Wassup!!! A lot, actually, just before Election Day

We were looking around for what director Chuck Stone III has been up to lately, when lo and behold we found this incredibly dark parody that he just released on You Tube called "Wassup." It mimics his famous Budweiser spot called, you got it, "Wassup," which first aired on Monday Night football back in December, 1999. The same cast from the original spot are here again, suffering mightily, like the rest of us, 8 years later through the Iraq War, the Wall Street/World crash, the mortgage meltdown, and our at-home health care crisis.

We first met Chuck years ago through his dad, Professor Chuck Stone, who recently retired from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Journalism School after an incredibly esteemed journo career at the Philadelphia Daily News (Both Chucks must be jacked about the Phillies...we'll report back to you on that one). What was wild about Chuck Sr. is he always wrote with brown ink, which he said made him "unique." Well, his son got his talents for the last word as well.

Check it out:



We also love this other Election year spot from Farm friend Lubna Abu-Osba who we've known since her days at Kirshenbaum & Bond. This spot is all about sexy Democrats cutting off access to the good stuff if you vote Republican. It's called "True Love Waits for a Democrat."

Both Chuck and Lubna urge all of us to get out and vote, to finally get some real change around this joint called USA!!!

Smashing Pumpkins

We were listening to NPR (National Public Radi0) and heard this piece about the growing of the largest pumpkins in the world. Turns out that if anything goes wrong in trying to grow a 1800 lb. orange behemoth, they explode.

You can think of Smashing Pumpkins like this:



or this:

Pencils

Whatever happened to the good old
# 2 pencil? We still see our kids using them occasionally when they have to write out a difficult math problem. You can hear the red eraser scratching the paper when the numbers just don't add up right(maybe Wall Street should take the same hands-on lead/eraser approach to their work given all the crazy math we've seen there of late).

Point is that most the time, no one uses pencils any more. We do when we're taking notes with a client. We pull them from this special can that sits on our desks.










It's an oyster can from the '50s. One of our grandfathers, Granddaddy Anderson to be exact (who was a farmer), used to tell us a joke about lead and oysters (punchline has to do with oysters putting lead in your pencil) so that old can filled with #2 pencils reminds us of him each and every day.

Joe Joe Joe

One other thing that we had to mention today - Joe Torre. Way to go Joe!!! Taking the lame LA Dodgers to the NCLS his first season as skipper....hey, Yankees, where is your messiah now? Man oh man...what were the Steinbrenners thinkin?

Well, Joe didn't get his Dodgers to the show in '08, but there is always next season, right Joe? We've been talking an awful lot about Joe Six-Pack, and now Joe Plumber, but in our minds there is only one Joe - Joe Torre.

Any chance in heaven above that we will ever see this again? Light your candles, everyone.

Brownies

We were not very happy about the Giants losing their first road game since the first week of the 2007 season (especially to a team whose mascot looks like an elf pretending to be bad ass with the weirdest big toes ever!) but if it was gonna happen, better now with the Skins AND Cowboys both losing as well last week.

We did dig the retro helmets of the Brownies, though. Gotta love old school design!

Patsy's

We went to one of our favorite eating haunts in all of New York Sunday for pizza. It's called Patsy's. We know there are a few about town with the same name (must be a license agreement), but the original is the only one to visit, and it's been around since 1932, pumping out incredible pies from its coal burning oven. That's right..pizza-making since the Great Depression.

Treat yourself to a few pies with some friends. We like to put just one or two items on the pies, which come with this incredible tomato sauce and mozzarella topping. We love sausage on one pie, ricotta on the other, along with a healthy topping of garlic to boot. Patsy's has the thinnest, softest, crispiest crust we have ever tasted. Imagine a crispy pizza crepe. It's located on 1st ave, at 117th street, East Harlem. Take the 6 train to 116th, and walk east. You won't be sorry.

The Superpowers/Boston Afrobeat Society

We just LOVE this band. They were first called the Boston Afrobeat Society, a name that really captured their musical style, but then the band decided they needed a higher power name, so they switched it to "The Superpowers."
A bit pretentious? Sure. But these fellas are salt of the Earth dudes. We know, because we got to know them a bit better over a few beers after a show. They are ALL about the music. Most of them are graduates of the prestigious Boston Conservatory.

The Superpowers are so into what they do that the sax player told us during a break after the first set last year that he gave up tickets to see his beloved Red Sox in the World Series just so he could play a gig with his mates! When most bands these days are making tens of dollars, you gotta love his commitment to the music. They travel all over the country in a delapidated bus powered by vegetable oil that they strain from the fryer vats in the clubs and restaurants they play. It's a modern day, green-friendly, Ken Kesey magic bus kinda vibe.

Here's how they describe their music on their myspace page:

Internationally recognized afrobeat group THE SUPERPOWERS have been hailed by critics as a "poly-rhythmic juggernaut." Originally formed as the Boston Afrobeat Society, having won the 2007 Phoenix Best Music Poll and 2006 Boston Music Award for Best World Music Act, this 21st-Century Dance Band has been blasting off in the Northeast. They have since relocated to Brooklyn where they have nurtured a monthly residency at Zebulon, one of Brooklyn's most well-respected music venues, for 2 years! They have played packed houses throughout the Eastern U.S. and shared the stage with internationally renowned artists including Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars, John Browns Body, Aphrodesia, and NOMO.



Their album Revival Time which you can find on iTunes is wonderful. Check out the horns on Abami Eda, and the amazing trombone solo on System Slaves. That trombone sound seems to be showing up everywhere for us these days (check out our blog entry on the alpshorn player earlier).



Below are a few video clips of the band that we found on You Tube.


Technorati Profile

Art Shit

When we entered the term "Art Shit" in Google Images, this is what we found. So is it shit art or just art shit? You be the judge...

100 years later...and the goat curse continues

It's been 100 years now since the Cubs won a World Series. What a long time to wait. Sure, we were bummed that the Yankees aren't going to make the Show either, but we have memories of three straight World Series rings - 1998, 1999, 2000.

We overheard a guy in an Irish pub act astounded that the Cubs were down two games to none to the Dodgers. Where has he been living for the past century?

So Steve Bartman still has the curse on his back.




And the Billy Goat curse continues onward as well.



We are so happy for Joe. What a manager. To take LA Blue to the playoffs in just one season. What were the Yankees thinking when they let this classic Hall of Famer go?

Finally, what was Lou Piniella thinking that he could beat Joe and Manny?

"The last two games were probably the worst two games we've played all year." Cubbie timing, yet again.

Blow that Alphorn Eliana Burki, Blow

We saw a very strange article in the Wall Street Journal recently which talked about the rennaissance of the Swiss Alphorn. This traditional instrument is now being played by a pretty 25 year old Swiss woman named Eliana Burki who tours with her 7 or so foot horn around Europe. It's easy for her to take her horn around because it's made out of carbon fiber versus traditional wood. Check this out. The Alphorn goes funkadelic:



Eat your heart out Miles, or perhaps more likely J.J. Johnson since she plays the alphorn a lot like a trombone verus a trumpet. You got to hear it to believe it. She has two albums that you can get on iTunes. The music is a funk/light jazz vibe. Blues for Louis has some great soul funk riffs to it, and even a better one is Vacuum Funk.



So, do you think her success has anything to do with how she looks versus this fella who plays a mean alphorn as well?