Piggybacking on Joz’s last post…

I was just in the restroom, doing my business, when a guy walked in, talking on his cell phone. He didn’t break his conversation or hang up on the guy he was talking to, at all.

On top of that, he didn’t flush, lest he reveal that he’s in the proverbial john.

And he didn’t wash his hands before he left.

Sadly, I didn’t recognize his voice, so I’m hoping he doesn’t work at my workplace! Ugh.

To the person who stole my half-eaten chili dog and hamburger from Tommy’s out of the fridge at work:

I think it’s disgusting that you’d want to eat someone’s partially eaten lunch from yesterday, but if you want it that badly, you can have it. For pete’s sake, no one was around to see me put in the the fridge, so you could’ve been eating food touched by a leper, but luckily for you, it just had my cooties on it.

Let’s *not* do lunch sometime,
Joz

Jim McMurry spotted this shirt on a flight from LA to Vegas. And they say LA women are shallow!

This weekend features at least two conventions to meet some celebrities:

• The Hollywood Collectors and Celebrities Show is this weekend at the Hilton Burbank Airport & Convention Center. Daily general admission tickets are $15.00 while a two-day pass is $25.00. Big tip: Get there early, as parking there fills up rather quickly.

• The Angel Booster Bash at the Westin Century Plaza Hotel and Spa starts today and runs through Sunday. Tonight features a concert by Common Rotation and KANE at Key Club. Tickets are definitely on the very pricey side, with the concert going for $35.00 and a weekend pass going for a whopping $290.00, and that doesn’t include the Friday Night Cocktail Party ($135.00), the Saturday Night Banquet ($175.00), the Sunday Private Luncheon, or the Angelís Food Drive Check Presentation Luncheon ($95.00).

I know some of the other b.la contributors have bad relationships and experiences with their neighbors, but I’ve realized lately that I don’t have any kind of relationship with most of my neighbors. I’ve been living in my Palms apartment since September 2000 and still don’t know the first names of the people who live upstairs who have good music taste, the Indian family across the hall and other tenants in my building.

While I was finishing up my undergrad education, it didn’t really bug me that I wasn’t too familiar with my neighbors. I was hardly ever at my apartment with lots of evening meetings and late night study sessions on campus. That changed when I had semi-normal work hours, but I still don’t know my neighbors.

This bugs me now. I had some incredible neighbors when I was growing up in Hacienda Heights. My parents make friends with everybody, and it paid off considering our neighbors have been really helpful and plain old neighborly in the 27 years we’ve lived in the area. I don’t plan to be here that long, but it would still be nice to ask a neighbor if I could borrow a cup of sugar.

Would it be strange to finally say more than a simple “hi” or “hello” to a neighbor?

You know how much abLA loves the sexy (or at the very least takes notice of it)…continue reading

Jonah just posted a call for help so if you want to read hundreds of LA blogs every day and pick out cool stuff for the site, now is you chance!

Not really. Just wanted to toss a shout out from the historic Tembo Hotel in Stone Town, Zanzibar, where wife Susan and I arrived this Friday afternoon (about 10 hours ahead of L.A. time).

Almost two weeks into our African adventure and this is the first place we’ve found access to the internets (not to mention TV and newspapers). Trip is going grandly. We’ve hung out with mountain gorillas in Rwanda and seen elephant and lion and hippo and black rhino and leopard and cheetah and giraffe and zebra and wildebeest and everything else on the Serengeti and Lake Manyara and in the Ngorongoro Crater. I’ve even been bit by the dreaded tsetse fly (twice) to no ill effects (other than I’m suddenly using a lot of parentheticals).

Anyway, we’ll be here on the island for a couple more days before beginning the long trip back to Los Angeles next week.

Downtown blogger Eric Richardson has just launched an amazing service called Singularist, a site which makes the -ist collection of sites more readable by doing away with the annoying editorial “we.” Best part is, this is completely in line with the allowed usage according to the Creative Commons License the sites are published under, specifically that this is a non-commercial derivative work. You know, some days I really love the internets.

You know, here I was joking around yesterday about being an accident magnet, and earlier this morning I was as almost the victim of an accident. I was driving in the slow lane on Rossmore and headed south towards Beverly, when a black Honda Civic to my left nearly plowed right into my car while trying to switch lanes.

As I quickly swerved to avoid getting hit, I let out an audible “Whoa!” and felt the adrenaline rush kick in. Is it really that difficult to look *before* you change lanes?

Just what the world needs…another talk show. But wait, this new one is the Tyra Banks Show featuring Miss Tyra Banks and if we learned anything from America’ Next Top Model it’s that the fierce host gives good advice (and is not one to hold back on a screaming fit).

The show begins on the WB this September, to attend a free taping this August in Los Angeles, click here.

As Tom over in DC points out, System Administrators often toil in obscurity, unheralded, unrecognized and underappreciated. So six years ago, the last Friday in July was designated System Administrator Appreciation Day.

So today, raise a glass of whatever liquid you have handy to Metroblogging’s sysadmin and resident code poet, Jason DeFillippo, who regularly rocks it like the proverbial hurricaine. Thanks, Jason.

And don’t forget to take today to genuflect to all the sysadmins in your life: home, office and elsewhere. That includes the friends and relatives you have come over to your house to fix your computer. Today is the day to placate them with burnt offerings.

Quite a few art openings this week (color me surprised) including William Betts @ de Soto (see image), Neckface @ New Image Art, and the curated group show Mix @ the Chouinard School of Art…continue reading

A big invitation for everyone to come out to sixspace this Saturday to attend the Art Prostitute Issue No. 6 release party and say farewell to or downtown space…continue reading

This morning, I saw an article on USA Today that covered the launch of BeautifulPeople.net:

Officially launching Thursday, the networking site is the electronic equivalent of the junior high cafeteria, with the popular kids ó i.e., members ó voting on whether to offer seats to the hopeful hordes. Which means that unlike other online communities such as Friendster and Thefacebook, BeautifulPeople functions more like an invitation-only social club.

The criteria are shamelessly superficial: a recent photograph (bikinis and bare biceps encouraged) and body statistics. Is your six-pack more of a two-pack? The site also accepts “people with personal/professional qualities that stand out from the majority” ó like “Sandhill,” an entrepreneur with a goofy grin who says his income is $1 million-plus.

An applicant’s photo and profile is posted for three days. Members grade candidates of the opposite sex (to avoid Mean Girls-style competition) on a four-point attractiveness scale, from “Yes! Certainly!!” to ó ouch ó “No! Not at all!”

But this reminds me of VanityDate.com, where yes, you (if you’re a guy) can date former Hugh Hefner favorites (and L.A. residents) Sandy and Mandy Bentley. But that is, of course, if you’re presumably pretty enough for them. (Somehow, I don’t think any of the Slashdot crowd need apply.)

UPDATE: BeautifulPeople.net is apparently only compatible with Internet Explorer, but geeks know Firefox is the beautiful browser.