News cameraman BeFrank makes no apologies in covering a fluff piece for the day (instead of his usual beat of cop shootings, drive bys, and other violent acts), and gets some great snaps (like the one at right) from behind the scenes at the first day of The Price Is Right’s 35th season. Which reminds me of something else I’ve never done in L.A…. join the studio audience and try to become a contestant on The Price Is Right – heck, that sounds like a great writers and readers field trip for blogging.la! Anyone wanna come on down?

Blogging.la contributor Travis Keller is a featured DJ on the bill for LA Weekly’s Detour Music Festival to be held Oct. 7th downtown. While you’re waiting for Travis to perform (or finishing your drink afterwards) you can also check out Queens of the Stone Age, Redd Kross, Shepard Fairey, and the one Scientologist who might make us give the religion a shot: Beck!

The deadline to get your pet spayed and/or neutered* and implanted with a microchip was this past Sunday. What? You didn’t know. No worries since “the county Board of Supervisors voted to postpone strict enforcement of the new law for six months.” This only applies to pet owners in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles. (from The Daily Breeze)

It sounds like the demand for cheap, illegal labor is about to go up in Los Angeles as the state Senate approved raising minimum wage to $8 an hour. The $1.25 bump is being rolled out in two steps, starting with “an increase of 75 cents an hour in January and another 50 cents the following year.” (source: Daily News)

Little known fact: the most active (and arguable interesting) comments in the Metroblogging network are at Karachi, Pakistan. One of the hot subjects revolves around a post where blogger MB suggests that they’d be better of if a number of their local leaders “just disappeared” or worse.

*In tribute to Bob Barker, I suggest both.

Two LA Weekly links (Theo Van Gogh and land/soundscapes of LA), Rauschenberg on MAN, and Jason Rhoades plus LA in Berlin on Artnet’s magazine. Phew…continue reading

Last night we ended up at Sushi Nozawa, home of the “Sushi Nazi” around 7pm and were seated right away at a table. We turned off our cell phones as soon as we sat down.

3 “Trust Me” Specials. A large Asahi, a Diet Coke, and a water. The Special is selected by Nozawa-san, aka the Sushi Nazi himself… he picks out what he’ll serve you; omakase: chef’s choice. “Trust Me,” it says. The Special was baby tuna sashimi (maguro) in ponzu sauce, yellowtail (hamachi, probably my favorite) sushi, red snapper (tai) sushi, crab rolls (fresh crab), large scallop (kaibashira) sushi, and fatty tuna (toro) roll.

This wasn’t regular sushi. It was fresh, high quality sushi. Served in a very modest, unpretentious strip mall off of Ventura. On plastic plates. Who cares about the plates? The food was delicious. I would not question Nozawa-san and would trust him to serve only the best.

Yum.

We weren’t in the line of fire (the sushi bar), so Bossguy dared to take a call on his cell phone (he was hiding it) and even asked for fruit for dessert to Mrs. Nozawa (no, we didn’t get any and it was good thing he was about to pay). No one was dumb enough to ask for a California Roll. So we didn’t get kicked out. Yes, people have been thrown out for not following the rules. (Rumor has it that Charlize Theron was thrown out of here a few years ago.) We were in and out in under an hour. And when we left there was a line out the door of people waiting to get in.

I know some people poo-poo this place because of the lack of ambiance, service, decor, whatever. But I, for one, enjoy good food and since Bossguy was buying, the high cost of such a meal wasn’t an issue. Check out what others say about Sushi Nozawa.
::danchan:: ::tikkabik:: ::chaodai:: ::colleencuisine:: ::aol cityguide:: ::citysearch:: ::calendarlive:: ::la.com:: ::yelp::

Photo snagged from danchan

So what other “Food Nazis” do we have in LA?

I’ve written before about California’s concealed weapons laws and how they are ripe for abuse. Rather than a set of standards that applicants must meet, the current law in CA puts the deciding factor in the hands of the local sheriff or police chief. Police chiefs often defer all applications to the sheriff’s department putting even more power in one person’s hands. The problem with this, is while the law states that these chiefs/sheriffs must have a set policy (the Orange Country Sheriff’s CCW policy is online here), there is little done in the way of enforcing a policy is adhered to. The policy should include what kind of applicant will be considered, and what requirements they must meet. The LAPD defers to the LASD and the LASD does not have a published policy, however due to the extremely low number of permits that have been issued in LA, as well as denial letters from the LASD and interviews with Sheriff Baca it’s fairly safe to assume that requirements that would grant a permit in other counties in the state will not be approved in Los Angeles. This would not be an issue if there was proof that this set of standards was applied across the board, but there have been accusations that celebrities, friends and campaign contributors are held to a different set of standards than the general public.

Now it seems that this is drawing the attention of Preston Guillory, a Riverside private investigator most well known for successfully taking the County of Orange to federal court over a similar situation in 1984 (Guillory vs. County of Orange aka Guillory vs. Gates). The US Court of appeals decided that then Sheriff Gates, and thus the County of Orange, were violating his constituional rights be denying him a concealed weapons permit. A similar case is now being built here in Los Angeles. Apparently a legal team is already in place and they are currently collecting plaintiffs to add to the suit. Postings on message boards across the state have been asking for people in Los Angeles with a ” solid need for a CCW that is related to their occupation/profession/legal lifestyle or situation that places them at risk.” For more info on this case, or if you think you should be a part of it, contact Mr. Guillory directly at clueseau@sbcglobal.net or (951) 352-2934.

For more info on gun control, gun rights and CCW laws nationwide, I suggest skipping all the crap and just watching this Penn & Teller video.

[Disclaimer: I have completed the required handgun safety training courses and currently hold a non-resident CCW license issued by the State of Florida, which is valid there as well as 29 other states. I also hold a very strong belief that the 2nd ammendment is just as important as the 1st.]

Photographer Paul Redmond’s picture of the week (which gets emailed to me weekly, naturally) is from the Cramps’ performance this weekend at Sunset Junction.

This week’s City Beat has a cover story about the West Memphis Three, in part because of the continuing attention they are getting from folks in this town. Both documentaries are now available on one DVD and the wikipedia article on them is being updated almost every day. Back in 2003 we held a benefit exhibition for them at sixspace and have been following the case ever sense and the momentum keeps growing. There is new evidence, and new hope. If you aren’t familiar with the case, the City Beat piece is definitely worth reading.

I wrote a whole post about the August 9th show, then closed my browser before hitting SAVE. Hmmm. Not exactly the best way to plug a friend’s band.

Fortunately for me, and for you, The Running Kind is giving us a second chance.

Come to the release party for their new record, VERY FAR, on September 5th at 1030pm.

Check out their Myspace to hear their music, see some pics, and learn about this local treasure.

Ronnie Mack’s Barndance
@ El Cid
4212 Sunset Blvd.
LA

[Do you need to see it bigger? If so you know what to do.]

I may not know much about you, but I can goddamn guarantee I know where you won’t be eating lunch today.

We too have been host to a rather large film shoot for the past week, and I guess they ain’t done with us yet, because by 9 this morning they’d had all this set up, plus a buttload of tents and support stuff across the way.

The good side: money for our pals at Astro!

The bad side: get your burgers elsewhere for a while.

[click image for full-on solar squirrel action]

What? You don’t have a solar squirrel?

If that’s true it’s certainly not for lack of trying. This one snapped on camera safari at The Great Indoors in Burbank.

I would have bought him too, had they not been sold out. I guess no one could resist that demon face – or maybe it was his under-$30 price tag.

Damn.

It sounds like Glendale might be the next city in/around Los Angeles to offer free wireless internet for it’s residents. The Glendale News Press has the story which states that the City Council has officially backed the plan and are now looking at (and for more) proposals from vendors to see who can provide the best service for the city. This is super exciting, and I really can’t wait until the news is when a city doesn’t offer this kind of service.

I received an e-mail this morning from KNBC-TV writer/producer Colin Campbell announcing their brand new Los Angeles Disaster Response Wiki. Apparently he, Bob Long, and others over there have been talking about this thing and finally got something up and running and wanted to soft launch it with “some of the Southland’s web movers and shakers” or so the e-mail said. The e-mail also asked me not to blog it, in fact, it said:

“Note – we’re NOT looking for you to post a link to this wiki on any of your websites – this isn’t really a “general public” thing, at least not yet.”

That’s fine with me, and I had no intention of blogging it. In fact I hadn’t even clicked the link to it yet when I saw this post on fishbowl LA. They clearly got the same e-mail I did, and ignored the “don’t blog it” part and went ahead and posted it. Since it’s now out there, I thought I’d go ahead and link to it as well, as I’m sure many of the people reading this will have much better contributions to make then I will. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of this.

Living in Los Angeles, I see some “celebrities” every now and then (although it’s always more fun when you see someone who looks like a celebrity but isn’t and you can pretend that, hey, I just saw Ed Asner or some crap like that). Every once in a while though, I see someone so fantastic that I kind of can’t believe it. Yesterday was one of those days. I saw…Booger (aka Curtis Armstrong) at my local Gelsens. Coolest thing so far this summer!

I could’ve loaded up on the porn as I rolled home from work yesterday. I’m not sure exactly what was going on but on the 8th floor two guys got on an elevator with me and, after finding out I was quite a bit older than he was hoping, one of them opens up this huge bag of porn and starts trying to sell me on how much I need it. Now, hopefully I don’t look like the sort of guy who you’d see in an elevator and think “Whoa, that guys needs some porn,” but, well, let’s just hope that’s not the case. So I’m gonna go ahead and presume that this guy doesn’t just go around selling porn in elevators and was actually on the 8th floor of my already totally weirdo building on some other possibly porn-related business? No one else has seen this guy doing this in other nearby elevators, right? Anywhere around the dirt pile formerly known as the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire? I suppose it’s a good idea, I mean, convergence at it’s best and all that, I was just not expecting to get home from vacation only to suddenly be able to buy porn in the elevator at work. I suppose it’s not as good as the time I had security called on me for being “homeless,” but I think that’s another story. He said they were only $5, did I miss out on a deal? Oh, workplace, how you frighten me. Next time I promise I’ll take a picture. Until then you’ll have to just look at this sweet office portrait that my coworker and I shot today. Aren’t we pretty?

The awareness of the Los Angeles art world is starting to really spread its wings as the phrase “Culver City is the new Chelsea” has entered the publication art hype vernacular. In the current September issue of ELLE magazine…continue reading

Over at LAVoice, MadProfessah opines on some pending vetoes expected to be exercised in the near future by Herr Governator. But he didn’t mention that Arnie today killed the bill to make zinfandel California’s historic wine. Note, that’s “historic,” not “state.” We have all kinds of lame state symbols, like a State Tartan, a State “Gold Rush Ghost Town,” and my favorite, a State Fife and Drum Band, but supposedly this would’ve been the first with potentially serious commercial implications and even watering it down to “historic” wasn’t enough to satisfy critics. Muscley McSchwartzengovenor busted out the big red veto pen earlier today and now reporters all over the state are killing themselves writing painfully bad grape metaphors.