Friday, August 29, 2008

(Bruce Lee) x (Jimi Hendrix) = Matthew Bellamy



I’m convinced that Muse singer/guitarist (also a stellar pianist) Matthew Bellamy is the love child of Bruce Lee and Jimi Hendrix. The guy plays the most mind-bending riffs with the discipline, precision and power of a martial arts master taking on a room full of ninjas. And he does it all while singing in a voice that would belong to the Vampire Lestat if every time he wanted to tear someone’s throat open, he sang a song instead.

I don’t mean to leave out Christopher Wolstenholme and Dominic Howard. You guys are awesome too. It’s not all about Matthew. There’s no ‘I’ in band, right? We all know it takes all three of you to make that muscular, dizzying vortex of sound that’s as tight as a Baptist preacher's ass (Southern Baptist that is, not those liberal, Bible-rejecting Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists).

This is a band that deserves every glowing adjective that can be thrown at it, and I can’t wait for the next album including Bellamy’s rumored 15-minute space-rock solo.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Baghdad Eye On The Tourist Coin


In a show of extreme optimism, Iraq’s tourism board has announced its plan to build a 650 foot tall Ferris wheel in Baghdad. The London Eye (pictured above) is a mere 443 feet tall. Iraq’s version would feature air-conditioned compartments large enough to carry 30 passengers each. Insurgents are readying their rocket launchers.

The Baghdad Eye, as it’s been dubbed, will provide sweeping views of the capital city. Those who make the complete revolution will be offered the opportunity purchase a souvenir photo. The families of the others, will receive complimentary Zip-loc baggies.

Iraq’s tourism board is also looking for bids on a proposed resort island on the beautiful Tigris River, which would feature a six-star hotel, spa, 18-hole golf course and country club. Start packing, bargain travelers.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Trade The Brown Bag For Green


Maybe it’s a little bit of OCD, but I am in love with these bento style lunch boxes. Not just because using them drastically reduces waste, but also because every day when you open the lid you are met with this amazing little mosaic of food. Everything all carefully laid out in a road map of lunchtime bliss, each item assigned its own neat compartment. The possibilities seem endless. The tidy configuration with its unassailable boundaries between food items defies you to stick with the usual boring sandwich, apple, chips routine. Stretch out. Pack cous-cous salad. Caprese. Sushi. It’s what Lunchables would be if they were made with real food and didn’t come in a disposable piece of landfill.

Clearly, I’m not alone in my obsession. There are whole Flickr pools dedicated to art of the Laptop Lunch. Do I occasionally find myself scrolling through them just to see all the imaginative ways to put the UN in lunch? Admittedly, yes. I’m weird that way.

But the best part about the bento-ware is the fact that it produces no waste. Think about this as the school year gets underway: the average lunch-toting child generates 67 pounds of garbage per school year (ref. www.greenopia.com). That translates to 18,760 pounds of waste for the average elementary school. Imagine the difference if all those kids traded their brown bags and Zip-locs for a dishwasher safe, reusable Laptop Lunch system.

Designed by a Santa Cruz-based company, the lunch boxes are available at www.laptoplunches.com and also at some retail outlets like Whole Foods. Check the site for retailers in your area.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Audacity of Cupcakes


The recent proliferation of cupcakeries in the U.S. gives me hope for this country. A people that, in the face of a the worst economy since the great depression, a war on terror, environmental chaos, pop-star drama, and the horrors of a reality show programming, can embrace the innocent, frosted promise of the cupcake must be optimists at the core. And that bodes well for our future. Even the most hardened cynic must be silenced by the plucky verve of ginger lemon.

Once the staple of bargain bakery shelves, their Crisco frosting in all manner of unnatural colors smashed against their sad little plastic shell cases, the sweet little cupcake has muscled its way to the top of the confectionary heap with gourmet and organic ingredients, artisan production, and exotic flavors like Chai Latte, Raspberry Dazzle and Red Velvet. Specialty cupcake stores like Sprinkles (which will soon have 22 locations around the country), Kara’s Cupcakes in the bay area, Chicago’s Cupcakes, and Seattle’s Cupcake Royale are battling it out for the lucrative cupcake coin.

There are glossy full-color books about cupcakes, cupcake crafts, and websites devoted to the topic (cupcakestakethecake, 52cupcakes). I haven’t seen such passion about a food item since the meteoric rise of Krispy Kreme. (I’m still mourning the “Hot Now” beacon that has ceased to flash in my neighborhood). I believe the cupcake craze will have a longer shelf life than its deep-fried and glazed cousin. The donut was like the Vin Diesel of bakery treats, while the cupcake is more like the Holly Golightly. A cute little thing with a slightly questionable past that has grown into a fascinating confectionary creature. Full of charm and wit, with the ability to be reinvented a thousand different ways, the cupcake never gets old.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Invisibility Cloak: F*** Yeah!


Geeks, freaks and the criminally insane, get ready to pop open some Fanta and JD, or maybe a vial of kitten blood and some pure oxygen. The invisibility cloak is one step closer to reality. Thanks to the brilliant minds at University of California Berkeley, you may soon be able to confirm the belief of those around you that you don’t actually exist.

While other scientists are busy looking for a way to keep our vital organs from aging, California’s best and brightest are looking for ways to finally give us all the superpowers we’ve been fantasizing about. This is why I thank God every day that I live in California. That, and the fact that I can eat outdoors in November, never get a mosquito bite, participate in a massive community pillow fight, and so many more reasons that I won’t go into because California is already crowded enough. Stay where you are. (Yes, I know there are plenty of other great places. I’ve tried a few. They have much to offer…if you’ve never been to California.)

So what of this amazing development in the superpower arena? It’s all due to the creation of a new material that bends light around 3D objects, thus making them disappear. That's the crux of it, but there's more scientific lingo to explain it in greater detail here.

Aside from being a great way to sneak around castles, evade Snape, and steal North Korean nuclear secrets, what real good is an invisibility cloak? How will this advance society? Sure it can get you backstage at a Coldplay concert. Been there. And trust me, you don’t need the cloak to be invisible. If you’ve been dreaming about following your buff neighbor around the house to answer the age-old question of boxers or briefs, maybe there’s some value here. Or you could eavesdrop on you boss, but do you really want to know how much the new guy is getting paid. Can your ulcer take it?

I’m waiting for the pill that can make me fly. I guess for some, that already exists. But I want the one that comes without rehab and a ruptured spleen.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

New Film Explores Pearl Fryar's Not-So-Secret Garden



Pearl Fryar has spent the last twenty-four years transforming his yard from a typical palette consisting of a swath of grass and a couple of box row hedges into a sort of Lewis Carroll fantasy of flora where shrubs take on mythic proportions swirling toward the sky in joyful spirals, or hugging the green earth in playful stacked mounds of varying shapes and sizes.

He shares something in common with the likes of Simon Rodia or Jeff McKissak, but aside from the obvious fact that Fryar does not work in the usual mediums associated with Dementia Concretia—concrete, glass, tile, steel—his particular creative compulsion grew out of something bigger and louder than the little voice that urges the ordinary (if such a person can be called ordinary) obsessive to toil away in his ethereal realm.

Pearl Fryar’s drive to build something beautiful, lasting and bigger than life came from a desire to overcome obstacles. The obstacle of racial intolerance. The obstacle of fear. The obstacle of ignorance. The obstacle of “no, you can’t.”

He could. And he did.

The prize for Yard of the Month in Bishopville, South Carolina had never gone to an African American. After hearing that white neighbors feared he wouldn’t keep up his yard, Pearl Fryar was determined to win that coveted prize. He knew nothing about plants and he lived just outside the prize boundaries. But those things were not about to stop him. He bought a $2.00 shrub and began sculpting. He kept at it for more than two decades, often working until midnight even after having put in a full day at his factory job. Today, he has topiaries topping twenty feet. He has not only been honored with the Iris Garden Club’s Yard of the Month Award, he’s been featured on PBS, HGTV, in Newsweek Magazine and countless other publications, and is currently the subject of a documentary film A Man Named Pearl, which can be found in limited release around the country now through October. A list of dates and venues is available at the film’s website.

Pearl’s three-acre garden of elan draws visitors from all over the world and has required a turn-around for tour buses to be built at the end of his street. He has brought his community together. He has inspired thousands with his message of love, peace and goodwill (the giant mantra is carved into his lawn). And he has created a living, breathing, constantly evolving reminder that beauty is in the believing and the doing.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Dementia Concretia: Beautiful Freaks

I ran across the term Dementia Concretia today. As diseases go, it sounds like a good one. It’s a disorder that causes people to create compulsively. Not in the typical fashion like writing books or painting pictures. Something on a grander scale. Like building a cathedral out of broken bottles and hubcaps and spare bike parts. And then adding a bonus room. There are plenty of great examples. Watt's Towers in Los Angeles, a series of concrete, glass and tile structures up to 100 feet tall built over a thirty-year span by Simon Rodia.


Bishop Castle, a family cabin gone wildly out of control. The structure has been under construction in Pueblo, Colorado since 1969 and has employed more than a 1000 tons of rock. It represents an escape from reality, a celebration of freedom, and a protest against government restrictions for builder Jim Bishop.


The Orange Show in Houston, Texas, a 3,000 square foot architectural circus of steel, brick, concrete, tile and random found objects—wagon wheels, tractor parts, finials, mannequins—all cobbled together with hope, sweat and obsession by postman Jeff McKissack in tribute to his favorite fruit, the orange. Sprinkled throughout are odes to the king of citrus and advice to visitors for better living through oranges. (Here's a link to a nice first-hand account.)


Because all the references to Dementia Concretia that I can find come from blogs, I suspect that it’s just a made up term that has taken hold. Still, I like the concept. I would submit however, that this is not a disorder at all, but rather a primitive response to the inherent need in all of us to create, a need that is sublimated to the imperative of making a living. After a lifetime spent working in within corporate confines or at menial tasks, the sheer force of all that pent up creative energy explodes in a dramatic fashion resulting in these fantastic monuments to the ingenuity and undaunted creative spirit of humankind. These are the ultimate edifices from which to proudly let fly a massive freak flag.

Bravo, freaks. And I mean that in the most endearing sense possible.