Meme Virgin No Moremore

I, who reside in the small suburban city of College Park, Maryland in the great country of the United States of America, had never been Memed until now. I don't even know if I need to capitalize Meme, but i feel like i ought to for some reason. It was my wife, O for Obsessive who Memed me......and she was very gentle. Can Meme even be used as a verb?....but i digress.

Rule One is list your 5 all time fave restaurants.
Rule Two is link to the person who tagged you, perhaps even twice.
Rule Three is list the state and country in which you live.
Rule Four is tag 5 others and tell them you've done so.

So anyway, here we go.....Burger King and Taco Bell are really close to each other over there on Route 1. Just kidding.

1. Delhi Palace Cuisine of India
933 E University Dr #103 Tempe, AZ 85281 (480) 921-2200
I have a lot of history with this place. My first date with Kelly was there, and i was so nervous i forgot to tip, so i went back the next day and delivered it with apologies. After that, much to my amazement and delight, the staff always gave me a 20% discount whenever i dined. They have the tastiest Indian food i have ever had, hands down. Their lunch buffet was even primo. And the prices were very reasonable, too.
2. Laboratorio del Galileo
1110 Twenty-First Street NW Washington, DC 20036 (phone) 202-293-7191 (fax) 202-331-9364 info@galileodc.com
Laboratorio is the best. The chef and his assistants are right there in the room with you cooking your meal. And what a meal. I've had both the 9 course and the 12 course dinners, and i've never had a dining experience before or since that came close in quality. It's not your impulsive "hey let's go eat at Laboratorio tonight" kind of place. You need reservations months in advance sometimes, and they only do the Laboratorio on certain nights. But if you want to splurge on a fantastic meal for an ultra special occasion, this place must be experienced.
3. Sushi Taro
1503 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036, U.S.A. (17th & P street) (202) 462-8999
I haven't been to Sushi Taro in ages, but i remember it always being the best Sushi in town. I liked Kaz and Spices and a few other places too, but Sushi Taro was the tops. Nylonthread thought so too.
4. Addis Ababa
8233 Fenton St, Silver Spring, MD 20910Telephone: (301) 589-1400
Many of my fave restaraunts are also my wife's. This one is no exception. Kid friendly, excellent food, usually good service, and reasonable prices. What's not to like?
5. La Lomita
1330 Pennsylvania Ave., SE; 202-546-3109
My list could not be without a Mexican food restaraunt. There was one that i liked here in College Park that just closed, unfortunately. So thinking about it, i remembered La Lomita from my old neighborhood. The food is tasy, the margaritas are delicious, and the chips and salsa are some of the best i've had in the area.

Well i am going to have to break Rule Four because i don't know five bloggers who haven't already been previously hit with this. I will also be breaking the usually unspoken Rule Five which states that "No one shall be double Memed". ok i made that up.
tag you're it.

Rape is Always Wrong

A friend of mine recently confided in me that she had been raped as a teenager. I was so horrified, as would be any sensitive and caring person. My mother was raped, too, in the early 80's. The sick and demented excuse for a human who did it kidnapped her and held her in his house for hours before finally allowing her to leave. The fact that she wasn't also murdered is pretty amazing. The guy was caught, and eventually sentenced to a mere 10 years in prison.

That rape exists makes me embarrased to be male.

Rape laws in the US are not strict enough. For most cases, sentencing times are left up to the jurisdiction, and for some there is a federal limit to how many years one can be sentenced.

Rape is always wrong. One cannot justify an act of rape. Murder can be justified in some cases (certain self-defense scenarios etc), but never rape. Rape is the most heinous crime this side of brutal torture resulting in death. It's worse than aggravated battery, and it's as bad as premeditated murder. That this is not reflected in the sentencing of cases is a crime in and of itself. There ought to be higher minimum sentencing times set for all cases of rape. 20 years should be where it starts, instead of being the maximum for some cases.

Review of Tidings of Comfort and Joy by Skafish

Now, i am no Christmas album aficionado, but having worked in record stores for 13 years or so in my younger days, i certainly heard my fill of holiday music. Most of it was, and is, horrible. But hearing Skafish's 2006 release Tidings of Comfort and Joy was refreshing, as well as both comforting and joyful.

Alternately titled A Jazz Piano Trio Christmas, Skafish has put together one of the most original, brilliantly arranged, and beautifully played Christmas albums ever. Supported by session musicians Lawrence Kohut on basses, and Tom Hipskind on drums, Skafish takes you on a Christmas music journey via the A-train, with musical nods to many great Jazz giants, while also inflecting his piano parts with strikingly inventive chord forms and shimmering glissandos.

Recorded at Chicago Recording Company, and produced by Skafish himself, the sound quality is superb, every instrument captured in perfect proportion and clarity. It is very easy on the ears indeed, and allows one to concentrate totally on the music.

Each track begins with an original introduction before launching in to a traditional melody, and then proceeds with variations and improvisations. This approach gives the music a serious and introspective feel that one doesn't usually associate with modern interpretations of Christmas music.....in other words, this ain't no Kenny G Christmas! Far from it. For me, this album has joined Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas as being the two most interesting, listenable, and original holiday music albums ever recorded.

Well done Jim Skafish. I hope the world will hear more of your great music from the past, and i hope you make some more great music in the future.

The Evil of the World is Ignorance

Bush must go.

What a Wonderful World This Can Be is a blog book by Bertha Stoller-Fields.

It's blatant hope mixed with a fatalist reality.
It's scary.
It makes me want to do something.
I just haven't figured out what, yet.

What Would Al Do?

The Sugarcubes at The Roxy in Los Angeles, 1989

Ethynol and all

I have been thinking about getting a vehicle with better fuel economy, and hopefully one better for the ecology too. I do a fair amount of driving for my job so it makes sense. I want to wait until i find just the right car because i can't afford to make the wrong choice, as it were.

The other week i was at a gas station and the young man next to me pumping gas was very friendly and we started a casual conversation which eventually turned in topic to rising gas prices. He told me about a guy he knew who had a car with an ethynol burning engine. I believe he said the guy built the engine himself. And he said his friend got all of his "fuel" from fast food restaurants with which he had made a deal to remove some of their waste for them. It seems when they were all done making french fries and chicken nuggets, this guy would take huge vats of oil (corn oil, i guess) off their hands, thus getting all of his fuel for free while saving them the trouble of otherwise disposing of it.

I didn't know whether this was a tall tale or not, but seeing as there are so many fast food restaurants, it sure would make sense to market such an engine, if indeed it is feasable. Perhaps McDonald's will help start a new industry: a new automobile line with engines that run completely on ethynol, a line of gas stations -complete with mini-markets and McDonald's- to sell the new fuel, and a few factories throughout the nation (world?) to distribute french fry grease to the stations after, i would guess, a certain amount of filtering. The engines probably couldn't tolerate the french fry and chicken nugget sediment in the oil.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

Hugo Largo at The Roxy in Los Angeles 1989

Mimi Goese with knife

Adam Peacock and Mimi










Hahn Rowe

Mimi and Timothy Sommer

Adam and Mimi

Adam

These photos were all taken by Angela Kwan.
Check out the fansite for Hugo Largo.

Obama O-bombed-a on MySpace

I stumbled on this piece by a Florida Journalism graduate student while roaming the blogoshere:

"Below is my correspondence with the Barack Obama campaign from my MySpace.com account. I saw a story on CNN about how Obama took over Joe Anthony's Obama MySpace page. Initially, it was a move so that the candidate could control the information posted. As CNN reported it, the two parties couldn't agree on compensating Anthony for his work and the campaign officially took over the site. I've got some GRAVE concerns about this move and Freedom of Speech. "

read more at http://cherphillips.blogspot.com/2007/05/barack-obamas-campaigns-stand-on-new.html

Japanese Rock

I became interested in Japanese popular music around 1985 or so when i worked at a record store and was the import buyer. I was routinely exposed to album release pitches (mostly by mail) from representatives of distributors and labels. So reading about these various groups i started to form an interest.

Also around this time i was listening to Art Rock a lot, and Henry Cow guitarist Fred Frith was producing a lot of Japanese bands. Other Western artists were getting involved in the Japanese scene too. XTCs Andy Partridge, Thomas Dolby, Robin Scott (the guy behind the smash hit "Pop Music"), Adrian Belew, the list goes on. So whenever i'd see a familiar name on a Japanese release, my interest was further piqued.

One of the first Japanese artists/bands i bought records by was Yellow Magic Orchestra (or YMO). They were regarded in Japan as being as big as The Beatles were in England. They just never were able to catch on in America. Musically they were at the forefront of the New Wave explosion. Their techno sound was accompanied by techno song titles, and an all encompassing techno sensiblity.

Tenko is an out-there avante garde singer. Her voice is more expression than musicality. Wailing, screaming, chanting, and growling was her modus operandi. But i connected with it in the same way that i later connected with the work of Yoko Ono, although Yoko was more song-oriented.

Hajime Tachibana made a brilliant record called "Hm" in 1983. Completely instrumental, it's essentially a saxophone quartet rock album. It features lush arrangements and very catchy melodies and riffs. It is also a world away musically from his band The Plastics. They were comparable to Devo, or perhaps better The B52s, with quirky songs and jerky rhythms. I wish i had been able to buy more records by Hajime Tachibana, but he didn't get American distribution and the imports were priced out of my wage, even with an employee discount. Besides i had so many competing interests that other things won out.

My favorite Japanese band is Sadistic Mika Band. I just noticed one of their records in a used record store which i frequented in the 80's, and oddly enough i remembered that Brian Eno is wearing a Sadistics sweatshirt in a photo from the album Mainstream by Quiet Sun. So with only that and the cover to recommend it i picked it up and was blown away by it. It was their self-titled debut album. Luckily i went back to the same record store and found two more by them, Hot! Menu! and Black Ship.

I discovered Shonen Knife about a year before they started becoming known in America, which was thanks to Portland and Seattle area bands who sort of adopted them for the US. I was amittedly as attracted to their cuteness as i was their sound and songs, but i still own almost all their CDs (and some vinyl too) so it wasn't all about the cuteness.

I also became a fan of a Japanese easy listening singer relatively unknown outside Japan. Her name is Yumi Matsutoya, but was better known as Yuming. I have only ever owned a 60 minute cassette that i dubbed from another cassette that my friend had at the time. It was a collection of Yuming's early work, roughly 1972-1975. I have since burned a CD of it (in case the tape bites the big one), but i still can't find her CDs, let alone vinyl, at any affordable prices.

I just became aware (via my friend Bob) that Julian Cope is releasing a book about Japanese Rock called Japrocksampler. He had a similar book about German Rock called Krautrocksampler.

1975: Blegvad kicked by Cow

Peter Blegvad describes why Henry Cow was just not the group for him. I love the last line.

"The piece that got me kicked out was "Living In The Heart Of The Beast". I was assigned the task for the collective to come up with suitable verbals, and I wrote two verses about a woman throwing raisins at a pile of bones. Tim just said, I'm sorry, this is not at all what we want. And he wrote reams of this political tirade. I admired his passion and application but it left me cold. I am to my bones a flippant individual, I don't know why I was created thus or what I'm trying to deny, but it clashed with the extreme seriousness. People who take themselves very seriously make me giggle, unless they're pointing a weapon at me or my loved ones"

Go here to read more about Mr. Blegvad - http://calyx.club.fr/mus/blegvad_peter.html
Go here to read more about Henry Cow - http://www.ccutler.com/ccutler/bands/group02.shtml