The votes have slowed for Classic Eats #5. The results as I write this Thursday morning are: Classic Hollywood Cocktails is leading Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles by a good margin, El Cholo is third. Get those votes in, the poll will close Monday afternoon.

Click here for the ballot if you haven’t voted yet. 

Click through past the jump for details on all candidates on the ballot. 

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Following up on my Monday post about discovering work commencing on the restoration of the “Postcards of Ballona” mural in Culver City, I wanted to check in with an update in the form of a slapdashed pano of the mural taken as artists put finishing touches on it Wednesday evening (click to biggify):

Mike at Franklin Ave. was inspired by our Songs About Los Angeles series and has created a poll asking his readers which L.A. song is their favorite. As of this post, 96 people have voted, with no clear winners, but Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” is in the lead with 22% of votes cast. Strangely, Walter Moore is also on the list currently in second place. How’d that happen?

Go vote.

Lesbian tires grip well

Already two posts into the series, I am compelled to confess I am breaking genre slightly.  Not too badly, I believe still within the conceit of the title.  My dearest native informant had me over recently for a very lovely dinner, with cold trays of priscutto, smoked salmon, radishes, and fresh guacamole, to match the hot weather in which baking and frying would be altogether too much.

My informant lives in one of the apartment buildings to the south of Burton, and east of Robertson, in Beverly Hills.  That is, this was in that 90211 zip code area that was built for working class residents in the post-war (WWII, that is) era. It’s not a cheap place to live, but it is an area of apartments and moderate sized single-family houses (with just a few ugly McMansions scattered among its fifth-of-an-acre lots).  My informant’s apartment, or anyway the bathroom art (by conceit, a “restroom”) fittingly matches its neighborhood. Read the rest of this entry →

It’s great to know we can always count on Diane Edwardson to cover Silver Lake news!

Check out her latest blog post, about the grass fire on Fletcher yesterday. We love you Diane!

Or any day for that matter! The LA Dept of Power and Water will give you a free tree to plant just by going to this website and filling out their form. It’s pretty cool. You take a 10 minute informational thing to learn about how to plant and take care of your tree and that’s it. They deliver it for free with stakes, dirt, etc. All you have to do is plant it. Oh yeah, and be a customer of LADWP.

They have all sorts of trees too… from plums to olives to jacarandas. You can get a small, medium or large-growing tree. My yoga teacher, Anthony Benenati at City Yoga, turned me on to this today for Earth Day. He and his wife, Rebecca, have planted four trees in the past four years. Go ahead! Do your part for Earth Day 2009!

I have always loved Johnathan Richman.  Apart from, y’know setting the stage for punk music to exist (along with, admittedly, Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, the Velvet Underground, and Television), Johnathan has the special virtue of having never sung a lyric that was negative or really critical of any topic he addresses, after 35 years of performing.  No cynicism, no biting wit, no sour recollections.  Sure, Johnathan has presumably been in, and definitely sung about relationships, cities around the world, social situations, and whatnot, but he always finds joy and humor in everything.  He also seems to have a special attachment to singing about places, though most especially of his hometown, Boston.

Johnathan sings of “Nature’s Mosquito” that “You see, God put me here just the same as he put you, so I’m nature’s mosquito. And that means I’m gonna go bite-bite-bitie-witie-wite-sir.”  Or of a discarded “Chewing Gum Wrapper,” “These colors move me more than most of what I see today.  I love the faded colors like would end up at the dump,  My heart goes bumpety, bumpety, bumpety bump.” Or yet again, of his “Dodge VegOMatic” that although it sits in the parking lot, with brakes of glass and tires of vinyl, he “likes this car a lot.”

Not all of his songs are quite as silly, but they all have a joie de vivre to them.  Singing about Los Angeles is not different.  [...] Read the rest of this entry →

It’s not unusual to see the Stars & Stripes hanging from poles on someone’s house, but since moving to El Sereno, this house has captivated me.

The photo is somewhat dark, but yes you can see the small scale Statue of Liberty on the porch. There is also a flag banner on the other side of the door. In front of the house, cut off from this photo is a 25′ flag pole. You can see that in the wider view here.

One of these days, I’m going to have a chat with the residents to find out where they got that Statue of Liberty.

On Sunday April 26, the Mar Vista Green Committee is having a free, self guided tour of gorgeous gardens from 2 to 6pm. Take a gander at how you can turn your front yard into a beautiful example of drought tolerant landscapes and talk to the owners about their experiences. From the Mar Vista Green Committee’s website:

In an effort to help Mar Vista become a model community for reduced water consumption, we seek to encourage others in the community to be inspired by and to adopt the water-saving solutions already in use by green trend-setters. With so much at stake during the summer season’s impending water shortage, the Mar Vista Green Committee has organized this first-ever event in order to give Los Angeles area residents a head start towards a beautiful and cost-effective way to do their part to conserve.

Visit the Mar Vista Green Garden website for more details and photos.

Here is a map of all the houses on the tour. There is a description of each house and what you can expect to see.

Click past the jump for a few examples of these houses and their lush gardens.

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Brief announcement: You may have noticed this guy floating around a lot in the comments section recently and not known way. Of at the very least, thought “damn, I sure do look swank in that hat I’m wearing.. hey wait!” I think maybe some explanations are in order. Basically, we added Gravatar support to the site, which means if you have a Gravatar account that avatar will show up on your comments here. If you don’t, well then you get the default MB hat guy. An important note is that Gravatar maps images to e-mail accounts, so you need to have your Gravatar account set up using the same e-mail account you used to set up your metblogs account. Know what I mean? If you don’t have one and want one, it’s pretty simple and quick to set up. All the details can be found here. Enjoy!

One of my favorite things about working at the Getty Center during my twenties was being able to walk over to the Museum’s West Pavilion, go up the stairs to the “post-structuralist” gallery and simply stare in awe at James Ensor’s Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889. Anytime I damn well felt like it.

I know this isn’t an art history blog, and I’m certainly no Sister Wendy, but let me just say that for reasons similar to why I love Ensor’s masterpiece–the colorful chaos of the Mardi Gras party it depicts, Ensor’s irreverence in portraying himself as the central Christ figure, the juxtaposition of tragedy with comedy– I also dig Beck’s “Que Onda Guero” (listen) from his 2005 album Guero.

Image: Beck in concert. Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid.

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Ron Jeremy

To enter, simply leave a comment adapting the titles of any 3 recent LA Metblogs posts into porn film titles by this Friday at noon. A secret panel of perverts will pick their favorite, and notify the winner sometime Friday afternoon.

“One Eyed Monster,” an R rated horror parody hitting DVD shelves April 28th, stars Ron Jeremy, Amber Benson, Veronica Hart and a handful of character actors and porn stars “playing it straight.” Click for the NSFW movie synopsis, giveaway details, and comments…

I’m on the Southeast coast of Florida, that well-known stretch between Miami and Palm Beach.  Therefore, it’s time for another installment of East Coast vs. West Coast.  This area of the East Coast was my second choice of home location after the West Side and South Bay beach towns near Los Angeles.  So while I’m here visiting the runner-up location, I want to see if I made the right decision.  Here’s how I evaluate it:

FLA vs. L.A., after the jump

Originally released in Los Angeles in 1965, it never took off on the charts. A few weeks later when it was re-released in Boston it started climbing in popularity, and was rumored to be responsible for hundreds heading to LA at the thought of summer in January. “California Dreaming” eventually reached #4 on the charts in early 1966.

The Mamas and the Papas had a tumultuous history, largely (no pun intended) due to the drama with singer Cass Elliot. Sadly, after a particularly great performance that ended with ovations, she died quietly of a heart attack in her hotel room. (Yes, the “choking on a ham sandwich” is just cruel urban myth). Read the rest of this entry →

What do cows, CHIPS, Merlin, a pirate, geese, deer (elk?), a couple of dogs and a knight in armor have in common? They all have taken up residence on a Santa Monica lawn around the corner from Whole Foods. Click through for a couple of other pictures of piratey goodness.

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