Festival Season is upon us!

My favorite time of year is upon us.. (ok so, fall is awesome for football, summer is awesome for beaches, and winter is awesome for Christmas but…) Spring is festival season in Birmingham, so here are a few things I am looking forward to doing over the next few months…

First off, my favorite: THE MAGIC CITY BREWFEST – May 31 & June 1 at Sloss. – Over 250 beers and all the food you can grab, set to the tune of some great music. Last years festival was a blast… check out www.magiccitybrewfest.com … As a proud member of Free The Hops, I hope you can come out and enjoy this while helping us fund the fight against outdated beer laws in Alabama.

Next: Do Dah Day. – Dogs take over Caldwell Park in downtown Bham. Chloe had a blast last year. www.dodahday.org

The Buck Creek Festival in Helena. A very laid back affair around the creek in old town, complete with a rubber ducky race down the water fall. Too chill to miss. www.buckcreekfestival.com

City Stages – A pretty cool lineup this year… www.citystages.org

The Crawfish Boil – An AWESOME music lineup… Candlebox, 3 Doors Down, Seether, Flo Rida, T Pain, Gavin Degraw, and Fergie. Wow! www.schaeffercrawfishboil.com

And, although it isn’t a festival, the Farmer’s Market on Saturday’s at Pepper Place. So cool.. homemade ice cream, Okafes Coffee!!!, fresh produce, tastey baked goods, and a really cool atmosphere. www.pepperplacemarket.com

Did I miss any? I know there are others….

Death Love and Beer

Haven’t posted in a week or two (dang you, life! Getting in the way of me blogging!) but I thought I would feed you a quick update.

Free The Hops had an awesome write up in the Montgomery Advertiser last weekend. If you are not aware of Free The Hops or where the gourmet beer movement in Alabama stands, here is your chance to catch up.

I am walking in the March of Dimes’ March for Babies this weekend… if you would like to donate to, you know, save freakin babies… that would be awesome… Donate here!

Also, Slamwire did the Magic City Brewfest website this year. Check it out. I am also working with the festival, so if you don’t know about it, check out the website and come out for the best beer and food Alabama has to offer.

And on a personal note, poison oak sucks… if you see the dreaded leaves of three… run like hell. I’m serious.

Finally, enjoy my new favorite song of the moment… Ludo – Love Me Dead

Pandora is the best web 2.0 application yet.

Most of you have probably heard of Pandora, the radio-ish music site based on “the music genome” project that lets you stream music over the web for free. Many other sites let you do that (grooveshark!!) , but none as easily, or as ACCURATE as pandora.

The genome project game them a great way to classify music as if it was DNA, allowing them to predict what songs you will like based on songs you have gave the thumbs up to. Yahoo Music did this also, but it is no where NEAR as accurate as Pandora. And yahoo has ads if you don’t pay.

The thing I like most about Pandora is the fact that it appeals to EVERYONE. No one will look at this and go “what good is that?” Almost everyone loves some type of music, and the prospect of finding more that you will like is a universal appeal. Facebook is great, myspace is huge, people love blogs and twitter… but no web 2.0 development is as universally appealing as pandora.

Check out some of my stations that it created me, based on songs I like: