He puts it best:

Click link below for a dose of intelligent and well articulated commentary:

X

We went to see X last night. AWESOME! FUN! They totally put on a great show. It was all high energy and all from their first four albums. Later, went home and watched Decline of Western Civilization. Stubbs was packed and after the show, everyone seemed charged. Billy Zoom did not disappoint, Exene and John did not disappoint and D.J. is a total badass. Didn't show up for the opening bands.

Poop

I'll miss Paul. But Yay! to Paul and Orlando in Houston! It's a very good thing. Still, change is hard.

Old Shows

OOO-ooo-ooo
Watched some Hong Kong Phoeey this weekend and it brought back vague memories of the show. I remember Spot. Always cool to watch an old 70s cartoon though.

Thanks to You Tube I can watch those old WGN Xmas cartoon shorts like Suzy Snowflake and the others that I can't seem to ever stop talking about

I discovered Hawaiian Eye! and I am hooked! How come no one ever told me about this? I came across it on youtube. So now, if the dvd comes out I'm buying. None of this would have happened without youtube.

Visual-Spatial

I found out not everyone thinks in pictures! WHAT?! Are you serious???????? I thought that is how one thinks, in pictures.

That explains a lot. Funny though, after all these years, just finding this out, it explains quite a bit. Now that I know, I know.

Don't know what I'm talking about? View here. So now I wonder what it is to not think like I do. What it is like?

Minutiae

1. Hawaii Five-O Has the best edited montage to music EVER!
1a.Hearing the Ventures do it is pretty awesome! Mel Taylor's drums....dreamy. It's the best version of the theme. Well, that's instrumental version, Sammy Davis Jr rocks it.

1b.Don't buy Swamp Rock

2.Q.If you could sit down to the dinner table with any three people, past or present, who would you invite?
A.Sinatra, Cassavetes and Kerouac. It seems like it could get uncomfortable.

3. Donuts

4.

5. AWESOME! Vintage Toasters Yet another site to use for my 1949 ktchen reassembly. Just to review:
Toasters
Neo Vintage Don't forget SMEG
Refurbished Vintage Appliances

Save that Penny

Americans need to save money. This is an old custom has lost it's way in our society. My grandparents were of the Depression Era and they stressed always save your money. Nowdays whatever disposable income is seen as waste and used to purchase bigger houses, bigger cars that need more gas but you can afford cause hoarding money is a sin? So you are well off, have money in the bank, get taxed on it, have disposable income and dispose of it but hey wait a minute. Now why not try this radical socialist idea: why not save that disposable income for a rainy day, not just your rainy day maybe your cousin's or your sibs or your children's or your best friend's.

Not advocating giving all your money to everyone you know at the drop of a hat but ...The medical industry in this country is pricey, not many have good insurance, I am sure you have a family member who is not completely covered, why not save that money you'd spend on a new bloated couch for relative x when tragedy or financial ruin strike. If more Americans practiced a moderate and diluted form of socialism in their own families, their own circles, their OWN FAMILIES (their own nuclear society) in their own world instead of handing Corpoarate Joe their cash maybe, just maybe a few more people would be a bit better off. You give to charity. Great, I hope when you see relative x or best friend of 30 years drowning in worry that you try and find a way to help them too.

It is important to care for those around you when you can ...once again, it sticks it to the man. I do know of one family that does this and they are my heroes. They are truly beautiful souls with the way they generously help each other out so they can all advance.

I know how to decorate, you do too!

The current deluge of magazines pushing the religion of consumerism is nauseating. I received a mag recently called The Nest. I did not sign up for it, just a sample copy as a result of being on some list. The mag had nothing but cliches for articles and the pages were littered with ads for home decor and appliances. BLEHK! I tossed it.

Now I do subscribe to Domino and that was a mistake but at a dollar an issue, for one year it's an alright mistake that will be corrected when the renewal comes. I get two other mags as gifts from my mom and sister and they do come in handy for recipes and info. They are not decor mags. Mags that push me to furnish my home with the newest and trendiest...fuck off!

We choose to decorate as we like with what we find where we find it. It's a nice house. No mag has been able to showcase a home like ours with a couple like us, interested and collecting what we do and how to integrate what we own into a form follow function layout for each room. Even if they did, I doubt it would be as cute as what we have already done.

Take for example NEST! They said to take little plastic toothbrushes and display them in a shadow box lined with textured fabric that we then hang on the bathroom wall. WHAT?! That is almost as ridiculous as this line from a Monkees episode: Davy says:
"Why not take little metal bottle tops and nail them to your living room floor. It gives you the impression that you are walking on little metal bottle tops."

Now why would you want to go out and buy all you need for that work of shit art when you have a perfectly offbeat relic lingering somewhere in your house or apt that would work. I bet you do and I bet it's hanging in the bathroom right now because it is perfect there and no on needs to confim or validate that for you.

I encourage you to challenge yourself if you are into these mags to put them down and cancel one subscription. This goes for fashion mags as well (Man! Lucky is pushing $500 shirts and the models look like a three year old having fun in Mommy's closet ordered them to put on what they have just for shits and giggles. You can't do better than that?) I can guarantee you will be able to survive, you will come up with your own decor, designs and finds from your own inspirations in your own life and be successful at it. I will even say, your friends and family will marvel at what came out of your own creative mind and do the same at their own abodes or with their own fashionable finds.

This goes for those Trading Spaces shows and HGTV programs as well. How many times do you have to see someone in California plant a garden, put down rocks just so or landscape a 5x5 yard in a way that pleases them and brings them joy before you go out and try the exact same shit on your own yard. It's like OZ, you had that power of design all along. You can do it all by yourself. Now there are those who just don't want to put aesthtics into their lives, they don't watch these shows, read these mags, they don't care...I'm not talking to them. I'm preaching to the the ones who appreciate beauty and have a sense of aesthetics and but feel they don't measure up or can't do it without a model room or feel like what they have done doesn't measure up because it isn't emulated in those mags therefore making them them feel not up to par. Those that have nice abodes yet feel the need to purchase still more and again and again until it's that perfect mix of hip/trend/retro and art. It's already there, I am sure. It's called the Joneses and they shop exclusivey at Crate and Barrel, West Elm....Check out Room Service, Goodwill, estate and garage sales and you'll be on your way to style, cool decor and at the same sticking it to the man and his religion of consumerism. You don't want to keep supporting this monster (corporations), noooooooooo, it's not even decent.

Charmed

Peter Gowland

Always-Davy Jones

The Non-Sporting Life or: My New Fascination with Surfing as Spectator

Been reading the book by legendary surfer Phil Edwards:
You Should Have Been Here An Hour Ago - The Stoked Side of Surfing or How To Hang Ten Through Life and Stay Happy (1967). The read does convey how hard it is to learn to stand on a board and surf. I know I'll never really have the opportunity to learn to surf unless I quit my job and we fly off seeking the perfect place to begin (note, sharkless waters) but it's awesome to watch. So many of the great surf points from the past have disappeared and extreme sports have really taken over so it can get uber aggro and annoying to watch nowdays. I prefer to watch huge waves and elegant surfers riding them, rather than a spaz on a small board twisting all over with a leash attached.

Skateboarding just didn't appeal to me. I tried it as a kid for a few days but eh. None of us could get the thing really going so we went back to our bikes. It felt better to have a breeze while peddling away than to stand in the hot Southwest Texas sun waiting to put a foot on the skateboard and trudge slowly down the street. The wheels would make that loud and annoying grinding noise-not the cool even sound you get when you're really skateboarding but that wretched sound from cheap wheels on bad pavement and level ground.

Biking, swimming, rollerskating and even horseback riding was where it was at growing up. Rollerskating was the best. It still is if only I could ever get to the tennis courts when no one is there. Last summer I rollerskated on this outdoor basketball court at night. It's just been too hot this year. Indoor rollerskating is fine but who needs everyone in your way. Horseback riding was iffy but like to try it again. The fun was based on the horse you got. You'd get on a boring Quarter horse and there you are again, trudging along in the hot sun with the odor of manure just under your chin. There were only a few times I was able to get a fast trot out of a horse and the goal was getting him to gallop fast but my friend's parents would never allow that. Too dangerous they'd say so I was given some old walker.

So I can imagine surfing is somewhat like that feeling you got when you were a kid and going uber fast on your bike down a steep hill feeling like you could take off. Actually I did that back in 1995 on a hybrid with bad breaks-no breaks. It's a good thing the light was green when I reached the intersection and could keep going at lightening speed. I was going pretty damn fast and it was scary but I was laughing like a loon the entire time, probably because the light did turn green and I didn't have to deal with injury.

Injury...that is what made me stop the whole rock climbing, spelunking and rapelling sport in my early twenties. I saw too many injuries and thought I'd quit while I was ahead. The fear of injury is what sobers me up. Still, the idea of surfing small waves is so appealing, not thinking of the injury, don't want to read about or realize the injury. Might be too late: note sharks. But it will definitely be a sport I enjoy watching.


Note: Tiger Sharks can be found in shallow waters in places like Cancun!

Find yourself feeling rather skeptical of the news today?

You are not a jaded rat! Just read this from Daily KOS:

A. Bush and Blair conspired to invade Iraq. This is indisputable at this point.

B. The invasion of Iraq itself, and many of the actions associated therewith, were crimes. Some were war crimes.

C. Bush is worried about being prosecuted for war crimes.

D. Being prosecuted for war crimes is very serious business. Many people who have been prosecuted of war crimes in the past have been dealt with in the most severe fashion.

E. If Bush and Blair lose power, they are likely to be vulnerable to prosecution for crimes committed while they were in power.

F. In America we just had absolute proof, through an election, that the voters are so fed up with the current situation that they are willing to come out in droves to do something that only happens 2% of the time -- they are willing to dump an entrenched encumbent in order to clean house.

G. Bush's control of the power he currently has is limited in time. So is Blair's. They are living on borrowed time. But for the moment they hold the reigns of power. So while they have the considerable powers over the branches of their respective governments, they are likely to use those powers in order to avoid future prosecution for war crimes.

H. To avoid prosecution for war crimes, Bush needs to avoid being investigated.

I. If Congress switches to Democratic control this year, investigations into the crimes of the Bush administration are likely to begin. If the GOP continues to control the Congress until 2008, he's likely off the hook.

J. Blair is in almost exactly the same boat as Bush. These men took a huge risk, and they failed. They now have to save their asses.

K. Polls have shown that in times of crisis or attack from foreigners, a populance will rally around whatever "leader" they have, even if the leader is a less-than-legitimately elected yahoo like Bush in 2001.

L. It is now an established fact that the Bush administration abused the terror warning system for political gain up until his re-election in 2004, and since 2004 he has not used it a single time.

M. The situation that has unfolded in England in the last 24 hours is exactly the kind of operation that you can hire to be done by the U.K.-based company described in this DailyKos story. A direct link to their website is [htttp://scl.cc/home.php here].

Thus, one whose mind works logically, and one who has been paying attention the last six years, and one who is familiar with companies such as Strategic Communications Laboratories, as well as other PSYOPS operations conducted by both the U.S. and the British military, can only conclude that to believe the current stories at 100% face value is just plain DUMB.

That's how my mind works anyway. I'm not saying that it DEFINITELY is anything. I'm not saying that there are NOT terrorists who want to kill Westerners. Of course there are, and there are more than EVER BEFORE because of Bush's stupidity and recklessness and criminal behavior.

Some people can't seem to think logically and keep an open mind. They seem to think that if you even CONSIDER the possibilities that you are ruling out others. That is not true. People like me consider all the possibilities. One of the possibilities is that the story as we are being told it is 100% true. Another possibility is that it is 0% true.

One thing I do know is that we are probably never going to know the truth. We have been lied to over and over and over again, and we all know now that the media will report whatever the government tells them to report, especially if it's juicy, like this.

Wow

I was going to buy a new set of bongos and then I found this. Okay....nothing shoots down my momentum faster than babies doing something better than me. Well, there is the whole cats that paint thing.

Interests Du Jour

************************
1. Surfing, surfing, surfing in Africa-Cape St Francis
1a. Miki Dora
2. Early to mid 50's kitchens (how they appear in film and in photos)
3. Names: male, female name combos
4. Handmade
5. Malia Dresses
5. Religious icons and reliquaries as art
6. Thoreau
7. Mandola's

THE OUT LIST
1. Fueling up
2. The A Type
3. Flip flops and low rise
4. Bloated American Consumerism
5. Flash Mobs
6. I heart VY tees

This kid has loads of 'tude!

The kid with the lollipop in the photo below has presence:

It's Castro. Is that a pinky ring?

I like this photo.

Lala's Lil Nugget

So we went to the Peacock the other night and it was nice but Lala's rulz. I've been going to Lala's since 1994 or so. Before that it was the Carousel Lounge but that was trendy by 1994, sad because it was a gem. Buddy's Place is still pretty exclusive but it is too far down the road, Lala's in right in the hood.

What makes the place so cool is the year round Christmas decor, paneling and the fact that it looks like a VF hall on the inside and is part of a strip mall on the outside. The only drawback about the place is the smoke that lingers in the air . I don't even think it's recent either. So many people have smoked in that tiny bar that it's soaked into the walls, the floor, the decor and it's thivk. You breathe in smoke from 20 years ago to the present. As a result, I don't linger as long as I used to.

Coffee bar opening on the corner! That would really complete the comfort zone. With Denny's, Lala's, Frisco, Sun Harvest, Terra Toys, Zingers, Elsi's, Oaxacan Tamaleo and Half Price, all needs are met within a 5 mile radius.