I did a little recon last week for our Hot Dog Death March and visited Oki-Dog, where I met the owner, who is an enormously pleasant, but surprisingly not enormous, gentleman who looks like he stumbled out of a Cheech & Chong flick and swore next time I showed up he’d buy my Oki Dog.

THERE WILL BE A TEST (I’m not kidding), so familiarize yourself with Oki-Dog now: check out the flickr set. Take copious notes.

Heino Performs Tonight @ The Red Lion Tavern

Heino, the most successful German folk (Volksmusik) singer (or at least a parody of one), will be performing at the Red Lion Tavern in Silver Lake tonight.

My friend Chandler has been trying for months to get me to see Heino perform, but I have yet to go the distance. If all goes as planned, tonight may be the night I lose my Heino hymen.

I’m not exactly sure what to expect. When dealing with the Germans, who does?

Red Lion Tavern, 2366 Glendale Blvd, Silver Lake, 21+. 10pm.

That very special Classic Eats Episode in which we eat wieners and answer wacky trivia questions. (Not necessarily in that order.) Over on the Hot Dog Death March Blog is an update on the prizes and games we have planned for you. As well as info about the “March” portion of the day. Check it out there.

Our most exciting contest is the Hot Dog Haiku. I hope you’ve been working on yours. I wrote one to get you inspired to do better:

Sauerkraut and bun,
Cradle the steaming wiener.
Hey! Where’s the ketchup?

I know you can do much, much better!

Don’t forget to bring a few extra dollars (if you can) to donate to the building of toilets in rural India as part of “HDDM Gives Back.” See more information on that charity on the Poop Report website.

Elvis Costello, accompanied by singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale, will do a live in-store performance at Amoeba in Hollywood on Monday, June 22nd at 8 PM. Amoeba will stream the performance live on its website.

The Amoeba Hollywood performance is the second of two in-store performances Costello will do that day, the first one taking place at the San Francisco Amoeba at noon. His new album, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, was released last week.

Spector deflowered and Prejean dismissed.

The synchronicity of a rug-less Phil Spector prison photo released by the CA State Corrections Department and the news that big hair-sporting Miss California USA, a.k.a. Carrie Prejean, opposite marriage defender, getting her ass fired by none other than architecturally-coiffed Donald (“You’re fired!”) Trump for treating people “like shit” probably doesn’t say anything about the Power of Hair.

But I’m sure glad I got mine cut last night at Rudolphos, the upscale branch of the Rudy’s chain on Melrose and Orange. To my exacting requirements, it may have cost nearly twice as much as a cut at the low-end shop, but it looks twice as good and it took four times longer, clocking in at 40 minutes.

Two reasons for my haircut: Saturday’s Hot Dog Death March and Sunday’s Gay Pride blow-out in WeHo– another sort of weiner parade.

Music inspired by the Toaster at Grand Performances

I had initial plans to participate in Silver Lake’s Dyke March on Saturday night, but darned it, something else might pull me away — Battlestar Galactica.  Specifically, Grand Performances’ presentation of the music from Battlestar Galactica, led by BSG composer Bear McCreary.  This is almost as nerdy as it actually is.

The show kicks of Grand Performances’ Summer Series of outdoor, global music and performances downtown at California Plaza.  If you haven’t jumped on the Battlestar wagon yet – or refuse to – fine but you are missing out – spend the nice summer night at any one of Grand Performances’ other Saturday shows scheduled between June 13th and August 29th.  The full schedule and details are on the official website here.

On the Inability of a  French Post-Modernist to Enjoy the Magic Kingdom

At least once every 365 days, I take some time out of my life to visit Disneyland. This week, I journeyed back into Magic Kingdom to exploit the fruits of a free birthday pass (I turned 14), and titillate my insatiable addiction to churro smell (not taste). So, while wandering around the all-too-real reality of Disneyland’s stroller-pushing, teenaged mothers and churro-eating masses, I, of course, remembered the words of my, and undoubtedly your, favorite postmoderist, poststructuralist Frenchie philosopher, Jean Baudrillard:

Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation.

The late Baudrillard apparently had a complicated time at D-Land–he even calls the parking lot a concentration camp– but he penned this (perhaps pretentiously) hilarious treatise on the why Disneyland is, like, soooo PoMo. I’ve posted the short excerpt from Simulacra and Simulations after the jump. If only Baudrillard was able to experience fully the Russian doll, So-Cal microcosm of California Adventure…

Put this in your pipe and smoke it…

Read the rest of this entry →

While traveling south on the 5 Freeway this past weekend, I spotted a white, blue and grey boxy vehicle passing us on the left. It looked like an unmarked ambulance, which I figured  was probably a prop car for a film or tv shoot. I didn’t think too much more about it until several seconds later when there was suddenly another one, and then another one, and so on. Five generic ambulances in all. Since I wasn’t driving, I snapped a few photos until they exited onto the 60 toward Pomona as we continued toward the O.C.

Despite impassioned pleas from advocates of medical marijuana, the Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to close a “hardship” loophole in a 2007 moratorium temporarily banning any new pot dispensaries from opening in the city and to extend the ban for six months.

The moratorium, intended to control the proliferation of dispensaries while the city develops permanent regulations for medical marijuana use, was due to expire in September.

The easily-applied-for hardship exemption has been invoked by hundreds of pot dispensaries that opened in LA after the ban went to effect in November 2007, preventing the city attorney’s office from prosecuting any violators.

Public comments during today’s council session (which is viewable on LA Cityview Channel 35) ranged from the ill and their supporters who spoke of improved quality of life benefits derived from access to marijuana for medical purposes to irate residents living near allegedly shady, fly-by-night dispensaries to obvious recreational users hoping to maintain their supply– not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Buddyhead founder DJ Travis Keller, who I just saw open for Peaches the other night, is teaming up with Kevin Fitzgerald of the Circle Jerks tonight at Jones on Santa Monica (bar info here, event info here). Keller’s DJ nights always bring the party and draw fantastic collaborators, so I’d expect a fair amount of scenestars & tastemakers crowding Jones’ dim, cozy interior. You’re welcome.

bcnunnery's Los Angeles photo courtesy of stock.xchng

Last week, a friend of mine from New York was visiting LA for work, and perhaps inevitably our dinner conversation turned to that old saw: LA vs. NY. Know that we weren’t trying to establish the superiority or dominance of one megalopolis over the other, just come to some sense of understanding. Annette, my New Yorker friend, had just come from a yoga class and was a bit culture-shocked–first there was the fact that the entire class sat on the floor in their fine yoga togs texting on their mobile devices while waiting for the instructor. Then there was the intensity of the class, the fervor with which the students yoga-ed themselves into bendy, sweaty shapes, coupled with the high anorexia quotient. “The women in the dressing room,” Annette remarked, “Had those hollows in their pelvises that you see on malnourished people and POWs.”

“Welcome to my town,” I said. Read the rest of this entry →

The lovely Neko Case will be bringing her stunning voice to LA’s own Greek Theatre this Friday and you, yes YOU, can be there. Wanna go? In the comments below, tell me the first time you fell in love with Neko’s music. We’ll randomly select one lucky winner to go enjoy the show.

Show info is here.

The Westfield Shopping Center in Century City is having free movies “On The Terrace” all summer. Every Wednesday night at 8pm you can sit on the 2nd level food court terrace and watch a movie for free. It might not be quite as cool as sitting in a cemetery, but there is furniture and I bet the line is shorter.

The schedule is as follows:

June 10 – Love Story
June 17 – Forrest Gump
June 24 – Footloose
July 1 – Back To The Future
July 8 – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
July 15 – Raiders of The Lost Ark
July 22 – Ghostbusters
July 29 – Top Gun
August 5 – My Fair Lady
August 12 – TBD
August 19 – Grease
August 26 – Special Double Feature TBD

Not sure who’s choosing the movies, but I am curious why they are reaching into my teenage movie going memory banks on most of them!

For more info and a list of the restaurants, click here.

The Dean Of City Hall Reporters has arrived at LA Metblogs. Over many a maté [NOT a latte], Mr. Marc Haefele & I conspired to unleash his killer prose upon you unsuspecting readers.

Haefele has been digging up the dirt on City Hall and LA politics for more than 25 years, in pubs as scrappy as my own LA Alternative, various & sundry weeklies, and as award-winning as the LA Times and KPCC. Where he talks. On the radio. (For those who can’t hear him, he has a deep and sonorous voice, gentle yet infused with childlike glee when describing his car chases up the 405, pursuing the smoked-windowed vehicles of mysterious political donors).

A quick Google of his name will land you with a good idea of his pedigree, but what’s most impressive is his passion for Los Angeles, a maté made right, South American adventures, barbecue, his lovely lady, and his cat, not necessarily in that order. I hope very much this blog will be added to that list. Welcome to LA Metblogs, Mr. Marc Haefele.

Don’t miss his 1st post, below, and here.

In a cost cutting measure, GOOD Magazine moved out of its stylish Melrose headquarters last week and into a new space a few blocks away on Citrus off of Highland.

Considering it had only moved into its previous offices at the end of last year, it’s a fast turn of events for the magazine, which skipped its second full issue of this year to instead publish a tongue-in-cheek  “stop-gap” flyer about the new economic reality.

As I pointed out in a previous post about the magazine’s temporary financial woes, it also is cutting back from six to four print issues a year.

GOOD is not alone in key respects: The downturn in print media specifically, along with the global economic downturn in general in combination with its admitted overspending during headier financial times, necessitated the scaling down.

The next issue will focus on the planet’s threatened water supply, a topic any Angeleno should find relevant, what with the recently imposed mandatory water restrictions in LA.