These are things I've heard in my hometown, Berkeley!

Girls: are you happier now?

UPDATE: No, you are not! 

December 16—Happy Birthday My Dear Ludwig van Beethoven.

I do not have anything to say about Beethoven, the man who freed music, that has not already been said.

I was introduced to Beethoven in my early twenties by two newspapermen, Ed Frisbie and Fran Ortiz, both of whom worked at the SF Examiner where I was a copyboy. We would sit around the M&M Tavern at 5th & Howard and talk about the late quartets, the Grosse Fugue ... and I would try to soak it up and I'd go buy pieces they recommended ... and I'd listen to them when I tired of Bowie, Roxy Music, and Captain Beefheart.

I am forever grateful to the two of them.

Fran was a great news photographer whose works - four pieces as a matter of fact - were chosen by the New York Museum of Modern Art for their retrospective of twentienth century photojournalistic excellence. He was a gentleman, a kind man, a great cook, and quite the ladies man: he gave me a lamb recipe for the first time I had a woman over for a serious dinner date. It worked. 

But this is not really a story about Fran, or Beethoven, but about Ed Frisbee, one of the most serious drinkers and most entertaining story-tellers I knew in my early life. It was another era. I had a lot to learn about booze.

Sweet fluffy lambs.

On a recent post celebrating Beethoven's birthday, I mentioned a lamb recipe for the bachelor who wants to impress a woman with his prowess in the kitchen. As we know, skill in the kitchen implies a heightened respect and knowledge of les Plaisirs d'Amour. D'accord.

One of our readers requested the recipe. I am including two recipes today. Neither are very demanding, but are delicious, nutritious, and shagalicious. Here is the first:

1. Determine if prospect eats meat and has sex on first date.
2. Get good lamb chops, about 1" thick.
3. Trim excess fat.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
5. Sprinkle dried tarragon generously on lambchops. Cover tarragon with coating of gourmet mustard - your choice, hot, sweet, whatever
6. Sprinkle italian seasoning on top of mustard.
7. Put lamb chops on roasting rack and into oven. Cook for 30 minutes. (Vary time according to thickness of chops)
8. Serve with brown rice and raisins. Spinach salad with avocado and tangerine slices and vinaigrette.

You will get lucky.

(Recipe #2 & story on the flip-fl0p) 

From his website:

Robert Farber~Fine Art :

"Welcome to the Fine Art Gallery exhibiting Robert Farber's expressions of the nude. His work in nudes have many parallels in painting. For example, his classical nudes seem to draw inspiration from the old Dutch masters, and the softness of many of his images echo Renoir's Impressionism, yet his graphic nudes have all the strength of abstract art."

Hard to believe I've been posting for months and haven't put up one true nude, aside from the large-breasted mannequins piece, that is. 

Fifty years ago, I was looking around my father's study, a small room off the garage, where he worked on his first book, The Earth Shook, The Sky Burned, and I found one of his photo magazines. His day job required him to shoot photos as well as write and edit marketing materials for the companies where he worked before that book became a best-seller, setting him free from the workaday world.

I was five years old, obsessed with Superman and Zorro for the most part.

Back then, the photo magazines were very different from the soft-core porn they are today. I remember though, as if it were yesterday, looking through the magazine.

Still-lifes, landscapes, nature photography and then, near the back of the magazine, at the bottom of the page, a tiny picture of a naked woman.

And I knew in that moment that there was a universe full of wonder to explore, a world of mystery of which I had been heretofore unaware. And that that exploration would shape my life.

Little did I know.

"... fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives ...
"So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked.
"But if you see what I see,
if you feel as I feel,
and if you would seek as I seek,
then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight ..."
                —V, V For Vendetta

[This is Part Two of a three-part series. If you haven't done so, you may want to read Part One first.]

So we are talking about the killing of President John F. Kennedy, the fact that his killers were never brought to justice, and the feeling that we are now, as a country, living in Bizarro-world, where everything is the opposite of what it is supposed to be.

We left off in Part One with my ex-gangster friend replying,"Are you having a nice night, kid?" when I asked him who his associates in the mafia thought had killed JFK.

I smiled, but was silent, totally focussed on him and whatever he might say next.

 And he said, finally, looking at me levelly,"I could tell you a story. I don't like to talk about it that much. I knew at least fifty people who were involved who have been killed ..."

(further conversation on the flip-flop)

the bondage jukebox: the best bdsm music and bondage songs

A Mylene Farmer cd cover. I found a myspace tribute page to her. Her music is like most 80's metal: easy listening music with drums and distorted guitar. Lots of thick synth pads, too ... kind of Enya with hairly legs, but in a good way. Mylene is clearly endowed with amazing talents. A HUGE star in Europe.

One of may artists featured on the Bondage Jukebox::::

The French Madonna makes like Joan Jett crossed with Catherine Deneuve in some of the most amazing bdsmy concerts you've never seen, in which she prances in latex hobble dresses, steel-cage ponygirl attire and other visual delights while cooing ethereal over a heavy-metal soundtrack. She even managed to sneak a naughty song ("L'Histoire d'une fÈe, c'est..." the last two words of which translate phonetically into "fessee," French for spanking) onto the soundtrack for Rugrats In Paris. (more on the flipflop)

Here is a little bootleg of John singing "Working Class Hero" with a heavily phase-shifted guitar. Very cool.

Don't know what else to say, except I still miss him after all this time.