Anyone who made it out to the Pub & Grill at Santa Fe Brewing Company Sunday night (1/17) truly got a treat—New Orleans’ Cowboy Mouth played its first Santa Fe-area show and didn’t disappoint. The band is touring the country on its 14th (!) annual Mardi Gras tour, but from the sheer volume of energy packed into every show, one would think they’re fresh on the scene and still beyond-psyched to actually be playing real live gigs. But no, these people who love what they do so freaking much.

There are a lot of musicians who should take a cue from the Fred LeBlanc School of Crowd-Pleasing. Seriously, this dude is a force of nature. He’s both the frontman and the drummer, and between talking to individual people in the crowd, specializing in call-and-response bits and exuding a unique brand of over-the-top, almost terrifying enthusiasm, he can get even the most uptight wanker in the crowd to let loose and “go insane on the count of three.” (I couldn’t believe that every time Fred urged the audience to “go insane” at the end of a countdown, everyone actually did—it never got old. Ten or 12 times in and everyone would still jump up and down and scream and go totally nuts when he told them to.)

Below the jump, check out some videos I was able to capture before I caught the bug, put the damn camera away and started dancing.

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Each week, I plop “New Mexico” into YouTube’s search in the hopes of finding something poignant, polished, professional. It rarely happens. Mostly it’s just poop…or in this case, pubic hair.

In this short film, a teenager embarks on an epic journey across the New Mexican desert in search of an answer to the question: “Why can’t I grow public hair?”

After the jump: Horizontal cliff diving and a pretty decent dark country music video about drawing sketches in an RV.

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In this month’s episode of SFR’s comic book vidcast “The Panel,” Chris Diestler is joined by Andy Bramble and Enrique Martinez, who unload on the finale to the 100 Bullets series. Martinez is the artist behind the comic book Syk and Bramble, besides being SFR’s distribution manager, is a 100 Bullets scholar.

They’re also all in costume.

This is the longest episode of The Panel to date in part because the guys had so much to say. Plus, City Councilor Matt Ortiz was complaining that too much time had passed since the last installment. We wanted to make sure he got his wait’s worth.

I got a tweet alert from @jettboy at about 11am Sunday morning about a “Monster Battle” at 1pm on the Plaza.

So I went, and waited, and sure enough:

I can’t describe the story line to you. I kept losing the plot almost as quickly as they* made it up.

A couple video clips after the jump.
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Santa Fe, I’ve got a homework assignment for you.

Zip down to Smiths or Albertsons, walk right up to the DVD vending machine known as the Red Box, pop in your debit card and spend a $1 on Nothing But the Truth, the straight-to-video journo-drama from director Rod Lurie. Go home, watch it.

I say homework because, for me, the film is an instant Journalism 101 essential. If All the President’s Men is the ultimate argument about why anonymous sources are crucial to reporting, then Nothing But The Truth is the ultimate explanation of why a reporter must protect those sources.

“I want to make it very clear to you rreaders that it’s also a thriller and very entertaining,” director and writer Rod Lurie tells SFR in a phone interview. “I don’t want people to think that it’s broccoli.”

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