I’m not sure what it is with people who stuff themselves silly with food all in the name of unhealthy competition, but after what I saw this weekend, believe you me, it is fascinating.  Saturday was the 3rd Annual Gyoza Eating Championship in Little Tokyo.  Joey “Jaws” Chestnut, world renowned eating competitor whose most recent shark maneuver was beating Kobayashi by downing 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes at the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, has the world record (because there are records for just about anything) for gyoza eating, tallying 231 gyozas in 10 minutes at last year’s Gyoza Eating Championship.  On Saturday, he hopped in his car and took a drive down to Little Tokyo from his hometown of San Jose to defend his title.   Sure, there was a $1,000 grand prize, but that’s just small potatotes (or gyozas) — this here contest is all about pride.

A pictorial recap, after the jump.

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Classic Eats #7: Hot Summer Nights Edition is Saturday, August 29. The votes are coming in and currently the Reel Inn is looking like a winner. Voting will end Tuesday morning.

Click Here to vote.

Click on past the jump for more info on the three locations listed.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

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Four Los Angeles Bicycle Film Festivals ago I answered their call for submissions by transferring this meaningless  trifle of a 2004 mountainbiking short of mine to VHS tape and shipping it off to their NYC selection committee HQ. Because I’m an idiot, it was way too easy to grandly delude myself into thinking my little waferthin wisp of a barely YouTube-worthy nothing shot over one laid-back downhill in the Verdugos had some chance of being accepted.

Yeah, no… it wasn’t. Not by a longshot no doubt because the festival organizers had this high-falutin’ interest in quote/unquote quality filmmaking. The righteous bastards. And how did I handle the rejection? Like a grudging asshole I’ve literally harumphed and pffft’d every festival since — which for a guy who purports to be such an urban cycling advocate is a bit like a gun lover hating on the NRA. If the NRA had a film festival. And a video he’d submitted to it had been rejected. I behaved in other words, like that tortured analogy: very much the painful epitome of lame.

So. Sensing that it’s high time I take yet another baby step in the long journey toward getting over myself , not only am I here to make amends for my irrational boycotts of past fests by trumpeting next week’s arrival of  the 2009 Los Angeles Bike Film Festival (LABFF), but I’m also planning to actually attend an event or two. So bottom line? Don’t be a selfish dick like me: Support Your Local Bicycle Film Festival!

From the LABFF press release:

This summer, the annual Bicycle Film Festival, returns to Los Angeles for its sixth year to present a cultural phenomenon like no other. Originating in New York City, the festival is a voice for the most powerful and culturally relevant movement of the past decade: the urban bike movement. The BFF brings together many creative communities, including fashion, music and art as well as various bicycling communities ­ including fixed gear, BMX, and road cycling — over a shared passion for bike riding.

I promise: nothing more about me and everything about the LABFF program after the jump.

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As reported by Angry Asian Man and also by 8Asians, various Asian American groups protested The Goods in front of Paramount Studios for its "Pearl Harbor" scene which depicts Ken Jeong’s character getting attacked by fellow auto salesmen for looking Japanese.

In addition to using this particular scene in the trailer, Paramount Pictures released an unapologetic statement:

“We understand that when presented out of context, jokes and situations in the movie about a variety of topics might be offensive to some people,” it said in a statement.

“To be very clear, ‘The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard’ is in no way meant to be mean-spirited, disparaging or hurtful to any individuals and we regret any offense taken,” it said.

In other words, "A hate crime can be funny in the right context!"

As I type this, MANAA and JACL, along with other community groups, are wrapping up the protest outside the front gates of Paramount Studios. When I stopped by about an hour ago to take some snapshots, Friday night traffic was at a peak and cars (including mine) honked their horns in support of the protesters.

For more after the jump…
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It served as the backdrop for many a Hollywood spectacle. One such night, was the premiere of “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex,” starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn.

It was the Warner Brothers Theater. The year was 1939.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

One of the many pleasures of living in Los Angeles is that on any given night there are countless ways to divert your membrane from the mundane.

Tonight at 8:00 pm, Machine Project presents a lecture on a guy intimately familiar with diversions — St. Anthony, “the 4th century desert ascetic who was tortured by hordes of demons and would go on to become the patron saint of skin diseases.”

But wait, there’s more! According to the ephemera, the lecture, titled “Tempting St. Anthony: Epilepsy, Masturbation and Iconophobia,” will cover various depictions of St. Anthony during the Renaissance (including one by Heironymous Bosch, right); French novelist Gustave Flaubert’s lifelong obsession to retell the saint’s story; and topics as varied as, “epilepsy, ergotism, demonic posession, madness, [and] the scourge of masturbation and its relationship to capitalism.”

Hell, yes! And, remember, scratching will only make it worse.

I ate a baker’s dozen of gyozas in one sitting once, and was pretty sure I was going to die.  Not so for Joey Chestnut, the reigning Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest champ, who downed 231 gyozas (a record) at last year’s Gyoza Eating Championship in Little Tokyo.  Joey instantly became an Honorary Asian for his Stomach of Iron.  On Saturday at 3pm, Joey returns to defend his record, and his Honorary Asian distinction, at the Third Annual Gyoza Eating Championship.  On deck to challenge his prowess will be other ranked eaters, including Tim Brown, Eric “Badlands” Booker (an eater/rapper, but no word on whether he raps while he eats), and Kevin Ross.  A seat at the competitor’s table will be auctioned off immediately prior to the competition, for those seeking to change up their diet a bit.  The championship will be held at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Little Tokyo, which is the midst of  Nisei Week 2009, a nine day celebration of all things Japanese and Japanese American (congrats to Dana Fujiko Heatherton, who was just crowned the 2009 Nisei Week Queen on Saturday!).

For those who think with their head and not their stomach, Nisei Week also will host, for the first time, a Rubik’s Cube speedcubing tournament (no, I didn’t know speedcube was a word either).  Registration and full schedule can be found here.

Allez cuisine!

Image courtesy Gene.arboit under a Creative Commons license.

I’m going to be out of town this weekend, but after getting this morning’s e-mail from the Cinefamily I’m kicking myself for what I’m going to be missing. This Sunday they are teaming up with Feral House and Process Media to present an evening of events from one of my favorite cults. From their invite:

Was The Process Church truly “one of the most dangerous Satanic cults in America”? Or were they an intensely creative apocalyptic shadow side to the flower-powered ’60s and New Age ’70s. Scores of black-cloaked devotees swept the streets of New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, and other cities selling magazines with titles like “Sex”, “Fear”, “Love” and “Death”, and a theology proposing the reconciliation of Christ and Satan through love. Marianne Faithfull, George Clinton and Mick Jagger participated in Process publications, and Funkadelic reproduced Process material in two of their albums. The inside story of this controversial group has at last emerged with Feral House’s LOVE SEX FEAR DEATH by Timothy Wyllie and other former members. Tonight, Feral House and Process Books present a re-creation of an actual Process Church “Sabbath Assembly” ritual. Author Wyllie (Father Micah) will follow to discuss the cult and his time within it in a multimedia presentation. The Sabbath Assembly band, comprised of Imaad Wasif (Tee Pee Records), Jex Thoth (I Hate Records), Kevin Rutmanis (hepa-Titus, et alii), and David Christian (of No-Neck Blues Band), will perform Process hymns and songs throughout. Join us!

Show starts at 6PM at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax, It’s $15 and if I were you I’d buy tickets online ahead of time. Damn I’m pissed I’m missing this!

I didn’t realize I’d compiled a quartet of drive-by shots of some of the various new and old street art along my route until I got home and uploaded them to my desktop. So instead of four individual posts, I figured I’d collage ‘em all into one. Descriptions after the jump.

(click for the bigger pictures)

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The one time in my life I actually felt like I was part of my family was when I was maybe 7 or 8, at my uncle’s house for Christmas.  I was opening up my presents in the corner of the room – my mom always said that I had “this really weird habit” of opening my presents by myself, away from other people, as if I was resource guarding or something – and looked around.  There was my grandma (alive at the time), my parents (married at the time), my mom’s brothers and sisters, their children, and us.  It hit me: I’m related to these people!  My family has since scattered about, ties have been broken, relationships have been strained, but that satisfying feeling of understanding a part of me that I didn’t know needed to be understood is something I’ve rarely experienced again.  Until Sunday.

Sunday was the official unveiling of the Lesbian Legacy Wall, a floor-to-ceiling compilation of magazine covers spanning over 50 years of lesbian ink, at the ONE Archives down by USC.  The Lesbian Legacy Wall is the brainchild of LEX, the same group that brought us the GenderPlay exhibit in May.  If GenderPlay served as an urban encyclopedia of lesbian identity, the Lesbian Legacy Wall is an anthology – history, notable milestones, definitions, individual stories, and shared recollections.

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Dang. I think I just got caught up in the latest version of a speed trap, disguised as a parking meter. Yesterday, on my round of errands in Hollywood, I dashed into the bank. Like a good citizen, I dropped 2 quarters into the meter for fifteen minutes.

Silly me, I thought that would be enough to do a simple transaction, so imagine my surprise when I strolled out to see a ticket on my windshield.
Checked my watch. 15 minutes on the nose, no parking officer in the vicinity… so how did I get a ticket? Are the meters rigged to run less than 15 minutes?

And then I glanced at the fine. FIFTY DOLLARS!!!!!!! Fifty big ones for either being two minutes late, or the meter went off early. The hourly rate is $2.00, so the fine is 25 times the fee. Seems a bit off. And clearly designed to irritate people who live here. It’s bad enough that we pay higher parking fees when everyone is hurting for money… but the fine seems pretty hateful. Makes me hate the city government who decided that the very people who elect them should pay outrageously for parking fines and any parking in the city.

I suppose I will just chalk it up to the occasional random charge I get for living in Los Angeles.

If you are at all familiar with skateboarding history, dogtown, or the LA surfing scene then you know who Jim Muir is. If you don’t, the quickest explanation is that he’s very important to all of those. Earlier this year while surfing Jim suffered a broken neck resulting in some pretty hefty medical bills. Since then his friends, fans, and supporters have been trying to help out and have set up a Jim Muir Benefit site which houses the full story as well as an auction of several donated works from local artists and musicians and skaters. Tonight at 7:30 at the Air Conditioned Supper Club on the west side there will be a screening of “Dogtown and Z-Boys” for $10 with proceeds going towards Jim’s bills. If you are free it should be a fun event and for a good cause. Come out!

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I have to laugh at what LA Blogger “The 99 Cent Chef” does, some harder than others.  This longish vid starts in the Hollywood Farmers Market and ends with what is actually a very good lesson on how to make crepes.  Just seeing Billy in bad drag was enough to lighten what has been a bad morning around here.

As Jerry Seinfeld would say, “who are the wizards who thought this one up?”  Yesterday, notices were posted at my apartment complex indicating that, this Saturday night/Sunday morning starting at midnight, Southern California Edison plans to shut off power in my neighborhood to perform “routine maintenance.”  The posted message on my building owner’s letterhead, which may or may not have been from SCE talking points, states that “in an effort to minimize inconvenience, the testing will be done during night time hours, when the majority of our residents will be sleeping.”

Oh really?  Asleep on a Saturday night at midnight?  I can (and did) assure my building complex’s manager that the majority of us certainly will not be asleep.  Rather, many of us will be engaged in a variety of activities (use your imagination) for which we will want to use our stereos, televisions, lights, or other electrical appliances.  Read the rest of this entry →

Great puns are hard to make.  Great puns in another language are even harder.  For example, my last name is Nguyen.  I was on my firm’s softball team, and someone asked me what name I wanted to put on my jersey.  I settled on “Nguyenner” but no one appreciated it until I explained that my last name is pronounced “Win.”  Lightbulbs flashed.  “Oh!” they said.  Hmph, I said.  I’ve been working here for how long?

Here’s Foreign Language Pun Exhibit 2, snapped through my dirty windshield somewhere on Olympic:

This makes no sense until you realize that “Ahn” is generally a Korean last name pronounced “On.”  “Ahn Top.”  Ha!  Ahn-nestly, I wouldn’t put this Ahn my car even if my last name were Ahn, but it is entertaining once the lightbulb is turned Ahn.  See, learning foreign languages can be fun!