Friends of mine recently moved their design company into a new suite of offices in Larchmont– a light, airy space tucked away but near enough to the village street and all of the charm and convenience it can offer. Good lunch and dinner spots, boutiques, a newly opened outpost of Crumbs (the Beverly Hills-based cupcake mecca they swear they’ll resist, as a daily habit anyway,) even Chevalier’s Books, the much reported site last week of a browsing Mayor V. and his new anchorwoman girlfriend.

The only drawback, however, is a looming cellphone tower hovering over their new digs. My friend, a new mom, joked about it. “I wouldn’t be so concerned if it was after I have my second child.”

There has long been an argument raging about the increased incidence of cancer and birth defects among people living near radiation that the towers emit, and some claim a rise in leukemia in children.

While the U.S. slowed to a crawl during the last administration when it came to regulating companies that posed possible health risks to its citizens, other countries have taken action. The United Kingdom, France, Israel, Japan, Russia, Tajikistan and India ban children from using cellphones due to radiation risks; India even made it illegal for pregnant women to use them.

But change may be on the way here too. In the U.S., activists are targeting Section 704 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed into law by President Bill Clinton, which greatly reduced state and local governmental control over the placement of cell towers and other commercial wireless transmitters. Since then, local governments have been powerless to stop  telecommunications companies from constructing, erecting and modifying cell and wi-fi towers as they try to keep up with customers’ demands for better signals.

Last week, on June 2nd, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took action against telecommunication companies, voting unanimously to support federal legislation to repeal sections of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 “that limit the authority of state and local governments to regulate cell towers and related wireless facilities on the basis of their health and environmental effects.” Read the rest of this entry →

Hot Diggity!

Are you hungry for hot dogs yet? I sure am!

This Saturday, June 13 is HD-Day and there is so much to look forward to. First of all the hot dogs: Pink’s has about a jillion varieties, Oki-Dog will scare you straight and Skooby’s will rock you with their swinging style. And while all these dogs will be worth any wait in line, we will also be having some fun to distract you while you queue.

First there will be trivia contests. Study up on your Hot Dog and Hollywood facts and history, there will be prizes for correct answers. Then there will be the artistic portion of the day wherein you will have written a Hot Dog Haiku and you will read it aloud. Best haiku (decided by applause) gets a great prize and the haiku will be posted on the HDDM website. And if your inclination runs to costumery, then come dressed as your favorite hot dog or hot dog related character or thing and we’ll decided on a wiener of the costume contest.

The details again:

Saturday June 13th
3pm start at Pink’s (La Brea and Melrose)
Then to Oki Dog (860 N. Fairfax)
Finish at Skooby’s (6654 Hollywood Blvd)
(We are not actually walking or marching, this is LA after all!)
Event is free, but each person pays for their own meals.

Donations being accepted to help build toilets in rural India. Check out the Poop Report Website.

More details to come this week. Check out the Hot Dog Death March website for other info and fun articles.

(Dodger Dog photo by dabruins07 used via creative commons license.)

Photo by Neil Berrett

Heidi “Bluegirl” Calvert is teaming up with twisted performance troupe Art Of Bleeding to present an evening of naughty nurses, gorey performance art and bandages applied for all the wrong reasons.  Fever! hits the Infusion Gallery this Saturday June 13th at 9 pm with a medical disco dress code.  So, break out your hospital gowns, six inch heels, gauze and glitter for a sick evening of disease driven expression. 

Featured artists include Heidi Calvert, Al Ridenour, Muffinhead, Debra Haden, Paul Torres, Eban Lehrer, VK7, Marianne Williams, Miss Numa, Alan Deforest, Auriana- Lynn, Radhika Heresy, Paul Zollo, Rajiv Jain, Jason Hadley, June Julliet, Jezebelle X, Dr. Mangor, Jerry Shawback, and Joe Holliday.  Live performances throughout the evening from Art of Bleeding’s Ambulance Theater & Nursing Fetish Ward will melt your brain while DJ Howie Pyro spins the soundtrack to your demise.

Fever! is 18+ with a bar available for those who can legally kill brain cells. $8 donation at the door ( only $6 for those in themed costume ).

As a guy who’s been covering LA for around 25 years now, I want City Hall to be a happy place. It’s the `60s guy in me I suppose: “Hey everybody take hands with your brother and all get together and love one another right now.” Rarely, it seemed, you did get that mood in City Hall, and when you did, usually something good happened. Like the trainload of relief aid the city sent to Mexico after the `85 quake. Or the anti-apartheid resolutions that spread from Tom Bradley’s office to the statehouse and all over the nation—helping to end South Africa’s undemocracy.

But the times aren’t right for that mood just now. These, in fact, are the toughest times since at least the early 80s— when last there were last real layoffs, as opposed to simply the elimination of unfilled jobs. The insider mood now is fear. Increasingly, the city’s 30,000 or so employees are looking at one another with the suspicion that some of them, at least, won’t ever get to have a retirement party. Does this mean that they’re going to be working harder to help us civilians when we show up at service counters, so that they’ll get better performance evaluations? Maybe so. The offset, however, will be longer waits in line and shorter counter hours. While libraries go back to the two-day-per-week schedule or even close. And after-school youth programs that have painstakingly, over the past decade, liberated some city parks from gangs disappear, and the gangs return.

This is probably why you haven’t seen a happy face for quite a while on the city’s own official visage, Antonio Villaraigosa. I noticed this for the first time early this year, when AV rolled out his State of the City speech in a corner of the city so obscure that it was actually south of Torrance… Read the rest of this entry →

It is Monday and its time for that odd reminder that those of us in the far East LA, better known as the San Gabriel Valley do exist and are busy little critters.

• Pasadena Daily Photo has the most interesting “Zen Monday” photo yet ready for your comments.
• Pasadena Closet Conservative declares today “Laugh at Libs Day“.
• Pasadena New Progressive doesn’t know the difference between a million and a billion (read the headline).
• Crime Scene continues to remind us crimes are alive and well in the SGV including the saga of the alleged rapist who got his tongue bitten off during an attack and arrest at ER when he tried to get it fixed.
• Sierra Madre Tattler makes a case against local police in favor of contracting LA Sheriff that “does a good enough job” over in Temple City.
• M-M-M-My Pomona is glad to learn they are having an indie band play there.
• Goddess of Pomona is now a private blog requiring invitations to read her pearls of wisdom.
• Pasadena Sub Rosa (formerly Pasadena Pundit) continues to watch over us and points out that Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor’s name translates to “big thicket” and worries “Whatever happened to the liberal notion of superior competence?“

It’s official. Monday at noon. Doors open. Officially. For reals.

The newly expanded Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art reopened at the end of May at the Huntington Library and Gardens, which, along with the recently renovated main house, provided an escape from the rain last Wednesday, not to mention the rumbling thunder and lightning.

I stood in the desert garden, much of it in bloom, as rain pelted down, jagged bolts danced across the sky, the smell of the junipers drifted by– all elements converging to create a sensory spectacle not often witnessed in Southern California.

The new Scott Galleries provide a striking contemporary backdrop for the paintings, sculpture and objects that date from the 17th to the mid-20th century. Being overly familiar with the work I’ve seen repeatedly in New York museums by artists like John Singer Sargent, Wiliam Meritt Chase, Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper, Mary Cassatt, Robert Motherwell and Richard Diebenkorn, it’s energizing to discover “new” images by them and fall in love all over again.

There’s a collection of furniture by Frank Lloyd Wright in the new section as well as  interiors and furniture by Greene and Greene in its own small gallery, the Dorothy Collins Brown Wing, tucked away from the expansion.

You can enter the building from the side if you’re coming from the gardens, but seek out the glass loggia at the main entrance. It brings a flood of  natural light into the galleries, as do strategically placed upper corner windows in some of the inner galleries. It all works together beautifully.

Photos by CP

I’m going to be brief and bloggy and ranty for a moment:

1. Last night at 4am I couldn’t get to sleep because of music blaring from the roof of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel over 4 blocks away. When I arrived in the lobby there were two other neighbors there as well, one had been there over 45 minutes. The hotel acknowledged the music started at 2am. It took over an hour for the police to respond (the music finally stopped around 4:30am).

2. Yesterday, blogger “Toastycake” wrote that he went to see “The Hangover” at the Arclight with a friend who stars in the film, and took a still of the screen when said friend appeared. Arclight staff took notice, escorted Toastycake out of the theatre where four LAPD officers were waiting to give him a verbal lecture on piracy.

More on the whole Roosevelt situation later – but 4 officers respond almost immediately to a piracy complaint, but it takes more than an hour for them to respond to numerous residents complaining about being woken up by music at 3am?

h/t Molls She Wrote

The Carnevale of Venice, Italy is a rich, ornate, historic pre-Lent celebration characterized by dramatic costumes and masks. The Carnevale of Venice, California? Not so much.  Yesterday’s California-style Carnevale on Venice Beach was a good excuse for a street festival, but the Carnevale connection was tenuous at best.

At Windward Avenue near Ocean Front Walk, the first thing we saw was a group of Hare Krishnas competing with — or maybe taking advantage of — the pulsing beat of techno music a few yards away.  The Carnevale DJ booth, an oversized wooden cat mask, held some thematic promise, visually if not aurally.  But the only costumed dancers were dressed more for a rave — or perhaps an advertising gig on the nearby walkway — than for a Carnevale. 

Venice does Venice – sort of – after the jump

Got some free time on your hands next weekend and feel like helping out at a great event? The Southern California chapter of Special Olympics is holding its 40th Annual Summer Games at Cal State Long Beach Saturday and Sunday, June 13th and 14th. There are multiple volunteer opportunities, some general, others sports-specific. Of course, monetary donations are accepted.

I have a younger brother with a disability who inspired me to go into a career in which I work with that population. Unfortunately, I don’t get to see him compete in Special Olympics very often, so I feel like I have a long distance connection by getting involved here in Los Angeles County. I’ll be there again this year with a group of other do-gooders (and our registered therapy dogs) to meet and greet athletes and their families. Our presence has been appreciated and enjoyed in the past. It really is a fun time!

The Summer Games will take place June 13th and 14th at Cal State Long Beach, 250 Bellflower Blvd, Long Beach, CA 90840. Click here for a list of events, which are free and open to the public. There is also no charge for parking. I’ll be on Sunday because there is no way I’m missing the LA Hot Dog Death March! I hope to see you in Long Beach and scarfing down some wieners in L.A. the day before!

15 years too late to be precise.  Doesn’t matter much as the Nevada courts managed to do what LA Superior couldn’t.  Toss OJ in the slammer for a long time.

This witness “statement” caught with the craptastic cell phone cam in Duarte at the stop lights for the 210 on-ramp.

The annual Los Angeles River Ride is taking place as I type this, but yesterday was my time on the waterway spent posting the ride’s route signage  with my friend Stephen “Mr. Rollers” Roullier and first-time volunteer Bobby, a transplant last year from Portland, Ore. The three of us spent the morning hanging southbound and northbound directional markers between Olympic Boulevard in Boyle Heights and Imperial Highway in South Gate, marveling pretty much every pedal of the way at the dramatic cloud-filled skies that were impossible to ignore, such as this moment coming west across the 6th Street Bridge after we’d finished and were heading towards Steve’s suggestion of the Blue Star Restaurant for lunch (click to maxify):

Bonus this year: Steve and I weren’t hassled by the Vernon PD! Even more FTW: Blue Star — an oasis of neat eats and cool peeps at 2200 E. 15th Street amidst an otherwise industrio-desolated section of the city that might be described as the Scrap Metal District. One of the Saturday-only specials on the menu was something called a Shields Dateburger — with a side of mac ‘n cheese at $13.50 certainly one of the priciest in the burgerverse, but seriously: The Best Tasting Burger I Have Ever Had.  I’ve already made plans to go back for another one next Saturday.

Flickr photoset viewable here, includes a few photos of Blue Star sometime-chef’s fully restored 1941 Czechoslovakian air-cooled rear-engine Tatra V8, which was parked out front in the space reserved for Awesome.

A couple Saturday mornings ago I organized a group bike ride, the bulk of which featured a number of stops in the historic West Adams District of the city. In the course of my research for the excursion, I discovered that the house at 2279 W. 20th Street became the post-World War II home of one Army Staff Sergeant Walter Ehlers, who moved here from his home state of Kansas after the war in Europe ended — that’s him there below, in front of his convertible in front of the house (click to enlarge a bit):

As it was Memorial Day Weekend, I couldn’t help but  include a brief stop at the two-story craftsman and recognize Ehlers as a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I’m taking these moments a couple weeks later to share what I know about him because 65 years ago on this day he and the rest of 18th Infantry, First Infantry Division, L Company, stormed Omaha Beach as part of the D-Day invasion force at Normandy, France. Walter’s older brother Roland landed up the beach with K Company and was killed in action when a mortar struck a direct hit on their craft.

Ehlers’ orders were to lead a 12-man reconnaissance team to a town about five miles inland. Under his leadership, the entire squad made it off the beach and up into the bluffs, where they captured a German pill box.

Then the real heroics began, which you can read in Ehlers’ official Medal of Honor citation, after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry →

"F#@&!"

You’ve seen him. You’ve quoted him. (“You can stick it up your fern if you want to!”) You may have even made VHS copies of him before YouTube. (I did.) Of course I’m talking about Winnebago Man, aka Jack Rebney, the foulest foul-mouth you’ve ever loved.

Have you wondered about this enigmatic gent? All your answers may be answered in a film by Ben Steinbauer being screened at the Silent Movie theater via The Cinefamily tomorrow night. From the Cinefamily site:

Filmmaker Ben Steinbauer takes on the seemingly impossible task of tracking down Jack, and his journey turns into a fascinating exploration of viral video culture, and what it means on a personal level to its sometimes unwilling subjects. When he finally tracks down Rebney, the real man is more savvy, irrascible (of course), deep, weird, and cool than you could have possibly hoped for, and turns out to be more than able to hold his own in the modern media culture. In short, he is a star. A lovely and hilarious look at one man’s response to Internet humiliation, and how that so-called “humiliation” can become a beacon of light to many. All hail Jack Rebney: the patron saint of our collective frustrations.

The Silent Movie Theater
611 N. Fairfax Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Sunday, June 7
8:00pm
Tickets are $12 and can be bought online here.

Be blinded by the f#@&ing hot-light original, right here (uh, language totally not safe for work!)

P.S. NO MORE!

If you are in LA tonight and don’t have something else planned that is at least mildly entertaining then perchance you will find yourself at Machine Project for a lecture by Johannes (of monochrom) about computers in pop music. This video is the closing song he used in a version of the talk I saw him give a few years ago in Berlin and trust me when I tell you it’s a fascinating talk that gets into your head often in ways you can’t control. I tell you this not only because he flew all the way over here from Vienna to give the talk, and not only because he’s currently naked in my shower getting all prettied up for the event, but because having seen his talks all around the world myself for years and years I can testify that it’s always entertaining and worthwhile! More over on BoingBoing.