Another plug for Clark Little Photography!

Yeah!

Bummer

Robot Chicken's Vegetarian in Question video was withdrawn from the internet.  Bummer.  It ruled.  In case it comes back, I won't spoil it.  I still liked the 'You're special in your own special way' tag line.

In the meantime, here's George Lucas:





A reasonable second choice.

"Tick Tick Boom" Live.

The Hives.

Live.

Freaking awesome.



[In case you didn't know... The Hives are Swedish.  English is their second language.]

Legendary: Peanuts Larson

George 'Peanuts' Larson.

(Words from Croul Publications)

It took only two weeks after Laguna Beach's new marine sanctuary laws went into effect on January 1, 2012, for the Dept. of Fish and Game to make its first arrest of poachers. Two night divers were caught with a haul of 47 spiny lobsters which were photographed for evidence and then released back to the briny deep.

The incident put us in mind of Laguna Beach's George "Peanuts" Larson, shown in this '50s photo with the kind of lobster nobody has seen in local waters in recent memory. Peanuts was a skilled diver and fisherman who eked out a subsistence living so that he could surf full-time — leading the "surf lifestyle" long before there was even a term for it.

But Peanuts himself sometimes ran afoul of Fish and Game, although he was arrested only once as far as we know. On another occasion, he got himself out of a jam in this very funny story as told to author Craig Lockwood by Ernest "Doc" Farley:

"So Peanuts was bug diving and the F'n'G is standing there when he comes out: 'OK, let's see what you have in that sack, buddy.' Lars opens the bag and sure enough there's six nice size bugs squirming around. 'Well, those look like lobsters to me, son. You even got a license?'

'License? Why, officer, I don't need a license for these lobsters, they're trained pets.'

'Trained pet lobsters? There's no such'a thing. Are you crazy?'

'Not at all sir. I keep them at home and every few days I take them down to the beach and let 'em crawl around [in the ocean]. Then when I tap the glass on my mask three times, they crawl right back.'

'Ba-loney, that's impossible.'

'You want to see?' says Lars. 'Watch, I'll show you ...'

"And he took each of the bugs out, petted each one and called it by a name — 'Suzi, you come right back. Freddie, you too. Mona, you be good,' like that —and put them back in the ocean and stood there. After a couple of minutes the F'n'G says, 'OK, now call them back.'

'Call who back?' says Lars.

'The lobsters, stupid'

'What lobsters?' says Lars."

Guy Fieri New York Times Restaurant Review -- WOW.

URBAN SPRAWL Guy's American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square. More Photos »

By PETE WELLS

Published: November 13, 2012 1019 Comments

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GUY FIERI, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square? Have you pulled up one of the 500 seats at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar and ordered a meal? Did you eat the food? Did it live up to your expectations?

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• Guy's American Kitchen & Bar »

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Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar

Related in Opinion

• Room for Debate: Do We Need Professional Critics? (October 7, 2012)

Readers’ Comments

"Guy Fieri is a pox on professional chefs. I think the Donkey Sauce may be seasoned with the tears of Gordon Ramsay and Anthony Bourdain. "

Red, Minnesota

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Did panic grip your soul as you stared into the whirling hypno wheel of the menu, where adjectives and nouns spin in a crazy vortex? When you saw the burger described as “Guy’s Pat LaFrieda custom blend, all-natural Creekstone Farm Black Angus beef patty, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super-melty-cheese) and a slathering of Donkey Sauce on garlic-buttered brioche,” did your mind touch the void for a minute?

Did you notice that the menu was an unreliable predictor of what actually came to the table? Were the “bourbon butter crunch chips” missing from your Almond Joy cocktail, too? Was your deep-fried “boulder” of ice cream the size of a standard scoop?

What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature croutons makes Guy’s Famous Big Bite Caesar (a) big (b) famous or (c) Guy’s, in any meaningful sense?

Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are? If you hadn’t come up with the recipe yourself, would you ever guess that the shiny tissue of breading that exudes grease onto the plate contains either pretzels or smoked almonds? Did you discern any buttermilk or brine in the white meat, or did you think it tasted like chewy air?

Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?

When you have a second, Mr. Fieri, would you see what happened to the black bean and roasted squash soup we ordered?

Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?

At your five Johnny Garlic’s restaurants in California, if servers arrive with main courses and find that the appetizers haven’t been cleared yet, do they try to find space for the new plates next to the dirty ones? Or does that just happen in Times Square, where people are used to crowding?

If a customer shows up with a reservation at one of your two Tex Wasabi’s outlets, and the rest of the party has already been seated, does the host say, “Why don’t you have a look around and see if you can find them?” and point in the general direction of about 200 seats?

What is going on at this new restaurant of yours, really?

Has anyone ever told you that your high-wattage passion for no-collar American food makes you television’s answer to Calvin Trillin, if Mr. Trillin bleached his hair, drove a Camaro and drank Boozy Creamsicles? When you cruise around the country for your show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” rasping out slangy odes to the unfancy places where Americans like to get down and greasy, do you really mean it?

Or is it all an act? Is that why the kind of cooking you celebrate on television is treated with so little respect at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar?

How, for example, did Rhode Island’s supremely unhealthy and awesomely good fried calamari — dressed with garlic butter and pickled hot peppers — end up in your restaurant as a plate of pale, unsalted squid rings next to a dish of sweet mayonnaise with a distant rumor of spice?

How did Louisiana’s blackened, Cajun-spiced treatment turn into the ghostly nubs of unblackened, unspiced white meat in your Cajun Chicken Alfredo?

How did nachos, one of the hardest dishes in the American canon to mess up, turn out so deeply unlovable? Why augment tortilla chips with fried lasagna noodles that taste like nothing except oil? Why not bury those chips under a properly hot and filling layer of melted cheese and jalapeños instead of dribbling them with thin needles of pepperoni and cold gray clots of ground turkey?

By the way, would you let our server know that when we asked for chai, he brought us a cup of hot water?

When you hung that sign by the entrance that says, WELCOME TO FLAVOR TOWN!, were you just messing with our heads?

Does this make it sound as if everything at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar is inedible? I didn’t say that, did I?

Tell me, though, why does your kitchen sabotage even its more appealing main courses with ruinous sides and sauces? Why stifle a pretty good bison meatloaf in a sugary brown glaze with no undertow of acid or spice? Why send a serviceable herb-stuffed rotisserie chicken to the table in the company of your insipid Rice-a-Roni variant?

Details & Reader Reviews

• Guy's American Kitchen & Bar »

Multimedia

Slide Show

Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar

Related in Opinion

• Room for Debate: Do We Need Professional Critics? (October 7, 2012)

Readers’ Comments

"Guy Fieri is a pox on professional chefs. I think the Donkey Sauce may be seasoned with the tears of Gordon Ramsay and Anthony Bourdain. "

Red, Minnesota

• Read Full Comment »
• Post a Comment »

Why undermine a big fist of slow-roasted pork shank, which might fly in many downtown restaurants if the General Tso’s-style sauce were a notch less sweet, with randomly shaped scraps of carrot that combine a tough, nearly raw crunch with the deadened, overcooked taste of school cafeteria vegetables?

Is this how you roll in Flavor Town?

Somewhere within the yawning, three-level interior of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, is there a long refrigerated tunnel that servers have to pass through to make sure that the French fries, already limp and oil-sogged, are also served cold?

What accounts for the vast difference between the Donkey Sauce recipe you’ve published and the Donkey Sauce in your restaurant? Why has the hearty, rustic appeal of roasted-garlic mayonnaise been replaced by something that tastes like Miracle Whip with minced raw garlic?

And when we hear the words Donkey Sauce, which part of the donkey are we supposed to think about?

Is the entire restaurant a very expensive piece of conceptual art? Is the shapeless, structureless baked alaska that droops and slumps and collapses while you eat it, or don’t eat it, supposed to be a representation in sugar and eggs of the experience of going insane?

Why did the toasted marshmallow taste like fish?

Did you finish that blue drink?

Oh, and we never got our Vegas fries; would you mind telling the kitchen that we don’t need them?

Thanks.

Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar

POOR

The Death and Return of Superman: A Film by Max Landis

1.  Not kid friendly.

2.  Long.

3.  ADD.

4.  Hell... ADHD.

5.  But enjoyable as hell.





6.  The credits.

D'yer Mak'er (Fool in the rain) - John Bonham

Old, bad joke:
Man 1:  My wife's gone to the West Indies.
Man 2:  Jamaica?  (pronounced "Djer maker?" as with a nice thick english accent)
Man 1:  No, she went of her own accord.

D'yer Mak'er, also known as Fool in the Rain, is one of the few Led Zeppelin songs where all four members share composer credits.  The band members generally thought it was a joke, with bassist John Paul Jones stating it was a joke they didn't think through carefully enough.

Alright.  So be it.

But check out this isolated Drum Track from John Bonham.  WHOA.



First time I heard this, I was amazed.

And here is the finished product:

BARK Catalina Classic 2012

Video by Chris Aguilar of Soul Surf Media.


 
Bark at the Catalina Classic from Soul Surf Media on Vimeo.

A Look Back..

Catalina Classic post-race dinner, 2012.