So the beautiful spazzes behind the LA Dodgeball Society are bringing back their annual 4-square championship, this time to the Ricardo Montalban Theatre in Hollywood–they’re definitely going big-time now! Good on you, guys, and keep keeping LA weird.

Wanna watch or compete? Channel your inner 8-year-old & go here for info and to sign up.

Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin will be speaking at the Home Depot Tennis Stadium in Carson on Saturday.

While her handlers will surely keep any detractors miles away from the event, Courage Campaign, the online grassroots organizing network, is having a contest to see who can come up with the pithiest slogan to write on an airplane banner that will circle the event.

But you have to act quickly to get your enlightening, persuasive and informative zinger in the running. Deadline is tonight, Wednesday, Oct. 1st at 9 PM. Get snarking! (Thanks to tdookk.)

thumbnail: Fox News

One of the toughest things as a parent is teaching kids to respect others and appreciate the differences.  The harder part is to get them to understand that no one can help who they fall in love with, it just happens.  I am putting my fingers into action to support, even promote Equality California and their efforts to stop the close-minded attempt to overturn the court ruling and prevent people from marrying the one they love deserves attention.

The invitation just arrived in my email.  The exact location in LA is a secret for now.  BUT one of my favorite actor/comedians; Lily Tomlin is going to be a special guest at a “No on 8 Fundraiser” this coming Sunday.  The address will be revealed when you make your RSVP.

• The details: Sunday, October 5 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
  Hosted bar and complimentary hors d’oeuvres
  Minimum Donation $100
  Guests will be asked to contribute to defeat Proposition 8.
  For address, please RSVP to Erica by email or at 323.661.2071 x203.

flyer about tonight's meeting

Do you hate those obnoxious digital billboards as much as I do?

Seeing them on Sunset Boulevard is kind of Bladerunner and okay, but seeing them pop up in neighborhoods is really disgusting to me.

And after being hammered daily with all this Flex Your Power/Reduce Your Carbon Footprint bullshit, am I the only one who’s outraged by this vulgar and wasteful new trend? You tell me to leave the bathroom light off when I pee but you’re running a million candle-power billboard 24/7?

Residents of Silver Lake MAY have the chance to get rid of the eyesore on Silver Lake Blvd. by attending a City Council meeting TONIGHT at 7pm at the Michetorena School on Sunset. Sorry for the short notice but I only just now saw the flyer.

You can also call or email Eric Garcetti’s office (323-957-4500), not that I have any idea how much good that will do.

Please do what you can though – this digital billboard trend needs to be stopped.

The first of the haunting decorations went up yesterday in my 'hood!

Its started.  The great push towards the All Hallows Eve party on 10/31.  30 days away and people are beginning to start their decorating to celebrate the big event.  I *think* this year I’m taking a few of my oldest kids and a few friends to weho to enjoy the parade – I still think they have the most jubilant celebration of the day in LA.  Agree?

I’m working on a few more of the ” LA boo-stories” that I started last year.  Am researching the Brand Library and Clifton Middle School to name a few.  If there are others in your corner of LA that need attention let me know.

Of course if you want up the minute, almost daily haunting stuff in LA visit our own David Markland’s Creepy LA.

Pic by me grabbed on my morning rounds getting the kidlets to school.

This was tweeted by a friend on Twitter. I ’bout spit out the water I was drinking. Porn is always leading the way. (click image for all the deets.)

“No Anal required.”

Local artist Shepard Fairey who created the main “Hope” image for Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign has responded to some growing criticism about the image and what it suggests. This from a reply just posted on his blog:

“The Obama image is a positive image that is patriotic and in no way Socialist or Communist. Is your assertion that my poster is “RED” based on my use of the colors from the AMERICAN flag, one of which happens to be red? I have criticized the U.S. government in my work, though I am a patriotic American. I believe patriotism is about trying to follow your conscience and make the country the best it can be. You are obviously a nationalist who supports the U.S. unconditionally. Nationalism brought Hitler to power. I’m not interested in promoting that mentality.”

This flyer has been distributed around Los Angeles and probably other places, though it’s not the first to make this incorrect assumptions. I’ve seen people make claims that Shepard only ever does portraits of communists and socialist revolutionaries so therefor he must be making a statement like that about Obama. Usually pointing these folks to any number of the portraits of people he’s just a fan of like Ozzy Osbourne, Jay Adams, LL Cool J or Flava Flav is enough to get them to reconsider. I guess in this case he felt like a more direct reply was in order.

(Disclaimer: I met Shepard over 10 years ago and have considered him a trusted friend ever since.)

I just recently moved from a bourgie block in Encino with two boarded-up, foreclosed houses on it–one with a public auction notice on the front–to a place in Sherman Oaks with at least one abandoned house within a block that I have spotted. 

While the real estate market becomes more and more viscous every day, the LA Times reports that a group of South American investors bought William Morris for a cool $143 million:

“They give us ideal protection from inflation at a time when there is turmoil in the financial sectors,” Covarrubias said. “We’re putting our money into hard assets that are going to preserve their value.”

And that news made me think of the upside of the impending depression, those of us who have over the course of the last eight years, repeatedly contemplated emigration won’t have to contemplate such a thing any longer when we become completely economically colonized. (I wonder how much my student loans will cost me in Euros…)

What’s better than Vampires? Swedish Vampires. And what’s better than Swedish Vampires? Swedish Vampires for free of course. You know what I’m talking about. Yes you do. I know you do. Shut up.

Anyway.

Tonight at the The Landmark Theater on Westwood, Mahalo is hosting a free screening of “Let The Right One In” (aka Låt den rätte komma in) which is a warm, tender story about a bullied 12 year old who falls in love with a vampire. Yes it’s a classic theme you’ve seen a million times, but this one is from Sweden! So if you need a Vampire fix tonight, that’s your best bet. Grab a seat.

No, this is not a screen grab from The Sims: Conspiracy Trial.
Film still from Chicago 10 courtesy of American Cinematheque.

Can’t find a reason to peel yourself away from Dancing with the Stars on Tuesday nights?

Are you also flat broke?

The American Cinematheque and PBS’s Independent Television Service (ITVS) have you covered.

Well, at least for one Tuesday a month.

Starting tomorrow night (September 30), ITVS will begin screening one free documentary a month on select Tuesdays at either the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood or the Aero Theater in Santa Monica.

Tomorrow night at 7:30 p.m. at the Egyptian it’s Chicago 10, a film that explores the infamous 1968 Chicago Conspiracy Trial of eight anti-war protesters. Partially animated, and featuring the voices of Hank Azaria (Abbie Hoffman), Mark Ruffalo (Jerry Rubin), and Jeffrey Wright (Bobby Seale), the film received a lot of buzz at Sundance in 2007 but failed to make a splash when it opened in limited release in February.

So here’s a wonderful opportunity to see it on the big screen. It was also recently announced that there will be two sequels to this film, so best catch up now or risk being labeled a “square” by your peers.

And in November, ITVS is screening I.O.U.S.A., a film about America’s impending debt crisis. This film also received a limited release, quietly sneaking into a few theaters back in August.

I can think of 700 billion reasons why the film’s producers may be printing more reels as we speak.

Ayup, they just gave me a couple pairs of Oasis tickets for their show December 4 at the Staples Center. (Again, Goldenvoice, I owe you my first-born AND our first puppy.)

And need I mention that my future ex-husband Ryan Adams will open up for them? Squeeee!!!

To win a pair of tickets, tell me where you were when “Definitely Maybe” dropped (this should be interesting). I was in my junior year of high school, shaking off a grunge-rock hangover. You?

Wanna get in on the presale tomorrow, 10a-10p? Go here and enter the password, “WONDERWALL.”

Now, my fellow Angelenos, no assaulting Oasis when they get here. They’ve had quite enough.

In addition to the fact that it’s getting hotter, we actually had a few drops of rain on the West Side today.  Did everyone else around town get some?  Maybe it was a cruel reminder of the financial doom that rained down on us today. 

How long has it been since we had any rain?

Want to see how much cash Mayor Antonio has raised in Florida for his election? Curious about how many employees at a particular development company have donated for a suddenly eminent domain happy city councilman? You have questions, the LA Ethics Commission has answers…

Huffington Post’s Fund Race, which allows anyone to see which Presidential candidates your neighbors are contributing to, isn’t much of a secret (or unique – many other sites allow similar searches). But if you want to get more local, and see who’s contributing to Los Angeles mayoral and City Council seats, check out the Campaign Finance database at the website for L.A.’s Ethics Commission.

By clicking on “2009 Municipal and LAUSD Election Totals” you can see find out how much money each candidate gearing up for election day March 3rd, 2009 has raised and from whom, and how much they’ve spent and where.

“Search Contributions” allows you to find out who donated by name, employer, city or state, and other criteria. Read the rest of this entry →

Was skimming through my RSS reader and this chart posted on LAist caught my eye:

That lead me to this article “Cool Summer, Warm Future: Extreme Heat Days Increase for Southern California” published by NASA’s JPL which just finished a study where they were trying to find out why it’s so damn hot. They write:

“One hundred years of daily temperature data in Los Angeles were analyzed by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; the University of California, Berkeley; and California State University, Los Angeles. They found that the number of extreme heat days (above 90 degrees Fahrenheit or 32.2 degrees Celsius in downtown Los Angeles) has increased sharply over the past century. A century ago, the region averaged about two such days a year; today the average is more than 25. In addition, the duration of heat waves (two or more extreme heat days in a row) has also soared, from two-day events a century ago to one- to two-week events today.

“We found an astonishing trend – a dramatic increase in the number of heat waves per year,” says Arbi Tamrazian, lead author of the study, and a senior at the University of California, Berkeley.

They say that not only has it been increasing, but it’s going to keep on that trend and we’re going to see longer and hotter heatwaves in the years to come. But before anyone freaks out about global warming, that doesn’t seem to be the cause here. Instead point your finger at something called “urban heat island effect.” Basically this effect is seen worldwide and comes from buildings, cars, lawns, and every other damn thing that makes something a city absorbing heat and making urban areas up to 10 degrees hotter than surrounding areas. Couple that with the temperature in Southern California to begin with and bang, heat wave. Read the full article here if you are so inclined.

The problems with LAUSD have been corrected. The Subway to the Sea has been finished. Ånd one million trees have been planted.

Having solved every other major issue facing the city of Los Angeles, the Mayor now wants to address housing.

Today, Antonio Villaraigosa announces his $5-billion plan to build housing for the poor and middle class. The Times gives us a quick rundown of what this plan will include, like more mixed income housing along the Metro Gold and Expo Lines.

It will also include this nugget:

Redeveloping the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts into a mixed-income housing development with some units for very poor people and some units of market-rate housing.

If you happen to be one of the candidates looking for market-rate housing, and should you decide to relocate to a swanky new loft at the Jordan Downs projects development, might I recommend an affiliation with the hometown 103rd Grape Street Watts Baby Loc Crips?

Photo from Ilpo’s Sojourn’s photostream