Hot Lixx Hulahan beat out 20 challengers from around the globe to become the world's champion air guitar player.  The championship takes place in Finland and an American hasn't won since 2004.  Apparently, Hot Lixx has dominated the US competitive field for a couple of years.  Now he's shredded his way to world domination.  What a rock star.

Three fried-egg sandwiches.

An omelet.

A bowl of grits.

Three slices of French toast.

Three chocolate chip pancakes.

Two cups of coffee.

Phelps burns 900-1100 calories per hour in a training session.

Breakfast of arts blogger:

Three cups of coffee.

Power bar.

Calories burned while blogging:  10-15, depending on topic.

We have become a nation of key taps and cell phone clicks.  You become aware of the clicks in your daily work flow when you get a new keyboard - all of sudden the tapping at your desk is louder and more resonant.  Then there's the common ring tone, most noticable when cell phones sing their way into a meeting, or movie, or, as in the other night, the Lyle Lovett concert at Humphreys (I was bitter and commenced with the glaring).  But today I present you with a strange and ingenious use of cell phone tapping, clicks, and...Mozart.  I also leave you with this question:  Isn't the human impulse to engage in random and odd forms of expression refreshing?  Or maybe it's this question:  Did that impulse increase with the birth of YouTube and its platform?  Enjoy!

I am now in the midst of acclimating to the world again.  I'm going slowly, hoping to not get the bends as I move from Comic-Con submersion to street-level life.   Culturally, I'm moving from this:

To this:

This is not only one of my favorite pictures of Tom Waits, it's one of my favorite images of a celeb ever.   It was taken by photographer Anton Corbijn, who also directed Control, last year's great movie about the band Joy Division.  I look at a framed poster from Control every day as it hangs in my office, right above my desk, and was generously given to me by KPBS film critic Beth Accomando.  In the image above, I think Corbijn captures Waits perfectly.  It looks like something Tim Burton or Edward Gorey would dream up.

Since the release of Being John Malkovich many years ago, I've occasionally wondered whose head I'd want to live in for twenty-four hours. If, for example, I found a portal in my KPBS office (I really should look under my desk), who'd make me venture down the rabbit hole to spend time in his or her head?  By the way, I REALLY wish I had said portal in my KPBS office.  Anyway, Edward Gorey would definitely be on the list.  Evelyn Glennie would be another - to live in a deaf musician's head would be amazing.  Prince is on the list, so is Edward Albee, Michel Gondry, Dave Chappell, and this guy popped up on my list yesterday (before he got busted, of course, and just to live the thrill of transgression for 24 hours).  But always, always close to the top of my list is Tom Waits.  This fantastic interview with Waits, where he interviews himself, just solidifies that ranking.  Reading the interview feels like being in his head for a moment - maybe not a full-on portal, but close. 

To whet your appetite, here's what Waits wrote introducing his interview with himself:

I must admit, before meeting Tom, I had heard so many rumors and so much gossip that I was afraid. Frankly, his gambling debts, his animal magnetism, coupled with his disregard for the feelings of others… His elaborate gun collection, his mad shopping sprees, the face lifts, the ski trips, the drug busts and the hundreds of rooms in his home. The tax shelters, the public urination…I was nervous to meet the real man himself. Baggage and all. But I found him to be gentle, intelligent, open, bright, helpful, humorous, brave, audacious, loquacious, clean, and reverent. A Boy Scout, really (and a giant of a man). Join me now for a rare glimpse into the heart of Tom Waits. Remove your shoes and no smoking, please.

Not exactly "heavy breathing," I mean, it is NPR.  It would be like hearing your parents heavy breathing, or your grandparents.  So it's not heavy breathing, more like earnest and civilized breathing.  Public radio breathing.  Anyway, an artist named Chuck Jones from Chicago has created a sound piece where he pulled just the inhales of an hour of All Things Considered.  I've listened to the show for so long, I swear I can tell the difference between the inhales of Robert Seigel and those of Melissa Block.  See if you can tell.

P.S.  It's kind of gross to hear mouth noise. 

P.S.S. I realize this is  the ultimate time waster.

This past weekend, we heeded the strange siren call of the Salton Sea and drove once again into Imperial Valley.  As an amateur photographer and a collector of stories, Imperial Valley has become an obsession.  There are incredible images at every turn and generous storytellers -- real characters with a weathered but reliable charisma.  You meet them in the strangest places.  This is the story of meeting one in the middle of the desert. 

I've spent a fair bit of time around the Salton Sea (though it never seems like enough) and some surreal story always emerges from my visits to the Valley.  Last July, we went to Bombay Beach and I had a terrifying encounter with thousands (millions!) of flies trapped in a car... OUR CAR! And I'm not talking regular ole flies; I'm talking flies that had just been hobnobbing on rotting fish.  Apparently bored with miles of fish carcasses, swarms of flies decided to bum rush our car (more advice:  even if you are in the 110 degree heat of Bombay Beach, don't leave your car window cracked.  The flies will find you).  And you know what?  There's only one way to get rid of those suckers... you just have to get in the car and drive.  Imagine it right now, sitting at your desk, what it would be like to get in a sauna-like car with thousands of flies and the stench of dead fish -- now imagine having to sit there with them all over you while driving as fast as you can with the windows down so they would fly out.  I'm telling you, it tested my mettle and, well... I personally think I'm special forces material now.      

Anyway, for this trip, I wanted to see Salvation Mountain and Slab City, sans flies.  Both places were featured in two recent films:  a documentary called Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (narrated by John Waters!) and Into the Wild, last year's feature film directed by Sean Penn.  

Slab City and Salvation Mountain are in the middle of the Mojave desert, about three miles east of Niland, California, at the foot of the Chocolate Mountains.  Driving through Brawley and Niland, we were a little worried about getting lost.   Having left the GPS at home (another genius move), we figured we'd rely on the old school method of a paper map.

Words of advice: If you can't GPS,  then you best not forget to laminate. 

It turns out Salvation Mountain isn't hard to find. Once you get to Niland, just go to Main Street (not that many streets to begin with) and head east.  Before the road bends, you catch a glimpse of the colorful, candy-like mountain in the distance.  I can't imagine what it would be like to just stumble upon Salvation Mountain.  Driving in the desert involves observations like:  "wow, look at that cactus," and,  "boy, is it hot out here," and "I wonder if there are rattlesnakes," not "hey, check out the brightly-colored mountian spouting Bible verse."  And that's why you have to see Salvation Mountain;  it's so wonderfully strange and alien.

Salvation Mountain is the work of one man with lots of paint and a simple message:  God is Love.  Originally, Leonard Knight thought he'd spread the word of God through a hot air balloon, because...you know... why not? 

He spent 10 years trying to raise the money for the balloon and then decided he would try and sew it together himself.   He began sewing in Nebraska, but the fabric rotted one winter, and when Leonard moved to Slab City he discovered his project wasn't salvageable.  It was time to give up the hot air balloon dream and figure out what to do next.  It occurred to him that he could paint a mountain into the landscape.  To that I just say: it's the desert.  Trippy ideas bounce off the land left and right.  One could attribute Leonard's dream to the desert heat or his pure evangelism, but either way I'm sure glad he stuck to it. 

Leonard estimates it's taken over 100,000 gallons of paint to make the mountain, which is constructed out of adobe and straw.  Leonard has worked on it year round for almost 30 years.  In the summer months, he works early in the morning and naps during the extreme heat.  If you visit, he'll be there giving tours, telling you about his mission, and posing for pictures. 

Leonard lives right at the base of Salvation Mountain, in a vintage truck with a makeshift cabin built on the back.  The truck is also painted in bold colors with Bible verses. Leonard has no electricity, water, or a bathroom.  He's off the grid, but has an entire mountain to show for it.

Tourists and residents of Slab City and Niland bring him food and paint.  Some even stick around to work with him for a couple of hours. 

I read that some years back, a dust up ensued over whether Salvation Mountain was an environmental hazard.  There's probably tons of lead on that thing.  Nothing much came of the controversy and in 2002, Senator Barbara Boxer placed Salvation Mountain on the Congressional Record as a national treasure.  Leonard must have told us this four or five times.  He's so proud that someone thinks it's a treasure.  

Leonard is 77 years old.  Salvation Mountain is now protected, but it's all the more special when you can see it with him. Go visit.  Bring him some paint or make a donation. 

Leonard Knight is an outsider artist, a missionary, and a classic dreamer.  You gotta love dreamers in the desert.

Cupcakes have been all the confectionary craze for a couple of years now in New York and LA, with Amy Sedaris as the cupcake pied piper.   San Diego is now jumping into the batter with its own twist.  Square cupcakes!  Personally, I didn't need a square version to get me on board but if this is what it takes to get a pistachio cupcake with pomegranate frosting, so be it.  I'll worship the square.  Other unique flavors: Lilikoi--vanilla cupcake with lilikoi (passion fruit) buttercream frosting, Peanut Butter and Jelly--peanut butter cake and strawberry frosting, Vanilla Chai--tender Chai cake with vanilla/orange buttercream frosting, and the other siren in the bunch for me, a Lemon White Chocolate--white chocolate cake with a hint of lemon frosting with white chocolate ganache.  These sweets are only $2.75 each.  Grand opening is today!

This interactive feature from The New York Times is so, so fun.  You can look at a sampling of Al Jaffee's back cover fold-in's for Mad Magazine.   Jaffee still does the fold-in's for Mad, drawing them by his 87-year-old hand!  I went through the feature twice trying to find the elements of the resulting images in the original drawing.   A worthy time suck.

McSweeney's has a mini film school course in three lines.  Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and other greats are hilariously boiled down.  For example:

West Side Story

TONY: Cinema has a long literary tradition. This one's based on Shakespeare.

MARIA: Just like that Amanda Bynes movie!

TONY: (Sigh.) Let's just dance-fight.

Errol Morris seems to be everywhere right now, which is really a good thing.  He has a new documentary coming out about Abu Ghraib (the site for his film is really good - but be prepared to look at the unbelievably disturbing photographs again).  Can't seem to find an opening  date for San Diego... anyone? Tentative opening in San Diego is May 2nd.   Morris and Werner Herzog chat it up over at The Believer.  I regularly have the dinner party fantasy:  what's the most interesting mix of 8 people for dinner?  My fantasy guest lists change all the time, but Werner Herzog and Errol Morris together is a bang-up start.   Morris has also written two interesting opinion pieces in NYT about using re-enactments in documentaries.

KPBS Senior Editor Alan Ray on the new Scorsese-helmed Rolling Stones documentary Shine a Light:  "All rock and wrinkles."  He doesn't recommend it. 

A lot of you probably know about Flickr, the online photo sharing site, but have you ever browsed the photographs in Flickr's San Diego group?  There are some great images of our fair city by visitors and local photogs.  Enjoy!

And finally, check out these Garfield comic strips without Garfield... way better.  Thanks for the tip, Edward!

Last week a book arrived on my desk called Not Quite What I Was Planning:  Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure.  It's a collection of six-word memoirs submitted to an online project launched by SMITH magazine.  They made a book out of it and I'll tip my hat and make a blog post out of it.   

Of course, the original hat tip goes to Ernest Hemingway.  Legend has it Hemingway was challenged to write a novel in six words. Lord knows how many bottles of booze it took for Papa to brilliantly write, "For sale:  baby shoes, never worn."  Inspired by the legend and aware of a national memoir craze, the editors over at SMITH launched sixwordmemoir. com and received thousands of entries.  It didn't take long for the likes of Stephen Colbert, Dave Eggers, and Joyce Carol Oates to submt their versions. 

I decided to write my own.  Unfortunately, nothing came right away.

After having a three day weekend, I've been scouring the Internets to get my mind back in the swing of things.  By the way, was anyone at Bondi on Saturday night?  I was there, enjoying my dinner, wine and company when out of nowhere, I couldn't stop coughing! Face turning red, gasping for breath, arms in the air, the whole bit. I couldn't even stop long enough to have water.  Then I looked around to discover other patrons coughing.  Suddenly, a hostess started yelling for everyone to evacuate the restaurant.  We all went running outside (my dinner companion does not forget to grab his beer... always thinking, that one!) when fire trucks and the police soon descend on the joint.  Apparently, some knucklehead decided to see what pepper spray smells like.   Nice.  Chalk one up for the knuckleheads. 

Anyway, here's some Tuesday reading...

The new R.E.M. album Accelerate comes (officially) out today.  Here's an interview with Michael Stipe.

Stuff White People Like is now coming to a bookshelf near you... and the blog's author, white boy and unpublished author Christian Lander, is getting paid a reported $300,000 for his musings. 

This is almost unbelievable.  We are banning literary authors from entering our country for reasons of "moral turpitude"?  When will our nation and culture grow tired of our puritanical roots, especially when they are so misguided and hypocritical?  It was the outfit that gave the poor bloke away:  "he was dressed in top hat, long velvet coat and gloves – and detained while officials searched the Internet for information about him and his work."

Another disturbing trend, which we've felt acutely right here in San Diego, with the loss of David Elliott at the Union-Tribune.

David Simon, creator of The Wire, has a couple of different projects in the making.  I've heard rumblings of an HBO series set in New Orleans.  However, this HBO project might be a priority.  I have to admit, the characters in The Departed seem like perfect Simon material.

Here's a review of yet another book purporting a deep anti-intellectualism in the United States.   The book's author Susan Jacoby writes:  "America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism."

On that cheery note, Happy Tuesday!