After Daeley’s investigation into LA Times RSS feeds, it occurred to me to check LA Weekly for the same. After all, doesn’t it make perfect sense for them to syndicate things like Calendar listings and Picks of the Week? I guess not, because they don’t have any RSS feeds at all. It seems like quite an oversight, since their parent pub Village Voice has several. Seeing another chance for City Beat to one-up the Weekly, I dug around their site as well but suffered no better results. So, are there any LA publications that syndicate over RSS? It’s a little sad that when I fire up my newsreader in the morning I’m getting loads of national info and have no idea what’s going on here (outside of the LA blogoshpere).

The power of blogging…my old business landlords contacted me about a post I made about them in March. Needless to say it wasn’t kind…continue reading

Because everytime I’ve driven past Doggie Style on Silver Lake Boulevard since I blogged about it, I have squealed like a little girl, I figured that it was time to pay them a visit. We had the pleasure of meeting co-owner Melinda Paulo and the stylish Kaily who modeled some Chloe-esque doggles for us. Too die for, darling.

To my delight, it’s a wonderfully unique dog boutique. So often these days visits to different dog stores either physical or online carry the same merchandise so it was nice to see a lot of original projects. For instance, Doggie Style carries a diverse range of dog outfits (yeah, I know) for both girl and boy dogs. It’s refreshing to see that someone realizes that not all dogs want to be Tinkerbell. They had great “Rolling Bones” baseball tees, a variety of tees with poo-puns written on them, and bomber jackets. I keeed you not. The absolute best thing was an assortment of plush toys with fashion mock-names – the “Chewy Vuitton” faux bag was the best as well “Bark Jacobs.” So what did we pick up? Nothing that the boys are going to like too much. It’s a remote control collar that emits citronella to discourage barking…harmless but worth a shot.

In the near future, Doggie Style will be offering human-grade dog treats and dog grooming. I think I had better start saving!

Why I love Vin Scully: during the Padres-Dodgers game that’s on right now, he just described a batter as being from “Salinas, the lettuce capital of the world.” You have taught me so much, o wise one.

See you next year, Dodgers. Now it’s time for the Southern California Angels of the San Andreas Fault to make us proud in the postseason.

Here at blogging.la, we pride ourselves on offering not just the best things to do around this wonderful metropolis of ours, but general advice of all kinds. So in the spirit of giving that is our hallmark, here’s a tip for all you potential felons out there.

If you and your buddies decide to carjack somebody here in LA, make sure the guys inside the target car aren’t FBI agents on a stakeout.

Back at the end of August I blogged about my awesome experience in a wheel-building class over at Bicycle Kitchen, the first stage in a bike resurrection project I’d undertaken to raise from the dead a sad old broken down 10-speed I found abandoned on my block last year and convert it to a fixed-gear.

Work progresses. Since the wheel build, I’ve stripped the thing bare, dubbed her “The Phoenix,” prepped the frame and forks and yesterday just finished the last of the orange-and-red homebrew paintjob portion (click the images to biggify them). All told I’ve put in about 30 hours so far ó and apparently I’m so not the only one. Go ahead, slap me silly and call me trendy, because in today’s L.A. Times Magazine, I found an excellent feature by John Balzar on the growing fixed-gear bicycle craze, replete with excellent photos of Bicycle Kitchen volunteer Aurisha Smolarski’s hot pink single-speeder.

Next up I’ll be working with Jim Cadenhead at Bicycle Kitchen who’s been invaluable in helping me figure out how best to outfit the Phoenix with her new transmission. Then it’ll be onto other essentials like… a seat. And handlebars. Pedals would be nice, too. All in I’m hoping her inaugural ride will coincide with Mack Reed’s next Fool Moon Roll.

I’m so inflexibly unhip that for 36 of the 40-odd months I’ve lived in Silver Lake I thought Jeff Electric, housed in an otherwise nondescript building on Sunset Boulevard, was the HQ of an actual electrician ó even with its rotation of quirkily dressed storefront windows. Yeah, I know: Little Bus.

When it finally filtered down that it was ó hello! ó an art gallery I looked forward to sheepishly paying my first visit, which my wife Susan and I did last night after I found Caryn’s post on art.blogging.la announcing the release party and interactive* exhibition there for the Quiet Life Camera Club’s first book of imagery.

After tacking the images we brought to the gallery walls and being told “thanks for the art,” we admired the other photographs before heading out back where there was a donations-requested open bar with Red Stripe beer, tons of interesting fashion choices, and even a ping-pong tournament on some spiff professional-level tables (winner to bag an iPod Nano), which I momentarily considered entering at Susan’s encouragement until I saw some of the competition warming up and also realized there’s a good reason I hadn’t played since 1989: because I suck.

Anyway, it was an excellent way to discover the truth about Jeff Electric. Tune in next week when I’ll be finding out that the nearby Silver Lake Lounge isn’t really a lounge, but a therapy clinic.

And for the record, Julia Sweeney is back in action with her fantastic one-woman show, Letting Go of God, in various Sunday morning performances over at the Groundlings theater.

It’s running in rep with her other recent one-woman play, In The Family Way, for the next four months. Schedule on Julia’s website.

At $20, it costs a bit more than church (upfront, anyway), but there are a lot more laughs.

Well, intentional ones, anyway.

I haven’t posted about any shows at my theater lately because…well, because I think it’s tacky to toot our horn too much. But last night I finally caught a performance of our newest production, She Stoops To Comedy, andówell, I gotta toot, because it’s that good.

Forget that it scored LA WEEKLY “Pick of the Week” and critic’s pick-type kudos in Back Stage West (and the LA Times, which generally seems to take pleasure in crapping on us). Go see it for John Fleck. And Shannon Holt. And the rest of the amazingly great cast. Go see it because it’s funny and witty and charming as hell. But mainly, go because it will restore your faith in live theater.

$15 on TH/SU, $20 on FR/SA. 8pm start. At Evidence Room. Thru October.

Long live low tech entertainment…

He’s running something called CitySceneBlog which looks pretty familiar. Here’s all the details.

UPDATE OCTOBER 14: Those sites have been redesigned and are no longers stealing ideas from us.

Hey, merci beaucoup! Apparently the Quebec government has sent a couple of fire-fighting planes to help fight the brush fires and will send more if necessary. This despite one of our local hockey players sticking his skate in his mouth about French Canadians this past week. ;) So again, merci!

Yesterday, cycling my way into work, fire-fighting planes were going over my head every couple of minutes, only a few hundred feet above. I gave myself a neck cramp craning around looking at them going by — big planes, very close, pretty slow. Heading for the Thurman Fire in the San Bernardino Mountains. Weather conditions have been favorable (somewhat cooler, lessened wind), but the difficult nature of the terrain means that there was 12% containment on it this morning. And while this fire is only 1,000 acres burned so far, it is threatening the evacuated Angelus Oaks. Hopefully conditions will stay favorable. The planes continue flying today.