You know who you are, you little rascals. Now I know things have gotten a little lax around here since I was out of town for a while but I’m back now so I thought I’d just go ahead and say “Hi.” So… Hi. Hows it going? Well I hope. And how about the family? They’re good too I hope. Super.

Now that I we’ve gotten that out of the way I wanted to bring up something and throw it out there for you to chew on a little bit. While it’s no secret that I’m no fan of anonymous comments, especially anonymous comments that exsit pretty much for the sole reason of starting shit – we all know that as long as there’s the internets there’s also going to be anonymous shit starting comments. So be it. We could get around that by requiring logins and all sorts of other who-ha but who really wants to deal with that? You? Neither do I. So we’re happy to live and let live. Or live and let troll. Whatever.

For the most part anyway. Recently it seems some of you have found a new low though. Trolls pretending to be other trolls. Yep. The only thing lamer than not having the stones to take credit for your own words is pretending to be someone else who doesn’t have the stones to take credit for their own words. Can you believe this is actually happening? Well it is.

Here’s the trick – when you post something, our system logs your IP address. Yep. So even if you don’t post your name we know a bit about you. And when the IP address that you usually have suddenly is associated with another name, we know someone is pulling some crap. Putting words in other peoples mouths, even other trolls, is pretty slimey. So we’re not going to put up with it. We could just ban you from the site, but that’s no fun. So this is what we’re going to do – if this kind of thing keeps happening, we’re going to dig up every bit of info we can about you based on your IP address, and any IP address you’ve ever used on the site and then we’re going to post it.

Right here.

For everyone to see.

Then you’ll be the opposite of anonymous. Everyone will know your name, your phone number, your street address… everything. If you don’t want that to happen, don’t be a fuck. If you want to talk shit, please use your own fake anonymous name, not someone elses. OK? Super.

Toodles!
-sean

UPDATE: This episode will be repeated on Tuesday, January 4th at 4:00 PM PT/7:00 PM ET on CNBC.

Sorry for the late notice, but the L.A.-based duo The Ditty Bops (who’ve been mentioned on B.la before) are performing tonight on the New Year’s Eve edition of Late Night With Conan O’Brien (Conan’s other guests will be Darrell Hammond and Susie Essman).

Judging by their past performances at Bricktops, Largo, The El Rey Theatre (where they opened for The Dresden Dolls a few months ago) and The Derby, they’ll undoubtedly charm the pants off the entire viewing audience. And their next performance back here will be this Tuesday night at Tangiers with Jesca Hoop.

On that note, and I know I’m jumping the gun here, but Happy New Year to my fellow B.la contributors and readers!

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Party Thingy last night. I took some pictures but the transfer cables for my new camera are in my missing luggage so when ever that shows up I’ll post some. Very cool to meet some of the new people in person and I can’t wait for the Jay Bushman on Jay Bushman interview podcast that Joi will mostly likely do terrible things with in the near future. Otherwise, the place got packed quick so if you showed up and didn’t know what we looked like or something sorry about that – all our other events have taken place where there was no one else around so it was impossible to miss us and who knew this would be any different? To anyone who didn’t show up, where were you?? Jacky Treehorn… I’m looking in your direction.

Here’s a photo of Grant & Jill from the OC metblog and our own Jeff Koga. Here’s Grant & Jim and part of Grant, Kat, and Jay. Photos by James from OC.

I have simple hair. It’s really not a big production, clippers on the back and sides, scissors on the top. Most places take about 10 minutes.

I met Charlie the barber about 4 years ago, drew him in the SuperCuts lotto — next up. Charlie takes pride in his workmanship, took about 25 minutes at SuperCuts. Soon after I started to see him regularly, he changed shops (turns out SuperCuts canned him for taking too long). After SC he cut hair at Recardo’s. Recardo’s was cool and old school, leather barber chairs and girlie mags in the waiting area. They would give you a shave with a straight razor and a hot towel. Like a man spa.

Recardo moved to Vegas, and now Charlie cuts hair out of his home. It’s a little place in Glendale where his mother had lived, still has lots of her stuff. I sit in his kitchen and he goes to work for a good hour and 15 minutes scissors, clippers, more scissors, he seriously cares more about my hair than I do. At the end he holds up the mirror and another one so I can see the back. I can’t see jack without my glasses, but it would hurt his feelings if I didn’t look.

A little warning here, the story gets a little gross after the jump…
Continue reading Getting a haircut →

I can’t believe I forgot to post about this – quite possibly my favorite grafitti artist in the world has a new book out and is all about Los Anagles. Luckily Caryn remembered:

“France’s notorious public art mosaic maestro Space Invader has just released his second book and it is a must have. Invasion Los Angeles: Mission Hollywood contains images of his 100 mosaic pieces he has placed in our fine city. Look around LA closely and you can find these very site-specific works of art hidden on businesses, billboards, and even the Hollywood sign. Once you know they’re there, you can’t help but find more.

If you saw his previous book, Invasion Paris you know how thorough and detailed Space Invader is and, well, how incredibly cool his works are. Quite frankly, he’s one of the few artists who works illegally in the streets who I get really excited about. Everytime I discover a new piece, it’s like unearthing a small treasure.

Invasion Los Angeles comes with great timing too as his upcoming solo show at sixspace is this June. Expect the number of LA invasions to rise!”
so says art.blogging.la.

I read about the Adidas 35th anniversary Superstar: Cities Series on Josh Rubin’s blog. To celebrate this anniversary, this series includes 7 customs dedicated to the cities most responsible for making the Superstar a success.

They are Berlin, London, Paris, NY, Boston, Tokyo & Buenos Aires. Each design features a trademark unique to each city.

Oh well, it’s not like I’d have bought “I *adias logo* L.A.” Superstars, anyway. I wonder what “trademark” L.A. shoes would’ve had though.

Here are some amazing photos of the 110 all flooded. Wow. Thanks for pointing those out Koga!

Did anyone see/hear the tornado warning issued last night for Catalina Island, Huntington Beach, Torrance and other locations throughout Los Angeles County? I was watching tv and it came scrolling across the screen, complete with instructions on what to do if you’re caught in it while driving or walking. (Walking? In a thunderstorm? People have to do that? Really? Yikes.)

Here’s an article about the weather wackiness, including the following:
“Weather service officials today confirmed that a weak tornado struck Inglewood early this morning and were looking for evidence of tornadoes in Long Beach, Norwalk and the Whittier Hills.”

Maybe I’m just too jaded by bigger cataclysms. No, definitely I’m just too jaded by bigger cataclysms. As such, the L.A. Times couldn’t have chosen a better photo to illustrate how pathetic and helpless we become when the rains hit town.

With the Red Cross estimating that perhaps as many as 100,000 people are dead from Sunday’s 9.0 quake and its resulting tsunamis that have devastated coastal areas around the Indian Ocean, I’m considering the life-and-death struggles the survivors face in the weeks ahead and I’m having just a wee bit of trouble mustering anything along the lines of compassion for the blubbering woman shown being rescued by two L.A. County firefighters from a flooded Vermont Avenue intersection. Why, one is even carrying her bags, while yet a third leans in to examine the S-Class Mercedes sedan she no doubt stalled out driving it blithely into the bumper-deep water.

Oh, the horror! Yet, is she crying because of how harrowing it is to walk through the knee-deep water or is she mourning the deaths of her drowned Manolo Blahniks?

Back in November I blogged about a traffic problem downtown. (check out that fancy diagram) It wasn’t too long before Doane Liu from the Mayors Office cc’d me on a note to the DOT referencing the post and asking them to take a look at it. It was a pretty hefty request and honestly I didn’t expect much to come of it. Turns out I was wrong – he just forwarded me this file (676 K PDF) from the DOT which explains they have looked into it, determined it is a problem, and will be installing a left hand turn signal at that light. Wow.

OK, what’s the next thing we need to get fixed? ;-)

Listening to KPCC (89.3 FM) on my way in to work this wet Wednesday morning, a plug for today’s line-up of guests on the station’s show “Airtalk” (10 a.m. – noon) included our very own Wil Wheaton who will be onair to chat about quantum physics, nanotechnology, his recent ascent of K2, dog grooming tips, his gorgeous wife, as well as to solicit signatures for his petition to legally force William Shatner to change his name to William Fucking Shatner. Plus I’m sure he’ll make some minor mention of his book “Just A Geek.” If there’s time. After the Texas Hold’em tutorial.

Just got back in town. Countless hours late and short some luggage which might still be in Dallas. Or it might not. But at least I’ve got this Jury Duty Summons to take it’s place for the moment.

Okay, I know there are far worse natural disasters happening elsewhere in the world, but there was just such a sudden downpour and shock of thunder that a CAR ALARM got triggered!

I was gonna go down and get my mail (I was out all day playing chauffeur to my Atavan-schnockered, gum-surgery-getting sister) but I think the new MacMall catalogue can just molder away in the mailbox ’til tomorrow.

A car alarm?!? This is like a rain after-shock or something…

Speaking as an L.A. native, is it just me or has this week’s rainstorms been the strongest and hardest-hitting in recent memory (at least in the Miracle Mile and San Fernando Valley areas)? I don’t think even El Niño was this bad!

Waking up to the busy construction work of rain, even my cat stayed away from the window to avoid seeing her friends and rivals splatter the pavement. Me, I’m wondering about where to eat, after all, weather like this lends itself to a different los angeles atmosphere and appetite – almost as if looking for comfort food after a particularly hard breakup, a month away from home or catching a cold. Barbeque pork fried rice from Sam Woo’s in chinatown would work. Spaghetti and sausage from Andre’s on third is good. Or mushroom soon do boo from that korean place in the corner of the strip mall at Vermont and Olympic (how come no one ever knows the name of that place?). How about chicken noodle soup from Jerry’s deli. Where to eat where to eat. I’ll go back to bed and sleep on it for a little bit longer. Hope it rains the rest of the week, there’s a lot of good food waiting.

Anyone have their favorites?