PicoBlog

Ewoks. Some hate them. Some dislike them. I think a few people might like them. One guy loves them. But whatever you think of those stubby assholes, they played an important part in ending the “Star Wars” trilogy, not least as distraction techniques for the Rebel soldiers, but also musically. Yub Nub! As most know, 1983's “Return of the Jedi” ends with a massive party in the Ewok village, with the Ewoks themselves providing music diegetically, although they seemed to have a pretty good choir hidden away off-camera.

My body , like the song, has always been a wonderland. I always wonder what’s happening with it. From the age of 3 when the stirrings down yonder began. I pressed my little bunny foo foo fingers to my little garden patch, and voila. I held magic. I thought I was the only one in the world with this secret. This body explosion that made my ears tingle, and my new legs weak.

Birbiglia’s fave joke is this one from Mitch Hedberg: I wrote a letter to my dad. I wrote, "I really enjoyed being here," but I accidentally wrote rarely instead of really. But I still wanted to use it, so I crossed it out and wrote, "I rarely drive steamboats, Dad. There's a lot of shit you don't know about me. Quit trying to act like I'm a steamboat operator." This letter took a really harsh turn right away.

We lost our cat Peanut last weekend and I’m devastated. She was only seven. She was my first baby. The first thing I ever had to care about besides myself. She got me through breakups. New jobs. Graduate school. A pandemic. I’ve been trying to write through the grief. This small psychotic voice rattles around my head and tells me to turn my loss productive. Write something profound about loss or find some clever books about loss or loss or loss or loss

This morning I was doing my usual information trawl, and I came across a knowledge gem of a youtube video  Steve Reeves on Mike Mentzer  For context, the two gentlemen talking are John Little and Steve Reeves. John Little is a bodybuilding historian who was friends with Mike Mentzer, and has relationships with many Silver and Golden age bodybuilders going back decades. Steve Reeves was a Mr. America and Mr. Universe from the 1950s, and is widely considered to have the best natural physique of all time (he never used steroids).

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Every region of the world has its own unique music, whether that be Spain and Flamenco, the accordion of Italy or the waltz of Vienna. In Portugal, that music is called Fado, a form of folk music with expressive singing, usually accompanied by a musician playing a pear shaped, mandolin styled instrument called the "Portuguese Guitar," or Fado Guitar. Any… ncG1vNJzZmiilZuzpr7SqKWgqpGdrq560q6ZrKyRmLhvr86mZqlnpJ2ybrPUoquaql2htqyxjKKlrKyiqrqmutOsZKieXaW8s8DUoJil

Earlier this week, my wife and I enjoyed a concert at the Mercury Ballroom from one of my favorite musicians, Grammy Award-winning guitarist Eric Johnson. Listening to song after song that coupled extraordinary technical skill with blinding flashes of improvisation, I could not keep myself from considering the absurdity of thinking that such order and complexity could emerge from nothing more than random chance and fortuitous mutations. Naturalistic evolution ought to reduce, or even to eliminate, creativity that makes no net contribution to survival.

Eazy-E was one of hip-hop’s seminal figures. The diminutive Compton gang member started off selling crack and ended up creating one of the most important labels in music history. Founded in 1985, Ruthless Records was a juggernaut, popularizing gangsta rap and birthing the careers of N.W.A, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and Bone Thugs & Harmony. Ruthless grew to be worth perhaps $30 million, but it all came crashing down in February, 1995 when — seemingly out of nowhere — Eazy was diagnosed HIV+.