This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Guided By Voices’ lo-fi indie classic Bee Thousand, and the popular Delaware-based microbrewery Dogfish Head is celebrating with the release of “Beer Thousand.”

Released on June 21, 1994, Bee Thousand was the last album GBV recorded for the Cleveland, OH (later, St. Louis, MO) based indie label Scat Records, before moving on to chug from bigger kegs on Matador Records for Alien Lanes. The album remains one of the band’s most lauded efforts, and was named the greatest indie album of all time by Amazon’s editors in 2009. It’s typical of most of the band’s output at the time, characterized by brilliantly addled little fragments of songs, brief and luminous glimpses of British-invasion inspired pop.
 

 
But enough about rock, let’s talk about the beer.

Just as Dogfish Head has always brewed the beers we want to drink instead of bending toward trends and tradition, Guided by Voices has always made the music they want to listen to.

“We’re only making records for ourselves,” GBV frontman Robert Pollard says, “I’m going to put exactly what I want on them.”

To celebrate that independent spirit and the 20th anniversary of the band’s classic album Bee Thousand, Dogfish Head has brewed BEER Thousand. This imperial lager, chosen to echo the copious amounts of lager that fueled GBV’s garage recordings, is brewed with 10 grains and 10 hop varieties, and clocks in at 10% ABV.

10x10x10 = BEER Thousand.

“I can’t believe it’s been 20 years,” says Pollard. “But I’ll drink to that.”

 

 
10% ABV! Because who needs to remember stuff, really? The beer won’t be released to the public until early autumn, so if you’re in one of the 30 states they sell in, you have that to look forward to. While you wait, enjoy these clips of GBV’s hometown (Dayton by God Ohio) show from the same year as Bee Thousand’s release. Some of this material can be found on GBV vocalist Bob Pollard’s wonderfully-titled DVD The Devil Went Home and Puked
 

 
More vintage GBV after the jump…

 
These tasty pictures are by Tisha Cherry, who makes food art to “enhance the experience of eating and not just consume for sustenance.” Cherry uses whatever foodstuffs or utensils she has in her kitchen to create these masterpiece morsels—and if she makes a mistake? Well, she can eat it and begin again.

See more of Tisha Cherry’s work here.
 

 

 

 
H/T Neatorama
 
More of Tisha’s edible artworks after the jump…
 

 
Stippes Bar, “Home of the Hungarian hot dog,” is something of an institution in Malmö, Sweden, a diverse, formerly industrial city known for its large immigrant population. Their affordable, delicious, spicy garlic sausages (often served to barhoppers in need of ballast) eventually became the joint’s signature dish, but when it opened in the 1970s, the owner had to offer free coffee to taxi drivers, just to get some patrons in the door—authentic Swedish cuisine is not exactly known for its “heat.” Johnny Thunders, however, was an Italian-American New Yorker, and I’m not surprised he made a stop at Stippes for the intense garlic flavors.

While his exploits in Sweden are pretty well documented—a child from a whirlwind romance, a now-infamous “banned performance.” I can’t find any context on the ad. Stippes is a local favorite, but it’s not exactly “famous.” The ad reads “I, too have gone over to Hungary”—maybe Johnny just really liked the dogs?

Below is some footage of Johnny playing Sweden in ‘82. It’s an engaging performance, but the crowd is seated at tables with actual tablecloths, and they don’t seem to know what to do with the spastic performance. Methinks the hot dog crowd was more his wheelhouse.
 

The Beyoncé Cleanse
 
Italian photographer Dan Bannino has recently completed a cheeky art project, to translate a bunch of celebrity fad diets from our own time (as well as a couple from a few centuries ago) and depict them in the form of a magnificent still life by a great master, perhaps an inspired 17th-century “daubster” (hey, I had to look it up too) from Holland, Flanders, or some place like that. I can’t remember who said it, possibly someone from Monty Python, that the essence of comedy is to elevate the humble and bring down the lofty, and this series of photographs (which are quite pretty in their own right) certainly fits that paradigm.

Here’s Bannino’s comment on the series:
 

With this series my aim was to capture the beauty that lies in this terrible constriction of diets and deprivation, giving them the importance of an old master’s painting. I wanted to make them significant, like classic works of arts that are becoming more and more weighty as they grow older. My aim was to show how this weirdness hasn’t changed even since the 15th century.

 
I don’t think I knew that the “Cleanse” is so closely associated with Beyoncé. In fact, the Cleanse has been around for much longer than Beyoncé has been alive. It was originally called the Master Cleanse, as I believe it still is, and was developed by Stanley Burroughs in the 1940s and, decades later, promoted in his books The Master Cleanser and Healing for the Age of Enlightenment (both 1976)—by the bye, isn’t that second title just totally spot-on for a book that would come out today? Burroughs was, at least in that sense, way ahead of his time.
 

Charles Saatchi, Eggs diet
 

Gwyneth Paltrow, Strict detox diet
 

Bill Clinton, Cabbage soup diet
 

Kate Moss, Hollywood diet
 

Simon Cowell, Life-enhancing diet
 

Luigi Cornaro, Sober life
 

Henry VIII, Banquet diet
 

Lord Byron, Romantic poet’s diet
 

For the curious, here’s the real thing. This is the Dutch painter Willem Claeszoon Heda’s Breakfast Table with Blackberry Pie from 1631:
 

 
via designboom

 
I find these monkey brain bowls by FireBox amusing, but with a price tag of $58.59 a pop, maybe not enough to purchase. If they were a tad cheaper I’d probably buy a set of four. If you’ve got the extra dough to spend, these would make an excellent conversation piece for sure but you might get sick of eating red jello or cherry cobbler all the time.

 
Via Boing Boing

 
Radical activist and opportunistic prankster Abbie Hoffman’s infamous 1971 opus Steal This Book is part political manifesto and part handbook on getting things for free. The lists of goods and services he and his comrades thought should be automatically free to everyone, such as medical care (including birth control and abortions), higher education, and food, all considered unthinkably outrageous 43 years ago, have been subsumed by more recent movements as perfectly normal expectations in an affluent society.

The rhetoric doesn’t sound quite so jarring, either, except for the occasional bit of vintage slang. This Hoffman quote could easily be taken from a Russell Brand monologue:

Dig the spirit of the struggle. Don’t get hung up on a sacrifice trip. Revolution is not about suicide, it is about life. With your fingers probe the holiness of your body and see that it was meant to live. Your body is just one in a mass of cuddly humanity. Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines, and in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them. The duty of a revolutionary is to make love and that means staying alive and free. That doesn’t allow for cop-outs. Smoking dope and hanging up Che’s picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power. We are not interested in the greening of Amerika except for the grass that will cover its grave.

Food insecurity is still a massive problem in the U.S. four decades later. Hoffman’s advice on finding, stealing, and scamming free food contains nothing that a poor college student, couponing single parent, “recession wife,” or unemployed person doesn’t already know: crash wedding receptions, bar mitzvahs, and conventions, ask for vegetables, bread, meat, and fish that are about to be thrown out at groceries, wholesalers, market stands, and restaurants (although I suspect most people would draw the line at asking for leavings at the local slaughterhouse), ask for “charitable” donations at canning factories, eat off other people’s plates at restaurants before tables are bussed, form a food co-op, and hustle from caterers. With ubiquitous security cameras in every chain grocery store, shoplifting food is much more of a challenge than it was back then. It may be easier to qualify for food stamp benefits now but food is astronomically more expensive.

The scams Hoffman outlines to get food from restaurants and food delivery people are clever but sometimes require props and costumes (a nun costume?). Of course, many of his ideas are obviously outdated (slugs for vending machines) or silly. He advises that you line your pockets with plastic bags before you load up on food to take home from buffets, especially fried chicken. However, it’s hard to imagine anyone today actually taking him at his trollish word and trying to pour coffee into a bag hidden in their pocket for later. Not when you can get free coffee at Half-Price Books or bank lobbies.

Hoffman included recipes for cheap food, including “Hedonists’ Delight,” which starts “Steal two lobsters,” and this one for granola, which would probably cost $100 in raw materials from Whole Foods:

Hog Farm Granola Breakfast (Road Hog Crispies)

½ cup millet

½ cup cracked wheat

½ cup buckwheat groats

½ cup wheat germ

½ cup sunflower seeds

¼ cup sesame seeds

2 tablespoons cornmeal

2 cups raw oats

1 cup rye flakes

1 cup dried fruits and/or nuts

3 tablespoons soy oil

1 cup honey

Boil the millet in a double boiler for ½ hour. Mix in a large bowl all the ingredients including the millet. The soy oil and honey should be heated in a saucepan over a low flame until bubbles form. Spread the cereal in a baking pan and cover with the honey syrup. Toast in oven until brown. Stir once or twice so that all the cereal will be toasted. Serve plain or with milk. Refrigerate portion not used in a covered container. Enough for ten to twenty people. Make lots and store for later meals. All these ingredients can be purchased at any health store in a variety of quantities. You can also get natural sugar if you need a sweetener. If bought and made in quantity, this fantastically healthy breakfast food will be cheaper than the brand name cellophane that passes for cereal.

Abbie making gefilte fish, below:

 
According to McDonald’s website...

McDonald’s USA is offering guests new reasons to feel good about the fun and the food at McDonald’s with the addition of a new yogurt side option for kids and a Happy Meal brand ambassador.

This terrifying new brand ambassador is called “Happy” (which, of course, is only coincidentally the same name as Pharrell’s ineluctable juggernaut). On the twitterverse people are already joking that “this is the meal that eats you!” and so on. It’s a pretty hilarious example of corporate self-hypnosis.
 

 
Perhaps you’re wondering: How on earth did they ever think that box with teeth would do anything but terrify children? Well, as a denizen of big corporate culture for a number of years now, I’ll bet I can take a pretty good guess at what happened:

1. Several years ago, an older, very high-level McDonald’s exec figured that the Ronald McDonald character was getting a little dated. A little long in the tooth. Even Ronald’s break-dancing and fist-bumping was getting old. So he called a meeting with a bunch of the young energetic MBA sub-execs and commanded them in no uncertain terms to come up with something “new” and “hip” because the public was no longer being charmed by the sight of a ginger clown selling them processed meat products.

2. Hoping the older exec would eventually forget, the MBAs commissioned a series of marketing studies that, a couple of years and a few millions of dollars later, culminated in some zany, purple, googly-eyed mascot that, while not exactly registering off-the-scales consumer-wise, was not hated or despised either.

3. The MBAs showed the senior exec images of their proposed mascot along with specially-selected customer testimonials, but the exec hated the proposed mascot and told them to come up with something completely different.

4. Of course, the MBAs were out of ideas and a veritable parade of potential new mascots all tested in the single-digits customer-approval-wise. As the weeks and months went by and the senior exec grew more irritable, the junior execs grew more and more desperate, while maneuvering into trying to lay blame on each other for the delay as well as the crappiness of the original purple googly-eyed mascot. After a night of serious drinking, however, they grabbed a guy from the graphics department to help them. After a while, one of them suggested that they simply stick arms and legs onto a happy meal and use the “golden arches” as eyebrows. An enormous gaping maw was probably considered a little too scary-looking so they gave it teeth. Since it was well past midnight the MBAs agreed to work together to sell the idea to the senior exec, even if none of them was honestly all that hot on it.

5. The next day, fighting reasonably bad hangovers, the MBAs worked hard to sell their idea, claiming that “Happy” (as the new mascot was to be called) was not terrifying at all, but had “tested strongly in the key demographics” (of course, “tested strongly” meant fear, confusion, or out-and-out hatred, but they didn’t tell the senior exec that). They argued that “Happy” would be the centerpiece of a “surround sound” strategy and that Pharrell himself was days away from selling them exclusive rights to his song.

6. Though somewhat dubious, the senior exec was reasonably placated and gave approval to “Happy” as the new mascot. None of the MBAs, of course, really like “Happy” all that much so they’ve kept his introduction pretty quiet and, after a few months, will even more quietly phase ol’ “Happy” out.
 

 
And there you have it: The birth of a shitty corporate trademark.

And in case you’re wondering: Yeah, corporate culture really works like that.

Below, the WSJ weighs in on the controversial new McDonald’s mascot…

Grey Squirrel: squirrel crostini, white mulberry, goat cheese, hazelnut & purslane
 
What constitutes luxury is most certainly subjective, but it’s usually connected to rarity or scarcity, or at least the perception thereof. For example, beautiful pearls can be created through farming technology, but people pay way more for natural, rather than cultured. Diamonds aren’t particularly rare either, but De Beers controls output, manufacturing scarcity to control prices. Sell the common as fancy is the real challenge, but photographer Christopher Testani, food stylist Michelle Gatton and art director Mason Adams believe it can be done.

Invasive Species is a photo series of just that—non-indigenous animals upsetting the balance of their new habitats—prepared and plated to gourmet presentation. Some of it doesn’t look half bad, but I’m a little skeptical of its wider appeal. Gatton hopes that we might “reclaim our role as predators and not consumers to restore balance in nature.” It’s a noble goal, Louisianans have been trying to make Nutria meat happen for years. It’s lean, delicious and comparable to rabbit, but the meat of a giant swamp rat is a hard sell for most folks. Maybe all they need is an artsier presentation?
 

Nutria: nutria sausage gumbo, tiger shrimp, bell pepper & black rice
 

Canadian Goose: goose leg confit, autumnberry sauce, sweet potato mash
 

Jellyfish: peanut butter jellyfish, wakame & salted cucumber salad
 

Wild Boar: wild boar ribs, celery root & watercress
 

Periwinkles: steamed periwinkles in calvados cream broth
 

Lionfish: lionfish ceviche, wild fennel & red onion
 

Earthworm: lemon curd tart in chocolate & earthworm crust, crispy earthworm topping
 
Via feature shoot

 
Yesterday Motörhead tweeted an image of what appears to Lemmy on a pancake. There’s no backstory to where the Lemmy pancake came from. Perhaps a fan sent it to them?

All hail the Lemmy pancake!!!
 

And then this happened! Lemmy appeared on a pancake! It's a miracle! #MotörheadForLife pic.twitter.com/WadxipzJxi

— Official Motörhead (@myMotorhead) May 22, 2014

 
Via Cherrybombed

 
In 1981, the Louis Malle-directed My Dinner with Andre was released to instant and lasting acclaim. The daring film had almost no conventional narrative, and revolved entirely around a lengthy and intense dinner conversation between old friends played by theater director Andre Gregory and the absolutely wonderful actor/playwright Wallace Shawn. (If for nothing else, you surely know him as “Vizzini” in The Princess Bride. If you haven’t read his work, maybe consider giving his Essays collection a whirl, for starters. He is quite brilliant.) Thanks to the charm of the two performers and the compelling content of the conversation, this risky and limited conceit worked.

Given its massive critical success and utterly distinctive character, the film has been parodied and used as a punchline countless times across all media. A favorite of mine was a throwaway sight gag in a 1993 Simpsons episode which showed the effete Martin Prince character playing a My Dinner with Andre arcade game.
 

 
But perhaps the very first parody/homage/whatever to emerge was the Andy Kaufman gem My Breakfast With Blassie. Where Andre featured a perceptive meaning-of-life debate between two patrician theater mavens in an elegant Manhattan restaurant, My Breakfast with Blassie presented two wrestlers—Kaufman, who was immersed in his bizarre late-career wrestling phase at the time (thus the neck brace), and actual legendary wrestling world figure “Classy” Freddie Blassie—spending an hourlong and oft-interrupted chat burnishing their own egos and griping about germs and the banality of small-talk over greasy food in a noisy, homely diner. You also get to see Blassie totally beat Dr. Atkins to the low-carb punch. The film was released direct to videocassette in late 1983, only months before Kaufman’s death from cancer. It’s been reissued on DVD twice, once in 2000, bundled with the I’m From Hollywood documentary about Kaufman’s wrestling exploits, and on its own in 2009. It turned up on YouTube last week, so you can see it right here if you like, but you might want to watch it soon, in case it gets yanked.
 

 
After the jump, Kaufman and Blassie talking about the project on Late Night with David Letterman...