Hey, so have you seen this Reggie Watts guy?

He's pretty freakin amazing. Check out this entirely improv'd beatbox jam with nothing more than a phrase sampler and a good memory.



Check out Reggie Watts website here.

My celebrity weekend, part 2

So I get back to LA late Saturday night, and the next day, my wife Jamie Pachino was receiving an award called the Scientists, Technologists, and Artists Generating Exploration (STAGE) award, sponsored by UC Santa Barbara's Professional Artists Lab and the California NanoSystems Institute. No, I'm not making this up!

It was for her play called Splitting Infinity, and the ceremony included an award presentation by Nobel Laureate David Gross (2004, physics) and a fantastic reading of the play by a star-studded cast. Look, I swear I'm not making this up. Here, go here and read this press release for yourself.

Who are these stars, you say? Well, there was Sharon Lawrence, who you know as Andy's wife on "NYPD Blue", Michael Cassidy, who played Zach Stevens on "The O.C.", and Saul Rubinek, who has literally been in every movie ever.

The cast was uniformly excellent, as well as very nice people, and it was a really lovely afternoon. Nancy Kawalek was the director, and man, she did a great job of putting up a reading in one day. It had like projections and lighting cues, it was definitely the most produced reading of a play that I had ever seen.

Now, because I've composed music for this show twice in the past, Nancy asked me if they could use my music for the reading and, of course I said yes. It worked out great and I was glad to contribute to the night.

So, afterwards, I'm chatting with people and just generally being proud of my wife, when someone comes up to me and says "Lindsay, there's someone who wants to meet you. He loved the music in the play."

Well, hey, great! Sure, I'll meet this person. So I walk over and the person who's introducing me says "Lindsay, this is Howard Hesseman."



Well, you coulda knocked me over with a feather!

And he says, "Hey, man, I loved your music! I liked the play a lot but I really loved your music!"

I was like "WOW! Thanks!", and inside my head, I'm thinking "Wow! Dr. Johnny Fever likes my music!" I mean, you have to understand, I NEVER missed "WKRP In Cincinnati" when I was a kid. I was a huge fan! And now he's telling me he's a fan of me!

He said "Hey, so what is that anyway? It's like this crazy cosmic klezmer music or something."

And, you know, I never thought about it, but he's completely right, that's exactly what it is.

But I'm just totally starstruck, and I just say "Um. Yeah! That's...uh...that's what it is."

"Well, can't wait to hear more of what you've got sometime soon." And with that, he left.

I was so tongue-tied, I didn't really say anything, but I have to tell you it made my night. Hopefully, I will see him again someday, but if I don't, I'll just have to pretend that Dr. Fever is spinning one of my records late at night on WKRP.

My celebrity weekend, part 1

Well, it started on Friday night around 11pm. I had to fly back from Los Angeles to Chicago for a meeting on Saturday morning, and for these kinds of things, I've developed kind of a routine, which is:

- fly overnight and get 2-3 hours of sleep on the plane
- get into wherever I'm going at 5am (or so)
- go to wherever I'm staying (in this case, my apartment in Chicago) and get another 3 hours sleep
- go to the meeting, recording session, runthrough, etc.
- fly back on the last flight of the night, and then be back in Los Angeles by midnight or so.

Piece of cake, right? I do this about once a week.

Now, as you can imagine, I've gotten very good at working the upgrades so that I can fly in First Class as much as humanly possible. It can make a huge difference in how these trips go, and I'm dedicated about making it happen. Now, most of the time, my airline of choice is United, but because American is running a special at the moment (25,000 bonus miles if I make 3 trips into O'Hare before Feb 28!), I'm on American.

American's rules about upgrading a little weird, compared to most other airlines, so you gotta pay close attention if you're gonna try it. With most airlines, you put in the request in advance and if there's room, they confirm it. If there's not, then they put you on the list, which means that when you're at the gate, if First Class isn't full, then they move you up into an empty seat. On American, however, if you don't get confirmed into First Class, you have to wait til you get to the airport and then ask to put yourself on the list AGAIN for the empty seats. Then the priority of who gets what is based on how early you showed up at the airport. It's a totally wack system, if you ask me, and if I hadn't asked about it at the gate, I would have missed my chance to move into First altogether.

However, I'm not the only one who was confused by this rule! I'm standing at the counter waiting on my upgrade to be called, and there's a tall stocky man standing beside me trying to get the gate agent's attention while she is checking out the upgrade list.

The conversation went like this:

Tall Stocky Guy (TSG): "Excuse me, miss, I wanted to see if..."

Gate Agent (GA): (not looking up) "Just one moment, sir."

TSG: "I just wanted to make sure..."

GA: (still not looking up) "Just a moment, sir. I need to call these upgrades out."

TSG: "Yes, I know that and I wanted to get..."

GA: (absolutely still not looking up while picking up the PA microphone) "I'll be right with you, sir. I just need to announce these upgrades."

TSG: "Wait, please..."

GA: (over the PA system) "MIKE DITKA. PASSENGER MIKE DITKA, WOULD YOU PLEASE STEP UP TO THE COUNTER?"

The entire terminal breaks into applause as TSG, a.k.a Mike Ditka throws his hands up into the air and then bangs them on the counter.

Then GA looks at Mike with a completely straight face and says "Yes, sir, how can I help you?"



Iron Mike's trouble's were not over, however. Mike had been given the illustrious seat 5B in First, which is the back seat on the aisle, and of course, they seat everyone in First Class first, which means that now Mike is in his seat, and the entire population of Economy (a totally full flight) would be filing past him as if he was the king and they were his subjects. Which, let's face it, they were. I mean, this is a flight bound to Chicago, and the Bears are one week away from their first Super Bowl appearance in 20 years, which was with Iron Mike.

There was a moment where I thought maybe I should ask if he wants to trade seats with me, who was living in anonymity in 6F, the back window seat. But before I could ask, he quickly pretended to be asleep, as Economy started to board. Honestly, I can't blame him. No less than 15 people walked by, whispering to their friend "Wake him up! It's Ditka!", but thankfully nobody did.

I have to say the biggest surprise about seeing the man in person is that he's much taller than I thought he was. I'm so used to seeing him on TV, being dwarfed by his players, that I was genuinely surprised to see that Ditka is, in fact, taller than me. Turns out those football players are a LOT taller than me, which is probably the reason that I do not play football. Well, that, and the fact that I don't really follow football.

However, I'm not as clueless as my good friend Alexandra Billings, with whom I was on the phone when all this was happening.

Me: "Alex, I'm on the plane with Mike Ditka!"

Alex: "That's fantastic, sweetie! How exciting! Now, is he the baseball guy?"

This all being said, the flight was very uneventful, and Ditka managed to get off the plane in Chicago without too much hubbub. There was an American representative waiting for Ditka on the jetbridge, and he quickly escorted him to a motorized cart to drive him through the terminal. (Nice service! Even Pierce Brosnan didn't get this, although he stole my seat, which is a whole other story.)

As he was getting into the cart, I said "Good luck next Sunday, coach!", to which he said "Thanks, kid." and then sped away into the pre-dawn darkness of Terminal 3. Bleary-eyed, I was kicking myself for not asking for a ride with him. Not so much because I was hoping for quality time with the guy, but because it was 5am and I was tired!

Well, you win some, you lose some. We'll see next Sunday.

Go here to see part 2.

I miss disco.

Especially disco in the forest.



You miss it too now, don't you?

Top Chef Super Spoiler Alert!

OH. MY. GOD.

Eater LA claims it knows who the winning chef is for Top Chef.

MUST. RESIST. URGE. TO. CLICK. HERE!

(psst. scroll down. more new posts below. pass it on.)

Pasta for you, pasta for them.

All right, this is a nice thing here, with benefits for everybody involved.

Barilla is offering a free download of a very nice 35 page pasta cookbook, with recipes by some professional chefs such as Mario Batali as well as some unlikely sources such as Pierce Brosnan, Harrison Ford and Kristin Davis.

Now the cool part is that for the first 100,000 downloads of the cookbook, Barilla will donate 1 dollar per download to America's Second Harvest, a non-profit charity that supplements food banks for the poor across the country. Nice, huh?

Click here to download the book.

Now, whether these recipes are good or not, I have no idea. I have a hard time imagining some of these stars ever EATING pasta, much less having their favorite recipes.

Oh yeah, Sela Ward is definitely pounding back lasagna on a regular basis, I'm so sure.

It's lonely at the top...

I freakin LOVE the show "Top Chef" on Bravo. No, seriously. I LOVE IT. I'M TOTALLY HOOKED ON IT. If you are not watching it, drop everything and start watching the ten thousand reruns on Bravo right now.

If you're following the show, then you know that Marcel and Ilan are the finalists, and that Marcel is HATED by everyone else on the show. Now, the guy is obnoxious, I will admit that, but the way that people are demonizing him on the show is completely ridiculous. He's just a guy with some poor social skills, that's all. If you think that's so awful, you should spend a couple of weeks with me. I deal with these kinds of people a lot, and they're not bad people, they just don't express themselves very well.

However, no one was more stunned than me that Sam was voted off the show. Sam rocked that show week in and week out. But the judges made their decision and that's how it goes.

But people are just getting fucking crazy now with this whole thing. There's a new report in the news that Marcel was attacked in a restaurant by a woman with a bottle!

"This girl came up to me at a nightclub and asked me if I was Marcel from Top Chef," the 26-year-old cook told the Las Vegas Weekly in a story published in last Thursday's edition of the alternative newspaper. "The next thing I knew, this bottle struck me, and my friends had to rush me to the hospital. I needed 30 stitches."

The unknown assailant was apparently upset with Vigneron's Top Chef 2 behavior, which many of the show's other contestants have described as "selfish" and "arrogant." Vigneron denies both characterizations.

"I don't think I am [arrogant]. I believe in my food, and my abilities, and seriously, if you don't have that belief, how far are you going to make it in the competition? But I never went out of my way to slam anybody else, which I think would be an arrogant thing to do," Vigneron told Las Vegas Weekly. "[I] offered help to the other chefs whenever I could, so I find that [selfish] accusation puzzling."

Uh, well, it's not that puzzling, dude. You are definitely annoying. But, people, please! Hitting people on the head with a bottle is not gonna solve anything.

Especially if it's off camera.

There are so many...

Do you ever think to yourself "Gee, there are so many conservative idiots out there. I wish there was a way to narrow it down to just the top 10 of the week so that I would know who was being especially stupid this week."



Tada! Democratic Underground actually makes a list every week! Go here to check it out.

Oh my god, I have so been there part 2

Click here to see part 1.

How to scare the crap out of people in an airport.

Click here when you can't find a seat in the terminal.

Guaranteed!

Ted Nugent is gay? By gay, do you mean "wears something that perhaps he shouldn't"?

Seriously? I'm gay?
How can I be gay when I have guitars for hands?


Dammit, I was all set to blog about this guy, and his list of bands that encourage homosexuality, and then my good friend Alexandra Billings beat me to it. Read this whole thing and let your jaw just drop in amazement.

Oy, and the video. Do not even get me started on this video, for crying out loud.

But I will repeat my comment about the list of "Gay Bands":

TED NUGENT IS ON THE LIST. TED FUCKING NUGENT! And next to his name, it says "loincloth", as in what he's wearing on the "Scream Dream" album!

OK, seriously. This man is not gay, this man is not straight.

If he truly finds Ted Nugent in a loincloth to be so tempting as to place him on this list, this man's sexual orientation truly belongs in its own individual category.

And that category is "Insane".

I love eggs!

OK.

Do yourself a favor.

Drink a half a bottle of cough syrup.

Then click on this.

Nice, huh?

Slayer on Jimmy Kimmel!

Well, it's quite a weekend for music in LA, what with the Kronos Quartet playing Clint Mansell's score from "Requiem For A Dream" on Friday, and the Bang On A Can All-Stars at UCLA on Saturday and Sunday. (If only I wasn't freezing my nuts off in Chicago!)

BUT! We all know what I wanna see! That's right! SLAYER! The gods of metal appeared last night on Jimmy Kimmel, live from a free concert in downtown Hollywood, and if anybody out there needs a transfusion of testosterone, you've come to the right place.

All right, I know...

You'd rather die than watch Bill O'Reilly's show. Me too.

HOWEVER! Stephen Colbert gives better than he gets from Papa Bear.

And you know that's saying something.

Even you saw O'Reilly on the Colbert Report, you definitely gotta watch round 2.

Ah, screw you.

Hang on, it's nothing personal! Click here to enter this contest and you'll get a free corkscrew.

Don't look at me like that! Like you don't need another corkscrew!

Borat for bunnies?

So were you surprised when Sasha Baron Cohen won a Golden Globe Award last night for "Borat"?

Imagine how'd you feel if the whole movie was done in 30 seconds by a cast of bunnies.

Warning! This link will ruin the whole movie of "Borat" if you have not yet seen it.

Well, "ruin" may be a strong word. If you don't know what "Borat" is about by now, then chances are good that this link will provide you with everything that you need to know.

What is rock and roll?

Apparently, THIS is rock and roll.

Busted!

Turns out that to get a Nickelback, one must employ the tools of counterfeiting.

Hmm, something fishy here....

Gee, wasn't it swell of Scholastic books to recognize me for my fantastic parenting skills? All right, perhaps they got the gender wrong. Completely wrong. But they must be able to somehow sense from afar what a great parent I am, right?



I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that I bought books from them, right? It's just because of what a wonderful mom I am.

What can I say? It's just my maternal instinct that guides me. But I'm very honored to be recognized and look forward to more awards for my motherhood in the future.

Now, OK, I'm sure some of you out there are saying "Well, it's just an honest mistake. After all, Lindsay is a girl's name."

Oh yeah? Well, then how do you explain this guy getting one?

Keep on rockin' in the really expensive world

Back when I was engaged to be married, I had heard a CD by the Brian Setzer Orchestra, and I thought to myself "Man, this would be a great band to have at my wedding." This was way before their big hit "Jump, Jive and Wail", their first album had just come out on Hollywood Records, which meant that hardly anyone knew about them (even though Brian Setzer had been in the Stray Cats years earlier), and it was not completely beyond the realm of possibility that I could afford the band for my wedding.

So I found the number for the manager of the band and gave him a call to inquire about the band for a private gig.

"Oh, Brian really doesn't like to do weddings", the manager said, with a tone that was like dismissive, but with a tinge of "How much ya got?" mixed in.

"So there's no way?" I asked.

"Well, you'd have to really make it worth his while financially, for him to consider it." he said.

"OK, so like how much?"

"A lot."

"Yeah, but how much is that?"

"A whole lot."

"OK, but can you like give me a number to work with here? I just need to see if it's possible."

"I don't think Brian would be willing to consider anything under a hundred thousand dollars."

A HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS?!??!?

"Uh, sure, that sounds doable."

I'm totally lying.

"I'll give you a call back."

I hung up. I did not call back.

Well, it turns out that since then, prices have gone up a lot. Now, I know that we talked about this a long time ago, but this new article in the LA Times about the corporate gigs that rock stars are taking these days is really shocking.

On New Year's Eve, for instance, British pop star George Michael was in Russia making about $3 million an hour singing for a few hundred guests of Vladimir Potanin, a mining and lumber magnate. The gig was 75 minutes, and he was home in London by lunchtime.

Last weekend, pop diva Christina Aguilera and Oscar winner Robin Williams were in Pittsburgh as the hired entertainment at the birthday party of Joe Hardy, founder of 84 Lumber. Both stars are veterans of the lucrative circuit. Aguilera took a reported $1.5 million to serenade another Russian businessman, Andrei Melnichenko, at his September 2005 wedding. Williams, who reportedly fetches a cool $1 million for a night's work, joined the Rolling Stones and John Mellencamp in Las Vegas in 2002 at the birthday soiree for David Bonderman, co-founder of Texas Pacific Group, a private equity investment firm. The reported price of the affair: $10 million.

Still, money doesn't necessarily guarantee for a good time, as explained by Sammy Hagar. Hagar definitely had mixed feelings when Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, called several years ago to hire him to sing "There's Only One Way to Rock" at the billionaire's birthday party. Then Cuban mentioned the private plane, the plan to stage the show at the arena in Dallas and, of course, a particularly large sum of money.

"The money," Hagar said, "was very good. I won't say how much, but it was good. But I didn't do it for the money…. Well, maybe I did."

Hagar had to earn it, though. He described the show as one of the most awkward stage experiences of his three-decade career.

"There were 70 people in the audience, so we have this huge, empty arena. But we did a full-blown, 45-minute show, lights and everything. The front row was filled with Mavericks players, and half of them, you know, they didn't know us or care about our music. And they were so tall they were looking me right in the eye. The whole thing was just plain weird."

Not as weird as hiring George Michael for 6 million dollars for night! For that amount of money, that guy should do my laundry too!

Where does Oprah's poop go?

Well, today I'm at Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven, and my sound engineer Jeanne and I were chatting about her favorite obsession: poop.

You heard me. Jeanne loves talking about poop. The color, the consistency, the act, how long it takes, how long it takes to flush, you name it. If it's poop, Jeanne is interested in discussing it. Apparently, everyone at Yale Rep knows this, and within seconds of anyone approaching us to see what we're talking about, they all say the same thing: "Is Jeanne talking about poop again?"

SO! I thought "Surely, there must be others with this particular fascination as well", and sure enough, 5 seconds later on the internet, we found The Poop Report, which calls itself "your #1 source for your #2 business". Believe me, they are not kidding, if poop is your thing, The Poop Report is what you're looking for.

Interestingly enough, Oprah Winfrey seems to share this fascination as well, having devoted not one, but TWO shows recently about poop! She has on Dr. Mehmet Oz, who wrote "You, The Owner's Manual" and You On A Diet", to answer all questions about poop, and you can check out all the answers here.

But, as Jimmy Kimmel recently discovered, there is one burning question that has not been answered: "Where does Oprah's poop go?". Now the answer can be told, in the educational filmstrip show below!

I have so many things to talk about!!

Oh my, what a day yesterday in the news! Let's review:



- OK, by now, you've probably seen the Iphone from Apple that was announced yesterday at Macworld. If you haven't seen it yet, go see it here, it's a truly beautiful piece of design, as could only come from Apple.

The downside? It only works on Cingular! CINGULAR!?!?! How could you do this to me, Apple? Don't you know how much Cingular blows? I had them for years and years, and no matter where I was in the US, it totally sucked. They kept telling me "Oh, you just need to upgrade to a new phone" and then I would, and it would still suck! Don't you just love those commercials where Cingular boasts that they have the fewest dropped calls? Of course they have the fewest dropped calls, it's hard to drop a call that never connected in the first place! FOR GOD'S SAKE, APPLE! Did you learn nothing from the phone you made with Motorola? Sigh...



- OK, if you're afraid of flying or your name is Alexandra Billings, you may wanna skip this next one. So, let's say you're flying on United (which I fly on virtually every other day - 126,614 miles last year, not that I'm counting...) from Chicago to Burlington, Vermont. Sounds reasonably safe, right? Oh, perhaps you were unaware of the possiblity of
a scorpion stinging you in the leg not once, but TWICE while you're sleeping! Somebody call Sam Jackson, there are muthafuckin scorpions on this muthafuckin plane!


The only thing more unbelieveable about this story is that the guy who it happened to thinks that the airline is probably gonna call him back to offer compensation. CALL HIM BACK? You need to get your muthafuckin upgrade vouchers before you get off that muthafuckin plane! Why is it only the casual flyer gets these kind of problems, I would taken United to the cleaners.




- It's David Bowie's birthday!

You know, I think that "Extras" with Ricky Gervais is just about the funniest thing on television. People go on and on about "The Office", but I like this show better, I'm sorry.

So! In honor of Mr. Bowie's birthday, let's show a clip from his appearance on "Extras", which shows off the genius of both of these guys. I just hope that Bowie doesn't ever wanna make up a song about me.



- Finally, my good friend Toy is in Los Angeles this week, on a job that I recommended her for, and she's been having a good time. Surprise, surprise, she likes all the stuff that I like, and is bothered by all the stuff that I barely notice. But she's getting in the swing of things by wearing her sunglasses all the time, and hanging out in trendy bars so she can get the skinny on who's not in town. Go here to read the full report.

Remember, everything is written in stone, until it's written again in a different stone. That's just how it is.

Welcome, Loie Jones!

Congrats to my brother Christopher and his wife Amy on their brand new baby girl! Loie (pronounced low-ee) Elisabeth Jones was born today, January 9th, at 8:08am, weighing 6 lbs 10 oz and looking great!

Everyone is doing well, although as you can see, a nap was in order after the birth. Turns out being born is hard work!

Animated gif of the week!

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the single most important piece of information that this site will ever offer you.

Wanna know how to find those mp3's of your favorite artist on the internet for free? With this simple trick, you can get tons of mp3 download links using just Google!

All you have to do is put this in the search window:

"Band or Artist name here" last modified mp3 "index of" -html -htm -php -asp

For example I want to get some Calexico song, therefore I type in:

"Calexico" last modified mp3 "index of" -html -htm -php -asp

What's great is that you'll mostly find links to live or unreleased versions of songs that the artist performed, which is what made the internet so cool in the first place. Try it!

You're welcome!!

It's bound to get chilly soon...

Here, have some hot cocoa on me.

Some great stuff from Atomfilms

I don't know you've been there yet, but Atomfilms has got some of the best films on the web.

Here are two of my favorites!

Get on the bus, people! We're going to New Jersey!

Ya'll take my shit and get the fuck out!

HO-LEE CRAP! Somebody call all my gay friends and get them out of bed. Whitney Houston is auctioning off all her old stuff! I'm not lying!

Take a look at it here!

This has all the makings of one hell of an afternoon. DAMMIT! I WISH I COULD GO!!

What makes this so awesome for me and all my gay pals is that the auction is almost equal parts of audio stuff and fashion stuff! That's right! For the first time ever, you can see Mackie mixers next to Bob Mackie gowns! Never again are you gonna see the brands of Akai and Dolce & Gabanna next to each other! Oh, I'm just sick about missing it.

PLUS! It gets so much better! Look at some of the crazy shit in this thing!

A Versace Catsuit with this whole psychedelic dream on it.

Spare nuns from "The Producers".

A 5000 lb forklift.
(Boy, you don't wanna catch Bobby Brown on a bad night when he's driving this around!)


BUT OK. THIS IS MY FAVORITE.

Take a look at these pictures below.




See, these awards are listed in the catalog as "Music Awards", but look closely! Every single one of these actually belong to Bobby!


Ain't that cold-blooded? Threw the man out the house, and now is selling off every last one of his awards!
Now THAT'S a comeback.

The auction takes place this coming Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 11:00 AM. The address is 84 Coit Street Irvington, NJ 07111.

If you go, Please, I beg you, write me and tell me what happened.

Red Hot Riding Hood!

Many many thanks to my friend Toy for pointing me to this, which is one of my ALL TIME favorite cartoon sequences: the big show number from "Red Hot Riding Hood", directed by Tex Avery and released by MGM.

If I had a dollar for every time I have thought about this wolf's reaction, I would be a very rich man.



The whole cartoon is sensational, go here to watch the whole thing. I HIGHLY recommend it.

I have been sucked into the belly of the beast. Again!

OK. So. I admit it. I am a full on computer geek.

Not just a computer geek, mind you. An audio computer geek.

But I just can't help it! I've been buying new software this week, and it's just incredible what's out there now.

Take, for example, these films on Melodyne, which is a pitch correction and time correction software. Now, even if you are not an audio person, I challenge you to watch all 4 of these short films and see if you are not mesmerized by them.

I don't even own this software but I was totally captivated by these films! Now I have to buy the damn software! ARGH! IT'S NEVER GONNA END!

Just click on each of these and watch. You'll see what I mean.

What did I do New Year's Day?

I'm so glad you asked. I watched a 10 year old girl hypnotize lizards and dress them up in doll outfits. I truly cannot think of a better way to kick off the New Year!