# TITLE VIEWS: Date Posted:
1) The Mountain Goats (Pt 1) 388,617 Sept 5, 2006
2) Rodrigo Y Gabriela plays... 14,381 Jan 27, 2007
3) Feist at Amoeba Mushaboom 14,127 Jan 22, 2006
4) Jamie Lidell "A little bit more" 13,281 Feb 23, 2007
5) Against Me! acoustic 12,321 Aug 2, 2006
6) The Blood Brothers 9,579 Oct 10, 2006
7) DJ Cheb I Sabbah @ Berkeley 7,882 Nov 4, 2006
8) And You Will Know Us...Dead 6,343 Sept 2, 2006
9) The Mountain Goats (Part 3) 5,993 Sept 19, 2006
10) The Mountain Goats (Part 2) 5,691 Sept 12, 2006
It was on this day in 1962 that Marilyn Monroe took her own life. Or, if conspiracy theories are to be believed, it marks the day that the Kennedy Family hired Reticulians to invade the actress’ home, kill her, make it look like a suicide, and then use snippets of her DNA to… I dunno… revive Adolf Hitler’s dehydrating brain. (I’m not as well-read when it comes to American history as I should be.)
It’s also the day that the Manson Family first killed, fulfilling the only thing possible that Charles Manson could do that would actually be worse than his music.
Ladies of the Canyon: "Gypsy", Ruth Anne & "Squeaky"
It’s also the anniversary of the day that Paul Tibbets flew his airplane, named after his mom, Enola Gay, over to Hiroshima, where he performed an act that would later be re-enacted by every Thai food delivery service that gets inside my apartment building.
"Look Ma, no mercy!" Paul Tibbets in the cockpit
I could go on. In short, it’s a particularly dark day in history. So I’m sitting with my beloved in his favorite café, Stir Crazy (at La Brea & Melrose), asking myself to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative; I’m calling upon myself to remember things – music, movies, flavors of Method cleaning products – that remind me that it is a beautiful world after all, and that Norma Jean didn't have the right idea, forty-five years ago.
Although it is almost forty years old now, the Steve McQueen cops-and-bad-guys thriller Bullitt, featuring its famous San Francisco car-chase scene, is still a true classic, one that I could re-watch a hundred times. The 1968 film, directed by Peter Yates and available on DVD, in which McQueen plays tough SF police lieutenant Frank Bullitt, has not only great car-chase cinematography that makes you really feel like you are riding in the car, but if you are familiar with San Francisco, it is just so much fun to watch and try to figure out exactly which part of the city the cars are racing through (and they cover a lot of territory) or to note the changes in some parts of SF since they shot the film in '68. Check out the nine and a half minute car chase below, but if you want to see the whole movie on the big screen, there is an opportunity to do so tonight at 8PM (Sunday August 5th) at The Cannery in San Francisco at Del Monte Square, 2801 Leavenworth Street -- and the best part -- the tickets are FREE for the showing in the outdoor courtyard by the Fisherman's Wharf. To get further details either call first (415-771-3112) or go online (www.thecannery.com). The screening of Bullitt will mark the kickoff of the month long Movie Nights At the Cannery series. 
Yesterday, August 4, Lee Hazlewood passed away from renal cancer at the age of 78 in his home in Las Vegas. Born Barton Lee Hazlewood in Mannford, Oklahoma in 1929, he was a music legend and viewed as one of the more iconoclastic figures of 20th-century pop. Just his baritone voice alone made him sound like a cantankerous, hard living son of a bitch. I suspect he was.
Hazlewood was mostly known for his work from the 1950s through the 1970s, he composed such masterpieces as “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” “Some Velvet Morning,” “Sand,” “The Fool,” “Summer Wine,” “Houston” and “Trouble Is A Lonesome Town.” He built a reputation as a solo artist, producer, and label owner. In the 1950s he produced Duane Eddy developing the whole ‘twangy’ guitar sound. The single “Rebel Rouser,” co-written by both Eddy and Hazlewood, became a huge international hit in 1958. As far as being in the public eye, 1965 was his breakthrough year when he teamed up with Nancy Sinatra for a string of hit singles and an album Nancy and Lee. A few years later his own LHI label, released what is widely considered the first country-rock record, the International Submarine Band featuring Gram Parsons. Over the next couple of decades he produced a series of beautifully odd solo albums that were mostly unheard of in America until Sonic Youth reissued them in the 1990s. His final release, Cake Or Death (Ever), was released earlier this year.
