Nashville is the 4th best place to hear live music

The Society of American Travel Writers has named Nashville one of the 10 best cities to see live music.

Nashville ranked No. 4 on the list.

See the entire list at their website.

Two of my favorite people, Anthony Bourdain and Famous Fat Dave, together

Scenes from the NASFT Fancy Food Show in NYC

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Civilization by Marco Brambilla

Civilization by Marco Brambilla from CRUSH on Vimeo.

DaVido, the Java Jitter, and his Starbucks Rejection Tour

DaVido used to sing at Mere Bulles in downtown Nashville but now has moved on to bigger things. He now sings the "Java Jitter" and is currently on the Starbucks Rejection Tour. This is funny and good stuff. I knew he had a unique way to get himself "out there."

Here is the video


NEW YORK, Sept. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- DaVido, the outrageous crooner, has been thrown out of over 200 Starbucks and it's all captured on video on YouTube.com. Because of his courage and tenacity, DaVido's Starbucks Rejection Tour Video is rapidly getting worldwide attention.After Starbucks Corporation rejected his song "Java Jitter," DaVido decided to take matters into his own hands, and performed his song in as many stores as humanly possible hoping that corporate headquarters would take notice and embrace him and his quest.

Unfortunately, every time DaVido tried to sing "Java Jitter" in the stores, he was consistently kicked out. DaVido's relentless goal: have his CD on the Starbucks music racks next to superstars such as Paul McCartney, Johnny Cash, and Ray Charles.

Should someone be able to sell a reservation for a restaurant besides the restaurant?

I think this is just wrong for someone to act like they have the ability to "auction" or "sell" tables at restaurants without working with the restaurant. Having been a concierge, I know that there are times when you can have a restaurant hold a table or two for you but to sell them...I can't agree with that. I never was a fan of OpenTable or other websites that tried to do the job of a concierge or a person calling the restaurant themselves but after reading this article, I really don't enjoy this process.
~Corey Webbspun


By SARAH KERSHAW
Published: March 12, 2008

IT is hard to imagine Joseph Bastianich, who owns a dozen restaurants with Mario Batali and controls some of the most coveted tables in the country, being flustered by a reservation for two at Babbo for 6:15 on a Friday night.

But Mr. Bastianich was furious: someone was offering that table at TableXchange, a Web site on which diners can buy and sell reservations, hot commodities in a town where getting a table at the most popular restaurants has become an extreme sport.

The price was $25. The table was gone within an hour.

“We’re selling dinner; we don’t sell the opportunity to have dinner,” Mr. Bastianich said. “It goes against the grain of everything we do.”
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Read the entire article in the New York Times.

Willie Nelson: Twin Towers Were Imploded Like Condemned Vegas Casino Buildings

"I saw those towers fall and I've seen an implosion in Las Vegas - there's too much similarities between the two, and I saw a building fall that didn't get hit by nothing."

Listen to Willie's thoughts on the attack of 9/11. *audio comes from the website, BreitBart.tv*

Overheard on the Subway in New York City

"ladies and gentlemen, i'm sorry to be bothering you while you're working, but i just need some money for a warm breakfast. my only talent is my singing voice, but it's too early for me to sing at the moment. please give me money."

Find more cool stuff at Jazz in Strange Places blog.

The Naked Cowboy Invades Nashville at Fan Fair

I can't imagine doing this myself but from what I hear, he makes a ton of money this way.

Famous Fat Dave Talks About Pumpkin Pie

Learn about the history of Pumpkin Pie from Famous Fat Dave.

New York's Famous "Serendipity 3" has Been Closed by the Health Inspector

While serendipity may be the art of finding pleasant things by chance, what health inspectors found at celebrated eatery Serendipity 3 was not very agreeable.

Officials closed the restaurant Wednesday night after it failed its second inspection in a month. An inspector spotted a live mouse and mouse droppings, fruit flies, house flies and more than 100 live cockroaches.



People stand in line for hours outside the Manhattan restaurant, known for its extravagant and expensive desserts. Its $25,000 Frrrozen Haute Chocolate features top-grade cocoa, edible gold and shavings of a luxury truffle and was declared the most expensive dessert in the world by Guinness World Records. The eatery also offers a $1,000 sundae named Golden Opulence requiring 48-hour advance notice.

Read the entire story in the USA Today.

A $25,000 Dessert in New York

By Vivianne Rodrigues


NEW YORK (Reuters) -

A day after New York City came up with a $1,000 bagel, a local restaurateur unveiled a $25,000 chocolate sundae on Wednesday, setting a Guinness world record for the most expensive dessert.

Stephen Bruce, owner of Serendipity 3, partnered with luxury jeweler Euphoria New York to create the "Frrozen Haute Chocolate," a blend of 28 cocoas, including 14 of the most expensive and exotic from around the globe.

The dessert, spelled with two Rs, is infused with 5 grams (0.2 ounces) of edible 23-karat gold and served in a goblet lined with edible gold. At the base of the goblet is an 18-karat gold bracelet with 1 carat of white diamonds.

The sundae is topped with whipped cream covered with more gold and a side of La Madeline au Truffle from Knipschildt Chocolatier, which sells for $2,600 a pound.

It is eaten with a gold spoon decorated with white and chocolate-colored diamonds, which can also be taken home. "It took us a long time to experiment with all the ingredients and flavors, and more than three months were needed just to design the golden spoon," Bruce told Reuters.

Read the entire story at Reuters.

Moondog in New York

Bochum, West Germany.
For 30 years he was a landmark for New Yorkers. Decked out in a bizzare mock-Viking outfit, a horned helmet on his head and a spear in his hand, he stood on the corner of 54th Street and Sixth Avenue, majestically ignoring the giggles and wisecracks, selling his poems and copies of his sheet music and playing what one critic called "delicate Coplandesque rhythms" on weird instruments of his own design. He called himself Moondog, after a dog he liked, and was unfailingly courteous and patient with the curious. Although handicapped by total blindness from an explosion when he was 16 years old, Moondog wasn't just another one of the crazies wandering aimlessly through the metropolis, but a dedicated nonconformist who insists he pursued his unorthodox street life for the sake of his music. Over the years he acquired a lot of friends, some of them with real clout in the music world, like Artur Rodzinski, conductor of the New York Philharmonic. However, repeated attempts to get him off the streets and into a more conventional mode of life foundered on Moondogs's fierce protection of his freedom.But Moondog, whose real name is Louis Hardin, isn't standing on street corners anymore. At the age of 62, in an uninspiring little town in West Germany, Moondog has found a home.A Composer's Paradise"I am living in a composer's paradise"



"I am living in a composer's paradise," he says to a visitor in a sound studio in Bochum, where his music is being recorded. "I am surrounded by musicians, I get my meals on time, I'm warm, and most of all I'm free for my music." He speaks like a man who has suddenly realized the joy of no longer having to cope with the very problems of existence.Sitting next to him, watching fondly and proudly, is the architect of his new life, a slight blond woman of 27, named Ilona Goebel. She and the musician met three years ago in a small town in the Ruhr valley.Moondog (Miss Goebel calls him by his given name Louis) came to Germany in 1974 under the auspices of one of his early New York admirers, the organist Paul Jordan. Mr. Hardin had been invited to conduct a concert of his works played by Mr. Jordan in Frankfurt, and has simply never returned to New York."I felt at home here, in the country where so many great composers have lived and worked," he said. "I went to Bonn to the house where Beethoven was born. I sat at the spinnet where he composed some of his great music and I felt I was in spiritual communication with him.When Ilona Goebel first saw him, Moondog was standing on a street corner in Recklinghausen, dressed in his familiar Viking cape and helmet, selling copies of his poems. The somewhat startled citizens thought he was an out-of-work actor costumed as an "alt Deutscher"

Read the full story in Moondog's Corner.

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Sidewalk Hero, On the Horns Of a Revival
By JOHN STRAUSBAUGH

Plenty of chamber music festivals have featured works by Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Or Charles Ives, Elliott Carter and Leon Kirchner.

But a festival that includes music by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Ives, Carter and Kirchner, all playing second fiddle to the classical works of Moondog?

''Moondog Rising,'' which takes place on Friday and Saturday at Advent Lutheran Church in Manhattan, is surely the first. The Viking of Sixth Avenue, as he was known, would be proud.



From the late 1940s to the early '70s Moondog was as recognizable in the New York City landscape as the Empire State Building, and nearly as striking. A tall blind man with long hair and beard, wearing a handmade Viking helmet and primitive cloak, he regularly stationed himself at Sixth Avenue and 54th Street, which cops and cabbies knew as Moondog's Corner. Dispensing his poetry, politics, sheet music and recordings (some on boutique labels, some on majors), he was sought out over the years by beats, hippies and foreign tourists, but also by the media and celebrities, from Walter Winchell and ''Today'' to Marlon Brando, Muhammad Ali and Martin Scorsese.

''Everybody who was anybody met Moondog,'' Robert Scotto, author of ''Moondog,'' a biography published this month by Process Books, said recently. ''And everybody had his own Moondog.''

Even after he moved to Germany in 1974, where he remained until his death in 1999 at 83, he was remembered in New York as an emblematic street character, though not as a serious classical composer. As the British music critic Kenneth Ansell observed in the mid-'90s, while jazz greats like Count Basie and Charlie Parker admired Moondog's idiosyncratic forays into their world, ''the classical orthodoxy has not rushed to embrace him.''

Robin Boomer, a cellist and the organizer of Moondog Rising, said: ''Most of the people I know from the classical music world don't know Moondog at all. He hasn't made it into the canon.''

Part of the problem is that Moondog was so prolific and eclectic. Working in Braille, often composing under his cloak on the sidewalk, he wrote in an impressively wide range of styles: percussion-driven exotica (he made his own triangular drum-and-cymbal instrument, the trimba), avant-garde jazz, folkish madrigals, Bach-like neo-Baroque rounds and canons for chamber orchestra, symphonies for full orchestra, and a layered minimalism that influenced his young collaborators Steve Reich and Philip Glass. (They can be heard playing with Moondog in the 1960s on a sampler CD included in Mr. Scotto's book, for which Mr. Glass wrote the preface.)

Read the entire article in the New York Times

Chocolate Week in New York City

Attention all chocoholics: New York has declared its “First-Ever Chocolate Week.” Launching Sunday, November 4th, restaurants around the city - Artisanal, Butter, Le Cirque, Country, P*ong, to name but a few - will be getting in on the action with chocolate cocktails, tastings and entire chocolate menus (sweet and savory).

In conjunction with the week’s festivities, the 10th Annual Chocolate Show will be held from November 9-11 at the Metropolitan Pavilion and Altman Building (125 W. 18th Street).

For more info, visit the Chocolate Show.


This post is from Restaurant Girl

Guess Where George Clooney Had Dinner and Win a Free Dinner Cooked by Chef Mario Batali

Productivity at Eater HQ has ground to an absolute halt at the moment, as the collective stares at this video trying to figure out where in the hell George Cloony and friend ate last night. Good guesses have been thrown around—Frederick's, Primola—but we're stumped.

Details of note: wood paneling, light fixtures, a prominently-located dessert display and, seating in close proximity to a storefront (this was shot through the front window). So, we'll put it out to you all: name this restaurant and win a date with Sam Talbot AND a new 2008 Zagat AND a reservation at Per Se AND a dinner for ten cooked by Mario Batali.* Your best guess goes here.

This post comes from Eater blog.

Visit TMZ to see George Clooney and Sarah Larson having a romantic dinner.

Reba trades her big hair for blue jeans

I love Reba....Cuz she is just the best. God bless ya Reba and keep up the good work and thanks for mentoring the future talent, like Kelly Clarkson.

~C.S. Webbspun

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At 52, country superstar says she's finally happy to just be herself

By
BEVERLY KEEL
Staff Writer

Reba McEntire is conducting business today at her impressive Starstruck Entertainment building on Music Row, but she is dressed in her stage wear.

But instead of a sparkly gown, she wears a pair of jeans and a trendy blue V-neck. This is Reba McEntire 2007.

After living largely in Los Angeles for the past six years to shoot the WB/CW sitcom Reba, McEntire returned to her home in Sumner County after the show was cancelled late last year.

Instead of going Hollywood, McEntire returned to her roots. Gone is the over-the-top image created by her big hair and big production shows featuring numerous costume changes.

It was obviously an image that worked. McEntire has sold 38 million albums, recorded 33 No. 1 hits and collected two Grammys. She's won seven Country Music Association awards, including a record-tying (with Martina McBride) four trophies in the female vocalist category.

"I used to sit in the audience of the CMAs and just wait for the moment when she would walk out onstage in her big gown and big hair, and you knew you were watching a superstar," McBride says. "Her command of the stage is something I strive to have."

But about five years ago, McEntire ditched the cumbersome outfits and costume changes to be more comfortable onstage. More important, she wanted to have more time to talk to her audience. "Because of the Reba TV show, I was a character that people fell in love with because she was a normal person," she says.

In the past, onstage she played the characters in the songs — "I was never Reba until I talked." But now, she says, "I can play Reba and sing the song with my heart."

"I love being 52. I get to be me now, and I don't have to please anybody. I please myself first, and I love myself first. Because if I can love me, I am more open to everybody accepting me the way I am, and I don't have to pretend."

The flashy big-haired image wasn't really who she was, she says, but a stylist's idea of what she should look like.

"I went for it because I had no taste. I grew up with hand-me-downs all my life. I had no idea what I was wanting to wear."


Read the full article HERE

Woo-Hoo! JetBlue Airways Announces Fall Sale

The Official Airline of Springfield, today launches a special 15-day Fall sale for travel between September 5 and November 14, 2007, with fares starting as low as $139(a) for travel between New York/JFK and Burbank; Long Beach; Oakland; Ontario; San Jose; or San Francisco. Fares as low as $59(a) are available between Orlando, Florida and New York's JFK or LaGuardia airports.

Earlier this month, the low-cost, high-frills airline was named "The Official Airline of Springfield" -- the hometown city of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson -- to celebrate the summer theatrical release of The Simpsons Movie. In honor of America's favorite animated family of comedy, JetBlue also unveiled its first-ever specialty aircraft, christened "Woo-Hoo, JetBlue!" and featuring an image of Homer along with a permanent logo of its new Springfield status. To celebrate Fall travel, the low-fare airline is offering special sale fares for Springfielders and non-Springfielders across the country.

See some of the deals and read more of the article at Money.CNN.com

Sundae Sunday at Serendipity 3

My Old Friends

This is for you all.......my old friends.

A Zoned Hotel for the Arts?

Sherill Tippin's Op/Ed piece in the NY Times reminds us that when the Chelsea was built New Yorkers were facing a similar housing crisis. She writes, "The Chelsea was built to address this problem. A French-born writer, inventor, architect, and idealist, Philip Gengembre Hubert, introduced the cooperative apartment system to New York, specifically to free New Yorkers from the burden of overpriced housing and to encourage the cross-class intermingling neded to nurture a cohesive culture." Tippins also mentions how readers of this blog have responded with creative solutions as to how to deal with the recent hostile take over of the Chelsea. Here’s one of the more interesting.

Surely, if the Soho artists could get an entire neighborhood zoned just for artists, the Chelsea, with its landmarked status, could work with foundations, friendly investors, artists-with-money, the Bards, and residents to create a zoned hotel for the arts.


Read more about the ongoing struggle to save the Chelsea Hotel in NYC, HERE