Is it me...

or does Elmo have a cameltoe?

Creepy!

I would like to give you the whole world for free....

...so here you go. Just fill this out.

Magnetic Ribbons On Your SUV

Fantastic video from The Asylum Street Spankers from Austin, TX. It should be said that several members of this band are former members of the military, and that this song is pretty heartfelt, despite the obvious comedy.

That being said, it's some pretty great comedy!

The end of the world

is clearly explained here.

Papa don't take no mess!

Thanks to my brother for sending this along...

James Brown blowing the doors offa Soul Train in 1974! Check out the way James gets the band to slam into "My Thang" after working out "Papa Don't Take No Mess"! MAN! I wish they still made bands that could do this...

Free foodie book alert!

Surely you know who Anthony Bourdain is, right?

If you're any kind of self-respecting foodie, you know that he's the guy who's willing to go to places you can't go and eat the food you would never think of eating.

But check this out!

You can get his new book "The Nasty Bits" for free right here!

The only catch is that you can't live in California. Boy, how many times has that been the thing that denied us the good life. Am I right, people?

And the genius grant goes to....

Look, nobody was more surprised than me when John Zorn won one of this year's MacArthur Foundation Genius Grants. Zorn has long been a personal music hero for me, so, as a result, I completely expected him to toil away in obscurity forever.

Well, ok. One person may have been more surprised.

That person would be Stephen Colbert, who would like to know why he did not win one.



OK, to be fair, John Zorn has put out a LOT of really listenable music, and his constant output of music is one of the most incredible things that exists in modern music.

Here! Check out his band Masada, who are like a klezmer band if Ornette Coleman played klezmer. This stuff is truly awesome.



The musicians in the band for this show were:
John Zorn - alto saxophone
Marc Ribot - guitar
Trevor Dunn - bass
Jamie Saft - keys
Kenny Wollesen - drums
Cyro Baptista - percussion

Genius!

(Many thanks to Toy DeIorio for catching the typo on this post, as well as helping me get started blogging in the first place. Her genius grant is already in the mail.)

About that chicken...

Boy, the response about the Subservient Chicken has been interesting, what with people thinking that it might possibly be a real person who is just sitting around waiting for you to tell him what to do.

Fortunately, the world's most handy website Snopes.com (most well-known for helping to get your Aunt Nellie to stop bugging you about how NPR is closing tomorrow, or how Bill Gates will send you a million dollars if you send email - HE WILL NOT, FOR CHRIST'S SAKE - PLEASE, PEOPLE, JUST STOP SENDING THIS EMAIL! LET IT GO!!)

Quoting Snopes:

Input a suggestion into the box, and then wait to see if the chicken (or person in a chicken suit) will cooperate. Start off by typing "riverdance" or "throw pillows" and then let your imagination run wild. There are a lot of things the chicken won't do (and that is probably a good thing), but SubservientChicken.com is a fun distraction.
The garter-clad subservient chicken can be prompted to do one's bidding in response to a variety of keywords. Some of the more amusing entries to try are:

* die
* strip
* dance
* lay egg
* sing
* eat
* elephant
* read
* fly
* clean room
* Michael Jackson dance moves such as "moonwalk"
* Riverdance
* The "elephant"
* Lay egg
* Walk Like an Egyptian
* Yoga
* Rage
* Spank
* Taco Bell
* Fight
* Read a book from his bookcase.

When told to perform sex acts, take off his mask, or do anything the Subservient Chicken considers offensive, the chicken walks up to the camera and shakes a scolding chicken finger in disappointment. When told to eat food from rival fast food chain McDonald's, he approaches the camera and places his finger down his throat, while when told to eat Burger King he has a more positive response. The chicken responds to the command "smoke crack" by smoking, but when told to "smoke a bong" he waggles his finger scoldingly.

Actually, the chicken has a repertoire of about 300 different actions, each triggered by the entry of one of the combinations of nouns, verbs and other parts of speech programmed into its "vocabulary." A complete list of trigger words and the clips they invoke has already been posted to the Internet, although it appears the clips can no longer be viewed directly from external web links. (That is, if you want to see the chicken jump, you have to go to subservientchicken.com and enter the command "jump" — if you try to go directly to the URL for the "jump" clip, all you'll see is the chicken waving an accusatory finger at you.) A Subservient Chicken Request List has also been established to chronicle the actions the chicken will or will not perform.


So there you have it. No chickens were harmed in the making of this website. People, however, were irreparably damaged.

Anybody want free coffee?

Hurry. Today only.

I know my Muppet obsession is getting out of hand but...

this is too fun to pass up.

I know that this is getting weird...

...but I know what I'm going to be for Halloween.

Deep down....

...aren't we all subservient chickens?

Suddenly...........Beeker!

Let's all sing along!

This is solely for my own personal entertainment...

As I now know what to yell when something goes wrong....

Have you heard the new Paris Hilton album?

Of course not, right?

That's ok, however, because this review really tells you all you need to know.

You bring me closer to Spock

WOW.

This is stunning. And disturbing. Disturbingly stunning. Stunningly disturbing.

The Star Trek version of Nine Inch Nails "Closer"

Forgive me

Dammit, I don't care what you think. I think Roberto Benigni is a freakin genius.

The other night, I watched this section again from Night On Earth, directed by one of my all-time favorite directors, Jim Jarmusch, and man! I just loved it.

Watch both of these and tell me you don't love this guy. The only thing you need to know is Roberto is a taxi driver and he's just picked up a priest with a heart condition.

Hilarity ensues.

Reasons to drive (or not) in Russia

Who are the bad drivers of Europe? You might say any of them boast some pretty incredible bad driving, but the winners by a landslide are the Russians.

Why, you ask?

According to Mosnews, they're all drunk and having sex. That's right, while driving!

About 25 percent of Russians have had sex while driving, a poll released by KRC Research and Goodyear revealed. And this is just one of the things that make them the worst drivers in Europe.

According to the research, Russians do not use seatbelts, break speed-limits, drive through red lights, drive drunk and have sex while driving much more often than other Europeans do.

The odd thing is they don’t think all this is bad.

According to the poll, 36 percent of Russian drivers regularly cross speed limits. This is the highest rate in Europe, the Delovoi Peterburg newspaper reported. Russians talk on the cell phone while driving more often than drivers in the other 14 European countries polled. About 30 percent of those polled in Russia have driven drunk before.

Russians also do not pay enough attention to their physical condition when they are going to take the wheel. Only 9 percent of those polled in Europe will drive if they don’t feel good in comparison with 23 percent of Russians.

23 percent of drivers in Russia scold others while driving, and another 23 percent can break in centre strip to surpass the other cars. And finally, over 60 percent of those polled in Russia do not check the condition of their tires.

Turn around..... no, seriously, turn around, you're under arrest for singing.

As you may remember, I love the news, especially when it goes completely over the edge. This is one of those stories that is just so insane, it could only be true.

Awesomely, awesomely true.

UPI is reporting this story about 80's one-hit-wonder Bonnie Tyler who frightened a group of Belgians when she sang an a cappella version of her hit "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" on an Air France flight in honor of the captain who was retiring.

All right, fine, don't believe me! I'll let UPI tell you the story then!

Passengers on a flight from France to Mauritius have filed suit against Air France after musician Bonnie Tyler performed a song at the request of the co-pilot.

The passengers, believed to be Belgian, complained to the airline after the Welsh singer performed part of her 1983 hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at the request of the co-pilot, who retired after the flight, The Mail on Sunday reported.

"I was asleep in First Class. The stewardess came and said the co-pilot was retiring. And they asked me would I sing to him. They were having a bit of a party," Tyler said.

The complaining passengers reportedly claimed they were traumatized by the experience and had feared for their safety during the celebration. The complaint eventually escalated into a legal dispute.

An Air France official said: "The claim against Air France, which it completely rejects, is that the celebrations got more and more unruly and came to a climax when Bonnie sang.

"Air France is saying that any suggestion there was anything more than a few slaps on the back for the co-pilot is nonsense, and it completely rejects the claims that the passengers were at any sort of risk."


You can sue for being traumatized by Bonnie Tyler? Jesus, why didn't somebody tell me this back in 1983?!

Burning Man? That's Barbie burning there, my friend.

So! Didja go to Burning Man?

No?

You must have a job.

Nevertheless, Jet Set Lara (who has a job like you would not believe, my friends) does the dirty work and comes up with quite a find:



Oh it's bad all right...



Some little girl gonna be really mad when she get home from school and finds all her dolls gone, and her stash of ecstacy has been totally raided.

Go here to get the full story...

OK go stop your record label from screwing up your career

We've spoken of our good friends from Chicago, OK Go before, and their fascinating low-budget videos of them dancing like they've got nothing to lose.

And, of course, with the crazy internet fascination for the dancing, you would think that the band's career would be all peaches and cream, with record sales going through the roof.

Oh ho ho! You would be wrong, my friend. A fascinating article in today's Billboard puts an actual timeline to the entire OK Go phenomenon, and with just a little tiny bit of reading between the lines, one can see exactly how close their label, Capitol Records, came to ruining the band's career.

Looking at it objectively, it's just another example of why the music business is failing hard and fast. It is, quite simply, the inability (based in fear) to capitalize on new technology to further artistic endeavors. That whole mp3 problem? If the labels had jumped on that when it was first developing, things would be booming. Now, the only people making money in the music business is Apple Computers, and they don't even have a label.

The Ok Go story is truly unbelievable though, because it shows over and over again that the label, rather than capitalizing on word-of-mouth from the band's own homemade videos on YouTube, instead continues to try the stale marketing techniques of traditional routes - namely, work a song to a specific venue with appropriate marketing and hope for the best. Ignore fan reaction and what the public is responding to.

Looking at it so clearly spelled out, it's astonishing.

The most astounding part is revealed when it's shown that despite millions of people viewing the band's popular video "A Million Ways" on the internet, Capitol continues to push a different song entirely to radio, and never even submits "A Million Ways" video to MTV or VH1.

It's like somebody should write a memo to Capitol that's like: ATTENTION CAPITOL RECORDS! IF YOU HAVE A MILLION PEOPLE WATCHING A VIDEO OF A CERTAIN SONG, THEN THAT IS THE SONG THAT YOU SHOULD BE PROMOTING!

Thank god OK Go hung in there, and now it appears that MTV will play the crap out of their new video "Here It Goes Again", despite the best efforts of Capitol to keep it from being released. And it should get the crap played out of it, it's a great video!

But, damn, if somebody has not learned by now from these videos that it is NOT about the money spent, but about the buzz that true innovation creates, then I do not understand how the music business is gonna make it to the end of the year, much less into the future.

Me? Seriously?

Well, ya know, no one is more shocked than me, but I have just received word that I have been nominated for 2 Jeff Awards, which is Chicago's theatre award.

One for my sound design of Hecuba at Chicago Shakespeare, and another for my original incidental music for Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 at Chicago Shakespeare.

I know what you're thinking. Thank god for Chicago Shakespeare, right?

Anyway, very exciting. Stay tuned for Nov. 6 when the awards are handed out, although probably not to me.

It's just nice to be nominated. I swear!

Tell Me Do You Miss Me

Watched this really interesting movie tonight on the plane back to LA. I dunno what it is lately, but I seem to keep watching these documentaries about why rock bands break up. There's been a real slew of them lately! From the movie about Refused to the new DVD about the end of the Minutemen (review coming soon), there just seems to be a lot of reflection on what happened to all the great bands.

Anyway, so now there is this movie about the end of Luna, and interestingly enough, it's directed by a guy that I went to school with named Matthew Buzzell. I haven't seen him literally since college, but he was an extremely nice guy, and in my last conversation with him way back when, he told me that he was gonna be roommates with this guy named Sean Eden, who had just gotten a job as the lead guitarist of Luna. That was a long time ago, people.

So the movie was pretty interesting and kinda sad. See, here's the thing. I played in a rock band for a long time with my best friends in the world. It was a great situation. Eventually, the band broke up. Why? Well, for one thing, we all were ready to move on to other things. Each of us had a different direction that was pulling us away, and it wasn't a bad thing, it's just what was meant to be. We're all still great friends to this day, which, quite honestly, if you're in a band with someone for 12 years and at the end of all that, you're still great friends? That's the greatest accomplishment any band can boast of, in my opinion. Why is that?

Well, that brings us to the second reason why my band (and Luna) broke up. It's really hard fucking work being in a band. It sounds like it's gonna be all orgy-under-the-stage-while-one-handed-drummer-does-his-20-minute-solo, but it is SO not like that. It's work. It's travel. It's logistics and disappointments and dashed expectations for a large portion of the time. And, most importantly,a good percentage of it is really dull. Which is kinda what this movie shows.

The scene where the airline loses all the bands' merchandise that the proceeds of were gonna fund the whole tour? Totally happened to us. The awesome new club that isn't so awesome? Been there. Twice. It's not glamourous. It's not unglamourous. It's just another day of struggling up the mountain. I thought Matthew did a terrific job with the film in sort of encapsulating what their lives are like on tour.

Now, was Luna the best band ever? No. They're fine. They're kinda quiet and interesting and different. I never found myself thinking "Wow, this band is the future." They were pretty good. But the movie does two great things: the first is that it's gives you the chance to appreciate pretty good in its proper context, and the second is that you get to understand why pretty good isn't enough anymore.

In the end, it's just time to move on.

Someone I know is very grouchy...

and this is my last hope.

God help us all, I'm back!

OK, I know, it's been a while, but I had a good excuse. Several, actually. Seriously, thanks to everyone who said nice stuff about the birth, I really appreciate it. I promise that this blog will not devolve into a baby album. Honest.

Anyway, I'm back on. I have to do that thing where I'm simultaneously in NYC, Chicago, and LA in the next 48 hours. But dammit, I'm ready to blog. I got a lot of stuff backlogged in my brain.

SO! As you will remember, the rules are I fill in what days I missed, so scroll down and start checking out the stuff as I fill em in. They will all get made up, that's just how obsessive I am.

Have fun!

Uh....you first.

Exactly how bored are you?

See, this right here is why I love the internet.

So Amazon.com started selling food, right? It's apparently going well. And of course, as we all know, Amazon allows people to review all of their products and then post a review along with the product. Which is helpful if you're buying a book or something. But what if you're buying something like a gallon of milk? A gallon of milk is a gallon of milk, right? Who would review something like that?

Apparently, 745 wisenheimers have, and man, let me tell you, it is some of the funniest stuff I have seen in a long time. It's either a brilliant guerilla art exhibit or a revolution of the single most bored people on the planet.

Or both.

You decide.

This is what your mom meant when she asked if you were sure about going into theatre for a living.

We've discussed this before, but damn! It is hard to run a small theatre company in this world.

"Come on" I hear you say. "My job is way harder than that."

Oh yeah?

Well, check out this email I just got from the Elephant Asylum Theatre in Los Angeles. I did a show once in this theatre a while ago and while I do not know them well, this tale of woe did actually made me pay attention.

Someone crashed into the Santa Monica/Lillian Corner of our theatre last night. They broke completely through the wall and into the Elephant Lab theatre. They then LEFT. No note. No business card taped to the crumbled wall. Nothing.

And you think it ends there? No. No my friends. Someone then came into the theatre and STOLE 3 chopsaws, a table saw and our sound equipment out of the booth.

You know, at some point, after 7 years in this building, you would THINK that the tranny hookers, or Big Lou the crack head would have fended off the bad guys.

All joking aside, thank god no one was on that stage late at night building a set. We have a load in for a play called Two In a Room produced by Caroline Gordan Elliot loading in THURSDAY. Amid all the Insurance issues, the building super, and us crying over our stolen goods- a play must go on!

So that being said, if our sad tale inspires you at all, and you possibly have an unwanted chop saw, or such laying around... let us know.

Otherwise, you could support us by coming to see the Smash Hit 7 Redneck Cheerleaders at the Elephant Asylum Theatre. We just extended through September 30th. Thurs-Saturdays (One Sunday performance left this weekend). You can get tickets at plays411.com or through Goldstar and LA Stage Alliance. And just think, not only will you get to see one of the funniest shows in Hollywood (about Hollywood theatre) but you will also get to gawk at the huge hole in the side of our building.

Thanks
The Elephant Theatre Company

Now, like I said, I don't know these people, I can't vouch for this show, I offer no guarantees. But the show is going on while they got a freakin' hole in the side of their building!

That's hardcore.