Big Rick's Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack Podcast 11 04 23

Robert Plant sang "Stairway to Heaven" for the first time in 16 years at a charity event in England. The event was organized by Duran Duran's Andy Taylor and raised a six-figure sum for cancer charity. Disneyland's Paradise Pier Hotel is set to reopen as the Pixar Place Hotel in January 2023, with a complete makeover themed around Pixar movies. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has launched a monthly ad-free plan for European Union users at a cost of $14 per month. The plan is a response to Meta being fined for breaking EU data rules by tracking users and serving them ads based on their online activity. Costco is offering a 157-piece La Crusse Cookware set for $4,500, which is considered a good deal compared to buying the items separately. Homemade pizza sauce is cheaper and more delicious than store-bought options, and can be made with just a few ingredients in about 30 minutes. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack Podcast. You know on Saturdays we play fun music and we feature great information at 993thevine.com. With me, Big Rick Stewart and music from my time at Live 105 and at KFOG. We also mix in some stories that I find kind of interesting whether it's local music or food or tech or just kind of some cool things I think you ought to know about. It's always lots of fun. Fun music and great information happens every Saturday at 993thevine.com and the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack Podcast features great information like this. Happy Saturday everybody. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. This is one of those, oh I wish I was there kind of stories. Maybe it's on YouTube. I didn't look it up. I'll have to look for this. From ultimateclassicrock.com, Robert Plant agrees to sing Stairway to Heaven for a huge charity donation. So you're thinking like, oh well, you know, like what's the big deal? I mean, that's a good thing and all, but still. Well, Robert Plant doesn't really do Stairway to Heaven when he performs live. He'll do some other Led Zeppelin songs, but it doesn't really touch that one. In fact, he hasn't done Stairway to Heaven in 16 years it says, but he did when he was offered a huge charity donation at this event over in England. Now the story comes from Kenwin House, who's a musician who was on stage and working with this band and the whole thing happened in England a few weeks ago and it was a cancer fundraising event organized by Duran Duran's Andy Taylor. So Robert Plant goes on stage and sings Stairway to Heaven the first time since that Zeppelin reunion in 2007. So what was this like? Well, Kenwin House says, it was a combination between uber excitement and terrifying. I literally only had four days to learn everything. He wasn't told about Stairway until he went to a rehearsal before the show when Robert Plant walked into the room and I had to play Stairway to Heaven. Can you imagine doing that in front of Robert Plant? He says that it was a little bit nervous and it was the most pressure he'd ever had, but it was really fun. And of course, you know, he's playing guitar with one of his heroes singing one of the most famous songs ever. The whole deal happened because a request came from a donor to the charity. Someone bid a huge amount of money for him to sing the song and there's a good circle of karma around the whole thing. That song and that bidder combined for a six figure sum for the cancer charity. Very cool. I like that. I'm gonna go to YouTube and see if I can find it. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Thank you, Robert Plant and Andy Taylor. It's the Wine Country Saturday soundtrack at 99.3 Divine. It's the Wine Country Saturday soundtrack, fun music and great information. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Are you making plans for Disneyland? Are you one of those Disneyland people? I know Disneyland people and some of them don't have kids. They just like going to Disneyland as adults. That's okay. Here's some news for you from the Point Sky. Now, if you're traveling anywhere, the Point Sky website is really good. It gives you all kinds of good tips and things. Here's the headline, Disneyland's Paradise Pier Hotel. Do you know that one? It's set to reopen as Pixar Place Hotel in January. They're redoing this whole thing. Now, if you don't know, Disneyland only has three on-property hotels. They have a couple, including Paradise Pier Hotel. Now, that's going away. It's Disney's most budget-friendly hotel. It's also getting a makeover, and it's a Pixar movie-themed makeover. So think of all those great Pixar movies, right? It's gonna reopen January 30th. That's when it is scheduled for reopening. The lobby's gonna have bright colors and nods to Pixar characters and stories, including some never-before-seen artwork. Of course, the iconic Pixar lamp that kind of got the whole Pixar thing started. In the lobby, you'll see all kinds of other themes, including a gift shop with lots of things and a place called Store E, which is a take on the Pixar film Wall-E. The rooms, as you would guess, colorful and playful and all kinds of different bedding and two-tone images, and kids are just gonna love the whole thing. And families will be excited to know the hotel will feature a new Finding Nemo-inspired water play area, including a nice big splash pad. And check this out. The pool deck will provide views of the nighttime fireworks at Disneyland. Wow, but you gotta wait till January. And, you know, maybe they'll have a soft opening before then if you're like a Disneyland club member or something, I don't know. Anyway, the Pixar Place Hotel at Disneyland, getting renewed and remodeled, even as we speak. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 99.3 Divine. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Hey, thanks for hanging out with me today. And tell your friends that Big Rick lives every Saturday here at 99.3 Divine. Wouldn't it be cool if you could use Facebook and Instagram and not have ads? And maybe even cool if they didn't track you and kind of serve you up ads based on tracking you and it's all kind of creepy, right? Well, you can, but there's a catch. Well, there's two actually. Meta, which is the parent company that owns Facebook and Instagram and a bunch of other stuff. Here's a headline from Petapixel photographic website. Meta launches a monthly ad-free plan for Facebook and Instagram. The deal is that it costs about $14 a month, but it's only for people in the European Union. How come? I'll tell you in a second. $14 a month gets you an ad-free version of Facebook and Instagram. The monthly fee will apply across all linked Facebook and Instagram accounts, but Meta's gonna eventually charge extra for linked accounts, like you have a couple of different accounts, business or whatever. I guess they're gonna charge you more. Well, of course, right? So what's going on here? Well, it's all because over in the EU, Meta got in trouble. Uh-oh, yes, they did. Earlier this year, Meta was fined over $400 million for breaking EU data rules that discovered that they were actually tracking you and then sending you ads based on your online activity, not just on Instagram and Facebook. They tracked you everywhere. So the EU said, we can't do that. So they came up with a solution to charge you $14 a month. I mean, I guess if you really don't wanna be tracked, there's your solution. Will it ever come to the US? I don't know. I think politicians get a lot of donations from Meta, but maybe it will. That would be cool, because I don't like being tracked by Instagram and Facebook or anybody else for that matter. Anyway, we'll see how this goes over in the EU. Maybe it'll head our way soon. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday soundtrack at 99.3 Divine. It's the Wine Country Saturday soundtrack. I'm Big Rick Stewart. There is a deal at Costco. Oh my gosh. You'll save thousands of dollars, but you have to spend thousands of dollars. And if you're looking for some cookware, I mean, you just wanna get everything all at once and you want it to all be really good and all match, well, Costco has a deal for you. Oh, it's pretty expensive though. Costco has available for you online a 157 piece La Crusade cookware set of utensils and cookware and baking goods and just like, you know, all that stuff. And you know, you go to Costco, you buy big giant jars of pickles and stuff. Well, now you actually cook something with the things you buy. And La Crusade is that famous French cast iron, mostly, you know, probably from cast iron. They also have stainless steel. They have utensils. They have bakeware. They have like everything, coffee cups. I mean, like all kinds of stuff. And so together with Costco, they've come up with this 157 piece. They call it the ultimate cookware set. It costs $4,500, but I mean, you get so much. It's just incredible. Now people are trying to figure out, is this really a good deal? I mean, it's a lot of money, $4,500 for a cookware set. One Reddit user went ahead and calculated the cost of each item if they were purchased separately. And it was over $8,000. That's not a bad deal. Now, if you buy this online at Costco, get ready because a truck is gonna come with a lift gate and deliver a giant pallet to your house with all this La Crusade cookware. Cast iron is not lightweight, as you probably know. Seems like a pretty fun deal. I don't know. I mean, I like La Crusade. I don't have that much money and I don't need that much cookware, but maybe you do. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 99.3 Divine. Hey, I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. We have fun music and great information. The price of everything is like outrageous, right? You know what's really outrageous? Pasta sauce and pizza sauce. It's outrageous. Those little jars used to be like a couple of bucks. I mean, sometimes you can pay over $10. And you know, if you look at the ingredients, you can see that there's not that many ingredients. And here's the thing. It's not that hard to make your own pizza sauce for sure. So how about this? Homemade pizza sauce is easier, cheaper, and more delicious than the jarred stuff says delish. And it is. I make tomato sauce all the time. I buy those giant cans of tomatoes and I make it. All right, so you've never done this before? You can do this. Come on, I have confidence in you. You're gonna make two cups of, in this case, pizza sauce. It's gonna take about five minutes to make. It's gonna cook for about 30 minutes total. You need a 28 ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes or any other kind of can of tomatoes would be just fine. A couple of garlic cloves, finely chopped. Some extra virgin olive oil. Some oregano, dried oregano is just fine. A little black pepper if you like. A little kosher salt if you like. And if you wanna add some sugar, sweetener, you can do that as well. Throw everything into a food processor or a blender and pulse the tomatoes and garlic until broken down and slightly chunky. Get them all in there. Don't blend it too much, otherwise it's kind of soupy. Kind of keep a little chunky, a little bit of texture to it and then cook it in a big, wide, soft pan or a large pot over medium-low heat. Don't be cracking up the heat too much. And then get yourself some good pizza or pasta sauce because it's kind of sort of the same thing. You'll get arguments from people, but it kind of works both ways. You can keep this in the fridge for a while or you can freeze it if you like. You can find lots of different recipes, but they're all pretty basic and that's how you make your own pizza or pasta sauce and save a whole bunch of money. I'm Big Rick Stewart, the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 99.3 The Vine. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. We have fun music and great information. Oh, this will kind of get your attention. Science Alert Online says, giant super volcano in California is sleepy, but scientists say it's restless. Don't worry. This story has kind of like a happy ending. This is all from a new study from the researchers at the California Institute of Technology and they're talking about the Long Valley Volcano Field. This is in the Eastern Sierra, kind of near Mono Lake, just kind of Mono Lake and South, just a little bit. They say that these volcanoes there are a little restless, tossing and turning as deep magma chambers cool for a big, long sleep. The last time the volcano went off, it was kind of busy and it was kind of crazy and it was 100,000 years ago. And long before that, it spewed up enough ash to bury the modern city of Los Angeles beneath a kilometer of sediment. Wow. All right, so it's, don't worry. It's not about to explode or anything like that. Actually, they say this is because of cooling. So it's not getting hotter. It's actually cooling off, which can cause some unrest. And also they've had some earthquakes around the Mono Lake area as well. So they say we don't think the region is gearing up for another super volcanic eruption, but the cooling process may release enough gas and liquid to cause earthquakes and small eruptions. All right. Locally, are there any volcanoes? Well, yeah, up in Lake County. Mount Canocti is part of the Clear Lake Volcanic Field. It's also a little sleepy. Last time it erupted, they think was about 8,500 to 13,500 years ago. All right, just a little something. Bye, throw it out there. I'm Big Rick Stewart. It's the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack at 99.3 The Vine. Well, those are some stories that I have featured on the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack. Tune in at 8 a.m. every Saturday at 99.3TheVine.com. I'm Big Rick Stewart. Hear music from my days at Live 105 in Cape Fog, some current songs, lots of surprises and more. It's always lots of fun. We have a 10 at 10, a Beatles brunch at noon. It happens all day. The Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack and the Wine Country Saturday Soundtrack podcast. Tell your friends and thanks listening to this podcast and thanks for checking out 99.3TheVine.com.