Nelson Mandela became president – “a huge balancing, the end of slavery, from Africa to the ‘free world’ and now free!” The whole world is celebrating with us…

When we started out on this tour the outcome of the election felt very uncertain, but as we traveled through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona over the past three weeks, we saw overwhelming support for Obama out on the streets. We are so proud of our swing states! All of the swing states we tagged are now painted blue. While we can’t claim credit for this, we speculate that the “Obama-rama bump” effect might be related to the state capitols being marked with his face ; )

Here’s a little movie we made of our video tagging… and hey – can someone send this to Shep for us? He’s not answering our emails!

Stay tuned for a mini-documentary of our trip and thanks for all of your support and for joining us on our journey. Three cheers for Obama! Let’s take a break, and then roll up our sleeves for the real work has yet to begin.

Barack on, good people!

P.S. We want to do our Obama-rama show for Barack at the inauguration party – help us out if you can pull those strings! Oh, and we want to get on Oprah too!

Every city presents its own unique challenge. In Reno, the cops told us that the video projection was illegal even after we turned the sound system off, which is complete BS but it led us to invent tagging (thanks Kai)! And most everywhere else, it is hard to find people out at night downtown simply because of the way the cities are designed to not include living spaces. Denver was great because of the downtown walking mall, and we just plain got lucky in Albuquerque.

But damn, Las Vegas was tough! There were tons of people out, but there was no VERTICAL SPACE to project on. Every square inch was covered in lights and massive TV screens. so it was mostly too bright to see our tag. The other challenge was – no parking. And the sound competition was also intense – so we didn’t even attempt to do our multimedia show. But all of these challenges forced us to innovate our most outrageous form of Obama-rama madness yet – the drive-by tag! This might not sound so crazy to y’all, but we’ve got a $30k projector that is barely bolted down and if the bulb burns out from the vibration while its lit we’re looking at $800 to replace it.

Our first target was the Luxor. As we set up around the corner I asked “do we even have to get out of the car?” Hmmm, mebbe not, let’s give it a try. So J-Love drove and operated the hydraulic lift while I shot video and stills from the sunroof. We pulled up and shot the side of the Luxor pyramid, but it was made of some weird non-reflective material. The light just disappeared inside like it was a pyramidal black hole. We zipped around the corner and pulled up at a bus stop in front to tag the obelisk. Some kids walking by saw the tag and freaked for Obama.

Neo-graffiti on "ancient" graffiti

The Luxor

We made sure to stop at every red light, which gave us enough time to pop the projector through the roof and grab a few images. We ended up behind one of those billboard trucks advertising for “Girls who want to meet you” if you call 696-969-6969. The driver slowed down and hollered through his window – “do it again!” We drove down the strip while having a rolling conversation through the car windows. He told us how much the country needed Obama. He even offered to let us drive around behind him projecting Obama onto the scantily clad girlie on his billboard. We weren’t sure what kind of message that might send to folks, so we opted to not post the images here Here are a few others though…

Caesar's Palace

Drive by tag Las Vegas

By the way – check out our latest press in Pop + Politics!

Arizona State Capitol - McCain's home state

We left Albuquerque late on Wednesday, so we didn’t make it in time for our Scottsdale show and decided to just tag the Arizona state capitol building instead. We did a drive by and couldn’t find a clear line of sight through the trees to the front of the building, and the tall executive tower on the backside was too brightly lit. So we had no choice but to stop right in the middle of the road, right in front of the capitol building and do our most audacious tag ever…on the state capitol in McCain’s home state. We stopped around the corner from the capitol to set up the projector and the computer so it would all be ready to go when we pulled up. Fortunately there wasn’t much traffic at 2:00 AM.

Ever the well-oiled guerrilla tag team, Jared stepped on his computer and had to reboot, and the battery died on my camera because I’d forgotten to charge it. But we managed to get some images with the video camera before a little electric golf-cart-like maintenance vehicle came up behind us. We jumped in the van and zoomed off, but decided to go back to be sure we got a good image. This time our tag went more smoothly and we got off a perfect shot, but a half a block down the road a cop pulled up behind us and flashed his lights.

As the officer approached and shined his flashlight into my eyes, he barked, “So WHAT, exactly are you doing?” I couldn’t muster more than a deer in headlights response, and turned to Jared so that he could do the talking.

“We’re just doing an art project, actually,” Jared answered.

“What kind of an art project?”

“Oh, we just use this projector to shine images on buildings and then take pictures of them.”

“I see.” [Flashing the flashlight into the van and checking out the equipment]. “What kind of pictures do you project?”

“Ummm, you know, just that really cool hope poster. You know, the one with Obama on it?”

Blank silence stretched on for an eternity. Then the officer finally said, “Well, you know, the reason why I pulled you over is because ever since 9/11, we have to be extra careful about terrorists…and, we noticed that one of your headlights was out.

All through the trip, we’ve attracted attention not only for our daring artistic stunts, but also because of a burnt out headlight on the van. This was the third time we’d been pulled over on this trip. The first was when I got a speeding ticket somewhere between Salt Lake and Denver last week, and the second was when Jared was pulled over for the headlight and for going a teeny bit fast earlier in the evening. He got off with just a warning and a fix-it ticket for the headlight, which was very generous of the highway patrol officer. The other dumb thing is that we don’t have the vehicle registration, so we go through this whole act of pretending to look for it whenever we get stopped. “Gee, I thought it was in here somewhere…” Jared produced his fix-it ticket from earlier in the evening and we gave them both of our driver’s licenses.

After a few minutes the officer returned and said, “You aren’t planning to go BACK to the capitol are you?” I smiled and said, “Nope. We’re done.” Then he said he was going to let us go, and we drove off to find some more tall buildings downtown.

We rolled into Albuquerque around sunset and immediately set about scouting for good spots to tag and get some street actions on. While scouting we came acoss and Obama outpost full of people so we thought we’d surprise them with a little show. We’re still a surprise aspect of this campaign, some people knew about ud but a lot of the volunteers were pleasently surprised to find outside their front door shakin it up. One volunteer, Laurie, said she was dog tired and had gone home to rest, forgot something in her car so she had to come back, she found us upon her return as was completely re-inspired! That’s our hope, we just want to keep the energy high and positive out here on the street and so far it working out great.

The Obama outpost was in a cool neighborhood so we figured we’d set up on a wall down the street at UNM across the street from some restaurants filled with people. This show had cars slowing down to watch and honking in support. We met a group of kids that were loving the show and at 19 Andrew was talking like he was a seasoned political activist. This kind of thing gives me so much hope. We need to inspire these kids and show them that they really can change things, we are inheriting all this madness, we need to sober up and take action, and they are!! by the millions!! its great to see that first hand! I told Andrew that its really up to our generations to really break this open, he felt that too which is why he’d already voted early for OBAMA!

After dinner we started tagging first this time because we couldn’t resist this huge darkly lit building right in the heart of downtown, we loved the odd word plays too – New Mexico… “Banking on HOPE” and “TRUST in “HOPE”. This was our largest Tag yet, over 120 feet high, it dominated the view. After about 10 minutes we were asked to leave by a security gaurd even though we were on top of a city parking garage. He kept flipping these lame excuses at me about why we had to leave, meanwhile the HOPE images is radiating on this massive building. I told him it was just an art project and he said “looks like you’re promoting something to me” I said art does that, it promotes ideas, this is an idea and a vision we’re sharing. Needless to say there were several more minutes of silly excuses which was all we needed, as I gabbed with our friend, Lisa kept taking shots and adjusting the image so we could document it, we got the shot anyway happily moved on.

We were high after that tag and started cruising downtown to see what fun we could instigate, we came across the Atomic Cafe right near our tag. They happened to have a great wall to shoot on and low and behold…a parking space right in front of the club. There were all kinds of people hanging out so we scouted it to see if was right for us and as I walked in this man scoped my “I heart Obama” pins and complimented me. We got a drink, handed out some invites to the show and broke out an completely killer set of tracks including out new “Funk For Peace” video sent by FORT KNOX FIVE. Check out our PLAYLIST to see it, its fantastic and its our favorite way to start the show now.

Micahel,Erin,Mustafa, J-Love - Finally got some Shwag to hand out!

Lisa Loving the crowd!

Turns out it was an Obama Kareoke night organized by Erin and Mustafa to rally their volunteers!  So there were plenty of Obama people there mixed in with McCain supporters who frankly were not so happy at being shown up by all these creative people going off outside the club. One guy tried to get a little rowdy but the sheer positivity of the vibe shut him down. Some people are open to new ideas and some aren’t, we just kept shining and he couldn’t deal so he left. “No Hate in ‘08″ stayed strong! This was THE most mixed, completely brilliant group of people from all walks of life, it was really a great snapshot of America! Cops drove by but not one of them even stopped, the party just went on and on. For an hour an a half we all danced and laughed on the streets. It really was a beautiful moment. MC Yogi’s video got every one bouncing and literally clapping at the end, there’s some video we shot here coming so you can check that out later. We made some great new friends and plan to all stay in touch with all the work that’s coming ahead. Everyone and I mean everyone we have talked to right up to the sweet barista at Starbucks this morning named Stephanie comments on how they know they have to stay involved in order to get all this straightened out. Its really great to see. Obama and his team have really made it clear that this network needs to stay in tact and everyone is exicted about that! YES WE CAN!

The Big Hearted

We always end the show with WILL I AM’s video and it never fails to bring people to tears, that’s really how much this means to everyone right now. People want to see things change and evolve, we see first hand every night people just being people, human beings, not all these separate ethnicities that some folks want to say is THE difference between us all. Sure there are differences AND we have more in common with everyone and everything around us than we could every imagine! Its almost as if this is emerging again, in a deeper way, as a general awareness right now, you can see it and you hear in every conversation. We talked to hundreds of people and its always the same theme.

I think Obama is helping the”Land of AND” to emerge in culture. People are capabale of finally celebrating their unity in diversity! Its the Economy AND the Environment! People AND the Planet! Prosperity AND Responsibility! You AND Me! At last there seems to be another big step in people’s ability to hold BOTH perspectives, multiple perspectives not just “either / or”, “Black / White” mentalities.

We’re holding space and creating containers on the streets for a more matured dare we say evolved “World-Centric” perspective. You can hear this in Obama’s speeches, its much more about BOTH / AND than it is about either / or. Its incredible to SEE it in every day people, they are drawn to the BOTH / AND perspectives, its like fresh air for them and they are exicted! Thank you Albuquerque for all the inspiration and great energy! We’ll be back!!

We just got our pics downloaded for his event so again, sorry for the out of sequence-ness of this. We went to see Obama the next morning after our night of tagging in Denver. It was amazing, very inspring. Over 100,000 people showed up, what a great mixed cool crowd it was too. Obama was on fire as usual and people seemed very inspired by the grandness of it. People were literally hanging off the trees and cranes to get a better view!

We rolled into Santa Fe just in time to do our usual dinner and vino routine. Santa Fe is another very kicked back area and it was Monday night so we thought we weren’t gonna find anyone to get rowdy with. Then after tagging the Capitol building here and drawing some fans off the road we went to the town square and set up on a wall we could hit from the street. Out of nowhere comes the hard core Obama Volunteers who’d been here working the butts off here since September! So we ran through our entire set for them. Having them around attracted more people and suddenly we had exactly what we were looking for, Street Action! There were NO police anywhere. Santa Fe turned out to be a blast and we made some cool connections that will hopefully get us invited to the Inauguration Party. We’d love to line up some performances with the people we’re showing and have a little video set ourselves so if you’re reading this and you’re handling the invite list for performers for that event, just know that the little guerilla kids at Obamarama, after jumping up and down and freaking out, would LOVE to be able to rock it at that party!!  And I’m sure that everyone we’re showing would freak to know that their work made it all that way, talk about bottom up!!

We were invited to crash at Kathy and Lee’s place in Woodland Park on our way to south to hit Colorado Springs. They were so kind and supportive to us. Their friend Ellen made us the best carrot cake! We dove into that after Kathy’s amazing full on home cooked meal. I don’t have to tell you how great that was after almost 2 weeks of fighting to find real food on the road and eating cheese sticks for snacks. We pulled out the projector and did a little show in their driveway on their garage, it was the sweetest show yet. There we were, a couple generations of people connecting over ideas and shared visions for where we can take this country, we’d never met before and yet it felt like we’d all known each other for years. They made us feel so at home. Kathy even made us breakfast the next morning and we all hung out talking till noon. We’ll be staying in touch with these guys for sure! Thanks for all the great talks and support. Viva Obama!

This is one of the most conservative areas in CO. It was THE SLEEPIEST town we have ever seen. There wasn’t a soul on the streets to even try to entertain. None of the building were cool enough to tag so we went to Garden of the Gods and by chance ended up doing a show for hikers leaving the park that evening. People saw the Hope Tag on a 300 ft cliff way off from the road and drove in to see what it was all about. It was like a beacon. We used the cliff face as our screen and ran through our favorites for everyone. Check out he gallery to see two great Obama Volunteers that saw the tag from a distance and came to watch the show and help hand out flyers. They are from out of state as well and have come to help the cause, thanks you two!! This show turned out to be even better than we had hoped and a nice twist from the sleep Sunday night in Co Springs.

We started our evening downtown at 16th and Market which is a cool walking area with tons of traffic. We found a great wall with a parking lot, our favorite. We attracted a lot of attention, handed out about 100 Obamaramatour.com flyers that help people get tapped into local volunteer networks and get voter information as well. A guy from Salt Lake City came by, how random is that? He had seen us the first night we were in SLC and loved it there. We had the music up nice and loud since there was a decent street scene and got through just about the whole hour show before we got asked to leave very nicely by Denver Police. They only wanted us to turn down the sound which was new for us so we kept the video up for awhile longer before heading out to do more shows.

Later we drove by this cool club in a church that was having a Latino night. There was a great building to shoot on across the street and a smoking patio outside facing that wall so we figured it was a perfect time to entertain them. We finally got to do our full Spanish language set for a Spanish speaking crowd. The Spanish vids are always mixed into our regular playlist but this was a treat for us and people seemed to really dig it. We’re seeing Obamanos! stickers every where here, its cool as hell, lots of honks and peace signs with other cars as they drive by, its fun to have that kind of connection with random people. We want to see that kind of thing keep rolling in ’09 and beyond.