do you want to hear me talk about my practice?

1) Americans have Lost fever

2) I am an American (damn straight!)

3) Therefore, I have Lost motherfucking fever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow I get to have the experience of watching my first new episode ever on the TV. Will the commercials drive me insane? Perhaps. Regardless, I'm very excited.

Check out all the shows coming up from Club Pow. Crazy. I'm gonna go to the ohsees/agent ribbons show.

Uh, that's about it. A yoga instructor told me I have a "beautiful practice" last night. Stoked!

catsandratsandcatsandratsandcatsandrats

That was an unmissable show last night and I'm glad I un-missed it. Thanks to soundguy Andy, it had impeccable sound, and the Mantles upheld their title of the hardest workin' band in show business. Yellow Fever were really fun. They are really early 90's, in a great way. They trade instruments a lot. It's charming that it's so evident that they're from Texas. Cats and Rats is quite a hit, check it out on their myspace. I bought their other 7 inch last night, but now I'm gonna order Cats and Rats. Done, thanks to paypal. Mt. St. Mountain are going to put out their next single.

I caught the last day of the Jeff Wall exhibit (see above) at the sfmoma. Pretty cool, but it didn't make me a big fan. I had read about him and always figured it would help to see them in person, because the scale is so big, and they're exhibited on light boxes, but I was not blown away. The Olafur Eliasson exhibit is interactive and a definite crowd pleaser. It's still there until almost the end of Feb. The next big photo exhibit is a Lee Friedlander one (feb 23rd to may 18th), which is more up my alley. That reminds me, for you artist types out there, if I were to subscribe to one art magazine, which one would you recommend? That moma show inspired me to follow the contemporary art scene more closely, but I don't want to subscribe to some mag that sucks.

do it

I'm not quite sure why, but I've been asked to link to this story.

And if you haven't already, check out JG's glowing review of the knock knock show.

What? Shaun Slaughter's moving?

Go to the Mantles show on sunday! For real! Don't miss it. It's not to be missed. Not even remotely missable. You miss, I diss. Just swing, don't miss. Look, missy, I'm talking to you!

Jack with a beard?

I am TRIPPING on that last episode of Lost. It ends in such a depressing way that I actually felt sad the next day. I can't wait until the new episodes!

Here's some non-TV related news, there is a must-see show in Davis on sunday. The Mantles and Yellow Fever at Delta of Venus.

How did the knock knock show go? Were there lots of people? Were many CDs sold? Liv has a sick-ass clip of the show on her blog.

yakitori story

Yes, it was very warm in San Diego. Basically t-shirt weather. Pretty nice. The first morning we were there we headed straight to Costa Mesa (about 40 miles from downtown SD) to the Lost Abbey Brewery to get our special release Red Poppy brew and I thought I was going to get a sunburn at 10 am. I bought two bottles, drank one, and I might be a jerk and sell the other one on ebay. There are a couple up there already.Here's the barrel room at Lost Abbey. After that we headed to dim sum at Jasmine Seafood in the Kearny Mesa neighborhood. It was good, about on par with New Canton but with a bit less variety.
This is an ugly, blurry picture, but this was one of my favorite things. A huge platter of deep fried squid tentacles crusted with the spicy salt and interspersed with green onion and jalapeno. Very addictive. Another interesting thing we got was a "soup" of plain soft tofu in a honey ginger broth.
The room was GIANT, although once again my crappy photography does not capture that fact. Then we went to Torrey pines state park. It was pretty, but once you've seen Big Sur it's hard to get impressed. Nor Cal rules!

More stunning photography. I'm like the Ansel Adams of our age.
Whenever I see a fern grotto I snap it for MH.
Here's the real impressive view. SD is like heaven for beer lovers! Most exciting for me they have every kind of Cantillon. Packing all the beer we bought was quite an undertaking. My suitcase weighed in at 48 pounds, so I just squeaked under the limit.

My favorite place that we went to eat was a yakitori place in Hillcrest (a fun neighborhood to walk around). It is open every night until 1 am and is set up to get you pretty wasted, although unfortunately I drove so I couldn't go for the full experience. They had a pretty funny list ranking the favorites of the Japanese patrons vs. Americans, you can click on it for detail.My two favorites were the chicken liver and the pork rolled w/shiso, which was unbelievably rich and delicious.

We got the takoyaki, which was pretty good. That's a big lump of mayo.
This sign was in the bathroom, but I didn't see it until after I was done eating so I didn't try the chicken skin. Consequently, I do not have baby soft skin.

food blog with a side of snot

How have I never heard of this long-standing Sac food blog? I like it, although the tone of the Piatti review is more than a bit snotty. She seems to hit up all the kinds of restaurants I'm interested in. She made want to give Mehran a try, but I'm not sure it's still open. The post on the native cuisine of Florida is really informative.

Brad Paisley, Nine Inch Nails...Knock Knock?

yes! This letter in the news and review is so rad:

Griffith's good suggestion
Re “Who’s there?” by Jackson Griffith (SN&R Trust Your Ears, January 3):
Thanks for the story about Knock Knock. I went to The Beat and picked up their Girls on the Run CD. Very enjoyable; this from a 55-year-old who listens to everything from Brad Paisley to Nine Inch Nails to opera.
I especially enjoyed “I Was Born.” I hear overtones of Roger McQuinn and the Byrds. If they put a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar on a couple of the tracks it would flush out the sound to be very Byrds-like, but with a pop-punk sound. Where are they playing live next? Good luck to the band!
Bob Aldrich
Sacramento

Bob Aldrich, sir, you are the best!

Don't forget that CD release show this saturday at Old Ironsides. Since it's Old I, the sound will be very good, the beer will be very bad.

Also, KW reviewed Udupi.

I want to go to this show

I was looking at the mt. st. mtn. website to see what it's up to and I saw this link. Scan the list closely to see if you know anybody on it. That's some illustrious company!

deep bullshit

So, I've still been searching out the perfect, mid-level yoga class for me. I finally decided that the advanced yoga class I'd been taking is too hard and I'm tired of being the only one in the class that can't casually balance all my body weight on one finger. I have contemplated going to Deep Yoga many times, mostly because it's right by my house, but very few of the classes are appealing to me (for instance, one called "body joy dance"). I went to their Kundalini yoga class yesterday, and it was like an hour and fifteen minutes in hell! I should have known that kundalini is all mystical and religious and shit, but I didn't. I was clued in when the teacher showed up wearing a weird flowy white getup and a turban. I should have snuck out while I had the chance. Right when I was setting up my mat, the chef from the Waterboy got there and set up his mat behind me. I know him enough to say "what's up", so I was pretty embarrassed that he was going to be right behind me for the whole time and that I was wearing my saggy-ass yoga pants. Thanks American Apparel. I guess glorified sweats that cost 36 dollars can't be expected to hold their shape. Then the class starts with a bunch of Sanskrit chanting that everybody knows, great. Instead of holding postures for strength or stretching you do a lot of flailing around and holding your breath and crap. To top it all off, my Tom's of Maine was not cutting it, so while I was flailing about I got to stress on the fact that I was stinking up the place, and that Rick Mahan would think I was gross. We would be ordered to flail around and I would try to flail gently so that my b.o. would not spread throughout the room. During the class, the teacher would bust out with pseudo-scientific shit like , "this movement stimulates the pituitary gland" or "you hold childhood trauma in your hips" that I had a hard time not rolling my eyes at. It ended with the whole class singing some bullshit about your life path. The thing that made me mad is that I felt I had basically been tricked into attending a religious service. I did get some good ab work, though. I usually like the mystical shpiel that goes along with yoga, I don't mind visualizing and meditating and even the occasional "om" is pretty fun, but I don't want to be talked to about God and I want some exercise. Deep gives you ten days for ten bucks if you're a starting student, which is one of the best deals in town, but I won't be back.

trippy show, trippy shit

Knock Knock is having a CD release show this saturday at Old Ironsides. You better get your copy there because I've heard it's rapidly selling out at local record stores. I'll be in San Diego this weekend, but luckily for me, Knock Knock is playing Ironsides again next month (feb 15th) with hometown heroes the english singles.

Has anyone else noticed that the Carrow's on J was recently bulldozed into oblivion and then paved over? I swear it was there like a week ago and now you can't even tell it was ever there. Trippy shit.

bloody buns

What a weekend! What a country. I give "There Will Be Blood" a definite thumbs up. A solid good time. Great performances. No chicks anywhere.

Yesterday I made my second visit to the Alameda marketplace (in Alameda, natch). This place is exactly what sac needs. Good wine shop that has cut and wrap cheese, meat counter, fish counter, bakery, small natural foods grocery, and best of all for me yesterday, and deli that boasts the "ten napkin burger" that you see below.
That's blue cheese, not mayo, and yes, if you look closely you will see that the pink "juices" have soaked into the bun. Those are housemade potato chips, the inclusion of which kinda sold me on this burger that was only 8.50. One of the best burgers I've ever had.

On Mike Dunne's blog, in the midst of a post about what I can only guess is the uber-yuppie, 11 million dollar costing Oxbow market in Napa (from the same guy who developed the ferry building in SF), he buried this little nugget:

Wait, there's more: Carlin is talking with the developers of Sacramento's railyard project to put an even larger version of the public market there. Nothing's been committed to paper, but he's one assured guy who has pulled off a long string of successful projects in unlikely settings. "I'm very confident we'll work it out," he says of his prospects for a similar public market in Sacramento.

Not to be a naysayer, but to me this kind of thinking sums up Sac's image problem in a nutshell. Here you have a city like Alameda, that presumably doesn't suffer from a crippling lack of self-regard due to its close proximity to a real world-class city, that has a one-stop public market that is on a modest scale and serves the community. The Alameda market has upscale and European items, but overall it doesn't feel pretentious or forced, and the building itself is quite modest. Sac has nothing like this, so do we plan to do something along this scale? No, because Sac has this fear of being an eternal cowtown we try to do something grandiose, along the lines of the ferry building, which can only be supported because it is embedded in a dense urban area with a surrounding population of over 7 million people. That would be awesome if we got something that grand, but it will take like 15 years or more to get finished and then due to the large scale would probably limp along subsidized by the city. Maybe not, but I still lament that we couldn't get something like the Alameda marketplace put into the old woolworth's building where the stupid cabaret is going.

Then, later in the day we checked out the Trappist in downtown Oakland. This place rules and it's a real labor of love for the owners. They have weird hours because they are still working their dayjobs. I predict great success, so they can probably quit them soon.

french chicken in a pot

I'm going to see There Will Be Blood at seven tonight! So excited!

Also, another exciting (yet bittersweet) thing is happening tonight. Have you all heard that Real Pie Co. is closing basically because it was too damn successful and the piemaker is having a nervous breakdown or something? Well, smiller managed to successfully place an order for a chicken potpie for tonight! If it's the best thing ever, there will probably be tears mingling with each bite we take.

On the subject of weird closings, I drove by Shoki Ramen house on thursday at 5:30 and it was closed. That place seems to always randomly be closed. I read on yelp there are long lines now, did they throw in the towel, too?
I've made the Cook's Illustrated "French chicken in a pot" recipe twice now and this is a really good and super easy way to make the most tender, moist chicken ever. I use herbs de provence, which really puts it over the top. The onions and garlic in the pot at the end are like the best part, so put lots. Use a meat thermometer so you don't overcook. This isn't really falling-of-the-bone type chicken, because you want to get it just on the edge of pinkness.
I cooked some lentils to go along with an onion, carrot, celery mixture and a bay leaf, and then in the end, spooned some of the broth from the chicken. A pretty bomb dinner, if I say so myself.

cockamamie to the max

There are only 26 hours until There Will Be Blood opens at the Tower Theater. This is the movie I am most excited to see since Eyes Wide Shut, but let's not discuss that movie. I caught plenty of shit for liking it. Wow, I don't know how Atonement is doing, but Tower is keeping Juno, too, so that seems like an unprecedented slate of blockbusters for them.

OK, let's talk about the bus station. What do you guys think about this plan? It seems cockamamie to the max, to me. If the bus station is eventually going to be moved as part of the railyard redevelopment, then why slap a band aid on the problem and NIMBY it out to Richards Blvd., which is already pretty creepy and isolated, only to move it again in a few years? If they're going to spend that much money and they say it's because of crime, why not just hire a cop to patrol the station? I may have slightly moved past the days when I'm busing it to the Bay Area (although I wouldn't rule it out in certain cases cuz Amtrak is so expensive and takes more time), but if you've done that, think about how that would effect your decision. One of the best things about where the bus depot is is that you could walk home when your bus got in. Getting dropped off on Richards at like midnight? What the fuck are you supposed to do? What's their rationale? It's a magnet for crime? So, won't that be the same when it moves? I am particularly interested in what wburg thinks of this, since many of his client's SROs are going to be next on the list. I personally would rather bike past the block with Greyhound than the blocks of K street nearby, where I am forced to walk my bike and sometimes do get hasseled. The greyhound station is active at all hours, with cabbies as well as bus passengers and groups of people at night are less scary than walking down an isolated street with one sketchy person. If they turn it into offices, it will just be another block with no night-time activity. I know, they think right now that it will become some lively "mixed-use" area (isn't that kind of what it is currently?) but who knows really what will happen. It could just sit empty for years.

The New Kids (no, not those new kids)

I busted out The New Kids from the VHS selection last night and this is one crazy 80's teen movie. It's like a mix between Pretty In Pink (Spader, Stolz, Lori Loughlin) and Straw Dogs (pitbull attacks, multiple shotgun murders, script by Harry Crews).
Spader, as soulless killer with fake southern accent, is hot as fuck. And there is an out-of-nowhere, S&M-ey scene between him and the male lead, in which he's in little blue speedo things.



This video clip pretty much sums it up. You can catch Loughlin (Aunty Becky from full house) and Stolz, and then Spader struts in. There's a weird scene in which Loughlin is showering with some kind of paste-on breast coverings, I bet it's because she wasn't 18 when this was filmed.

If that's not your cup of tea, here's an article about ridiculously hopped american beers from the nytimes. Eww-even just reading this makes me feel like I can taste that gross bitter hops taste that you get from beers like these. Why does America always get everything wrong? Even when Americans get into something cool (craft beers) they fuck it up (making extreme hopped beers with 20% alcohol).

weinie royal

No way! June's got mentioned in this episode of the kitchen sisters!
Who knew that a weinie royal was a remnant of the internment camps?! And spam sushi, which they sometimes have across the street at Osaka Ya.

There's this event next week called "dine downtown" in which a bunch of local restaurants are creating three course meals for 30 bucks. I was all set to eat up until I looked at the menus and none of them looked that appealing, mostly because one of the courses is a dessert.

deadstock

ok, yeah, nothing so hot to say today. here's a pretty cool ebay store for those vintage fiends out there. i am watching one item. i love the ladies oxfords but they're too small. the key word here is deadstock. she has some good ties for dudes.

wtf?!

I was just catching up on livmoe's blog (link to right) when I came across her post on the Goodwill sale and this picture. This picture made me lol. I ran into her that day at Deseret and coincidentally, I was covertly taking pictures of old clothes labels that I like. I suggested to her that we combine our thrift store pictures to start the most boring blog ever that only we will read.

the lake, she is clear

I spent some time in the Clearlake region this weekend. Yet another amazing place in California that I had never seen before (I've never seen the redwoods, either, so sue me). We cruised the whole lake on sunday, including the towns of Lucerne and Nice. We saw snow around Loch Lomond. We saw waterfowl aplenty (HC, I thought of you) including a mysterious large white bird that was cruising to far away for us to suss it out. I was pretending it was a pelican. I don't think it was an egret, but we saw those, too. Hey, wait a minute, now that I'm checking I see that the American white pelican winters in central Cali. Maybe I was right! We also saw blue herons, wood ducks, coots, quail, turkey vultures, mallards, and a brightly, black and white striped waterfowl that I can't seem to identify. Anyone?
It was cloudy and beautiful, not much rain.

Late season persimons, too mushy.
Dese nuts (stuffed in the tree). What's up with this, it looks like woodpeckers drilled the wholes and squirrels stuffed them in. It's not downtown, so I know tweakers didn't do it, but who did?
Gorgeous!

begin with beerhunter, end with tubthumper

I think there's one thing that we can all agree on in these crazy, mixed-up, ring-a-ding times that we are living in, and that's the value of a good, honest pint.
Pulled by a real pro.

This guy is a cask manager at a British pub. Raising a pint is his job.
RIP!

Wow, Safeway is being surprisingly responsive. They have currently passed the buck to some California grocer's assn, but at least they are getting back to me, and they answered my complaint email, too, and asked for more information on what stores I'm talking about. It seems like the (short) article might become real for the April MM issue (earth day-related).

How about this wind, huh? A tree crushed a house like two blocks from mine. I couldn't sleep because of constant dreams of the ceiling falling in, etc. It's kind of fun to have real weather for once.

Four Eyes Christmas show set list, anyone? with asterisks next to my personal faves. two asterisks next to songs that I fucking hate but which the foureyes made me love

sunshine of your love

luca

magic man

two princes/semi charmed life

California love

wish you were here

take me home tonight*

smile-lily allen

SHE'S LOST CONTROL*

cause I got high**

rave on

crazy-gnarles barkley

bang a gong

kodachrome

the weight**

the night they drove old Dixie down

atlantis*

touch of grey**

psycho killer

love is a battlefield

here I go again

mongoloid

ragdoll

splish splash*

my girl wants to party all the time

sweater song

livin on a prayer

don't stop believing

roy orbison..CRYING

GIGANTICbody count (on with the)

papa was a rolling stone

blister in the sun

cant touch this/superfreak

losin my religion

dance magic dance

try a little tenderness

rocket man

whats so funny about peace love and understandingAllison

the aeroplane over the sea

graceland

redemption songs*

creep

lonely teardrops

sharp dressed man**

BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN

don't do me like that

man in the mirror

the lion sleeps tonight*

we built this city on rock and roll

come on Eileen

islands in the streamwe are the world

tubthumper**

knock knock!

This is a rad review of the knock knock record! I couldn't agree more. Well said. Ixnay on the eelray amenay, though.

intense supernanny

Wow, did anyone else see that intense supernanny last night?

So....I have a call into the Northern Cali PR person for Safeway right now about their corporate policy on bag use. I said that I'm writing an article for MM on local markets from an environmental angle to get them to call me back. I bet you'd be pretty excited to read that article if it was real. The thing with the bags at Safeway is fucking crazy. They will double bag a head of lettuce. I want to know what their training for baggers is. It seems to consist of telling them "use the most bags you possibly can".

Did I mention I ate at Tuli Bistro? I may have ranted to you about it in person. I need to give it another chance, but it really let me down. Hey, guys, do you need another place to go get burgers and fries? No? What about pizza? How about "pulled pork" sliders? Why do people love the phrase pulled pork so much? If you would rather have a semi-healthy sandwich our salad you are probably S.O.L. I got an eight dollar salad that would not be enough food for an infant and it was soooo plain. It didn't even have the promised almonds, just a big ball of goat cheese and lettuce. Scott's tuna melt was teeny and the bread was SOAKED in butter, in addition to the sandwich being draped in cheese. I guess the menu changes daily, so maybe they will get a clue.

Puzzle of the year

Back to work. Wow, friends, I think we can all agree that that was a lot of togetherness. We really touched base. We put in so much face time it's not even funny. We got knocked down, but we got up again, and nothing's ever gonna keep us down.

I never got around to posting any best of lists. I think I can muster a top five for albums. You can look at it and tell I like some pretty mellow shit. It's because I spend so much time raging at shows, I need to unwind when I'm at home. I heard that heckamax's new years resolution is to rage more.

1. Human Like a House-Finches

2. Girls on the Run-Knock Knock

3. Person Pitch- Panda Bear

4. Imagine Our Love- Lavender Diamond

5. Fiery Furnaces-Widow City

Varietal of the year- Cabernet Franc, specifically from the Loire.

Food of the year- Ramen and Pho (tie)

Vacation of the year: Tokyo

Child of the year- Everly B and Matea (tie)

Venue of the year- Guphy's basement (RIP)

Genius Award- Jonathan Richman (every year)

It's hard for me to post a lot of best ofs cuz my memory is so crappy. I could use the blog as a guide but who wants to go back and read all that bullshit? Not me. I know that the Four Eyes xmas show and the Four Eyes at Cody's wedding were two show highlights of the year. Specifically the four eyes singing "shout" at Cody's wedding was amazing. The English Singles and Mantles and Ganglions at that house party was also one of the best, in its sheer fun retardedness. There are probably tons of shows from the first six months of the year I'm forgetting. Ski Instructors and Oh Sees at Fools. Oh yeah, that last Bananas show in Tokyo was off the chain. Morrissey in Stockton (can you tell that I am looking at the blog archives now?). Knock Knock in Guphy's basement. Holy Crap! and knock knock at Cesar Chavez, how could I have forgotten that? Jonathan Richman at the Palms, of course.