Daily Loaf

Does Friday the 13th equal a freaky news day in the music world? Find out here.

The Who are scheduled to perform at Super Bowl XLIV, which will be held Feb. 7, 2010, in Miami. This will be the band’s first North American performance since 2008. The biggest night in pro football and the Who? My dad (and probably yours, too) can now die happy. (But let’s hope they don’t! Die now, that is.)

Welcome to On the Radar, where we preview up-and-coming arts events to mark your calendar for. Next week, Ybor City sets the stage for two worthy comedy shows, and neither takes place at the Improv.

Four furry Southeastern funnymakers bring their “Beards of Comedy” tour to New World Brewery to entertain the beer-loving masses with their alternative brand of humor. Each comic – Dave Stone, Andy Sanford, TJ Young and Joe Zimmerman (pictured) – presents a set of his own stand-up and participates in collaborative performances of music, sketch, and improvised comedy with the rest of his comrades. Topics and styles range by comedian; Stone touches on subjects ranging from Facebooking his Pop Tart eating habits to getting warned by his dad about the perverts on “Myspaces” (“Dad, I’m a 30-year-old bearded fat man poking around on Myspace, I think I’m the predator not the prey”), Read the rest of this entry »

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.

It’s 8 p.m. and Phil is driving through a torrential rainstorm in an abandoned part of New Orleans’ West End. He’s running his hand through his hair, bent over the steering wheel, trying to find Magellan Road. The GPS isn’t working and every street seems to lead back to the interstate we just exited. A tiny brown Chihuahua looks lost, too, as it darts across the road and between two houses.

It’s enough rain to make a New Orleans native nervous.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had so much fun in Key West for Fantasy Fest it should be illegal (though I’m sure some of it was, or very damn close).  The boat ride on the Key West Express was well worth it. We got there in a fraction of the time and my friend Melissa and I got a head start on the festivities by sucking down White Russians and talking to Fantasy Fest veterans and fellow virgins. My favorite old pros were Bob and Rita who gave us a heads up on the freaky crazy fun of swinger groups who meet in Key West just to have sex with one another and go to kink parties. We quickly realized how true their anecdote was when we stepped off the boat and were promptly offered a free room by some NYC cops. Unfortunately they were a bit vague as to the terms of their offer.

The best word to describe what I saw in Key West is WOW!! I knew I was going to see some weird shit at Fantasy Fest but no amount of preparation or pictures can ready a person for the real thing: a celebration of parades, naked people, drunken stupors, and casual sex. Read the rest of this entry »

Until this week, I had no idea that the World Wide Web that I am accustomed to is called “Web 2.0”, a second wave in the development of our most important medium for communication. Web 2.0 can be thought of as inspiring a shift in the role of the user, from receiver to creator, allowing participants to become “core developers”). The Web became a two-way street, constantly changing at the hands of the public (for a detailed description of Web 2.0 and its development, click here). As hard as it is to imagine the Web without its interactivity, Web 2.0 only came about in reaction to the dot-com bust, when the unidirectional Web 1.0 was in a crisis. The response, a rethinking and reworking of the existing system, introduced the world to many of the most successful applications and websites in use today, from MySpace to YouTube to Facebook.

In a similar sense, we are currently in an energy crisis, yet continuing to rely on old, out-of-date systems of provision that are no longer viable, economically or ecologically. Energy is distributed from power plants to consumers in a top-down fashion that leaves all the control in the hands of large corporations. Additionally, power stations produce massive amounts of waste and CO2 emissions, illuminating the need for a radical transformation in the way that energy is produced and distributed. What must occur, to follow the above analogy, is a shift to Energy 2.0.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m beginning to wonder if Opeth are cursed.

Over the past few years, bad things tend to happen when the Swedish deathprog metal makers hit the road. When Opeth stopped in St. Pete in 2005, their tour bus driver was arrested for child pornography and flying an underage Michigan girl to meet him in Tampa. Opeth were guilty only by association — they knew nothing about what their driver was up to, and the man was hired by the label for that tour.

Last week, the band’s tour bus was involved in a fatal collision while traveling from Dublin to Brussels on their current European tour. Thankfully, the only band members on the bus at the time were bassist Martin Mendez and keyboardist Per Wiberg (singer/guitarist Mikael Akerfeldt and the rest flew home for a few days to be with their families), and neither were injured.

I’d say the driver of the other car wasn’t quite so lucky, except he got exactly what he wanted. Read the rest of this entry »

She’s back! The beautiful and talented Colbie Caillat brings us more of her powerful, acoustic pop-rock and soulful vocals. I first discovered Caillat when I was in the studio with my band. Our record producer told me that I sounded like Colbie Caillat. At the time I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. Intrigued, I immediately went to a computer and searched for this songstress. At once, I realized that I’d received the mother of all compliments. Her voice was flawless and lyrics meaningful and heartfelt. From that moment on, I was forever a fan of Ms. Caillat. Her debut album, Cocoa, exploded on the charts, with “Bubbly” hitting the No. 5 spot on the Billboard Top 100 and No. 2 on Pop 100.

Caillat’s fame came from none other than Myspace. The prestige of her profile getting her props as the number one unsigned singer in her genre. This California girl was fulfilling her dream, one friend request at a time. Before she knew it, “Colbie Caillat” was a household name. Even a 2-year-old girl can be seen singing one of her songs on YouTube.

Okay, we all know she’s talented, but she did have a pretty good connection through her dad. Ken Caillat co-produced Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors and Tusk albums, and she grew up around Mick Fleetwood and John McVie! In 2004, Colbie started writing her own songs.

Read the rest of this entry »

He’s an impressionist, but not like Monet. See, Pablo Francisco does vocal impressions of people, and he brings his imitation tricks to Tampa Improv this weekend. Francisco has starred in seven comedy specials dating back to 1994 and has appeared on numerous shows – MADtv, FrankTV and Comedy Central’s Mind of Mencia as “the Voiceover Guy,” among others. And his sporadic on-stage antics, which include loads of self-made sound effects and beat-boxing, do not disappoint and are interspersed with plenty of improv. In addition to stand-up, Francisco owns the Internet; his Myspace comedy page is one of the most visited stops on the entire networking site. He’s also a favorite on YouTube with his impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger and R2D2. Fans will likely see some of their favorite characters brought to life during the comedian’s weekend sets. June 25-28, 8 p.m. Thurs., 8 and 10:30 p.m. Fri., 7:30 and 10 p.m. Sat., 7 p.m. Sun., Tampa Improv, Ybor City, $20, 813-864-4000, improvtampa.com. —Matt Wiley

Curator of Education at the Salvador Dalí Museum Peter Tush presents Surrealism in the 1930s, a multimedia tour of the International Exposition of Surrealism in 1938 and the evolution of the Surrealist movement in the years before WWII. 7 p.m. Thu., June 25, Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, St. Petersburg College-Tarpon Springs Campus, 600 Klosterman Road, Palm Harbor, $8, $5 LRMA members, free for students, 727-712-5762, www.spjc.edu/central/museum.

Your Thursday won’t be complete unless you see the events after the break: Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not enough that Ron Jeremy’s penis is nearly twice as large as mine, makes more money in a year than I’ll earn in a lifetime, has replica’s made in its image, is a movie star, or has sex with more beautiful women than I’ll ever masturbate to, now his penis has started blogging and tweeting, gaining a larger readership in a few weeks than I’ve amassed in a few years.

Jeremy’s penis has started sending regular updates to the popular social network Twitter at Twitter.com/RonsMonster, offering an interesting perspective into the notorious performer’s life:

“Ron is still sleeping but I’ve been up for hours. He must be dreaming about buffets again.”

This raises the important question, does his penis have its own cell phone, or does it simply poke the buttons through his pants pocket?

Jeremy’s penis also hosts its own blog RonJeremysDick.blogspot.com, where it rants on its desire to distinguish itself from Jeremy. Read the rest of this entry »

Bill O’Reilly: Don’t mess with Jessica Alba. From the actress’ MySpace blog:

I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately. I find it depressing that in the midst of perhaps the most salient time in our country’s history, individuals are taking it upon themselves to encourage negativity and stupidity. Last week, Mr. Bill O’Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people…it’s so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_World_War_II if you want to see what I was referring to. I appreciate the name calling and the accurate reporting. Keep it up!!