Blog Posts by Robert of the Radish

When preparing for a dinner party at your home, it's important to pay attention to the details. The very best food is well thought out and not rushed. Attention must be payed to selecting the right dishes, finding quality ingredients, preparing the food correctly and presenting it with style.

But the food is not the only thing you need to pay attention to. Just as the best restaurants do, a great dinner experience also includes great service and ambience. A good host or hostess is always aware of these other critical elements. This entry is meant to provide you everything you need to have a fantastic Thai night at your home with friends.

1. The Food - (Please note: you can substitute your own Thai recipes, but either way, a trip to a specialty food store to gather all the authentic ingredients is worth the effort)

Recipes are from Thaitable.com and each includes step-by-step instructions with photos!

First course: Soup: Tom Yum Goong recipe

Appetizer: Fried Wontons recipe

Main Course:

Musicians, artists and writers have a world-wide reputation for eccentricity. As Oscar Levant so famously said, "there's a fine line between genius and insanity."

In order to create great art the artist must be outside of the norms. So before I get into my top picks for "weirdest musicians" I want to make it quite clear that being "weird" is not in itself a bad thing. Weirdness is just behavior that the majority of the population finds foreign, unnatural or strange.

In some cases weirdness can be a bad thing -- For example, if I ran around a shopping mall slapping old ladies across the face while screaming profanities, you could not only classify my behavior as weird, you could also classify it as a crime. On the other hand, if I spent my days collecting cigarette butts from the ground and gluing them together into sculptures that bring attention to the dangers of smoking, I may be considered weird, but in this case, the end result is positive. Finally, weirdness can also be

There were 6,328,000 car accidents in 2003. These accounted for 2.9 million injuries and 42,643 deaths related to auto crashes. Almost 60 percent of children, age 14 and under, who die in motor vehicle accidents were unrestrained. So buckle yourself and your kids up! This playlist contains songs about car accidents. A tragic theme to be sure, but one that started way back in the 1950's with the popular "teenage tragedy" story.

Many times it was love itself, which drove the teenage lover to their death in these songs as in Ray Peterson's "Tell Laura I Love Her", the tragic love story of Laura and Tommy. His love for Laura is the driving force behind Tommy entering a stock car race for a $1000 prize. Just enough to buy the engagement ring for his beloved Laura. Needless to say Tommy made the wrong decision.

Also, in the classic "Teen Angel" a teenage couple's car stalls on the railroad tracks. The boyfriend returns to the car for school ring and is killed by the oncoming train. So

666 is an interesting number for many reasons. For one, if you write 666 in Roman numerals you will see that it contains the first five Roman numerals in descending order. i.e.:DCLXVI (D = 500, C = 100, L = 50, X = 10, V = 5, I = 1)= 666. It is also the sum of the first 36 numbers. i.e.:(1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12 etc. to  + 36) = 666. And if you're a math dork, you may also know that 666 is an abundant number, a repdigit,  a Smith number and can be written in binary as "1010011010".

There are very few people alive today who would be interested in the above information, but if you throw in some satanic imagery and an electric guitar you get a formula that's sold millions of records. 666 has become the ultimate poster boy for satanic metal, psuedo-satanic metal, as well as a fine tool in the hands of a musician with a good sense of satire.

Of course, the reason the dark side of the music business was attracted to 666 in the first place is due to it's mention in the Bible's book of

We've been putting playlists together by subject for a while here at the Y! Radish, and although songs linked by theme (Rain, Fire, Love, Food, Cars, etc) will always be fun to create, many times they are inconsistent in regards to genre and mood. When you focus themed lists by genre, they become more targeted and listenable. This example takes hundreds of songs about fire and filters it down to a manageable number of quality songs that all fall into the "Classic Rock" genre.

Sometimes when I'm hanging out with friends I'll put on a themed playlist like this and about five songs into it ask, "Do you know what the theme of this playlist is?" It always creates a fun game for guests to play with the music they're listening to and never fails to spur some good conversation.

Fire is a powerful metaphor that a writer can use to represent power, destruction, danger, sexuality or even renewal and passion. So even if you don't use this playlist at your next get together, give it a spin and

I have always been torn about the concept of "Earth Day". On one hand it brings environmental issues to the forefront and gets the message out to those who may not have been paying attention. But on the other hand it cheapens environmental responsibility by compressing what should be practiced all year into a single day. And driving to an Earth Day event to consume and create trash once a year doesn't exactly get to the heart of the matter.

Earth Day was founded in 1970 and falls on April 22nd in America each year. It has grown in popularity over the decades and is now even celebrated by "light green" environmentalists who may volunteer for a clean up, donate to an environmental cause, or simply make a renewed pledge to live more gently.

Being that artistic types tend to be more in tune with environmental issues than the population at large, it's no surprise that many environmental songs have made their way into the popular culture. Musicians have been selling green since the 1960's

I'll freely admit that this playlist (Songs For Dentists) is an odd one that only a small group of folks will appreciate, but isn't this exactly the kind of fringe benefit digital music affords? You see, a record company would be crazy to produce a compilation album like "Songs For Dentists" or "Songs About Tofu", but with the advent of celestial digital music jukeboxes like Rhapsody and Yahoo Music, playlists can be created, produced and distributed at little to no cost. By the way, this is exactly what this blog is all about. Need a playlist about urination, baseball, rainbows, cars, dirt, marijuana? If we don't have it just check back later. As more playlist blogs and communities turn up, you'll be able to quickly and painlessly find the soundtrack for just about any event imaginable. From an Aardvark convention to a Zodiac themed party, you'll be covered. Do a quick search, click on a link and the music starts streaming in real time.

This leads me to this playlist, which is

"Waitressing is the number one occupation for female non-college graduates in this country. It's the one job basically, any woman can get and make a living on. The reason is because of their tips."

-Mr. White (Reservoir Dogs)

The Waiter (masculine) and the Waitress (feminine) get their names because they "Wait" on hungry and / or thirsty customers. From the low-end greasy spoon to high-end 5 star restaurants, the waiter's job can run the gambit from a teenager's summertime gig to a real career.

The maître d' or "literally "master of the hall", is the top job position for a waitstaff professional. They will only be found in the world's finest restaurants. The maître d' manages waitstaff, handles seating and are usually distinguished by a formal white apron that extends to the ankle. Although the average wage for a waitstaff employee in America was just $14,050 per year in 2004, tips can add a whole lot of easily "unreportable" income. If you provide good service tips can help you pull