Well, almost… President of the Los Angeles City Council, actually.

Time was not so long ago that I could lampoon my favorite L.A. City Councilperson for some ridiulous fine the city’s ethics commission levied against him for walking around with his shoelaces untied while campaigning back in 2001, and he’d be the only one to get the joke. But with the news just out that his fellow councileers have today unanimously elected him our next City Council President, I guess it’s time for me to quit kidding around, right?

Gawd, I hope not. Hell, I voted him for mayor last May. Seriously!

Eric Garcetti’s good humor coupled with his amazing accessibility, his ironclad work ethic, and his tireless dedication to the city of L.A. and its citizens will all come in handy when he succeeds outgoing Prez Alex Padilla this coming New Year’s Day. According to the official press release, the council presidency is anything but laid back:

Elected by the 15 members of the Los Angeles City Council, the Council President is the parliamentary chair of the council. In his new role, Councilmember Garcetti will be responsible for setting the council agenda, chairing council meetings, and assigning members to legislative committees. The president also serves as interim mayor if the mayor leaves the state of California.

Sources tell me that there’s quite the goody bag that comes with the new gig. Some of the shwag includes a really cool crown and sceptor (only worn in closed-door sessions and during Lakers championship parades), a gavel that doubles as a Pez dispenser, the money needed to repave Griffith Park Boulevard and restripe its bike lanes, a Segway, an Xbox 360, and unlimited free rides on the Angels Flight railway, whenever it finally reopens.

But in all proud constituent righteousness: congratulation Councilman/President-Elect Garcetti. You lead. I’ll follow.

I know this is a terrible photo, but that’s the marquee of a store I passed on Broadway, downtown. In case you can’t read it, the name of the store is Disco Fiesta. How awesome is that? Disco Fiesta. Take that, regular Fiesta!

Good people of Los Angeles, the next time you’re headed to the checkout lane at Von’s I’d ask you to bear in mind that the sign over the Express Line that says “20 Items or Less” is an explicit direction, not a suggestion. “20 items” does not mean a rough estimate of 20 items. “20 Items” is not 22 or 24 or 28 items. “20 Items” is already pushing the limits of “Express,” so do us a favor and don’t ruin it for those of us that really only need to buy a couple of things. And don’t cheat on your count. You can only count items of the same type as one item if you’re reasonable about it. Obviously, a bag of tomatoes is one item. If the checker can ring in one of your items and then input the quantity on the keyboard, maybe that’s okay. But if your 20 yogurts and 20 2-liter bottles of soda and 20 boxes of diapers have to be rung up separately then it’s 60 items, not 3. Or if your stuff takes up an entire cart or an entire checkout counter belt, it’s not 20 items.

As a corollary, I would like to point out to the management of the Echo Park Von’s on Alvarado that if the only lane you have open is an Express Lane it sort of defeats the point.

During the morning carpool to work, headed southbound on the 101 Freeway near the 134/101 split, I spotted a silver Lexus GS300 with the license plate:

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I shit you not.

So this is really weird – for the last 10 minutes or so, my cable reception has been completely frozen. I was watching some cheesy made-for-TV movie (what? when I’m ovulating, I watch sappy chick flicks. deal with it) and it just stopped mid-sentence. So, thinking it might just be that channel, I flipped through to see what the others were doing. Every channel I’ve switched to is suspended in some kind of weird thing, like a still photo from a promotional photoset. Except it’s just not working and eerily quiet.

Anyone else dealing with Adelphia meltdown right now?

Vido, the neighborhood dog from up the street has decided he wants to move in. For the past week he has been stalking the house. He’s able to open his gate, walk down the street and open the gate to OUR house! Then he comes in the yard and starts taunting Moki – our dog. What do we do?

He’s a friendly older dog, but makes ours jealous and what’s up with opening OUR gate? Right now, he’s laying siege in the sun in the street in front of our house. Any suggestions?

I received a summons for jury duty back in August for a September service date, but postponed it because I had a full month of booked business trips in September. This week is the latest week I could move it to. Ah, the life of a road warrior. Anyway, I intend to blog the whole process as I go, since I’ve never gone through it before. I know we’ve had jury duty-related posts on b.la before, but hey – this is an updated version!

The first step in jury duty is to call in the night before the designated reporting date and find out if you need to show up at the designated courthouse. Tonight, I called in, and I found out that I wasn’t needed tomorrow. That means that I need to call again Monday after 5 p.m. and find out if I’m needed on Tuesday. If not, lather, rinse, repeat all week. If so, I plan to blog as much as I can when I can. They don’t allow camera phones in the courthouse, so I can’t photoblog it, but I’ll take my trusty Moleskine and take notes, and update when I have access to teh internets. Exciting, no?

My friend, Milan-born local author Gloria Mattioni’s got nine lives and she wants to tell you all about them. No, not hers, others; specifically those found in her new book Reckless: The Outrageous Lives of Nine Kick-Ass Women, whose launch party is December 1 at the Borders Books at 1360 Westwood Blvd. in Westwood beginning at 7 p.m.

Gloria knows about what she writes. Having quit a successful career to go on a 20-year globetrot in search of inspiring women who defied convention and charted their own courses, in Reckless she profiles nine of those ladies she discovered who took on challenges to better themselves, pushed their limits and overcame their fears.

So why not defy convention this Thursday and come on out to Westwood to celebrate her achievement as she discusses and signs her new book. Word is there’ll authentic Italian cuisine to nosh on and she’ll be joined by four of her book’s subjects: Gevin Fax, who left a promising career in Ohio to ride a motorcycle across the country to California, Angelika Castaneda and Barbara Warren, the 61-year-old “Twin Traithletes,” famous for competing the Ironman Triathlon and more, and Lisa Distefano, a former Playboy model turned “Warrior of the Sea,” who has dedicated herself to the protection marine life.

I have to get all my stuff to NYC in the next few weeks. Can anyone recommend a moving company?

I’ve used Ben-Hur Moving and Storage in the past, and they were okay (they only lost/broke a few things), but I’d like to get an estimate from at least one other company.

I’m not in LA this week. I’m in Miami. And you know what else is in Miami? A brand new Metroblogging site! Caryn and I are guestblogging there and so is Johannes from Vienna who is in town hanging out with us which should make for a very interesting blog launch. It’s funny, having spent a lot of my growing up years in Florida I heard a lot of comparisons between Miami and Los Angeles. This was amusing at the time since all the Miami based folks I knew thought of themselves as New York South as opposed to having any relation to the west coast, but even more so now because I live in LA and know the cities are nothing like each other. OK, so it doesn’t snow in either place and we’ve both had the honor of having a version of Grand Theft Auto modeled after the cities but other than that, not so much. I’m here for work so I don’t know how much sight-seeing-blogging I’ll get to do, but I’ll try and post some photos if nothing else. Assuming you give a rats ass about that kind of thing, check it out.

And since we’re making announcements – Miami is the 37th Metroblogging city, because Dubai is the 36th and that went live this morning as well. Enjoy!

Having just added Islamabad and Vancouver to its stable of now 35 cities, you’d think our mightymighty Metblogs leaders would kick back and enjoy the long holiday weekend. Nah, instead they’ve gone and added two more metropolii to their growing empire: Dubai and Miami.

Rather than do the traditional turkey thing, my honey and I spontaneously jumped in the car and drove up the coast. We landed in Big Sur at a little place called “The Ripplewood”. It’s a funky motel kinda spot, 15 little cabins by a sweet river. Cheap too, decor circa 1959 with a wood burning stove. No phone, no tv. It’s right smack in the middle of nowhere. Everything smells good and full of pine in Big Sur. All the stress of the city just drops away. We hiked in Pfieffer Big Sur State Park, gorgeous waterfall, amazing vistas of the valley. After that we dropped in on the Post Ranch Inn for dinner at sunset. That place is amazing! The buildings are all tucked into the hillside, and made of wood and glass so you can see the stunning views of the pacific. The food was out of this world…it was great not to have a traditional feast and all the drama of family.

Now we’re on the road to San Francisco…literally, cuz my car broke down and had to be towed to a shop….so we’re in a rental and cruising. I’ve been to SF many times, but always for work and always with an agenda. Now I’m just kicking it and wonder…what’s fun to do in this northern alluring city? Any suggestions out there? We’re thinking of hitting the clubs tonight….I’m partial to house music….so if you have a favorite club, restaurant or cool thing to do or see here…fire away!

The tenants of the Lincoln Place apartment complex in Venice got fed up with the shrug-off they kept getting from city attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s office when they approached him about the illegal harassment and evictions they’ve been undergoing at the hands of developer/landlords AIMCO, so they took the protest to Delgadillo’s (very nice) house here in Hancock Park-adjacent.

The Channel 2 truck pulled up right as I was leaving, so I wanted to scurry home to blog this.

For background, a good article on NPR’s website about moderately-priced housing going the way of the dinosaur in general is here; more detailed info about the fight between AIMCO, the tenants facing eviction and the role the California Historical Resources Commission has played in the fight on the Preserve LA site, here.

Here’s where my shameless self promotion of the month pops up. If you’re bored on a Saturday night in Hollywood and wanna have some cheap drinks while you listening to good rock n’ roll come the Vine Bar. I play anything from The Beatles to Black Sabbath to The Jesus Lizard to The Jesus and Mary Chain to The Wipers to X to The Stooges to Bob Dylan to The Stone Roses to The Replacements to Primal Scream to Led Zeppelin to The Gun Club to James Brown to Oasis to Spacemen 3 to The Faces to Love to The Standells to The Damned to Chuck Berry to Queens Of The Stone Age to Neil Diamond to Guns N’ Roses to Van Halen to Joy Division to The Velvet Underground to Os Mutantes to Karp to Suicide to The Birthday Party to Depeche Mode to The Dicks to Spiritualized. Plus the bar is cool. No cover. No List. No Hollywood bullshit. Thanks for your time.

Today art.blogging.la reached a milestone as I made the 1000th post. Not bad for a little art blog that’s under two years old! So just a quick thanks to Spencer, Heather, and Valerie for contributing invaluable pieces and to everyone who has discovered and read any of those 1000 posts. If you haven’t read them, well, go the site right now to see all the insanity.

Here’s to 1000 more!