The great thing was that I didn’t even really plan it that way. It just sort of happened. The morning started with Sugar and me making pina coladas, from scratch. Like walk to the Mexican produce market and buy a fucking coconut scratch. Even though I could have just gone to BevMo for a can of Coco Lopez, I was insistent. I wanted the authentic experience.

In this case authentic means hammering nails into a hairy wooden ball, watching the liquid drain out and then smashing it with hammer.

The pulp was gleaming white and smelled delicious and complex.

I shredded it in my juicer. And made a huge fucking mess.

The shredded pulp is simmered in water for a bit,

drained through cheese cloth (ie, a T-Shirt, because who has time to get cheese cloth?)

and the remaining coconut infused goodness is cooled in the fridge, the cream separates from the milk and then the cream is skimmed off.

The Pineapple was easier and became pineapple juice largely without incident. Sugar is an artist with the knife.

Put coconut cream, pineapple juice, and white rum (I used a wonderful Flor de Cana Extra Dry from Nicaragua) in a shaker with ice. Shake and strain into a glass, Garnish with a pineapple slice, or if you must, a maraschino cherry, drink heartily and feel good to be alive. Preferably outside and near a plant.

It was about that time that Sugar had to go to work, the weekend notwithstanding. With nothing to do for 6 hours, I went investigating next weekend’s planned Lobster/Blueberry Pie extravaganza but ended up buying oysters from the seafood market that has been up the street for years but which I had just discovered.

Fresh oysters for .65 a piece.

Huge, fresh, creamy, briny, mouthfuls of yonic goodness.

Continuing with the authentic at any price theme, I stopped off for champagne vinegar and one perfect pearl onion. For cocktail sauce on an oyster is an abomination. A fresh mignonette is the only proper course of action. Mix together a tablespoon or two of the vinegar, finely chopped onion, fresh ground pepper, and the tiniest pinch of salt. Let it sit in the fridge while you shuck the oysters. I also happened to find a beer in the fridge so this was my dinner: Splash a bit of the mignonette on the oyster and slurp loudly straight from the shell, no chewing, and follow with a sip of cold beer. Fireworks will go off on your head. No really, you will see colors.

Sugar came back that night and we had another pina colada, the last of the oysters (yes, I saved a few for her) and then danced all night at Booty Bassment. Sunday she went back to work, Sunday notwithstanding. Again, hungry and wistful, I went back to the seafood place for more oysters. While I was there, this little guy caught my eye.

Drop your prehistoric friend in a pot of boiling water for 12 minutes. While he is enjoying his Jacuzzi, shuck a few more oysters and drip on that mignonette that has now been marinating in the fridge for 24 hours now, follow with beer, get reacquainted with the deity. Take the crab out and drop it in bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Begin with the legs and then move toward the body (like dating). Dip in melted butter if you must, but really not even then. Don’t worry about the mess. Any day you are eating your dinner with a hammer is a good day.

Just have to let everybody know that if you’re as disatisfied as Sam Gezari is with NBC’s lack of airing of a diverse array of countries and sports in their actual coverage of the actual competitions of the Olympics (like, not what someone ate for lunch) you need look no further than the glorious and technological Internet.

That’s right, WWW.NBCOLYMPICS.COM is all you really need.

Everything is organized and easy to find in the VIDEO section; from “Highlights” to longer clips/“Encores” (men’s synchronized diving comes in at a whopping hour and forty-nine minutes).  Long-form Rewinds are the longest.  It’s shot beautifully and the structures Beijing has built are amazing.

They also don’t do the weather on there.

So turn Bob Costas off. And log on for Lomong.

Professional rock musicians B. Dave from Something For Rockets and Lucas from Low Vs. Diamond shake hands. Picture taken while they were on tour together.

B. Dave sporting the PF bandanna so hard as he works and plays.
Our friends Low Vs Diamond were just on Letterman last week. Get off of them.

myspace.com/lowvsdiamond

myspace.com/somethingforrockets

well, i’m following that visual post by gray on deck with how he lives the rest of the time. here is a still from the soothsayer shoot last week. it is going to be fire.

Let me start by saying that I’m not generally a picky man. I sleep on the floor, the couch, and the wet spot. I go barefoot when I can, I eat with my hands, and I drive with my knees (even with hands-free). More telling than this remarkable string of willingness and feigned invincibility, though, is my penchant for going potty in public. Not like I like going in public view (pubic too), but I don’t think twice about going anywhere. It doesn’t bother me if I have to use a public restroom to do my doo. I’m a grown. But even I, Mr. 45-Second Rule, have a cautionary tale to tell the messy set: if you’re gonna take a shit at Dodger Stadium, you better do it during batting practice.

When me and the fellas last showed up at Chavez Ravine it was a hot, sticky, Saturday. The kind of Saturday where at least one of your buddies is cuffing his pants at the thigh saying “jesus why did I wear jeans?” I, Veteran Game Dick, naturally reply “I don’t know you fuckin’ dumb asshole” juuuuust loud enough to attract the quinceaneras sitting in Infield Reserve. Anyway I noticed a rumble in my gut on the way through the gates, the incessant beeping of the ticket readers seeming to incite ominous activities in my belly of bellies. We had arrived in plenty of time to grab a beer, peruse the concourse and find our seats without rushing, but we were nonetheless on a mission — a group mission — to do our Dodger thing. Sometimes saying ‘guys I gotta hit the head’ isn’t really an option, socially. So I held it. And the game began.

Soon the nachos came, the hot dogs went, and the tallboys were poured into 7 dollar plastic cups (right? The beers cost 12). By the time the third inning rolled around I felt like a lit stick of dynamite with a herd of jelly donuts shoved up its ass.

I was up to bat.

The race to the men’s room was laden with anxiety and malcontent. Would there be a line? Goddamit why am I wearing pink!? Everyone has a goatee! I got lucky though. The home team was at the plate and there were men in scoring position. People would be suppressing their bodily needs to an abnormally high degree. I was off the grid, and on the move.

But the volume of foot traffic and relative toilet availability were only the first hurdles in having a pleasant go of it. More variable even would be the condition of the toilets one full hour into a 50,000 person gathering. I’m not prone to the protective piece of toilet-shaped doctor’s office paper that some bathrooms offer, but I was considering it this time, I will admit.

No such luck. The first stall carried classic symptoms. Soggy TP glued to the floor and hanging out of the bowl. What is wrong with people!

Bang! Second stall. No dice. Straight clogged, seat up, dookie stains on the underside. Dodger Brown.

Zham Wang! Third and final stall. Nowhere to go from here but down. Lord let there be accurate pissers…

Rolf. The entire mechanism was essentially overflowing. I think there was a lifeguard standing in the corner. Before I could make a break back for stall one the inning had ended, the place was mobbed, and I was soaked in a seeping nightmare. I took a moment, a deep breath and thought

hover hover hover hover hover.

I felt like Michael Jordan doing wall sits in ‘84. My quadriceps were burning like fire from trying to neither sit on this mess of a pot or splash myself by pitching from an irregular height. It was terrible.

But I did it. Again, like a grown.

Manny Ramirez is going to the Hall of Fame and he just got traded to L.A. He’s wearing #99.

Go early.

-gray

Daniel Stessen’s post really sums up the earthquake except for the only casualty that FOX news did not report.

I bought my first nice guitar, a 1968 Gibson acoustic, about 2 weeks ago. Really it was a piece of shit it was just old and cool-looking. And cool-sounding too in that wrong/shitty way. It was also easy to play, small, and not shiny. I’ve wanted one like this for years. My other acoustic is my first guitar, which I picked out before I could really play it and without knowing that I’d later wish it was smaller and not shiny.

I had 30 days to return the Gibson, and was debating doing so because it was an expense that came right before I was going to move (today), right after I put my cell phone in a glass of water, and just before I bought this nice lady in Santa Monica a new rear bumper for her Rav 4, simply because I am such a cool person. I also had some recent “cost of freedom” expenses that will go undescribed on this blog but anyway I was still winning and not in the red, but the guitar was a stretch. After much debate I decided it was not the time to indulge in new things, and I would take it back on Saturday.

Saturday morning I looked over at it and thought, you’re so hot, let’s spend another week together just to make sure.

Tuesday there was an earthquake and a heavy 4ft x 2ft mirror crashed down onto it, snapping the neck, and though I haven’t yet verified this with guitar guys, my instincts tell me this is what kills a 40-year-old guitar forever. (It’s worse in real life than it looks in that picture.) And if there is one thing I learned in all of this, it is to go with my instincts. I usually do, but my instincts got clouded by my other instincts. I should have returned it on Saturday. Then I would have $750, my old guitar would have been in the stand and it would have been crushed instead, and then someone would HAVE to buy me a sweet guitar.

Here in Los Angeles we just experienced an earth quake. Our house was twisting its self like a dry sponge whilst Gary (with his hand on my shoulder and tear down his face) and I stared quizzically out of our window next door to the illegal Russian day care center as they dragged children out by the arms and threw them on the sidewalk. At least half of them did not have pants on as they sat on the hot concrete in shock. The kids seemed afraid as well. I was convinced our brittle windows were to shatter and all I could really think about was how to move my hard drive’s with the new feature film and the new illinois video on them to the middle of the room.

and then it ended.

We turned on the news and saw a hunched over Chris Schauble looking like he was about to vomit. It turns out he was just reading passionately.

Chris Schauble

(sidenote) it took me fifteen minutes of looking at the KNBC CHannel 4 website (http://www.knbc.com/meetthenewsteam/index.html) to find “the black guy.” On television he is much darker than this press photo for those keeping score at home (FOX news). The “look at those eyes” reaction isn’t the only photo-shopping going on. Maybe I should keep putting things in “quotes” to help “drive home” my “point.”

OK.

This quake really gave reason for people to be nervous once again! And how relieved they seemed to be reporting on something, anything, that resembled a new tragedy. A fresh face of terror. The emails poured in. The experts explained. Weather men hovered in helicopters with cameras showing evacuated schools, as well as “sky cam” shots from thousands of feet above. Above the epicenter. It looked like a forest. I was confused as to why the fuck I was watching the forest. I turned off the television.

all in all it lasted maybe about ten or twelve seconds. and it was a bit scary. But when it finished and the phones started ringing and the reports came in. All I could think of was when I saw Dane Cook at Syracuse University in the year 2000 and he told his car accident joke. Except this time it was “I felt it, I was in my kitchen and I felt it.”

click.

talk soon.
d

…I’m serious, it’s really me. David Stokes. Consider this an answered text message.

This is what gets me up in th morning:

So most of you don’t know this but when I don’t write for Flaunt and People Food, I direct music videos with my friends David Hache and Dori Oskowitz. We’re called Skinny because we have the physiques of 12 year-old girls. We’d love for you to check out our stuff at www.skinnydirectors.com. The big news is that we directed a video for Devendra Banhart last March and it’s finally being released. As usual, People Food was there to help us on set. And as usual, our sets were crazier than our videos. Like Hunter S. Thompson once said though, “When the going gets weird, the weird get going.” Our most challenging task was thus naturally handed to Danny Stessen. He became our official octopus wrangler.

How does one wrangle an octopus you ask? Simple. You call 30 restaurants that claim to have an aquarium with a live fish tank and beg the owners to let you borrow one of their eight-tentacled beauties. Everyone at Skinny is really into animal rights (we have a video denouncing puppy mills coming out soon) so we naturally wanted to make sure our octopus was treated with all the love and care it deserved. Danny drove to the restaurant and filled a tank with water, oxygen and food to make sure our creature of the sea would have a nice environment to bathe in before its first shot at the big screen. When it came time to shoot our scene, Devendra delicately pulled the octopus out of the tank. I honestly never thought he would actually go through with our plan but he brought the octopus to his lips as it tried to suffocate him with its tentacles. It escaped from his hands so we re-shot it once and then Danny drove it back home to the restaurant. Check out the last scene, and thank the Stessen for giving our little octopus a chance to accomplish any cephalopod’s dream: a Hollywood kiss with Devendra Banhart.

Check it: http://youtube.com/watch?v=k_QAPjtO2cA

have been happening. I can tell you more as soon as i wake up.  But one of the things is like this.
click

the fact that this flew off of my radar I blame on a couple things.. mainly the fact that fashion week at the start of the year had me burnt, burnt, burnt. being in NY for weeks submerged in “work” with crazy garmento yentas (male and female) left me slightly disenchanted. The nonsensical, wishy washy designs of some the “greats” had completely gone against the anticipation of the new season. everything looked the same. booooooring… my other excuse is that I pretty much drank my way through the trip… and was just really hungover all the time.

Prada, those crazy I-talians, apparently made some bomb ass hand bags. I saw the pictures, yeah they’re cool, but I totes don’t really care about uber expensive hand bags or totes bags. Then at 3am this morning in my search for a moustache necklace, yup a moustache necklace, I found what the buzz was really about. In promoting their new collection “Trembled Blossoms”; Prada made a four minute film. It’s a beautiful/creepy/sexual/fashion fantasy.

which led me to check out the artist responsible.. i love it.. check it.

oh yea and if you want a moustache necklace go here..

moustache

If ever there was a time to acquiesce in the modern lingo rat race, it is now. “OMFG, I found the best new burger in LACA.” It’s the #1 at 25 Degrees.

This is the new spot 4 paces west of The Roosevelt Hotel. It’s named for the difference in temperature between a medium rare burger and a burger well done, and it’s intended to be ordered in the former form. The beast consists of: gorgonzola, bacon, arugula, thousand island and crescenza. I don’t even know what that is. But it might be that lump of cheese on the plate pictured above. And this precisely what I’m getting at.

You might as well wear some rags to this joint, because napkins are useless and your hands and mouth will be outplayed. They should give you your change in quarters.

This burger is so good that eating it is actually impossible. It requires an alternate method of consumption. Heroin? Needle or spoon. Something less fierce? Bong or balloon.

Still, don’t get it twisted. The music is TERRIBLE and you will get slapped with a drunken tourist sing-a-long. The bartender’s a dyke, but I made friends with him. The prices are spiked, with an eleven dollar Jameson.

So do yourself a favor. And go to 25 Degrees hungry. Not thirsty. But go. LMAO.

starting with the most problematic and ending with the second most problematic

1. visual guitar tuning

it just blinks numbers at me

2. the stock market

no matter how many times it is explained to me i don’t get what you are all doing on there. i had to drop out of smart kids class in 5th grade because of the stock market game. it was like, guys what happened to the tetrahedrons

3. why non-hybrid cars are still coming out, similarly, why hybrids have to look like space. make me one of these

4. what exactly my brother does for a living

5. the order of things - i just did an image search for the order of things and found this dope artist: kyle johnston