Big Wheel

People ragging on Andy Dick are usually funnier than Andy Dick himself. Exhibit A: the Shatner roast Exhibit B: the Pam Anderson roast I'm hot and cold on Lovitz but his slapstick Hitler scene in Rat Race is one of the most hilarious movie moments ever.

You can get plenty of other decent non-TBC wine at TJ's for not much more than $2. There are a couple of Argentine Malbecs that are $3 (at least in California), and a bunch of others in the $4 range. Last weekend I picked up an organic Spanish rioja...I think it was maybe $5. (Note: I'm far from a wine expert and would probably drink any swill out there.)

As I understand it, "Charles Shaw" actually is wine that comes from a variety of wineries, for reasons I'm still not clear on. Since there's no one consistent "Charles Shaw chardonnay," it's possible that the testers got a particularly good bottle. Maybe even TJ's can distinguish which are the best suppliers and entered one of the ones they knew would have a fighting chance.

Yes, the Hitachino white is quite good but also crazy expensive. The red rice ale they make is ok but strange. I sometimes see the Japanese Classic Ale in stores and may pick one up after I've tried a bunch of other stuff.

It doesn't list the city as Detroit. The AP story was filed in Detroit, but it never identifies him running in Detroit. That's all the city label before AP means at the start - that the story was filed there. That said, I'm surprised more people don't jog nude. It might be a growing fad. This is the second case I've heard of this year.

I started a thread about this amazing record a few months back and it died a quick death. (I think Apfelbaum's real brilliance is as a composer more than a saxophonist, though.) Nobody else has heard this?

Just finished a Deschutes Buzzsaw Brown ale and am now brewing a pot of mediocre white tea (I'm trying to get rid of the stuff so I can go buy some much better tea and not feel like I'm wasting what I've got). I enjoyed my first Brooklyn Brown but I was really wowed by the Brooklyn Oktoberfest I had two years back. That was good stuff.

You can take over a football team with only about $3 million? If that's the case, why didn't the star players ever do what these fans are doing? I know this isn't the NBA we're talking about, but even with salaries in the hundreds of thousands this would seem doable.

Yes, it's those uppity women and their unreasonable demands to control when they want to raise families that's the cause of America's social decay. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was standing on your lawn.

This place is also either under new management or just undergoing a name change. http://www.yelp.com/biz/cvs7dJ0M9EMMpDHr2-ZMog Haven't paid a visit yet but I can say that I've seen some pretty sketchy stuff go down right around that corner.

Let me guess, you tried my squirrelpaper theory and on the surface, it doesn't seem to be working. Listen, I know it's not easy to stay the course, but when the going gets tough, the solution is actually more and more nuts. You have to have a surge of nuts in the danger areas outside or you'll never get the squirrels under control.

I must be the only person in California who thinks that In-and-Out is only marginally better than McDonald's. Maybe my local franchise is just unrepresentative?

This ain't much wackier than tying a string around your entire neighborhood just so you can carry stuff around.

that ain't hebrew! I'm pretty sure that is Hebrew - in cursive rather than block letters. The loop looks exactly like a cursive letter ayin. I'm not sure what the long line is but I think it's either a vav or a lamed. [Oops - maybe it's a nun. See http://www.nana.co.il]

I think that if the goal is to attract listeners who are used to pop and whatnot, going with primarily swing and bop and hard bop is a dubious strategy. You have to assess your audience and figure out what their frame of reference is. Here's a playlist I recently made for a friend who is primarily into whatever indie pap is hot: Aaron Goldberg, Worlds: "Lambada de Serpiente" Dave Douglas, Keystone: "Famous Players" Gilad Atzmon, Exile: "La Cote Mediterranee" Duke Ellington, Far East Suite: "Isfahan" Hank Mobley, Hank Mobley and His All Stars: "Don't Walk" Kurt Rosenwinkel, Heartcore: "Thought About You" Maria Schneider, Evanescence: "My Lament" Woody Shaw, Stepping Stones: "Blues for Ball" Larry Goldings, Moonbird: "I Think It's Going to Rain Today"

Henry Louis Gates once called me "little brother." I've flown on planes with Manny Ramirez and KC and the Sunshine Band. One of Eddie Money's roadies screamed at me never to touch his band's equipment. If I hadn't been 17 at the time I would have thought of the ultimate retort: "You're one of Eddie Money's roadies."

I also have a nice Trek hybrid. Unfortunately, I was not accustomed to riding on anything but nice flat East Coast terrain and took a nasty ass-over-teakettle spill going down a relatively small slope in SF the day after I bought it. Embarrassing, but I never learned that using the front brakes when going downhill is a big no-no. It hasn't left the garage too much after that...sadly, my neighborhood is just too hilly and frankly, I'm starting to wonder if the bike is just too big for me to ride it properly (if I try to lean over the back wheel when going downhill, I can barely reach the handlebars).

It is: James Man.

Medical science hasn't determined that the level of chemicals or lead is sufficient to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA has. And because of that highly dubious finding, and the litigious nature of our society, GE had to add that warning. Unbelievable. You can't imagine how relieved I am to live in Florida, where, obviously, I'm safe from any such "threat" - and you can't imagine how relieved I am not to be living in California, for other reasons. pssst....there are things out there called search engines. They help you find, you know, actual information about things. So you don't have to languish in ignorance. Information like this: IOW, California adopted Proposition 65, which requires this text on certain products, because people had reason to be concerned that the federal government wasn't going far enough to regulate toxic substances. Note that the level of whatever substance it is does matter - businesses can become exempt from the warning if they can show that no significant risk results from exposure. But probably a lot of businesses are too lazy to do this, so they just slap the warning label on there instead. I think shifting the burden of proof from government regulators to businesses is a good thing.

First of all, could anyone point me to something Jesse Jackson said that was so irresponsible in the case? All I've been able to turn up of substance are a fairly circumspect op-ed and the widespread reports of the Rainbow Coalition offering to pay the "victim's" tuition. As for the tuition payment, I don't see what the big deal is - Jackson didn't say "we're doing this because guilty whitey deserves it," he said that they wanted to make sure that the woman would never again have to "stoop so low" as exotic dancing to have to put herself through college. Well, WTF is wrong with that? Why does it seem like every time there's an incident involving a racist white person, there's an inevitable chorus of middle-aged white males pointing to Something Irresponsible Jesse Jackson Supposedly Did Too?

Yes, because we all know that a rush to judgment based on incomplete information is somehow the same kind of thing as a pointless and completely unprovoked racial slur. "Wah wah wah, Don Imus said some mean things about black people. But Jesse Jackson said some mean things about white people! I can't tell the difference."

I'm filing this post under "Sentences I Never Ever Thought I Would Read."

I assumed that PR was the whole point. If you want instant connection to the community of pro musicians, it seems to me that that community is mostly centered on Myspace. For example: Vijay Iyer Wadada Leo Smith Charlie Haden Roy Haynes Jack Dejohnette If you want a website where you can write articles or a place to post your thoughts on various topics on an ongoing basis, or a place where you can post photos of your family, by all means get a blog. If you don't think you'll update it very often, then maybe something more static than a blog would suit your needs better.

For a musician? Probably MySpace. It looks kinda crappy, but everyone is on it, you get instant buzz among musicians you know, and best of all, it's free.

one thing I forgot to mention: Google AdSense actually doesn't allow porn ads for the most part, so if you're seeing porn links on weird-looking websites, they are most likely part of a different advertising network or affiliated with the porn providers directly.