The East Coast is so lame. The shitty Washington Post newspaper from the capital of the East Coast reports that D.C. couldn’t even design its own monument to another bald white guy, and had to pick Santa Monica’s own Ephraim Goldberg, a/k/a Frank Gehry, to do it.  Some don’t like Gehry’s work, but he belongs to us.  He moved to the Los Angeles area more than sixty years ago.  Suck on this monument, D.C.

Dwight Eisenhower.  Could you even make up a more bald white East Coast-sounding name?  And what did Dwight/Ike/White ever do, anyway?  Build a bunch of highways?  Great, we can thank him for the shitty traffic in L.A.  What else did he do?  Sign a civil rights law?  Two civil rights laws?  Big deal.  It’s not like Eisenhower freed the slaves or anything.  Now that would earn you a monument.

Washington, D.C.  They couldn’t even design their own city, they had to have a French guy do it.  And, they say Washington is Hollywood with ugly people.  It’s so true.  Just look at White Eisenhower if you don’t believe me.

LA Metblogs will begin a series of posts on Monday called “Songs About Los Angeles.” It will last about three weeks. But this is no Top Ten or Best Of series.

This is personal.

We will share the song (or songs) about LA that meant something significant to each of us. Los Angeles is a strange and wonderful city and has inspired some strange and wonderful music. We will delve into songs that had impact on us, songs that represent certain periods and places in our lives within this city we may (or may not) call home.

We look forward to your input as well.

UPDATE: Click past the jump for a compilation of the posts in the series as they unfold.

(Photo used with permission by Mike Smith, 2006. See the photo in his flickr stream here.)

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Tomorrow night we are Pasadena Bound. See you at 5:30 at Pie ‘N Burger. Regulars Jeff and Donna have a list of places to go afterward if anyone wants to continue the fun after the Eats.

Pie ‘n Burger
913 E. California Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91106
(They have much more than just Pie ‘N Burger on the menu)

Looking forward to it!

Hi guys, I’m really sorry I didn’t post this sooner. If anyone would like to win tickets to Little Big Town tonight at Club Nokia, we’ve got your hookup! Just comment telling me why you’d love to see the band.  We’ll randomly choose a few winners to go. It’ll be a plus-one so you can schlep a pal. Info on tix & the show is here. This is a thirty-dollar tickst–BEFORE ticketmaster fees–so winning these tix will be quite a coup & will win you the instant love of your country-Americana-lovin’ pals.

Just when I thought the LAUSD and the California Legislature couldn’t possibly make me any angrier, our school parents’ group publishes an online poll today that goes something like this:

In order to face the upcoming deep LAUSD budget cuts, we need to make some hard choices.

Which of the following services do you believe we can afford to lose the least? Please mark these in order of priority – 1=most important, 7=least important:

• Academic coaches
• Technology/computer program
• School library
• Physical education
• Kindergarten aides
• Teacher training to match instruction to student skill levels.

Here’s the pathetic part – these are all services funded BY US BECAUSE LAUSD DOESN’T PAY FOR THEM. Read the rest of this entry →

The whole Easter Poops thing was bad enough, but at least funny, but Easter Bugs? I think holiday merchandising has jumped the shark. What say you?

(Pic grabbed at the Pavilions market here in outer monrovia with the cell cam).

My mother is Thai, my brother is a former Muay Thai kickboxing champion, and I have 30+ Thai cousins and assorted other relatives still living in Thailand. While this doesn’t make me an expert on all things Thai, it does provide me with an overly inflated tone of superiority when discussing Songkran (Thai New Year), which will be celebrated in Thai Town this Sunday, April 5 as part of the 6th Annual Songkran Festival.

Muay Thai Fighter Performing the Wai Kru. Taken at Sityodtong Muay Thai, Pasadena, CA, February 9, 2008

Like all festivals of this sort, there will be overpriced food stalls offering mediocre Thai food, displays of traditional Thai dance, raffles, religious ceremonies (Note to the Ladies: Do not ever touch the monks!), beer tents, and the 2nd Annual International Curry Festival. However, year-after-year, my favorite event of Songkran is watching the Muay Thai fighters duke it out in the ring.

All Songkran Festival events are free to spectators, so this is an excellent opportunity for first timers to introduce themselves to the rad sport of Muay Thai. From what I can tell, there is no obvious boxing schedule posted anywhere on the Songkran Festival site (please let me know if you find one), but from past years, the fights seem to go on from mid morning through late afternoon. If you happen to catch a match this Sunday during the festival, here are some things you should know about the sport. Read the rest of this entry →

Bumper sticker seen on Crescent Heights, Hollywood.

Sorry for the technical limits.  I was driving, and not able to get an actual picture of the sticker.  I think my reproduction captures the essence of it though.  For what it’s worth, car looked to be about a 1990′s Toyota, not obviously falling apart, but also not so pricey as the German cars that inhabit my neighborhood.

(for blind readers and robots: the image reads “I’d rather be reading Bukowski”)

Burbank's Red Boot Car by Jodi

This driveable car, in the shape of a red hiking boot, has actually caught my eye for several years now. It typically sits outside of Victor’s Shoe Repair on Verdugo Ave. in Burbank, just west of Hollywood Way. In the past several months, the boot has occasionally been parked in front of Milt & Edie’s Drycleaners on the corner of  Pass and Alameda, also in Burbank.

I’m not sure why this vehicle continues to provide me amusement, but it does. And oh how I’d love to get my hands on the keys and take it for a spin some day!

Spotted at Van Nuys & Valerio. Lunch, anyone?

A simulacrum of nothing much

One of the many horrors of L.A. architecture is certainly its over-presentation in movies and television. It is comically clichéd to see stories set in other cities, whose framing shots are the same Los Angeles “skyline” that even non-Angelenos have come to recognize as framing shots of every non-L.A. city that makes it onto filmic representation.  What makes this SoCal-centrism so much the worse is the underlying vacuity of buildings in Los Angeles.  Fredric Jameson, following Jean-François Lyotard, famously advanced the notion of postmodernism as pastiche, and Angelena intellectuals often paint the unthinking, seedy eclecticism of Los Angeles as advancing such post-modern ideals (or its anti-idealism, perhaps).

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I’ve written before about classes I’ve taken that fill my head with extremely vital info that I don’t know how I lived without. In sharing those stories I’d be lying if I said that the searing jealousy from friends who wish they also learned the sekrit skillz wasn’t half the charm. That said, I’m currently directly that same searing jealousy at the recent hires for Intelligentsia‘s soon to open Venice location who are currently buried in the grounds of Barista bootcamp being taught by Kyle Glanville. This is a class I’d kill to take (and I know how to do that too) if it was offered to the public. Sadly, it’s top secret or something. Luckily, schmuks like you and me can follow along on the recently more active Intelli.la blog:

Kyle led the Venice Nine through a full day of basic coffee introduction…starting with a line up of fruit.

Easy, breezy…eat a piece and describe what you’re eating without mentioning the fruit itself. (And saying “plantain” for banana will get you a stink eye)

Measure the acidity of the pineapple. Measure the sweetness. Compare it to the honeydew. Compare it to the grape. Now we’re talking. Suddenly, you can taste hints of almonds in a banana. Or Earl Grey tea in the blood orange. Seriously. The world gets more interesting when you stop to think about things.

Damn that sounds cool. I want in. Seriously. Please?

Askmen.com has come out with its 2009 “Top 29: Best Cities to Live In” (phrase-ending preposition included at no charge), and Los Angeles ranks number 19.   We came in just behind Vienna, Austria, and well behind American cities Miami (16), New York (6) (attention East Coast haters, I’m just the messenger), San Francisco (3) (SF haters, see previous instruction), and the winner, Chicago.

We’re number 19! after the jump

In Downtown Los Angeles for the remainder of this week, at the Standard, the rest of Postopolis! will be going down–an event I probably heard about six weeks ago & promptly forgot or overlooked–criminally so. This event is hella more interesting than this short descriptive quote would seem to infer: “A live 5-day blogathon of back-to-back discussions, interviews, panel talks, slideshows, films and parties with scheduled and unscheduled guests, themed around landscape and the built environment.” Baroo?

Let me explain. Last night I missed Fritz Haeg, whose Edible Estates replaces front yards–the classic American symbol–with fruit & veggie gardens (and who’s now transferring that idea into the animal realm with Animal Estates–very cool). Dwayne Oyler of OylerWu stopped by–they’re responsible for “Density Fields” at Materials & Applications in Silver Lake (pictured). I also missed Michael Dear, a professor of geography at USC, whose research delves into urbanism in LA, its proximity to Mexico, and homelessness in the city.

The good news: it goes on for four more days. Don’t miss the peeps behind the Fallen Fruit Collective, Mike The Poet, folks from curbedLA, GOOD Magazine & DWELL Magazine, and more. Stop in for a full day, or just for one talk. Full schedule behind le jump.

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Pop Flock, Cheryl Cambras’s crochet sculptures of small and enormous colorful birds and everyday objects, are in the windows at Mercado on Sunset in Silver Lake. The LA-based artist, Nebraska-born and with an MFA in Film from the Art Institute of Chicago, makes films, sculpture and music. 102 of her crocheted budgies were included in Machine Project’s recent Field Guide to LACMA exhibit at the museum.

Cambras’s yarn sculptures are precise, sterile and speak to a detached, yet somehow cuddly, sensibiity. After seeing her films on her site, I was curious about how she approached the non-fibrous medium. She told me in an email,

I’m drawn to the absurd. My films tend to be darker than my sculptural work, visually and thematically. I explore the dream lives of seemingly ordinary people and things.

Similar to my sculptural work, my film plots and characters are presented fairly minimally, pared down. The characters tend to be tightly wound, virtually suspended, due to some fear; their stories come from their search for release.

Pop Flock will be at Mercado through Monday, April 20th; 3517 W. Sunset Blvd. LA 90026.

Her super short film, louise and fred, after the click.

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