This boggles my mind. The art of George Vlosich III is something astounding, something baffling; I don’t understand why he’s chosen this medium! The artist Paul Klee was once asked about how he draws. He said he simply takes a line for a walk. The line George Vlosich takes for a walk goes on one insanely long nutty jaunt. And when you consider that all it takes is a single inadvertent bump for his art to be toast …

Vlosich uses an Etch-A-Sketch, and yes, it’s the same exact rectangular, red plastic framed model toy many of us had as kids. Each Vlosich Etch-A-Sketch piece takes considerable pre-planning and will typically take between 40 to 60 hours of patience, focus and attention-to-detail to complete. Remember, to draw with an Etch-A-Sketch, there is one line and only one line all the time. There’s little room for error, you can’t erase a mistake.

Probably the best thing I ever drew on one of those things was some pathetically lopsided cat. Vlosich produces refined images and precise portraiture and has since he was a kid. He started drawing when he was about ten years old. By the age of 18 he was being commissioned by the Topps Trading Card Company to produce a series of Etch-A-Sketch drawings as special inserts for their 1998 Topps Baseball trading card collection. He continues working today, still using the Etch-A-Sketch and it’s 5 x 7 screen, but Vlosich has also expanded his art to include painting and illustration, and has set up a design company specializing in advertising and logo design, sports memorabilia and apparel. Plus, he has a line of greeting cards. So next year for Christmas … someone send me one. I’d be damned pleased!

Only in the middle of Hollywood would you ever find a 7 inch record like this. Yeah it’s a theme song from a soundtrack, but not from your typical movie, this 45 pop record is from the soundtrack of a soft-core pornography hit called "Diary of a Stewardess." Imagine the treasures we could have unearthed if only Amoeba hadn’t opened its doors on Sunset Blvd, but instead, opened for business deep in the heart of the America’s well lit, scantily clad, steady-cam ready, zoom in, action, work-it-a-little-slower-honey, bedroom community known as the San Fernando Valley.

Released in 1972 and sung by Bob Grabeau, Diary of a Stewardess b/w Fasten Your Set Belts (released on Segue Records and based in Canoga Park!) is an actual artifact of the valley’s 1970’s pop-porn culture, a culture that resurfaced with the 1997 film “Boogie Nights.”  I bet many of our Dads saw “Stewardess” in a triple bill with “Deep Throat” and “Behind the Green Door.” Okay … maybe not your Dad …

The song Diary of a Stewardess was co-written by the legendary Buddy Feyne, celebrated for his swinging hep-cat lyrics and penning some of the biggest hits of the '30s and '40s, including Tuxedo Junction, Jersey Bounce and After Hours. During his career he wrote more than 400 songs collaborating with legends like Raymond Scott, Al Sherman, Avery Parrish, Louis Jordan, Erskine Hawkins, Lester Young, and even Milton Berle. Feyne’s compositions might even be considered essential to the hipsters of that era, actually any era, as a matter of fact: Bee Bop On the Range, After School Swing Session, Aristocrat of Harlem, Cream Cheese and Jelly, She Works In Men's Pajamas - the list goes on and on.  Feyne also wrote the original lyrics to something called Dolomite that a certain bon vivant named Rudy Ray Moore re-navigated into his own signature song.

“This is in no sense a  stunt record. Let the record speak for itself.”

Says that right here on the back. Of course the record starts with the sound of a train, moving from left speaker to right.

“In spite of the high
degree of perfection
reached hitherto in the art of commercial disc recording, especially
since the advent of the long-playing record, the  monaural or one-channel system has certain limitations. The listener is deprived of any real sense of perspective in the sound.”

 

But wait, there is something astonishingly beautiful and perfect about some monaural mixes: and that beauty is called “clarity.”  To my weary, tinnitus-filled ears, the mono mix of the Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle is perfection, even in headphones. There’s separation. The piano, the organ, the harpsichord, the guitars, drums, the vocals, the reverb … it’s all there sounding just about what you would like these things to sound like, without the sugar-coated, frosty-haze of full frequency stereophonic sound creeping into your left and right ears, ping-ponging one at a time!  Another great psyche classic, Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn also benefits from a mono mix,  as it was originally released in mono. There is something distracting about the gamesmanship of  “The Piper” stereo mix. That’s right … the gamesmanship.

Coincidentally, (then again, like I’ve written here before,
there are no coincidences …) according to the Pink Floyd
official website, the 40th anniversary edition will be
released on September 4th, 2007, as both a two CD set
and a three CD box set and with both the stereo and mono
versions. Unfortunately The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
has been “newly re-mastered.”

 
Alfred Peet, entrepreneur and the founder of  Peet's Coffee & Tea, who opened his first store in Berkeley over 40 years ago and is credited with spawning our insatiable appetite for gourmet coffee has died at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 87.

He was born in Alkmaar, Holland in 1920 where
his father ran a coffee roastery business.  After the Second World War, Peet left Europe and in 1955 immigrated to San Francisco working for E.A. Johnson & Co, importing coffee.

Peet set up his first shop in 1966, opening a small store in Berkeley at 2124 Vine Street, near the UC campus. To set himself and his coffee apart, he personally hand roasted high-quality beans, soon he opened new stores in Oakland and Menlo Park.

The founders of Starbucks, such as Jerry  Baldwin,  were among his early customers and
found their inspiration in Peet's business plan.
Early on, before Starbucks became the
gargantuan enterprise it is today, they purchased their roasted coffee from Peet’s, until Peet could no longer keep up with the supply demands of the chain.

After Alfred Peet retired in 1983, Baldwin and his partners purchased Peet's Coffee for $4 million.

I can’t emphasis how important a great cup of java is to me. Back in the old days, before internet time itself, whenever a friend of mine traveled up to the Bay Area, I would beg them to bring back a couple bags of Peet’s coffee.

I salute you Alfred Peet! You've made my life richer!