Plus, a little story about pequin peppers

My latest column about four meat dishes that need to be deleted from menus worldwide has gone live on the New Times blog (they’ve moved my digital publish day to Mondays).

As always, you local kids can read it in the paper on Thursday.

723YR26F59PJ <- Irritating blog claim token in an attempt to fix my mis-claimed blog on Technorati.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

4 to 86: Crappy Meat Dishes We No Longer Need

Geek jeans from Europe have a place for everything. Yes, everything.

You just can’t stand keeping your iPhone or iPod Touch in that crappy, standard issue jeans pocket, can you? And the memory stick you carry around that has your KeePass password database and a hacked version of Windows Ultimate? You need a safe place for that too, don’t you?

WTFJeans has got you covered, and then some. Their new pair of pants has an iPhone/iPod pocket that’s “easy in, easy out,” and has a micro-fiber liner to protect and serve. Then there’s the hidden memory stick pocket to keep all your critical data and encrypted porn close.

But perhaps the most interesting thing of all doesn’t pad your electronic gizmos, it pads your flesh gizmo. That’s right, for some reason they’ve added extra padding in the crotch to give you a nice wang snuggle, and it works whether you dress right or left.

They’ve even stitched a huge outline down there too, either to imply you’ve got a mammoth unit or to provide targeting assistance for the chick you just insulted after getting wigged out on too much Mountain Dew.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

WTFJeans Give Your Junk a Snuggle

Tacos y burritos.

Read how to keep pregnant women and El Chupacabras at bay with tasty Mexican foods, in this week’s Meatist. Online now, in print in the New Times this Thursday.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Fending Off El Chupacabras With Meat

South Florida natives make great, big noise

It’s close to midnight, and I’m driving through a deserted commerce park in Jupiter. I’m trying to follow sketchy directions on my phone’s voicemail that end with the phrase, “Call me when you’re lost.” Not an issue: I head towards the wall of sound coming from a unit in back, and I’m at Lavola’s practice space.

Julian Cires, Brian Weinthal, and Matt Hanser (yes, he's out of focus, fuck you) are Lavola.

I tap on the tinted glass when it quiets down a bit, and Julian Cires cautiously open the door.   “We never know who’s wandering around out there,” he says.  Entry wins me an immediate offer of ear protection from bassist Matt Hanser.  ”Do I look that old?” I think, then see singer/guitarist Julian’s Orange amp head and Matt’s Ampeg bass rig and accept, hoping to keep my eardrums from being pushed into my brain.

I’m struck by the distinct lack of beer cans on the floor or pot smoke in the air, and there’s not an enormous saucer-like pupil in the room.  These guys are here to play music, not to fuck around like a bunch of high school kids that just discovered how bitchin’ weed is.

I settle onto a crappy Peavy amp someone left over in the corner, the band starts to play, and the room transforms.  It’s not that the music is just loud, it’s hella-loud.  It’s a hugely physical experience: I’m getting it in the stomach (no brown notes, thankfully), the chest, the head.  It’s so immersive that it’s like tripping, which is fun for a while unless the music sucks.  But it doesn’t: it’s really, really good.

Cires and Hanser had played in bands together when they were in high school, but that ended when both left for college. Hanser headed to Colorado to study business, “I was a train wreck,” he says of his time there, Cires to Tallahassee to study creative writing. “It was a compromise,” he says of his major, “A great compromise, but a compromise.”  During his time at school, though, Cires began pursuing what he really wanted to be doing.

“I didn’t have many friends in Tallahassee, maybe one or two. It was mostly playing guitar, night and day.” And songwriting, he says, which “was the first thing in my life that I can remember actually being proud of.”

Lavola formed after Cires sent Hanser an email one spring that read: “Hey, I got a Vox. Wanna play this summer?”  They got together and recorded a four song EP, but weren’t a full band until drummer Brian Weinthal, of “call me when you’re lost” fame, arrived this winter via an ad in Craig’s list. “I called Julian and said there was a kid that was planning on moving to New York, but that he’d stay if we let him join the band,” says Hanser. “And he rocked,” adds Cires.

Adding a second guitarist, though, didn’t go quite as smoothly.  No one that they auditioned fit; most sucked out loud. “I shoulda known from the mullet,” Cires mutters after one particularly talentless douche departs.

A moment came during one of those practices that pretty much said it all.  Lavola were trying out guitar player number four (or was it five?), who was sitting down noodling with his Telecaster, trying to find something to play. Matt and Julian slowly moved towards Brian’s kit, the group of three closing up together, the fourth outside the circle.

The process had turned out to be positive.  It had helped push the core three together, crystallize who Lavola were, build chemistry between band mates. Ultimately they dropped the idea of adding a fourth. And that’s a good thing, because it’s that chemistry, combined with their huge sound and singer Cires’s emotional connection to the material that make Lavola so worth seeing.

I dug out my notes from the first practice I sat in on and I found the following scratched on page one: “British Sea Power, J. Mascais, Peter Gabriel, Jeff Mangum, Pixies,” and also “fucking cool.” I also found: “Rhythm section needs to lock up better.  Focus on listening to each other. Build chemistry.”

When I stopped by a practice a couple of nights ago though, things had changed. The three guys playing music in a deserted commerce park in the middle of the night had become a band.  And they played like monsters.  That night, I even skipped the ear protection.

—————————–

FREE MP3:

If you want to hear Lavola for yourself, visit their MySpace page, or make it easy by grabbing this free download of Lavola’s song, “The Philosopher’s Daughter.”

Fair warning: Lavola has grown.  If you catch an upcoming show (and you should) be prepared for something much, much bigger.  Personally, I’d love to drag their asses into the studio and get some recordings of the new line up…..

Live Show: Lavola play tonight, Friday, Feb 26, at Respectable Street Cafe in West Palm Beach. Doors open at 9 PM, opening act is Now Breathers.  And it’s free, so you have no excuse for missing it.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

West Palm Beach’s Lavola: The Best Band You Don’t Know

I knew there was a reason I loved the Swedes beyond the cute blond thing

They just get me.

You may have seen this. I had not (surprisingly), and it is so very cool.  I’m embedding it below, but really it’s much better on the hosted site.

Click here to hit the totally sweet version , or watch the one below.  Loading does take a while, but it’s worth it.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Best Thing Ever

In the meantime, dig this.

I love writing my weekly column for New Times.  But there’s more to life than meat (not much more, but more).  Which explains why I’ve cracked open my American Express points-bank and cashed in for a ticket to Austin next month: I’m covering SXSW, bitches!

If you know what SXSW is, I’m guessing I don’t need to explain why covering it for the paper is awsomeness incarnate (if you don’t, then go check it out), but I will anyway.

Imagine five days of great music, great food, and margaritas. Now add in spending time with bands like Rogue Wave, Karnivool, and a bunch of others, then writing about it.  And since I’m not really a traditional, boring interview kinda guy (but you knew that already, didn’t you?) it’s going to be about hanging out, then telling the story. Which is good for me, for the bands, and for anyone reading my stuff (do we really need yet another flurry of boring, cliched, cookie cutter reports from a music festival, written by people who’s primary goals seems to be proving that they know more than you?  No, my brother, we do not).

So all that’s great.  But it gets better: because not only will I get to see bands I already know are great, I get to discover worthwhile bands that I didn’t know a damn thing about, then tell everyone who will listen to check them out. And that starts here, now, with Crash Kings.

The publicist for Karnivool turned me on to them (yeah, yeah, she’s their publicist too, but you can’t fault the chick for doing her job), and they just do not suck.  First of all, they’re a three piece with no guitar:  like the brilliant Joe Jackson album Rain (which, I should note, Crash Kings do not sound like) it’s a piano/bass/drums thing.

And at times, it’s a huge piano/bass/drums thing.  If you’re looking for a list of sound-alikes though, sorry, I’m not really into playing that game (and you can hear what they sound like for yourself on their site).  There’s something inherently great about a three piece, and the fact that singer/keyboardist Tony Beliveau rocks one of the coolest Clavinets I’ve ever seen (see video below for more on that) just makes the whole thing better.

Second, they’re really good song writers, and they have that whole written-on-a-keyboard-not-a-guitar thing going for them, which is tits. Plus, Beliveau can actually sing without using Satan’s tool (that’d be Auto-Tune, not devil dick), so fuck you, Taylor Swift.

Third, well, just check out the video below.  Beliveau is playing that Clavinet I mentioned before, according to the band one of only 12 in existence with a whammy bar.  But it’s not just about the Clav: according to their publicist, they really dig vintage gear in general (apparently the studio they tracked in is filled with it), which earns them huge points (redeemable for exactly nothing, but points nonetheless).

I’ll get back with the full story of hanging out, and how they were live (though if the videos on their site are any indication, they’ll be great) once I hit Austin.  I’ll also be filling in the spaces between my pieces for New Times with reviews, stories and updates right here (you’ll note the new SXSW category in the header)

In the meantime, enjoy the video and go grab their album.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

I’m Getting All SXSW-Y Next Month

Yet another thing on my shit that’s gotta stop list.

My current column for New Times talks about why I hate the term “gastropub,” and then gives you three great types of burgers to make in your very own home.  Online now, in print Thursday.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Gastropubs: Kill That Shit

Tea Party protesters go to Burger King for sliders

If there’s one thing that makes me want to bitch-slap the trustafarians whining about Starbucks, it’s this:

Yesterday, on the 31st anniversary of the Iranian Revolution, anti-Ahmadinejad protests took place throughout the country. Not so long ago, what went on at protests in countries like Iran was kept from the eyes of the rest of the world (hint: the cops and army fucked people up).  This year though, despite the fact that Gmail was blocked in Iran, hundreds of videos have been posted to YouTube that show violent clashes between the protesters and police forces.

And standing up to the government in places like Iran isn’t quite the same as holding up a sign in front of the White House. These people have huge balls, and regularly getting beaten, shot, or disappeared.

So before you paint humans in the Middle East with too broad a brush (and before you talk about the “incredible bravery” of people like those Sea Shepherd douches), you might want to take a look at that YouTube playlist of Iranian videos. A warning though: in a lot of them, the police do exactly what you’d expect, and it’s not pretty (the video embedded here is on the tame side – relatively).

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Iranian Protesters Get Beaten and Killed

Google Buzz doesn’t suck.

So as if Twitter and Facebook aren’t enough, I’ve started using Buzz as well (I wrote a short piece on Technorati about its launch).  We’ll see how it all shakes out, but thus far it’s easier and cooler (to me) than either of the others.  Plus, I can get it on my G1 (the battery on which is completely ass-ey, BTW).

You can check out my buzz feed at my Google profile, or just add me from your Gmail account by hitting your Buzz page and searching on my full name (that’d be Bradford Schmidt, folks).

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Buzz Me, Bitches

Too bad no one cares.  But I do.

I love watching the America’s Cup. Yes, the boats have gotten pickier and the sailors have gotten less attached to home countries, but it’s still an amazing event to watch (just look at these photos: I know, the old style boats are beautiful, but that thing is really badass looking – now imagine it racing – got a boner yet?).

I’m also well-aware that the Cup is completely bound up in politics and bullshit (and court battles), and I know we’re forced to look at Larry Ellison in sailing gear, and I know defending cup holder Alinghi has a kind of evocative (and not in a good way) name, but I still love it.

Problem is, the heathens ’round these parts (that’d be us Ah-MER-kins), don’t seem to give a shit about the oldest international competition in sport, and there’s little to no coverage of America’s Cup events. Strange too; in a culture obsessed with winning you’d think more people would watch, because we kicked the Royal Yacht Squadron’s ass in 1851 and held the cup until our first loss in 1987. That’s like, 882 dog-years.

Anyway, all of this just makes YouTube a friend indeed right now, as their America’s Cup channel will be providing streaming coverage of every race.

But of course, that’s not all; you can also follow the U.S entry, BMW Oracle, via Twitter and Facebook. Totally worth doing, if for no other reason than the Skipper has the coolest name in sailing: James Spithill.

Finally: something useful to do with the Internet.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

America’s Cup Kicks Ass

News flash: Kutcher and SNL writers are still talentless.

Ashton Kutcher, well known social media junkie and hugely irritating waiter actor, hosted Saturday Night Live this weekend in an attempt to combine two hacky, talentless products of pop culture in the hope that something good will result.

No such luck. When they decided to try for a parody of Kutcher’s Twitter success, SNL’s writers couldn’t come up with anything more creative that fart humor: a new social media site “Tooter,” that not only broadcasts when Special K farts, but sprays artificial fart scent into the the faces of Tooter subscribers.

The only highlight of the video, watching the great John Paul Jones of Them Crooked Vultures saying simply “I was in Led Zeppelin,”  was tempered by the fact he’d agreed to be in the car wreck at all (the video, not the band).

But I’d guess that Them Crooked Vultures provided the only redeeming moments of a show that stopped being worth watching over two decades ago (I certainly didn’t watch it Saturday night).  Which is no surprise, really, because how can you lose when you combine Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), John Paul Jones (Zep), and Dave Grohl (Scream)?

You can’t – which is why I’ve chosen to embed THOSE video instead of the stupid fart bit.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Ashton Kutcher on SNL: Can’t Even Make Farts Funny

Venezuelan President & musical theater fan wants state control over Internet

"Pretty Bird. Now you DIE!"

Responding to a steady stream of negative comments about himself and his administration, President Chavez has not only called the anti-Chavez Twitter messages terrorist threats, he’s now calling for state control over the internet.

I suppose it’s POSSIBLE that a bunch of terrorists are actually twittering shit like “you distract his body guards, and I’ll fly a plane into him,” but I’d tend to doubt it.  Particularly since the hashtag they appear to be most pissed off about, #freevenezuela, is reportedly being used by almost 70 million users.

All of whom, apparently, want to overthrow Venezuela.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Hugo Chavez to Twitter Users: Terrorists!

400 million people now wasting time on site.

No more real life for YOU.

Yes, it’s true: Facebook has turned six.  I know it’s tough to believe, especially as it seems like only yesterday that you started wasting hundreds of hours trying to increase your friend count, playing Scramble, and trying to reconnect with your high school girlfriend (so you could bang her).

But, as it turns out, today isn’t just about length, it’s also about girth.  Facebook founder Mark Zuckeberg recently announced on the Facebook blog that not only is it their birthday, they’ll reached the milestone of 400 million users this week.

Considering the fact a year ago they had less than half that, and they announced the 300 million mark only five months ago, it appears that Facebook’s growth is actually still accelerating.

At this rate, they’ll should have something like four times the entire population of Earth as users by sometime in May.  Which definitely increases your chances of finding someone interested in “what’s on your mind.”

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Facebook Turns Six. Gets Swelled Head

In this week’s Meatist column.

Joanna thought of them, I made them, she topped them, Desmond looked on in wonder. Read about our journey (complete with photos!) to meaty cupcake happiness in my New Times column. Online now, in print this Thursday.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Meat Cupcakes: The Perfect Valentine’s Day Gift

Zef rap rave.

Here’s the deal: it’s tough to take it seriously when someone raps “I’m a ninja,” even if the cat goes by the name Ninja.  But it’s still worth catching these two videos from Die Antwoord (The Answer) a zef-rap-rave band from South Africa. What’s zef? Open to interpretation it seems: some say it means common, some say it means fucking cool, but I don’t really give a shit.

Whatever it means, the music is very fucking cool, the rapping in Enter The Ninja is kick ass, and the video for Zef Side has Crazy Swinging Penis in it, which is always hilarious (just try to ignore the silly posturing). Plus, that albino-ey chick is awesome.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Die Antwoord from South Africa