7-inch single of “What A Drag” featuring the infamous cover image of a cigarette smoking a joint out now from Cantora Records.

Mi Ami:

Bob Holman & Karamo

I went to see Safe, AKA Chris Edley play a few week ago at ATA. You can’t exactly tell from my blurry photography, but Chris was singing over beats recorded onto a VHS, which also contained a video of him kneeling shirtless in front of the camera singing along. It ain’t easy to stand up in front of a seated audience to sing along with a tape so props to him for entertaining the shit out of a tired audience. How do I know it was a tired audience? Because most of us were at the same party the night before.

Safe’s new record is available now from Greedhead/Lasercave. Check out Bob Weicz’s video for the hit “20 Years On”

I met Chris a few months ago, and I was realy excited because as my friend Jesse put it, “Everyone seems to know who he is.” And I guess, I know Chris now too. Does that make me cool?

Speaking of Jesse, he organized the event as part of his monthy Deap Leap Microcinema series, which features some amazingly curated expirimental video. How he watches/ makes so much of that stuff without having a seizure, I’ll never know. More blurry photography after the jum.

A few months ago, I went to interview/ photograph Owen Pallett (the artist formerly known as Final Fantasy) at Different Ear Studios in San Francisco. Photos didn’t get used, but I think they’re pretty cool.

More After the Jump…

TMLE are awesome. They’ve got a new EP entitled:

“THEM STEADILY DEPRESSING, LOW DOWN MIND MESSING, POST MODERN RECESSION BLUES,”

More photos after the jump.

What more can be said about this?

I took this photo of California AG Jerry Brown and Former SF Mayor Willie Brown talking this morning after the AG’s presser announcing a law suit against Wells Fargo. A political move?

W. Brown was no doubt there covering the story for his current gig “Willie’s World” at the Chronicle. Please note how much better dressed W. Brown is than J. Brown.

So what are they talking about?  Probably about the AG’s gubernatorial campaign. J. Brown could really use the help from the popular ex-SF Mayor now that current SF Mayor Gavin Newsom has officially thrown his hat into the crowded Democratic field.

Did I forget to mention that current SF Mayor Gavin Newsom officially announced his candidacy for governor this week via Twitter? According to his Twitter account (and probably with it’s aid) Mayor Newsom managed to raise $28,000 on  his first day in the race.

Hurray for him.

I went to Interior Secretary Salazar’s San Francisco hearing on offshore drilling to cover the protest outside.   From the SFBG:

U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was welcomed to San Francisco last Thursday by a host of activists dressed as marine creatures, including a few diehards in head-to-toe polar bear costumes who were probably becoming endangered species themselves by standing out in the sun. At a public hearing called to solicit comments about a federal plan for new offshore-oil development, environmentalists and elected officials demanded that the new interior secretary reject new leases for oil drilling off the California coast.

One of the “die hards” in dressed in a six-foot- tall polar bear costume was Brian Nowicki, a policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

There’s lots of folks here saying no drilling, clean safe energy now, however, at the same time, we are in the middle of that period where the deadline where Secretary Salazar can restore endangered species protections to the polar bear and species threatened by global warming.

The occasion of the offshore drilling hearing drew more than 30 environmental groups under the slogan “Not the Answer.” Offshore drilling is a rallying point because, as Nowicki points out, drilling is a symbollic battle for a myriad of interconnected  environmental issues.

Offshore Drilling is a double  barreled threat for the polar bear and species threatened by global warming. On the first hand you have off shore oil rigs development potentially going right into the offshore habitat for the polar bear. On the other side you have the greenhouse gas emissions coming from the burning of those fossil fuels that contributes very directly to the global warming that is the primary threat to polar bears and the species threatened by global warming.

More photos after the jump…

See the whole album on Flickr.