Mission Mission

Bill Murray wants to boat from island to island around the Philippines torpedoing pirates! Badass!

[via Molly Lambert]

Previously:

Bourdain Bonanza!

San Francisco’s Mark Growden is finally back from months of touring and he’s playing at the Porto Franco Art Parlor on Liberty and Valencia this Friday. The last Mark Growden show of this type sold out pretty quick, so only advance tickets are available. Grab them here.

Mark is an amazing songwriter and musician who plays the chromatic button accordion, an instrument that is pretty damn rare in the states. You pretty much have to walk into an accordion shop, glaze over the bountiful piano accordions, and say, “fuck it, I want to play the harder one”. I guess the added bonus is that no one will ever ask to play it during your set break. If only I had a nickel for every time some dude walked up to my guitar and said, “hey dude nice axe, hey can I show my friend this RHCP tune I just learned?”

Oh, have you seen that video of Mark Growden playing bicycle handlebars? It’s outta sight!

BTW if any of you musically-inclined cyclists are into collaborating on an all bike parts band (“bikestra”), he’s totally down.

Sure, we’ve sung praises for the yodelin’ Japanese cowboy Toshio Hirano before, but I just found this video profile of him done by PRI that deserves some attention:

Toshio has a charisma and passion for music that is really sobering to all the cynical young musicians like myself. Here’s a guy who loved classic country music so much that he literally up and moved straight to the source. (Ok, so my love of burritos may have moved me from the east bay to San Francisco, but that’s not exactly the same thing.)

He’s no fool either, he’s well aware that there’s quite a bit of the novelty/freak show draw to his act. But hey, if that’s what it takes to get people to come out and see him doing what he loves, then he’s ok with that. Oh, and his between-song banter is hilarious… that’s no act. This man is funny.

Toshio will be playing tonight as part of his monthly residency at the Rite Spot Cafe on 17th and Folsom from about 9pm-12. Go get your two-step on.

Many Machines just hipped us to Los Perdidos, a new short film by a group of 826 Valencia kids. It rules.

First, an old video of Mission locals Dr. Popular and Kiya (yeah, Self Edge Kiya) nonchalantly SHREDDING on their yos while interviewing for KRON 4. (Bonus: it’s the same awkward correspondent that interviewed Broke Ass Stuart some time ago):

Next, Kiya posted this bit of history in the comments of the last Yo-Yo-related post and I thought it was too interesting not to share:

The Mission yoyo craze started many years ago when Doc moved from Minneapolis to the Mission and lived with me for a while on 22nd street.

I have a yoyo club which he’s a part of called The Consortium of Yo, we used to be sponsored by Zeitgeist and for years there was a COY x Zeitgeist yoyo you could buy at the bar that had both our logo and the Zeitgeist logo/motto on the side-caps.

Also, another bit of trivia… I named the fried pickles dish at Weird Fish/Benders, hence the name Fried Yoyos.

Doc is the Bay Area’s yoyo ambassador, 2nd Place World Champion, and a famous hair model.

Kiya: Still got any of those Zeitgeist-branded yo-yos buring a hole in a box in your garage? We must learn your ways.

Ok no more yo-yo posts this month, I promise.

(YouTube)  Thanks Amanda!

The non-embeddable trailer on the homepage is better than the one below, but whatever. (link)

Dunno how I missed this one 6 months ago.  Fuck ya You Tube comments:

Passing out gifts, blazing up spliffs (Via Snoop Dogg)

Yeah.  Made this vid about my travels this morning.  Guess it is worth watching.  Still super jetlagged and cannot sleep past 4 am.  English literature is scarce so this is what I did with my downtime.  EPIC.

(video/YouTube)

No jokes: they actually have PBR in China and you can buy it for $0.07 USD. I wanted to be hella cool so I drank some on the back of the bus. love the back of the bus. I also need a haircut and learn how to take MySpace photos that don't make me look fat.