Category Archives: Hedonism

May 8, 2017 2:21 PM

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) With the same comic cool with which he created him, cartoonist Matt Furie has killed off his character, Pepe the Frog after the carefree amphibian was hijacked by far-right extremists.

In a one-page strip in Fantagraphics Free Comic Book Day offering, Worlds Greatest Cartoonists, Pepes stoner-bro roommates, Andy, Brett and Landwolf toast him as he lies dead in an open casket.

(Fantagraphics, Free Comic Book Day)

The quartet of slackers were part of Furies Boys Club series that debuted in a 2006 comic book and shot to meteoric comic book fame. Fans identified with the comical vignettes combining laconic psychedelia, childlike enchantment, drug-fueled hedonism, and impish mischief, according to the blurb on Amazon Books.

Years later, Pepe would spawn a fan base that Furie never anticipated. His beloved chill frog-dude would be dubbed a symbol of hate.

Internet memes showing Pepe adorned with swastikas, mocking progressives, and making racist and sexist and anti-Semitic remarks were plastered across social media.

Hillary Clinton condemned the meme during her 2016 election bid and it was designated a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.

There were so many Pepe memes promoting Donald Trumps presidential campaign that Trump himself tweeted an image that morphed his likeness with Furies green frog.

In retaliation, Furie mounted a campaign to #SavePepe.

In a video, Pepe the Frog: From Innocent Meme to Hate Symbol, Furie says, Pepe is just basically a chill frog. He likes to do nothing, just basically hang out with his bros, watch tv, eat snacks, chill out, occasionally smoke various plants.

It just kind of melts my spirit a little bit because a cartoon that I made had evolved to become somebodys symbol for hate.

Furie would spend months trying to spin his dilemma into something positive, teaming up with the ADL, and even coming out in support of Clinton in 2016.

Lifes too short to be a hater, says Furie in the video. Apparently, he has opted to cut Pepes life short to keep the green icon from being just that.

No doubt, haters will continue to exploit Pepe, but for Furie, it appears his chill-frog dudes soul can finally rest in peace.

Read more here:

Cartoonist Kills Pepe The Frog Character After Stoner Icon Co-Opted By Alt-Right - CBS San Francisco Bay Area

Festivals have long been cosmic experiences havens of music and hedonism designed to whisk you away from reality for 72 hours. Of course, those mind-melting moments usually arrive at 6am in the dance tent rather than watching someone in a lab coat wielding a telescope. Not so in 2017. Blame Brian Cox, blame The Big Bang Theory, but music festivals have gone giddy for geekery.

It simply isnt enough to put bands on in a field anymore, says Paul Reed, general manager of the Association of Independent Festivals. Anyone with money who wants to take a huge gamble can do that. He says areas such as science are a natural step for experiential boutique festivals, which offer alternative activities alongside the music, and who are keen to broaden their audiences and offer them a more cerebral experience.

One such festival is Deer Shed in North Yorkshire. Since 2013 its science tent has gradually grown into a phantasmagoria of dorky delights, mostly geared towards children. This year forensics and slime-making workshops sit alongside live spectrograms, which allow you to see your own voice, modular synth-making sessions and another in which you can solder your own lie detector perfect for nippers and hungover parents alike.

According to its Deer Sheds organisers, the science are has become increasingly popular. Not all kids are arty, not all kids are sporty or into music, explains Oliver Jones, the festivals co-founder. Some kids will spend their whole weekend in the science tent. Thats a mentality also shared by Latitude festival: their Wildlife, Weird Science & Adventure kids area features everything from astronomy classes to a School Of Noise where future Aphex Twins can make their own experimental electronic beats.

Its not just children reaping the benefits of the boom in scientific festivals. Events such as Also festival in Warwickshire and Bluedot at Jodrell Bank observatory are aimed more at adults. The former has been billed as a small festival with big ideas and also been likened to Ted talks in a field. Bluedot, meanwhile, returns this year after its 2016 debut with an astronomy-heavy lineup alongside the musical bill. Its science programme includes talks on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, the future of humans in space and the anatomy of a solar eclipse as if the complex time signatures of musical headliners Alt-J werent boggling enough.

Talks such as these bring some sense, says its organisers, to our unsteady world. People are much more interested in science and its place in our lives; were all aware that science and technology will shape the future, says Prof Tessa Anderson, science-culture director of Bluedot. It really expresses a new zeitgeist; [science] is the natural counterbalance to the post-truth manipulation of information.

There are few stars who bridge the worlds of science and music quite like Brian May, who has both Queen guitarist and PhD in astrophysics on his CV. Four years ago he teamed up with fellow astrophysicist Garik Israelian to create Starmus festival in Norway, designed to enhance our knowledge of the universe via science and the arts.

As a child I was forced to choose between art and science as if they were mutually incompatible, says May. I never believed it. I think the Victorians got it right: to be complete human beings, we need an appreciation of everything the universe has to offer. As for what Starmus has to offer, therell be headline talks from Stephen Hawking, Buzz Aldrin and Brian Eno, and performances from guitar hero Steve Vai and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra.

Elsewhere, dance music festivals have taken the tech up a notch to explore the relationship between listening to and making music. North Carolinas Moogfest has hundreds of sessions with geektastic names such as For the Love of Audio Gear and 3D Audio Space Jam, while, in the UK, Sheffields No Bounds preps for the main October event with a launch party in June where therell be coding workshops followed by shedding some cells to a set by DJs Nina Kraviz and Helena Hauff.

Creative director Liam O Shea says: No Bounds is about moving beyond boundaries. Its about change, growth, movement and hopefully progress. A little highfalutin it might be, but events such as these hark back to the hippy days when festivals were seen as incubators of change: beards and weirds coming together in an attempt to create accord during difficult times.

If the geek will indeed inherit the Earth, then, it looks like their benign takeover starts with its festivals.

Read the original here:

Here comes the science bit: why music festivals are going geek - The Guardian

For muchof its 35-year history, MTV has lit the way. You may not have always liked where it led, but whats undeniable is how much ithas danced onthe cutting edge of youth culture, folding the future into the present. In the early 80s, it turned music video into an aestheticand marketing revolution by making it into the new pop normal; it also took the Jell-O-shot bacchanalia of spring break and transformed it into a new (lowdown) ideal for everyone heading off to college. In the 90s, with The Real World, MTV invented reality TV as we know it. It also gave us the divine idiocy of Beavis and Butt-Head, the divine meathead hedonism of Jersey Shore, and no small thing ironic detachment as a way of being.

It also gave us the MTV Movie Awards, a snark-drenched put-on of an awards show that when it first started, back in 1992 (and for a few years afterward), I used to find refreshing. Not just because it seemed an antidote to the self-seriousness of the Academy Awards, or because such only-on-MTV categories asBest Kiss hadan irresistible legitimacy in terms of how we watch movies, but because the shows shameless embrace of youth culture sometimes led it to choose better winners. (In 1995, Forrest Gump was nominated, but MTV went for Pulp Fiction.) The shows way of mocking movies as a form of flattery was also ahead of the curve.

Yet for too long now, the popcorn charm of the MTV Movie Awards has been fraying, as the show devolved more and more into a boilerplate two-hour promotional reel. When the producers decided, for the first time this year, to convert the show into the MTV Movie & TV Awards, it didnt exactly feel like one of those MTV revolutionary ripples, maybe because the Golden Globes fused the two mediums long ago. I assumed the format would change, but that the promo would go on as usual.

And it did. Here was Tom Holland, the unabashedly boyish star of Spider-Man: Homecoming (hes just 20, much younger than Tobey Maguire or Andrew Garfield when they took on the role), introducing a big fat clip as if he were at Comic-Con. Here were Amy Schumer and Goldie Hawn, introducing the Movie of the Year award by saying, See Snatched!

But here as well, even in the midst of host Adam DeVine offering some welcome tweakingof identity politics (Adam gets it!), was a changethat seemed right in line with the tradition of MTVdoing revolutionary things becausewell, they feel like it. That change was the introduction of acting categories that, for the first time in history (as the show preeningly but accurately put it), didnt separate actors based on their sex. Men competing with women: No distinction. Exactly the sort of thing that would make a lot of people (including myself) say, Oh, come on, thats not going to work! As if the standard way of doing it Best Actor, Best Actress has been some endlessly perpetuated sexist mistake that was only now, at long last, being corrected.

Yet when Emma Watson won the very first award for Best Actor in a Movie, which she did for her performance in Beauty and the Beast, competing against such performers as Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out, Hailee Steinfeld in The Edge of Seventeen, and Hugh Jackman in Logan, and accepted the award from the non-binary Billions star Asia Kate Dillon, Watsons speech hit a note of sparklingand literate graciousness that had a meaning far beyond the context. The win itself came off as inevitable to the point of being pro forma, folding in the usual MTV factor of what a monster hit the movie was. Yet Watson, like most of the people nominated, represents a new generation of star. She was more than comfortable treating the traditional acting gender wall not as a separate-but-equal distinction but as a sideways glass ceiling. For a few moments, she made you seeit in a new way.

Where will all this lead? I dont even want to predict. Maybe nowhere. Maybe somewhere. But what it could depend on is exactly the feelings of actors like Watson, who represent evolving ways of looking at things. Wherever it leads (or doesnt), I have to give the MTV Movie & TV Awards credit for having the audacity to shake up the cultural DNA, to show us what a new kind of post-gender consciousness feelslike. For kicking open a door by simplydoing it. Maybe its just a sexually correct tempest in a teapot. A decade from now, on the other hand, we could be saying: It all started here. The way so many things do at MTV.

Link:

The MTV Movie & TV Awards: A New Gender Revolution? - Variety

Chuck Avery 5:30 p.m. ET May 4, 2017

Chuck Avery(Photo: Provided)

Supposedly we humans are the only living creatures who are aware of our existence, which is a roundabout way of saying that we are the only ones who know we are going to die. We are also the only ones who care.

Some recently-completed study has reinforced the first statement; the second is opinion. For the study, behavior scientists put various animals in front of a mirror to see which would know they were looking at their reflections and which would react as though they were looking at another animal.

Some of the higher primates chimps, orangutans, etc. began to understand that they were looking at themselves. Humans did not recognize themselves until they reached the age of 18 to 24 months. (Cats, I suspect, after realizing that their reflections offered no amusement, would show their usual disdain.)

One might argue that our many and various codes of behavior can be summarized by the common expression, If I did that, how could I look at myself in the mirror? Along those same lines, if we were not mindful of our impending deaths, I doubt most religions whose primary attraction is that a life after this one would have many followers.

Being aware of our mortality has also given birth to contrasting philosophies to explain our existence. The one we choose individually to follow guides our lifestyles and forms our personalities.

Take my old army buddy, Frankie Oliverio, for example. After living in the same barracks with Frankie for over a year and spending much of my off-duty time with him, I would say he was a dedicated hedonist with overtones of narcissism.

Frankie was one of these small, but perfectly molded, men of Italian descent. With his dark complexion, curly black hair and blue eyes, he closely resembled a young Tony Curtis. He was self-assured, but never unpleasant. He appreciated what nature had given him and made the best of it.

We were stationed in Germany, near the tourist city of Wiesbaden, where we spent most of our leisure hours. After picking up our passes and before we left the barracks, Frankie always made one last stop in front of a mirror to make sure that everything was perfect. He would tug one curly lock of hair until it hung jauntily over his forehead. Satisfied, he would turn to me and say, Lets go get em. Frankie swaggered through the streets of downtown Wiesbaden like John Travolta strutting across the Brooklyn Bridge to the tune of Staying Alive.

As young men, Frankie and I had a kind of symbiotic relationship. I hung with him because he attracted girls; he hung with me for the contrast.

As people age, they sometimes turn from hedonism to solipsism, which is related to narcissism. For example, my step-father and father-in-law both believed that when they died, the world would come to an end. They were so convinced that they did everything but walk around town carrying a sign.

The true solipsist would insist that all reality exists only in the mind of the individual. It is hard to argue with a solipsist, for he believes he is responsible not only for your argument, but also for your very being. To his way of thinking, if he closes his eyes and stops his ears, you will no longer exist.

Now that were both older, I decided to try to contact my old friend, Frankie. I eventually located a relative in West Virginia, who said Frankie died over a decade ago. I was sorry to hear it, but hes still alive in my mind.

Perhaps thats where he existed all the time.

EmailChuck Averyat:charlesravery@gmail.com.

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Checking the mirror to see if we're here - Palladium-Item

New Yorks long boom of new restaurants that traffic in the retro-luxury fantasias of earlier, more decadent eras has finally reached its apogee in the most anticipated opening of the year, Major Food Groups The Grill. While Le Coucou has given us quenelles de brochet once more and Thomas Keller promises to restore continental cuisine at TAK Room, Mario Carbones menu of both faithfully reconstructed mid-century dishes and new ones inspired by the era, served in one of the most treasured rooms in the city, reaches beyond the simple old-is-new-again paradigm.

Its shown in everything from the the names of the dishes like wild pheasant Claiborne, a literal dream dish of the legendary New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne to over-the-top details like the Tom Ford-designed $6,000 uniforms and the $10,000 trolley carts, where service captains will debone Dover sole, plate filet Peconic, and flamb desserts.

The menus propensity for the guiltless luxuries of upscale restaurants past is particularly present in the wild pheasant Claiborne. Its a riff on pheasant Souvaroff, a one-pot course where foie gras, black truffles, endive, and Madeira are sealed with the bird in a puff-pastry-lined pot and baked to create something like an incredibly decadent pot pie. At The Grill, the dish is prepared in a millennial-pink Le Creuset stacks of pink cast-iron pots dominate the shelves in the kitchen, which is otherwise stocked with more serious gold-rimmed plates and utilitarian cookware and when ready, the pastry is punctured to fill the air with the scent of truffles.

The unabashed hedonism of the cuisine goes hand-in-hand with the spectacle that diners have come to expect at Major Food Group restaurants like Carbone; those impulses combine most spectacularly in an egg noodle dish called pasta a la presse. Parts of a duck, squab, pheasant are roasted, and then paired with bacon, tomatoes, and onions on a platter.

A tuxedo-clad server wheels a cart topped with both the platter and a Victorian-looking duck press over to a table and piles in the ingredients. Then the server starts to crank: The juices, both meaty and vegetal, slowly dribble into the now-empty pan, forming a small pool of jus.

The pressing of the duck, pheasant, squab, bacon, and more for the pasta

When hes finished, he rolls the cart away and whisks the jus-filled pan to the kitchen, where a chef will pour the sauce onto bright yellow egg noodles. After being garnished with grated parmesan, the waiter brings the deceptively simple-looking dish back to the table for the diner.

Other dishes simply use sauces from times past or drop names that rarely appear anymore: Ravigote, a classic acidic French sauce with shallots, capers, and herbs, is usually paired with vegetables or tte de veau (boiled cows head). Here, The Grill pairs the sauce with tuna for a dish that Carbone describes as nicoise-y, referring to the classic salad of tomato, Nice olives, anchovies, olive oil, and hard-boiled eggs.

A filet Peconic refers to seafood from the Peconic Bay on Long Island. Carbone dry-rubs and roasts a 10-ounce filet in the hearth, and dresses it with Island Creek oysters that have been smoked over the grill and finished in a white wine butter sauce.

As for dessert, there is the grasshopper Charlotte, lemon chiffon, and a Nesslerode coupe with frozen custard, candied fruits, currants, and whipped cream. But the day before the restaurant officially opened, Carbone pointed to the cherries melba flamb, a combo of cherries jubilee and peach melba the latter being a dessert that Escoffier created over a 100 years ago at the Savoy London.

Here, housemade vanilla ice cream is dressed with cherry compote. Once the dessert arrives at the table, the first of the seasons cherries from Santa Barbara are flambed in bourbon, then ladled over the ice cream. As to why hes sourced cherries from the north and west, Carbone says he likes sweet and sour together.

Even Claiborne would approve: Of fresh cherries, he once wrote, theres no surer sign of early summer.

99 East 52nd St., New York, NY 10019

Link:

The Grill May Be Manhattan's Most Luxe Time Machine - Eater NY

READER REPORT:

SAM NIGHTINGALE

Last updated12:01, May 1 2017

Getty Images

Warriors player Kieran Foran gives a somewhat halfhearted wave to the crowd after a narrow win over the Sydney Roosters.

A few years ago I wrote a philosophy essay on a theory of wellbeing known as "hedonism".

Hedonism states that what makes a life go well for an individual is the greatest balance of pleasure over pain:that we can know what is good for us and what is bad for us through the experience of pleasure or pain, and we can do what is good for us and what is bad for us by actions that produce pleasure or pain.

Watching the New Zealand Warriors for the past fiveyears and counting has left me seriously doubting the team'spositive effects on my wellbeing.

Watching the Warriors every week is of course only a microcosm of my life over this time, butnonetheless there areflow-on effects every time that 80-minute siren sounds.

READ MORE: * Defence key for win: Kearney * Warriors hope performances lead to points * Crazy times good for no-one * Lolohea'sdays at Warriors numbered

I try to remember those times where the pleasure of watching the Warriors far outweighed the pain the evening of 2 October2011 when the Warriors took on the Sea Eagles in their first grand final appearance in nineyears, for example.

The Captain Cook Tavern in Dunedin was as full as a night during O week, despite the fact thatit was dangerously close to the end of year exams of the hundreds of students whopacked in to watch. And it didnt take long for them, or me, to maybe wish that we hadnt.

Im sure many who watched that night felt pain of the sort any loyal sports fan would feel, with the pleasure of the thought of winning the grand finale a distant memory.

And so it began. The vicious cycle of weekly hope ranging from pre-season to pre-game expectation.

And so it continues - fiveyears later and counting. The number of times I have turned the TV off feeling pain has sadly far outnumbered the times I have turned it off feeling pleasure. Yet for some reason I keep turning it on the next week.

Maybe it is because I know that my late friend, and flatmate, would be there on the couch watching, no matter the score, until the final hooter. Maybe it is because I hope to feel that pleasure of the Warriors winning, and winning in a league full of Australian teams for there is hardly a more pleasurable feeling, right? Maybe it's because I like feeling that pain of being let down time and time again... but I dont think so.

After watching the Warriors stumble and fumble their way to two losses in a row, something inside me was triggered probably my pleasure and pain receptors.

I simply couldnt do it, I couldnt bring myself to watch them take on the Roosters at 4pm on a Sunday.

Instead I found myself writing this.

At halftime we were up 12-4. When I saw that online I felt hope, hope that we would win. This faded to that familiar feeling of pain when it was 12-12 with less than 10 minutesto play.

The next time I checked the score was when I hadnearly finished writing this. 14-13 to the Warriors at full time, on an 80th minute penalty no less.

I dont think I want to know the details, and now I am just lost. I dont know whether to feel pain that I missed watching the game when I nearly always do, pain that I will have to wait another week to watch them (twodue to the international window), or pleasure that we managed a win; but pleasure which can only be held in check by the knowledge of the inevitable cycle of the last fiveyears and counting.

Hedonism states that what makes a life go well for an individual is the greatest balance of pleasure over pain:that we can know what is good for us and what is bad for us through the experience of pleasure or pain, and we can do what is good for us and what is bad for us by actions that produce pleasure or pain.

So maybe I should just be a Storm supporter.

-Stuff Nation

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NZ Warriors: My faith is running out - Stuff.co.nz

GMNI officials with Minister of Youth and Sports, Imam Nahrawi (ist)

JAKARTA, NETRALNEWS.COM The Indonesian National Student Movement (GMNI) assesses that Indonesia's education is still hampered by various problems that ignore the character building education based on nationality and the people.

GMNIs Education Committee member Widya Fattah conveyed the reasons for the spread of cultural hedonism and radicalism among youth. According to him, privatization and liberalization in the world of education had become a factor of cultural outbreak of hedonism and radicalism.

"Privatization and liberalization of education become the entrance to the spread of cultural hedonism and radicalism among youth," Widya said in Jakarta on Tuesday (2/5/2017).

According to him, liberalization and privatization of education is felt to facilitate other understandings into the world of education that weakens the state in shaping the nation and character building of the Indonesian nation.

He also highlighted the ease of understanding of radicalism in the world of education. This is supported by the findings of textbooks taught in Jombang, East Java.

In that book students are allowed to persecute other children of other faiths. It indicates the weakness of the state to supervise the substance of education.

It is time, he said, the government restore the function of education as an arena of sharpening reasoning skills, and develop intellectual and character as Bung Karno called about renaissance-pedagogie, which is education to raise the nation.

Therefore, GMNI urges the government of the Republic of Indonesia to re-enter the curriculum on Pancasila and to socialize the importance of nationalism and nationality of Indonesia from primary education to higher education.

"There is no bargaining, civic education must be done seriously, not as a political commodity, because the output is the behavior of the nation's children in society," he said.

Read this article:

Why Radicalism Culture is Spreading in Indonesia - Netralnews

On May 2, Alitalias board unanimously voted to place the airline into administration, triggering thatfeeling of dj vu...again.

Ive been an aviation journalist for nearly 15 years. Over that time Ive lost count of how many times the Alitalia death knell has been rung.

Like the 1993 Bill Murray film, Groundhog Day, we keep repeating the same day again and again. Alitalia is caught in an endless loop.

Italian shareholders and Etihad Airways were willing to plough another 2 billion ($1.1 billion) into the airline, based on a cost cutting plan where only one third of the cuts were labor-related.

But just as the media have been through the cycle several times, so have Alitalias employees. The plan was rejected, forcing the company into administration. Again.

After indulging in hedonism and committing suicide numerous times, he [Phil Connors, an arrogant Pittsburgh TV weatherman] begins to re-examine his life and priorities, says the Wikipedia entry for the film.

The parallel with Alitalia is strong. The question is will Alitalia be given another chance to re-examine its existence? The most likely answer is yes, but the outlook for the foreseeable future is far from fair.

Victoria Moores victoria.moores@penton.com

Continue reading here:

Italy's Groundhog Day - ATWOnline (blog)

They traveled the world, they drank from the fountains of madness, they nibbled at the forbidden fruits of wisdom and laved at the shores of freedom. They are vagabonds, united by their wish to crush frontiers, tear down walls and open dams. Not only with their music, but also within our hearts. They will stop at nothing until they achieved this and absolutely refuse to take any prisoners whatsoever. Enter Gasmac Gilmore, sinners galore and the massively rocking heralds of a new age.

Emir Kusturica's new favorite band, trade magazine Melodies & Rhythms judged, even the strongly conservative Rock Hard's couldn't help but be enthused by their Polka on speed. What we are talking about here is one of these rare sensations proving even after 66 wild years of Rock'n'Roll that originality isn't something that can be bought or studied. Either you got it. Or you don't. Gasmac Gilmore got it. Their reservoir of musical astonishments and aural surprises seems as inexhaustible as Kustirica's visionary visual worlds. Gogol Bordello meets Kaizers Orchestra meets System Of A Down witty, ludicrous, insane from tip to toe.

Some things can't and shouldn't be explained. They should be sensed. Gasmac Gilmore is one of them. A Viennese band consisting of members who one day felt that pure Death Metal just wasn't enough anymore. A band boldly engrossing all the dichotomies of the unmatched indulgence and morbidity of their home town on four prior albums. Where Orient meets Occident, where the river Danube flushes Western culture into the haven of the Black Sea they chose to settle down, becoming the fearless and somewhat lunatic pioneers in the borderlands of allegedly disparate cultures. The geographic vicinity to Eastern Europe already left its mark on the local music scene in the 19th century, drummer Max Berner says. A massive Balkan hype emerged around a club called Ostklub, not failing to ignite us as a band. Victor Ezio Gabriel adds: We love to combine things that don't belong together at first glance. Like a battery-powered tube amp and a crowded Viennese underground carriage during rush hour. Yes, it really happened! And what's more: All these tired people getting home from work suddenly grabbed our beer cans, began to dance and even forgot to leave the train.

It is important to note, however, that Gasmac Gilmore are not your typical vernacular brand of semi-traditional group setting out to proclaim a new Viennese dandy revolution using the momentum of their iconic artist Falco. On their first German album Begnadet fr das Schne (Blessed by Beauty) Gasmac Gilmore prove to be the band everyone will be talking about in 2017. This is not a forecast. It is a warning. Their music is a sweaty stampede through Alt-Metal, thrashing Rock, tongue-in-cheek Polka Punk, Balkan chuzpe and the fury of Klezmer. To add even more megalomania to their antics, the new album title Begnadet fr das Schne is a direct quote from Austria's national anthem! It is a very strange sentence which of course didn't fail to impress us, vocalist and guitarist Matthias Wick grins wickedly. Usually, you are considered 'blessed' for something you're really good at. For being blessed for our sense of beauty? That doesn't sound like hard work, but more like that certain type of hedonism quite common in Austria. With this in mind, the album cover fits like a glove: On it, Gasmac Gilmore sport swanky gingham pattern pullovers while playing golf at a miniature golf course and cheer at a couple of Wrestlers while having Champagne. Decadence, hedonism and a certain disconnection from reality are the essential pillars carrying this album, Elias Berner (guitar) says. We approach it via our very own irony and make a point not to take ourselves too seriously.

In the past, a multitude of sources compared their breakneck approach to that of esteemed icons System Of A Down. A bold move indeed. But a move not unjustified. Apart from the uncanny vocal similarities of Matthias to dervish Serj Tankian, it is the throbbing push towards eclecticism and a glaring aversion against blinkers of all sorts that justifies a comparison like this. We were never about playing authentic Balkan music. Others are way better at that than we are, Max points out regarding the vast breadth of influences. Beginning as a Rock band, we just wanted to push the envelope as far as we can. Metal, Rock, Polka, Punk, Klezmer, Blues, Pop? Gasmac Gilmore dance on the graves of obsolete drawers and smilingly beckon their listeners to join in their enraptured dance macabre. Ultimately, everything they do is blessed by their sense of beauty.

Tour de nations

As of this day, daredevilry has a new hero. It's called Gasmac Gilmore and is leading this enterprise begun in 2002 to unprecedented heights. A cornucopia of musical ardor, Storm and Stress in an universe of Metal, Rock and Balkan folklore. There is no no in their language, between two stools is where they sit best. Then again, this troupe never finds time to sit down anyway. After gigs in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Romania, Italy, the Czech Republic, Slowakia and the Netherlands, the conquering of uncharted territory is right on top of their ambitious agenda. It was not for nothing that Germany's rather merciless online magazine laut.de found these explicit words: The fact that this team is not playing the festival stages throughout Europe is a nuisance that must be rectified immediately. And it will be. With gusto, Gasmac Gilmore trample down genre limitations like a pack of scallywags stealing fruits off the neighbors' trees. Unconventional like a die hard Heavy Metal fan at a Balkan party, unrestrained like a Gypsy celebration at full moon, bursting with ideas like a think tank full of geniuses and crazy like a witch after too many magic shrooms... Gasmac Gilmore is all that and yet so much more. A shapeshifter with a twinkle in his eyes and melancholy in his heart, daydreamer and nightwalker, lost in reverie and yet rooted firmly in the here and now. Heavenly joy, followed by deadly sorrow, thirsty and hung over, optimistic and critical, enthusiastic and elegiac. Colorful like life, loud like life, wonderful like life, strange like life, unique like life. And by now also officially blessed by beauty.

Euro Live Gigs:

30.04. DE - Sonthofen, Barfly

12.05. AT Wien, B72

27.05.-28.05. DE Kln, Roleplayconvention

29.06.-30.06. DE Dsseldorf, Sommerkult

01.07. AT - Weiz, Cross Check Festival

05.07. CZ - Hradec Kralove, Rock for People

08.07. DE Halle/Kln, Rhein Rock Festival

25.07. DE Mnchen, Free and Easy

04.08.-05.08. DE Gssnitz, Open Air

26.08. DE - Rudolstadt, Residenzschlo Heidecksburg (Support von IN EXTREMO)

27.08. DE - Hanau, Amphitheater Hanau(Support von IN EXTREMO)

15.09. DE Kummerfeld, Ackerfestival

13.10.-14.10. DE Hameln, Autumn Moon29.04. DE - Geislingen, Seemhle

30.04. DE - Sonthofen, Barfly

12.05. AT Wien, B72

27.05.-28.05. DE Kln, Roleplayconvention

29.06.-30.06. DE Dsseldorf, Sommerkult

01.07. AT - Weiz, Cross Check Festival

05.07. CZ - Hradec Kralove, Rock for People

08.07. DE Halle/Kln, Rhein Rock Festival

25.07. DE Mnchen, Free and Easy

04.08.-05.08. DE Gssnitz, Open Air

26.08. DE - Rudolstadt, Residenzschlo Heidecksburg (Support von IN EXTREMO)

27.08. DE - Hanau, Amphitheater Hanau(Support von IN EXTREMO)

15.09. DE Kummerfeld, Ackerfestival

13.10.-14.10. DE Hameln, Autumn MoonTODO 24.04.2017

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Gasmac Gilmore On Spring 2017 Tour Now - Grateful Web

EAST VILLAGE A new food and drink collaboration kicks off on Thursday, April 27 at You & Yours Distilling Co. when Culinary Hedonism will bring its Supper Club pop-up to the distillery. The six-course meal, prepared by Culinary Hedonisms chef Peter Calley, will be paired by mini cocktails from You & Yours including the Side Salad made with Y&Y Vodka, green bell pepper, basil, lime, honey, sea salt, and olive oil; the dinner the first in a series of events that will be hosted at the tasting room. A small amount to seats remain open for the intimate dinner, which focuses on seasonal cuisine and locally-sourced ingredients, starts at 6 p.m. and is $150 per person. [EaterWire]

PACIFIC BEACH The Grass Skirt is ushering in the fresh releases on its spring cocktail with a tiki shindig scheduled for tomorrow, April 26. Expect drummers, dancers and music to celebrate the new menu which includes a must-see custom punch bowl from Tiki Farm filled with two helpings of Aku-Aku Lapu, a cocktail with The Grass Skirts signature rum blend, Demerara 151, lemon, pineapple, grapefruit, passionfruit, falernum, and demerara. A special $8 price will be offered all night on the other new drink additions ranging from The Martinique Banana Trading Co. with XO Rhum Agricole, banana liqueur and allspice bitters to the Melbourne Manhattan, a mix of bourbon, sweet vermouth, coffee-infused bitters, and tiki allspice bitters. [EaterWire]

LA JOLLA On Monday, May 22, George's California Moderns culinary director/partner Trey Foshee and chef de cuisine Jonathan Bautista will welcome Justin Cogley into their kitchen for a special collaborative dinner. Currently executive chef of Aubergine at LAuberge Carmel, Cogley worked at Charlie Trotters in Chicago for four years and has been awarded "Grand Chef Relais & Chteaux" and Best New Chef by Food & Wine Magazine. Guests will be able to mingle with all three chefs through the dinner; reservations begin at 6 p.m. for the $130, nine-course menu with optional beverage pairings. Call 858.454.4244 extension 129 for reservations. [EaterWire]

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Culinary Hedonism at You & Yours Distilling - Eater San Diego