boxing: action fights

(This post is mainly for James, since the rest of y'all are barbarians who don't appreciate the Sweet Science.)

First, one of those "grab a beer and miss it" fights from the SSM/Vargas card this Saturday.

Daniel Ponce De Leon vs Sod Looknongyangtoy

Not only does it have a spectacular finish, I can't recall a recent fight with a better, more evenly matched pair of kickass names.
Pelf's old man literally went to the fridge for a beer and missed it.

And next, one of the cats from my boxing forum was enerprising enough to upload a French bout that is the consensus Fight of the Year among hardcore internet fans, Mahyar Monshipour vs Somsak Sithchatchawal. A nonstop brawl- it's a criminal shame it wasn't broadcast in this country.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Don't worry Jamesy- I'm burning you a high quality copy.
This is just to whet your appetite.

music: bill frisell

returning to town, hallelujah!

His last show blew my mind and this looks like a great lineup...Jack DeJohnette is an atomic drummer.

headbutt heaven

This cat has collected a large sample of the Zidane headbutt folk art generated by his world cup antics.

Some funny stuff.

more suspicious activity from those shifty Canadians

The put up 50 years worth of animated shorts for free online viewing.


What's the catch, Canucks?

<_<

cooking: quiche

The Bastille Day party was a grand success despite Army of Shadows being re-scheduled for the 28th.

I made a bunch of quiches and the experience impressed the wisdom of the ancients onto the wet clay of my brain: making quiche is so easy your cat could turn out a passable specimen. The crust is the only tricky bit, and that's only if you want it to be photogenic. The rest is just mixing eggs and cream together with whatever flavorings you prefer and baking it for a while.

As long as you don't wuss out and use milk or half and half you can't go wrong.

The hit of the night was the onion quiche. I'm usually critical of my cooking output (unfairly so, according to the Wife), but this was an exception. I added a couple of tablespoons of pureed roasted garlic along with the carmelized onions and the result was culinary heaven.

The Wife's French Flag tart was also a hit, I'll have pictures up tomorrow or the next day.

Hot on the heels of our big party of the year I'm off to peep Vargas/Mosley II...I'm hoping the massive infusion of pizza & fisticuffs will provide much needed ballast for my lingering hangover.

customers: tantric

a balding, 40'ish fellow with a southern accent:

"two questions- one, do you have a bathroom, and two, where are your tantric sex books?

Viking Kittens

I remember this about once every six months, and every time it rocks just as hard.

GAY BAR by teh Viking Kittens.

Featuring the hardest rocking guitar solo ever by a winged puppy.

Thanks for the shirt Bobo

I'm having a bit of a problem with it, I'm hoping it's nothing a good night's sleep won't cure...

Rake Art, baby!

they're like crop circles, only not lame.



Faintly reminiscent of the eerie,cryptic & beautiful nature art of Andy Goldsworthy.

Ok, just a tiny bit...but any excuse to bring up Goldsworthy is a good one.

day of the oddballs

I just got a hurt, accusing glare from a small developmentally disabled woman because my reply to her Special Olympics fundraising plea was "no soliciting in the store, sorry". Then I had to run her out when she started hitting up the customers. =/

Moments later a morbidly obese woman rolled up on one of those combination seat/walker things looking for books on Alaskan fur trappers.

Wheeeeee!

yo bobo

nice of you to post more flickr pix, but why are you obsessed with preventing comments?

WHY WHY WHY!

Now the world will never know how much I think Ivan looks like a demonic imp from a Bosch painting.

signs o' the times

so I live in a bucolic, conservative enclave best described as "a wannabe Santa Barbara", full of white people who aren't rich enough to live a few hundred miles south.

Yesterday was an interesting cultural core sample.

After the world cup, an event which in years past was so far off the radar it didn't even engender indifference, a large convoy of cars circled downtown honking, screaming and waving Italian flags in celebration of their side triumphing over France.

Strange, yes, but not as strange as the sight that greeted me on my walk home.

The local GALA chapter was having their annual shindig, which in the past occasioned a dispirited clump of booths, a few banners and some picketing fundies down at the plaza.

This year I walked smack into a huge, boisterous crowd rocking out to the musical stylings of Rupaul.

Well now!

Small signs of life, assuredly, but signs nonetheless.

better late than never

hey Bobo, next time you're tempted to strip the flesh off your arms try this instead.

movie: Casanova

The wife is on a Heath Ledger kick, who she's had a crush on ever since screening A Knight's Tale
with one of her at-risk youth back in her mentor days with Americorps.

I was mostly cleaning house during this one, but I think the wife's comment about halfway through the run-time sums it up nicely:

"More nudity, less shitty dialog!"

I'm about to check out the Korean military/supernatural thriller R-Point.

Hopefully I won't find myself howling "more supernatural phenomenon, less poorly subtitled dialog!" during the third act...wish me luck.

Music: Steely Dan

I'm at work (yes, on the 4th of July) listening to Steely Dan's Alive in America, track 7, their classic hit Peg.

Making my E-rounds I come across a youtube link on the making of Peg.


EERIE.


Off to a BBQ after work, wish me luck.
And nobody blow off their fingers or toes!

/edit
link fixed- thx dangs!

Nuke Test Videos

declassified for your viewing pleasure.

Theater News

The Pelf has some East Coast productions coming up:

fReAk sTorM is showing in NYC thanks to the fine folks at American Theater of Actors. It'll be running for a week at the end of August.
I think I make an apperance in this one as "childhood friend #2".
Biographical note- Pelf wrote this one after our batchelor party road-trip before Bobo's wedding.

Also in August the Revolution Theater Company will be putting on GORE HOUNDS.
I assure you dear reader, any similarities between the horrifying plot and our gloriously misspent youth are entirely coincidental.

For the sake of Pelf's few remaining hairs I hope they act better than they code HTML...

Bastille Day

It's nearly upon us and we here at the Baxblog will be celebrating in fine style.

Anyone in the neighborhood is invited to attend the first annual Secret Garden Bastille Day Celebration & Sing-Along


click image for readable size

We begin with a screening of Jean Pierre Melville's last film Army of Shadows at the Palm. Rather pathetically, it is the film's first theatrical release in North America.

Then it's off to the Secret Garden for gastronomic delights in the Parisian tradition.
Baguettes, cheese, lyric sheets & snooty attitude will be provided by the hosts...guests are responsible for appropriate headgear, wine and witty repartee.

Hirst's shark rotting

clicky clicky

Speaking to critic Stuart Morgan in 1996, Hirst said: “I did an interview about conservation and they told me formaldehyde is not a perfect form of preservation... They actually thought I was using formaldehyde to preserve an artwork for posterity, when in reality I use it to communicate an idea.”

Hey Damien...maybe you should have explained that to the sucker who paid 6.5 million dollars for your "art".


On the other hand, anyone stupid enough to pay 6.5 million for a dead shark gets whatever they deserve.

movies: half of Predator 2

The wife came home with a guest halfway through Predator 2, necessitating a switch to Down By Law to protect my carefully cultivated image of omnicient hipness.

Predator 2 is a kid's coloring book of a movie, the pictures filled in with neon pens weilded by epileptics. It feels like it had a comic book instead of a script, creating a particular flavor of jokey over-the-topness it's hard not to embrace. Sword in the Moon could have used a transfusion of P2's happy juice.

I'd forgotten it had Rueben Blades in a supporting role- I always liked him.

It was impressively multiethnic and despite it's hyperventillation it caught the "feel" of LA better than a lot of other movies. LA actually looked like LA, for a start.

It was pretty fun, I think I'll finish watching it tonight.