Remember what it's like when the hometown team wins the championship?

I'm from Syracuse NY originally... a rust belt, economically distressed town like any other town in the North East. It has its special little gifts and unique treasures, but mostly they are hidden from the perspective of the outside world. It appears to be just like any other mid-sized Northeastern city with an eroded population and diminished tax base. The local paper announces triple digit job loss figures on what seems to be a daily basis.

But one thing Syracuse has that does not escape the perspective of the outside world is a Division 1, kick-ass college basketball team.

Most every year (for the past thirty years), the Syracuse University Orangemen field a top 20-ish, nationally competitive team. The community expects Coach Boeheim to deliver the goods, and most of the time, he does (under great community-wide, applied duress, I might add...the man has the patience of a Saint). It's rare that the team does not receive an invite to the NCAA tournament. March Madness is an entitlement in Syracuse NY.

Usually the team gets knocked out early (Remember the Richmond Spiders? You may not, but everyone in Syracuse does), but sometimes it catches a wave of winning, and advances, usually about as far as the Sweet Sixteen. In 2003, the team took the entire city surfing on a 40 foot tidal wave of winning, successfully landing on the beach of a national NCAA championship at the Superdome in New Orleans.

A curious mass psychological event occurs when one of those "winning waves" takes place: With every win, you can feel the cloud of always impending doom being magically lifted from the collective shoulders of the populace, the constant veil of struggle being parted from the faces of folks that are still struggling to get through another brutal Central New York winter; People actually smile at one another, have a collective springier step, pat each other on the back... they are all focused on one thing and one thing only; the success of their beloved Orangemen.

There is no better place in America than Syracuse, NY in March when the basketball team is advancing deeply into the field of sixty four. The entire population is hypnotized, literally a "Little Engine That Could" mass meditation, revival and prayer meeting that lasts not the length of a church service, but literally weeks.... and that's a long time to focus for one person, let alone the collective population of a mid-sized American city.

With every win, the absolutely impossible becomes slightly more plausible...the power of over a hundred of thousand residents releasing themselves of their collective cynicism all at the same time and entertaining the notion of the Universal question "What If?" is palpable. You can literally see that energy rising off the slush covered sidewalks.

It makes taking a "Leap of Faith" just slightly less dangerous, it lessens the risk of the pain of eventual disappointment just enough for people to take that first step toward the exciting and compelling "Possible", rather than being forced to accept the usual crushingly mundane, everyday aspects of "Reality".

There's only one drawback to the "Syracuse Basketball Success Strategy" as it relates to the general community consciousness... its a high risk community wide strategy to achieve a collective state of euphoria: the jackpot pay off, when it happens, is huge. But one national championship in 30 years ain't exactly a North Carolina / Chapel Hill level of success. There are long periods of drought between the successes.

Being of this town, this phenomena is hard wired into the fabric of my soul... and I have attempted to make engineering this phenomena on a regular basis a major part of my life's work, albeit with a slight variation: What if, instead of an annual occurrence with a success rate of once every thirty years, I could somehow create a vehicle that could deliver a smaller dose of this type of euphoria on a daily basis, almost like taking a “psychological vitamin pill” as part of a lifestyle ritual? What would be the end result? How could the community benefit as a whole if we all felt the feeling of a successful “March Madness” run, everyday of our lives? Is it possible? Is it sustainable? How far could we advance as a town, a tribe, a culture, a society, if in fact, I could find a way to pull this off? What would be the outcome if we all entertained the possibility of  “What If?” as a sort of base line, community wide, meditative thread that a large segment of the population accepted and actively pursued?

So here’s the hypothesis: What if, instead of tying the collective outlook of the community to a team, you could convince a community to BE THE TEAM; and in doing so illuminate the possibility to the community, that by going through a two step process of internalizing and then externalizing that notion, that the possible result would be that the community could psychologically “shift” to the realization that we can be the masters of our own destinies…  with a major dividend payout attached, both personally and collectively.

What would be the ramifications of a successful outcome of the experiment on psychological, spiritual, and even economic platforms?

If I were to simplify of how I viewed my overall purpose and responsibility to my community through the course of my own very brief and insignificant history, it could be framed as such:

Through music, and other related platforms, I have dedicated my life to the purpose of encouraging people to psychologically project themselves into believing that the impossible IS indeed within reach. It addresses the collective consciousness of the community; to perhaps change their perspective on how they view their community, and it's collective future.  There are much more talented musicians in Syracuse than I. I'm more of a shaman than musician.

I have always believed that there just might be a better way to achieve this kind of mass euphoria on a more consistent basis: Make it a daily part of the community wide zeitgeist, and then broadcast that strategy throughout the world, from the small confines of my personal  "within", to the vast corners of the great "wherever"; for the benefit of all who actively participate.

Frankly, having personally engineered of few of these types of aberrant social events in my career, it's always a crapshoot when things escalate to another level from the grass roots. Either its understood by the gatekeepers of mass media message as an opportunity or not... and most times, its not; at least to the level that it needs to be at to be a truly transformative, community-wide event. 

In fact, its been my experience that certain factions of the community actively try to quash these opportunities, as they desperately try to protect their ever shrinking share of a slice of an ever shrinking pie. They don't want to open themselves to the gifts that are being made available to everyone, and would rather employ a "Cut 'Em Off At The Knees, Before They Cut You” or more appropriately, a “Crabs in a Bucket/ Drag Anybody that Dares to Aspire To a Higher State of Consciousness Back into The Swarming Mayhem of Mediocrity” strategy.

This IS an effective defensive posture, but its unfortunate side effect is that it effectively kills any future possibility of any future progressive growth.

All I can do is try my best to present the opportunities. If people lack the vision to recognize that an opportunity is being presented to them... well, lets just say the days of me losing sleep over that particular conundrum are over.  I have become more philosophical about that predictable outcome. I used to internalize this outcome. In fact, it was probably the paramount reason for me to exile myself from my home, family and roots and forced me into hiding in New Orleans for 11 years… another epic failure to change perception has led me to go underground and lick those wounds for long periods of time.

But no longer. Now I identify my successes by the epic nature of my failures.

Perhaps my “mission” is just to lead horses to drink. If the horses choose dehydration out of spite over sustenance, that’s just Darwinian evolutionary principles at work. Moses may have parted the Red Sea, but it was up to his people to decide as a group to walk across the ocean bed and be delivered… they could have just as easily have chosen to collectively reject the miracle in front to their eyes and camped out on the beach. Come to think of it, what exactly was the miracle in that parable, the sea parting, or the fact that the people excepting the fact that it actually did? In my humble interpretation, two miracles happened that day, not one.

So if obtuse thinking patterns cause you to die of dehydration at the edge of the watering hole you’ve just been led to… perhaps it’s a good idea to recuse yourself from contributing your special brand of genetic material to the future gene pool by doing the rest of us the favor of dying the death of eventual irrelevancy.

So over here, in this corner, we have two little doggies named Huckleberry and Doodle competing in an international, 12 week, internet doggie beauty contest with the grand prize being an award of $1,000,000.

For three weeks in a row, our intrepid duo of doggies has in the top 98.9th percentile out of approximately 50,000 other fiercely competitive contestants. Not enough for a win but close enough to entertain the possibility of a win.

Most of the weekly winners have pledged to donate any possible winnings to a charitable cause... I have avoided this strategy, because its too easy of a sell. I like a challenge, and I do not shirk from them.

As incentive, I have promised to anyone and everyone, that IF YOU TAKE THE INITIATIVE AND FULLY PARTICIPATE IN THE SHENANIGANS OF VOTING DAILY AND ACTIVELY PROMOTING THEIR CANDIDACY, I will sell the annuity and send all the top participants on an all expenses paid victory luau on the Hawaiian Island of Maui.

Ridiculous you say? Nuts? Crazy? Impossible? Those of you that know me personally also know that I am wholly capable of blowing a million dollars on my friends and walking away with nothing but a memory. It's never been about the money for me... but to blow a million bucks in a legendary Elvis- like, one fell swoop of generosity? I'm all about going down in a ball of flaming infamy; In fact, it's what I'm known best for… setting myself up for a Wile E. Coyote-esque free fall to only end up in a puff of dust at the bottom of the canyon. We all know that outcome, and yet it never ceases to compel us to watch and be entertained by it.

So to heap a pie in the sky "incentive" of a Hawaiian Luau for several hundred of my closest supporters on top of the already impossible notion of winning a 12 week internet contest is... an insult to the laws of probability, and the territory that I have spent a lifetime traveling.

In week 5 of the contest, "Huckleberry and Doodle" broke into the Top Thirty, the Top Twenty in week 6, and the Top Ten in week 7, and have been lurking in Tiger Woods like fashion in the top 5 for the past 4 weeks, out of 90,000 other contestants. What are the laws of probability governing THAT outcome? Old Wile E. is within inches of finally getting his paws on his goal.

Is Little Georgie up to his old tricks again?

Well, Yes. Guilty as charged.

I have once again convinced people to fabricate a maypole for all of us to dance around… and it is obvious that many other people are beginning to recognize this as an opportunity to celebrate this event on a local, regional, national, and world wide basis.

They understand that being part of something bigger than the sum of its parts is a spiritually liberating experience. They are allowing themselves to get swept up into the roiling wave of fantastic projection, rather than allowing themselves to accept being swamped in the dead calm of cynical thought. Highly creative output is the result of surrounding yourself with high creation, and they realize that THAT IS a promised land worth searching for. Space most definitely, is the place.

They aren’t surfing the ocean…they aren’t surfing the net… they are positioning themselves on the crest of the wave of the Universe; the “Big Kahuna”… and are about to hang ten into the pipeline of all creation.

They know a maypole when they see one. This is more than just a doggie beauty contest. It’s a celebration of the indomitable will of the human spirit. With a dog by our side, Dog only nose….

Unfortunately, to others, when the maypole reveals itself, they immediately see that as an opportunity to lift their leg and pee on it.

To those of that mindset, and to all of the supposed gate keepers that rush to create and maintain a ceiling of concrete for the blades of grass to push up against and eventually wither from lack of civic support, all I have to say is this:

This “Doggie Contest Experiment” was designed specifically for you, and aimed directly at the space between your ears. Are you feeling challenged? Even a bit threatened?

Good. Judging by the amount of negative feedback and/or blowback generated over a freaking doggie contest, I will say this: My Aim Is True. My defense of my own audacity is this: I only have your best interests at heart.

Do you really want to see me fail? Then help us to continue the story into the next two weeks… help us to raise the altitude of the high wire, as it will make the eventual fall all the more spectacular! I double dare ya!

Einstein once said that the true definition of insanity is constantly repeating behavior and expecting a different outcome.

I’m just as guilty of this as the next guy. But tied to my own repetitive message is this one caveat: “Change your perspective, change your methods, remain fluid, and vigilantly disciplined in extracting your head out of the sand of your own making on a daily basis; Triangulate around a problem or goal in a mosaic fashion, rather than plowing into it head on in traditional linear thought process even if the laws of probability dictate that the outcome may be the same, because”:

You never know. Maybe this is the time you’ll break through to the other side.

I have often repeated that it is better to shoot for the outer reaches of the galaxies and end up beaten and bloodied in a back alley behind Pluto, then to remain Earthbound with feet of clay, living under a mountain of regret.

The Dog Contest is just another attempt at finding the right escape velocity, and the right trajectory… the only difference being is that instead of fiercely guarding the proprietary data, I’m inviting as many people as I can to contribute to the process.  An improvised story is being written in real time around the most innocuous vehicle I could find: A Dog Contest. It’s an amazing story, a fun story, a mysterious story… and for eleven weeks now, a highly entertaining story for all of it’s contributors and participants.

So is it a Dog Contest? On a surface level, it is… yes. But I assure you, it’s a lot more than a Dog Contest.

We only get one shot at life in the physical dimension, Peeps. With every tick of the clock, one thing is certain: We ain’t getting any younger.

So here’s another shot, inconsequential or insignificant, as it may appear at the surface.

A big fat meatball has been slow pitched to you: Change your behavior, go the opposite direction and swing for the fences this time.

No Regrets.