Big Arnie Loves Weed.

My favorite ex-bodybuilder & Terminator cum politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger has recently publicly stated that "That is not a drug. It's a leaf," when asked about smoking cannabis.

In fact, he has already earlier admitted smoking marijuana in the 1970s but when interviewed recently by the GQ magazine he stated that he had never taken drugs. He had just smoked weed instead. This would be kinda hard for him to deny since there exists a movie filmed in his Mr. Universe Days in the 1970s in which he is getting high. There's been also stories about stoned group sex sessions and orgies during his body-building days etc.



I'd say Righ On, Conan The Barbarian!



America needs more progressive and liberal political vision now more than ever. And we better also remember that he has a strong environmental vision and California's environmental laws are most progressive in USA.

EDIT!

Lazy me! Here's the actual video of Arnold smoking The Joint, and telling about it, courtesy of YouTube, of course.
Thanks again, Giac.

'Cocaina Nella Chitarra Elettrica' & Plenty Of It!

Weeeell, we've been blogging about guitars, cocaine and traveling here, among many other things of course. Giac (thanks!) just sent a link to these 2 totally great pictures.

I cannot post the protected images here but clickclick & wonder at these:

Pic 1.

Pic 2.

Courtesy of La Rebubblica and Italian Customs.

So from what little Italian I understand, that black Stratocaster arrived from Costa Rica to Fiumicino, the Rome International Airport, and only wanted to come and play some totally sweet licks for/by someone, like Eric Clapton (who is known to have indulged more than his share in the good old days) before the evil Italian Customs interfered and blew everything...

The Soviet dumpster find fixed gear coversion bike project, pt. 2: It's Ready.

Back in early September I reported about how I salvaged a complete Soviet-made 1970s Kharkov XB3 road bike from a trash dumpster and I promised I will convert it into a trendy fixed gear bike. Well, now the bike is ready. I've been riding it for a long time already but the build was not completely finished until now.

In my original post I talked about having to get lot of new parts but in the end I found out that there was actually no need for stuff like new bottom bracket because it was just fine, then I just couldn't get the old cottered cranks off without destroying them, the double-chainring was usable as such and so on and so on. In fact, even the original tube tires, which proudly said CCCP on the sides, held air when I pumped them. As for the rest of the bike I can say that the best part is the frame-set, it's an old school classic road bike lugged steel-frame. I've no idea of what kind of steel the tubes are but the frame is very light just as it should be, and much lighter you would expect any old russian bike to be. And the size was also just right for me.

Anyhow, along the building process I decided that since the bike was free in the first place, I was not gonna use much money on it. As a result the only new things I bought for it were the funky color-coordinated kiwi green Oury BMX grips and one new inner-tube. Everything else on the bike is either original, taken from my other bikes, my parts box, scavenged somewhere or from the local recycling center bike workshop's parts pile.

The bike is intended mainly as my winter/rainy weather beater/commuter-bike and I will still put a fender on the back wheel once I find that one missing right size screw from somewhere. The gearing is kinda light (40X18), for winter use, and for the same reason the tires are of the knobby cyclocross-kind.

And no, I will not post a picture of my bike on Fixed Gear Gallery, Velospace, Pinkbike or any of those places...

BEST SONG IN THE UNIVERSE right now.

Due to the serious WACK ATTACK provided by that video on the previous post, I'm forced to counter attack with the heaviest means I have in my possession.

Quick, here is the antidote.
And like righ now, THIS is probably the BEST SONG IN THE UNIVERSE.

Listen to the loose luscious groove, that ambient airy-ness, the funky snap of the drums, the jittery percussion of straight african decent, the heavy on-money-bassline bounce, the SOULful vocal, just everything in it. Oh, Lord.

You will be healed from the pain caused by Anssi and his bass. At least I was.

Cymande 'Brothers On The Slide'.

Kelaa this

We all know the character from his massive hits a few years back, but now he's got sumthin' to say 'bout popping that bass. Che-che-check it out!

And he also likes to play Iron Butterfly in a major scale... That's funny but my old friend T.Rislakki told me that they used to do this kinda stuff way back before Anssi.

Party ALERT! Rave at Elimäenkatu Squat In Vallila.

Here's the deal. During the past summer there's a small but dedicated group of young squatters took over six different abandoned and empty buildings in Helsinki, in order to start an Italian-style Social Centre.

The newspapers reported a lot about their activities and their radical political agenda but unfortunately the cops also kept busy kicking the squatters out from every place they entered, with the help of riot squad, tear gas, batons, helicopters and all that normal sh*t.

However; in August something strange happened. After the squatters took over an old rundown building (in Elimäenkatu street) in the Vallila industrial district, for reasons unknown to me, the owner of the building did not ask the police to empty the building like in all previous cases. So, currently there is an Autonomous Social Centre in Helsinki and now the building has been cleaned and organized enough so that freeform parties, gigs, movie viewings, workshops etc. can be organized. No bouncers, no closing times, cheap drinks etc. always make for a more fun party, right?

I'm personally all for this kinda stuff happening, so here's the info (in Finnish) on first slighly bigger happening at Elimäenkatu, next saturday actually.

* * * * *

TECHNO FREAKS

La 20.10.2007 | 22-06 | 5e |
Elimäenkatu 15a (Vallila)
Busseilla 62, 64, 65, 66 ja 67 kaksi pysäkinväliä Sörnäisistä pohjoiseen.


ALAKERTA

Pietari (La Persé) | Poro (pihaus.org) | Snoxn (Hytky) | Olli&Karel (Hytky) | Docius (Hytky / Viidakkorumpu)

Vallilan teollisuusalueella sijaitseva hylätty ravintola on vallattu viime
elokuussa kapitalismin vastaiseksi monitoimitilaksi ja ihmisten
kohtauspaikaksi. Tila on suonut puitteet monien politiikka- ja
taideprojektien toteuttumiselle, minkä vuoksi talo henkii voimakasta
tunnelmaa. Myös graffitigalleriaksi muodostunut katutason varastotila on nyt
tyhjennetty romuista ja se pistetään bilekuntoon tykillä äänentoistolla ja
hytkytyylisillä efekteillä. Varastoreivitunnelmissa tampataan housea,
elektroa, teknoa, uutta ja vanhaa.

YLÄKERTA

Erkko & Makelove (Misf*ts) | J-TEL | Canyini (Hytky) | Push-ups

Yläkerrassa soitetaan loungetunnelmissa elektroa, indie-rockia, new wavea ja
triphoppia ja tuhmaa housea. Bile-eläimet voivat ostaa kohtuuhintaista
ruokaa ja juomaa ja molempiin huoneisiin järjestetty lämmitys lievittämään
sekä hyvässä että huonossa mielessä karua biletilaa.

The BIG Radiohead Album Download Scam...

Ok. Now that everyone has bought a download of the new Radiohead album 'In Rainbows', and paid something or not for it, it is time to lift the curtain and tell the truth about the whole hulabaloo.

Two points.

1.) The album is quite nice, IMHO. More pop than the last albums, less 'experimental' for sure, but the songs are actually pretty good.

2.) 'The whole buy the donwload and pay how much/little you want thing' is one big hoax, just a big marketing gimmick.
Why? I'll tell you why. The downloadable album is encoded at crappy 160kbps. It's like a damn C-cassette. Anyone who paid more that 1 Euro for that donwload is an ass. Sorry.

Come on, do you actually want to pay any money for audio quality as poor as that? No, you don't, or at least you should not - as a paying customer, that is. Anyone who actually listens to music and appreciates the audio quality at all - and I'm not talking about those audiophile jerks-offs who listen to their €€€€-costing cables during their lonely nights at home - have to wait until January or whenever the cd is actually going to be released, period.

Also, this shows that Thom & boys are really smart. Good for them.

EDIT:
I just found out that the downloadable so-called-album does not even include all the songs. The actual real cd/double vinyl album will have more songs than the ones released last week. This fact only proves my points.

This is the euro nite!

Sounds kinda wack, but still kinda pleasing to the ear. Maybe 'cos I'm a sentimental fool. But can ya really blame these dudes / dudettes? This is euro! But the keyboard sound is wack fi real. And this used to sound better in finnish still.

White Lobster! Praise Jah!

Guardian reported of this nice incident in the caribbean.

Local people are getting loads of free cocaine floating from the sea, 'cos the smugglers seem to drop "White Lobster" in to the sea for various reasons.

"They consider it a blessing from God. You see people all day just walking up and down the beaches keeping a lookout to sea," said Louis Perez, the police chief in Bluefields, the main port on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast."

Aren't these trafficers modern day Robin Hoods?

In your face Myspace!

As you can see from the chart above, Facebook is slowly reaching more and more people, and might be soon as big as Myspace. And now Facebook is giving more attention to musicians, giving them a possibility to create pages for their bands and promote their tracks and upcoming concerts on the site. Myspace has for long been the place to promote artists, but now it seems that FB is trying to win this battle as well. Read the article here

We gotsta get dem Kriton Boyz on the 'Book soon!

Street Market. In Vallila Style.

All right, check out the photo. It’s taken last Saturday afternoon on Mäkelankatu, right next to where I live.
A real Street Market – in the best Vallila style.

So what’s actually going on there? Apparently someone had died or been kicked out of flat, or something, and all his/her stuff, the contents of the whole flat basically, had been emptied out on the street by the landlord. This happens sometimes in every city, right? Especially when the legal protection of the tenants is as weak as it here in Finland currently but let’s not get into politics right now.

Anyhow, when I dropped by in the afternoon to check out what was going on there was a bunch of young and quite entrepreneurial substance-abuser/junkie-type dudes who had already taken control of the pile, sorted all the good stuff away and where selling things to people passing by.

When I came to the scene the main dude, in blue coveralls, was feverishly trying to call someone and to borrow a van to get the stuff away from the street. I need to admit here that I actually ended up negotiating with him a bit and bought a nice Shimano MTB front wheel for 2 Euros for one of my bike projects.

Supporting the local economy. Or something.

RED ALERT: Nagamarque Live !!!

So, it's finally happening, our favorite Aussie-in-Finland is about to drop his first CDR on Kriton Records. The first - extremely limited edition - batch is discs is already printed and all that but for now concentrate on this:

The man & his laptop is performing live at the 10th Improv Helsinki Session on Sunday, October 7th at a very interesting new venue, The Barracks (Kasarmikatu 36, 00130 Helsinki). The show time is at eight, so be early. However, please note that Fatto Spinelli, the vocalist features on the new CDR, is unfortunately unable to participate on this gig due to other commitments but he has promised to be there for the next week, soon.

Other artists of the Improv Helsinki night are E.Coli K-15 & Ben Byrne.

Right On, Bro!

Tru Oldskool Sneakers

Since 1948 the Dassler bros did their own separate things with Puma and Adidas, but now they're (well, not these guys themselves I guess) bringing back the Dassler Schuhfabrik -brand, where it all started. This Dassler Schuhfabrik is supposed to be a real nostalgic thingy, that's inspired by those old models from pre WWII.

I'd call the real old skool.

The Grand Skateboarding Versus Progressive Rock Debate

The comments and ensuing debate concerning my recent post of the cool Indy’s Pool-shaped ashtray and the Phil Collins related post below got me doing some surfing with Google images. And thinking.

This lead me to make two conclusions:

1.) Skateboarding, while certainly a fun hobby, is not very healthy for you in the long term.
An example: Duane Peters AKA ‘The Master of Disaster’, the anti-Tony Hawk, a truly legendary skateboarder but also an archetype of an aging punk rocker, as well as substance abuser, a convicted felon, etc. all in true American Style ™.





2.) Progressive rock, on the other hand, seems to have quite an opposite effect than skateboarding, as illustrated by the case of Phil Collins, an aging prog-rocker turned into, well, your dad, apparently.



Needless to say that I personally find this empirical evidence and findings to be extremely interesting, actually verging on being rather shocking.

Skateboarding is, by its true essence, a physical sport and a fine form of exercise, which should be good for you, right?

But progressive rock, isn't that one of the shadiest sub-gebres of 1970s rock music? Dirty haired dope-smoking hippies composing grandiose and mostly incomprehensible musical opuses and theme albums lasting for (in worst cases) hours and hours and dealing with strange issues such as Aliens, sub-consciousness and Freudian dreams and so on and so on.

I can feel it part III

This is a banger. One more really good online video ad.

"Perfect gift for any skater who smokes"

Yea, I know it's bit tired to keep on blogging about all the stupid items such as this, or the Minimug, that Turntable Lab newsletter keeps stuffing my email with but check this out anyway.

It's a really cool ashtray, Indy's 'Hogan's Pool Ceramic Ashtray' or the "perfect gift for any skater who smokes".

Independent Truck Co., are hearing me out, pleasepleaseplease send me one of these, our studio screams "I NEED IT!!!".