Graffiti the Ghost

Miss Fun Time Attitude

Vote for our little Rose for SF's Hottest Bartender!

Why? Because Rose has a fun-time attitude.

And it shows.

posted by stefbot @ 4:32 PM 2 comments

Coachella: The Movie: The Review

Movie reviews are pretty scarce on the Ghost. I'm no good at writing them, and unless they involve kung fu, caddies, or cartoon characters, Stef doesn't watch movies.

So let's not call this a movie review (even though technically I already did). Let's just say this is a heads up that if you like music at all (and I think you do) you should add this one to your queue immediately. Even if you've never been to Coachella (you've never been to Coachella? What the hell is wrong with you?) there's no way you wouldn't enjoy seeing the performances and interviews captured in this documentary about the 2 day musical feast that takes place every year on a polo field in Indio. We're talking Bjork singing All is Full of Love under a full moon with palm trees swaying behind... Radiohead's epilepsy inducing light show... the Pixies return debut performance... Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips being birthed from a space bubble and fantisizing about his idea of a proper Pixies' reunion performance.... Noel "I'm a Git" Gallagher vs. Saul "Music with a Message" Williams in a cleverly edited face-off over the musician's proper place in the larger scheme of things (does anyone not hate Oasis? Really, I'm asking.).

True to Coachella form though, some of my favorite moments in the film came from bands that I had either not heard of or am not generally that fond of. The Mars Volta jerking and spasoming frantically around the stage during what must have been the hottest part of the day... The Arcade Fire bringing down the house with a sundowner set... I even found Belle and Sebastian charming rather than cloying when they urged the crowd to "come have a dance."

Really there was not a moment during watching this movie that I didn't feel heartsick that Coachella couldn't happen more often, or that I had to wait a full year to go again. My post festival depression hasn't even quite worn off yet, so for true fans I might recommend waiting another couple of weeks before watching it.

It's just too bad that they couldn't capture those other Coachella moments... moments like Chadwick doing whippits and laying down some deep philosophy. "Ok, so what if, like, partying is up here, and..... what?..... wait... dammit! I lost it."

All is full of looooooooooove...

posted by Jess @ 10:34 AM 2 comments

Makin' babies via instant messenger

Every once in a while Jess and I have an IM conversation so retarded that it deserves to be shared. This one in particular exposes some of our revolutionary ideas about birthin' babies. It started with the topic of grandparents. All's I know is, we's gonna be some eff'ed up mommas someday. We might even let our babies grow up to be cowboys.

sg: time for us to start making grandparents out of our parents
jess: shut it
jess: are you getting the urge?
sg: enh we got about 5 more years before we start that
jess: i should hope so
sg: i decided i'm gonna have 4 tho
sg: i always thought it would be fun to have a big family, so why not make one myself? i got the equipment
sg: you know, play-doh, molds
jess: jesus. you'd better stay preggers for 4 years straight then
jess: your womb is gonna be all stretched out and stuff
sg: i figure by the time i'm 40 technology will be so advanced we'll be able to keep having babies till 50
sg: i'll get a replacement robowomb
jess: and you'll be able to shoot one out in the rice fields
jess: easy peasy
sg: wait, i'm not asian
sg: what am i doing in rice fields?
jess: greg? that's not you?
jess: oh shit, that's what i get for having multiple IM windows open at once
sg: ha
jess: well, potato fields then
jess: whatever it is that polocks grow
sg: meat locker
sg: this is one of those IM conversations that deserves to be blogged
jess: hah. anything that makes fun of greg deserves to be blogged, really
sg: true that

posted by stefbot @ 3:38 PM 0 comments

"Fat is beautiful. Fat is our friend."

That there is a quote from one of my new heroes, Armandino Batali, father of Iron Chef America's Mario Batali, and owner of Salumi, a carnivore's cream dream, in Seattle. I challenge any pork-loving reader to get through this NY Times article without drooling all over themselves. After reading it, culatello is now my holy grail, and I'm going to make a pilgrimage to Seattle to get a taste of it. Who's with me!? CULO!!

And speaking of fat, the results are in from my duck bacon and duck prosciutto experiments. What did I learn? Well I learned that duck has a very strong flavor, and this flavor is even stronger when presented in bacon or prosciutto form. The duck bacon alone was just too...gamey or something. While it did seem that there was less fat than pork bacon, there was twice as much grease. I don't know what the difference between fat and grease is exactly, but try some duck bacon and you'll agree - there is a difference. The duck prosciutto was intensely flavorful - almost too much so, yet I found myself jonesing for it on a daily basis nonetheless.

After my initial straight-up tastings, I used the remainder of the duck prosciutto to make this salad (with aroooogula, one of teh best food words evar), except I used a blush vinaigrette and no balsamic vinegar. It was duck-licious. I would order more duck prosciutto just to make it again. I strongly believe that nothing makes a salad better than the addition of meat, and the fattiness and pepperiness of prosciutto makes it the perfect pal for greens. I also want to try this recipe for duck prosciutto with carmelized pears. Yummm.

Since the duck bacon was just too intense on its own, I had the brilliant idea to make duck bacon fried rice with the remainder of the package. This was my first time making flied lice, so I acquired the secret recipe of Iron Chef Playa, Tung. Armed with his simple recipe (fuck peas & carrots!), my first attempt at fried rice also had duck-licious results. Duck bacon works perfectly in the dish, and although I might have used one too many eggs (hey, I like eggs), I would make it again in a heartbeat. I ate three bowls full, and would have eaten four if there was more.

Fat is beautiful. Fat is my friend.

posted by stefbot @ 1:57 PM 8 comments

Mecha-godzirra snack time!

This just has Jerome the Underpants Gnome written all over it. It's Pimp My Snack, a website dedicated to people making giant versions of their favorite snack foods. It's mostly UK people, so they've got some snacks on there that we don't have here in the US, like Jammie Dodgers. The write-ups by the giant snack creators are full of dry British humour too, with some cute nuggets of Brit slang to boot.

Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order:

Giant Oreo - true to form!

Burberry Curly Wurly - major style points.

Colossus Cola Bottle - you know, those little gummy Coke bottles.

Custard Cream Dream - um, it's a cream dream.

If I were going to pimp a snack, I think I would go with gummy worm, and call it "Gummy Anaconda." Yeah, somebody already thought of it, but they did a kind of retarded job on it.

What snack will YOU pimp?

posted by stefbot @ 2:14 PM 5 comments

Your Standard debauchery

Ah, mid week debauchery. Sometimes you just can't wait for Friday. You need to howl at the moon, and you need to do it now. Which is why it wasn't too hard for my friends Jason and Serena to convince me to cart my old ass down to The Standard Hotel last night. Jason and his friends from NYC were kicking off a bachelor's weekend there, and he needed help showing them how the west coast rocks.


The Standard Hotel is an LA landmark. Sex and the City fans would remember it as the hotel where the girls stayed on their LA vacation. Stefbot would remember it as that place where we got wasted beside the pool on our LA vacation. Their big claim to fame is that their sign is upside down. Oh, and they keep a girl in a plexiglass box in the lobby. But they give her the basic necessities for survival- she was checking her email last time I looked.

Moving on, we had a blast just chillin and drinking smuggled vodka on the terrace (the Standard has a retarded policy forbidding outside alcohol because they want you to have to pay $11 a pop for their overpriced crappy cocktails-- one of the guys had to bribe the doorman $30 to let him bring in a bag of liquor). I ended up spending a good part of the evening geeking out about music with this guy.

Scissor Kick was one of the music blogs in my regular rotation back when I had the free online time to have a music blog rotation. Steve was pretty excited that I had heard of and appreciated it, and I was pretty excited to meet the guy who created it. Talking with him made me remember how much I love music blogs, and how much they've expanded my musical horizons. Now I rely mostly on radio to introduce me to new music, which in LA, hometown of Morning Becomes Eclectic, is actually not too bad an option. But music bloggers are consistantly on the cutting edge, introducing new artists and tracks that may never hit the airwaves, and the best ones have impecable taste. Even if the music they feature is not your thing, in most cases you will at least learn something new about the genre. Anyway, I think I missed Scissor Kick in my last shout out to music blogs, but it's definitely one of the better resources in the blogoshere, in my humble opinion. And Steve is a really nice guy who is probably doing very bad things in Vegas right now. Good on ya, Steve. Hope you're having a great time.

posted by Jess @ 11:39 AM 4 comments

You're throwing away a fortune, Jabba, don't be a fool!

We all knew Lucasfilm would do this. They swore they would NEVER release the original versions of Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi on DVD. Then they waited for everyone to reluctantly buy the new versions for Christmas last year. Now they announce that, due to overwhelming demand, the original versions WILL be released on DVD after all! Conveniently enough, and not at all surprisingly, they'll only be available from Sept. through December, 2006...hmm, just in time for Christmas again.

I wonder how much they'll gouge our wallets for these...you have to buy the new versions with the old versions. But how's this for a Jedi mind trick: one of us can buy them and burn just the old versions for everyone! Hooray for DVD burners!! In your FACE, Lucasfilm!

posted by stefbot @ 12:49 PM 0 comments

J'adore Colbert!

In case you haven't heard, (since the story being ignored by most major media outlets), Stephen Colbert gave George W. Bush the truthiness tea-bagging of his life on Sunday night at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. You must check this out. He basically said what all of us would like to say to Bush, while standing less than 10 feet away from the man, and W just had to sit there and attempt to smile politely.

You can see the video here in Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

And you can view the transcript on the Daily Kos blog here.

P.S. I got my duck bacon and duck prosciutto in the mail!! Review to follow!

posted by stefbot @ 10:04 AM 0 comments