Alternative Meat - a section in the frozen foods aisle at Whole Foods

Chinese Spaghetti Sauce

Lucky Swallow

Ethnic Hair Care - at Target. I think they mean Black

Mountain Dew Throwback - Made with real sugar

RAPE - Someone spelled out RAPE with the animal print letters at the fabric store - click to enlarge.

And, yes, Alternative Meat is a great punk rock band name. Go run with it. I don’t need it.

One of the very few films that somewhat understood punk and that awkward time of someone being pretty sure they want to be punk, but not doing so hot at it. That part may be a little to familiar for many. The rest of it, hopefully less so. Genuinely disturbing.

Nice writeup at Blastitude.

Out of the Blue is available on DVD from Anchor Bay.

Record Store Day is this Saturday. 3,000 Indie record stores have closed in the US in the last decade. “I Need That Record! The Death (or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store” by guerrilla filmmaker Brendan Toller features interviews with Thurston Moore, Ian MacKaye, Noam Chomksy, Mike Watt, Lenny Kaye and others. The film will be offered be offered exclusively via indie record stores for 90 days starting on Independent Record Store Day, this Saturday April 17th.

“An elegy for a vanishing subculture …a lively, bittersweet film that examines – with caustic humor, brutal candor, and, ultimately, great affection – why roughly 3,000 indie record stores have closed across the nation over the past decade…” – Johnathan Perry, Boston Globe

Keep in touch with America’s premier punk rock record store Trash American Style (in exile) at their MySpaceship.

Sorry it’s been slow blog lately. A casual look around reveals that most others are even lazier. Anyway. Been very busy getting a record out to press, a 2011 calendar started and getting a front yard garden put in. More on all that in the coming weeks and months.

In the meanwhile here’s the things I’ve found super interesting and want to share.

Many years ago, Alex Jordan Jr., in an inspired case of Frank Lloyd Wright envy, created the astounding mid-west tourist attraction, the House on the Rock. A few years later, acclaimed comic book writer Neil Gaiman created the astounding, and much recommended novel American Gods, which features a pivotal scene in the House on The Rock. On October 29th and 30th, you can join Neil Gaiman and other American Gods fans for literary panels, talks, presentations, a limited number of chances to ride the World’s Largest Carousel, and a costume party focused on all things American Gods. If you can’t make that, but love the book and own a camera, you can join my flickr group, American Gods House. The group description is highly entertaining.

I don’t know how I missed this for so long, but John Bergin has taken his classic self-published From Inside to the screen. Very much worth a look.

150 years ago – April 9, 1860: Phonoautogram made the oldest known human sound recording “Au Clair de la Lune.”

After a year of silence, Schenectady media icon Ed Dague is back in the blogsphere. Oh yeah, baby!

Paul Rapp calmly and sanely defuses the hysteria over the FCC/Comcast ruling.

Help save BBC 6Music! Go get “Joy Division Oven Gloves” by Half Man Half Biscuit.

DJ Shadow launches Shadow Radio: Tune In NOW!!

DJShadow.com is up for a Webby Award for Best Celebrity/Fan website for 2010. Go vote now. See Wow Cool’s feature on the website.

Salvador Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo? Who knew? Steven Heller says it, it must be true.

This comic strip about Tesla by Kate Beaton is wonderful.

About the most insane musical moment on Saturday Night Live ever. This may top the Beastie Boys and Elvis Costello doing “Radio, Radio” or Natalie Portman’s rap. Punk.

I was sent a link to iO9’s write-up of Alex Cox’s recent Non-Sequel to his classic Repo Man film today by my nickname: Rebel cohort Michael Keegan. It was too early in the day to absorb. This was the first I had heard of any such sort of venture. I sort of peeked at it a couple of times. I sent it to someone else. Her response was “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!” Which seems to be the general reaction. I’m gonna say that’s a good thing. I want to see this movie.

Here’s the trailer:

Alex Cox has a blog. He talks a bit about the development and making of Repo Chick, as well as his repo turf war with Universal.

American TV and movies have pretty much always sucked at getting punk right. This and an episode of Quincy tend be remembered as classic quotable examples of this from a certain era. As a side note, my brother had the nickname “After School Special” in high school. He wasn’t particularly punk. Now you can watch the whole thing online. (found a version with somewhat better sound) Share and enjoy.

After School Special page on Wikipedia

Thanks to C. Adam O’Toole for pointing this one out.

Slightly more mystifying is this t-shirt that is part of Shaun White’s (Olympic gold medalist snowboarder, sponsored by Target since 2002) fashion line. It sparked a small argument when I wondered why a Mat Brinkman T-Shirt was on sale at Target; which was quickly countered by ‘who the hell is that?, it’s Shaun White’. To which I replied ‘who the hell is that’. So there you go. It might be slightly more interesting if Shaun White did art like this than if it was Mat Brinkman, some other Fort Thunder related person, or someone unknown doing that style.

And now the punchline

While trying to find a usable photo of the Pink Punk Cosmo for this post I discovered that TGI Friday’s have been using the song Hayseed Rock by Tight Bro’s From Way Back When off their 2001 Kill Rock Stars LP Runnin’ Thru My Bones as their website theme-song since at least May, 2009. It’s still up there. Apparently the song also featured in a TGIF TV commercial that I’ve been unable to find a copy of on the interwebs. I’ve put the word out on the tweetsphere and friendspace and expect to provide some background on this amazing collision in the future.

By far the worst offender in this later category is the Noah’s/Einstein chain with 600 bagelries in 36 states. It was at one of their Noah’s located in San Jose California that I found myself staring at their dodgy subway platform decor and began to wonder about these things. I then made another discovery. The framed posters of New York City that hang on their walls were riddled with blatant inaccuracies. Wrong Dates, wrong places, wrong cities… How could this be? Thousands of these posters must have been sold all over the world! Most to dubious bagel shops and pizzerias no doubt.

It all starts with a cuckoo clock. It’s a fitting tribute to the director of F for Fake, master liar Orson Welles, who famously remarked in the film The 3rd Man, “in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” It’s a small lie apparently handed down from Mark Twain, and it has no real bearing on his central argument. Anyway, the Third Man was released in the US in early 1950, debuting in New York on the eve of my father’s 14th birthday on February 2. So, we have a very popular, somewhat muddy image, depicting Times Square on a cold and wet day in early 1950, forever marked as being 1942-either days or months after the US had entered the war-but clearly showing a sign for a film made seven years later that depicts the events of post-World War Two Vienna. And it hangs in eateries, homes, dorms and undoubtedly countless net cafes around the world. Is there no justice? No Peace? No truth? What does this all mean? Why the fuck do I even care? How could something so wrong continue unchallenged? Call your Senator, call Amway for Christ sakes, something must be done!

I found out I was not alone in my discovery, a couple of other blogger types noticed it too… but the funny part was, all dated the photo to the year of the Third Man’s initial release in 1949, even though it had not been shown in the US yet. Eat it nerd! I have outdone thee! Proudly representing from the über geeky South Bay, this is Marc A signing off (and I could give a crap about Noah’s crap-ass decor, WTF with this whipped cream cheese?).

Other poster call outs: The Spirit of Radio | Movie Poop Shoot | Laredo Morning Times (PDF)

Buy the damn poster

The Third Man on the IMDB

My mother, Roberta Juracka, one of the longest working women in American television, drawn by a young me. Found in a bizarre Catholic baby book at my late grandmother’s house. No clear indication on my final status as a soldier of christ. (picture after the jump!)

I Got Soul, But I’m Not A Soldier

Proof for any non-believers that need it that Christianity is (A) Science Fiction and (B) Child Abuse. But, a lovely drawing anyway. In my declining years when I succumb to a belief in such nonsense, I can pretty much guarantee it’ll be an afterlife containing Daleks, Rose Tyler and a cackling John Simm.

This is, of course, also true for artists, makers, crafters, and all other manner of geek, electronic whiz, computer genius, hacker, basement and garage tinkerer and eccentric; but, I’ve found that it is the music connection that really resonates (sorry, pun) with people, and has brought in the most luscious booty. Most recent example – pictured above – my aunt-in-law Joan had accumulated a whole bag of wall warts that did not match anything she actually uses. So they were donated to me. When I saw the wealth of 9-volt adapters and the venerable Archer universal, I nearly wept with joy (if you are a musician, especially a guitarist, this makes perfect sense to you and you share in my joy as part of that universal brotherhood. Let no more be spoken).

My favorite example of this was when I was at a friend of a friend’s farm in upstate New York a few years ago, and he was giving us the grand tour… we stop in a corner of his garage and he hands me a Garden Weasel. “You’re a musician, right? This has got a real cool sound, I’m sure you can use it” No joke, that thing sounds awesome. Fly the freak flag.

Check out the coolest broadsheet in the northeast! Phantom Brain Exchange Paper Program – Free! Online! Features a couple illustrations by teh yrs truly. To get a physical copy, you need to make your way up to Turners Falls, MA. The next one is March 25, 2009. Montague Phantom Brain Exchange main page.

Bow Wow Wow | C30 C60 C90 Go! | EMI 1980

This is the first in a series of what will hopefully be regular Friday posts of possibly forgotten items from the past that had a huge influence on the rise of punk/DIY culture, Wow Cool and me personally. This started out from noticing I was getting re-turned on to books, music, etc. that were very important at one point in life, but had become forgotten. In the future, the items will be run without additional commentary. Thanks to Erik from Xeroid Records for turning me on to this video. Share and Enjoy!

Andrew Gerhan is front and center in Time Out New York’s ‘I, New York’ feature in this week’s issue. Andrew twiddled knobs, arranged mics, rode the faders like Hopalong Cassidy, and even played a few odd parts for nickname: Rebel a few months back in sessions for the nearly completed New Rock Church of Fire LP. Now it seems he is flying the freak flag high and brandishing his sizzling whiskers in the little known neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn as a “freelance music engineer”. Andy discusses Thomas Pynchon, particle physics, coffee and more with the popular entertainment weekly. We wish Andrew well in this new dangerous land, but hope he returns one day to visit us in the Bay Area.

Found this strange pair taking root in my front yard. What the hell are they?

Romanesco… I’m far from the first to come across this crazy broccoli meets Benoit Mandelbrot thing, but I could not resist its charms–especially for 90 cents at the local farmers’ market. I’ll try not to let it sit for too long before I steam it up with some garlic. But… Wow. Just wow.

Sticker pack for the Stick Me Hard Show at Musma Gallery in Brussels. Hopefully it will make it there in time and not get stuck in customs forever for smelling like paint…

I’ve been drawing this bunny character for like 20 years and he rarely looks the same way twice…

Stick Me Hard! is an upcoming International Exhibition of handmade stickers, posters and stencyls at Musma Gallery in Belgium. Local sticker legend Mr. The Gritboy has pulled the stencils out of storage to make a go at contributing. This is just a small gallery of artifacts from one nights work. Pretty ghastly stuff. See some examples of the vastly superior work by the other contributors on Musma’s flickr page.

Grit Boy is back (up against the wall, you know, so to speak), and he prefers Session Beer.

Awesome garage sale score. 5 Bux. Just in time for the halloween light show! Sadly, I didn’t end up with a whole planetarium like I hoped.

Just the thing to celebrate making it through cold and flu season! 3 parts lemonade (homemade or Simply Lemonade brand) 2 parts elderberry tea, 1 or 2 parts vodka, lots of ice in a big glass, stir. Looks very pretty with the lemonade and the tea separated before you mix it. Looks like a watermellony gray color once you mix it and tastes a bit like it too. Goes great with chicken soup!

Up on flickr now, 55 shots of classic pinball machines and their insane graphics. Check it out!

I should mention, Frank is a man with a mission. All money received goes directly to disaster relief efforts. More info on the Bountiful Garden site.

So, yeah, two days later (and still photographing things like t-shirts and swords in the garage, so, therefore still all set up with the lights) I started washing and plucking and slicing and dicing and mixing and making all kinds of a mess. Unlike the peanuts from the other day, these taste as good as they look.

The raw ingredients

plucked and washed

Pico de Gallo

Guacamole

Hot out of the oven. Conveniently, I was already set up with the lights and everything to make it look so pretty.

As mentioned here recently, I have deep-sixed internal combustion and gone back to self-powered 2-wheel goodness. Here’s the hot ride in late night glory, purchased at an awesome bike swap held by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition. Behind it is a Chariot (half-price, same swap!) to drive my littlest to and from pre-school. Been getting busy tricking it out. The rear-view mirror, bottle holder and U-Lock went on today. Still trying to find a compatible rack for the back.

It would be nice to have more things like the bike swap for independent comic artists and publishers around here… instead so much energy gets directed at things like APE…

First time out with the new manual mower. Will pay for itself in about 6 weeks. We don’t really have much grass. There will be less soon. Food Not Lawns!

I figured I had to make a roast at least once. There are just certain things I’m not a fan of doing to foods. Slow Cooked Beef Brisket is probably one of those. It came out pretty good. Plenty of left overs, which was the whole goal of the project.

The kitchen compost bin, with detailed instructions. This gets transfered to a big Dalek-like thing in the back yard twice a week, with some leaves and grass clippings and such. Looking forward to having some actual compost in… uh, the Spring.

Projects waiting in the wings… sandbox, kombucha, recessed lights in the living room, accessorize mad pimp out the bicycle, um, I forgot what else…

In Denver now… Day three of the move. Be in Utah soon. Abandoned hangars… Bison… Antelope Island…

Finally got everything loaded and got on the road at 6pm today. In Paducah, Kentucky now… be in Kansas tomorrow night.

Yes, after 10 years of painful internal combustion agony that followed 5 years of bicycle bliss, I am finally declaring ‘one less car’ again and it feels so damn good.

Share the road, fucker!

The mug I purchased from the BBC shop at Bush House off the Strand while on our honeymoon has lost it’s latest battle with the Kenmore dish washer. The handle surrendered completely, and the hairline crack down the side has become inoperable. The Head of George Harrison weeps.

Across the river, mansion hill burns with the emerging scandal of now former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s indiscretions. In the historic district of downtown Troy an untarnished hero of the people is roasted for doing what was clearly the right thing at the right time. Steve Pierce is a saint. A champion of the empowering possibilities of media placed in the hand of the common man. He should be held in the same regard as other such far-thinkers as Rick Prelinger and Kevin Kelly. His most recent passion, The Sanctuary for Independent Media was callously shut down by the City of Troy, New York this week in a blatant flexing of cronyism.

Here’s Steve’s official statement from last night:

Hi-

Perhaps you’ve heard the news that the City of Troy, citing code violations, has shut down The Sanctuary for Independent Media effective immediately.

This happened the day after a top Troy official, who is also a Rensselaer County legislator and a constituent liaison for Senator Joseph Bruno, organized a protest condemning Wafaa Bilal’s work and our decision to present it on Monday night.

We have been working on our building since we first occupied it and throughout have been in close communication with the city about our plans, so this sudden closure-following the censorship of Wafaa’s work by RPI last week-came as quite a shock.

You can hear the phone call from the City of Troy at www.MediaSanctuary.org, along with a clip from Wafaa Bilal’s talk, and make up your own mind about the motivation behind the City’s action.

We have contacted the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and private practice attorneys for assistance on the First Amendment aspects of this situation.

This crisis has created an urgent need to raise funds for building improvements: if you can manage it, it would be greatly appreciated if you could make a secure online financial contribution at www.MediaSanctuary.org, or send a check payable to The Sanctuary for Independent Media to PO Box 35, Troy NY 12181.

Under the circumstances, the remaining three programs in our “Art, Freedom, Democracy” series are in jeopardy as is the rest of the Sanctuary season. We will let you know shortly whether our presentation of The Yes Men next Tuesday, March 18 will proceed as planned, and if so, where.

Many thanks for your support in the past; if you can offer further help in this moment of need, please let us know by emailing info@MediaSanctuary.org.

Hope to see you soon!

–Your Friends at The Sanctuary for Independent Media

Here is Wafaa Bilal’s videotaped statement on the incident:

Interview with Wafaa Bilal on We Make Money Not Art

Virtual Jihadi main page

Article on Wired

Wikipedia entry on Bilal

YouTube Channel with coverage of the event

Still on the fence? Cast your vote… would you waterboard a dog or this Iraqi?

George Tabb Benefit, Thursday March 13 at 10pm with Mike Watt + the Missingmen at Safari Sam’s, 5214 W. Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, CA, (323) 666-7267. Visit MySpace.com/HelpGeorgeTabb.

I have to admit to being way clueless. My apartment in Brooklyn is a scant 4 3/4 miles away from the World Trade Center, in a neighborhood heavily populated by firefighters, and apart from some vague sense that, ‘yeah, the air after 911 was probably pretty bad and I’m sure some people are a little sick’, I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought (given that I only live there part time and moved in over a year and a half after 911, I’d probably miss a little, but c’mon!). Randomly today I see a bulletin from Mike Watt in my rarely visited MySpaceship about the benefit show, and first I’m thinkin’, ‘I didn’t know George was sick’, I read a little and it’s ‘I didn’t know George lived in New York’ (somewhere in there is, ‘we both worked at MaximumRockNRoll and even though we met once or twice I dodn’t really know George’), and then I’m sucked into a new scary world.

Simple version: George lived downtown during 911 and shortly after that he got sick… and then he got very sick, and found out that not only was there not much help available for anything beyond a runny nose, but the possibility that a causal link existed was denied in the interest of homeland security. Read his whole story at MySpace.com/HelpGeorgeTabb. As always George dishes things up in a clear, direct and honest human voice. For more on the human wreckage caused by the attacks in the years since, see these pieces in CBS News, The Village Voice, and Discover Magazine.

Back in the nonreal world, you should also give a visit to George’s YouTube channel, which contains many fine installments from his punk TV joint Destroy Television.

Homemade dough, sauce and mozzarella. A pretty good Neapolitan. Food still is the best thing to eat when you’re hungry.

How? Why? In Knoxville, Tennessee?

I pretty much never ask for autographs. I asked Jack Kirby for his once. I absolutely never pose for pictures with celebs I meet. But this was Stephen Fry. The smartest man in Britain. And there he was in Knoxville. He graciously posed with us (It took two takes, maybe if we’d gone for three little boy and me might have looked better. This is seriously the worst photo of him ever), we gabbed a bit about his project of visiting all 50 states. I almost wished he was going somewhere next other than Savannah (he’d never been), so that I didn’t have to gush so much about how pretty it is. (It really is, and I felt for the presumably Knoxvillian folk he was dining with).

It’s no joke that Stephen Fry is smarter that the rest of us, and he has recently started doing a blog. You should read it. He seemed genuinely surprised that I even knew he did such a thing.

There’s a memorial gathering for Lance tonight in Austin, more info on his site. His MySpace page is still weirdly out there also. Say hi.

This was my neighbors lawn this morning. If anyone, I thought the guy two doors down who kept telling the trick-or-treaters to stay off his grass would be the one to get nailed. What must these guys have done that was so much worse? Maybe all it took was the hideous yellow SUV in their driveway (far to shocking to show here)… That was left wrapped in green cellophane.

Lately, tho, I’ve become obsessed with finding really good pizza. In Brooklyn I’m a little spoiled for this… I’ve waited the many long minutes (sometimes more than an hour) for a pie at Grimaldi’s (by the Brooklyn Bridge) or Totonno’s (Coney Island). If you need to ask… yes, it is worth it. I haven’t actually been inside Di Fara yet to order a pie, but I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait.

One great find, pretty late at night, on the long drive up to Brooklyn was a little place called Luigi’s in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Harrisonburg is about half way between Knoxville and Brooklyn, but if you’re driving that long ribbon of highway, the I-81, it’s a good place to hit. Fine beer selection, excellent pizza, friendly staff and patrons. Downtown Harrisonburg was disturbingly similar to my home town of Schenectady, New York. A place that had been abandoned by the southern migration of industrialization some time in the 60s or 70s. I got involved in a totally out-of-left field discussion while there about Madonna’s legal ties upon the Bad Brains… Apparently (some super-light Google research revealed) she did actually own their name at one time. I dunno. I really don’t care. I just know that beer and pizza never tasted so good before catching a few Z’s before the next day’s (what proved to be excessively hellish) drive.

A couple of weeks later, I’m fleeing the Hartford/Springfield Airport (sorry… Bradley), headed for the Mohegan Sun Casino for another Karate tournament. Too hungry to cope in the rental, I randomly pulled off of CT Rte. 2 into the outskirts of Glastonbury, Conneticut. There were no music festivals, but there was a great tag sale (more on that in later posts), and a tip to try out Giovanni’s Brick Oven Pizzeria… which we did, and it was well worth the trip.

A footnote or aside… There is a web site called Slice, that is for the serious pizza hound, that has been a pretty good guide in my search for some good pie. I could never rise to the level of their stringent review criteria… and certainly won’t here… but if you are mad for that perfect slice, you might want to see them for guidance.

In Closing. There is good food, it’s usually not in the retailtainment hubs that have polluted this country. They are off to the side, in strange locals you might not normally visit. Restauranteering is possibly second only to bookselling for eccentric professions of the most benefit to the greater society, and it really is worth your extra effort to seek out and support such establishments.