I made a trip to Chavez Ravine this evening. I went for the cute blanket, and that was all the pleasure I got out of the night.

I love the Dodgers, and am in no way a fairweather fan. I can’t help but be a fan since I grew up in the 1980s (yeah, I’m young) at the height of Fernandomania. Lately, I’m more interested in the team and have been attending more games.

When the Dodgers are doing well and winning 8 games in a row, I’m feeling great. When they have lost 5 of their last 6 games, were swept in a series, and are in second place in the National Leage West I feel like kicking someone.

I bet Shawn Green is laughing all the way back to Arizona (or where ever the Diamondbacks’ next series takes place).

Oh Crap! The Star Wars Nerds were totally attacked today by some Netflix publicity stunt. It seems they sent Bai Ling over with about 10 million Netflix logos and she totally wrecked the joint. BoingBoing points out that this “probably brought the Star Wars Line geeks as close to hot female tail as they’re ever likely to get” which might be why they aren’t complaining about how they totally got used. They even let her answer the pay phone! AND! It looks like they knew she was coming (although it’s not clear if they knew this was going to be some giant Netflix ad, did I mention that already? Netflix was well represented).

What do The Nerds have to say about it all after-the-fact? Here’s their reports, and here’s a few totally out of context quotes:

“Whoever’s working the cam is all about the upskirts.”

“I sent a text to Matt saying “I hear there’s a short plaid skirt”. His response “That’s no skirt, that’s a belt.”

“i mean this in a totally heterosexual way, but i’m aroused… “

Um. Yeah. I mean this in a totally heterosexual way too, I’m creeped the hell out.

[full blogging.la star wars line coverage]

So I grew up in metroblogs’ Chicago beat and was unfamiliar with the whole beloved Boston duck phenomenon until a college roommate hipped me to it. But I’m on my way home from a fitting near the beach last night and damned if five or six ducks didn’t decide, “Hey! Screw the light! And to hell with these wings! Let’s walk across the street RIGHT NOW!!!!”

Only this being L.A., the street was Venice Boulevard and this being 2005, I have a handy-dandy digital camera in my car to take a pic of the ducks for blogging.la. Only as I reach for the camera, I see that the very attractive occupant of the car next to me is, in fact, a very attractive TV star and suddenly, I get all self-conscious about pulling out a camera, thinking “what if she thinks I’m taking a picture of her? I don’t want her to think I’m some tourist…”

So no picture of incredibly fat, hilarious ducks waddling across Venice Blvd from the canal to…where, exactly?

And definitely no picture of very attractive TV star. Hey, if you want that stuff, head on over to someplace where they serve up Actual Celebrity Dish.

Earlier Will was talking about Eric Garcetti and how lucky we are to have someone who “gets it” working for us. I wish other cities and districts were as lucky. This is from his blog about the new CD13 site:

“We’ve launched our new CD13 website, my official city hall web pages. You can search old e*news for subject-specific and geographic-specific items, and we have added items as blog entries on the home page, which we will regularly update.”

Do you like laughing? No? You must be dead inside. But if you do, you should check out tonight’s show at ACME:

WHAT: Dancing Barefoot, live on stage!
WHERE: Acme Comedy Theatre
135 N. La Brea
Hollywood, CA 90036
(323) 525-0202
WHEN: Tonight ó Wednesday, April 27th at 8 pm.
TICKETS: $12

Blogging.la’s own Wil Wheaton will be performing from his book Dancing Barefoot live on stage. Wil’s currently in the process of making Dancing Barefoot into an audiobook, so you definitely don’t want to miss this.

If you’re not convinced, take a gander at a very enthusiastic videoblog about it.

American McGee, designer of the delightfully twisted “American McGee’s Alice” video game (amongst others), points on his blog to an article on Gamespot covering the new Bad Day LA game. And given the screenshots and description, it has the potential to be a great deal of fun:

Enlight says that in BDLA, gamers will be “thrust behind the shopping cart of a homeless man turned city-saving crusader.” The main character, one Anthony Williams, is a “reluctant hero who left behind the privileged life of a successful Hollywood agent after losing his self-respect.” Williams encounters a number of challenges while traveling around the titular Southern California metropolis, including zombies, terrorists, and earthquakes.

The article has more screenshots and an interview with McGee.

Plans were revealed last night and LA Voice has a great wrap up.

In short, by hating, fearing, loathing and dissing the L.A. Times so actively, they give the paper even more weight than it has, or should have.

…

But at the end of the day, the L.A. Times is just another media outlet in town, just another news source that you can choose to use, ignore or test against other sources. If bloggers devoted half the time they spend bitching about the L.A. Times to actually reporting on news and issues that matter to Los Angeles, the blogosphere would be a helluva lot more interesting and informative.

Here’s some other bloggers talking about the event. We here at blogging.la are so down that we weren’t even invited!

From the Heavy Trash website: “Most people want to live in communities that are safe for their families and most homeowners want to protect their property values. Although these are fundamentally reasonable goals, walling off one section of the city from another is not a reasonable way to achieve them. In fact, doing so can actually harm the very communities in need of protection.”

In order to draw attention to this Heavy Trash has installed a bunch of bright orange “viewing platforms” outside the walls of several gated communities so that the general public can observe what life is like inside of the walls. Their site is full or reasons these communities are bad and possible solutions to the problems. Very interesting indeed…

[via LA Blogs]

It’s not quite 50-cent Fridays like the single-A teams have, but it’s pretty cool nonetheless. Today is “True Blue Tuesday” at Dodger Stadium, which means you can get tickets (1-866-DODGERS) on the Reserve Level, Top Deck and the Pavilions for $2 each, and watch the boys in blue play the division rival Arizona Diamondbacks, along with erstwhile Dodger Shawn Green. (Sigh.) Arizona righty (and Van Nuys native) Russ Ortiz will be facing Dodger (and Long Beach native) Scott Erickson.

On the trivia front, did you know the Dodgers got into the Guiness Book of World Records recently?

[They have] registered the highest cumulative home attendance for any sports franchise. Since 1901, the Dodgers have played before more than 166,000,000 fans. In 2004, the Dodgers drew 3,488,283 fans to Dodger Stadium for the third-highest single-season total in club history and the Major League-record 19th time they have reached the three-million mark in home attendance.

Oh, and another slightly important note: Eric Gagne pitched from the mound for the first time since March. 60 pitches and looking better than expected. With Brad Penny back already, Jayson Werth taking BP, and Wilson Alvarez hopefully making a rehab start in Vegas soon, things are looking up.

Brooks e-mailed me this weekend about the launch of LosAngeles.PhotoBloggers.org. Unfrotunately I was able to blog about it as quick as I’d hoped, which might have been a good thing since it seems they had some trouble with the database over the weekend so it wouldn’t have been a very entertaining link. Brooks has the honor of not only being a great photographer, but of being one of the last people still running a blog on GreyMatter. He’s keeping it real. Anyway, the site is up now, and they are looking for contributions and stuff so if you are the camera carrying type go check this out.

You probably already know that you cal give The Nerds a call at (323) 462-9609 but did you also know they are on AIM? Their IM name is LiningUp2005 and the converstaions you can have with them are riviting. Here’s a chat I had with them last night:

Sean Bonner: So what’s the haps at the line tonight?
about a minute with no response
Sean Bonner: really?
Sean Bonner: sounds exciting.
LiningUp2005: nothing much…..it’s fun to have imaginary conversations with yourself
Sean Bonner: If I didn’t know you guys loved me I’d totally think you were making fun of me with that last bit there
LiningUp2005: I’m kidding
Sean Bonner: ha ha ha
LiningUp2005: hahahah
LiningUp2005: hahahahahahaahahaha
Sean Bonner: ok, it’s not that funny
Sean Bonner: calm down there linesters
LiningUp2005: hehehe, ok.
LiningUp2005: what are you wearing?
Sean Bonner: A ninja outfit
LiningUp2005: damn, that’s hot.
Read the rest of this entry →

Brave LA friend Typefiend details probably the most disgusting thing one could ever casually discover (especially if you’re the store owner) – a big, nasty pile of hair on the ground. It was on Sawtelle near Olympic and could you possibly imagine anything more gross?

What could have possibly happened? Did Cousin It spontaneously combust? Did a hippie decide to shed his nasty locks? I mean, has the whole world gone crazy?!

My sincerest kudos to Typefiend for having the courage to document this and a hearty well-down to his special lady friend Emily who stood so close to it. Shiver.

While posting to get rid of some stuff, I found an interesting posting on craiglist.org:

A Topanga resident is offering specimens of invasive species Rattus rattus up as snake food. I’m not sure if it’s considered “having a heart” to trap rats and then send them off to be eaten, but I guess it’s all the circle of life. Of course if you don’t have a heart but do have a snake and think Topanga’s too far to go there are always lots of kittens looking for a home (I’m kidding!).

Other folks who have a heart include a person who’s found a bunch of bees in search of a new hive, maybe there’s someone out there with a lot of hungry spiders.

I haven’t written much lately, mostly because I’ve been trying to work as much as possible so I can buy a car. This weekend, as I slaved away over my computer, I could hear what sounded like a carnival announcer in the distance, saying things like “Beer or wine, three dollars!” He shouted that around noon on Saturday, so I’m guessing some of my neighbors start drinking a little earlier than I do.

Today, I walked over to check out the St. Charles Parish Festival, and discovered they were raffling off a MINI Cooper Convertible. Tickets were only $1, and the second place prize was $1000 cash. The drawing was at 8:00 tonight, so I guess I didn’t win anything, but it was nice to spend a few hours daydreaming about the awesome blog entry I could write if I won a car at a street fair two blocks from my house. (Seriously. I was daydreaming about the blog entry instead of the car. What is wrong with me?) My only complaint about the festival, aside from not winning the car, is that nobody was selling fried dough. I thought that stuff was a key part of the carnival food pyramid (along with cotton candy and snow cones), but it seems the St. Charles parish folks don’t appreciate its hot, sugary goodness.

I posted a few festival photos on Flickr, including one of a sexy carny lady from the future.

Number #1: Have your white stretch limo pull up out front so you can go grocery shopping at Gelson’s. Really, no one was impressed.

[Attention kids! You can play along at home with this handy new flickr tag 'looklikeachode'!]