karl pilkington: an idiot abroad

this post is mainly for heather, because she loves karl pilkington. i'm sure we'll be trying to watch this.

fierce creatures on the view looks good from here, fresno

we captured (not really) two of the fierce creatures and recorded a podcast. check it out. and, if you haven't already, pick up a copy of their ep. it's available at shows, on itunes, on emusic, and probably somewhere else. definitely worth the $.

unbranding

i was telling some friends about this interesting article and trend that i saw. let me share with you:

"Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here's the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other's bags! Competitors' bags!"

this is interesting and awesome. fashion houses, and i might suspect other companies as well, are sending gifts to less desirable "stars" like snooki from the jersey shore. they figure that people of haute couture don't want to be associated with a drunk mini-person that is pretty much the antithesis of fashion.

argyle pimps at the starline

tonight could be a very good time. you see, the argyle pimps are playing a show. i'll admit, i think i've only seen them play once, which is sorta surprising for a fairly well established fresno band. i enjoy their music, have their album, but just never really saw them play. along with the pimps will be fresno's latest buzz band, fierce creatures. i saw part of a creatures show, but wasn't in the mood for it so i didn't stay for the whole set. but, i also have their ep release and it is rather good.

another reason why this show could be intriguing is that starline is no longer 18 & over. that could cut down on the annoying kid factor. hey, i'm 34, i admit that i think of shows in a different way than when i was 18, 19 or 20. sure, it's unfortunate that there are less venues when younger patrons can go, but that also means there will be less people clogging up the bar, ordering soda or water, or taking up seats. and since there will be less people there, i'm a little more inclined to be there and show some support.

protect your neck - busker style

not exactly sure where this guy is (i sorta think england) but he does a fairly good version of wu tang's protect your neck

i'm voting tea party

i love finding funny websites, even if i'm not going to buy their stuff.



click over and check out several very funny t-shirt ideas.

stormtrooper singing in the rain

the good folks over at the dumb drum bring you "real" posts about star wars with content releases. well i say pishaw! i give you videos of stormtroopers dancing!

fred the raver

so, this kid is like our friend woody, but much younger. and blond.



but, it reminds me of seeing his daughter sing along to songs.

have another

meaty spaghetti sauce

so, i've been wanting to me a little more inventive with my cooking lately. not to crazy, but just actually using recipes for grilling and cooking. yeah, i know, crazy. anyway, i was thinking about making spaghetti & sauce for a meal, so i started poking around the 'net and found this one at cooks.com:

2 lbs. hamburger
1 lb. bacon
1 onion (medium)
4 cans reg size tomato soup
1 can contadina tomato paste w/ italian seasonings
dash worcestershire sauce
dash white vinegar
Cut bacon into bite size pieces. Chop up onion. Fry onion and bacon
together until onion is tender and bacon is cooked thoroughly. Drain.
Brown hamburger. Drain.
Mix all remaining ingredients together with onion/bacon mixture and
hamburger.

it looked interesting, but i decided to bastardize it and make it my own. here's approximately what i did:

1/4-1/3 lb of fresh bacon from butcher
onion powder to taste

1/2 lb ground turkey
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
1 tsp of garlic

1 can of campbells tomato soup
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 can of tomato paste
dash of worcestershire sauce
salt, pepper & basil to taste

i followed the prep directions pretty much in the original order. the ingredients above are grouped how i put them in.

the sauce as it finished cooking



some wheat spaghetti that i prepared



the finished product with a bit of grated parmesan



i'm pretty happy how well it turned out. honestly, as the sauce got hot and i was tasting it in its final stages i kinda just wanted to eat sauce. the flavors came together rather well, and i liked the ratio of sauce and diced tomato - i'm not a big fan of big tomato chunks. surprisingly, the bacon almost disappears in this mix and isn't a heavy hitter in the overall flavor, but when you bite in a chunk as your going it's a nice surprise.

fresno urban sound experience kickstart

the fresno urban sound experience (fuse 2010) is back again. last year we had a great time downtown, and we froze our butts off on the spiral garage seeing the sleepover disaster. if you want to see a list of confirmed artists for this year, you can click over to the fresnan, and watch for updates there as well.

anyway, they're raising ca$h for this year's festival and thought i'd share that with you (as if you didn't know that already). if you donate, creative fresno will share some goodies with you, depending on donation level. pretty cool stuff, and you're helping the festival come together.

on top of that, local newshound mike oz is doing funny stuff for donors. pretty cool, eh?

so, you can give some $ to help fund a great festival, which is good. then, you get some swag from creative fresno, double good. add in mike oz's bonus, triple goodness for everyone.

i say you do it. even if it's only a small donation - every cent is needed (and it's tax deductible).

skating vacant fresno pools

every so often a new video pops up with skaters draining pools in or around the fresno area. some are good, some are bad. i was perusing laughing squid today, and saw this one and was really impressed with the production of the video.

Cannonball from California is a place. on Vimeo.

it also got me to click over to the source of the video, california is a place. i tweeted their video honey pie, but hadn't seen their other vids. rather nice site, and i'm curious how many more videos they'll do.

and, demonstrating my short memory, mike oz posted this very video back in may. stupid brain.

stump removal

saturday i lured 3 friends into my backyard with pizza and beer for the task of removing a stump. the job before we started:



and with the magic of photos, here's the hole after we pulled the stump. there are a few remaining roots that i'm hoping are small and deep enough to not matter.



here's the pile of roots & stump that we removed:



and here we have the debris along with the filled in hole, all nice and smoothed out:



big thanks to adam, corin and mike for lending hands. these guys rocked, and without them it would've taken me a lot longer to get the job done, and my yard would've been a mess. i also learned that it's been a long time since i did manual labor, and my hands are very used to their white collar life.

twitter: the movie

i'm actually interest in seeing the social network (the movie about facebook). i think the story is interesting, and i think jesse eisenberg is a fine young actor. so, i'm pretty sure i'll check out that flick. until then, i'll just have to enjoy parodies like this one about twitter.

blake jones & the trike shop at tokyo garden

hey, if you're not going to see exit through the gift shop tonight, go see blake jones & the trike shop along with bad andy & the sunburns, and old toy trains. they're playing over @ tokyo garden. tell blake you saw a cat playing a theremin.

exit through the gift shop

i've been to many fresno filmworks presentations, but it's been a while. and, it's been a while since i've been as excited to see a film.



i love banksy's work, and this film has got me all twitterpated. okay, i'm not that giggly and whatnot, but i am excited to see the film. pretty sure we're going to the 8 pm show, feel free to join us.

denny's fried cheese melt

yeah, denny's must of been jealous of kfc and their double down sandwich, because they're rolling out something as heart attackingly "delicious." it's called the fried cheese melt.



so, you've got 4 mozzarella sticks inside of a grilled cheese sandwich. yep, sounds about right.

i can't get too high and mighty on this, because i've got to admit that i have eaten a similar hamburger at red robin that had mozzarella sticks on it (it wasn't very good).

diversity committee screw up

so, it seems that this is arab american heritage month, which sort of makes sense since ramadan started today. anyhow, at my work they have a bulletin board to celebrate it or whatever. i'm not exactly sure who put up the billboard and it's items, but they seem to be a little bit culturally ignorant or perhaps insensitive. or maybe i am.



maybe it's just me, but i'm guessing most arab americans wouldn't be too keen on the israeli flag & american flag together on a bulletin board celebrating arab american heritage. you know, since arabs generally aren't israeli (i know there are a some arabs in israel, and if i remember correctly they're mainly arab Xians). whomever did this billboard may want to rethink that picture.

bigger job than i thought

yesterday i wrote a haiku about going to remove a stump from my back yard. i had success removing a small set of roots a while back in july, and thought this may be another small remnant of a tree. damn if i wasn't wrong.

i started digging around 1 pm and it consumed my afternoon. i began digging where some tree sprouts were coming up and quickly saw that it was bigger than i had initially thought. so i uncovered more. and more. and more. here's where i am now:



yeah, i've uncovered a massive stump with thick roots. the remaining base of the tree that was is about three feet across. no lie. it's big. so, now i've got to figure out if i'm going to bring in a pro to pull this thing out, or try to see if it can get it out myself. i'm not exactly sure how deep the roots go, but i think when whatever happens, i'm going to have a deep hole in my backyard that needs to be filled.

monday haiku

went to work today
time for some lunch and then i'll
dig up a tree stump

nerdcore for life

i think them fellas over at the dumb drum need to put on a showing of this:

toothpaste for dinner!

i hadn't read toothpaste for dinner in a while, and chuckled about these gems today.


toothpastefordinner.com


toothpastefordinner.com


toothpastefordinner.com


toothpastefordinner.com


toothpastefordinner.com

weekly preview

man, i just realized that it was art hop & post art hop this week. rademacher has been playing a residency down in l.a., so i'm imagining they'll be sorta polished & ready. not sure who's playing with them, but we'll see.

i think i'll be out art hopping this month. there is at least one show i want to see - there's some cool looking stuff at the k-jewel gallery.

before thursday, well, it's pub quiz on wednesday. big jackpot this week, and i think 1/5 odds of winning it. last week we had our highest attended week with 120 players & 25 teams. i would be it will be similar this week. i advise people to show up early to get a seat.

after thursday, well who know what the week will bring. hopefully the weather will be nice (i've been out of town the last two weekends, and the weather @ both locales was awesome. don't do me wrong, fresno.)

show review: the sleepover disaster @ the big takeover

it really almost was a sleepover disaster this weekend.

how's that? well, we'll get to that in a second.

you see, this last weekend, i had the pleasure of taking my wife out to brooklyn, new york. while we'd been to nyc, we hadn't been to brooklyn, and we had the opportunity to go. you see, our good friends in the sleepover disaster were playing at the big takeover's anniversary festival. the show was 2 days long, and had like 16 bands playing. we knew we wouldn't attend the whole show, but we would see many of the acts on saturday when sleepover was playing. we secured free entry to the gig by being the merch people for sleepover - a fair trade in my opinion.

monticore & i flew out of fresno, and had a decent set of flights. nothing noteworthy, but we did enjoy sending joking texts to our colorado friend jay while we were in the denver airport.

anyway, we arrived in ny, checked into our hotel and began to wander the neighborhood a little bit. thursday night we ate some delicious gourmet pizza at a little place, found a spot for some libations and called it a night.

the band was flying in friday evening, so we planned to do some touristing in the area & then meet up with the band later. they were staying at the same hotel as us, and we thought we may be able to catch a drink after they were in. so, we headed out exploring, focusing mainly on the area of prospect park. we hit up the brooklyn museum, which was great, and the brooklyn botanic garden, which was pretty cool as well. after a lot of walking, we decided to go chill at the hotel for a bit before dinner & the band showed up. this is where the disaster begins to filter in.

you see, the band missed their flight. due to some terrible l.a. traffic (fly fresno, boys!) the band didn't get on their scheduled bird. of course, it was one of those classic situations where they got to the gate, the plane was still there, but the doors were closed and they couldn't board. so, they got put on standby for the next two flights that night. both were full.

the next morning, i got a text from vince and he told me that there were 3 possible flights they were trying to get on. they had stayed the night in the airport and were hoping to still make the 6 hour flight from l.a. to n.y.c. this meant more chance for monticore & i to take in some sights. so, we headed back to prospect park and went to the prospect park zoo. it's a bad sign if no one knows there is a zoo in your town (brooklyn) and even worse if you're within like 4 miles of said zoo and the cab driver doesn't know where you are. so, we helped our cabbie get us close enough. the prospect park zoo is pretty small, but it wasn't bad. and, it made me really value our zoo here in fresno. really, many fresnans don't realize we have an excellent zoo. when you get out and see zoos in a lot of cities (we love zoos) you understand what we have.

eventually, we heard from the band - they had managed to all get on the very last possible plane ride out. seriously, any other flight would've put them into n.y. after their set.

so, the band showed, taxied to the venue to drop off gear, and then met us at the hotel to check in. they got ready for the show & we walked the 10 blocks to the show. i think we arrived at the venue two acts before sleepover went on.

when they went on they killed it. really good. it's been a while since we've seen sleepover, as they've been on a bit of a hiatus. and honestly, this is the last sleepover show for the foreseeable future. eric is focused on family & recording and has left the band (ronald dzerigian played bass - he did some of their early stuff), luke is focused on the quiet americans, and vince is writing some stuff on his own. the band isn't officially dead (last time i heard) but it isn't looking like they'll be playing fresno any time soon.

anyway, sleepover was really good. ronald was a little tentative, but that's understandable when you're filling in. luke and vince were great together, and i loved their set. they had a good mix of their faster, more rocking stuff and some of the slower, more melodic as well. i'm not positive, but i think they stuck to material from the hover full length release and the oceanographer ep. in looking around the venue during the sleepover's set, it seemed that everyone else was digging it, too. really, people liked the band enough that they sold out of all of the cd's they brought, and a bunch of shirts. i'd take credit for my awesome merch selling skills, but the band and their performance is really what sold it all. sadly, the set was a little shorter than planned (i think they cut 2 songs) because the festival was running behind schedule. i got a little bit of video to share with you all:

friend



oceanographer - partial



hold my tongue



the venue, the bell house, was a rather nice venue. the main show space was probably about the size of audie's, and had a bar in there of about the same size. the stage was bigger & higher. they also had a lounge space that was a pretty good size, with another bar.

after the show was all over i was able to chill out with the gents and some friends that ronald had in the brooklyn area. great time.

sunday, monticore & i jumped on a plane home. that was almost a disaster, too. we literally sat on the runway @ laguardia for between 1.5-2 hours while we waited to take off. fortunately, that didn't screw our other flights completely, and we made it home safe.

monday haiku

another weekend
out of town missing the heat
vacations are fun