Since I had pale skin, no accent, and my only interests were Star Wars, Weird Al and Nintendo, the kids I grew up with had no idea I was half Mexican. Unless I told them. And really, as a child growing up in Modesto, a then largely white town in California’s San Joaquin Valley, why would I do that? No, for a number of reasons, I learned it was easier to simply keep my mouth shut and observe.

But that got old real fast, and eventually my bottled anger needed an outlet. Which brings me to one of my favorite songs about Los Angeles, Rage Against the Machine’s “People of the Sun” (audio / video). The song that kicks off Rage’s sophomore album Evil Empire (1996) begins with one of Tom Morello’s most unusual guitar riffs (created by scraping the A and E strings with an Allen wrench) and is followed by singer Zack de la Rocha’s opening lyrics:

Since fifteen hundred and sixteen
Minds attacked and overseen
Now crawl amidst the ruins
Of this empty dream
With their borders and boots
On top of us
Pulling knobs on the floor
Of their toxic metropolis

Now, hold on a second, you’re thinking. 1516? Wasn’t Los Angeles founded in 1781?

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Today was the official announcement from the White House of a new national high speed passenger rail network. A network of 10 regional corridors, including the California Corridor connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego. A network that leaves some glaring gaps on the map.

Now may be a good time for California to start looking even further ahead. As the current plans stand, the California Corridor stands alone, isolated from the rest of the nation. The first logical step would be a connection with the Pacific Northwest Corridor, with its currently planned terminus in Eugene, OR.

But, here is the bigger question. Which route would really fire people up? Which project would generate a national sense of pride, not to mention unprecedented job creation and economic – dare I say it – stimulus?

High speed rail from Los Angeles to New York.

The idea of any major rail network is to connect major destinations. With construction of the planned Chicago Hub Network and the Northeast’s Keystone Corridor, we’re already halfway there. We need to start thinking about how we can connect the California Corridor to the Hub, which is currently terminating in Kansas City. Los Angeles – Las Vegas – Denver – Kansas City.

This marks an exciting day for anyone who travels. A true, national high speed rail network. A network that will probably be completed before the Metro Purple Line even reaches Westwood.

Click pic for full flier with details.

Local “funny guys” Paul Scheer, Rob Huebel, and Scott Aukerman will be live Twittering the midnite opening of “Crank: High Voltage” tonite at the AMC Burbank 16, and invite you to bring your cell phone and join them, or tweet from the theatre of your choice.

Yeah, you read this right: they’re actually encouraging people to text during a movie! What kind of assholes would do such a thing?

Answer: apparently, assholes with rules. The flier for the “Twitpix” event has a few tips, including sitting in the back row so as not to disturb fellow film goers, and if someone complains to either comply or move. More here.

BTW, the guys behind this are pretty tight with that whole UCB Comedy Death Ray thing, so expect some special guests to show up.

Blood Sugar Sex Magik

Under The Bridge was released in March of 1992 as the second single from the album Blood Sugar Sex Magik and was one of the RHCP’s first ballads. It’s become one of those songs you hear often on pop LA radio stations, especially if it’s a “90′s Rewind Weekend!” (or some such.) I had heard it, but didn’t really hear it until about 1996/1997. Then it got under my skin.

While I can’t relate to all of what Anthony Kiedis was writing about, I could certainly relate the most of it. Who hasn’t felt incredibly lonely in this city (or any city for that matter) even when you are surrounded by good friends and a decent job? This song takes me back to that strange in-between time in Los Angeles, the time between what I thought would happen in my life to what was going to happen in my life.

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In addition to the recent news that Pasadena bakery My Sweet Cupcake now serves vegan cupcakes a few times a week (call first before driving over there), I just found out that New York’s Babycakes is finally about to open in LA, though not at their original planned location. You may remember that back in 2007 I pointed to their soon to open space n Beverly Blvd which in turn never opened. The cupcakestresses announced via e-mail this morning that not only they have signed a lease on a spot in the bank district in downtown but already have a staff hired and expect to be open very soon. More news when I get it!

About a year ago, I chanced upon this interesting and enigmatic installation on the east-side parkway  of Crescent Heights a couple blocks south of Pico Boulevard.

Biking home yesterday afternoon along that boulevard but a few doors down from, I found this recently debuted and eclectic example of adaptive reuse (click to biggify).

It bowled me over.

This past Sunday afternoon, I went to an Easter gathering in Westchester, attended by a bunch of adults and one lucky five year-old girl. On the ride over, Lincoln Boulevard, Manchester Avenue, and the surrounding local roads were pleasantly empty. The hosts set up an Easter egg hunt for the girl, with at least a dozen hidden eggs. The rest of us egged her on, yar yar, and gave her some helpful hints. The result, as pictured here, took all of about 60 seconds of egg opening to reveal. There were items of candy, figurines (rabbits and Ariel from “The Little Mermaid”), rings, decorative hair accessories, and more. It must be fun to be the only kid at the Easter egg hunt.

So the LA Weekly‘s been publishing for 30 years now! Thirty years since visionary Jay Ulin launched the iconoclastic free weekly. It’s changed a lot since then–like the city–and these days not everyone’s happy with the changes. It should be said it’s not seeing the Amazon-rainforest-esque destruction that the LA Times has been seeing; its editorial dep’t has not been quite laid to waste the way it has at the Times. But are people still reading the way they used to? With page counts dropping, one wonders.

All that aside, it’s time to celebrate the paper’s continued existence with LA Weekend, a two-day extravaganza of some of the high points of LA art & culture–much of which has been discovered, championed, or affiliated with the storied newsweekly over the decades. From a “Meat Lovers’ Panel” to occasional LA Metblogs author Wil Wheaton, it’s quite an assembly. Not quite sure how the Meat Lovers’ Panel will fare, scheduled as it is opposite the Grilled Cheese Invitational, necessitating a painful choice for fans of high-calorie repasts.

Full schedule behind the jump.

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For some reason, people like to create new sports by stripping the equipment from an old one.  For example, my personal peeve: broom ball.  Hockey without the ice skates.  Why this is a mandatory communal dorm field trip, I will never know.  Courtesy the Kogi BBQ truck’s website of all places, here comes a recession-friendly, no-equipment-required sport: powersliding.   Harking back to the time in my childhood when I too grew tired of all the third wheels in my life, powersliding is skateboarding without the skateboard, roller skating/shoe-ing without the rolls.  It’s hell off wheels:

I know, you can’t wait to see this in person! Lucky you, champion powersliders will be at the Third Annual (Third?!) (Annual?!!) Powersliding Competition this afternoon, from 3pm-5pm at the Santa Monica Pier.   Kogi will be there and giving out free combos for the first 450 people.  By “combo,” they mean combo: 3 tacos, 1 burrito, and a drink.  And, hey, Matt & Kim will be there too!  It’s just a few blocks from my apartment, but unfortunately, work duty calls.  Alas.

Joni Mitchell’s song, “California,” from her 1970 album, Blue, doesn’t mention Los Angeles. It doesn’t really have that much to say about California either, aside from a few lines about things like kissing “a Sunset pig” (what twenty-somethings called cops back then) and likening the state to a  “make me feel good rock and roll band.”

Her words are of yearning; for a place, for an idea, for a moment that comes through not lyrically, but in the loving turn her voice takes after she gives a good-humored but exasperated account of her misadventures on a trip through Europe. You can hear her smiling as she sings about going home; to California, to Los Angeles, to Laurel Canyon; where she and others planted themselves, grew, scattered the fruits of their creative labors to the planet’s reaches, tried to change the world.

“It’s too old and cold and settled in its ways here,” she grumbles in France. “California, I’m coming home.” This from a Canadian. Read the rest of this entry →

I was an impostor at the Silent Movie Theater this Tuesday evening. This was the second screening in Writers in Treatment‘s Reel Recovery Film Series, Billy Wilder’s amazing 1945 film The Lost Weekend.  Our Metblogs colleague has already written about this series in her posts More on the Reel Recovery Film Fest and The All-Addiction Film Fest, so we might consider mine an extension of this mini-blog series.

My first impersonation was of our colleage, who was unable to attend, but had already purchased will-call tickets, and suggested I go instead.  I would note that I never claimed to be anyone else than your own Lulu, but simply stated I was picking up the tickets under the name Travis Koplow.  Substitution in name was a minor prologue to wrapped layers of simulacra (however, dissimulation is anathema to your author).  Accompanying me was my dearest native informant, who happens to be something of a SMT aficionado and member.

The night was interesting, largely because the anonymous crowd was interesting in unexpected ways.  The attendance overall was pretty sparse, maybe filling half the theater, which is often brimming during other film series.  This sparsity had little to do with the general appeal of the film, but rather with WIT’s publicity strategy which lists the series on its own page but not in the SMT’s general schedule.  It is hard for me to guess exactly what motivations underlay this; I think WIT wants to reach out to a specific audience who “needs” this film series; but at the same time, organizer Leonard Buschel made a point of noting that the series was a fundraising effort by WIT.  The latter goal seems harmed by less broadly targeted audience outreach. [...]

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This weekend the LA Convention Center plays host to the 10th annual Fangoria Convention, where stars from horror and sci-fi film and television projects, among other artists dabbling in the macabre, will converge.

Among the festivities:

• Panels and signings featuring (among many, many others): Sam Raimi, Thomas Dekker (John Conner from “The Sarah Conner Chronicles”, Sybil Danning (“V”), John Saxon, Shannon Lark (pictured at right), and, oh yes, ladies,  Corey Haim (the blonde Corey).
• Seminars and workshops including “Writing Horror” with Clive Barker,  ”Low Budget Filmmaking” with Herschell Gordon Lewis, and “Filmmaking 101″ with Tobe Hooper (“Poltergeist,” arguably).
• As ridiculed by Sean, on Saturday morning a zombie walk will terrorize the living attending other conventions being held downtown (including a SoCal Home Buyer’s Fair and the NBC/Telemundo Health & Fitness Expo). This zombie walk hopes to break the world number for largest number of participants, but more importantly is a charity event for the Los Angeles food bank. Details here.

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On the theory and practice of being hypnotized in Beverly Hills Adjacent.

I went to a hypnotist the other day. I sat in the chair, he put some glasses on my face that flashed lights in my eyes, and I was like, so, hypnotized.

If my brain could twitter. It would have looked like this…

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Classic Eats #4 was a great time, thanks again to all who came. Classic Eats #5 is on May 2 and the voting begins now.

We will need to use an external poll again so please click here for the ballot. As ever, the time will be determined once a location is chosen. We tend to try and time the event early on a Saturday evening so you can come to Classic Eats then move on to your main evening event.

You now know that Hot Dog Death March will be a very special episode of Classic Eats on June 13. That very special website is here.

Click through past the jump for details on all candidates on the ballot. There is a new contestant on the ballot as well.

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OK, who the gotdangit is responsible for this? In case you don’t feel like clicking that link let me sum it up for you. Someone with clearly no understanding of zombies is organizing a zombie walk this weekend in Downtown LA. Now you might think that sounds interesting and fun and interesting, but you would be wrong. This isn’t a zombie walk where hordes or zombies descend upon and unsuspecting populous and stumble around getting blood on things. Oh no, this one is being used as a marketing tool for a horror convention, happening in an otherwise empty part of town ensuring that only convention attendees will even see it, and worst of all, it’s for charity.

News Flash: Zombies don’t care about conventions or marketing, they go where crowds of people are–not where they aren’t–and they don’t give a crap about charities. All they want is to eat you. Is that so hard to understand? This is what a zombie walk should look like:

That photo taken by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid shows an outright zombie attack on an Apple Store in SF. Zombies were removed by force at the hands of the cops because people were so freaked out. That, and other events like the ones organized by eatbrains.com understand the chaos that would be a swarm of zombies invading a metro area. Chaos! You can’t have order and corporate backing for a zombie walk. Way to suck.