Inspired by the current election season and Barack Obama’s presidential bid, SCOOPS ice creamery in East Hollywood is proud to announce a new campaign: FLAVORS FOR CHANGE

There was an OBAMA ICE CREAM SOCIAL tonight and I couldn’t make it… but it’s not too late to taste Flavors for Change!  What is this, you ask???

For the last few weeks, Scoops has been collecting flavors inspired by “the Obama campaign, the election, his opponents, our hopes for our country’s future.”

This week (through October 31), Tai will serve from the flavor pool created by the public, with 20 percent of the proceeds from that week going to the Obama Victory Fund.

Reported flavors:

• Obaiden (Half Chocolate/ Half Vanilla)
• Blueberry Butterfinger
• Banana Bacon
• Pistachio Lavender

All of the flavors had subtitles, but alas, I wasn’t there to take copious notes or to partake.

Were you?

Scoops
712 N Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90029
(323) 906-2649
Monday – Saturday 12pm-10pm; Sunday 2pm-6pm

You’d think with this normally arid climate, Santa Anas, red flag alerts, and abnormally weather, nobody would predict moisture… but the gays have, and no, its not tears over Prop 8. It’s the “Wet Spots,” one night only performing their “sex club meets Monty Python” act. I’d hate to see what they do to a dead parrot.

Canadian fringe theater favorites The Wet Spots bring their uniquely bawdy brand of kinky cabaret to the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center for one night only! Bisexual husband-and-wife team John Woods and Cass King combine seemingly innocent music with ridiculously racy lyrics, sex-ed segments and spankings. See it to believe it!

In other words, fun for the whole family!

8pm, 1125 N. McCadden, ticket info

Has it come to this? Has our economic meltdown gotten so bad that the Opossums are being thrown out of their homes? I guess the loan requirements were even more relaxed than I thought.

It’s rare for us to see opossums at night on the west side, but I saw Momma Opossum this morning walking along our fence with her four little ones. Poor things. I know they are not the prettiest of creatures, but you have to feel for single mom here, trying to find a place to camp for the day. It was waaaaaay past everyone’s bedtime (8am this morning). I guess they got scared off by some other critter and had to move. I just hope she found a warm comfy spot to curl up with the little ones.

2 more pix of the displaced family after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry →

For the lack of a lunchtime post of any substance or worthiness, I instead give you the YouTube version of this morning’s bike commute, otherwise known as 16.38 entirely uneventful crosstown miles from Silver Lake to Westchester (route map) timelapsified down to a herky jerky, annotated and musically accompanied 4.3 minutes of alt-transportation from the POV of my handlebar cam:

Our neighborhood has a blog~

Check it out and learn all about the history of the Red Car and the construction of the 2 Freeway.

(Thanks, Diane Edwardson!)

Oh, I just realized my headline looks like “hallow weenie.”  None of the people mentioned have hollow weenies. (I don’t think.)

Anyway, a short set of bullets, all from blogs written by people I’ve actually met in person…

• From Adam Chester, who I met years ago at a J Keith van Straaten show. From his blog “Please Don’t Eat Sushi! Love, Mom!”, Adam’s Mom warns him of the dangers of not checking to see if the trick-or-treaters at your door are actually children: Children at the Door

• From cyn3matic, a wonderful lady I met last week whose kid is going out for Halloween as Yoda: Everything I Needed to Know About This Election I Learned From My Kid and Star Wars

• From the17thman, who I met this past weekend at BarCampLA6,  predicts a potentially popular Halloween costume to be seen on the streets of WeHo this year: Got Speedo, Then You Have Your Halloween Costume

• From the lovely Siel (greenlagirl), who I met at a Nintendo DS party for girls, with her last minute tips for a less-orangey holiday: The Procrastinator’s guide to a green Halloween

• From the wonderful noirbettie, who I met through blogging.la (that’s what it was called back then, dammit!). Her sister asks for suggestions for a costume: Conversation with my sister

Photo from I don’t know where, but dang!!!

The Center Theatre Group, which includes the Ahmanson, the Mark Taper, and the Kirk Douglas Theatre, is offering $20 tickets to all of its shows this season–from Dame Edna to Uncle Vanya. That’s a damn good deal, folks. The group is calling the offer an “entertainment stimulus package,” and is making 100,000 of the $20 tickets available. Maybe we’ll all be homeless before the economy gets better, but hey, at least gas is cheaper and we can afford theater tickets.

(Thanks to About.com for the tip and to canjosh for the photo.)

The Institute of Governmental Studies Library at UC Berkeley CA Ballot is maintaining a convenient table listing California ballot measure recommendations from a whole slew of political parties, newspapers and non-profits that anybody who’s daunted by California’s lengthy ballot will likely find very useful. And if you’ve lost your Voter Information Guide, they’ve also got in-depth analysis of the propositions themselves. Now, if only I could find one for the numerous city and county of LA measures!

Before The Postal Service, before Conor Oberst added glitch to his whine, before indie kids nationwide started adding pops and hisses to their tracks, The Notwist morphed their sound from guitar-rock to glitch-poetry, and it created a silent atomic bomb in the indie world. Pitchfork plotzed, party soundtracks got hijacked, and everyone bought Neon Golden.

I never heard it on the radio. I still think Indie had a massive blind spot on that one. OTOH, at that time Indie was owned by Clear Channel and was in an ‘alternative gold’ format, s I guess there wasn’t much chance for The Notwist to get airtime.

After much goofing around & collaborating with other acts, The Notwist has issued their first album in six years, “The Devil, You + Me.” It’s great. It still continues in the vein of Neon Golden, a sound that seems restrained against the current crackle of indie glitch. And I can attest that it’s perfect road trip music.

You couldn’t keep me away from their show this Wednesday with Jel & DJ OddNosdam. And no one should keep you away, either. To win a pair of tickets, comment below and tell me your favorite underappreciated band. We’ll randomly pick a few winners to go to the show! If you’d like to just buy tix, you can go here.

Lindsay works for the Los Angeles Times. She lives in Downtown Los Angeles. Her blog is called Downtown L.A. (is Looking Up).

And she doesn’t want to live there anymore.

Yesterday, in the early evening, I saw a man hunched over facing the building *I live in* smoking crack. I turned the corner and passed the security guard to go back upstairs to our loft world.

Around 5:30pm one day last week, I made eye contact with a man urinating on my street.

Is Downtown Los Angeles having a nasty relapse? Discuss.

Photo from mattlogelin’s photostream

Today’s pithy Dow Jones riff brought to you by Eagle Rock’s Occidental United Presbyterian Church.

The New York Observer caught wind of an e-mail from David Westin, President of ABC News, that informed staffers of several cost-cutting measures to be implemented.

• Executives are asked to fly one grade below what they’re entitled to.
• Executives are asked to stay in “B” level hotels.
• Any meals (or drinks) with ABC or Disney employees will not be reimbursed.
• All newspaper and magazine subscriptions for executives and production employees will be canceled and moved to on-line.
• Any convention or conference attendance will be kept to an absolute minimum.
• All holiday parties will be cancelled this year. This includes company parties in LA.

I can understand ABC News tightening the belt during a global financial crisis. I would also be surprised if anyone was actually distraught at the idea that they won’t be forced to attend yet another awkward mixer with their co-workers. But, I think Westin missed a golden opportunity here. What if the e-mail read as follows: Read the rest of this entry →

UPDATED BELOW: Looks like the L.A. Times has begun laying off more journalists, as we mentioned it would a few weeks ago.

Blogger Veronique deTurenne Twittered, posted at her HereinMalibu blog at LAObserved, and then just now posted something at the Times blog. In the event the editorial higher-ups yank the post later today in a fit of revisionism, the text follows the jump here. Read the rest of this entry →

Bolstered by coverage Friday both in the Daily Breeze newspaper (link) as well as on KTLA’s news broadcast that evening (link), some 60 cyclists came together Saturday morning  for the inaugural Tour de Ballona organized by the Concerned Bicyclists of Ballona Creek to increase awareness of the creek bikeway and spotilght its continuing safety issues.

The casually paced 3.7-mile trip went from Sawtelle Avenue to the sea, where on the bridge o’er the troubled waters were found tables staffed by LAPD officers along with the nonprofit Friends of Ballona Wetlands and the Ballona Creek Renaissance. In addition, L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl’s Field Deputy Jim Kennedy was on hand and on his bike to show that making the creek a safer and more accessible place was important to his boss.

Of course, I made a timelapse vid, below, of the trek with my handlebar cam, and took stills  with another, viewable here on Flickr.

A second Tour de Ballona is scheduled for November 8.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to have lunch with two awesome Asian American women in K-Town.  We discussed various topics, but the discussion eventually got around to Prop 8.  Cyn3matic said that she had recently gone to Ranch 99 in the San Gabriel Valley for groceries but was hassled by groups of Chinese/Taiwanese people who were trying to get people registered to vote specifically to vote for Prop 8.  Some parts of the Chinese/Taiwanese community, particularly the churches, have been actively reaching out in this way.

To counter efforts like these, on Thursday, October 23rd, API Equality LA gathered various Asian American leaders at the Japanese American National Museum’s National Center for the Preservation of Democracy for a press conference to say NO to PROP 8.

Speakers included some powerful folks:  California Board of Equalization Chair Judy Chu, Assembly members Mike Eng, Ted Lieu, and Warren Furutani, and actor (and newlywed) George Takei.

One of the most compelling speakers was school board member, Jay Chen, who addressed the lies that same-sex marriage would be taught in schools.

Here is his speech in English.

And a corresponding one in Mandarin.  (If you have Mandarin-speaking family members who are confused, please share this video with them before election day.)