The other day I read an absoludicrous article on the Times of London website that appeared in one of my feedster search RSS feeds for Los Angles about how nobody in LA rides bikes and that to do so would be suicidal. I really wanted to write about it and didn’t, but thankfully Mack Reed also read the article and tore the limey a new asshole. Mack gets bonus points for calling me a “Downtown, code-punching fixie freak.” =]

What do you get when you combine Halloween (only the best holiday ever) and cute little dogs? Um, a big effing good time!

Yes, the fourth annual BowWowWeen festival is this Sunday from 12-4pm in Barrington Park, Brentwood. Not only are animals invited to attend, they are encouraged to enter their costume contest! Starting at 2pm, the costume contest will begin with categories such as “funniest”,” “scariest,” and “best dog and owner” costume with the grand prize “best in show” being a year’s supply of dog food! And, of course since this is LA, where would we be without the celebrity judges: Tori Spelling, Tiffani Thiessen, Constance Zimmer, Emmanuelle Vaugier, Adam West, Kate Walsh, as well as Margot Dougherty and Greg Oehler (the Senior Editor and Publisher of The Hollywood Dog Magazine).

And it’s all for a good cause too – there will be dog adoptions taking place during the festival and all proceeds will benefit the Much Love Foundation who is putting this whole shindig on. Oh, and there’s also stuff for those other kinds of children too. Most importantly however, it’s the opportunity to put that giraffe costume to use!

For complete information on the festival and the Much Love Animal Rescue please visit their website.

I will give Artforum.com credit for recently including more than zero “critic’s picks” for Los Angeles as they’ve included some fantastic shows written by people actually living here. However, the paragraph I’ve included below from yesterday’s Scene and Herd on the Frieze art fair in London jumped right out at me…continue reading

Need Apple shit but don’t want to drive to Pasadena or Glendale? Hate the Grove?

Then prepare to park it on the 101, my good friends, because the Apple Store is coming to Thousand Oaks.

Apple plans to open a new retail store this Saturday, October 29th at 10:00 AM in Thousand Oaks, CA. The Apple Store is located at 432 West Hillcrest Dr. in Thousand Oaks, on the Upper Level across from Express. As usual, the first 1000 visitors will be rewarded with commemorative t-shirts.

I hear the T-shirts scratch easily, though, so maybe it’s not worth the wait.

On August 15, I became a member of KCRW. I’m not really an NPR person, but once in a while I listen to Morning Becomes Eclectic (mostly because I knew Nic Harcourt a million years ago, back when we both worked at a tiny radio station in upstate New York).

It occurred to me yesterday that it’s two and a half months later, and I still haven’t received any kind of “welcome packet” from them. Today a KCRW envelope came in the mail, and I figured that was it, but no — they just wanted to let me know that if I contributed a few hundred more dollars I could be a KCRW Angel. Asking for more money before they’ve even thanked me for the first donation strikes me as seriously tacky. Anybody know if this is a common practice? Or just bad timing with my subscription?

People don’t seem to understand that trains are thousands of times more massive then their cars and they continue to try and see who will win in a car vs. train competition. The train wins, in this case it was the blue line. Btw has anyone noticed that the Metro Blue Line seats are stained with all types of nasty poop like marks? I haven’t ridding the Blue Line in a few years but I recall it being stinky and dirty probably having to do with the fact that it was the first of the Metro Lines.

So I’m working from home today and I decided I would take off some time to go get lunch and visit my friend Eric who lives in the car stereo district in Downtown. I rode over to his loft and hung out for a bit and then I rode over to Marukai Market in Little Tokyo to pick up and eat some sushi and onigiri (balls / triangles of rice wrapped in seaweed with a tiny bit of fish inside) and some green tea and aloe drink to wash it down. It was pretty fun dodging cars and I only had to use my front brake once when my toe clip strap popped off. Here is a map of my route.

At around 11 this morning, what looked like two military helicopters flew so low over my building that the windows shook (hell, it seemed like the whole place shook). They seemed like they were headed north. I’m not at all familiar with military aircraft but they looked kind of like this Blackhawk, but black. They were definitely not news choppers or anything commercial or civilian – they were obviously military. I just don’t know what model, and since I saw them from their underbellies I thought I’d try and identify them by in-flight photos. Anyone else see them or know what might have been going on?

It’s not too early to make plans for DÌa de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Xispas has a short list of some events in and around LA.

If you don’t want to paint your face like a calaca (skeleton), then maybe you can make your own Day of the Dead altar to honor loved ones who have passed away. It doesn’t need to be as elaborate as the ones you’ll find at Hollywood Forever cemetery. Simple votive candles, marigolds, pan de muerto (bread of the dead), sugar skulls, and photos are enough.

More info on Day of the Dead:
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Two separate bomb threats were reportedly received early this morning at Long Beach and John Wayne airports, but no explosives were found during searches. Although all threats are taken seriously, these were termed ‘non-specific’ and ‘non-credible.’ Flights are resuming this morning.

There’s some less than positive news about our northern neighbors which is being pointed out by Doc Searls. He says:

“UCSB geologists say the situation at La Conchita is even worse than it appears. (Though no worse than the terminal diagnosis I gave it in January, after ten beautiful people died there…

There is a belief, held by some, that the government can prevent more slides there. I think these geologists make the matter even clearer than a look at the hill would give any objective outsider with a minimal sense of geology: there’s no holding this one back.”

He’s got a big arial photo that he took back in January after the mudslide. It’s seriously time to GTFO of La Conchita folks. Very scary.

Some would say such front-page, column-one print exposure in today’s L.A. Times for phasion photog / subcultchavultcha Mark “The Cobra Snake” Hunter has left him in need of a life-preserver after so jumping the shark. Personally, I’m just totally envious:

He hangs out with models, DJs, pro skaters, fashion designers, celebrities, rock musicians, the unbearably cool and the painfully fashionable. He wears the most outrageous designer and vintage fashions, which he often gets as gifts. He flies all over the world to attend parties. People, young women especially, recognize him wherever he goes.

And yet Hunter has no car, no steady job, and is barely 20 years old. He gets around on a bike. By his own admission, he is goofy and not exactly physically striking. He points at his wiry beard and the furry paunch of his stomach as evidence.

My kinda hero.

There is an insidiously powerful obsession I get caught up in every few years, and that is model trains. I’m wise enough nowadays to be able to resist buying a bunch of supplies to finally build a layout — I think I’ll save that hobby for when I’m old and crochety. ;) However, the obsession comes through like a tidal wave every so often, wiping all other concerns from the landscape until it recedes. Thanks to the Internet, I can indulge myself by checking out really awesome layouts done by others, which allows me to obsess without actually buying anything. This is a good thing.

With this background in mind, and given the recent resurgence of this obsession, I was poking around the MetroLink website earlier tonight when I noticed they have a store. Oddly enough, it is only an ‘online’ store in the sense that pictures of their products are on a website — you can only order stuff by downloading an order form, printing it out, then either faxing or mailing it. Not email, mind you. Snail mail. Anyhow, before I got too pissy about that in the Year of Our Internets 2005, I spotted HO Model Trains. Whoo hoo! Man, they sure look cool. Oh wait: $65 for a freaking locomotive? This isn’t a full-size one, is it? Nope, it’s HO scale.

And thus my dreams of a ginormous Union Station/Chinatown/Chavez Ravine layout with Metrolink trains and old-school trolleys came crashing to a halt. At $65, it would actually be about the same to buy a roundtrip pass between Union Station and Rancho Cucamonga for Single-A Quakes games — on a real train, mind you — ten times. I guess they have to pay for their huge Flash website development bills somehow, but jeez-us.

Glendale Community College, who recently became under the direction of Roger Dickies, looks to be presenting some interesting exhibitions in a beautiful space…continue reading

As it turns out when a Metrolink train slams in to a big rig, the metrolink train wins, although 5 people inside the train were injured today when a train collided with a truck in Glendale.