Daylight Saving Time Rules! Too Bad for Arizona, Saskatchewan and Sonora.
Published on March 11th, 2010.
If you’re like me, you can’t wait to SPRING FORWARD this weekend and rejoice in the gift of later sunlight given to us by the benevolent minds of Ben Franklin and the more obscure New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson. According to legend, while Franklin was an envoy to France in 18th century, he suggested the lazy French wake up earlier to take advantage of more sunlight and save on candles; the compromise being to set the clocks ahead one hour cos no one wanted to get up early. Even better, Hudson’s plea had more modern-day parallel: his shift job didn’t allow him enough time to collect bugs after work so he diligently proposed we jump ahead an hour in the summer, thus giving us what we call Daylight Saving Time today.
We’re all on this fun train however except for the states of Arizona and Hawaii in the U.S., the province of Saskatchewan in Canada and the State of Sonora in Mexico. I wondered why so I grabbed my knowledge shovel and went digging.
ARIZONA
This state seemed the most likely not to join the party as they were also the last state in the union to observe Martin Luther King Jr. day. However, they were on DST during WWI and WWII in a national effort to conserve energy. My thought was that with that state being so hot in the summertime that another hour of sunlight is the last thing they would want. I was right. So for 6 months out of the year, me and John McCain share the same time zone. Sweet.
SASKATCHEWAN
Apparently as recent as the 1960s, each of the divided areas that you see above were able to have whatever time zone they wanted. Talk about freedom! I’d have my sun going down at midnight if I could. As you can imagine, the fallout was pretty severe with all these Saskatchewanians missing appointments with people on the other side of the province–family gatherings were a mess. The decision to get everyone on the same time zone was a bit complex so they had to take an all-or-nothing approach to this and just stick to one time, ALL THE TIME and not mess with the clocks ever, lest they take a big step back to their chronological dark age they fled not 50 years ago.
SONORA
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that because this area is just south of Arizona that they kind of just said “let’s do that” and voila. Pretty convenient for those crossing the border as they won’t have to reset their watches. That’s important.
HAWAII
I’ve never been here but I’d imagine that any time here is awesome so why f— with it?
-A
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Whoa Black Betty, Amber Lamps!
Published on March 4th, 2010.
By now, many of us have seen the “Epic Beard Man” video of a 67-year-old white dude bringing the pain on a drunk black man on a crowded AC Transit bus. I’ve been on one of those buses, they would make anyone angry. Nevertheless, had to repost this, best thing I’ve seen all week and watching this beat-down to the pulsing deep-fried southern rockness of Ram Jam makes this video even MORE EPIC. Thanks to the dude who put this together, to Daniel Tosh for making me aware of it.
And for those of you hiding under a rock, here’s the original video.
-A
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Reader owling: Le hibou.
Published on March 1st, 2010.
Japanese owl video with French subject line–worldwide owling. A good find from reader Francois.
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Music Video: Eloy.
Published on February 24th, 2010.
70s prog rock Deutsch-style my friends. When I first picked up Eloy’s album Ocean where this song is from, the guy behind the counter told me the band was “poor man’s Pink Floyd.” Dead wrong, but what did he care? He was working at an all-metal record shop in Providence. There’s something about non-English-speaking bands singing in English about “universal sins” and “magic heroes” that really just melts my nerdy heart. This video makes me happy and guaranteed as long as there are Euro-prog bands to cover, it will happen here. Suggestions welcome.
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Reader Owling in Berkeley!
Published on February 23rd, 2010.
I’m pleased to present our first reader submitted owl find! This one comes from my old friend and bandmate Aaron Levin. He spotted this gem down at Urban Ore in Berkeley, a store with one purpose: total recycling. Sounds like wordplay on the old concept of second-hand, but sometimes you need to do that. And besides, it produced this gem.
-A
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Excuse me, what does your steak eat?
Published on February 21st, 2010.
Ever since watching food conspira-mentaries like Food, Inc. and King Corn, I’ve been much more conscious of my food intake; easy to spot the healthier stuff at the grocery store, all you have to do is find the word “organic” and try not to flinch when the checker reveals your total. Beef however, is in a class all by itself: beyond organic certification there’s now a clear-cut choice as to what the animal ate before it was slaughtered and delivered to market. Almost bi-partisan in nature, the key choices are grain-fed and grass-fed. Some of these cows do reach across the isle and mix up their diets a bit, but for the most part they fall into those two buckets.
Grass-fed comes at an even higher premium than it’s organic counterpart and if you mix the two, you’re paying the most that you will ever pay for beef (online you can get some deals direct from the ranch at about $16-18/lb. but I’ve seen more than $25/lb. for common cuts of organic grass-fed). For this obvious reason, it makes making the switch a very weighty decision. So, I set to explore with my own taste buds to see if going grass-fed was worth it as well as asked some questions at my local market and to the internet machine.
My first grass-fed experiment was through a pound of ground that I purchased at Whole Foods for $10. “Ouch” I said as I left the store, feeling the sting of that hook and “YUM!” I said as the best pan-fried burger I ever ate went in my mouth. Juicy and flavorful as the cheap 80/20 fatty stuff that you ate as a kid but with no heavy feeling after. I took the rest of it and made meatballs for pasta, mixing in some ground organic pork, which was $4/lb. at Whole Foods.
After talking to the butcher at Whole Foods however, he told me that getting a tasty batch of ground grass-fed is common, because that preparation mixes in all the fat. I asked him if he thought that grass-fed tasted better and he honestly told me no, citing that it was “too lean” and “cooked faster which meant less flavor” than grain-fed. He also informed me with complete confidence that the U.S. has been eating grain-fed beef forever. But like a good salesman, he encouraged me to buy another top sirloin of grass-fed at $13/lb, which I have been cooking and eating while writing this post.
Between my first and last purchases of grass-fed at Whole Foods, I have also purchased more grass-fed ground and Italian sausages at the Atwater Village Farmers Market, both which were cheaper than the store and totally checked out. Both came out to be about $6/lb. and I felt great supporting that local vendor.
In preparation for this article, I read up on the foodie blogs to see if there was a conspiracy in the conspiracy, but as you can imagine, most of the posts were pro-grass-fed. I did however find more reading to support the long life of grain and corn fed beef in the U.S., a tradition about 50 years old which means that my mother’s first steak in the 50s was probably fed corn. Turns out, only freaks and people from South America have been enjoying grass-fed beef in the 50 years before steak-awareness became a hot button and the blogs had plenty of Argentinians who had nothing but bad, bad, bad to say about American beef. You have to wonder if they were feeding on the cows that needed the rainforests cleared out so they can graze (which would cause a real dilemma for the progressive shopper)?
As I mentioned earlier, there is overlap and this might be the best solution for budget eaters who don’t want to break the bank but still have a shot at being healthy. It is true that cows aren’t innate grain and corn eaters and while that diet will fatten them up making their meat more appealing to both palate and eye, it does cause serious health problems that get passed on to people as salmonella and E. coli. There are some butchers out there that will sell good meat that has a grass-fed diet for the first 2/3 of it’s life and then they will get sent to the feedlot for a grain diet to give the flesh that look and taste we’re so familiar with. And the best part: this stuff is priced 25-50% less than the grass-fed stuff. Outside of the 100% grass-fed, Whole Foods sells this type of beef exclusively.
And now the results of the grass-fed top sirloin taste test: excellent. I didn’t experience any rushed cooking times, the meat help onto a lot of the spices I used in prep and I ate about 16 oz without feeling like a big fat fatty-pants. At $13, this was cheaper than most restaurants I would care to eat at, who I can almost guarantee you won’t get grass-fed beef from. If you eat beef as much as I do, maybe once a month, the grass-fed option may be for you. Anything above that, well you have choices to make which hopefully this will help.
-A
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Weezy went to the dent-eezy. For 8 root canals.
Published on February 19th, 2010.
TMZ reported today that Lil’ Wayne’s recent court sentence was delayed to to a need for an astronomical amount of oral surgery. Looks like his habitual consumption of sizzurp landed him in the dentist chair for EIGHT root canals. I’ve had one and can tell you right now it ain’t no fun.
It’ll be a minute before Weezy “gets too comfortable” and so I leave you with the song of the day:
-A
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Holiday Weekend Owling: Show in Los Feliz
Published on February 16th, 2010.
An untimely holiday weekend tire failure resulted in something that I haven’t done in a long time and according to Missing Persons, nobody does: walking in LA. From the Discount Tire Center in Silver Lake, Heather and I made our way to Vermont Ave by way of Santa Monica Blvd and noticed the storefronts up in the Los Feliz Marketplace section had changed a little bit.
We came across a brilliant housewares shop simply called Show and what should my owling eyes find: some very mid-century inspired scores. Let’s take a look.
B&W Owl Plate, $66
Dark Wood Owl Statuette, $40
Two-tone Capsule Shaped Owls, $120 and $66
Quite the little sanctuary indeed. They are on Vermont Ave just above Prospect Ave.
Show
1722 N Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Ph: (323) 644-1960
-A
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New Music: Dawn Penn “It Must Be Him”
Published on February 12th, 2010.
Another talented Penn, this one comes from Jamaica and when I heard this song for the first time today, I knew in an instant this was the New Music jam for the week. That melody in the beginning before we hear her sing made such and indelible impression on me, hearing it again was like sneaking another piece of candy while no one was looking.
Her most famous single “No, No, No” has apparently been sampled by Rihanna and Lily Allen, so you know it’s good for you. This tune was originally made famous in the U.S. by Vikki Carr and Shirley Bassey and like most reggae music of 60s, this cover was most likely inspired by a free-roaming radio wave traveling long distance from south Florida to the Kingston.
-A
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Mommy, Where Do Music Festivals Come From?
Published on February 10th, 2010.
Big news in the last few weeks about the announcement of line-ups for two of the biggest American music festivals: the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival (or “Cah-chella” in the more common hipster dialect) and now the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. And if you’ve ever been to either of these events, you have this undeniable sense that your generation invented this culture–which is true, kind of like how Al Gore invented the internet. Generations X, Y and Z can take all the credit they want for these large-scale gatherings and for developing a space where they have the freedom to be able to pull the trigger on that piercing or henna tattoo, but Generations A through whatever know better. Youngins have been countering culture for years.
What the old-timers weren’t able to do, however, was take a good music festival blueprint and turn it into a reoccurring money-making behemoth like the promoters of today. My theory is that the people that put together things like Monterey Pop in 1967 which attracted over 90,000 attendees, weren’t really in it to put their kids through college and retire in style, but more for getting stoned with Jimi Hendrix. Which is kind of a bummer cos it took Coachella nearly seven years to reach that attendance level.
The exception here would be the Newport Jazz Festival, which began in 1954 and is to this day the longest running American music festival. The kids of the 60s and 70s would all listen to jazz while they did their drugs and made that scene all about them, so much that bands like Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin and The Allman Brothers were on the bills between 1969-1972. Ironically an incident during Dionne Warwick’s performance of “What The World Needs Now Is Love” in where festival crashers tore down fencing and rioting ensued, ended the integration of pop music into that festival.
Led Zeppelin at Newport Jazz 1969
After that, it was hard to make a rock/pop festival really stick in the U.S., despite any amazing attendance and lineup. For instance, Cal Jam in 1974 drew crowds exceeding 200,000 people and featured what I would imagine to be life-changing performances by artists like Earth Wind & Fire, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath. Only a year before was the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, which drew a record-breaking attendance of over 600,000 people; so many people that a large portion of that crowd wasn’t even able to see the stage. Despite the dedication of fans driving ticket sellouts, these festivals are long gone.
Cal Jam Newspaper Ad
It wasn’t until 1990, when Perry Ferrell as lead architect, devised a farewell festival tour for his band Jane’s Addiction and called it Lollapalooza, that we finally had arrived at what most festival promoters strive to achieve today: a high-profit model built on ticket sales, vendor sales and sponsorship sales. Five years later, its all-ages counterpart, The Vans Warped Tour came along and went global in a very short 3 years, driven by cheap tickets and multiple stages that 100+ bands could perform on at each show.
With that simple equation of money + money + money = money, it became apparent that the festival business was a lucrative one and pretty soon they started sprouting up everywhere. Street Scene in San Diego, Sasquatch in Seattle, Monolith in Colorado, Voodoo in New Orleans, Vegoose in Las Vegas and so on. Man, even I created a festival during SXSW week in Austin, TX called Mess With Texas, what I feel was the first to fuze music with comedy. Now everyone’s doing that.
This comes with a warning however: festival producing is not for the faint of heart. Now that we don’t create music festivals anymore so that everybody can get together and try to love one another right now, the goal of making a profit can sometimes not happen regardless of how much blood, sweat and tears you pour into it. And now more than ever: people are staying home and a hard economy has caused sponsor dollars to dry up.
What does this all mean? Not really quite sure to be honest. I felt it was my duty to give an educated account of how the music festival developed in the U.S. over the years and pay homage to the pioneers. And if you listen carefully, you can hear another one being born right now…
-A
