XXXL, Dino and MC Question Mark in the dome:

Make sure you zoom in on the Tesla photos, what looks like blurry lightning is actually an amazing progression of high voltage arc lines:

I plan on shooting and posting photos from Lupe Fiasco, The Coup, The Roots, Willie Nelson, and Rage here on blogging.la, eecue.com and flickr.

For today’s Sunday Snapshot I bring to you a couple faded prehistoric film negs of an image I composed and snapped exactly 15 years ago. Though the timing of the images is one reason to present them today, what’s more compelling is their location that late afternoon of April 29, 1992, at Kenneth Hahn Memorial Park in Ladera Heights. Little did I know while I was making the pictures what had begun unfolding around me. While Reginald Denny was getting his head bashed in four miles southeast of me at Florence and Normandie and the old Fedco store a mile to the northwest was being set on fire, here I was at a horseshoe pit in the middle of a park in the middle of a burgeoning apocalypse just trying to fulfill the requirements of a Pierce College photo class project until another park visitor clued me in to what had gone down and I got the hell out of the park and just in time (click to biggify):

Why exactly was I so far from home taking a picture I could have easily done in my Sherman Oaks backyard of the time? If you’re interested, that and more of the fateful hate-filled day is all laid out after the jump in the form of a column I wrote for the campus paper way back near the riot’s one-year annniversary.
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Ghostface Killah:

Stand by for one more set of photos tonight here on blogging.la, eecue.com and flickr.

TMZ reports that actor Tracy Morgan from “30 Rock” agreed to a plea deal to avoid a 30 day jail that requires him to wear a “SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring) device” for 90 days plus five days of community service. He recently was arrested in New York City for drunk driving, which violated terms of his parole for a previous Los Angeles DUI conviction.

The website for Alcohol Monitoring Systems describes the SCRAM as “the world’s only alcohol testing ankle bracelet that automatically tests for alcohol consumption every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” The 8oz device “tests vapor as it migrates through the skin in order to measure for alcohol consumption” and then sends the data wirelessly to a monitoring center.

In Morgan’s case, if alcohol is detected he’ll receive a warning and the 90 day clock will be reset. If alcohol is detected a second time, he’ll be required to serve the original 30 day sentence.

Between this and reports that Paris Hilton has been reported driving around L.A. in spite of DUI convictions, is indicative to me not that the rich are treated differently, but that drunk driving isn’t taken seriously by the criminal justice system of Los Angeles.

No word if the plot line for “Disturbia 2″ will feature a SCRAM device.

Morgan has until May 25th to get his drink on, when he’ll be equipped with the device at a Los Angeles Superior Court.

Tom Morello’s solo project, The Nightwatchman, rocked. Here are some photos:

Stand by for more photos throughout the evening and weekend here on blogging.la, eecue.com and flickr.

Here are some shots of the crowd and Pharoahe Monch:

You can see more photos from today on eecue and flickr. I will be shooting Ghostface, Ozomatli and Red Hot Chili Peppers and uploading later.

Update: Xeni has some great Coachella live blogging coverage over on BoingBoing

Yesterday, after coming across this blog post, which links to this post of mine, I decided to walk over and see how the Koreatown Sidewalk Garden is growing.

Quite pretty, if you ask me. And inspiring – I just may atempt some urban gardening of my own.

You can check out a few more Coachella Friday selections here on eecue.com and here on flickr.

Krawalla Madchen interviews Wonder Woman and Supergir- OH MY GOD, LOOK! HOOTERS!
…used under a Creative Commons license…

Christine Daniels, the sportswriter formerly known as Mike Daniels, will be blogging about her gender transition at the LA Times newest blog, Woman In Progress.

Between their in depth coverage of Coachella and now their handy guide to surviving the Festival of Books, the rock stars at LAist are kicking ass (and keeping me on my toes).

Glozell asks if its true that dirty white people “can take a bath, comb their hair and get a job quicker than a qualified black person.”

It appear that the downtown bloggers have gained some ground in their fight for residents rights vs. out of control film crews. POVs at View from a Loft and BlogDowntown.

Andrew at Here in Van Nuys bemoans a plan by some West Van Nuys residents to repackage/raname themselves “Lake Balboa”.

What are those strange contraptions attached to the tire wells of Fords around L.A.? Fightin’ Mad Mary demands an answer.

More photos and updates to come on here, eecue.com and flickr.

At first blush, the 2007 USA National Community Shred event that’s happening tomorrow sounds pretty lame. But given the fearsome specter of identity theft, maybe teaching people the value of shredding documents instead of just throwing them in the trash is actually kind of a good idea. If you’ve got a bunch of sensitive documents and a desire to watch them get munched into tiny bits, head on over to the Office Depot in Little Tokyo tomorrow and the folks from Crime Stoppers and Shred-it will show you how the pros do it. They’ll also probably encourage you to go into said Office Depot and buy a shredder of your own, and given how easy it is for people to get credit under your name that’s probably a good idea.

[click for detail]

Challenging parking not withstanding (the place is across from Bodhi Tree in West Hollywood), CAKE is one of my favorite stores.

And this weekend they’re having a huge sale. Bags, jewelry, body products – this place has it all and for a limited time it’s all on sale.

Now that I’ve already been in and cleaned up, it’s safe for me to let everyone else know about it. My other tip: Valet Parking. Better yet, if you spend $10 at the Bodhi Tree they will even credit you the $3.50 you pay the valet.

(They’ve also just opened on Vermont in Los Feliz, but that’s another story.)

CAKE
8568 1/2 Melrose Avenue
(in the funky courtyard)
West Hollywood,CA

Hospitality for hundreds of artists and their guests is a huge job. Last night their fun was just beginning. You can see some more photos I took last night at Coachella here. Keep an eye out for many more coming soon from each day. My EVDO card is not getting a very good signal here and so uploads are slow… maybe I can find a better connection. I should say, in the interest of full disclosure, that I programed the Coachooser for Goldenvoice.

While I can’t argue with the Los Anjealous’ editors picks for this weekend’s Festival of Books, I did want to give special mention to tomorrows 10:30am panel: Blogging and Beyond, with RJ Smith moderating a panel made up of LA Observed’s Kevin Roderick, The Homicide Report’s Jill Leovy, and some dude named Hugh Hewitt.

If any other readers or writers are attending, drop me a note so we can all arrange a giant wave in the audience.

Tickets for this panel are sold out – but I have a pair of extra tickets available, first come first serve. Just email me (unsomnambulist at gmail) and let me know if you need one or two passes. Additional tickets may be made available on site tomorrow morning, and there will also be a standby line.

Let me preface this by pointing out that for more than the past decade, Kinkos has been my nemesis. I can’t think of a better example of horrible customer service, pretty much consistently nationwide… definitely around Los Angeles*. Trying to pick out a couple incidents to cite here even gets me riled up.

Anyway, I actually want to applaud Kinkos (now FedEx Kinkos, if yer nasty) for their somewhat new “Print Online” service. Its pretty freakin’ easy: just upload the documents you want printed, choose the Kinkos location of choice, and in an hour to to four hours you’ll get an email back telling you your copies are ready.

The best part about this is that its damn cheap, especially if you’re printing a bunch of individual black and white pages. If you’ve ever printed out a document at a Kinkos, you know it costs about .50/cents a page. Via print online, its only about .11/cents per page. I just printed out all of my tickets for the Book Festival, plus some press applications, and some other items – about 20 pages worth, and it cost me a little over $2.

Not surprisingly, the most painful part of this was the pickup. The typically understaffed, undertrained Kinkos meant I had to wait ten minutes even with only one customer ahead of me in line.

Regardless, at about a dime a page, its probably cheaper to use this service than to print those ink heavy documents on your home printer.

I must say, I feel kinda dirty writing something nice about Kinkos…

*The Kinkos up next to Warner Bros. in Burbank has always done a top notch job on large print orders… a pure anomaly.