Tag Archives: Jeffrey the Barak

That’ll Come In Handy

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Jeffrey the Barak

That’ll Come In Handy.

An album by Jeffrey the Barak

Recorded in 2009 using bare hands on a Roland Handsonic 10 as the drum set.

 

Panama Dip Fright

Panama Dip Fright, recorded on 7th October 2009. Drums are played in one live take on a Handsonic 10. Upright Bass is input into Garageband using Korg Nano Pad, and the squeaky drum is generated from the Handsonic’s sound bank in a third take.

 

The Way Out

Recorded in the summer of 2009 using a Roland Handsonic and bare hands for all percussion, and Korg NanoPad plus the Apple keyboard for all of the other instruments. This was a tune that found its way into my head and required the making of an album to get it out.

 

Monkseaton Drive

Sometimes a drummer has to sit in the back and behave, and sometimes a song has to be in C Major and have a tune that won’t kill your goldfish. This one is almost normal, so for all you folks who were afraid of how the other tracks made you feel, have a cup of tea, sit down and listen to this one.  Tools used: Garageband, Korg NonoKey and a Roland Handsonic.

 

Not a Boat

A live take of the drums, played on a Roland Handsonic 10, with midi bass, guitar and trumpets over the top. Completed August 20th 2009.

 

Blues Whale 

Blues Whale begins with our friend the whale performing a blues, and then transitions into a brief dialogue between whale and drums. All instruments played by Jeffrey the Barak. Drums performed on a Roland Handsonic 10 and everything else via midi and GarageBand.

 

Xootr Over Pavement

Drums played on a Roland Hansonic 10. Other instruments: bass, piano and organ are midi-generated via Garageband. Completed September 11th 2009.

 

Lambience

Orchestral snare, bass and tympani from the Handsonic merged with midi upright bass and a thunderstorm. Synth texture for ambience, or in this case, Lambience.

 

 

The 007 Standard

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By Jeffrey the Barak.

An appreciative look at the Seiko SKX007

It is common for men who collect affordable watches to have between one and several Seiko SKX007 diver’s watches in their collection. It has become a standard classic watch against which others are measured. Perhaps only the Rolex Submariner shares this role in being such a universal standard to which other watches are compared.

The 007 is a big watch, with a diameter of 42.5 mm excluding the crown. (The Rolex above has a case diameter of 40mm but the photos are not to scale). Even with the oversize trend bringing us wrist clocks of 50 mm and beyond, no one would ever say that 42.5 mm was not a big watch by any standard.

The Seiko SKX007 uses the most common movement found in many different Seiko and Seiko 5 watches in this price range, the 7S26. It is a reasonably accurate automatic self-winder with quick set day and date and no hacking feature. But this article is not about the movement. There are already several online reviews to be found that take a more detailed and technical look at this icon. Rather I am writing about the SKX007 as the staple of any collection, and hopefully about it’s general style.

Men’s watches today have settled into a few pigeonholes, with the largest category being that of the diver’s watch. Depth ratings vary but the 200 meter rating of the 007 places it in the most common group.

Most owners of this widely owned watch would never be caught scuba diving to the rated limit of 200 meters below the surface of the sea, or even snorkeling at half a meter, or in some cases they would never be seen wet, but the solid, strong weight and feel of a diver and the undeniable usefulness of the time elapsed rotation bezel make the divers watch the ideal tool for life on dry land also. After all, you can time all your cooking and parking and then clean your watch with water.

The 007 is a reasonably big, but not too big, plain vanilla, middle of the road diver that has evolved from older popular Seikos like the cushion cased 6309. It tells you the date and the day, although if it happens to be around midnight you never be too sure of the wheels have jumped to the next day or date yet, or you may see them not quite reaching the dial’s window. The time displayed is usually pretty close to accurate, or more often a tiny bit fast than a little slow. But this is no quartz and such things are to be expected from a real watchmaker’s movement.

My first Seiko was a different diver. No date, no steel (well maybe inside the movement, but the case and bracelet were Titanium). That was an SKX403 and one day in 2003 a burglar dropped by the house and took it away.

Not long after that day I was in downtown L.A. with a small clip of twenties and a shopping list that read “watch” Two watches caught my eye and made it to the short list that day. The SKX007 and the SKX781 Orange Monster. I bought the Monster and wore it for five years. But by the end of that five year Monster period, I was buying and selling other watches with enough frequency that I came to the realization that I was a flipping crazy collector.

So after some delay, in 2008 I finally and belatedly got myself an SKX007. I chose a Jubilee bracelet as it’s mount because I liked the way the small shiny center links complimented the bezel grip. I really admired the watch and imagined it was all I needed. I considered making it my one and only. But for the 007, the timing was bad, because it came into my life during one of those mood swings that occasionally confounds collectors. I am constantly torn between wanting to own every watch I like, and being a one watch minimalist.

Shortly after receiving my new 007 I also acquired my favorite watch, a Japan market Seiko Prospex SBCB009 Solar Titanium Scuba. Visually, a direct descendant of my SKX403 that was stolen in 2003. This watch sent me to eBay to sell everything else, including my 007 which was really in 99% new condition at the time. There was one thing about the 007 that I didn’t like. The minute hand. Something about that shiny edged arrow shape just bugged me and when it was time to cull, the 007 was gone, along with all my others save for the Solar.

But over time as the collection started to pull itself back together after a brief one-watch Nirvana, I felt the need to consider another 007. At a Poor Man’s Watch Forum Get-Together (PMWG GTG) in Orange County California, I saw a few nicely modified watches based on either the 007 or the 6309 or 7002.

By this time I had become an enthusiast of modified watches, and was enjoying a great SNK809 mod, so after much back and forth, I commissioned a 007 with a yellow dial. But I made an error of judgement with that one. The hands should have been blacker. Alas I could not easily see the time, mainly due to the wrong choice of hands, so within a few days, I had it for sale. Without pausing to breathe I then commissioned another one. This time with the standard, unmodified dial, but with a red plongeur hand set.

The 007 is a very common platform for the watch modifiers. The widely used 7S26 movement will take a wide variety of modified dials and hands, and with replacement bezel inserts and various case finishes, you can have thousands of varieties of this watch, which comes only one way from the factory.

Of course this means the modifiers have piles of 007 dials sitting around that have been removed from 007’s during the modification process. Having come across a picture of a 007 dial shoehorned into a non-diver, I unexpectedly realized something. The original dial is great! It does not have steel edged applied dot markers like the Seiko SKX031 (Submariner style), but rather just delicious blobs of luminous white on a flat black background. Paired with the cartoonish red and white of the custom plongeur hand set, this dial makes the 007 a visual riot of clear precise time comprehension. A blend of Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse and Jacques Cousteau.

In fact I’ll say that the original hands of the 007 do not do it’s intensely dotty dial justice. The shiny edges of the original hands distract the eye from those crazy white dots floating on their sea of inky black.

So my new 007 mod, a riotous conglomeration of brushed steel, matte black, luminous white, and red paint, would be quite at home in a cartoon and it is certainly at home on my wrist.

I have experienced the oversize craze, enjoyed it and moved through it. I now know my ideal case diameter is somewhere around 39 mm, but for a good design exceptions are made. And it’s worth going back up to 42.5 mm again in order to enjoy the standard classic diver that is the 007.

Jeffrey the Barak spends too much time thinking about watches and is the publisher of the-vu

Scooterer Stories, Part Ten – Route 6 to Elvis

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Scooterer Stories
By Louis the Scooterer

The travels of Louis the Scooterer, a retired former South African who has found an unusual way of getting to know Israel.

Part Ten – Not Route 66, just Route 6, but at least there’s an Elvis.

Driving thru major cities and heavily populated areas do have some interesting places, but I reckon boredom could set in…so a quick discussion with myself, it is decided we will bypass those places and head toward Jerusalem and bypass to road 90 at the north end of The Dead Sea…and then will head NORTH ON 90. Then to much more exciting places. So now, I take the shortest route and get to Highway 6 (Kvish 6) to experience a short portion of that excellent highway.

I wrote a story elsewhere about that experience and its worth repeating here while we stop for a while at Herzl Forest and a quick visit to Engineering Forces Monument ( the highway story is told to you now while we take a coffee break…on the lawns at the monument.

Kvish 6 = Highway 6

Once, way back in the past – when I was still new to scootering – I remember vaguely having read something about an “Across Israel” (Highway 6) that was being built to be called Kvish 6. Then sometime later I read a sentence somewhere that the first 18 kilometers were ready and would be opened on some date or other. So, one day while scootering around, I came upon a road that was freshly tarred and was newly painted with pure white lines (being a new onramp >>> onto a new road).

So I asked a man in a van, “what is happening here?” He told me that Road 6 would be opening — in about 10 minutes, and IF I hung around I would be the first person to drive on it! About 10 minutes later, he told me to go!

The FIRST motor vehicle on the new highway was “me on my scooter”, going south…. no fanfare, no fuss, no cutting ribbons (this onramp was near Eyal Kibbutz. I rode those 18 kms on this beautiful, clean, smooth, well-built road with absolutely NO TRAFFIC. Later, one car went past me, and also an official “Road 6” patrol van.

So, all too soon I rode that 18 kms and went off at the new off ramp pointing to Rosh Ha’ayin, and rode to a coffee shop at a petrol station to drink a cup of coffee.

Then, about 30 minutes later, I decided to do the 18 kms going north….

NOW, this gets interesting… coz the new onramp is at the Head Offices of Kvish 6, and here was a big media event, TV people with cameras, newspaper people with cameras, many people with cameras… (except me, I never had a camera). There was a big party going on at the offices.

Many important dignitaries attended the “official opening”, and the “first drive,” which is from the office block going north — to the Eyal off ramp ~~> 18 kms.

I scooted in to the parking area and a woman ran up to me telling me “to get on the bus quickly, it’s waiting for me” (she thought I was a reporter from a newspaper). I soon sorted that out. So, I went into the lobby at the offices, a very posh affair with many people wearing suits.

I was given an orange juice and a cookie and a couple of maps, then someone told me I must leave… So a few minutes later I scootered on to the new 6 going ~~> north.

I noticed a few buses, many cars and vans and other vehicles were following me… as though I was the escort. After a short distance, all those vehicles overtook me and I guess I was at “the right-place at the right moment.”

I have since traveled several times on this beautiful, well planned, well built, well looked after, Kvish 6 highway, and also recently completed, now has two new twin filling-station-rest-rooms-shopping-complex on BOTH sides of the highway…. one way down south and the other up north. IT IS A DRIVING PLEASURE.

So I say…”Well done” and keep on adding new sections, and every time a new section was completed, I took a scoot to ride on it. The costs for a scooter are very little and I always feel safe riding on clean, litter-free roads. And all my trips have been in daylight hours.

A couple of times there were queries about the account that I received, but they were always solved by very pleasant personnel. I learned that much of the processes are automatically done to completion by computers, and the bill is clear and straightforward.

We need to squeeze a couple of hours visit to MINI ISRAEL…worth every minute and much more…all the model buildings and buses and trucks and soccer stadium and ports and cable-cars…and everything in Israel that is major importance is there in miniature….no problem with parking at the entrance, and obtaining a small electric golf cart to travel around in…Mini Israel is open on Saturdays, and is usually crowded so if you can manage during the week…better still.

Another couple of hours minimum is a must visit to the Armoured Brigade Military Museum at LATRUN where all sorts of armoured vehicles and tanks and many assorted vehicles of war that were captured from the enemies..during several wars. Pay an entrance fee and get some brochures, a movie in English explains and knowledgeable guides take you around and explain many things. (CLOSED ON SATURDAYS)… altho many captured vehicles can be seen if you drive a few hundred meters on the side road to the end of the fence. As usual, walking shoes and cameras always.

A short visit to the Monastery close by and a visit inside if you like climbing many steps…some days there are open air markets and food kiosks in the carpark.

Of course plan your day to visit NEWE SHALOM, close to Latrun, a neighbourhood where Israeli and Arab live side by side. A quick stop at the hotel lobby for some good brochures and then take a slow drive (or even a walk) through the streets and see what can be achieved.

Then we kadimah (move forward) coz our new journey has only just begun.

We pick-up route #1 and head toward Jerusalem..and at junction at Abu Ghosh we make a detour and head for ELVIS INN…this delightful restaurant that remains furnished in Elvis Presley times and hundreds of photos on the walls are a reminder as we sit at a table with Elvis Presley, and his music is always in the background. Excellent service from a small snack to a full meal, and if you drink a coffee, you get to take the mug as a souvenir.

I must mention the incredible toilets that cater for many tour buses that stop there. Outside in the carpark are many Elvis reminders including a magnificent “gold” statue of “The King Of Rock n Roll)..this is a “must” visit.

As we may start our day very early and finish very late, I’m not suggesting sleeping time but for the record I have slept over several times at Yitzchak Rabin Youth hostel…which is nicely placed for restaurants and for leaving the city without being snarled in traffic.

So, after Elvis Inn we stay on #1 and travel east til we get to #90…with a few short stops on the way to take pictures. 6 stops for 5 minutes each should be enough….you will decide what pics you want,
and at the end of #1 we coffeesnack at the same place we were at on an earlier time. We look at our mapatlas and plan our trip north on #90.

(Very much more exciting than driving thru built-up areas surrounded by highrise buildings and shopping malls).

Louis the Scooterer is 69 years old and it sounds like he’s just getting started.

The Urban Tango Phenomenon Explained

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An interview with Makela Brizuela, by Jeffrey the Barak.

In 2006, a very different dance performance was first presented in Venice California. Entitled “URBAN TANGO, The Agony and Ecstasy of Amateur Tango – In Search of the Elusive Embrace”, it was different in many ways and attracted the attention of many in the dance community.

Directed and choreographed by Makela Brizuela, the cast consisted of amateur Tango dancers, not professional dancers, and most of the cast were students of Makela. But even more unusual was the theme.

In a dance performance without spoken word, whether ballet or in this case, Argentine Tango, it takes a little more than the performance itself to explain what exactly is being conveyed by the dance. In 2006, the amateur performers seemed inspired by the passion of this event, and were heard enthusiastically explaining the concept and theme of the show to anyone who would listen.

The concept was repeated and passed along, and in some cases the theme may have been, shall we say incorrectly described as third and fourth hand versions made it down the line of communication. But one thing was clear, something about this event really got everyone stirred up.

With the reappearance of the show in February 2007, it is appropriate that the creator get a word in and talk a little about herself as well as Urban Tango…

It is unusual to find a Tango instructor with a B.A., an M.A., or a PHD, but despite her chosen profession, Makela has one of each.

J the B: How does someone with your academic qualifications choose the life of a Tango instructor?

MB: I studied ballet since an early age, and danced my entire life. When I was 10-12 years old, I used to direct my little sister (she was 6 years younger than me), to create little plays for our family. Even though dance was a major part of my life, my parents thought that I also needed to stimulate my brain, and that is why I chose a career that was as close as art as possible: Literature. I went to the University of Buenos Aires where I finished my BA

When I started to study Linguistics as a requirement, I got fascinated by the power of language in communication. At that time I realized, that I am the most passionate when I can make a difference in peoples lives by helping them out to communicate between each other. I finished my MA and PHD in General Linguistics at USC in 1999.

J the B: How did you get local Tango dancers, and students of dance to cross the line into public performance?

MB: When I started dancing tango in 1995, the power of language in communication made even more sense. I was for the first time able to connect to another human being at a total different level, feeling ecstasy without using words.

Being an Academic and a Professor would not have given me the opportunity of touching the lives of people in the same way. When I teach Tango, I can see how human beings are transformed to the best that they can be. Tango takes them to a journey of interpretations of rejection, inadequacy, isolation; all these feelings are rooted in each individual’s past. Dancing Tango is so rewarding, that most of the people are willing to face those fears, and overcome them to enjoy the dance.

J the B: In many of the descriptions of the theme of this performance, people are talking about the typical situation at a Milonga (Tango Dance) where the women have to wait for the man to ask them to dance, and of course it’s quite the same in the Ballroom community. How does Urban Tango address this?

MB: Being a woman without a steady partner in this Tango Community had taught me lots of things. There were periods where I was thinking that there were ‘scarcity of men’, other periods where I thought that ‘men are all losers’, other periods where I thought that ‘the women are the problem’, and it was a very long journey, until I realized that the power of enjoying tango is within myself. When I go to a MILONGA (social event) it is up to me to enjoy it or to be miserable in it. So, in order to have a good time, I consciously either try to meet friends there, or I will try to have a goal (for instance learning by observing dancing), or I would go just to see people. Suddenly everything started to open up.

When I started teaching I got lots of complaints from women that men are this or that, that they sit and wait forever at the Milonga, and that they do not enjoy tango, and I wanted to do something about it. That is how URBAN TANGO was born. I saw that I have a responsibility as a woman on my own, to allow other women to see that the experience of tango is totally up to them. It doesn’t matter if there are not enough men, or if some women are not nice to each other. It is up to us what we create in our community.

As a result, we started to see great changes. The men in our show, are very supportive of us, and they understand that they are helping us to express a female point of view. We are very grateful to them, and they are the proof that there are AMAZING men in the tango community, we just need to let them show up like that. We also started creating strong bonds between women, that went through difficult process of healing, but that resulted in a safe community where dancing is enjoyed.

Urban Tango shows the process that woman goes through when they chose Tango as their way of self-expression. First she goes to a Tango Class and feels the joy of it, she starts practice and to have fun with it, until she goes to a milonga and have a bad experience. That bad experience (for instance, sitting and waiting all night, or being hurt by a man, or falling in love with the wrong man, etc. etc.), does not allow her to enjoy the dance, so her first reaction is to be angry at women. That competition does not go anywhere, and then she starts to feel really sad. By supporting each other, and by allowing herself to experience that pain, very slowly she realizes that the power is in herself. From there on, she starts enjoying tango fully.

J the B: How did you approach the students and local Tango dancers with the opportunity to perform publicly?

MB: When I called my students with this opportunity I was surprised, because most of them told me that they would do the project just to work with me. I was blown away. They saw, even more clearly than me that I was aiming for a transformation of an entire community. I made sure that they understood that this project would allow them to see their dream come true, not only to enjoy the ecstasy of tango, but also to be able to share this with the women and men in the audience.

URBAN TANGO, The Agony and Ecstasy of Amateur Tango – In Search of the Elusive Embrace will again be performed in Venice, California, at the Electric Lodge, in February 2006.

Makela’s website is: http://www.makelatango.com/

Tickets for the show can be purchased here: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/8979

Growing Young (and Perhaps Sick) with Human Growth Hormone (HGH)

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By Dan Hall

Propagandaville – a quaint little town with white picket fences, nuclear families, neighborhood schools, and friendly salespeople who’ll be as nice and polite as possible so long as you’re shelling out money to buy their wares. Yes, in Propagandaville, money is king, and snake-oil peddlers abound, pushing their products onto unsuspecting people all in the name of health.

News of Human Growth Hormone or HGH has flooded the television and print advertising market in the past decade. Claims that HGH will retard the aging process, boost your sex drive, build muscle mass, help trim fat, cure depression, make you more intelligent, and cause you to feel better and healthier are ever-present in the media. But are these claims accurate? Is HGH therapy truly the new elixir of youth, or are the claims unsubstantiated, inaccurate, and just plain wrong?

HGH research has been occuring since as early as the 1960s, perhaps even earlier. HGH isolated from human pituitary glands is often used therapeutically to treat people with growth hormone deficiency, which could easily lead to reduced muscle mass and bone density. Of course, a true deficiency in growth hormone is not normal; it can be caused by a variety of factors, including hypopituitarism, tumors of the brain, and so
forth. Traditionally, people who need HGH treatment visit endocrinologists and do not purchase their HGH from infomercials.

Truthfully, HGH no longer exists, as scientists have stopped using true Human Growth Hormone and now market synthetic growth hormone. People claiming to sell HGH are not truly selling Human Growth Hormone but a synthetic blend that could very well be anything! Chances are, what is being sold is nothing more than amino acids or proteins wrapped in a neat little package. Unless you have a true GH deficiency and are willing to be diagnosed by an endocrinologist, you’re most likely wasting your money on mass-marketed HGH.

What’s frightening about all of this is that HGH does have its side-effects–ones that are rarely if ever mentioned on television. Diabetes, a gross enlargement of the nose and other facial features, a thickening of the skin and connective tissue, an increase in muscle mass but not strength, nerve damage, joint pain, certain cancers, edema, and other symptoms have been reported after prolonged use of commercial HGH. This is not something to be taken lightly, for it can very well have a negative effect on your health.

Homeopathic HGH (which is sold in small dosages) may actually live up to some of the hype, but only because the dosages are small enough to affect a change but not significant problems. Muscle mass may increase, skin may appear healthier, and energy may rise–in part due to the pituitary gland producing more natural GH as a side-effect–but these are all temporary effects. The true causes of aging have little to do with a lack of HGH and more to do with a lack of nutrition and/or an overabundance of toxins lodged within the joints and tissues. HGH can only add to these problems, not solve them.

Longevity cannot be found in a pill. A life-transformation is required to slow, stop, and perhaps reverse the aging process. Changes in diet, thought process, activity, and other areas of life are all necessary to remain young and live a long, healthy life. Pills, powders, shakes, oils, and other products will never replace true healthy living. And until we, as a society, can embrace the natural laws that will keep us healthy, we will continue to look for the next great wonder drug, thereby fueling the informercial conglomerates well into the future.

Dan Hall is a teacher and author living in Georgia. He is the author of the book Neohygiene. Visit him on the Web at http://www.neohygiene.com.

Pop! Goes The Mini Cooper Culture

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By Mike Marino

The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!

Those madcap ale drinking, pub hopping bloody Brit Redcoats ain’t just figments of the imagination Mate! Nor are they strangers in a strange land to the landscape of American history. Over 200 years ago, a perplexed Paul Revere rode deep into the bosom of the dark of the midnight countryside to warn of imminent peril and invasion by the forces of King George, by George!

In due time, another George, ours, who went by the name of Washington, took careful aim for the royal jewells, gave them a swift kick in the royal cahones, and sent them packing north to Canada, eh, and back across the big pond to Jolly Olde England. The Americans, now victorious in revolution, would not fear nor suffer another British Invasion ever again…well, that is until the British Invasion of Mods, Rockers and Pop Culture hit our shores like a behemoth tidal wave with a rock n’ roll backbeat in the 1960′s!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!

The Fab Four…The Rolling Stones…The Who! Who? British Music and moptop haircuts sucker punched American youth culture with powerful pop culture blitzkrieg and brought it to it’s sociological knees with a style of dress and a new code of conduct that would propel us into a whole new universe. A pop universe of James Bond, shaken, not stirred. Carnaby Street and Mary Quant, Dusty Springfield, Mods Aplenty and Pussy Galore. We were high on hiked up mile high mini-skirts and jazzed on jacked up go-go bootsl. Our hearts pumping in overdive, and without question, London proved, once and for all, that indeed, England swings like a pendulum do!

John, Paul, George, and Ringo, the Four Horsemen of the Beatles Apocalypse, made an indelible impression on all of us, similar to a tire iron being raked across the skull of some hapless victim in a dark alley in Detroit. However, it was an unlikely little motoring machine that not only came to personify that era more than anything else, but also flexed t’s design muscle and became a major bonafide pop icon. A chrome-magnon pop star in it’s own right with a cult following to match that of the Grateful Dead. That major, was a mini. A Morris Mini to be exact.

The red-dread, dread-of-Red ideological ice age that defined the meltdown nuclear Cold War era had produced a politicaly unstable behemoth of a glacier that was advancing and laying waste to everything in it’s path. That same instability would eventually knock stability off it’s pedestal and produce a plethora of petrol panic at the gas pump. The growing, out of control crisis in the Suez Canal region in the later part of the decade was to become the bravo-British-bravado version of the shootout at the OK Corral in the American Wild Child Wild West. This time those madcap Earp’s and Clanton’s were replaced by mysterioso shrouded-in-mystery Egyptians and pip-pip-cheerio stiff upper lip and all that Brits. Plain and simple, the sixshooter of oil consumerism had run out of bullets, and gas rationing, once again, was becoming a British way of life.

Clearly, a petrol saving, more miles to the gallon messiah of a car was needed to meet this crisis headon and to preach the gasoline gospel, and it was the vehicular virgin birth of a BMC classic that rose to the challenge. In 1952, two separate motor companies, Austin and Morris, merged in a marriage of metal to form the British Motor Corporation. BMC raced to meet the design needs of the growing gas crisis, and by 1958 had test driven and sent to production the design that would come to symbolize British Culture in the 1960′s.

The underwraps mini wonder wagon was unleashed in 1959 in two separate versions. The Austin factory in Longbridge gave birth to the Austin Seven, “The Incredible Austin”, while the Morris plant in Cowley delivered the Morris Mini, “Wizardry on Wheels”. Both destined to evolve into the singular, all powerful and rally race fashionable Mini-Cooper by 1961.

Power and muscle were not hallmarks of the original design under the motor meister, Sir Alec Issigonis. Born in Turkey in 1906, Issigonis went to work at Morris Motors in 1936 after studying engineering in his new adopted homeland, England. His idea was simply to design a car that was safe for the public and affordable for the masses, following in the footsteps of the vehicular visionary, King Henry the Ford, and his immensly popular Model T, and also the popular German Volkswagen. According to legend, the original sketch of the Mini design was drawn on a restaurant table cloth.

The Mini, at first was merely a “housewifes car” fit only for toodling to the grocery or scooting about town. In 1961 it got a high performance injection of John Cooper vroom and zoom, and it was, not only off to the races, but also well on it’s way to becoming the fashion accessory of the decade! The Mini sold a respectible 20,000 units in 1959 B. C. (Before Cooper), but by mid decade in 1965 it had topped the 1,000,000 mark milestone for units sold!

John Cooper had a formidable background in high performance motoring. Born in 1923, John and Cooper, Sr. formed the Cooper Car Company in the aftermath and shadow of WWII, and by 1948 were building serious rear engine racing monster mo-sheens. The 1950′s were the definitive age of the Chrome-magon. Racing was taking the world by the short hairs, and Cooper & Co. were making machines that were leading the perfomance pack on the racing circuit and in short time made it the must have car of the speed loving motoring public. John had already made a high octane impact on the autoworld, but the heavy metal planets were all in perfect alignment, and the best was yet to come when he put his expertise to work on the marvelous Mini. It was from this fornication of form and design that the pre-eminent rally sportser of the times would emerge…The Psychedelic Petroleum Prince of the Proletariat…The Legendary Mini Cooper!

The decade of the 1960′s saw the super duper Cooper take on and kick asphalt in a variety of key races that proved her metal once and for all. The Mini Cooper won consecutive Monte Carlo Rally’s, the Tulip Rally’s in ’62 and ’64, the Alpine Rally in ’63 and 25 other prestigious races out and about the European continent. The original Cooper’s came with a 4 speed tranny, go from 0-60 in 12.9 seconds, 0-100 in 20 seconds and best of all, got an amazing 30 MPG! Racing Coopers however, along with the pedigree led a hard life on the circuit and many had to be reshelled continually.

The Cooper also had a low center of gravity for cornering, and the Cooper S of 1963 – 1967 had wider wheels than a stock Cooper. The Rally Rear Package came with straight through exhaust, mini lite wheels, roll bar, twin fuel tanks and a lightweight stick on lisence plate. Other inclusions where woodrim moto-lita steering wheel, Halda trip meter, tachometer, stop watches, map light and a fire extinguisher!

Mods needed rods and that damn little Cooper fit the bill and soon anyone who was anyone was sporting a Mini Cooper, from The Beatles to Peter Sellers. Michael Caine even drove one into the realm of fame and infamy in the film “The Italian Job” in 1969. The Mini Cooper was king, and as anyone knows, it’s good to be the King!

As the Psychedelic Sixties began to fade away in a bag of seeds and stems, there were efforts afoot (Gadzooks!) to kill the little Mini beastie, but it kept selling in spite of those efforts. Cries of “It’s Alive” could still be heard loud and clear at the car dealerships and showrooms, as the resiliant little creature refused to go down without a fight. Until the ’80s.

As the decade of “Me” dawned on the horizon the Mini began to decline into it’s own sunset on the automotive horizon, but a new company that was now producing the Mini was trying to keep itself afloat on the horsepower ocean and not sink like the ill-fated Titantic. That company, Rover, came out with themed editons to tap into the reigning motherlode of nostalgia and by 1990 Japan was eating them up like Godzilla beast-feasting on nuclear power plants!

Sir Alec passed on to piston paradise in 1988 and John Cooper crossed the quarter mile into horsepower heaven in the year 2000 at the age of 77. In 1994, Rover was acquired by BMW and today they produce and export three different models to the motoring masses. It might be a Mini but you can’t judge a book by it’s cover…the Mini Cooper Slogan sums it up best…

“You Don’t Need A Big One To Be Happy!”

Mike Marino is a freelance writer of Pop Culture and Travel and also a published author of “The Roadhead Chronicles Book”

The Roadhead Chronicles Book

http://community.webtv.net/roadheadthree/book

Contact:
dharmabumroadie@yahoo.com

Hollywood celebrities with hair loss turn to the $300 CoolPiece

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Los Angeles, California, USA. March 2005.

Gossip columns abound with speculation. Who is wearing a hairpiece? Is that his real hair or is it a hairpiece? Did he get transplants, or is it a hairpiece?

As technology brings us less and less detectable hairpieces, celebrities and regular folks alike are saying goodbye to baldness with today’s high tech hairpieces. Los Angeles based CoolPiece.com is an online business with no salon, no hairdressers, no showroom and no storefront. But CoolPiece is the buzzword in the movie industry as make up artists, hairdressers and the stars they serve are lining up alongside the regular men and women to get the latest hairpieces for $300 via the Internet.

One Emmy winning hairdresser in New York says, “Why pay $3,000 for a designer hairpiece when side-by-side, a $300 CoolPiece is plainly better?”

At CoolPiece, owner Jeffrey the Barak, gets asked by the tabloids, “So who is wearing a CoolPiece? We hear its Celebrity B or Celebrity A”. But Jeffrey never tells. His motto is, “The day that movie star sends in a picture of himself to put on the website is the day we’ll admit we serve him. Until then our official line is, as far as we know, he’s not even bald.”

So why CoolPiece? Jeffrey says “Regular people who cannot afford high prices for top quality, hard-to-detect hairpieces come to CoolPiece for the savings, but the surprise is the quality. Even though the price point is down at $300, there are no compromises, and if there was a better option out there, CoolPiece would sell that for $300 also.”

In the early days, CoolPiece was always under attack from people who worked for certain expensive salons. The hair-replacement industry was never known for its honesty or good ethics, but CoolPiece changed all that by publishing the secrets that were previously hidden in the back rooms of the expensive salons, and former victims of the industry warily took what was left of their money and put their trust in this website full of free information.

They never looked back, and the appalled vendors of high-priced hair systems were less than pleased with CoolPiece and its effect on their old businesses. But quality prevails and a deal is a deal, and before long the millionaires and movie stars began to do the same as the regular folks and began to switch to CoolPiece.

CoolPiece’s secret? “Simple”. Says Jeffrey. “Help everyone, guarantee everything, replace anything, and refund anything. The customer comes first every time. In other words, everything the expensive salons wouldn’t do for their clients.”

So is there really a difference between a CoolPiece and a regular hairpiece? Usually there’s a huge and obvious difference, but CoolPiece is not totally unique as far as good hairpieces are concerned. The main difference is the actual level of quality. Until CoolPiece came along, you had to pay a fortune for top quality units, whether you were a celebrity or a schoolteacher, and now you don’t. Add in the considerable trust factor, and CoolPiece finishes ahead. And that’s without even considering the radically lower price point.

So what’s new at CoolPiece? Owner Jeffrey the Barak credits singer Beyoncé for the latest boom. He says “It seems that there are a lot of African-American females who have hair loss due to traction alopecia and chemical damage. The American singer Beyoncé is the women they all want to look like, and each week we get custom orders from around the world for full wigs, accompanied by photographs of Beyoncé. She seems to have the most admired hair since Jennifer Aniston in the early days of Friends.”

And the men? Jeffrey says “There is not any particular man that lots of guys want to copy. They’re just happy to have some hair that looks and feels like it grew out of their scalp.”

What about kids? CoolPiece features an offer on its home page, to make a hair system free of charge for kids with cancer and no insurance. Surprisingly there are not many takers, but there was a Russian gentleman who claimed to have a thousand children with cancer. “We had to turn him down” says Jeffrey.

So does CoolPiece owner Jeffrey the Barak make the hairpieces himself? “Of course not. They are made in the world’s best factory. I just spend all day and part of the night answering email and helping people find their way out of baldness and bad deals.”

And what about Jeffrey’s own hair? The Englishman in Los Angeles has this to say: “Some it is my own, and some of it is a CoolPiece. It all looks like my own though”.

How does CoolPiece handle the celebrities? “We treat the movie stars like librarians and we treat the store clerks like pop stars. Everyone gets the hair they deserve”.

A Communist Parade

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By Nick Dao

My trip to China to see The Great Wall was going to be in August of 1999, but then I caught a news clip on CNN broadcasting how China was getting ready to throw a birthday bash in September to commemorate its 50th Anniversary under the communist rule. The news clip said there would be parades and other joyous festivities! While I certainly would never be one to celebrate the joys of communist living, I was curious as to what the celebrations would be like. I postponed my trip for one month and flew to Beijing in September.

There were a lot of celebrations all right. There was a grand parade down one of the main boulevards, and there was a flowery and elaborate show of pageantry inside The Forbidden City. The celebrations would have been a sight to behold, if only I could have seen those sights for myself.

When I was walking down one of the crowded, main boulevards to see one of those grand parades, I ran smack into a wall of soldiers blocking my path. At first, I thought they were a part of the parade that hadn’t yet joined in with the procession. I thought they would soon be marching and moving, so I waited for them to move, but they stubbornly just stood there. My impatience was getting the better of me. I tried to go around them, but they had blocked the road so that there was no getting around them. Those uniformed soldiers with their rifles in hand had separated the parade from the crowd.

What was going on, I wondered? I wanted to ask someone about the soldiers, but I don’t speak Mandarin. I looked around and saw a Caucasian guy who was standing idly by at the side of the road. He didn’t look nearly as perplexed as I was and seemed to have a grasp on the situation. I walked over to him and said a slow, “Hello,” while hoping he was an English speaker.

“Hi,” he said with a smile.

His vernacular greeting instantly told me he was American, and I felt relieved we wouldn’t have to talk in broken English. “What’s going on here,” I asked him. “I’m trying to see the parade, but those soldiers are blocking the way.”

“They’re keeping out the public,” the guy informed me. “You have to be some sort of a VIP to get past the soldiers and see the parade.”

I wrinkled my brow and spouted out, “You’re kidding me! You have to be a special somebody to see a parade?”

The guy smiled ruefully then sighed out loud, “Believe it or not.”

I thanked him for the explanation and walked away shaking my head. When I saw that news clip on CNN about the festivities to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Communist Party, I had automatically assumed the parade would be for anyone and everyone, just like it was in the USA. Little did I know that in a communist country, you would have to be special somebody in the government or the army to stand by the side of the road and watch a parade.

I meandered away from the parade that I didn’t get to see and headed over to The Forbidden City. If I couldn’t see a parade, I thought, then I could at least see the historical site of The Forbidden City, and that assumption turned out to be my next mistake.

On my way over to The Forbidden City, I’d questioned if I would be able to get in there since the powers-that-be might have been having a pageantry in The Forbidden City. I dismissed that concern when I concluded that if the VIPs were back there busily watching a parade, then they couldn’t also be inside The Forbidden City simultaneously watching a pageantry.

After I had arrived at the gates of The Forbidden City, I began to wish I had stuck with my original plan to visit Beijing a month earlier in August. There wasn’t any display of pageantry in The Forbidden City at that moment, but the people working under the VIPs were busily setting up The Forbidden City for the pageantry. Therefore, The Forbidden City was closed and off-limits to everyone who wasn’t of the VIP status.

I chalked up the day as another learning experience that taught me something about sightseeing in a foreign country and about the inclusion of democracy versus the exclusion of communism. The next time I would see a parade on Main Street, USA, I would appreciate how anyone and everyone would be invited to watch the parade regardless of whether or not they were a VIP.

Writer Nick Dao is based in Southern California. An American originally from Vietnam, he is able to offer a unique perspective on travel to Asia and elsewhere.

Killer Pattaya Prostitutes

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By Leonard Calcagno

A half-drunk and drugged big blonde Dane wakes up relived of $500 US. Last thing he remembers is that this beautiful Thai prostitute gave him a pill with her tongue, telling him it was an aphrodisiac. He was a lucky bastard; last week two Germans were found naked and dead in their hotel room. Their personal effects were never found by the police. Not even the hotel owner remembers if they came in with somebody.

Most of the tourists in Pattaya, Thailand come for the same thing: sex for cheap. But cases of prostitutes stealing everything from their drunk clients were not uncommon. This time, something about the case didn’t wash. The coroner determined that both men died of heart attacks at approximately the same time in the same room.

These deaths, and a number that followed, began making international headlines, and the sex tourist industry shrank. The stories were becoming common: some beautiful Thai slipped in an “aphrodisiac” or asks the client to lick her breasts. And that’s pretty much the last thing anyone remembers. Usually they would be relieved of wallet and watch. But now, johns were being killed off instead.

Police in Pattaya were convinced that the local mafia was using prostitutes to lure, rob tourist and kill them. Working with INTERPOL, local police began combing the areas that the tourists were found dead or unconscious. The south of Pattaya is where the most of the prostitute bars are. European [re: white] agents began visiting these bars undercover. It’s not the first time that Thai and European police have worked together. A porno cartel dealing pedophilia was busted by Dutch and Scandinavian police a couple of years ago.

South Pattaya is where every bar has girls waiting in the door, bringing customers for cheap sex and beer. In every bar, naked girls are trained to be bait for sex tourists. Most of the “beer bars” are decorated in a cheap Christmas version of a high school beach party — but with a hundred horny drunken tourists looking and touching underage smiling merchandise. The message parlors are filled with who girls specialize in everything for the right price: $5 US; And for a little extra, they’ll go to your hotel, too.

The biggest beer bar is The Marine: two big dance floors and a dozen live show booths, each with a couple of girls scrammed in waiting for customers. In this ocean of horny tourists, police waited for 3 weeks before a Thai prostitute with mafia connections came in contact with one of them.

In a corner of the bar, there’s a drunken German tourist with 10 girls, talking loudly and paying for drinks without a care in the world. He’s tall, blue-eyed and full of golden jewelry, just waiting to be robbed. In the other corner policemen have spotted a group of Thais looking him over and sending girls over to him. They let the drunken German leave with the girls, and the next day the police get a report from him saying that he was drugged and robbed.

For two months the police go to The Marine and always hear the same story. Nobody is killed though; the police follow the stupid tourists for it’s safety after they leave the bar, but they needed proof for a murder rap. Finally, an undercover officer flush with cash gets surrounded by The Marine bar girls until mafia thugs send their two most beautiful girls to suggest a sex-crazed night in a local hotel. Accepting the invitation, the cop directs the other police officers to the hotel.

As the trio get to the room and the two prostitutes get naked, they ask the cop to take the so-called “aphrodisiac.” The police bust into the room and arrest the two prostitutes, confiscating the pill. They also arrest the four people waiting in the car and the gang in The Marine waiting for other suckers.

One the prostitutes, a 16-year-old girl, confessed about the killing going around Pattaya and how she and her cohorts drug tourists, rob them and the gang kills them. They confess using different methods to drug the johns. After he has consumed the pill, powder or liquid, it takes 10 to 20 minutes slip into a heavy coma-like sleep. Many johns end up dying of heart attacks.

About 75 to 100 tourists are found dead every year in Pattaya, some from an overdose, heart attack, fights and some still in bizarre circumstance. I guess it’s the price to pay for cheap sex in a land where sexual exploitation is the main product to sell.

Leonardo Calcagno, well know writer in Montreal Canada. He’s been writing for local Canadian, Americano and European e-zines and zines in French, Spanish and English for almost 5 years. More known to get hate letters from right-wing housewives and to get into fights with promoters who don’t let him interview bands! You will mostly see him eating tofu dogs and drinking Guinness with his laptop in Montreal writing another article about politics, music and sex. Graduated with a bachelor degree in International Politics with a minor on international law… his parents are still wondering why he took on a life of sex writer! Tattooed with Che, Husker Du and ARA! Played chino-Hispanic punk on Les Kalisses D’immigrant, Trash Blues on Les Tetes Reduites and now stoner rock on Your Sister ! He contributes on Freezerbox.com, Kerozen, Indymedia.org, Stooky.com, Eroticandy.com, Biotech Montreal Action, QuebecTel, Zona de Obra and other zines!

For more of Leonardo’s work, please visit www.montrealnightguide.com and www.montrealconfidential.com

Fizzrail and Ballystein

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By Jeffrey the Barak

Once upon a time there was a land in the Middle East that contained a variety of ancient peoples. There weren’t a lot of people by today’s standards, about as many as you might find in a small country town in Yorkshire or California, but there they were, white, brown and black tribal people who had migrated to the land which was eventually to become Fizzrail or Ballystein, depending on your point of view.

Technology imported from the Far East, Africa and the future Iraq enabled these exceptionally intelligent and beautiful primitives to develop a widespread agricultural society. Although they were of a variety of racial backgrounds, they were essentially one nation. They lived in peace together apart from the occasional territorial squabble, which at worst, led to a bout of warlike activity resulting in the deaths of a few hundred young adult males here and there.

Unfortunately something happened around three and a half thousand years ago that spoiled the whole thing. That thing which happened is known today as monotheism, or belief in one God. As far as we can tell, no one in our inconceivably ancient world ever believed in God until around a mere three and a half thousand years ago. The intellectuals at the time devised a whole new world history and using the best knowledge available from their discussions they decided to figure out the age of the universe from the time of its “creation” until their present time. The result of which can be seen today in the Glueish calendar year of 5760.

Anyway, some of the people in the region, missed out on this new fad and so it came to pass that some people ended up being Glueish, and some hereto identical people ended up becoming the local Larabs.

As time went by, a lot of the Glueish people decided to leave and spread themselves around their flat world with its heaven in the sky above. Some went to Southern India and ended up disappearing. Some went to China and also disappeared. Some went to Ethiopia, but it’s said that the Ethiopian Glues might actually have joined in the fun in more recent years. Many went to Spain, and many more went to Russia and Eastern Europe, including a large number of tiny countries that would eventually become Germany.

A lot of people were a little unsettled by the Glues and their different way of doing things so in many cases mass murders were used to make the locals feel better. This became quite a tradition, celebrated even today by ugly white kids with very short hair.

But even bigger than all of that, the next big thing happened back in Fizzrail and Ballystein. An exceptionally cool intellectual by the name of Cheezers popped up and made a whole bunch of people feel great with his radical new concepts based on peace and love. The ideas seemed to be free of charge at first, but there was a hidden price. Just as with Gluedyism a millennium and a half earlier, the followers of Cheezers had to suspend their disbelief and therefore their rationality by using a tool known as faith and accept wholeheartedly the idea of an all-powerful being who had created everything in the universe.

After Cheezers had been executed in the usual disgusting barbaric manner of the day, his followers decided to spread his word using militant political methods. Using fear they converted millions of people to the new belief system. The converts were afraid not only of the foretold consequences of not joining the gang, but also of the swords and other weaponry that the spreaders of the new idea were only too pleased to use on those who demonstrated any reluctance to convert.

The third part of the puzzle came about six hundred years later. Another amazing character called Moe, launched his Election 622 tour and succeeded in creating the third major religion, Hisbam.

So the stage was set in old Fizzrail and Ballystein. Three big ideas known as Gluedyism, Krispysanity and Hisbam coexisted to divide the people who had so recently been all the same. And the leaders and officers of those three great organizations enjoyed immense power over the lives, minds and wallets of the people and their governments.

Despite this, as time went on, the world as a whole became a better place for humans to live. Illnesses could be cured, inventions could be used, average life spans increased dramatically and at no time did the future ever look darker than the past.

But while all this was happening there was also the dark side. Wars took place between the armies of people who imagined they were different from each other in some way. Various kinds of people were massacred and exterminated for a variety of reasons. People grouped together with the people most like themselves until a situation was reached where if you were to ask someone to describe themselves, the first thing they would say would be something like, “I’m black/white/Glueish/Hisbamic/Krispyan etc. Oh and by the way I’m a doctor and I have one eye.”

After the biggest incident of selective murder in the mid 20th Century, during which millions and millions of people were murdered, including, but not limited to, six million Glues, the politicians of the day got together and decided that it would be nice if some of the surviving Glues could go back to the approximate location of their origins and create a new place to live called Fizzrail.

Unfortunately, some people from the ancient times, who never really left, were still there. They thought the place was called Ballystein. Anyway using amazing ingenuity, the Glues created a beautiful place out of an ancient and ugly mess. The new Fizzrail was like a paradise if you didn’t think too hard about it or look too closely.

Choosing to ignore the far left Socialist politics, the constant threat of war with the neighbors, and the terrible segregation that immediately existed with the creation of the nation, world leaders fell in love with the new Fizzrail with its industry and army and air force and beautiful teenage girl soldiers in miniskirts and little shorts.

The wealthy Glues in America and England poured money into the nation and retired to condominiums there and absorbed the local point of view through the local and world media.

However, some of the Ballysteinans were exiled abroad with deeds to land that they no longer owned. Land that was now covered by a whole new world.

And in Fizzrail, hidden things went on, which would eventually enrage the native Ballysteinans. For example, an entire Ballysteinan town would have to wait a week for its municipal water supply to be turned on for two hours, and then off again until the following week, while right next door a Fizzraily resort would be enjoying its green lawns and swimming pools.

Something had to give, and now we are here in August 2001. It seems that only a hereto-unknown genius would have any chance at averting an impending festival of death. Thousands of these fictitious Fizzrailys and Ballysteinans are about to die in an ever-escalating hatefest.

If this were real, if there really was a Fizzrail, or a Ballystein, it would be a terrible thing to watch.

So what about the real world? Taking the population as a whole we have approximately 33% Christians, 18% Moslems and 1/3% (a third of one per cent) Jews. What would happen if everyone suddenly woke up one morning and felt nothing but love for their fellow Man? What if all the hate would just suddenly vanish? What if they woke up the second morning and suddenly they didn’t believe in God anymore, just like a few thousand years ago before anyone had thought of God in the first place?

I don’t think that would be possible in our fictitious lands of Fizzrail and Ballystein, but it would be a beautiful thing if it were to happen in the real world!

Important note: The above tale is a work of light fiction. Any similarity to any actual place, race, Superbeing, religion or historical sequence of events is purely coincidental.