LilSugar

All The Young Dudes-Mott The Hoople

miss-britt — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:59:24 -0800

True Blood Season 3 Spoilers – Unfounded and Still worth It

LaLa0428 — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:24:53 -0800

Well, let me start by saying I have no way of knowing whether any of these things are true, but since I like the sound of most of these I have share them with you guys. Let’s discuss.
The Characters:

Sookie

She's not entirely human that's for sure. Series creator Alan Ball won't tell exactly what she is but assures fans that it will be revealed next season. "Sookie has a stronger genetic predisposition in another direction. People who have read the books know exactly what I'm talking about. People who haven't, it will be revealed," Ball explained. Based on the books, however, Sookie is a fairy.

Eric

The Viking vamp was missing for the most part of the second season finale but Alan Ball tells Entertainment Weekly there's a reason why and assures fans that Eric will be a prominent character in season 3. And once he resurfaces, he'll be making lots of sexy time with tremendously hot and bold Yvetta, Fangtasia's new Czechoslovakian dancer.

Tara

Tara hasn't been so lucky when it comes to the matters of the heart. This season, however, she's getting her very own vampire buddy in the form of Franklin Mott, who is described as very very sexy and over-protective. But she's not the only one on cloud nine because as it turns out, her ever-distraught mom turns to the church for comfort and "maybe a little more" in the form of honorable Reverend Daniels.

Jason

Jason will find himself in an embarrassing situation when two NYU girls, Jen and Missy, try to get him into the sack.

Lafayette

We will be seeing more and more of Lafayette in season 3 as he gets vulnerable not just because he's afraid of Eric. He also gets a boyfriend!

Andy

He'll find out that he is related to somebody and it will totally shock him when he discovers who it is.

Godrick

The vampire may have committed suicide by sunlight but he may still appear in the coming season in flashback scenes with Eric.

Queen Sophie-Anne

Queen Sophie-Anne may not have come across scary when she was first introduced in the second season but Ball says she will be in season 3. "You don't want to introduce a character you're going to see later and blow your wad up front. All I can say is keep watching. It will make sense," Ball explained of Queen Sophie-Anne who will return for the new season but not as a series regular.

Arlene

After a string of bad luck when it comes to love, it looks like Arlene is finally going to get her happy ending. Alan Ball reveals to TV Guide that she and current love interest Terry
"will make a surprising discovery that will bring them closer together." In other words, expect another addition to the Fowler household!

Shocking Plots:

The Bombshell Secret

Ever since Queen Sophie-Anne graced the second season of True Blood, Bill and Sookie fans have been haunted with a theory from the Charlaine Harris books that would certainly destroy their favorite vampire-human couple: that Bill is working for the Queen and he came to Bon Temps to seduce Sookie with ulterior motives. It's certainly an issue that would divide True Blood fans as this will push Sookie right into the arms of Eric, and while series creator Alan Ball hasn't really followed the novels to the letter, he isn't completely shutting out the idea either.

"It's certainly something that I found really compelling in the books," Ball told Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello of Bill's deep dark secret. "I was like, 'Wow.' But I can't really tell you what I'm going to do story-wise. So much of the appeal of the show depends on the element of surprise."

"I try to stay out of how the fans are responding to the show," he added. "I have to tell the story that I think is the most interesting story. Certainly, the main ingredient in drama is conflict and revelations. For every person who loves Bill and wants him and Sookie to just be in love always, there's another person who's like, 'I'm sick of Bill. He's such a wuss. I like Eric. He's dangerous.' Especially when you're working on a show like this with the kind of palette and the colors you use; you want it to be continually surprising and shocking. Not for the sake of being shocking, but that's part of the fun."

Sookie and Eric, will they or won't they?

Season 2 left fans with a cliffhanger that saw Bill being abducted just before Sookie was supposed to accept his marriage proposal. Now that Bill is seemingly and temporarily out of the picture, we are now left wondering if Eric and Sookie will finally get together in season 3. But Ball tells TV Squad, "I can't tell you if they're going to get together, because that's going to ruin the anticipation. But, if you've been following season two, he's definitely been doing things to make her more vulnerable and more susceptible to him. And he does want her, he's just not sure why. I think it's deeper than just, 'I want her because Bill Compton has her.' Although that's part of it, because Eric is a total alpha-dog."

Casting News:
• Tony winner Denis O'Hare has been cast to play Russell Edgington, the King of Mississippi. There's no word yet on how far the series will deviate from the books, but based on the Charlaine Harris novels, Russell is described as the perfect southern gentleman who prefers men. O'Hare joins season 3 as one of the regulars and is expected to make his debut early on.
• Season 3 will also include werewolf Alcide, super bad vampire Franklin Mott, Sam's blood relatives and a character named Debbie Pelt, who is "bad news" and an ex-girlfriend of a guy who's helping Sookie find Bill.
• Tommy Mickens will be introduced as a scruffy but attractive man in his early '20s who just so happens to be Sam Merlotte's long-lost younger brother. According to Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello, he'll be showing his "unadorned backside, which, with Sam's similar feral tendency towards the 'full moon,' proves that they really must be related after all." According to SpoilerTV, Tommy works at a Tire Depot in Arkansas and comes from a family with a bad reputation with debt.
• Beginning the second episode, Talbot, a sarcastic vampire with a model's looks, will surface as a "guide of sorts" for the kidnapped Bill.
• A character named Jesus Velasquez, an "unordinary orderly with a heart to match his good looks," will also introduced in the third season. He also happens to be gay!
• A guy named Coot will lead a pack of rednecks this season.
• An elderly woman who moves with the help of a walker mistakes Bill for her son
• Caroline Compton will appear in a flashback scene in the third episode of the season 3 in which she uses a shotgun on an intruder only to realize that it's her dead husband Bill.

How do we feel about these tidbits? I didn’t hear anything about Jason going back to getting naked, did you? Thoughts, theories.

James Frain Joins the cast of True Blood

LaLa0428 — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:06:43 -0800

For some reason that escapes me, I have a mini-crush on James Frain. It’s because he’s a Brit, but I keep wanting him to call me love from across the room, while I giggle gleefully grabbing his ears. What now?

Anyway, Frain has joined the cast of the delicious True Blood as the character Franklin Mott. Now, I’ve read all of 15 pages of Book Three so I have no clue who this character is, other than he is a possible vampire love interest for Tara. Since Tara got on my nerves so much last season, I hope his addition will make me care about her in some way.

What do you guys think? James Frain – Hot or Not?

Movie Soundtracks - Juno

donamaria — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:22:45 -0700

Tracklist:
1. Barry Louis Polisar - All I Want Is You
2 Kimya Dawson - Rollercoaster (Juno Film Version)
3. The Kinks - A Well Respected Man
4. Buddy Holly - Dearest
5. Mateo Messina - Up the Spout
6. Kimya Dawson - Tire Swing
7. Belle & Sebastian - Piazza, New York Catcher
8. Kimya Dawson - Loose Lips
9. Sonic Youth - Superstar
10. Kimya Dawson - Sleep (Instrumental)
11. Belle & Sebastian - Expectations
12. Mott the Hoople - All the Young Dudes
13. Kimya Dawson - So Nice So Smart
14. Cat Power - Sea of Love
15. Kimya Dawson and Antsy Pants - Tree Hugger
16. Velvet Underground - I'm Sticking With You
17. The Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else but You
18. Antsy Pants - Vampire
19. Ellen Page and Michael Cera - Anyone Else but You

2009 Shadwell Travers Stakes

Lorelei LeFae — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 09:33:42 -0700

Belmont Stakes winner Summer Bird followed in the footsteps of his sire Saturday afternoon at Saratoga Race Course as he splashed his way to an imposing 3½ length victory over longshot Hold Me Back in the 140^th running of the Grade 1, $1 million Shadwell Travers Stakes.

The son of 2004 Belmont-Travers winner Birdstone, ridden by Hall of Famer Kent Desormeaux, took the lead with a quarter-mile to go and was never threatened as he edged clear through the stretch to add the “Mid-Summer Derby” to his victory over Dunkirk and Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird in the Belmont Stakes.

Summer Bird’s winning time for the 1¼ miles was 2:02.83 over a sloppy track.

Sent off as the second choice behind favored Quality Road, who was third, Summer Bird returned $7.80 for a $2 win bet to his backers in the enthusiastic crowd of 34,221. In earning $600,000 for Drs. Kalarikkal and Vilasini Jayaraman, his record now stands at 3-1-1 from seven starts with a bankroll of $1,573,040.

“I feel like I do [have the best 3-year-old colt],” said his 35-year-old trainer, Tim Ice, who took out his training license just a year ago. “He beat Quality Road today. I have a lot of respect for Quality Road, and I have a lot of respect for my horse. So maybe he is champion 3-year-old.”

Desormeaux, who picked up his first Travers win after finishing sixth in both 2007 and 2008, kept Summer Bird well off the rail as Our Edge took the field of seven 3-year-old colts through early fractions of 23.19 and 46.88. With Grade 2 Jim Dandy winner Kensei inheriting the lead on the turn, Summer Bird began moving up rapidly at the five-sixteenths pole, taking control and opening a clear lead with a quarter-mile to go.

“He left the gate wanting to run,” said Desormeaux. “At the five-sixteenths, he took off, full of run. Thank goodness for the Jumbotron [in the infield]. I was never nervous because I could see the field was well behind me.”

Hold Me Back, who had trailed early, went six-wide on the turn and closed to gain second, 1½ lengths clear of the favorite.

“He ran great today,” said Hold Me Back’s Hall of Fame trainer, Bill Mott. “I’m thrilled. We were second-best but he ran big.”

Quality Road, who had set a track record in winning the 6 ½ furlong Amsterdam here in his first start since taking the Grade 1 Florida Derby in March, made a bid in midstretch after a rail trip but could not catch the top two.

“He didn’t break very good,” said John Velazquez, aboard the Todd Pletcher-trained colt. “There was nothing I could do, but he came back and got himself back into the race. There was no room for me to go around the far turn … once we got some room, he was starting to run again.”

Completing the order of finish were Charitable Man, Warrior’s Reward, Kensei, and Our Edge.

Summer Bird, who in his last start finished second to Rachel Alexandra in the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational, becomes the 30^th horse in Travers history, and first since his sire, to complete the Belmont-Travers double. Prior to winning the Belmont, he finished sixth in the Kentucky Derby and third in the Arkansas Derby.

“The more races he runs, I think he’s going to get better,” said Ice. “For this race, he was already a proven Grade 1 winner. For my colt to win the Belmont and come back and win the Travers, like Birdstone, means a lot.”

Shadwell Farm, presenting sponsor of last year’s Travers, became the title sponsor of the race in 2009.

“The Travers continues to offer our thoroughbred athletes competitive racing and we were fortunate to have experienced the thrilling victory of Summer Bird,” said Rick Nichols, Shadwell’s vice president and general manager. “Congratulations to the entire team associated with Summer Bird, and Shadwell wishes them all the best with his future racing career.”

Travers Stakes Preview

Lorelei LeFae — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:05:19 -0700

Tomorrow is the 140th running of the Travers Stakes at Saratoga. The Travers Stakes is one of the oldest horseracing events - the first race was in 1864 and the field is limited to three-year-olds.

One of the most notable moments in Travers history is in 1962 when Jaipur beat Ridan by a nose bob and was considered a bit of an upset.

Medaglia d'Oro was the winner in 2002, which would have made the race this year pretty great if his filly, Rachel Alexandra would have been entered as speculated. But unfortunately, neither Rachel Alexandra nor Kentucky Derby winner, Mine That Bird will be on the field. It will still be a great race with a fantastic field of horses. I'll be watching them all, but I am looking at Warrior's Reward for the win - he comes from the same bloodline as Rachel Alexandra and his jockey Calvin Borel can't be beat.

PP Horse Odds Trainer Jockey

1 Hold Me Back 15-1 William Mott Julien Leparoux
2 Charitable Man 6-1 Kiaran McLaughlin Ramon Dominguez
3 Warrior's Reward 8-1 Ian Wilkes Calvin Borel
4 Quality Road 8-5 Todd Pletcher John Velazquez
5 Our Edge 15-1 Nick Zito Alan Garcia
6 Summer Bird 3-1 Tim Ice Kent Desormeaux
7 Kensei 7-2 Steve Asmussen Edgar Prado

Comedian is Living in an IKEA Store

amh678 — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:50:59 -0800

From CNN.

PARAMUS, New Jersey (AP) -- When Mark Malkoff thought about where he could stay while his New York City apartment was being fumigated for cockroaches, he quickly ruled out friends' places (too small) and hotels (too expensive).

Instead, the comedian and filmmaker decided to move into an Ikea store in suburban New Jersey, where on Monday he unloaded two suitcases into a spacious bedroom at the store.

At night when the store is closed, he says he'll play laser tag with security guards and even plans to host a housewarming party.

"The fact that Ikea is letting me do this is mind-boggling," said Malkoff, lounging on a bed in his new room. "There's no way I'm going back. I love this way too much."

Malkoff, who works for Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" as a ticket handler, is allowed to stay until Ikea closes at about midnight on Saturday; the store, famous for its low-cost do-it-yourself furniture, is closed on Sundays.

Malkoff, 31, is known for his 2007 video "171 Starbucks" which documents his visits to all of the coffee chain's Manhattan stores in a single day.

Deputy store manager Julie Mott said Malkoff contacted the store about three weeks ago and presented a proposal to move in.

"We thought it would be a lot of fun and interesting," Mott said. "We're not really sure what this week holds."

He is being followed by a camera crew documenting his stay for a video, which will be shown on his Web site.

But despite the hospitality, Malkoff did find a few problems: The sinks don't work, and neither does the toilet, refrigerator, flat-screen television or the washer and dryer.

"Is anything real in this place?" he asked.

He must shower in the staff locker room and will have access to the staff cafeteria to cook his own meals, if he chooses, Mott said.

However, the Ikea display does offer more spacious living than his two-bedroom Queens apartment.

"I feel like I'm on the set of 'Friends,"' he said, adding that he has met a few new faux friends -- customers who wandered into his new apartment.

His wife of 2 1/2 years, Christine, isn't as thrilled with his new digs and has instead opted to stay with relatives in upstate New York.

"For some reason," he said, "she doesn't want to live in a store."

Mark Malkoff sits on a display bed in a showroom at the Ikea store in Paramus, New Jersey.

A camera crew is documenting Malkoff's stay at the store which he says includes laser tag at night.

The comedian had to find another place to shower because display bathrooms aren't functional.

Also check out his website, MarksLivesInIKEA.com!

100 Greatest Rock Guitarists

scotlandrulz — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:25:31 -0700

http://digitaldreamdoor.nutsie.com/pages/best_newguitar.html

1. Jimi Hendrix* - Jimi Hendrix Experience
2. Eric Clapton - Yardbirds, Cream, Derek & The Dominos, Solo
3. Jimmy Page - Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin, The Firm
4. Jeff Beck - Yardbirds, Jeff Beck Group, Solo
5. Eddie Van Halen - Van Halen
6. Stevie Ray Vaughan* - Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble
7. Joe Satriani - Solo
8. Ritchie Blackmore - Deep Purple, Rainbow, Blackmores Night
9. Steve Vai - David Lee Roth, Whitesnake, Solo
10. David Gilmour - Pink Floyd, Solo
11. John Petrucci - Dream Theater, Liquid Tension Experiment
12. Randy Rhoads* - Quiet Riot, Ozzy
13. Allan Holdsworth - Solo
14. Paul Gilbert - Mr. Big, Racer X, Solo
15. Yngwie Malmsteen - Rising Force, Solo
16. Phil Keaggy - Glass Harp, Solo
17. Jason Becker - Cacophony, David Lee Roth Band, Solo
18. John Mclaughlin- Mahavishnu Orchestra
19. Duane Allman* - Allman Brothers Band, Derek & the Dominos
20. Chuck Berry - Solo
21. Eric Johnson - Solo
22. Steve Howe - Yes, Solo
23. Neal Schon - Santana, Journey, Solo
24. Brian May - Queen
25. Gary Moore - Thin Lizzy, Colosseum II, Skid Row, Solo
26. Bo Diddley* - Solo
27. Steve Morse - Deep Purple, Dixie Dregs, Steve Morse Band, Solo
28. Carlos Santana - Santana
29. Tony Iommi - Black Sabbath
30. Buckethead - Solo, Praxis, Thanatopsis, The Deli Creeps, Cornbugs, GNR,
31. Mark Knopfler - Dire Straits, Solo
32. Marty Friedman - Cacophony, Megadeth, Solo
33. Nuno Bettencourt - Extreme, Mourning Widows
34. Shawn Lane* - Black Oak Arkansas, Willy, Solo
35. Kirk Hammett - Metallica
36. Uli Jon Roth - Scorpions, Solo
37. Terry Kath* - Chicago Transit Authority
38. Alex Lifeson - Rush
39. Frank Zappa* - Mothers of Invention, Solo
40. Rory Gallagher* - Solo
41. Dimebag Darrell* - Pantera
42. Peter Green - Fleetwood Mac, Solo
43. Robin Trower - Procal Harum, Solo
44. Slash - Guns N' Roses, Slash's Snakepit, Velvet Revolver
45. Mick Taylor - John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Rolling Stones
46. Robert Fripp - King Crimson
47. Tom Morello - Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave
48. Michael Schenker - Scorpions, UFO, MSG, Contraband
49. Ry Cooder - Solo
50. Angus Young - AC/DC
51. Keith Richards - Rolling Stones, Solo
52. Michael Angelo Batio - Nitro, Solo
53. John Squire - Stone Roses
54. Pete Townshend - The Who
55. Steve Hackett - Genisis
56. Zakk Wylde - Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society
57. George Harrison* - Beatles, Traveling Wilberys, Solo
58. Alvin Lee - Ten Years After
59. Dave Davies - Kinks
60. Jerry Cantrell - Alice In Chains, Solo
61. Steve Stevens - Billy Idol
62. Johnny Winter - Solo
63. Dickie Betts - Allman Brothers Band, Dickey Betts & Great Southern
64. John Cipollina* - Quicksilver Messenger Service
65. Kenny Wayne Shepherd - Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band
66. Steve Cropper - Booker T. & MG's/Stax sessions
67. Adrian Belew - King Crimson
68. Joe Bonamassa - Solo
69. Steve Lukather - Toto, Solo
70. Jerry Garcia* - Grateful Dead
71. Joe Perry - Aerosmith
72. Prince - Prince & The Revolution
73. Kim Mitchell - Max Webster, Solo
74. Adrian Smith - Iron Maiden
75. Dave Murray - Iron Maiden
76. Neil Young - Buffalo Springfield, CSNY, Solo
77. Billy Gibbons - ZZ Top
78. Tony MacAlpine - Solo
79. Mike McCready - Pearl Jam
80. Adam Jones - Tool
81. Gary Hoey - Solo
82. Leslie West - Mountain, Solo
83. Peter Frampton - Humble Pie, Frampton's Camel, Solo
84. Dick Dale - Del-Tones
85. Vito Bratta - White Lion
86. Mickey "Guitar" Baker - 50's sessions/ Mickey & Sylvia
87. John Frusciante - Red Hot Chili Peppers
88. Ronnie Montrose - Montrose, Edgar Winter Group
89. Mick Ronson* - David Bowie, Solo
90. Roy Buchanan* - Solo
91. Warren Haynes - Allman Brothers Band, Gov't Mule
92. Vinnie Moore - Alice Cooper, Solo
93. Robbie Krieger - Doors, Solo
94. Chris DeGarmo - Queensryche
95. Jake E. Lee - Cutting Crew, Ozzy, Badlands, Solo
96. Glen Tipton - Judas Priest
97. Joe Walsh - James Gang, Eagles, Solo
98. K.K. Downing - Judas Priest
99. Eddie Hazel* - Funkadelic
100. Alex Skolnick - Testament

101. Doug Aldrich - Burning Rain, Dio, Whitesnake, Solo
102. Michael Romeo - Symphony X
103. Vernon Reid - Living Colour
104. Gary Richrath - REO Speedwagon, Solo
105. Link Wray - Link Wray and his Ace-Men
106. Allen Collins* - Lynyrd Skynyrd
107. Larry "Ler" Lalonde - Primus
108. Randy Bachmann - Guess Who, BTO
109. Jeff Healy* - Jeff Healy Band
110. Greg Howe - Solo
111. Dave Navarro - Janes Addiction
112. Scott Gorham - Thin Lizzy
113. Ted Nugent - Ambouy Dukes, Damn Yankees, Solo,
114. Vivian Campbell - Dio, Whitesnake, Def Leppard
115. Paul Kossoff* - Free, Back Street Crawler
116. Ritchie Kotzen - Poison, Mr Big, Solo
117. Brian Robertson - Thin Lizzy, Motorhead
118. Andy Summers - Police
119. John Sykes - Blue Murder, Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy
120. Scotty Moore - Elvis Presley
121. Gary Rossington - Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rossington Band
122. Ty Tabor - Kings X, Jelly Bean, Poundhound, Jughead, Platypus
123. John Fogerty - CCR, Solo
124. Ron Wood - Faces, Rolling Stones
125. Ace Frehley - Kiss
126. Akira Takasaki - Loudness, Lazy
127. Michael Wilton - Queensryche
128. Cliff Gallup* - Gene Vincent's Blue Caps
129. Richie Sambora - Bon Jovi
130. George Lynch - Dokken, Lynch Mob
131. Reb Beach - Winger, Dokken
132. Nick Drake* - Solo
133. Tommy Bolin* - James Gang, Deep Purple
134. Kerry King - Slayer
135. Thurston Moore - Sonic Youth
136. Harry Cody - Shotgun Messiah
137. Lowell George* - Little Feat
138. Tracii Guns - Guns N Roses, L.A. Guns
139. Tom Scholz - Boston
140. Buck Dharma - Blue Oyster Cult
141. Jorma Kaukonen - Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna
142. Richard Thompson - Fairport Convention, Solo
143. Trey Anastasio - Phish
144. Janick Gers - Iron Maiden
145. Mick Box - Uriah Heep
146. Johnny Marr - Smiths, Electronic, Johnny Marr & The Healers
147. Blues Saraceno - Poison, Solo
148. Lowman Pauling* - "5" Royales
149. Timo Tolkki - Stratovarius
150. Mike Einziger - Incubus
151. John Christ - Danzig
152. Jonny Greenwood - Radiohead
153. Phil Collen - Def Leppard
154. Andy Timmons - Danger Danger, Ceili Rain
155. Steve Gaines* - Lynyrd Skynyrd
156. Ron Asheton - Iggy Pop, Stooges
157. James Burton - Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley
158. Mark Kendall - Great White
159. Lindsey Buckingham - Fleetwood Mac
160. Jennifer Batten - Jeff Beck, Michael Jackson, Solo
161. Matthias Jabs - Scorpions
162. Carl Perkins* - Solo
163. Wayne Kramer - MC5
164. Nils Lofgren - E Street Band
165. Michael Sweet - Stryper
166. Robbie Robertson - The Band, Solo
167. Frank Hannon - Tesla
168. Trevor Rabin - Yes
169. Brian Setzer - Stray Cats, The Brian Setzer Orchestra
170. Martin Barre - Jethro Tull
171. Kim Thayil - Soundgarden
172. Pat Travers - Pat Travers Band
173. Dave Mustaine - Metallica, Megadeth
174. Rik Emmitt - Triumph
175. Eddie Cochran* - Solo
176. Frank Marino - Mahogany Rush
177. Justin Hayward - Moody Blues, Solo
178. Tommy Skeoch - Tesla
179. Warren DeMartini - Ratt
180. Syd Barrett* - Pink Floyd
181. Don Felder - Eagles
182. The Edge - U2
183. Brad Gillis - Night Ranger, Ozzy
184. Andy Powell - Wishbone Ash
185. Mick Mars - Motley Crue
186. Billy Duffy - The Cult
187. Randy California* - Spirit
188. Eric Bell - Thin Lizzy
189. Lita Ford - The Runaways, Solo
190. Jeff Hanneman - Slayer
191. Mick Jones - Foreigner
192. Stone Gossard - Pearl Jam, Temple of the Dog
193. Duane Eddy - Solo
194. Mike Campbell - Tom Petty/ Heartbreakers
195. Glen Buxton* - Alice Cooper
196. Daron Malakian - System Of A Down
197. Steven Stills - Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y, Solo
198. Roger McGuinn - Byrds, Solo
199. J. Mascis - Dinosaur Junior, The Fog
200. James Hetfield - Metallica

All names past 200 are unnumbered and alphabetical.
John 5 - Marylin Manson, Solo
Johnny A. - J.Geils Band, Solo
Jan Akkerman - Focus
Dave Alvin - Blasters
Sam Andrew - Big Brother
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter - Doobie Brothers
Brendan Bayliss - Umphrey's McGee
Brian Benoit - Dillinger Escape Plan
Steve Blaze - Lillian Axe
Mike Bloomfield* - Electric Flag
James Dean Bradfield - Manic Street Preachers
Erik Braunn - Iron Butterfly
Paul Burlison* - Rock 'n' Roll Trio
Toy Caldwell - Marshall Tucker Band
Jeff Carlisi - .38 Special
J. Randall Casey
Alex Chilton - Big Star
Steve Clark* - Def Leppard
Kurt Cobain* - Nirvana
Rusty Cooley
Billy Corgan - The Smashing Pumpkins
Ian Crichton - Saga
Dean DeLeo - Stone Temple Pilots
Rick Derringer - McCoys, Edgar Winter, Solo
Mark Doyle
Elliot Easton - The Cars
Mattias "IA" Eklundh - Freak Kitchen
Francesco Fareri
Mark Farner - Grand Funk Railroad
Roger Fisher - Heart, Clever Bastards
Oz Fox - Stryper
Reeves Gabrels - Tin Machine, Solo
Eric Gales - Eric Gales Band
Noel Gallagher - Oasis
Mel Galley - Trapeze, Whitesnake
Amos Garrett
Henry Garza - Los Lonely Boys
Neil Geraldo - Pat Benatar
Guthrie Govan
James Gurley- Big Brother
Rana Hasan
Michael Hauser* - Widespread Panic
Yusi Hirotatchi
Marty Lee Hoenes - Donnie Iris
Wolf Hoffmann - Accept
Josh Homme - Queens Of The Stone Age
James Honeyman-Scott - Pretenders
Dan Huff - Giant, session player
Steve Hunter - Alice Cooper, Lou Reed
James Iha - Smashing Pumpkins, APC
Chris Impellitteri - Impellitteri
Bobby Ingram - Molly Hatchet
Ernie Isely - Isley Brothers
Jesse Johnson - The Time
Mick Jones - The Clash
Ronnie Jones
Ira Kaplan - Yo La Tengo
The Great Kat
Danny Kirwan - Fleetwood Mac
Greg Koch
Joel Kosche - Steve Walsh
Bruce Kulick - Kiss, Union, Solo
Andy Latimer - Camel
Kerry Livgren - Kansas
Jeff Loomis - Nevermore
Jimmy Lyon - Eddie Money, Greg Kihn Band
ANAND Mahangoe
Hank Marvin - The Shadows
Dave Mason - Traffic, Solo
Lars Eric Mattsson
Curtis Mayfield - Impressions, Solo
Henry McCullough - Wings
Thomas McRocklin
Mike Miller - Godhead
Bob Mould - Husker Du
Bill Nelson - Be-Bop Deluxe
Jimmy Nolen - (The J.B.'s)
John Norum - Dokken
Aldo Nova
Michael Orlando
Andy Partridge - XTC
Marcus Paus - Mr. Cucumber
Rod Price - Foghat
Robert Quine* - Richard Hell & Voidoids
Mick Ralphs - Mott the Hoople, Bad Company
Johnny Ramone* - Ramones
Josh Ramos - Ramos
Elliot Randall - Steely Dan
Chris Rea
Nile Rodgers - Chic
Omar Rodríguez-López - The Mars Volta, At the Drive-In
Todd Rundgren - Utopia, Solo
Stevie Salas
Claudio Sanchez - Coheed and Cambria
Al Schnier - Moe.
Andy Scott - The Sweet
Tommy Shaw - Styx, Damn Yankees
Kevin Shields - My Bloody Valentine
Hillel Slovak* - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Roger Steen - The Tubes
Leigh Stephens - Blue Cheer, Solo
Nick Sterling
Travis Stever - Coheed and Cambria
Joe Stump
Terry Syrek
Marv Tarplin - Miracles/Motown
Ron Thal - Bumblefoot
Tommy Thayer - Kiss, Black N' Blue
Pat Thrall - Pat Travers Band, Meatloaf
Mark Tremonti - Creed, Alterbridge
Walter Trout - Walter Trout and the Radicals
Ike Turner
Vinnie Vincent - Kiss, Vinnie Vincent Invasion
Jeff Watson - Nightranger, MSG
Ben Weinman - Dillinger Escape Plan
Paul Weller - The Jam, The Style Council
Jack White - The White Stripes
Snowy White - Pink Floyd, Thin Lizzy
Roy Z - Bruce Dickinson Band
Neil Zaza
Billy Zoom - X
Vinnie Zummo

Eating Better Than Organic

supermommie — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:51:39 -0700

Not long ago I had an apple problem. Wavering in the produce section of a Manhattan grocery store, I was unable to decide between an organic apple and a nonorganic apple (which was labeled conventional, since that sounds better than "sprayed with pesticides that might kill you"). It shouldn't have been a tough choice--who wants to eat pesticide residue?--but the organic apples had been grown in California. The conventional ones were from right here in New York State. I know I've been listening to too much npr because I started wondering: How much Middle Eastern oil did it take to get that California apple to me? Which farmer should I support--the one who rejected pesticides in California or the one who was, in some romantic sense, a neighbor? Most important, didn't the apple's taste suffer after the fruit was crated and refrigerated and jostled for thousands of miles?

In the end I bought both apples. (They were both good, although the California one had a mealy bit, possibly from its journey.) It's only recently that I had noticed more locally grown products in the supermarket, but when I got home I discovered that the organic-vs.-local debate has become one of the liveliest in the food world. Last year Wal-Mart began offering more organic products--those grown without pesticides, antibiotics, irradiation and so on--and the big company's expansion into a once alternative food culture has been a source of deep concern, and predictable backlash, among early organic adopters.

Nearly a quarter of American shoppers now buy organic products once a week, up from 17% in 2000. But for food purists, "local" is the new "organic," the new ideal that promises healthier bodies and a healthier planet. Many chefs, food writers and politically minded eaters are outraged that "Big Organic" firms now use the same industrial-size farming and long-distance-shipping methods as conventional agribusiness. "Should I assume that I have a God-given right to access the entire earth's bounty, however far away some of its produce is grown?" asks ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan in his 2002 memoir, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Nabhan predicted my apple problem when he vacillated over some organic pumpkin canned hundreds of miles from his Arizona home. "If you send it halfway around the world before it is eaten," he mused, "an organic food still may be 'good' for the consumer, but is it 'good' for the food system?"

I had never really thought about how my food purchases might affect "the food system." Even now I don't share the pessimism and asceticism of the local-eating set. In her 2001 memoir, This Organic Life, Columbia University nutritionist Joan Dye Gussow writes that her commitment to eating locally "is probably driven by three things. The first is the taste of live food; the second is my relation to frugality; the third is my deep concern about the state of the planet." I don't have much relation to frugality, and, perhaps foolishly, I'm more optimistic than Gussow about our ability to develop alternative energy sources.

But I care deeply about how my food tastes, and it makes sense that a snow pea grown by a local farmer and never refrigerated will retain more of its delicate leguminous flavor than one shipped in a frigid plane from Guatemala. And I realized that if more consumers didn't become part of the local-food market, it could disappear and all our peas would be those tasteless little pods from far away.

Still, the fact that not all locally grown products are organic had me worried. Even if most Americans wanted to buy locally grown organics, they wouldn't be able to find many. In a few not-too-dry, not-too-wet, not-too-warm regions--central California is one--it is possible to find abundant organic produce grown locally. But if you live in a humid climate, say, the moisture that encourages bacteria and fungi means that growing without pesticides is much more risky, expensive and rare. Consequently, in the Hudson Valley of New York, near me, it's very difficult to find fruit that hasn't been sprayed with chemicals at least once. In other regions, like the upper Midwest, most big farms don't grow any vegetables for local markets, conventional or organic. Instead, they produce commodity crops like corn and soybeans for sale to food processors. At a large Hugo's grocery store in Jamestown, N.D., last summer, I noticed only one local product: flour, which is milled in-state from local wheat. But there were organic apples and oranges from out of state.

Farmers' markets often feature organic produce from nearby farms, but not everyone lives near a farmers' market--and most products at the markets aren't organic. "I've been to farmers' markets, and there's people hauling stuff from the truck that they got at a wholesaler," says Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a liberal Washington group that supports strong organic standards. Mendelson prefers the "gold standard" of locally grown organics, but he is rather frightening on the subject of nonorganic food, whatever its origin. When I asked him whether I should favor local products, he replied, "I don't know what local means. Do they use local pesticides? Does that mean the food is better because they produce local cancers?"

All of which further tangles my original question: The organic apple or the conventionally grown local one?

It turns out to be a frustratingly layered choice, one that implicates many other questions: What's the most efficient way to grow food for all? Should farms be big or small, family- or corporate-run? How do your choices affect the planet? What tastes better? And then there's that little matter of cancer.

Let's get that one out of the way at the start. If scientists could conclusively prove that agricultural chemicals are harmful, we would all go organic. But it's not clear, for instance, that the low levels of pesticide typically found on conventional produce cause cancer. The risks of long-term exposure to those residues are still undetermined.

Even if conventional foods don't turn out to be as dangerous as organic advocates claim, several recent studies have suggested that organic foods contain higher levels of vitamins than their conventionally grown counterparts. In a paper published in October in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a team from the University of California, Davis, demonstrates that organically grown tomatoes have significantly more vitamin C than conventional tomatoes. Even so, the same study shows no significant differences between conventional and organic bell peppers.

"We're just beginning to understand these relationships," says U.C. Davis food chemist Alyson Mitchell, one of the paper's authors. "We understand, and have understood for a long time, that there is some relation between soil health and plant quality, but we still don't have a solid scientific database to link this to nutrition."

Organic adherents take it on faith that the way food is grown affects its nutritional quality. But advocates of local eating are now making another leap, saying what happens after harvest--how food is shipped and handled--is perhaps even more important than how it was grown. Locavores.com a site popular among local purists, asserts that "because locally grown produce is freshest, it is more nutritionally complete." But Mitchell says she knows of no studies that prove this.

In short, science can't tell you what to eat for dinner. Many of us end up relying on the government to keep food safe, or we just don't think about it. For those who do start to think--nervous new parents, say, or McDonald's burnouts--there are more alternative grocers than ever. There are online purveyors of gourmet health foods (pricey), the old food co-ops (too political for me), and of course those farmers' markets, which--in spite of basic limitations like not being open every day--have grown larger and more sophisticated. (According to Samuel Fromartz's valuable 2006 history Organic Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew, there were 3,706 U.S. farmers' markets in 2004, double the number there were a decade earlier.)

But for the past few years, the easiest answer for food-baffled Americans has been a single company: Whole Foods Market.

Whole Foods now has 190 locations from Tigard, Ore., to Notting Hill in London. In fiscal 2006 the chain's sales grew 19% (to $5.6 billion), a bit lower than 2005's 22% growth. Fretful about increasing competition from mainstream grocers who are offering more organic products, investors have punished Whole Foods in the past year; its stock price has fallen more than a third since February 2006.

Still, Whole Foods is expanding rapidly. It recently said it would acquire Wild Oats Markets Inc.; the merger would give Whole Foods an additional 112 locations in North America. Already, many Americans have come to see Whole Foods as the repository of both their dietary hopes and fears--the place we can buy not only organic arugula but a decadent chocolate bar too. I have shopped at Whole Foods off and on since 1990, when I had a summer job in Austin, Texas, where Whole Foods began in 1980. If I was going to decide whether to buy organic or buy local, I figured Whole Foods' ceo, John Mackey, could help me. After all, he is vegan, and his politics lean libertarian, so he thinks hard about different paths. And he has made a great fortune by joining two previously antagonistic alimentary impulses--health and excess.

When we spoke last fall, Mackey was at first diplomatic about the organic-local choice. He told me that when he can't get locally grown organics--and even he can't reliably get them--he decides on the basis of taste. "I would probably purchase a local nonorganic tomato before I would purchase an organic one that was shipped from California," he said. He called the two tomatoes "an environmental wash," since the California one had petroleum miles on it while the nonorganic one was grown with pesticides. "But the local tomato from outside Austin will be fresher, will just taste better," he said.

However, he also noted that products like hard squash that can last months in storage don't taste so different for being shipped. In that case, he said, "I might purchase the organic version from California." Mackey acknowledged that organic agriculture is "flawed"; he criticized organic-milk farms where cows are pumped with feed in factory settings just like conventional-milk cows. But he also bristled at criticism from local activists. He noted that just because a farm is near your home doesn't mean it practices sustainable farming. "There's an assumption that small is beautiful and big is industrial, and that's not necessarily the case," he said. Whole Foods could not keep growing without supplies from large international farms, which is one reason the organic-vs.-local debate is a delicate issue for Mackey.

At least at my Whole Foods--the one in Manhattan's Union Square, where I shop once or twice a month--most of the available produce comes from California or some other distant land, even during the local growing season. Like all other Whole Foods locations, the store began to push local products more aggressively last summer. A placard was posted above the escalator exhorting customers to BUY LOCAL, and all the cash registers were changed to show photos of area farmers.

These days, in the final weeks of winter, it would be unfair to ask Whole Foods to sell predominantly local produce at my store, because so little can be grown in the Northeast right now. But even during verdant summertime, the vast majority of products sold at my Whole Foods (fresh or otherwise) aren't from the Northeast. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the packages in which most Whole Foods groceries are sold say nothing about the food's origin. For instance, in the freezer section you can find Whole Foods' Whole Kitchen brand Breaded Eggplant Slices with Italian Herbs. The box tells you a wealth of information about the eggplant slices--that they contain wheat, dextrose and annatto (a dye); that they can be fried, baked or microwaved; that they have no trans fat; that they are "flavorful" and "versatile." But you don't learn where the eggplant comes from.

A Whole Foods spokeswoman told me the eggplant was grown in Florida, which is too bad because eggplant grows easily in the Northeast. But in the company's defense, very few customers care whether their food is local. Most who do, shop at farmers' markets. Also, there's not even a standard definition of what local means. To Nabhan, who inspired many local activists with Coming Home to Eat, it means eating within a 250-mile radius of his Arizona home. Many who blog at a site called eatlocalchallenge.com aim for a stricter "100-mile diet."

My favorite definition of local comes from Columbia's Gussow, a reporter for Time in the 1950s who went on to become a local-eating pioneer. For 25 years, Gussow has lectured on the environmental (and culinary) disadvantages of relying on a global food supply. Her most oft-quoted statistic is that shipping a strawberry from California to New York requires 435 calories of fossil fuel but provides the eater with only 5 calories of nutrition. In her memoir, Gussow offers this rather poetic meaning of local: "Within a day's leisurely drive of our homes. [This] distance is entirely arbitrary. But then, so was the decision made by others long ago that we ought to have produce from all around the world."

On his blog, Whole Foods' Mackey has used a radius of 200 miles to mean local. Measuring from my home, that includes not only much of New York State, New Jersey and Connecticut but also parts of seven other Northeastern states. Such a large food shed produces a great variety of fruits and vegetables, and Whole Foods has said it wants to increase its percentage of local produce. (Of the roughly $1 billion in produce the company sold last year, 16.4% came from local sources, up from 14.9% in 2005.) Last year Mackey announced a $10 million loan program for local farmers.

But Mackey also knows that most Americans will never eat a purely local diet. "One of the challenges of being a retailer is you don't want to offend people," Mackey told me. "Some customers want to eat apples year-round, and they're willing to pay more for a New Zealand apple." Finally, he offered a defense of the global food economy: "When I was a little boy--I'm 53 years old--being able to get oranges from Florida or produce from another state was a very big deal because the local-produce availability where I lived in Houston wasn't great. People back then didn't have nearly as diverse a diet as we do now, and you might also point out their life spans weren't as long."

That made me wonder if purely local eating was even possible--or healthy. Could I get everything I needed from the Northeast? What would I have to give up? For gustatory reasons, I long ago stopped eating out of season--I have no interest in those hard Canadian tomatoes my Whole Foods was selling in February. But would I have to forgo coffee? What would replace my breakfast cereal? How much would all this cost? I wasn't sure. So like everyone else, I went to Google.

I mean, I literally went to Google, to the company's Mountain View, Calif., campus.

I had read that one of Google's new cafeterias, Café 150, served only food originating within a 150-mile radius of Mountain View. I knew this radius included a glorious fund of farms, ranches and fisheries, the Salinas Valley food shed that Steinbeck made famous in East of Eden. I also knew that as one of the most successful companies of the era, Google could afford not only to pursue such a whimsical culinary ideal as total locality but also to do so in the form of a fine-dining restaurant. (Café 150 is one of 11 employee eateries on the Google campus, all of which famously charge nothing.)

Still, I wanted to see how Café 150's founding chef, Nate Keller, managed to serve more than 400 purely local meals a day. Most chefs simply place orders with suppliers. Good cooks understand that quality and origin are related because of the toll extracted by transportation, but in the end, if Emeril Lagasse wants to serve wild salmon one night, he can just order it from Alaska. Keller, who recently became the chef at another Google restaurant, couldn't do that. Although just a freckly 30-year-old, he had to plan his menus the way preindustrial cooks did, according to whatever local vendors offered that day.

"These guys have to be so flexible with their menus, it's unreal," said Café 150's fishmonger, Tim Zamborelli of Today's Catch in San Jose, Calif. "We have to find out what's coming in on that particular day and let them know so they can change." Café 150, which opened a year ago, can serve no shrimp or scallops, since they can't be found in the area, and tuna was available only from August through October, when currents brought bluefins into the radius. The day I visited, Keller hadn't learned what vegetable he would be serving until the night before. (He got baby red chard.)

It's a radically new way of thinking about cooking because it's so very old. But I was surprised to learn that Café 150 was the brainchild not of some anticorporate artisan but of John Dickman, 51, Google's food-service manager. Dickman not only worked for 14 years at the food giant Marriott--he even trained flight attendants to cook plane food. I was curious how he had created such a radical restaurant.

Dickman says he was inspired by chef Ann Cooper, whose 2000 book, Bitter Harvest, is well described by its subtitle: A Chef's Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the Foods We Eat and What You Can Do About It. Cooper, who now runs the acclaimed meal program of the Berkeley, Calif., public schools, writes passionately against industrialized farms that "inhabit a flattened landscape dotted not with trees, farmhouses [and] animals ... but with huge motorized vehicles." After meeting her, Dickman began to go to farmers' markets.

When Dickman arrived at Google in 2004, he says, "organic was the cool thing," and the company's chefs were buying organic whenever they could--even if that meant flying in Chilean nectarines. Dickman worked with the team to write new standards that place local before organic for all Google eateries. "You're using X amount of jet fuel to get it here, and that doesn't make sense," he says. "So forget the nectarines. Buy something local. Get some plums." Of course, this doesn't work in, say, Dublin, where Dickman also helped set up a Google café. ("Everything is flown in there," he said.) When I asked if he thought a restaurant as strictly local as Café 150 would be possible anywhere outside central California, he answered, glumly, "Probably not."

But others are trying. Restaurants from Cinque Terre in Portland, Maine, to Mozza in Los Angeles are run by cooks who strive always to find local products first. Some chefs are not only buying locally but actually growing the food. The two Blue Hill restaurants in New York--one in Manhattan and the other in Pocantico Hills--buy less than 20% of their ingredients from outside the New York region, according to chef Dan Barber. Much of both restaurants' food (including all the chicken and pork) is raised on about 20 acres next to the Pocantico Hills location. In the 31/2 years since the farm was launched, Barber has become one of the nation's most eloquent pro-local spokesmen, not least because he makes local eating profitable (and delicious--his restaurants win raves). But his commitment to locality means that Barber can't always serve beef, since the quality and availability of steers in the Northeast are uneven.

Café 150 has access to local beef from Bassian Farms in San Jose, Calif., but the restaurant can't obtain everything it needs from the valley. Take salt. "There are salt flats a quarter-mile that way," said Keller, pointing to the horizon, "but they're for industrial purposes." So he buys salt "off the truck," from a food-service deliverer.

Still, apart from such staples, Café 150 is living up to its name. It never serves tropical fruits, and it has planted lemon and lime trees just outside to ensure local citrus. The restaurant grows many of its own herbs and makes its own ketchup. And last fall Café 150 jarred tomatoes and fruit so that even though it's March, Googlers can get a taste of the local harvest every day. Imagine that: a company as ostentatiously hip as Google canning fruit in its kitchens.

Could I do this? Could I operate my own "kitchen 150"?

Following Café 150's lead, I decided to keep basic dry goods like coffee, chocolate and spices. But since I have no interest in gardening (and no yard, for that matter--I live in an apartment), I needed a source of produce. I find farmers' markets inconvenient, if only because you have to pay each farmer separately for items, which can mean a lot of waiting in the cold. Then I heard about the farm shares run by Community Supported Agriculture (csa) programs.

They sounded a little lefty to me at first, but it turns out csas are a wonderfully market-driven idea: you join with others in your community to invest in a local farm. At the beginning of the season, members pay the farmer a lump sum. Each week, or perhaps once a month in the winter, the farm delivers fresh vegetables (and, for more money, items like fruit, eggs and flowers) to a central location. Prices vary widely depending on where you live. The csa in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx costs just $220 for five months for those with a low income (food stamps accepted). The csa run by Angelic Organics in Caledonia, Ill., starts at $600 for 20 weeks of vegetables and goes north of $1,000 when you add fruit.

There are some lefty aspects: You don't choose what the farmer grows. He does. You might get lettuce one week and then--if, say, a hailstorm hits the lettuce patch--none for several weeks after. Also, you're locked into a fixed amount of food each week, so if you don't feel like cooking for a couple nights in a row, you feel guilty. A farmer sweated over these beautiful ears of corn, and I'm going to throw them out so I can pick up riblets at Applebee's?

The benefit is that the food is affordable--for $40 a month at my csa, I get (to take February as an example) four bunches of winter greens, a head of red cabbage, 5 lbs. of apples, and about 2 lbs. each of beets, onions, carrots, turnips and Yukon Gold potatoes. The stuff is phenomenally fresh. I once discovered a nine-day-old head of lettuce from my CSA farm at the back of the refrigerator. Because it had come to me just 24 hours after being picked, it was still crisp.

But how local was my CSA farm? And was it organic?

Windflower Farm is in Valley Falls, N.Y., 185 miles northeast of my apartment. Mapquest calls it a 3 1/2-hr. drive, but if you leave on a weekday at 5:30 p.m., as Windflower's Ted Blomgren and I did, it can take closer to five hours. That meets Gussow's definition of local--"within a day's leisurely drive"--although our drive through Manhattan wasn't leisurely.

Blomgren runs Windflower with his wife Jan. He is 46, and on the day we rode to the farm, he wore sandals and glasses. Ted, who has a degree from Cornell, is balding and studious, and might pass for a professor if he didn't have so much dirt under his toenails. Ted and Jan--who has lovely bright blue eyes perpetually fixed in a startled expression--have operated Windflower for eight years with their sons Nathaniel, 14, and Jacob, 11. On the day I visited last summer, I watched a barefoot Nathaniel walk to the henhouse to collect eggs in an old white bucket, as he did every day. I had been eating those eggs most days--that's how I had replaced cereal. Seeing Nate carry that bucket into the smelly humidity of the chicken coop, I realized I had never before felt so connected to my food. I had not only seen the chickens that produced my eggs but had also met the person who gathered them.

That's a core goal of CSAS--to remind you that your food originates in some place other than a grocery store. There are now some 1,200 csa farms in the U.S., according to the Robyn Van En Center at Wilson College in Pennsylvania. Van En helped start the first American csa at her Massachusetts farm in 1985 after hearing about the idea of farm shares from a Swiss friend. (You can find a csa near you at sites like localharvest.org.

So I was finally eating local, and it tasted great. Ted's yellow wax beans last year were so crisp and oniony sweet you could eat them directly from the field. During the winter months, Ted has delivered sturdy vegetables from his cold storage that look as good as anything at Whole Foods and seem to taste better, if only because they remind me of a warm day on the farm. And yet I do worry that the Blomgrens aren't certified by the Federal Government as organic growers. They say they don't use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, and Ted's policy is that any csa member can come to his farm to check his growing practices. "I couldn't show up at my local Agway and buy a jug of herbicide without it getting told to everybody," he said. Like many small farmers I met, Ted felt that organic certification would be too costly and time consuming.

Having met Ted, Jan and their sons--and having spent the night in their barn--I trust they don't use chemicals. But the Blomgrens don't grow fruit for the CSA. They buy it from other local growers, and most of them use sprays because of the humidity. Ted's hens were free-range--they strutted around eating the grass behind his house. But pastured chickens still require some grain feed, and the grain Ted bought was mostly conventionally grown, industrially processed corn.

I was deflated to hear that I had ingested chemicals with my fruit and eggs. But at this point I threw up my hands. If I wanted total purity, the only option was to grow my own food. Forget it. Farming is dirt-under-the-toenails hard work, and the Blomgrens are by no means making a vast fortune.

But I had arrived at an answer to my question: I prefer local to organic, even with the concessions local farmers must make. I realize there's something romantic about the desire to know exactly where your food is from. Among true agrarians, that desire carries a reactionary strain, a suspicion of modernity. "Instead of relying on the accumulated wisdom of a cuisine, or even on the wisdom of our senses, we rely on expert opinion," journalist Michael Pollan wrote in last year's acclaimed book The Omnivore's Dilemma. "We place our faith in science to sort out what culture once did." But science should trump culture on matters of nutrition. The problem is that science offers no clear guidelines yet on how beneficial organic food is.

When asked years ago whether she preferred butter or margarine, Gussow famously remarked, "I trust cows more than chemists." For my part, I do not. I will still go to Whole Foods to buy the mass-produced Organic Food Bars I eat for breakfast when I don't have time for eggs. I am happy that food scientists are finding ways to produce everyday products like cereal with organic ingredients. (How about organic Froot Loops? I have a weakness for Froot Loops late at night.) But when it comes to my basic ingredients--literally, my "whole" foods rather than my convenience foods--I would still rather know the person who collects my eggs or grows my lettuce or picks my apples than buy 100% organic eggs or lettuce or apples from an anonymous megafarm at the supermarket. Choosing local when I can makes me feel more rooted, and (in part because of that feeling, no doubt) local food tastes better.

Eating locally also seems safer. Ted's neighbors and customers can see how he farms. That transparency doesn't exist with, say, spinach bagged by a distant agribusiness. I help keep Ted in business, and he helps keep me fed--and the elegance and sustainability of that exchange make more sense to me than gambling on faceless producers who stamp organic on a package thousands of miles from my home. I'm not a purist about these choices--I ate a Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's on the way to Ted's farm. But in general, I have decided that you are where you eat.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1595245-1,00.html

N.J. to close nine state parks in budget crunch

tdsollog — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:16:18 -0700

From the Philadelphia Enquirer:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/nj/20080402_N_J__to_close_nine_stat...

N.J. to close nine state parks in budget crunch
By Adrienne Lu and Maya Rao

Inquirer Staff Writers

Chris Coons has been going to Brendan T. Byrne State Forest for 48 years, since she was 12 years old.
As a child, she swam in the lake and cooked on the grill with her parents and siblings. Later, she brought her own children to ride their bikes. These days, she goes alone to read and watch the geese and other wildlife.

So when Coons heard the news yesterday that the park could be closed by this summer, the victim of a tight state budget, the New Hope resident was not happy.

"Oh my god, that's awful," Coons said, sitting in front of the roaring fireplace in her cabin. "Where are people going to go? We have so many kids today that sit in front of the computer and don't go out to places like this."

Eight other parks, including Washington Crossing State Park, are also slated to be closed under Gov. Corzine's proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Three other parks would see their services dramatically reduced, and offseason hours would be trimmed at all of the state's 42 sites, if the Legislature goes along with the proposal.

If the parks are closed, residents would be discouraged from visiting them and could be asked to leave if found in them. According to the state constitution, a budget must be approved by July 1, which means the parks could be shut down in mid-summer.

About two million people visit the dozen parks that would be most affected.

The closures should save the state about $4.5 million in salaries and maintenance. Overall, Corzine wants to cut $8.8 million from the state's park management fund, from a budget of $34 million.

Corzine has proposed a budget of $32.97 billion for the state in the forthcoming year, about $500 million below the current spending plan. He has suggested closing the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce and Personnel and reducing the state workforce by 3,000 workers, through a combination of early retirements and layoffs to help resolve the state's fiscal problems.

"My feelings about cuts to state parks are similar to my feelings about cuts to the Department of Agriculture and a whole host of other choices that are painful through and through," Corzine said through his spokeswoman, Lilo Stainton. "This is not something that we choose to do, but something that is required because of a falloff in revenues and failed financial policies historically."

State Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Lisa Jackson said the department could not weather the budget cuts proposed by the governor without closing some parks.

"These cuts are very significant," said Jackson. "I wouldn't want to minimize the impact on families who have used the parks, sometimes for a generation, and workers who care about the parks. These are painful decisions."

Jackson said the decisions on which parks to close were based on factors including the number of visitors, revenues generated, and whether similar services are offered at nearby sites.

Carla Katz, president of Communications Workers of America Local 1034, said union leaders learned yesterday morning that 80 park employees could be laid off.

"The proposed Corzine cuts to environmental protection will continue to damage the already weakened agency, potentially endanger the public health, and prevent the DEP from truly functioning as it should to protect our environment and our state's citizens," Katz said.

Environmentalists, who had predicted the closures when Corzine announced his budget proposal, were nevertheless disappointed.

"I think it's going to have a tremendous impact on the people of New Jersey," said Jeff Tittel, executive director of the state Sierra Club.

Tittel said the state should work harder on finding ways to pay for the state parks, such as negotiating better contracts with utilities who pay to lay utility lines, and a small tax on outdoor recreation equipment such as ATVs.

"This is the worst April Fool's joke of the year," said Dena Mottola Jaborska, executive director of Environment New Jersey. "But it's no joke - if Gov. Corzine doesn't lift these draconian budget cuts, New Jersey residents will be locked out of enjoying some of New Jersey's state park jewels."

State Sen. Philip Haines (R., Burlington) called the move "another threat in an attempt to inflict pain on residents instead of cutting in a responsible manner."

Haines said he disagreed with the governor's proposals to close state parks and the Department of Agriculture and trim aid to smaller municipalities. Instead, he said, the state should limit funding increases to the poorest school districts to inflation, cut the public advocate's position, and investigate the aid to distressed cities.

Haines said state parks would be especially important to residents this summer. "I would certainly vote against it at this point in time," he said. "Think about the cost of gasoline - you can get down to some of these parks in 20 minutes, as opposed to traveling hours to get somewhere."

At this point, whether the parks will actually be shut down is uncertain. Haines noted that several governors have proposed closing parks as a negotiating tool for the budget. In politics, the tactic is known as the Washington Monument ploy, in which an administration proposes cuts it knows the Legislature will not accept, as a bargaining tactic.

Sharon Page of Manahawkin was another visitor at Brendan T. Byrne State Forest yesterday. She said she likes to go there to escape the Manahawkin crowds and used to take her two children there.

Both Coons and Page were renting cabins - each for less than $50 a night - on the first day they were available at the park.

"It would be a shame to close this down," said Page. "I would be so upset."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Imperiled N.J. Parks
The list of nine New Jersey state parks that would close under Gov. Corzine's proposed budget:

Monmouth Battlefield State Park, 2,928 acres, Monmouth County. Visitor center, restrooms closed.

Stephens State Park, 805 acres, Warren County. Camping area closed.

High Point State Park, 15,827 acres, Sussex County. Swimming, camping, interpretive center, office closed. Trail access limited.

Brendan T. Byrne State Forest (formerly Lebanon State Forest), 36,647 acres, Burlington County. Camping, group picnic area, Indian King Tavern, office closed. Trail access limited.

Round Valley Recreation Area, 3,684 acres, Hunterdon County. Swimming, camping, Wallace House, office closed.

Parvin State Park, 1,952 acres, Salem County. Swimming, camping, interpretive center, office closed.

Jenny Jump State Forest, 4,288 acres, Warren County. Camping and office, closed. Trail access limited.

Worthington State Forest, 6,584 acres, Warren County. Camping and office closed. Trail access limited.

Fort Mott State Park, 104 acres, Salem County. Hancock House, historic sites, office, closed. Access to ferry service, open.

The three New Jersey state parks that would partially close under the proposed budget:

Ringwood State Park, 4,044 acres, Bergen and Passaic Counties. Shepherd Lake swimming area closed; Ringwood Manor, reduced hours. State Botanical Gardens and Skylands Manor, open.

D&R Canal State Park, 5,379 acres, central New Jersey. Bulls Island Recreation Area closed to campers. Rockingham Historic Site and towpath, open.

Washington Crossing State Park, 3,126 acres, Mercer and Hunterdon Counties. Significantly reduced hours at Clark House, Johnson Ferry House and the museum.

Winter hours at all remaining parks would be reduced. All but Liberty and Island Beach State Parks would be closed Mondays and Tuesdays from Nov. 1 through March 31.

- Associated Press

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Contact staff writer Adrienne Lu at 609-989-8990 or alu@phillynews.com.
This article contains information from the Associated Press.