Celebrity Stalking with Bad Cell Phone Photography

I'd compare this image to a glass of wine, shady and complex with lots of nuance and hints of something bigger, that seemingly only coalesces into an impression with the power of suggestion tipping you in a certain direction. Think notes of New Orleans cajun cooking, a powerful cult of personality and... is that Emeril Lagasse I detect? BAM! Now you taste it!

I had the rare pleasure of dining in his New Orleans flagship restaurant last week gratis as part of the National Restaurant Association Marketing Exectuive Group meeting. 

To my surprise, Emeril flouted any notion I had of celebrity chef (chef, notwithstanding, Emeril is a Celebrity) and took the evening quite seriously, spending most of it sweating it out in the kitchen. Not actually cooking, mind you, but taking a commander's role in overseeing the craft and delivery of his culinary experience. It was great to see someone who's reached such stature in his field still taking the time (and obvious) pleasure in its sincerest expression - entertaining people with food. Despite the outsized image he's created, Emeril is obviously not too big for his own britches and hasn't forgetten where he came from.

Civic Duty, Done!

I am happy to report that I've done the bare minimum of civic duty such that buys me the right to at least four more years of complaining. I connected the arrows to Obama/Biden, among a host of other local elections, propositions and initiatives.

Perhaps my favorite though was California's Proposition R, to rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the 'George W. Bush Sewage Plant,' in honor of the worst presidency since Buchanan let the Civil War happen.

The Huffington Post got wind of this important movement back in April when it was a glimmer in the eye of a bunch of hippies running around Dolores Park gathering the required 10,000 signatures to get this on the ballot.

Well, they succeeded, and after the federal election, it was the easiest vote I submitted.

10/29 Addendum - Embedding the YouTube video from the posts claiming to the official campaign as for California Proposition R. 

Uh. Heady?

Tom Petty at Outside Lands, San Francisco

In an abstract way...

Tom is the twin golden apparition shimmering to the right and left of the blue stage light explosion. (Well, that's not exactly him, but the dual-jumbo tron digital recreations of Tom, he's actually the smallish orange blur below the stage lights.)

I've been meaning to post more of my stellar, camera-phone art, but the exchange of media from phone to email to computer desktop back to blogger means two things: 1.) I'm not as space-aged as I think am (some kids beam these directly from cellphone to blog); and 2.) most of the time something gets lost in the process.

Anyway, this was a fun show. You have to appreciate a musician who's past the pretension of wanting to convey a deep message or needing to always push people with new material. All Tom Petty did was play every hit song he ever had to an appreciative crowd that sang every lyric from heart.

David Byrne and the Extra Action Marching Band

The amazing encore included San Francisco's very own Extra Action Marching Band!





Caught David Byrne at the San Francisco Davies Symphony hall on Tuesday night and have to say it was a fantastic show. It would be nice to think there's a concert like this going on somewhere in the world every night.

I Was Very Late to the Party of Barack-Pun Mayhem

Though I maintain I arrived at this thought independently, I was not the first to imagine that Barack's period of prominence in the American public eye would be defined by a near limitless array of Barack and Obama puns.

In fact, I'm so late to the party that I might not even be considered an early adopter. To wit, Slate, in a follow up article 'Obomedy', has apparently been covering said poltico-linguistic phenomenon since February, even going so far as to assemble a compendium of 'obamaism's in their cleverly titled 'Encyclopedia Baracktannica.'

Sadly, while I attributed an earth-shattering degree of novelty and importance to this concept, when it independently occurred to me, Slate's high-minded cultural mavens dump it in their 'Low Concept' category with other 'dubious and far-fetched' ideas.

In other news about ships I let sail, I hemmed and hawwed over Wells Fargo stock at $20 a share last week. When will I grow some balls?

'Barackracy' - Another Term I Didn't Coin

I was thinking the other day that if the Republican fears are realized and Barack ultimately sets up this clumsy, socialist safety net of a government we could start calling it the 'barackracy.' Naturally high on my own notions and agreeing (with myself) that I either invent or independently arrive at most good ideas, I decided to see if this (finally) would be my million dollar idea.

So how to get rich on this idea? Given that we've got a 50/50 chance of Obama winning the next election, I reasoned that it might be a fine domain name for a political blog or satire site of some kind. Certainly clever, possibly intuitive enough to get incidental free web traffic and monetize it with advertising! Yes.....

We're onto something right?

But.

Of course, like most of my million dollar ideas to date, this is one I arrived at independently and some clever carpetbagger with a URL-registration business already got there. Two years ago it turns out.

Assholes 'Domains By Proxy, Inc.' Maybe his fortune is the product of a disciplined mind (if only I could think of such things on demand)!

No other website shits on my dreams quite as hard or often as Whois.net

Official Endorsement: The Led Zeppelin Video Channel on YouTube

You can access the channel here for over 70 more Zeppelin videos, like this Japanese promo for the first album, interviews and so many awesome live clips from the '70s your face will definitely melt off.