A friend said to me matter of factly, “its an art party”…as oppose to an art show. Was it? Maybe. Did it matter. Not really. Friendswithyou, probably more known for their plush animals with a rough sense of humor, had their opening reception at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery last saturday night. In addition to hand-sewned plush dolls, there were paintings, wooden block sculptures and several small installations of altars with written stories as well as…errr, performance pieces (?) by artists Sam Borkson and Arturo Sandoval. Dressed in white furry costumes, they either walked around the gallery hugging various fans, friends or both, or stood behind a large white sheer curtain like the wizard of oz, dispensing gifts and music. Sometimes, when crazy things happen at a reception, it can take away from the art and evening. But the night worked in their favor since Borkson and Sandoval’s art had always seem to be about bringing smiles and happiness to people – Not only did their pieces do so on a small intimate scale, but it succeeded from a larger perspective as well. I mean, who doesn’t like to petted by something soft and furry? Although, the performance portion of the works will be gone, their oil paintings served as a 2D extension of furthering the emotional content of the artist themselves as well as their characters while the altars gave greater insight into their creative process. Should people go check out the show…only if you want to walk away with a smile.

We want you! No, not you. To your left. You. Yeah, you! Jason is moving to San Francisco which is going to open up a blogger spot here on blogging.la. Think you can fill it? Do you live in LA and love it? Want a piece of the fame and glory that comes along with having the tens of people who read this site on a weekly basis vaguely recognize you name from something they think they might have seen somewhere? Want to have local PR schumcks track down your e-mail address and send you press releases and then send you follow up nasty grams when you don’t blog about their crappy events? Want to have the undivided attention of sometimes up to 4 entire people?! Want to be constantly hounded to post more often without having any kind of compensation offered your way? Then tell me about it. Send an e-mail to seanatbloggingdotla and tell me why you think the spot should be yours. I’ll forward it around to the rest of the b.la posse and we’ll pick someone. I’m net setting a time frame for this, so basically until we find the right person (or two) we’re on the hunt. Show us what you got.

NOTE: I swear to Christ, if any local PR schmucks harvest my e-mail from this post and start sending me “news” about their crappy events I’ll shut down the e-mail address will post their contact info here as the reason we’re not picking any new people. OK, so don’t even think about it.

UPDATE: OK. We heard from a ton of people, and are now going through the e-mails. Stay tuned for details.

Whenever my wife, Anne, and I get fed up with traffic, or smog, or idiots who can’t drive when there’s a light mist falling from the sky, we talk rather furiously about moving away from Los Angeles.

This usually lasts for a few days, until we realize that we live 30 minutes from the ocean, fifteen minutes from incredible hiking, and an hour from skiing and snowboarding. Plus there’s the Arclight, and all the random local things that I don’t want those damn tourists fucking up, so I’ll keep them to myself.

Oh, and Vegas is a 50 minute flight away, and if LA sucks so much, why did Rockstar choose our fair city to be in the latest Grand Theft Auto game? Because we rule, sukas.

So there’s lots to love here in SoCal, even if there is also a lot to hate. Sometimes it’s a good idea to remember that.

Anyone notice all the construction going on at just about every Washington Mutual? They are supposed to be making them better, but instead they are srewing them all up. OK, the way it used to work at most of them was you walked in freely, there was some guard dude who would nod at you and you could either walk up to wait in line then then talk to a teller who was behind a few inches of bullet proof glass, or if you were in a rush you could just throw your deposit envelope into the express deposit box and then take off. Well, I guess they thought that was too “impersonal” or some crap so they are getting rid of all that and replacing the windows with individual islands where you can just go talk to someone in person. It sounds good, but there’s a HUGE flaw that is playing out most obviously at the Vermont branch between Hollywood and Sunset. Because the tellers are just out in the open now you have to walk through a crazy double door weapon scanner thing when you walk in, and there’s no room for a line inside, so a guard stands outside and lets people in one at a time. Which takes for ever. The line the other day took over 30 minutes. Here’s the great, super well thought out part. The express deposit box? It’s inside. So if you just want to make a quick deposit, you have to wait in the same line outside with everyone for the entire time before you can get to the “express” box. Not very express at all. Well, at least there’s the ATMs right? Sort of. That’s great if you are making a withdraw, but if you want to make a deposit, you need a deposit envelope. Guess where those are. With the ATMs? Nope. Inside. Get in line sucker.

So what do people talk about while waiting in line? How much it sucks, and how there’s none of this chaos at other banks. I’ve heard several people talking about how they were waiting in line to close their accounts because it’s a nightmare to do business there now. On that note I opened a new account at Union Bank of California the other day and the experience was much, much better.

JJ Abrams is one of the two reasons I wish I had cable (the other being, of course, Deadwood). Fortunately for me I have generous friends who invite us over to get overly involved in the weaving, enjoyable, and sometimes shocking stories of LOST and, heart be still, Alias. Ah Alias, despite the fact that it deals with SPIES for christssakes, I like the fact that all of their “international” locations are in downtown Los Angeles. Oh, they’re in Russia…nope, just the Biltmore. Ah, they’re in Sweden…nope, that’s the downtown bridge. I’m just waiting for them to film something outside of the gallery – are you listening JJ? As for LOST, I’ve been gone hook-line-and-sinker since that show debuted. It’s phenominally crafted and, just so long as that monster isn’t Barney, I’ll continue to watch.

The New York Times has an article on Mr. Abrams today who is working on another pilot and Mission Impossible 3. Can it be that someone in Hollywood actually has style, taste, and is getting great jobs? I hope for more of his shows and less of the droll and useless “reality” shows. Wouldn’t you much rather watch Jennifer Garner as a spy with a hot dude than some disgusting wife swap? (Note: America’s Next Top Model is excluded from that statement – that shit rocks).

Caryn had never seen Lethal Weapon before so we rented it from Video Journeys the other day and finally got to watch it tonight. If you haven’t seen it in a while all you need to know at the moment is it takes place in LA and it’s raining in every other scene. We were making jokes thought the whole thing about the “creative license” that the director must have taken with that since it never rains here. Never. OK, maybe like one day a year. But not in December and not every day like they depict on the screen. I guess since Mel made that Jesus flick earlier this year he’s got some extra back up or something because as soon as the credits started rolling it started raining. Just to show us. I swear there was a puddle on my porch shaped like a middle finger. It’s was like Baby Jesus himself heard us breakin’ Mel’s balls over the that tubular hair-do he’s rocking and decided to take a piss all over us. Guess that’s what we get for busting on a dude who’s down with Gee Oh Dee!

On our regular fitness walks around the neighborhood, usually my baby and I head up and down and around some of Silver Lake’s available public stairways, but on this morning we decided to forego our usual routes up the Music Box Steps and accept the challenge of climbing up Micheltorena from Sunset Boulevard to the top. So we headed from our house across Marathon up to Micheltorena, and on our way north we first pass two LAPD patrol cars whose officers are congregated around an older jeep Cherokee. The officers smiled and waved and said good morning as we passed, which allowed me to hope that the vehicle didn’t contain anything or anyone dead, and we didn’t linger at all to find out the contrary.

Down the 200 stairs to Sunset, we set off up the climb to the top of the decently steep Micheltorena, at the top of which we spot a pair of Asian women heading south. One of the women, walking backwards, is wearing a vest and upon its back is everybody’s favorite: “Jesus Is God Read The Bible.” The fun part is, she proceeds to intentionally walk right up to me indicating the phrase on her back, asking repeatedly “Excuse me? Excuse me? Did you read? Did you read?” Stifling the urge to scream “No he’s not. Read something else!” my baby and I went on our way to the reservoir then at the Backdoor Cafe for a little breakfast before heading home. Not more than 15 minutes after we arrive there’s a knock on the door and I find a pair of neatly dressed Watchtower-bearing Jehovah’s Witness folk asking me if I was interested in learning more about how I could live forever.

Lord, help me.

Tonight at the I-5 Gallery in the Brewery Arts Complex downtown, there is a special event celebrating the life and work of Robert Vincent Peluce. If you aren’t familiar with Robert’s work, you really should see it – it’s surreal and beautiful and strange and wonderful. You can view some of his work at the Glass Garage Gallery website.

Robert passed away in April of this year. His studio was just downstairs from mine, and he was not only one of the most talented painters I’ve known, but also one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.

Location information is here. Admission is free. The art is amazing. You should really stop by if you can.

The exhibition opens from 7 p.m. – 11 p.m. tonight and runs through December 12.

“Hear me now, you WILL go see GWAR when they come to town “to play heavy metal and split some fucking skulls!” Bowing down to GWAR as our masters is an experience not to be missed.

You cannot resist the call of Oderous Urungus, Flattus Maximus, and Beefcake the Mighty! Buy your tickets TODAY. Do not delay or hem and haw over this. You simply must attend the GWAR concert.

I do not want to hear any bullshit about your plans to watch TV or snuggle with the missus. Reserve December 3rd as a night of mayhem, skull splitting, and getting covered in strange colored fluids in a mosh pit.”

So says Michael. Mark your iCal for December 3rd because that’s when they are playing at the Key Club. Michael will be there so if you are in LA ( I won’t be) you should saddle up and go get bled on with him.

Oh man, they are tarring the roof of the building sixspace is in and it smells so awful. They started yesterday but I suppose the fumes just keep seeping their way in. Isn’t the smog and air quality bad enough today? I can feel my lungs turning black already.

Gross.

Glamourcon is the premier gathering of Playmates, Models, Pinups, Artists, Photographers, Celebrities, Collectibles Dealers, Publication Vendors, Agencies in the Glamour industry and they’ve pulled together a huge guest list to come to town this weekend.

I know that it would seem like our resident fanboy Koga should’ve been the one to post about this, but since I’m actually going to be at Glamourcon this weekend to support Genevieve Gallen, one of the many featured models at the event, I thought I’d make the post and put up a little bit of eye candy as long as I was at it.

I know Koga can talk firsthand about some of his experiences at past Glamourcon conventions… anyone else have any past Glamourcon stories to tell?

In addition to a huge list of models (including well over 35 Playboy Playmates), there will also be booths from L.A. landmarks such as Golden Apple Comics and Hollywood Book & Poster and many, many others.

Is anyone else planning to be there?

Where Cesar Chavez (aka Sunset) meets Figueroa downtown is a massive bottleneck in the evenings. Here’s the set up. TONS of traffic is headed north on Figueroa coming out of downtown. People headed home from work and what not. Headed south there’s next to no traffic because the street only goes south for a blog block or two there before it becomes one way, and just north of Cesar Chavez is a freeway entrance and a side street, so there’s no where for traffic to come from. Ideally this should mean that the traffic headed north on Fig that is trying to turn left on Cesar Chavez should have it made, but there’s a twist. The north west corner is an evening adult school, the parking for which is in a building across the street. And there’s no turn light. This means that for almost the entire north-south green light, when tons of cars should be turning left, they can’t because there’s an endless flow of people headed back and forth across the street. 2, maybe 3 cars get through during one light. This wouldn’t be a problem if half of downtown wasn’t trying to turn left. The result is the turning lane is backed up in to the standard lane which in turn is backed up for a mile or two every night. I know that’s the problem because occationally there’s no classes, and in turn, no traffic. It’s the difference between a 15 minute commute and a 25 minute commute.

The solution? There needs to be either a turn light when people can’t walk but cars can turn, or better yet (but more expensive I’m sure) a raised pedestrian walkway so people could walk whenever they wanted and never get in the way of traffic. Anyway, it’s 1:30 am and that’s my rant for the evening.

UPDATE: Success!

FYI everyone, the meter has been removed, and the spot should be painted over shortly.

Big smiles.

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf has some program going where you can donate some dough and write your name on a piece of paper to hang on the wall and show how philanthropic you are. Last night, at the CB&TL on Sunset and Fairfax, I saw one with Ben Stiller’s name on it. But nobody, and I mean nobody, can beat this one from the CB&TL in the bottom floor of my building. I just wish I had been there when he came in. I mean, I’m not a star fucker or anything, but I’d have to at least ask for an autograph. Or some Energon.

I’m late to the party on this one, but I just found out that The Fourth Floor blog is gone. The anonymous creator says “The blog is closing because interest in my identity Ö has compromised my ability to protect confidential sources.” So, farewell to our own little Wonkette.