Morrissey On Halloween - Scary

Morrissey cancelled a live performance at the Inland Invasion Festival a couple of months ago. Tonight was the make-up show. Marie and I drove up to Devore to check out this happy old man sing his sad old songs. The Glen Helen Pavillion attracted some 60,000 fans to celebrate Halloween with the scariest of them all. Morrissey took to the stage in a priest costume and the members of his band were all dressed like nuns. He's an artist, you know. Most of his (newer songs) as expected flew over my head like passing cars on the freeway, but similar to what happened some years back at Coachella, when Morrissey started singing classic Smiths songs, the music took full control of my senses. Damn it. He can still hit me hard in my gut, stab a knife in my heart (Happy Halloween!) and torture me with heartfelt painfully-honest clever lyrics. "There is a light than never goes out," indeed...

Krassy Can Listen To It: "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out" by The Smiths

Boo! Dis Be Halloween. Big Up Yoself!

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Subway Song" by The Cure

La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita on Clairemont Dr. has the best Italian salad/soup bar in town. Hands down. Everytime I eat here, I can't really try their main meals because I get stuffed on their salad buffet. The girl with the acoustic guitar adds a very special touch to the atmosphere of this old school Italian Restaurant. Any minute now Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro will take a seat at the booth behind us next to the fireplace. Oh, did I mention the dry-tomato & garlic oil dip is to die for?

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Azzuro" by Adriano Celentano

Sander Kleinenberg DJ Set

Sander Kleinenberg was in town tonight. And I missed most of his set. I didn't make it to L5 until 2:45am, but the club was still rockin' on a school night. I got a taste of what this dude from the Netherlands is all about live, but that was it - just a taste...a tease. Must see and experience more of it. Next time.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Scorchio (Sander Kleinenberg Scorched Remix)" by Sasha & Emerson

All That Jazz

Dizzy's (344 Seventh Avenue, between J & K in Downtown San Diego) features some fine live Jazz music. Tonight I checked out an incredible Big Band Jazz Orchestra. Lively. Didn't even catch their name; was lost in music. Need to have more live jazz music in my life. Will be back for more.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Atabaque" by Jazzanova

Serahtonic In A Hairworld?

I got a phone call. Then an e-mail. Then another phone call on my cell. Then another e-mail on my other e-mail address.

Apparently Serahtonic has more fans than I ever thought. The person who called and wrote apparently loves our CD and used two songs from it in his independent documentary titled "Hairworld 2002". The film is about a hairstyling competition in Las Vegas and features some pretty funny scenes and interviews. Ha! The songs used were "Daybreak Eyes" and "Enter Space".

It's interesting how "Daybreak Eyes", a song that the band liked but didn't really love, was also chosen to augment a scene in a Gerry Lopez documentary three or four years ago.

My favorite part of this story is that the person who contacted me is someone who was touched by Serahtonic's music. He was telling me how he bought our CD at Music Trader and listened to it over and over. A couple years later when he started working on his indie flick, he was inspired to use some of Serahtonic's music and the songs helped him achieve the effect he was looking for in the scenes in which he used them.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Daybreak Eyes" by Serahtonic

Real Names Of Hip Hop And R&B Artists

A while back you all showed some solid knowledge of what are the real names of some real Rock Stars. Here comes round two. Do you know who's hippin' and hoppin' and rappin' and rhymin'? Like last time, no cheatin' - don't be too clever going' and doin' da Google thingy! You either know it or you don't! Werd.

Louis Freeze
Trevor Tahiem Smith
Carole Yvette Marie Stevens
Carlton Ridenhour
Artis Ivey Jr.
Oshea Jackson
Tracy Marrow
James Todd Smith
Stanley Kirk Burrell
Nathaniel Dwayne Hale
Jonathan Davis
Darryl McDaniels
Joseph Simmons
Cheryl James
Cordazer Calvin Broadus
Steveland Judkins
Lesane Parish Crooks
Mark Marseilles

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Lose Yourself" by Eminem

The Of And To A In That It Is

Ever wonder what are the most frequently used words in English? If you ever lost sleep because you never found the statistics, go to bed and relax! Here's help:

WORDCOUNT - Tracking The Way We Use Language

1. The
2. Of
3. And
.
.
.
67. Like
.
384. Love
.
.
1766. Totally
.
.
3107. Hate
.
.
35307. Dude
.
.
Percolification - not found

"WordCount™ is an artistic experiment in the way we use language. It presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonality. Each word is scaled to reflect its frequency relative to the words that precede and follow it, giving a visual barometer of relevance..." ( read more about WORDCOUNT )

Krassy Can Listen To It: "California Stars" by Wilco

Max Graham Live

He's good. He's REALLY good, actually. And getting better. Max Graham played L5 tonight. Svetla, Neven, Trevor, Marie and I headed down to the club after midnight. L5 was packed, dark, electrified. The walls breathing in and breathing out in synch with the thumping beat. Boom-ts, boom-ts, boom-ts. Max Graham is the heart. Pumping. Pulsating. Getting the packed crowd's blood rushing and boiling. He takes his time and ventures into hypnotic deep-house progressions. I feel alive.

It's Sunday morning now - time to go to bed.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Dreaming (Lucid Dub)" by BT

His Band And Bob Dylan

Tonight, Jeff and I had the privilege of witnessing a live performance by a true rock'n'roll legend. The show was called "Bob Dylan and His Band". No disrespect to the man at all - but after seeing his phenomenal band live, I thought the show should've been called "His Band and Bob Dylan" instead. And this is not to put Bob Dylan down. On the contrary - I think it's great that he is touring with such a talented band. Him and them are really one. They all sound great together and he himself can shine with his haunting voice and piano pounding in a different light - engulfed in the swirling bluesy jazzy psychedelic-at-times musical concoction provided by the great musicians around him. The band is his magic carpet; Bob Dylan is the dreamer riding on it, reciting poetry and preaching with emotional tone and madman's gestures to the stars and the skies and the sun and the moon.

Bob Dylan has talent. Has charisma. Has attitude. Leaves the audience wanting more at the end of his show, standing before them thousands like a warrior who had just defeated an impossible-to-defeat enemy. Blank arrogant stare at the crowd, no bow, no wave, no thank yous. Classic.

San Diego, CA
Cox Arena
October 22, 2004

01. Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat
02. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
03. Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum
04. Tell Me That It Isn't True
05. Things Have Changed
06. Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)
07. If Dogs Run Free
08. Cold Irons Bound
09. Positively 4th Street
10. Highway 61 Revisited
11. Standing In The Doorway
12. Honest With Me
13. Forever Young
14. Summer Days

encore
15. Like A Rolling Stone
16. All Along The Watchtower

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Absolutely Sweet Marie" by Bob Dylan

Vitamin Water

My latest addiction is Vitamin Water. Fave flavor: stress-b. Love it! Must have at least one a day. Have been craving this thing so much that have jumped in the car on occasion to drive to the store to get two - one for the drive back, and another one to enjoy on the couch at home. I haven't tried making a cocktail with this magical liquid yet, but I bet it could really work. Hmmm...

Anyways, Henry's usually runs a pretty good discount promotion on this drinkable bliss, so if you ask me, you should go stock up NOW.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Summer Sun" by Koop

"Smart" Ads

This is a screenshot of a news story (with some real "smart" and "useful" ads related to it) that was posted on CNN.com today:

Krassy Can Listen To It: "From Your Favourite Sky" by I Am Kloot

Panerai vs. Lorus

My sis and I met Dorota and Kiki at Wired Cafe le Bistro for some java and some chit chat.

Topic of conversation was Panerai watches. Kiki has been a fan for a long time now, and tonight is buzzing with excitement showing us his latest collection item - a Panerai watch with his own name engraved on the back.

According to Kiki, Panerai watches are the Mercedes of watches. Apparently celebrities love wearing them too. Curious who wears them? Kiki's been running an online message board posting mostly about celebrities who wear Panerai watches.

I love my Lorus watch that I bought at Target. I haven't seen any celebrities wearing a Lorus, but I still feel cool.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Side" by Travis

Comments. New And Improved.

OK, so I just noticed that the service I was using for people to leave comments on this blog, courtesy of HaloScan, erases everything older than a month or so. I am not happy about this. At all. One thing that I've enjoyed greatly about this blog is the comments that my friends and random visitors have been leaving. If I didn't care about people reading this blog and leaving comments, I wouldn't bother posting online.

OK, so the good news - Blogger's recent upgrade actually provides a comments service and I've managed to integrate Blogger comments into my blog, so please don't hesitate to leave as many as you want without being afraid, alarmed, panicked, depressed and concerned that your opinions will be lost after time. Blogger keeps all comments. Forever. What a great concept! As much as I like posting on here, I like hearing from you all. So speak up! This space is as much yours as it is mine. In the meantime I will try and "recreate" your posts that HaloScan is still keeping from the past month or so...

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Caravelle" by Jazzanova

Up In The Trees

Marie and I met Anna and Chuck for breakfast at Krakatoa Cafe. Nice conversation and fresh squeezed juice are the perfect way to start your day on a lazy early Sunday morning. And after you start your day like that, what you do next is, you go climb a tree. Like a kid. It's fun.

Reminds me of some oldskool Serahtonic lyrics:

Sitting in a tree by my favorite bush
Waiting around for the daily rush
I don't see happenings of much
So I just fly away on my own search...

...or sompethin' like dat. Word.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Leave Them All Behind" by Ride

Putting The "F" Back In Funny

Time for a triple play at the Movies. First, Marie and I saw Team America World Police. Wow!



The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, have done it again. Innovative, funny, in-your-face, provocative, entertaining. This puppetoon manages to make fun of anything and everything that comes to mind. This is one clever political satire that won't offend you, unless you are Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Helen Hunt, Jeanine Garofalo, Michael Moore, Susan Sarandon or Alec Baldwin. The storyline is absurd, the marionettes look cool, and the soundtrack is hilarious. Add the voice of Phil Hendrie as The Intelligence, and you've already made me want to see this movie again. I don't think Sean Penn wants to see it again.

The second movie we checked out was Shark Tale. This one is just OK. It ain't no Finding Nemo and it doesn't even come close. Marie liked it, but she really loves all these animation flicks.

The third movie Marie saw, was Sky Captain and the World Of Tomorrow. I saw half of it. Great first half. The cinematography is awesome. I can't comment on the second half because I fell asleep in the comfortable seats at AMC Mission Valley 20 Theatres.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Fit But You Know it" by The Streets

Homemade Guacamole

Ryan and Theresa brought over some delicious homemade guacamole, but like any great DJ, they wouldn't disclose the secret in the mix.

I've never tried to, but if I was to make guac, here's my recipe:

7 crushed walnuts
5 garlic cloves
4 pinches of black pepper
3 pinches of salt
1 roma tomato
1 lemon
½ chopped red creole onions
½ cup chopped cilantro
½ shot glass of orange juice
¼ cup crumbled feta cheese
¼ cup black olives

oh, and 3 avocados...

Krassy Can Listen To It: "By The River" by Groove Armada

No White Stripes - Just White Fur

I find Joel Veitch's Punk Kittens "video" for The White Stripes' song "I Fell in Love With a Girl" rather entertaining and much better than anything on MTV.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "I Fell in Love With a Girl" by The White Stripes

Evil Exists

Early in the morning. Ready to start my day. I get in my car, start the ignition, and as I drive off, my right hand by habit automatically reaches for the volume knob of the car stereo. Can't find it. Am I not fully awake? My fingers feel cold steel and dangling wires. Damn it. My car stereo - gone. I reach behind my seat. My digital camera - gone. My car got broken into.

Evil.

I don't consider my car stereo or my camera material possessions. These are tools that get me through my day and provide me comfort. This morning or last night, some idiots decided to take some of that comfort away from me.

I wish that at least I got robbed by pros. These guys didn't even know what they were doing. They took the detachable face but couldn't pull out the whole car stereo unit. They took my Canon PowerShot G5, but don't have the battery charger for it.

What I miss most are the hundreds of pictures that I had on my camera, and the daily hour of music or talk radio that get me through my commute.

Evil? Sure exists. Karma? I sure hope so.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Karma Police" by Radiohead

e-Commerce Solutions

Have been learning more about e-Commerce Solutions. Here's a list of links, links, and more links...

Credit Card Processing and Merchant Services:
2Checkout
Merchant e-Solutions
PayPal
ProPay
PayQuake
VeriSign
WorldPay

Shopping Carts and Online Stores:
Agora Cart
CC Now
Karova
Mal's e-Commerce
Miva
Miva Central
osCommerce
ShopFactory
StoreFront
VirtualCART
Zen Cart

Krassy Can Listen To It: "H20" by Darren Emerson

Next Stop - Station Sushi

Met Bello and Mike at the Station Sushi on Highway 101 in Solana Beach. The Crunch Roll is to die for. I shouldn't have been introduced to this place; it has the potential of becoming addictive. Thanks, friends - I am already craving more edamamame. Also, forgot to get an autograph from Jack Black's brother...

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Beautiful" by Athlete

Chalk La Strada 2004

On a perfect sunny fun Sunday, Marie and I checked out Chalk La Strada - the amazing Italian Street Painting Festival that takes place every year in Little Italy.


Simply Amazing!

I love the idea of artists creating their works right before your eyes. These incredible paintings are like songs performed live once. One shot - that's it. And you, as the audience, take away only that momentary impression of the brilliant work born right before your eyes. Unless, of course, you were lucky enough to be carrying a camera with you, so you that can take a photo, similar to the way you would make a bootleg recording of a live musical performance.

I took hundreds of pictures, but haven't had the chance to go through them all just yet. I'll post some of them later. In the meantime, here are some of the photos Marie took. Enjoy!

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Somewhere a Clock is Ticking" by Snow Patrol

Farfromgood 9/11

I saw Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight. My local rental store was renting out copies of it for free. With the election coming up in a couple of weeks, I "wondered" why the "promotion." After seeing the film, it makes more sense to me why the free rental - that's what the film is worth. Not a dime. And even worse - a waste of someone's time who is being brainwashed and manipulated. I was exposed to plenty of Moore-style "documentaries" growing up in my native country, then-Communist, Bulgaria. Blatant propaganda is very easy for me to spot.

Quick disclaimer, before you rush to judgment and possibly label me as a "conservative who just doesn't see it" - please be advised that I am neither a conservative, nor a liberal. I call it like I see it, without wearing a pair of political-affiliation agenda glasses.

I found this "documentary" weak and manipulative - almost desperate. When accusations and arguments are being made, I like to be presented with multiple sides of a story. Moore doesn't do that. One-sided arguments are like pictures described to blind people. Not convincing. At all. Simply manipulative.

In Fahrenheit 9/11 there is too much weight on one side and almost no weight on the other side of the scale. We don't live in a world where things are black and white. Or even, as painted by Moore - only black. Even the potentially "strong" points that Moore makes are somehow weak and lost in the barrage of inappropriate sarcasm and emotionally manipulative imagery.

I don't have the time, nor the desire, to do an in-depth review of this "documentary", especially since I wasted enough time already watching it and writing about it here...If you want at least one example of why this film is pretty bad, pay attention to one of the worst parts of the film - Moore making fun of the countries in the Coalition of the Willing. Way to go, buddy! You should be ashamed of yourself, especially calling yourself a Liberal.

This movie was supposed to criticize the Bush administration. Fair enough. But if the author was truly so concerned with helping people by showing them some "truth", why take the avenue of entertainment and exploit terrible tragedies in order to make millions of dollars? I can't help but feel sickened by this fact. Maybe some of the proceeds have gone to charity, but I am not aware of that - let me know if this is the case.

I am now curious to check out Farenhype 9/11. Maybe just as bad, but at least, I hope to find some balance in the biased world described by Moore.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Fusions Alright" by Röyksopp

Vote For Pedro

Caught most of the Second Debate on radio tonight. Well. OK. Erm. Huh? What? Already then...

Here's what I want for Christmas:

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Pick Up (Four Tet Remix)" by Four Tet

"P" Is For Pantera. "P" Is For Pedro.

Metalhead Bello showed me what Heavy Metal is all about. Pantera. Live in Moscow. Case closed. After a couple drinks and some headbanging in Bello's apartment, both him and I were wired and ready for some serious moviegoing experience, so we caught Napoelon Dynamite at the AMC La Jolla 12. I think Bello needs to see it again. And so do I.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Psycho Holiday" by Pantera

Digital Bubble Wrap

Bored? Enjoy:


(courtesy of fun.from.hell.pl)

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Martha's Mantra (For The Pain)" by Neil Halstead

Top Shelf : Final Episode

Tonight was the last episode of the Robb Dogg trilogy. Rod, Keefe, Bello, Kev, Mike and I got together for the final episode at Red Robbin. Our first visit was hilarious and our second visit was just as fun, but like with movie sequels, by now the story has become old. The joke has become sad. No more top shelf. No more...This is it. The End.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Songbird" by Oasis

The Eye Of The Beholder

A while back I blogged about Akiyoshi Kitaoka's fascinating work. Recently I ran across some other optical illusion experiments. These "simple" observations make you go "hmm, interesting." And then you think - ok, cool, whatever...big deal. Right?

But optical illusions are all around us in everyday life. I am sure they are part of our lives, coincidentally, without us even realizing that. And why haven't we used optical illusions a lot more for practical purposes? Yes, fashion uses them by means of color and stripes to make one look slimmer, for example. But that's too basic. What I don't understand is, with the incredible advances in science, how come optical illusions have not been applied in some amazing way? If an artist can create the image below, which shows 3 different faces simultaneously, shouldn't architects design buildings with multiple looks?

Maybe Optical Illusions could find application in movies and TV shows. A single scene could have multiple interpretations by different people as to what is being shown.

What about embedded advertisements(as if we weren't bombarded enough by such), but really - consider the big plus - uninterrupted broadcasting.

Maybe we could even fight wars with optical illusions. Fake them terrorists out. Now you see us, now you don't...now we look like one of you. (Yeah, camouflage gear is a form of optical illusion, but maybe we could do even better than that. I am looking for something mind-blowing. Cutting edge. Unreal.)

Maybe optical illusions have already been exploited big time and I am not aware of their applications. Please show me and tell me if you know how, where, and when...

Krassy Can Listen To It: "It Doesn't Matter Two" by Depeche Mode

Tim Burgess Performs With The Libertines

Marie and I went to check out The Libertines at The Epicentre tonight.




A couple of songs into their set, some dude wearing a cowboy hat gets up to the mike and starts singing with Carl Barat. I looked closer, and to my biggest surprise, it turned out to be the singer of The Charlatans, Tim Burgess. Are you kidding me? On a Sunday night, in suburban Mira Mesa, at a tiny live venue, I get to see one of my favorite singers perform with one of my favorite "new" bands. Was I dreaming? Nope. After the show, Tim was hanging out signing autographs and letting shocked fans take their picture with him.



As for the Libertines -- awesome. Too bad Pete Doherty was not with them. Still, the band put on a great show. Would love to see them again.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Can't Stand Me Now" by The Libertines

Disneyland For Adults

Stacey's going away party was at her aunt's house. The backyard, if it could be even called that, is an amusement park for adults. What we're talking about here is: a fairly large swimming pool with a 50-ft slide down a 60-degree slope, a golf putting green, a ping pong table, an outdoor kitchen, a fireplace, a karaoke bar, two large dining/bar areas, and a trampoline. Add 30 cool people, alcohol, and food, and you have the perfect ingredients for a proper party. Good times were had by all, especially Stacey, even though she was already sad, as we all are, for her leaving us soon.

Marie and I finally met Lona and Damian. Good fun people. And their 4-month old daughter is super duper cute. No wonder Angie didn't put her down for hours. Too bad we missed Mark and Christian; would've loved to see them both. Chris was hilarious, as usual. He was so funny at one point that my stomach started hurting real bad; I had to walk away to catch my breath.

Oh, at the end of the night, Marie and I were goofing around jumping on a huge trampoline. It was a lot of fun, but also probably somewhat dangerous, since we were both pretty buzzed. Of course I realize the danger now and not then.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "Come Together" by The Beatles

Hot Snakes

The Hot Snakes! Wow! This is raw energy. This is speed. This is power. This is rock! This is in your backyard, San Diego. Go see this band live.

Koa, Chris, Todd, Bill, Eric and I experienced the Hot Snakes live at The Epicenter tonight. And what a mighty show this one was! With ex-members of Drive Like Jehu and Rocket From the Crypt, the Hot Snakes is the result of over a decade of local punk rock talent searching for the ultimate rocking sound. Mission accomplished.

The Epicenter is an interesting venue. Looks like a small library with a stage and a sound system. Oh, and couches. As we walked into the building to the blaring sounds of the Hot Snakes, I casually climbed over a couch and made my way to the side of the stage to experience the loud power of the rockin' band up close. After the show, Koa, Chris and Todd were puzzled as to how I got to check out the show from the "VIP" area(if it could be called that). Apparently I crossed the line without a pass. Halfway through the show I did notice that N.D. from Rocket From the Crypt, Jimmy LaValle from the Album Leaf and Tristeza, and Casbah owner, Tim Mays, were all standing around me. I did wonder at one point why other people were not standing where I was. The sound was much better. Lucky move on my part.

Krassy Can Listen To It: "God Save the Queen" by The Sex Pistols