The SnapClap

Mint Condition @ The Atrium May 30th
with Special Guests D’Maestro, Crissy Alfred and Se’von

The Atrium
5479 Memorial Drive
Stone Mountain, GA 30083
call 404.547.8768 or for advanced tickets go to : www.choicesunlimited.eventbrite.com
$35 general admission
$75 VIP Admission; includes bottle of Champagne and VIP Tables for 4
limited seating available, get there early!

The World Famous DJ Lars Behrenroth will be in Atlanta spinning at Lava Lounge next week on Thursday May 1st with DJ Be of 4Deep and Chris Grass & Friends.  So, next week you won’t have to download or stream the podcast ’cause you’ll be able to experience Deeper Shades of House in person.  See you Thursday night.

Lars has been involved with radio and music production since 1996 when he was living in Hamburg, Germany. Over the last decade Lars has re-energized the music community with weekly music programming that explores the soulful side of house and beyond. He has been responsible for the launch of Germany’s first internet-broadcasting station where he co-hosted the longest running house music mix show on the net. His current show, “Deeper Shades of House” can be heard twice a week nationwide and has recently gained worldwide syndication. “Deeper Shades of House” is a weekly showcase of Lars’ versitile but selective musical range. As a producer, Lars has accumulated an impressive discopgraphy on labels such Chez, Compost, Progcity Deep Trax and has remixed artists like The Rurals, Deep Swing, Dubtribe, MJ Cole, Slope, Arnold Jarvis and more.  

Space Shuttle Endeavour, originally uploaded by larddesigns.

I don’t know about you guys, but the space shuttle is just amazing to me, it has always been. I guess seeing this picture just renewed my sense of awe. Sometimes I just think about the amazing things that we have accomplished as Americans; like, the space shuttle, the internet, single handedly ruining the world’s economy while at the same time fighting an unwinable two pronged war in a country we have no business going to in the first place. What do we do for an encore?!

Who would have thunk it! The Giants of New York upset the Pattys in Superbowl XLII. It was ugly first half but the fourth quarter more than made up for the rather mundane 7 – 3 score at the half; with the Giants pulling out the upset at the very end of the fourth. Too bad I’m not in new York anymore. I’m sure the parade is gonna be crazy! Its all good, I’m just glad enough that we got to stop the Pats! As Terry Bradshaw said, this win is the things that legends are made of. Lets hope, ’cause I’m just about tired of Tom Brady and the Patriots.

photo by: Foto Bocch

My wife and I went to Bones a few weeks ago. Bones is like Atlanta’s Premier steak house. They had a bone in Filet Mignon that was just ridiculous. At any rate, Bones has free Valet Parking.  So we valeted and went inside.  We had our steaks and potatoes and what not, and it was time to go home.  We went outside and presented the valet our ticket, he hurriedly retrieved our key, ran over to the car and pulled it around right in front of our feet. He opened the door for my wife and handed me the keys. I hit him with a five spot, hopped in and drove away.

Almost immediately we began to smell something.  It was absolutely rank.  I knew it didn’t come from me, and I figured it wasn’t coming from my wife either; she’s too beautiful for something so foul smelling to emanate from her.  So we looked at each other kinda puzzled.  That’s when I surmised that it had to be the valet. Damn valet, he took the liberty of passing gas in our car.  And to think, I tipped him a five spot and what I get in return? Fresh ass gas from the valet. Thanks valet guy.

So we rolled down the widows and opened the sunroof and tried to air the car out. But the smell would not dissipate. Did the valet guy have an accident in the car as well? Where is this smell coming from? That’s when my wife reveled that she spilled some of her lunch, which included yogurt, into her lunch bag. She thought that she cleaned it out. But alas, some of it had gotten it a small compartment of the bar and had began to rot.

Upon this realization we went from being mad at the gassy valet to being embarrassed by a stinky car. We wondered what the valet was thinking? Maybe there’s some blog out there by this valet, talking about our stinky car or something?  The moral of the story is, don’t tip free valet guys. Nah, I’m just kidding, the moral of the story is if you’re gonna valet, don’t pack your lunch that day.

This is weird I’m sure.  Especially since this car did not do well here in the states and this is a little out of left field but, the UK website for the Volkswagon Phaeton is one of the most engrossing websites I’ve ever been to in my life.  It might not be the most technologically advanced or best designed or whatever; but in terms of interactivity and imersion I think this site is top notch.  The music is off the hook, the detail that went into the site seems to be indicative of the detail that VW put into the Phaeton.  I know the US car buyers market is not deep enough to support an $80,000 VW but man, you gotta admit this car is awesome and so is the website. 

Your dream still lives!

Go GIANTS!!!!! Looking down the final stretch of this season, I had been saying that week 16 against the Pats was gonna be my Superbowl. Why? because the Pats had a light schedule towards the end of the season and I knew that Big Blue had a chance to win and stop the perfect season. Wining that game would have been enough for me. But we lost. Now, we have a chance to avenge that loss and put a damper on the Pats perfect post season, in Superbowl 42!!! This is absolutely incredible!

Drum roll please, . . the winner of the Snap Clap Ipod giveaway is:

Big Nat of Atlanta Georgia!  Congrats Big Nat, please email me with your contact info, so I can forward you this handsome Ipod that will serve you very well as an mp3 playing powerhouse of a paperweight!

Thanx to everyone who participated with a special thank you going to D.Charles and Lisa.  Thank You.  And, please stay tuned, instead of selling stuff on ebay I think I’m just gonna have drawings here on the snap clap, contests are always fun.  I have a few things, I need to get rid of so stay tuned. Peace.

photo by Jason Perlow

Me and wife found ourselves hungry after looking at some loft condos in Atlanta’s Castleberry Hill and stumbled onto Paschal’s soulfood restaurant.  I won’t belabor this but Paschal’s has the absolute best catfish I have ever had in my entire life, bar none!  This catfish was just incredible.  The cornmeal crust was perfect, the fish was flaky and seasoned well. 

Photo by Jason Perlow

Paschal’s fried chicken, was equally incredible.  The skin had been fried to a nice thin light brown crisp and the chicken was moist and consistently seasoned throughout the entire bird.  Wow.  It was good.  The sides were okay, we had mac and cheese, yams, collards and potato salad, with none being a real standout.  The cost is a little more than you’d like to spend for soulfood, about $12 – $20 a plate but its worth it.  I understand why they’ve been around since 1947.

Paschal’s
180 Northside Dr
Atlanta, GA 30313
(404) 525-2023

photo by James Camp

Normally, when I think of tapas, I think of little plates of tasty morsels that pair well with my beer. To be honest I haven’t done alot of tapas but when I have it was just a few steps above bar food; basically, it served as second fiddle to my main course, beer. Soul food on the other had, never plays second fiddle. As a matter of fact when you get soul food, its the ONLY fiddle! Me and my wife knew this place back in Brooklyn called Mamma’s, the food was so good we promised only to visit bi annually, the food was just too good and the portions were just monstrous.

At any rate, my wife and I stumbled onto a restaurant here in Atlanta that plays R. Kelly and Jay-Z to soul food and Tapas. Rare soul food tapas bar, serves soul food the tapas version. This is especially great for the horizontally challenged like myself, I can enjoy soul food without the guilt of going to a place like “Mamma’s” in Brooklyn. It’s no help however that the meals are served on large beds and not tables. (Yep, you heard me,right . . . BEDS!)

At any rate, when we arrived we were able to get seated immediately since it was a Tuesday, apparently this place gets packed on the weekends so make reservations or get there early. Our waiter led us to our table, which wasn’t really a table but a bed and not so much a bed but a huge lawn chair with extra plush padding and ultra wide arm rests.

The first thing I noticed was the music and the decor. It was like a neo-downtempo-soul type vibe, sprinkled with some deep house. I love deep house. (by the way if you’re ever in the mood for some dope deephouse, check out dogglounge. Dogglounge is by far one of the best sources that I’ve found for free deephouse, they stream it and they also offer dozens of downloads from their resident team of DJs, but I digress.) The decor was kind of a mish mash of things with a morrocan boudior type flair. It was all dark and candle lit and what not, the dining area has a large airy feeling thanks to the high ceiling but still maintains its intimate small feeling with all the dark paint and exposed brick walls.

So, we checked out the menu and decided on four small plates. We wold have the Buffalo Cornish hen, lobster macaroni, piri piri pork and collard green potstickers, but we started off with some drinks. My wife got a fruit punch and I got a mojito. The fruit puch was fruit punch and the mojito was couch syrup. Honestly it was the worst mojito I’ve ever had in my life, maybe it was because it was Tuesday and this mojito was leftover from the previous weekend or something, but whatever it was, it was bad. The food however, would change all that.

The food was pretty good with the potstickers being the standout. The potstickers where served piping hot and crispy with a melange of ginger, spices, a little pot liquor and succulent firm and not mush collard greens. They were quite tasty. Next was the piri piri pork. I have no idea what piri piri is, but I’ve seen it in a few places down here. Whatever it is, it tastes good. Its a spicy sweet marinade similar to jerk type seasoning. The pork was cooked in this rub and was very moist and tender, it was great. The Cornish hen was like buffalo wings except it was the whole chicken, it was novel but if you’ve had Buffalo wings you ain’t missin’ much. I’m allergic to lobster so I didn’t have the lobster mac and cheese. My wife said it was ok, “nothing to write home about”, is what she said, and judging from our fork fisted eyeball to eyeball fight for the last morsel of piri piri pork I believe her.

What meal would be complete without dessert? Especially since Rare’s portions aren’t huge and there’s enough space for the sweet stuff. Our waiter’s favorite dessert was the bread pudding so I decided to give it a shot. When the bread pudding arrived it was warm and sat above the rim of the ramican it was served in, oozing chocolate sauce, whipped cream and pudding down its side. Our waiter was correct, the bread pudding was superb. It had a great texture soft abd pliable but not too mushy with a few crunchy toasted bits around the edges, wonderful.

Service at Rare was good, but the place was empty. I bet on the weekends the level of service may dip a bit, but that’s too be expected. each plate at rare averaged between $5 to $7 dollars and was designed to be shared by two, so you can easily get in and out of there for under $50 with a few drinks and dessert. All in all, I give rare a 3.75 out of 5. It was great, and I can’t wait to go back on the weekend, I hear its a hotbed for Atlanta celebrities. but if you want to avoid the traffic and get a bed without a reservation, try going to rare on a weekday. Enjoy.

Rare
554 Piedmont ave.
Atlanta, Ga
tel: 404.541.0665
hours:
sun – thur: 5pm – 12pm
fri – sat : 5pm – 1am

Just in time for the holidays, I’m going to do a drawing for an ipod.  Now, this isn’t just any ipod, its my old 15gb 3rd generation ipod!  Yes, it still works, it works like a charm!  Its a little scratched up, but nothing that a little icleaner couldn’t fix!

Use it as an ipod for your car,  use it as a giant thumb drive, use it as a paper weight if you wish. (you can even use it to finally answer the question “will it blend” with your brand new blendtec total blender that you’ll be unwrapping on Christmas morning)  Do with this ipod what you wish! 

So, how pray tell, can you enter this fantastiriffic drawing for a blendtec ready, giant thumb drive, paper weight of an old 15gb ipod that you can use for your car.  Well my friends, . . thats the easy part.  Alls you gotta do, is subsrcibe to this here blog.  Thats right, . . subscribe to this here blog via email (in the panel to your right) or RSS feed (in the upper right hand corner over there), and then comment to this post confirming that you have done so, . . and I’ll enter you into the christmas morning drawing!  How Exciting!  By the way, if you’ve already subscribed you can also enter the drawing by making thesnapclap one of your favorites on technorati.

Below are some photos of my beloved old ipod, you’ll get the ipod  (which is a pc formatted ipod) and the headphones, but no cord.   (so don’t look a gift horse in the mouth!)

now for the fine print (what contest would be complete without fine print?)

• employees of the snapclap and it’s affiliated strategic partners and their families are not eligible for entry.
• All entries must be finalized by 11:59pm on December 24th, 2007. 
• International winners and winners living really, really far away from Atlanta may be subject to shipping costs. 
• No purchase necessary for entry. 
• All entries become property of the snapclap and may be used in the promotion and advertisement of the snapclap and its subsidiaries.
• Odds of winning are pretty darn good.

Thanks, Good Luck and Happy Holidays!

ok I admit it.  I haven’t been the most timely person when it comes to posting on my blog here.  Be that as it may, my time has been occupied by a necessary evil; getting used to my new surroundings here in Atlanta.  While I feel way more comfortable here, it’s still gonna take a nit more time before Atlanta is home.  I’ve also been reading a few blogs, surfing around on the web and such.  So, I’ll be posting some of my finds. 
 
The first is Buzzology Surveys, news for and about the black consumer.  You know what.  I’m not gonna front.  I really, really like Buzzolgy.  At first glance I thought that Buzzology was merely aggregating news from other sources but I was wrong.  As I dug deeper I found some pretty cool series of posts.  For example, for the holidays, Buzzology has a “Buy Black for the holidays” series of posts where they highlight black owned businesses.  Who knew there was a black designer watchmaker, Youngblood Timepieces and an HBCU football game, Black College Football Xperience Video Game; and who knew that Kedar Massenburg launched a brand of wine, K’orus?  Well, now that I’ve perused Buzzology I do know.

 
Buzzology also has a few surveys, one about hip hop’s influence on the black dollar and the other radio preferences.  Survey takers are entered into a monthly drawing for a $100 prize but I wonder where that data goes?  Are they selling to Nielsen or soundscan or something?  Who knows?  Buzzology also has tons and tons of links to articles and resources for black consumers.  Buzzology covers it all, and its a pretty cool website.  it’s like if Black Enterprise and Jet magazine had a baby and then Fortune and Consumer Reports had a baby and then by some stroke of luck their offspring met got together and they had a baby; it would be Buzzology surveys.  So, when you get a chance check ‘em out.

You know what, Just go to Buzzology surveys and see for yourself.  As a matter of fact I’ll highlight some of their buy black for the holidays recommendations and you can check em out for yourself, hurry up you don’t have much time before it’s too late for holiday delivery.

Highlights of BuzzologySurveys “Buy Black for Christmas” list:

• Youngblood Timepieces
• PZI Jeans
• Torrel’s Nintendo “bomb-omb” T-shirt
• Cakelove’s Box-o-love baked goods (having lived in DC and expereinced Cakelove first hand, this is my personal favorite)
• Kenneth Wingard’s “O” and “totem” ceramic vases
• Nerjyzed’s Black College Football Xperience Classic Edition Video Game 

photo by www.thesnapclap.com

Because of their insatiable penchant for extracting every possible nickle and dime from you; coupled with their misplaced desire to handicap, cripple and/or dumb down their products, I have finally freed myself from the shackles called Verizon Wireless.  At first I didn’t want to believe it.  I just knew Verizon was the best cell phone carrier.  I had the best network and I didn’t need all those extra bells and whistles.  But then, a few months ago, my Razr when on the fritz.  I called Verizon and got a replacement.  Much to my surprise Verizon has made it even more difficult to recover your data from your phone.  

Of course the Motorola Razr has built in bluetooth, but with Verizon, bluetooth has been removed as a file transfer protocol; its just for voice data.  You can’t transfer, rings, contacts, movies, pics, nothing!  It sucks but I knew that already.  So, a neat little sidestep was to just email yourself the data.  But alas, now Verizon has incapacitated this ability as well.  I can’t even email myself my own data without it going through some Verizon proxy nonsense.  This is ridiculous.  Mind you, I pay for every single media text message so it wasn’t like it was really ‘free’ for me to email myself the data in the first place.  They just want you to go trough them and buy rings and tones and data cards to transfer data etc etc etc.

I was finished with Verizon.  They didn’t have a great data plan and the phones are dumbed down anyway.

Like a breath of fresh air over a newly shaved bald head, Sprint came along with it’s employee referral plan SERO or (Sprint Employee Referral Offer).  Sprint Sero, has 1250 minutes for $49.99 including unlimited data and text messages!  PLUS Sprint got the one of the hottest phone out right now, the HTC Touch!  I’m there! 

After two hours on the phone with Verizon, I got them to release me from my contract with a minimal early termination fee.  I preceded to order my HTC touch and the rest is history.

The HTC Touch

The Touch is a small phone as you can see from the pictures.  Its just slightly taller than my old Razr and about the same width and thickness.  For a Smartphone, that’s just awesome.  One of the reasons I haven’t had a smart phone for a while is because of that.  Who wants to carry around a big bulky VCR of a cell phone.  The Touch absolutely floored me with its dimensions and weight.  While it doesn’t feel as sturdy as you might prefer it is small and lightweight.
I cannot lie the keyboard is small but there are several aftermarket downloadable freeware keyboards that are dope like the touchpal from Cootek .  I’ve also installed the opera browser which is alittle better than the default pocket IE.  I tried using some of the free push mail clients like Emoze and Consilient  but they never really worked the way that I prefer and besides, who really NEEDS pushmail.

The phone features an ‘innovative’ touchflo navigation interface.  Its ok, but a little overrated.  Its cool and extremely functional, but its far from revolutionary.  The touch also comes packed with like a million wires.  You got the usb cord plus adapter, the power cord plus adapter and a headset with mic and volume control.  It also comes with a 512 microsd card.  I’ve eaten cornflakes bigger than that sd card, man its tiny!

So far the HTC is cool. I’m in love with its form factor.  It has some great features, not many buttons and a slick interface.  My only real complaint is the processing power and the screen.  Although Sprint’s version of the touch got a boost in processing power, the touch is still a tad bit slow when compared with other devices.  Also, the touch sensitive screen is a bit hard and doesn’t respond as quickly as you’d like.  But I’ll deal with the shortcomings if it means I get unlimited data and 1250 minutes, as well as bluetooth file transfer, WOO HOO!!!  Besides I got 30 days to evaluate, if I don’t like I’ll get a 755p Treo like my cousin did.  Oh yeah, big ups to that guy!  He put me on this SERO thing to begin with.   Thanks.

Oh by the way, if YOU want SERO, drop me a line, I’ll give you the details AND stay tuned, I freed my wife as well, she got a red Palm Centro.  Dope!

You know, before I moved to atlanta, everyone said it was so fantastic.   But now, they changing Buckhead up, getting rid of all the fun stuff and making it like 5th avenue in New York, there’s an incredible drought, and its starting to get colder, alot ealier than I anticiapted.  Not to mention, i went to wedding last weekend that was just awesome, except for the fact that one of the waiters spilled about a half a pitcher of ice cold sweet tea on my suit jacket, while I was wearing it.

I’m starting to think that I missed the Atlanta.  You know?  Maybe the city peaked already and we got here late or something?  Well, based on the rule of averages, things have gotta get better right?  Although, getting better in this instance means a very wet winter, thats cool; rain is cool with me.  However, I must admin I’m a little scarred after getting a pitcher of sweet tea spilled on me.