A truck fire shut down the 5 near the 134 for most of the night, and this morning it’s still a parking lot. It took me almost an hour to go about 4 miles. I spent the ride bitching about people who forget how to drive in the rain, until I got up to the crash site and bit my tongue. There were multiple pieces of charred truck spread over the freeway. It looked like the set of a Terminator movie. The driver was killed, and a whole lotta gasoline was spilled.

Be careful out there today, folks.

Yeah, what Sean said. We finally got it out here in the west end of the San Fernando Valley last night.

I woke up at 2:00 AM to the sound of multiple lightning strikes and couldn’t go to bed for another hour or so. There was one lightning strike that was so cracklingly close, less than a mile away in fact, and so loud, that it really did sound like a large explosion had gone off right outside my window.

At least one car alarm went off as a result, but the dogs in the neighborhood were silent. Very unusual. I guess they were really spooked.

This has little to do with anything other than its the weirdest web thing that just happened. Looking for the forecast I typed “eather.com” into my browser instead of weather.com, saw the error of my ways and clicked the stop button before “eather.com” could load. Then I positioned the cursor to the right of the “e” to add the “w,” but what I ended up doing was highlighted the address so that when I typed the “w” everything else deleted and just the “w” was in the address box as I hit the return key.

In the next second the front page of www.whitehouse.gov is in my browser. Huh? So I did again: “w” then pressed enter = the whitehouse.gov website. WTF? So what happens with “a” + enter? That takes you to apple.com. B? Well of course, that’s btselem.com the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in Occupied Territories. Yikes! C is cspan.org. D give you dlink.com. Any guesses for “E?”
Duh: the online home of the E! TV network. F? G? T? And so on? Go find out for yourself.

I’ve been running around the internut for going on 11 years now and I never knew this. Please someone tell me I’m not the last person in the ether to discover this one-letter redirect function.

Oh and just for kicks: S? For some reason you end up at mcdonalds.com. I’m not lovin’ it.

A World Series title in So Cal is not to be.

Doh.

(I still refuse to call them the LA Angels of Anaheim, though.)

With today’s taste of unseasonal weather the squirrels have suddenly been much busier around the house hauling in their food stashes nestled in the crooks of tree branches and moving them to more accessible and/or drier storage facilities. Wonder if this foretells of a winter wet as the last one. Guess we’ll have to wait and see, but the squirrels sure ain’t.

There’s something sweet and mellow about going to brunch on Sunday morning…whether it’s rolling out of bed with your lover and starting the day over food someone else has prepared or hangin’ with your girlfriends and catching up on the latest gossip…it’s all good. Today for the second Sunday in a row, I tried a new-to-me place in Hollywood that’s been open for a little less than a year, The Hungry Cat on Sunset and Vine. It’s tucked away behind the Borders and new Schwab’s and it’s a sweet find. A couple of my friends told me dinner was great, but brunch hit the spot too. It’s a bit pricey, but the food really is worth it. Last week, my boyfriend and I hit it after a very late night out and it really delivered. Today, a friend and I split a lobster roll and a a really great egg over brioche and salmon…both were great. She had a bellini with fresh peach juice and I had a just squeezed orange, lime and pomegrante juice. And the espresso was perfect. Yum!

With the grand opening of the Virgin Megastore at the Hollywood and Highland Complex on Monday afternoon (so it’s best to avoid that area altogether), just a few blocks away from Amoeba Records, I could see the two retailers competing for in-store performances and autograph signings, but the reality is that their customer-base seems to be vastly different.

In fact, judging by its upcoming appearance schedule, that certainly seems to be the case, as Virgin seems to be aiming for pop culture and entertainment instead of just musicians:

- September 17th: Grand Opening, with performances by Dredg, Gang of Four, and INXS (with the new lead singer, JD Fortune).

- September 18th: Hugh Hefner and The Girls Next Door (Holly, Bridget, and Kendra) Playboy signing.

- September 22nd: Ashlee Simpson I Am Me CD signing.

- November 8th: Margaret Cho performance and Assassins DVD signing.

With Howard Stern, the self-proclaimed “King of All Media,” making his move from traditional terrestrial radio to Sirius satellite radio in early January, David Lee Roth appears to be his replacement in New York while Adam Carolla appears to be his replacement here in L.A.

Meanwhile, Mancow is apparently telling radio listeners that Howard’s successor is already here, as evidenced by billboards that’ve been recently placed around town.

60 seconds ago it was calm and quite outside. Now it’s raining so hard that I can’t see the street lights 20 feet from my window and if you told me someone had just dumped their pool onto my porch I’d believe you.

Clearly this is a sign that the end of the world is here. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

It only sounds dark and scary. The Gothtober website is a collection of 31 days of Internet art, organized by Julianna Parr, the creator of one of my favorite ongoing L.A. events — Craft Night.

A new piece of Flash entertainment launches every day in October, and they’re mostly (if not all) created by Los Angeles artists. I had to check out today’s project, because my friend Dan shot the background of that animation in my swimming pool! I haven’t watched everything yet, but so far other favorites include Day 7′s recipe for a rat-shaped cake and Day 10′s printable templates for constructing a paper hearse. See for yourself…

Once again, too many art receptions in Los Angeles to possibly see them all in one night…continue reading

Image:
Stella Lai – I See Your Problem, But I Donít See You @ Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery

In follow up to this earlier post about CitySceneBlog which was, um, ‘heavily influenced’ by our page layout – it looks like those sites have been redesigned and are no longer infringeriffic.

Selah Artistic Giving Center is hosting their seasonal marketplace for the arts, FAB Market, downtown tomorrow. The event is at 330 Santa Fe from 12-9PM. Selah does some interesting stuff, but they really, really need to get on top of their PR. Don’t go looking at their website for more info about this, because the last one they have any info about is from July. Instead, click the thumb on the right for the backside of their flyer.

Crap! I really miss LA Blogs not having an RSS feed anymore. Instead I have to hear from Mack that Jonah threw this together. And man is it cool. And the stuff from here will be in there soon too. Have I mentioned today how much I like food? If it wasn’t for food I’d probably be dead.

I know not all UCLA buildings are wireless hotspots, but I love the fact that my buidling is. Even though I’m in class right now, I can check my email when the conversation gets boring and see what’s up for the weekend on b.la.

However, some profs might not like it.

I wonder if other LA-area institutions of higher education (or K-12 schools) are equipped with wireless network access around campus.