Van Halen Links.com

Dave's Art

At0micPunk — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:41:19 GMT

You all see this stuff on Dave's site?
davidleeroth.com/

Some very cool. Some Bizarre. Didn't his uncle or some relative do Rat Fink or whatever??? Dave seems to have been influenced artistically by him as well as other styles. I'm impressed actually. He's a very talented artist. I had no idea.

the road....

voivod — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:28:24 GMT

EBMM size?

vhin04 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:48:34 GMT

The EBMM EVH or Axis, how small is it? I've tried to get some kind of idea as to its size in relation to a Strat but I can never seem to get a good handle on it. I'm a big guy, like 6'3'' 240 lbs, would I look like a tool playing this guitar? Are they really that much smaller than a regular Strat or Tele? Any pics out there of some big guys playing this guitar?

Van Halen In Kandahar December 5th

colink — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:02:25 GMT

A buddy of mine sent me the following message...

"Van Halen will be playing K.A.F. Should be good."

K.A.F is Kandahar Air Field , Afghanistan...

He emailed me back stating "the signs say Dec 5th".

....anybody want to weigh in on this one???

The Power Station

Scott — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:46:19 GMT

So, I pulled out this CD and realized again how aweseome it is! Well, three songs (Get it on, Some like it hot, Murderess)...I love the crazy druming by Tony Thompson (RIP) and the crunchy guitars with some funky bass.

They released another CD in 97 - but in Canada I can't get it (will be forced to download illegally I guess).

That said, are there any bands out there that remind you of these guys? I'm looking for something similar...

HELP!

Gilmour "Black Strat" Project data collection

YMI5150? — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:13:20 GMT

I have been craving a strat with single coils to play some blues and I have also been on a Gilmour kick lately. So this morning I decided to start researching his famous "Black Strat" guitar and plan on building it soon.

I'm looking for as much research material as possible (data, pics, etc.). I see it went through a similar transformation as Ed's baby; 6 necks, a Kahler trem that was later filled in, short trem arm, black over 3 color sunburst, custom pups, weird switching that allowed bridge pup to be on or off during any other selection, etc. I'll likely shoot for the last configuration so it captures the most battle scars. the tone should be Wall era tone.

If any of you are fans of that guitar and have good research materials, please point me toward them.

Cheers

Happy Birthday ChrisTheEdHead!!!

Kimmie5150 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:14:30 GMT

Happy birthday to a guy that I have kindled up a great friendship with! Thanks for always being such a doll to me! Hope you have a great day in (in despite of your appendectomy)! :thumb:

False Rape Allegation Follows "Strip Yahtzee" Game Gone Awry

Rare Painful Side Effect — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:14:47 GMT

Quote:

Amber M. Foster, 21, was arrested Tuesday night on a charge of false informing, a Class A misdemeanor carrying a maximum one-year jail term, after police said they determined her claims that a former boyfriend had raped her were false.

Investigators said the encounter between Foster and the ex-boyfriend came after she was the loser in a game of "strip Yahtzee."

http://www.thestarpress.com/article/...90336/1002/rss

RIP, CMOH Winner Col. Lewis L. Millett

Axxman300 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:31:39 GMT

Col. Millett was an Army legend:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111703929.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituari...,6730830.story

http://www.historynet.com/military-h...-l-millett.htm

From the Washington Post:

Quote:

As an antitank gunner in Tunisia, he earned the Silver Star after he jumped into a burning ammunition-filled halftrack, drove it away from allied soldiers and leapt to safety just before the vehicle exploded. Not long after, he shot down a German Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter that was strafing Allied troops. Col. Millett, who was firing from machine guns mounted on a halftrack, hit the pilot through the windshield

Quote:

During the Korean War, he received the military's highest awards for valor, including the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross, for two bayonet charges he led as a company commander in February 1951.

"We had acquired some Chinese documents stating that Americans were afraid of hand-to-hand fighting and cold steel," he told Military History. "When I read that, I thought, 'I'll show you, you sons of bitches!' "

He was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading a charge up Hill 180 near Soam-Ni on Feb. 7. When one of his platoons was pinned down by heavy fire, he placed himself at the head of two other platoons and ordered the men to charge up the hill.

According to his Medal of Honor citation, he bayoneted several enemy soldiers and lobbed grenades in their direction while rallying his men to fight. Grenade fragments pierced Col. Millett's shin, but he refused medical evacuation.

"Despite vicious opposing fire, the whirlwind hand-to-hand assault carried to the crest of the hill," the Medal of Honor citation read. "His dauntless leadership and personal courage so inspired his men that they stormed into the hostile position and used their bayonets with such lethal effect that the enemy fled in wild disorder."

Quote:

He later was sent to Vietnam as a military adviser to a controversial intelligence program called Phoenix, which killed thousands of suspected Viet Cong and their sympathizers in an effort to destroy the Viet Cong infrastructure in towns and villages.

He said he retired in 1973 because he was convinced that the United States had "quit" in Vietnam. He championed the return of U.S. prisoners of war from Vietnam and then worked as a deputy sheriff in Trenton, Tenn., before settling in the San Jacinto Mountains resort village of Idyllwild, Calif., across the street from an American Legion post.

Millett was the guy who dreamed up the idea of rapelling out of a helicopter, and was the first man on the rope. The current bayonet was designed with input from Col. Millett. He remained active in veteren's affairs and was a regular visitor to the 25th ID and the 7th ID while the 27th Infantry Regiment was here.

Blue skies , Sir.:thumb:

Couple Busted for Refusing to Pay Tip

avhevhmashdlr — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:06:51 GMT

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/...052.html?yhp=1

Couple Busted for Refusing to Pay Tip

Patrons claim service was so bad, they had to get napkins and silverware for themselves
By DAVID CHANG

Updated 12:20 PM EST, Thu, Nov 19, 2009

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If you�re frustrated by poor service at a restaurant, think twice before you decide to not tip. You may be in for a bit more than just a dirty look from the waiter.

"Nobody, nobody wants to be forced to pay a tip or be arrested for terrible service," Leslie Pope said when her happy hour ended in handcuffs.

Pope and John Wagner were hauled away by police and charged with theft for not paying the mandatory 18 percent gratuity totaling $16 after eating at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pa. with six friends.

Pope claimed that they had to wait nearly an hour for their order and that she had to get napkins and silverware for the table herself.

�At this point I became very annoyed because I had already gone up to the bar myself to have my soda refilled because the waitress never came back,� Pope said.

After the $73 bill came, the group paid for food, drinks, and tax but refused to pay the tip. After explaining the bad service to the bartender in charge, Pope claimed he took their money and called police. The couple was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car.

�I understand that, you know, we didn�t pay the gratuity, but it was a gratuity, it wasn�t something that was required,� said Wagner.

The owner admitted that the group waited unusually long for their food, but said the pub was extremely busy that night. He said managers offered to comp the food, a claim the couple denies ever happened.

�Obviously we would have liked for the patron and the establishment to have worked this out without getting the police involved,� said Deputy Police Commissioner Stuart Bedics.

Police charged them with theft since the gratuity was part of the actual bill. However, it is doubtful that the charges will hold up in front of a judge. The couple is scheduled to appear in court next month.

NEW DRUG AWAKENS FEMALE LIBIDO

Jesus H Christ — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:27:10 GMT

Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH is banking on sex really being all in women�s heads.

The German drugmaker is putting the finishing touches on a pill designed to reawaken desire by blunting female inhibitions. Unlike Viagra, which targets the mechanics of sex by boosting blood flow to the penis, this drug works on the brain.

The desire drug, the focus of a meeting on sexual disorders in Lyon next week, has the potential to revolutionize sexual medicine much as Pfizer Inc.�s blue pill did a decade ago. That could put family-owned Boehringer at the center of a debate about whether the medicine is a chemical shortcut around a complex dysfunction involving body and mind -- or whether disinterest in sex is a legitimate medical condition.

�This drug has the potential to finally open the door to acceptance of the idea that decreased desire can be something that involves a dysfunctional way the brain works, and not only a bad partner,� said Jim Pfaus, a neurologist at Concordia University in Montreal, who conducted early tests of the drug in rats. �Of course it�s in your head.�

The U.S. market for medicines to rekindle female libido could be bigger than the $2 billion a year in U.S. sales for erectile dysfunction treatments because more women report sexual problems, BioSante Pharmaceuticals Inc. Chief Executive Officer Stephen Simes estimated last year.

Showing It Works

Boehringer, based in the German town of Ingelheim on the Rhine�s west bank, was searching for a depression treatment in the 1990s when it stumbled on the compound, called flibanserin. By 2002, Boehringer found the drug wasn�t lifting patients� mood. The company says researchers were startled when test subjects rated one measure of well-being, sexual appetite, consistently higher than the others.

After what Pfaus described as an initial period of hesitation about developing a sex pill, Boehringer decided to move forward. The company needs new drugs because it faces the loss of 1 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in annual revenue when two older medicines, Mirapex for Parkinson�s disease and Flomax to treat enlarged prostate, lose patent protection next year.

The world�s largest closely held pharmaceutical company has been studying flibanserin for more than a decade and it has yet to publish clinical test results showing the drug is effective. The company will lift its veil of secrecy on Monday at the European Society for Sexual Medicine conference with data from trials of more than 5,000 European and U.S. women.

Women�s Distress

The main criterion for the clinical trials, which the company named after flowers, was how many �satisfying sexual events� women said they had experienced after starting treatment. If the results are good, the so-called Bouquet studies, dubbed Violet, Daisy, Dahlia and Orchid, could form the basis for applications to U.S. and European regulators.

The German company is taking a page from Pfizer�s book. The U.S. drugmaker broadened the appeal of Viagra in 1998 by steering clear of the word �impotence� and saying the blue pill addressed a disease called erectile dysfunction. Boehringer is avoiding potentially offensive words such as frigidity and refers to the problem its pill cures by its clinical name, hypoactive sexual desire disorder, or HSDD.

�An increasing body of evidence shows that hypoactive sexual desire disorder causes substantial emotional distress,� said Heike Specht, a spokesman for the company. The drugmaker �has conducted late-stage clinical trials in over 5,000 women from which we hope will result the first available pharmaceutical treatment.�

A Boehringer survey of 31,000 U.S. women aged 18 and above found that one in 10 expressed distress because of diminished sex drive.

Ideological Battle

A sluggish libido is �a real problem,� and early clinical results so far suggest Boehringer�s drug can help, according to Stephen Stahl, a psychopharmacologist and chairman of the Neuroscience Education Institute in Carlsbad, California. Stahl, who has been a consultant for Boehringer, sees a growing role for drugs in treating sexual disorders.

Not everyone agrees there is a disorder to begin with.

In 2003, a year after Boehringer started the Bouquet clinical trials, an article written by Ray Moynihan in the British Medical Journal called female sexual dysfunction �the freshest, clearest example we have� of a disease created by pharmaceutical companies to make healthy people think they need medicine.

�This is for some an ideological battle,� said psychiatrist Michael Berner of the Freiburg University Clinic, who had patients in Boehringer�s studies. �One view is the multi-dimensional view you get from people like me. And then you have these people that say you should work only on relationship issues and that medication cannot have a place.�

�Like Dancing�

Researchers don�t know why some women�s libido falters, said Pfaus, who has tested compounds in rats for Pfizer, Boehringer and Palatin Technologies Inc. by gauging whether they spur female rats to solicit sex from males.

�An erection is obvious, it�s easy,� Pfaus said. �But desire -- how do you get at that?�

The explanation may be partly evolutionary, according to Berner, who says male primates are driven by a need to spread their semen, while for females it�s important to be able to care for and rear the offspring.

Some researchers believe the social components of intercourse mean that sexual problems can�t be addressed in the same way as heart failure or cancer.

Sex is a �historical and cultural phenomenon,� said Leonore Tiefer, a psychiatry professor at New York University. There�s no baseline of normalcy by which to define a disorder, she contends.

�It�s like dancing, or music, or piano-playing,� Tiefer said. �You do it with the body, but the part the body plays isn�t the largest part.�

Over the Wall

Flibanserin works on the brain by putting �two feet on the brakes� to block the release of a chemical called serotonin, which regulates mood, appetite, sleep and memory, Pfaus said. In time, the process should trigger the production of dopamine, a chemical that, among other jobs, helps stimulate desire.

The drug differs from testosterone, a hormone that�s also been tested to reawaken women�s desire. Berner, interviewed at his study in Freiburg, sketched the picture of a wall to explain how flibanserin works.

�You�re standing here, sad, inhibited,� he said, drawing a stick figure next to the wall on a scrap of paper. �Testosterone would give you a little bit more excitement, so you�d climb over. Flibanserin would take away one of the stones.�

Once a Day

The compound takes three to six weeks to kick in. The pill has to be taken daily, and some women taking part in the clinical trials reported feeling tired, Berner said.

Boehringer recruited women for clinical studies using print advertisements. Berner said his patients were largely professionals in their early 30s to mid-40s, and most chose to continue in the trial in a subsequent phase that ensured they would get the real drug instead of a placebo. Boehringer is recruiting older women for a follow-up study.

Women can be diagnosed with hypoactive sexual desire disorder if they feel concerned, bothered or frustrated by a lack of desire -- or if it�s hurting their relationships.

The company used personal digital assistants to check whether the pill was working. Participants were beeped once a day and asked to rate their level of desire and say whether they had been sexually active and whether it was enjoyable.

Potential Rivals

If flibanserin makes it to market, it will be the first success after a series of failures from drugmakers including Procter & Gamble Co. and Pfizer. The New York-based maker of Viagra abandoned efforts to adapt its pill for women in 2004 and closed sex-health research at the end of last year.

The only female sexual dysfunction therapy approved in the U.S. is Eros-CTD, from NuGyn, Inc., a suction pump that fits over the clitoris much like the erection pumps that predated Viagra. Intrinsa, a testosterone patch from Noven Pharmaceuticals Inc. licensed by Procter & Gamble, is sold in Europe for women whose uteruses have been removed. A U.S. version was put on hold in 2004 on concern about whether it is safe for long-term use.

Still in clinical trials are a new version of the P&G patch; LibiGel, a testosterone gel from BioSante; and bremelanotide, an injected therapy from Palatin Technologies.

Researchers around the world will be watching Boehringer�s results in Lyon, according to Pfaus. �There are probably a lot of companies holding their breath,� he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Naomi Kresge in Zurich at nkresge@bloomberg.net

Dec 5 Las Vegas Webcast

Chet Dakota — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:02:48 GMT

<>

From the new website....

So, do you think this will be a concert webcast similar to what U2 did a few weeks ago on YouTube?

New 12 string

At0micPunk — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:42:01 GMT

Out of fun I added a few other guitars and a vintage backdrop.

Got a great deal on a Godin A12 I couldn't pass up. Mostly a trade for it.
amazing guitar for what it is imo. First 12 string I've owned. Anyone familiar with these? It's in perfect condition but the input jack might need looking at...*waves @ Ron*.

Posted for fun. We all love gear.

Gibson Guitar plant in Nashville raided by feds

Reckless Fable — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:57:23 GMT

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20...raided+by+feds

"An international crackdown on the use of endangered woods from the world's rain forests to make musical instruments bubbled over to Music City on Tuesday with a federal raid on Gibson Guitar 's manufacturing plant, but no arrests....

...Federal officials declined to say whether anything was removed from Gibson's plant or what specifically the agents were trying to find. But some exotic hardwoods traditionally used in making premium guitars, such as rosewood from the rain forests of Madagascar and Brazil, have been banned from commercial trade because of environmental concerns under a recently revised federal law."

Doesn't really sound like there is much there other than a bunch of bureaucrats firing a warning shot at the industry.

Video shows patient cop ...

avhevhmashdlr — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:23:39 GMT

...with affectionate cat

AYLOR, Texas � A black cat showed affection by crawling up and down a Texas police officer in a friendly display captured on the patrol car's dashcam. Taylor police Officer Keith Urban was seen being patient with the cat, whose image was captured during a recent traffic stop, then finally gently booting the kitty away.

The Taylor Daily Press reported Urban had pulled over an SUV in the driveway of a farm lot. The video shows the cat scampering up and down on Urban, making its way to the officer's shoulders.

Police Chief Jeff Straub said Urban never mentioned the feline encounter until he became concerned that the cat might have been injured when they parted ways.

Straub said the video shows "incredible patience on the part of the officer."

The collar-wearing cat fled.

Taylor is about 30 miles northeast of Austin.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_odd_video_cop_cat