CRAPPY KITCHEN VIDEOS

Click below to check out The Crappy Kitchen videos featuring Chef Sark Hazzy

Crappy Kitchen Videos

Giant Shrimp Attacks Dog

This is a video of a flying giant shrimp attacking my dog Curry. This will be on the upcoming Crappy Kitchen episode "Trip to Tom's Cabin, Vol. 1" If you want to check out the "Spanish Rice" episode of the Crappy Kitchen, click on "September" under "Archives" and scroll down until you see it. Click on the forward arrow.

TIME LAPSE

Back in May 2003, a couple months after I bought a digital video camera, I decided it might be cool to tape the leaves growing on a branch which hung over the railing of the deck where I lived. I would film a few seconds a day until the leaves were full.
On about the third or fourth day I discovered a Robin had laid 4 blue eggs in a nest that was tangled in black cable on a low shelf of a table on the deck. Needless to say the focus of the movie shifted from the branch to the Robins nest.
In about 9 days the chicks went from eggs, to fully grown Robins ready to take on the world. During that time I captured some insane footage, and learned how the Mother Robin keeps the nest clean. Here it is, finally! Enjoy!!

Cool guitar tunings to try

I love experimenting with different guitar tunings. It's fun to take everything you know about how to make chords in standard tuning (eadgbe) and throw it out the window. I began experimenting with different guitar tunings very soon after I started to learn how to play. One of the first I fooled around with was one I made up, although I'm sure it's been used before, I just have never seen it used anywhere else. It's (dadabe) The problem is tuning the g up to an a, careful, I've had the string snap many times when tuning up. The reason I ended up with this tuning is I couldn't reach a particular chord I was trying to hit unless I tuned the G up an A, and I was already in drop D.

One tuning that I've really enjoyed screwing around with lately is based on the G "mali" tuning. E up to G, A down to G, D,G, B and E stay the same. Pretty simple!(ggdgbe) This is basically a g-major 6 tuning and you can use both g's as a powerful drone while you go nuts on the strings above. Tweak the b down to a b-flat and now you have a g-minor with a mean sounding tri-tone on top(ggdg b-flat e) Now, for yet another cool sound, tweak the e up a half step to an f. Now you have (ggdg b-flat f) which is a g minor 7th chord.

I love experimenting with different tunings on a banjo as well, but I'm not going to go into that right now, just tune the b up to c for a sus4 sound known as the "high and lonesome sound." This was a common tuning used by pickers in the appalachian mountains around the turn of the century. (gdgcd)

Tinarowen cool intro

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Tinariwen Web Site
Tinarowen is a super cool band that plays "Mali blues" in the vain of artists such as Ali Farke Toure and Lobi Troure.
The guitars are often tuned to open G tuning (gadgbd) and the music is usually fairly simple structurally, yet often times extremely hypnotic. Check out this brief example of one of their tunes, sorry I don't know the name of it, it's from a mix Tinarowen mix tape a freind gave to me.

The good ole'cell phoneless days

I decided to see how many people were on cellphones while taking my 10 minute walk to class. I decided to count the 1st 5 females and 1st 5 males. Out of the females that I walked by, 4 we're on their phones. Out of the 5 males, 1 was on his cellphone. It makes me miss the 80s because no one had cellphones then. I don't know why it irritates me, it just does. People were less oblivious to their surroundings and less likely to be tangled up in a pointless conversation while walking to wherever they're going. Maybe the conversation is meaningful and important, but I highly doubt it in almost every case. At least the person on the phone looks like they have something they need to talk about and someone to listen.

2 great songs by Janes Addiction

I've got my negativity band bashing out of my system with the blog a few days ago. I will now begin a never ending series of positivity blogs entitled: "2 great songs by (artist)"
It will name 2 great songs by a particular artist and breifly, or maybe not so briefly, explain why I think they are great songs. My first entry is 2 great songs by Jane's Addiction. The first one is "Stop" off of " Ritual de lo habitual" 1990 I think. For me this song captures that fear in the back of my mind that I have had since I was about in 7th grade when I was told by someone that the USA and Russia have enough bombs to blow up the world many times over. In 8th grade in a political Science class we saw a film called "Fail Safe"
about the US accidentally dropping a nuke on Moscow, and them retaliating by sending a nuke to New York. From that day I could never get it out of my mind. It didn't leave me numb or anything but is was an unwaivering fear that I lived with. I would always have nightmares of walking outside and seeing a mushroom cloud coming from the direction of the Minneapolis skyline which was about 15 miles from my house at the time. I would hear a voice screaming, "France did it" Anyway to make a short story long, the song "Stop" encompasses that feeling of seeing the world heading in a direction where almost no one wants it to go and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. Well maybe there is we just haven't figured it out yet. Luckily most of us aren't curled up in the fetal position in the corner of a room in a mental ward weeping "The End is near" So go on with your life and basically just don't be an asshole, you know like those EnRon ceo types. Anyway, back to the song, here are a couple lines in the song that are most memoreable for me... "Save the complaints for party conversation. The world is loaded. It's lit to pop and nobody is gunna stop"
and during the trippy slow part, my favorite line..."One come a day the water will run no man will stand for things that he had done, hurrah!! And the water will run"
The other great song is off of "Nothing's Shocking" called "Ocean size" I won't go into detail as much about this one, but I love the lyrics and what it symbolizes...
"Wish I was Ocean size, they cannot move you man no one tries" Anyway, that's enough for now.

Janes Addiction Web Site

Pop music at an all time low, thanks Clear Channel

I told myself I was going to avoid being negative and or cynical about information in my blogs but I can't help it, I have to vent. A theory has been forming in my brain lately and it goes something like this. Nirvana in my opinion was the most important band in terms of popping the hair metal band bubble of the late 80s. It had become so ridiculous by 1990 with bands like Cinderella, Europe, Sherrif, etc etc that it had become painfulfully obvious that something had to give, and it gave thank god!!
Nirvana was not however the only band to help put this metal pop hairband glam fake predictable horridness out of it's misery. Bands like Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden were all important factors in the hair metal demise.
This brings me to my theory, I believe we are now living in an era of equally pointless, predictable, unimportant, faceless, derivitive bands that sound like regurgitated corporate made to appeal to the mass insipid consumer pallette.
I really do not wish to offend anyone but I can't sugarcoat this. Bands like Knickelback, 3 Doors down, and Hinder are among the bands I'm talking about.
This music is not about chemistry, or creativite musical ideas or great lyrics. It's not about well crafted songs either. It's about music created for the sole purpose of following a sellable musical formula that will appeal to the masses and sell tons of records. For instance, the"new" Jon Bon Jovi? What is that? Have you heard any of it? It sounds like Brooks and Dunn or something. I could go on and on about this.
I'm just hoping that someone comes along to burst this "Wimp Grunge" or whatever you want to call it bubble. Something has to give. I'm not confident that it will though. It just seems that the masses are so clueless when it comes to music. One ray of hope though, of all the 57 kids in Central MN School of rock this year ages 11-18, not one of the bands wanted to do any Knickelback or Hinder. The thing is there are so many amazing current bands that are out there, they just never get played on Clear Channel radio. AHA!! Maybe that's it!! Clear Channel, it's all their fault. Just do yourself a favor and go check out some Modest Mouse or Radiohead. Two of the many bands that still make great music and write great songs in my humble opinion. If you're a big fan of any of the bands I dissed, I sincerely apologize.