Lou - "Pssst.  VJ."

Valancy Jane - "Hmmm?"

Lou - "Now's the perfect time to go streaking, I think."

Valancy Jane - "Oh Lou.  We're really raised you right, haven't we?"

Lou - "Everyone is assembled but the movie hasn't started, it's not too cold ...."

Valancy Jane - *presses her hands to her heart*  "I think I'm going to cry."

*whisper from down the row*  "Anybody have matches?"

Lou - *reaches for her purse*  "I have a can of lighter fluid ....."

Valancy Jane - *faklempt*

Since nothing and no one can fix it, there's really not much to stop the downward spiral of a bad day, although Lord knows I try.  Every day that doesn't end in a "the tigers have found me and I do not care" moment I consider a huge personal victory, one I hold tight to me with nothing but my straining fingernails.

Denial has been my saving grace, but since it's not a quality I ever practiced or aspired to, there are often cracks.  So yeah.  That was yesterday.

But with characteristic luck, yesterday was my birthday party.  Yesterday was Aurora, who can't help showing her secret idenity as an angel at times.  Yesterday there was wigs and little Bunny Brothers and shiny presents and wine and twilight and the undefinable "It" and too few seats so we all had to snuggle.

Yesterday was nearly perfect.

It's not a recipe I can pull out of my pocket anytime I need it, but it gave me hope that maybe if I can be ok for one night, then maybe I can define and distill that magic, and scrape together enough for two, enough to fix this.  Or at least that happiness can run concurrent with misery.

senza di te

e' un inno alla liberta'.

Ogni ora una vittoria,

ogni giorno un trionfo.

Sentono le mie dita

l'addio dell' ansia,

Respirano piano

i miei timpani

senza piu' il terrore

della tua voce.

Senza te, finalmente.

Sporco del mio mondo,

Sono libero e civile.

Above: oxidized Brin de Chèvre (Menu Pineau) by Puzelat at Lou on Vine.

There is more interesting wine in Los Angeles than the skeptic in me expected to find here. This week found me at Lou on Vine, a fantastic natural wine bar located next to a Thai Massage parlor in a strip mall on the corner of Melrose and Vine. Lou is my new favorite Southland hangout and I'll be devoting a post to it soon. Sommelier David poured me a glass of super stinky, excellent 2006 Menu Pineau — a rare Loire variety — by natural winemaker Puzelat. Its initial nose of nail polish remover (noted my friend and Nous Non Plus' manager John Mastro) gave way to nutty and fruit flavors. I really dug this wine, as did John.

Above: halibut with bacon, sorrel and gribiche paired nicely with the Corton-Charlemagne generously opened by David Schachter.

Yesterday delivered the other extreme in the spectrum of French viticulture with a 2005 Corton-Charlemagne by Jadot, corked by my friend and collector David Schachter at AOC, one of Tinseltown's wine-centric mainstays. This was one of the most gorgeous expressions of Chardonnay I've ever tasted and whatever minerality it may have lost in the warm vintage was made up for by a wide range of fruit flavors that revealed themselves over the course of the evening (I reserved a glass to drink at the end of the night). The restaurant seemed a little off (a "B+ evening" for the venue, said David) but the wine service was excellent and I definitely want to check it out again. He also opened a 1999 Cascina Francia by Conterno. It was very tight but opened up nicely.

Life in the City of Angels seems to be defined by extremes like these. So far, so good...

I can remember growing up watching the Olympics and cheering on the likes of Carl Lewis, Greg Louganis (look out for that diving board), and Mary Lou Retton. The sheer dominance displayed by the USA, probably due to the fact that the Soviet Union, Cuba, and East Germany boycotted, in 1984 was enough to make you want to go out and buy Stars and Stripes workout pants. Now? I'm not so sure.

I just finished watching the highlights of (Professional Tennis Player) Thomas Blake defeat (Current World #1 Professional Tennis Player) Roger Federer. This was after I watched the U.S. Men's Soccer team (or the MLS All-Star team) lose to Nigeria. But it was not before I watched the U.S. Men's Basketball team (aka the American born NBA All-Stars) dominate host country China and Angola. Angola? WTF? And that's just on the men's side.

Where is the true amateur spirit of the Olympics? Where did it go? I miss it.

Now, I can't help but think that if the United States cared about Archery and Kayaking as much as Football and Baseball, then we would recognize our "amateur" olympians as the pros in their sports that they already are. The fact is, if you get paid $5 or $5 million for participating in a sport, then it's hard to say that you are an amateur. From what I can tell, by watching the commercials, if you work at the Home Depot and participate in the Olympics then you are still an amateur. Or maybe it's that you have to have a "real" job that pays your bills to be an amateur.

This ultimately leads me to this conclusion: Here in the United States, if you participate in a sport that fans are willing to pay ungodly amounts of money to go see, then you are a professional. If you participate in a sport that causes people to say, "You play that sport...Why?", then you are an amateur. This also leads me to believe that if you are an amateur athlete then you will have to go through the Olympic Trials to make the team, and if you are an "amateur" athlete, you just have to affirmatively reply to the "Hey Kobe, wanna play in the Olympics?" mass email that Coach K sent out to the NBA.

The double standard, alone, leads me to wonder why I find myself staying up all night to watch this. I haven't even started in on the gymnastics (and other sports) factories that China and other countries have established in order to manufacture Olympic gold. My only true realization is that my patriotism must be taking precedence to my cynicism; and like the olympians in Beijing, I am forced to breathe in the foul air that is the Olympic spirit.

e il respiro mozzato,

t'ho chiamata.

Con i nervi delle mani

sfranti,

ti ho scritto.

Quale dolore mi spetta,

per ascoltarti dire

ti amo?

Death Penalty. Gonna change/Spare change. Dumb Ass Police. Piccolo Player. Bebe's Kids. Hate my wife.

Chris Brown feat. Kanye West - Down.

I'm so late on ol' boy album and this song is (insert addictive mentally destructive drug here). Shout out to Preet. She put me on to the joint, I was hating right off the jump, like "why is you playing Chris Brown are you not an adult". She didn't listen to me and I thank her for that.

The ghettos full of disinterested dirty dissidents, Americas a character applaud when she bows.

I'm a little rusty, but I'm still better than most. Some entendres are there, couple metaphors.

I need you bad - Jazmine Sullivan

Lou's doing fine. Father's Day was nice, but nothing out of the ordinary. We still visit him almost on a weekly basis, while wife visits once or twice during the week.

He is on medication to keep him calm. A while back, the doctor at the facility took him off the drug and Lou became agitated. When we questions the nurses, they said the doctor took him off of the drug. When questioned, the reason was simple ... to see how he was doing. If this is a normal practice, something is wrong with the medical profession. If you're on blood pressure medicine, are you going to take the patient off to see how he's doing?

On the medication, Lou giggles and laughs a lot. He also has been having difficulty with some foods. He'll spit out anything with a different texture than the rest of the food in his mouth. This means, at times, that proteins like meats are hardly touched. While concerning, we usually arrive prior to dinner, which is actually a lighter meal anyways.

More to come.

malate sono dunque le stelle.

Il tempo e' malato, vissuto

sopra pelle, in spazio minuto.

gli dei sono malati, umanizzati,

mostri golosi,ingiusti, capricciosi.

Resta l'accidia, unica forma nuda

della vita vera, unica forma vera,

unico personaggio in scena.

Vivere,non vale piu' la pena.

Esistere è sopravvivere,appena.

Lou Butt became involved with Yarn Forward in December last year, when Kerrie invited her on board the nascent magazine. As it happened, the timing was perfect. Lou had left Simply Knitting earlier that year, anticipating a relaxing life as a “yummy mummy” with the occasional book project to break things up – but after a few months, she found herself missing the busy schedules and creative activity of publishing. And with Yarn Forward about to go ten issues a year, Lou expects to be very busy indeed: “The best times have to be when we get such fantastic feedback. Going 10 issues a year was a very scary concept, but all our readers and advertisers are 100% behind us. The worst times have to be the deadline when I’m up late designing pages and trying to do the 101 other things that come with running a business too. We’ll have an art editor soon, so at least that pressure is reduced.”

Step into a UK newsagent, and you’re likely to see several home-grown knitting magazines. Lou thinks that YF is more than able to stand up to the competition. “There is so much that makes us different”, she says. For a start, there’s the approach to advertising, limited to just 10% of the magazine each issue: “We don’t feel it’s right to make our readers pay for 20+ pages of adverts.” Lou adds, “We’ll have no book extracts or designs from yarn companies. Because we’re independent we don’t feel pressurized into reproducing designs for the sake of advertising.”

Instead the emphasis is on providing original designs, put together with a real love for the crafts of knitting and crochet – and because restricting the advertising makes more room for editorial, Lou says “we can be gluttonous with our space and have lots of large charts on the patterns.” There are also at least five in-depth features in every issue: “There is so much out there in the knitting world, that 2 pages just isn’t enough room to really do something justice.”

After the jump... "battleship grey acrylic chunky", Uri Gellar, minuscule slippers, a "scary block of flats", and the projects that Lou loves best of all.

Lou’s passion for knitting goes back to childhood, when her parents owned a joint hardware and wool shop. “We had one of those old fashioned shops where customers could 'lay away' yarn and would buy a ball a week. It was my job to sort all the lay away yarn. Mum used to design and sell knitwear for the shop, one day a jumper that she'd marked up for £20 was snapped up by two ladies, who after paying informed mum that they were going to sell it in their London boutique for £200! That was back in the eighties.”

Lou took to knitting straight away, mastered crochet a little later, and was soon making bags, bedspreads and gloves for sale in the shop. Not everything she made was a success, though. Her first jumper was worked in plain st st with chunky yarn, decorated with half stripes across the front: “Mum still wasn't convinced that I'd finish it so chose some awful shades of yarn. Battleship grey acrylic chunky, with the half stripes alternating in white or cerise chunky mohair! I finished it in a week though. I hardly wore it as the colours were so bad.”

However, by the time Lou reached her mid-teens, the knitting boom had faded. As sales fell, the yarn side of the shop was wound down (although they continued to design and knit original garments for sale, some of which were so popular they went on back-order). Lou found that knitting was occupying less and less of her time: “it wasn't very trendy to knit and I got into other hobbies like painting, drawing, cardmaking and crossstitch – and boys!.” At university, she says, “I'd pick up my needles to make the occasional garment, but study and partying took up much of my time.”

Her early career in publishing had nothing to do with fibre-crafts: she started out on Uri Geller's Encounters magazine, and moved onto videogame journalism. But when she heard that a knitting magazine was in development, Lou says, “nothing was going to stop me working on it. I got the job as Operations Editor in 2003 and really embraced the craft again. I couldn't stop knitting and designing, and my husband was in shock at how much stash I managed to acquire. We became the odd couple. He would sit there reviewing the latest playstation games, while I sat and knitted all night. The perfect jobs for both of us!”

Working on the Simply Knitting revived Lou’s interest in designing. Her book, Knitted Sock Sensations (with Kirstie McLeod) was published by David and Charles in April this year, and she has at least three patterns destined for upcoming issues of YF. “Sometimes I can pick up a ball and picture exactly how I feel it should be knitted up. Sometimes I’m given yarn and told to ‘make something’ which is harder to do. There’s no set way that I go about my designing. I have been known to follow a person wearing knitwear to work out how it’s constructed, then stop and write notes in my pad that I take everywhere with me. I currently have an idea for a cabled sweater that’s inspired by fence that I pass on my way into town, among many others. I like to make practical things that people will wear or use.”

Even when following a pattern, Lou finds that she has to do her own thing. “I can never follow a pattern to the word. I may start off with all good intentions, but then I’ll ‘ad lib’ and put my own little touches to it, like leaving out a line of pattern for a few rows, or putting a cable in the rib. Or even adding something completely new.” She likes a mixture of challenging work and satisfying results: “A st st jumper would bore me rigid. I like to work with 4 ply – though saying that I do like to knit with chunky and super chunky. I also like knitting socks, especially in variegated yarns, I like to see the colours pass through the needles – watching them is quite addictive. Accessories are a good, quick knit and great for presents.” Knitting has taken precedence over crochet lately, but, she says, “At some point soon, I’d like to get back into it. I like the way that crochet grows really quickly.”

“I hate frogging! As does everyone. I just can’t contemplate knitting something to rip it all out again. Time is precious. So before I embark on a project I make sure it’s exactly right on paper and in my head. So far I’ve only had problems with one garment. On the fifth attempt I really felt like burning the yarn. It just wouldn’t do what I wanted!” So Lou is a diligent – though reluctant – swatcher. “Swatching is also that necessary evil. I just want to get straight on and knit. It’s so important though. When I was designing the fulled slippers for Knitted Sock Sensations I did a swatch and fulled it at 40 degrees to work out the shrinkage. For some inexplicable reason when I’d finished the knitting of the socks I decided to put the machine dial to 50. When I took out the miniscule slippers I could have cried!”

However, there are some disasters which even swatching can’t prevent. “My biggest knitting nightmare was when a certain delivery service delivered my parcel of 8 new designs to the wrong address. I was so upset, that my wonderful husband drove all the way from Wiltshire to London at 10pm at night to get it back. He’d never driven in a city before and the route we’d planned was blocked off when he reached London. Somehow he found the ‘scary block of flats’ after midnight and woke up the poor bemused chap to retrieve the parcel. You can’t imagine how elated I was when he called me to say he had it in hands.”

Lou’s favourite projects are the ones with personal significance. “I love the wedding socks that I made for my best friend that are featured in the current issue. It was such a special day, and that design holds so many memories. I was knitting them in the limo on the hen night, though had to give up when I dropped stitches after the third glass of bubbly!” And Lou’s close relationship with her mother is commemorated in the project of which she is most proud – the Sudoku blanket in Weekend Knitting. “I designed it and my mum knitted all 81 squares in record time. Then we spent 8 hours sewing them all together. It was a real labour of love. I lost my mum last year, and every time I look at that blanket it reminds me of her and the work we did together on it.”

Recently, I watched two touring musicians perform live at a small venue. On CD, the music of this singer and guitarist involved an array of instruments and musical effects. For this performance, much of the supporting music had been brought along in digital form on a computer. (Hey, who can afford to carry a big band on tour?) A musician friend of mine came over and whispered to me, "I don't know about you, but I prefer live musicians." If I have a complaint about Tig Wired's release, this is it. The sound is big, but the instrumentation is all recorded and digitized by one person, Colin Campbell, with a little bit of help on drums and blues-harp.

You've got to hand it to Campbell. He's managed to carry this legerdemain off without sounding all digitized and soft, as happens with so many of today's one-man bands. Most of the time, but not always, without reading the liner notes you would never know this wasn't a flesh and bones band. I only hope that, if Campbell and his lyricist partner - his brother Chris - take this show on the road, they'll have the good sense to take along a real band and not just a pack of mp3 files.

That small quibble aside, this is a varied and interesting release that maintains a certain artistic unity despite its overall eclectic nature. If these brothers are not twins, perhaps they should have been. Their artistic vision is that tight, as though the creative centre of this music comes from not two minds but one. Chris Campbell's lyrics are a perfect match for brother Colin's musical magic, the two balancing and counterpointing one another at every turn.

While these songs hint at the blues, Forties' country music, rock, reggae, jazz, and even folk music and show music, they're really in a relatively new genre that often falls between the tracks and goes unacknowledged. What really connects these songs is their affinity for this genre that's only existed since perhaps the late-Sixties. What strikes me most about these songs is how much they remind me of the jazz rock pioneered by artists such as Van Morrison and Lou Reed some forty years ago.

Chris Campbell's lyrics, often socially conscious but never strident, are excellent, comparing favourably to the works of Morrison and Reed as well as many of our finest writers of protest songs. These are not just pretty poems but moving stories set to his brother's music for additional impact.

Much of the time, Colin Campbell sounds a whole lot like Lou Reed in his seminal Velvet Underground years. As often, he sounds very like Van Morrison from the same period and a few years after when Morrison slipped into jazz-mode. On "When I Get To Feel This Way," he starts to sound like Tex Williams of "Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette" fame. "It's This Job I Do" is pure country, so much so that most contemporary country music stations might not play it. A bit more schmaltzy, and it might have been a Bobby Goldsboro song. On the more reggae-sounding songs, his voice shifts again, sounding ever so much like a young Bob Marley. The variety present in this release only adds to the literary and musical talent of the Campbell brothers.

The musicianship on this release is impressive. There are trumpets (Keyboard? They sound real.) that at times echo the early Freddie Hubbard and at other times blast hard like early ska trumpets. Other instruments bring the same high quality to this production. As far as I can tell, except for drums on some of the songs and blues-harp on one, Colin Campbell is the musician responsible for all of these very cool sounds.

Even though I'm in favour of a full suite of musicians playing on a recording, keeping working-musicians working, I can't help but be impressed with what the Campbell brothers have accomplished with this release. I do highly recommend that you give it a listen.

You'll find more information on Canadian musicians Colin and Chris Campbell, aka Tig Wired, at tigwired.com.

Support this independent roots music CD reviews blog.

The Denver Tattoo Convention: Museum of Skin

First Official “Green” Tattoo Expo & Release of The Tattoo
Sourcebook

The Denver Tattoo Convention (Sept. 19-21), an effort of leading
studio Phantom 8 Tattoos, brings nationally and locally recognized
tattooists together in a weekend of live tattooing, performance,
contests and parties. TattooFinder.com, a Denver-based leader in
online tattoo-friendly artwork sales, sponsors the convention as
their official release of The Tattoo Sourcebook.

DENVER, CO — The Denver Tattoo Convention: Museum of Skin (DTC)
comes to the Mile High City this fall, September 19-21, celebrating
the history of the craft and it’s connection to the nationally
recognized Denver tattoo community. The DTC stands apart from other
tattoo expos with their earth-friendly stance and efforts to include
post-consumer products, hybrid transportation, education and carbon
offsetting into the convention manifesto. And with dozens of
celebrated tattooists, sideshow carnival entertainment, body art
contests and live, multi-artist tattooing collaborations, the DTC
will be a spectacle, a platform of public education and a weekend of
camaraderie.

TattooFinder.com, a Denver-based leader in online tattoo-friendly
artwork sales, joins the Denver Tattoo Convention as a promotional
sponsor. Celebrating the September release of The Tattoo Sourcebook
(TSB), their new publishing effort with HarperCollinsPublishers and
Barnes & Noble, TattooFinder contributes their unparalleled knowledge
of tattoo-friendly artwork and their connections to renowned flash
artists and tattooists — both contributors to the Tattoo Sourcebook
and the company’s collection of over 22,000 high-quality, tattoo-
friendly designs.

Lyle Tuttle, the “Forefather of Modern Tattooing” and contributor
to the TSB, brings industry celebrity to the convention with his free
public presentation on the history of modern tattooing on Saturday,
September 20. With one of the world’s largest collections of tattoo
artifacts and a history of professional tattooing that began in 1949,
Tuttle has practiced the craft on six continents and tattooed legends
like Janis Joplin and Cher.

Several other industry leaders will be on hand to celebrate the
release of the Tattoo Sourcebook, including Friday Jones, New York’s
couture celebrity tattooist. Jones, who has tattooed her share of
icons (including Angelina Jolie and D. Woods of Danity Kane) and
contributed her amazing tattoo artwork to both the TSB and
TattooFinder.com, joins the Denver Tattoo Convention for the city’s
first ever Skinfusion feature. The live, multi-artist tattoo
collaboration brings together some of the best local and national
tattooists in a joint effort that will give some pretty big bragging
rights to two lucky participants!

Visit us online at http://www.denvertattooconvention.com/ or http://
tattoosourcebook.com/ for more information. A full media press kit
for TattooFinder.com can be found at http://
tattoos-101.tattoofinder.com/press-media.

Tattoofinder.com is division of Flash2xs.com, LLC, an Internet-based
company located in Denver, Colorado, owned by Lou Bardach, Rachael
Bardach, Brett O'Connor and Brad Hutchison. Lou, Brett and Brad have
worked in the Internet applications development, graphic design, and
online marketing fields since the mid-1990s and Rachael has been
tattooing since 1991. The Tattoofinder.com website was launched in
January 2003, and members of this team have been selling tattoo flash
since the early 1990s.

       Según recoge el proyecto de Real Decreto enviado a las Comunidades Autónomas, Universidades y otros sectores para su debate, la nueva selectividad mantiene una estructura similar a la anterior, pero aumenta las opciones de elección del alumno.

PINCHA AQUÍ SI QUIERES TENER MÁS INFORMACIÓN SOBRE ESTE ASUNTO

http://www.koolandthegang.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kool_&_the_Gang

Too Hot. Ladies Night. Take my heart. Get down on It. Celebration. Hollywood Swinging. Joanna

Hollywood swinging was sampled to make this:

Lou (right) and Dee (left) kindly took a little while away from attending to subscribers and suppliers to show us around. (Kerrie and Shirley are based at the second office in Bishops Stortford.)

Lou's "creatively organised" desk - "Dee likes to tease me about that", she said. Dee's desk is so organised that there was nothing to photograph, but I did find...

a secret stash of chocolate.

We're knitters, though, so the edible treats are a lot less exciting than the yarny ones. Piles and piles of gorgeous wool (that's the subscriber yarn, ready for dispatch)...

plus useful books, and beautiful handknits. Oh, and spray cleaner.

The YF staff are a self-reliant bunch. Not only do Lou and Dee have to clean up after themselves - they even had to build their own desks!

It was hard to say goodbye, but at least we got to take a little bit of Yarn Forward home with us. Hang on, what's in the bag? Could it be yarn?

Oh, it's chocolate. Note to assistant: go for the wool next time.

Lou: oh, who are you seeing?

Valancy Jane: Sugarland.
My friend ZJ got tickets.

Lou: nice
very awesome

Valancy Jane: So Aurora and I are going.
I'll prolly sneak out and go on an elephant ride.

Lou: please take pictures

Valancy Jane: I guess that makes more sense when I mention the concert is at the fair.

Lou: hahahah, yeah

Mój chińczyk vel. krowa vel. gruba świnia vel. osobisty ochroniarz vel. Mufinek vel. Lou kończy dzisiaj 5 lat! Na psie to już 50!!

PozdrawiaMY ( ja i solenizant!) :).