Jeff Cagle

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nedhepburn:

Ned Hepburn “Crockett’s Theme (Nightfox’s Baltimore Club Remix)”
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i made this back in 2006 / 2007 when i was dj’ing in and around Chicago. it was my second attempt at a remix ever. it basically puts the Miami Vice theme with Lil Jon and i added some drums.

i dj’d under the name NIGHTFOXXX because i was really stoned when this promoter called me one night. i was watching Oceans 12, and he asked me “hey, what name do you want to be on the flyer?” and as a joke i said “man, i wanna be The Nightfox” (the name of the french villian dude in the movie).

and then cut forward two weeks later and on the flyer it said “Ned Hepburn aka The Nightfox” and it stuck.

i miss dj’ing. i really do, but i set out what i wanted to accomplish, which was to play First Ave in Minneapolis (where Prince filmed the concert parts of Purple Rain). there was like 700 ppl it was probably one of the best nights ive ever had. i dunno. now its kinda “huh, well, its still sorta fun” but the crowds in LA are so fucking apathetic and hate to actually dance.

Ned, put your mixes up for download. I still have the “run to this,” the one about stoned TV, and your original “this scene is dead” or whatever on my desktop, but it’s too hot in my room to boot it up to look at the actual names.

Ned has made some pretty sick tracks in his day.

Note to self: If you ever meet Mike Skinner and engage in conversation, don’t ask him his thoughts on the fragrance industry.

Michael Jackson to be buried without his brain

Michael Jackson will be buried this week — without his brain. As his family tries to finalise details for the King of Pop’s funeral on Tuesday they have been told it will be held back for tests.

They faced the grim choice of waiting up to three weeks for Jackson’s brain to be returned to them or go ahead and bury him without it — which they have decided to do.

I love it when tabloids save the best for last:

Michael Jackson starred as the Scarecrow in The Wiz, the 1978 musical version of The Wizard of Oz — playing the character without a brain opposite Diana Ross as Dorothy.

thebikebeat:

I have a love/hate relationship with the B.iCycle app for my iPhone. I love that I have a GPS cyclometer for $10, but I hate when the above happens and it doesn’t record half of my route. What B.iCycle recorded is above in orange and came out to be 10.9 miles and 650 calories burned, while my true ride included the track in red, which I added myself.

I wish B.iCycle would have recorded the full track, as I finished it in 70 minutes and felt like I was averaging about 15-16 miles per hour — all after a long night of beer, barbeque and fireworks.

Today’s hangover cure.

Can we still blow stuff up today?

Fuck yeah Fourth of July!

Beer, fire and explosions. Fuck yeah!

'Rediscovering Secular America,' The Nation

This Fourth of July, those who identify themselves as non-believers, or humanists, or atheists — or a whole host of other names which signify a nontheistic worldview — have much cause for celebration. After eight years in the Bush wilderness — and an even longer period of ostracism by the Washington political establishment — a rising demographic of like-minded Americans and a new president are guiding us back to our roots as a secular nation.

“We have generally been a pariah group in America,” says Woody Kaplan, Advisory Board Chair of the Secular Coalition for America. “Pretty much unrecognized by the political establishment. Yet there’s almost no religious group in America as large as us…. We were that third rail that politicians failed to touch.”

Indeed when the Obama Administration invited the Coalition to the White House for a meeting in May it marked a stark departure from recent history.

“Joe Lieberman famously talked about the constitution providing for freedom of religion but not freedom from religion — and questioned the possibility of non-believers to be ethical human beings,” Kaplan says. “Suffice it to say we were never invited as an identity group into the Bush White House. But interestingly enough… we were only invited into the Clinton White House under the rubric of core civil rights or civil liberties interests, and not as an identity group of nontheists.”

Full Article. (via vaughnshirley)

Born on the Fourth of July

thebikebeat:

Since my original plan to be out riding most of the day today before consuming copious amounts of beer and barbeque fell through because of the all-day rain event in Chicagoland, I figured I’d go ahead and pull the trigger on this little blog I’ve been mulling over as I rack up the miles each week.

I bought a bike as an early 25th birthday present to myself a little more than a month ago as a way to get out and enjoy the upcoming summer weather and stay in shape. I have flat feet and can’t really run on asphalt, and the few miles a day I was putting in on the treadmill was about as painful on my sanity as it was my joints.

To make a longer story (coming soon) short, I walked into my local bike shop and rode out. I rode so much that first day until my ass was raw. I could barely sit in a chair for three days. And I’ve put nearly 300 miles on my bike since.

I’m going to try to post a picture a day from my ride, individual ride stats from my B.iCycle app, Google Earth screen shots of my routes, tales of my all-too-frequent close calls with cars and bike news around Chicago’s suburbs and the city itself.

Maybe it’ll give you something to check up on, but hopefully it will be something to motivate you to get out and ride yourself.

I started a new blog today, The Bike Beat. You guys should follow it so it keeps me motivated and out riding. I’ll probably occasionally re-post things here, but I figured it’s easy enough to start and manage a new topic-specific Tumblr, so yeah.