Los Angeles band Silversun Pickups have the number one song on Billboard’s Hot Modern Rock Songs chart this week, marking the first time in eleven years that an act on an independently distributed label has occupied the top spot.

The band is on Dangerbird Records, a Los Angeles-based label whose offices are on Sunset Junction in Silver Lake. According to the label, “only three songs by artists on independently distributed labels have reached this position.”

“Panic Switch,” the first single from the band’s new album Swoon, jumped ahead of tracks by major label acts Linkin Park and Green Day to land at the top of the chart.

Sorry to toot my own horn, but to quote Ruth666, “what good is a blog if not for shameless self-promotion?”.  Barely two years ago I was invited to join the Metblogs crew and here I am at post 600.  A little reflection of what I have posted in a semi-best of.  Since I haven’t hit 1,000 (yet…late 2010 maybe) I couldn’t quite come up with 10 favorites but here is what I have:

• Ride along with Pasadena PD that ended with a murder.
• The answer to gang violence is teaching virtues to our kids.
• Monrovia’s not so stellar human rights and sexual harassment record with its police dept employees.
• Beating the local TV and print media with a story on the Sierra Madre Fire in ’08.
• Ride along with Arcadia PD that ended in a Q&A with our readers questions.
• After an attempted toss out of a press conference, I asked “Is a blogger the media” and got a boat load of answers.
• I interviewed a parking tard named “Richard”, our readers renamed him “Dick”.
• I chronicled a few hawks on my street, the youngest of which could not quite get a grip on his first trip out of the nest.
• This car lovin’ guy wants a rail system that works and brought out the crayons for his dream routes.

There you go, not too bad a list for a gabacho with a keyboard out in the SGV.  I can’t tell you what I’ll post next but I promise to continue to annoy you one key stroke at a time.

Long live the wildcat strike

Sorry for the absence, readers. Whimsy brings me back though.  Somewhere in LA, perhaps everywhere in LA, chaos reigns this week.  Or at least such is the hope of some artists from UCLA’s REMAP (Research in Engineering, Media and Performance).  This community art project–inspired, so we are told, by situationism–brings ludic activity to geographic loci of LA.  Hmmm… putting that is smaller words, they want us to play this week, and report the results.  In the words of enGage ludiCity:

enGage ludiCity is a process-driven cultural performance composed of three distinct stages:

1) ludus constituo ~ personal disruptive ludic actions (June 13-19)

2) ludus locus ~ collective situationist ludic engagement (June 20)

3) ludus meditor ~ dialogic ludic reflection (After June 20)

It’s simple really… or at least my first impression seems to be. Register for the Situationist Messaging System (SMS), and do things.  After all, Los Angeles will not be sunny until the day when the last bureaucrat has been hung with the guts of the last capitalist!

This gorgeous, gently used Bentley comes to us from a friend of Metblogs who is trying hard to find this four year old pup a new home. They tell us that Bentley is a family friendly guy, just 85lbs of pure love and happy dogness. The current owners are looking to place Bentley with a responsible, dog loving family – so an interview will be required. Here’s what else they have to say about him:

“Bentley is the first to welcome me home, come rain or come shine, he meets all of us with an array of circle runs, sky-high-jumps and happy barks. He’s a sucker for treats and expects them when he’s been good…which is often. He’s very smart and is oh-so-trainable. He diligently chases midnight marauding raccoons who are attempting to over-turn our trash cans and mockingbirds who are always attempting to steal just-ripened-fruit from our courtyard garden.

He’s house broken, sleeps in our son’s bedroom and naps on various doggy pillows around the house. He loves SoCal’s sunshine and prefers peeing and pooping in private. A daily walk or run is his definition of the start or end to a perfect day.”

If you are interested in adopting Bentley or can help find him a new home please e-mail Jock Begg at begg@nhlfunding.com.

Bentley Needs A New Home

A big Metblogs THANK YOU to all who came along on this past weekend’s Hot Dog Death March–we made lots of new friends & bonded with old ones. How can you not bond, after all, over weenies & pastrami & chili wrapped in a tortilla? It’s like going to war. If you live, you come back with friends for life.

Photo by regular commenter & Metblogs friend Mr. Hooks.

And live we did! Between 40-50 Death Marchers converged on Pink’s around 3pm on Saturday. Pink’s was incredibly kind & gifted us our first 20 or so chili dogs and drinks. Thank you, Pink’s! A big thanks to Oki-Dog & Skooby’s as well for being such good sports. Skooby’s also gifted us a few shirts to give away–thanks guys!

We played hot dog games, enjoyed hot dog trivia, shared hot dog haiku and gave out hot dog prizes! Big ups to Julia for getting the t-shirts and the temporary tattoos made with Spencer’s great logo, and then giving them all away for free! What a gal!

There are more recaps on our Hot Dog Death March blog, as well as 278 (and growing) photos in our Hot Dog Death March photo pool on flickr, so check ‘em all out! Chal took video of our Hot Dog Haiku contest which we’ll be posting shortly.

One Death Marcher, David, sent us this mp3 of an old punk song about Oki-Dog. Here it is, with a montage of photos from Saturday, taken by Mr. Hooks, Superdave, Skosakura & Abiko79 on flickr. Enjoy!

Even if free this ANALOG TV with the cracked case is completely useless.  I’m not sure how exactly it started, but my neighbor has decided rather than get a yard sale permit and clean out his house in one fell swoop, has taken to putting “free” stuff on the end of his driveway Sundays.  Not much is usually picked up, even less like this “hazardous waste” gets picked up by our trash service on Monday.  (Electronics need to be recycled as hazardous waste at e-waste round-ups that several communities in the SGV have several times a year).

Folks in and around the Atwater Village area might be displeased to know that earlier this month the Farmers Market which has been held monthly in the Wells Fargo parking lot off Glendale for years was told they needed to find a new home pronto. Folks like Adam at Painkiller.org didn’t take this news too well and started calling people left and right and asking others to do the same. This seems to have worked, at least in the short term because they have been granted a stay on the eviction and Council President Eric Garcetti will be meeting up with bank reps this week to see what kind of arrangement can be reached. I’m guessing in the meantime further support for the market can’t hurt.

Thanks to Jen for bringing this to my attention.

Agent Orange - Flickr photo used under Creative Commons.

Agent Orange, the original southern California surf-infused punk band, tore it up at the Knitting Factory Saturday night. 30 years on (30!?!) these punks may have grown up, but they haven’t grown old.

Slam dancing, moshing, skanking…whatever you call it, a great mass of fans swirled in a counter-clockwise (always counter-clockwise. Why?) spin-cycle in the center of the crowd. Moving seemingly indiscriminately, bumping into each other, being pushed back into the center if they get too close to the edge of the circle, sometimes being pushed off balance and falling under the feet of the rest of the spinning crowd. At first glance it seems like a violent, rage-filled cauldron of bodies, yet a closer look reveals a strange sense of community. When one falls, someone nearby, a stranger, is quick to offer a hand to get them back to their feet and push them back into the roiling mass of sweaty bodies in motion.

Click past the jump for more, plus live video of an Agent Orange classic. Read the rest of this entry →

This is a bigger upset than if the Magic had beaten the Lakers: last Friday, the California Coastal Commission  ignored its own staff recommendation and the will of Venice voters by overwhelmingly denying the request by the City of Los Angeles to create “overnight parking districts” (“OPDs”) on several Venice streets that would have prohibited unpermitted vehicles during the wee hours.

Here is the video of the 4-hour Commission hearing (click on the June 11 link and forward to 40:00). Because the proposed OPDs are in the “coastal zone,” the City needed a Coastal Development Permit from the Commission to establish the OPDs.  However, the Commission was limited to considering whether the OPDs would hinder public beach access.  Nevertheless, the hearing, which featured scores of Venice residents speaking for a couple of minutes each, quickly turned into an emotional debate about homelessness, gentrification, and rich versus poor.

Park here for more

At least, this leads me to presume as much.

Right after the Lakers’ win tonight, fans, some non-fans, and other folk jonesing for a little mob mentality coalesced to celebrate with a bit of a riot downtown.  Is this scene a sign of class warfare erupting – plebeians angry with the downturn economy and impotent social services using this victory as an excuse to throw rocks at the authorities – or is this just a couple of bum idiots (“knuckleheads” as Chief Bratton called them) who thought a victory dance to the tunes of arson and violence was the appropriate response?  Perhaps a little of both.  In any case, it’s 11:30pm, well after the game, and the news outlets still show people smashing up stores and derailing Metro bus lines.   Now I wonder what these people/we will do when the economy sours even more, the unemployment rates continue to skyrocket, and we find ourselves forced to choose between dinner and a doctor’s visit.  Stay tuned…

LACMA’s Grand Entrance Plaza currently has a suspended maelstrom of sickeningly-colored plastic crap in anticipation of its upcoming exhibition, Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea.

HappyHappy is the name of the site specific work by Choi Jeong-Hwa.

LACMA’s blog says it’s “actually nothing more than floor-to-ceiling strands of thousands of household containers procured from local 99¢ stores.”

Indeed.

The exhibit runs June 28-Sept. 20. Read the rest of this entry →

Look for the sign!

The LA Metblogs Hot Dog Death March launches its ungainly trajectory into the upper gastrointestinal tract of Los Angeles this afternoon at 3pm, at Pink’s Hot Dogs in Hollywood.

Bring change & bills for parking.

Beware parking signs.

Pop a Tagamet around 2pm.

We’ll be arriving at Oki-Dog around 5pm, possibly sooner depending on how quickly we exit Pink’s–but we’ll be limited by the massive line there.

Julia & myself will be there to meet you at 3pm…you’ll know us by the hot dog hats & Hot Dog Death March sign.

Follow us on twitter @HDDMLA to keep up with our…progress, if you can call it that.

In real honest-to-gawd shades of gray or green camouflage and on sale too!  These “lovelies” were found at Kirkland Home in the old Mervyn’s center here in outer-monrovia.  The name describes what I think of the blasted things.   Please someone tell me that this is the final sign the abomination has jumped the shark and soon they will all be no more.

The Latin Sounds Music Series at the LA County Museum of Art is underway. The free music event is held every Saturday between 5 and 7pm, May thru September.

When the weather cooperates, it’s perfect for an early evening  picnic listening to music from Spanish-influenced corners of the world.

Tonight’s performer is Louie Cruz Beltran. Beltran is an adept percussionist with a sounds based on Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms. His shows are great fun and always get people on their feet.

You may want to contact the music department, (323) 857-6115, before you arrive to make sure if the recent rain will move the event to from the Dorothy Collins Brown Amphitheater to the courtyard of the museum.