Daily Loaf

Routes Music is a documentary film acting as a roving music census, taking in the true musical passions (and disgusts) of the American people. We’re traveling all across the country, stopping along the way to interview local bands, take footage of live performances and chat with anyone and everyone. Learn more about the documentary here; check out all previous entries here.

We met Mushroom Montoya in Long Beach after a long, hard day on Malibu Beach. A practicing “modern shaman” for nearly three decades, Montoya views music as more than entertainment: he uses it for healing the mind, body and spirit. His tools are the drum and the didgeridoo, a hollowed-out pole that, when blown into, sounds like a nest of idle bees. Montoya’s choice of the didgeridoo is no accident; the instrument is said to be man’s first wind instrument dating back thousands of years. Aboriginal shamans in Australia used the didgeridoo in their own rituals and ceremonies.

Well, it just so happened that Phil was complaining of congestion, so Montoya took out one of his three didgeridoos to help clear our crew member’s sinuses. Watch the video below: Read the rest of this entry »

I got a fundraising e-mail from Charlie Crist the other day. It was a pretty good hoot the way Charlie “have it two ways” Crist is trying to paint himself as a Conservative. But hey, he’s starting to show some bravado – he’s even got the nerve to quote Ronald Reagan!Each paragraph of Chuckles’ original letter is shown below along with my version of what his letter would read like if he were to tell the truth.

What it should have said is in italics:

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Illustration: Patrick J. Lynch

There is an excellent CNN commentary, written by Rudy Ruiz, called “Open your minds, America.” The article comments on the intolerant and hostile tone in our debate over health care. Ruiz argues that our inability to form rational dialogue is a symptom of a larger problem — “A contagious culture of close-mindedness threatens to suffocate our progress as a society”

“Increasingly, the willingness to change one’s position on political issues has been misread as a mark of weakness rather than product of attentive listening and careful deliberation.”

How has this happened?  The ability to change our opinions in the face of new information is actually a sign of intelligence, yet our culture seems to disparage such self-reflection.

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Did you know the coral reefs are being suffocated by tourists’ sunscreen? Going to the tanning bed sets up a controlled environment so you can regulate your light absorption and then have a base tan that will help you avoid sunburn and use less sunscreen, therefore preserving the coral reefs and other oceanic life affected by multitudes of tourist sunscreen!

Raydiance Tanning and Spa (and Wellness Gardens and Tea house) offers a multitude of services to keep your lifestyle “green”, healthy and inexpensive. In light of our new proposals for a universal health care system as well as the one already in place it has become all too obvious we need new ways to stay healthy that integrate into our everyday life, because the health care is way too expensive and only used in dire need. There is now a resource to end this cycle of frustration, and it located so conveniently there is no excuse to make a step to integrating preventive health care into your world.

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Comedian Louis CK puts our current economic crisis in perspective.

• What’s another $634 billion among friends?
• When it comes to their guns, Mexican drug cartels buy American.
• Pick a diet, any diet …
• The Obamas have selected the First Dog … maybe.
• Tiger Woods is frickin’ incredible.
• The Arrested Development movie is a go.
• Good bye, Derrick Brooks, Warrick Dunn. Hello, rebuilding year.
• R.I.P. Philip Jose Farmer.