Prompted by an alleged coyote attack in August and another last Wednesday night wherein a man sleeping on the ground near Travel Town reportedly woke up to find a coyote biting his foot, California Department of Fish & Game wasted no time dispatching wildlife trappers who spent Thursday and Sunday in Griffith Park hunting and killing seven of the creatures.

As an unabashed coyote admirer who’s had a number of uneventful close coyote encounters all over Los Angeles, the tragic kicker of it all, as reported by the L.A. Times, is that having not been able to collect the attacking animal’s DNA from the victim’s foot, there’s no way of knowing if the culprit is among the seven carcasses collected.

But Fish & Game officials don’t let such pertinent bits of evidence keep them from raining death on a whole bunch of otherwise innocent coyote flesh, especially since the department can stand stoic and clenched behind a policy of wholesale slaughter if there’s deemed to be a danger to the public (or at least that segment of it that despite all the “Warning: Dangerous Animals” signage posted throughout the park decides it’s entirely fine to lay oneself out on the grass after dark and go night-night).

My point being this wasn’t a rogue coyote rampantly or randomly attacking someone in their Atwater Village driveway. This was a creature in its familiar environment who made the mistake of sampling what it thought was the best buffet ever.

But the state agency in charge doesn’t see any difference.

“Somebody getting bitten is an imminent threat,” said Fish & Game biologist Kevin Brennan to the Times.

If the park’s surviving coyotes could I’m sure they’d yell “No shit! To us!”

Are you following us on Twitter yet?

If you were, you would already know the Pixies added a 3rd show at the Palladium on November 11th.

Tix go onsale…when, you ask? Click away, young padawan! I’ll be the first to admit I’m sick of the mouthfrothing Twitter rabies spewing from every pop culture orifice lately, but when I don’t have time to put a blog post together & want to get info out asap, that’s how I’ll be doing it…via @LAMetblogs on the tweet-tubes. I ain’t sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

In case you didn’t know, tomorrow is a special election day if you live in the valley and vote in City Council District 2.  The seat was left vacant by Wendy Gruel getting elected to City Comptroller and tomorrow 10 people are up for the post.  The area spans from Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills to Sherman Oaks, Valley Village, Verdugo Hills, North Hollywood to Tujunga.

I’ve only met one of the contenders… Frank Sheftel… a down to earth guy who was born and raised in the Valley and has run several businesses there his whole life, and I like him for several reasons.

Read the rest of this entry →

Sometimes frequent commenters distinguish themselves often enough with witty prose, clever insights, cool tips, spirited defense (when we’re assailed by trolls), and just-plain-neat-ness that we here at Metblogs take our relationship to the next level. You saw it with Burns!, now an author, who started out as a passionate & well-spoken (well-written?) commenter. Now I have to introduce you to Mr. Hooks, who, while he demurely passed on my invite to become an author (he’s a busy man, after all), has come to almost all our Classic Eats events and meetups and has become–dare I say it!–a Friend.

The friendly Mr. Hooks is becoming Chef Hooks tomorrow night, and you all will get a chance to meet him as he becomes the latest Friend to cook in the “Friends Cook at Canelé” series–occasional Tuesday nights when the bistro/tapas/wine bar opens up its kitchen to select lucky bastards (I think you have to call them & ask, plan a menu within their price point, and just be downright righteous) to curate & cook their own recipes in a dinner service.

Chef Hooks’ own recipes, featured tomorrow, include sweet corn soup with avocado crème frâiche, cilantro oil & bacon lardon and pan-fried skate wing in brown butter lemon sauce with apples, young leeks, and a cauliflower purée. Dessert is a riff on the summery fave of strawberry soup. Your very reasonable cost for this three-course price-fixe is about thirty smackers.

Our compliments to the chef!

Only ten performances of this wack-tastic ‘splosion of Python-y goodness will grace the Ricardo Montalban Theatre, a venue I have always wanted to visit because of its name but have never been inside.

“A Night Without Monty Python” is a cherrypicking spectacular of Python’s best-loved moments, from the Spanish Inquisition, to the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Lumberjack and Spam songs, and scads more (go here for full list).

Eric Idle isn’t IN it (although an appearance would not surprise me), but he directs Alan Tudyk (Dodgeball, Dollhouse) and Jane Leeves (Frasier), Jim Piddock (who’s been in just about everything, ever) and a few others, plus likely guest-star cameos throughout the run.

This one’ll sell out, folks. Tix are here…for now.

Amoeba Hollywood @ night by Jodi

Amoeba is one of my very favorite places in L.A. It’s my go-to spot for unloading old CDs, thumbing through the bins of deeply discounted DVDs, and buying previously owned music. Besides being a place with a  fantastic selection of music of all genres, movies, live performances, and more, Amoeba is dog friendly and encourages folks to bring their canine pals along to shop.

Considering the store’s open arms policy to dogs, it’s not too much of a suprise that they are hosting a pet adoption this afternoon from 12pm to 4pm. Lange Foundation is a local organization dedicated to finding new homes for pets in need, as well as a sterilization program throughout L.A. County. They will have some furry friends for you to meet and possibly take home. At 4pm there will be a charity auction to benefit the group. Even if you aren’t looking to add a pet to your family, stop by and support a great cause.

Amoeba Music is located at 6400 Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood.

Apart from my other jobs, I moonlight as a wonk.  In particular, for the last 6 years or so, I’ve been involved with a group called the Open Voting Consortium, much of that on its board and as its CTO. With that hat on, I am enormously excited that Los Angeles County is likely to get much better voting systems in the relatively near future.

Let me give the brief plug: we want to make sure that no one has to vote on proprietary DRE voting machines (or ever does voluntarily, for that matter).  There are two glaring flaws in these systems: the source code is secret (so-called trade secrets), and both accidental flaws and deliberate vote tampering is both possible and has likely happened; a voter has no means to inspect the recorded vote before casting it (other than a machine telling them, “trust us, we’ll put the right electrons somewhere”).  Read the rest of this entry →

The largest fire in LA history is expected to keep burning through the weekend. It has burned more than 160,000 acres (250 square miles). Here’s Joan Didion on living in fire country:

Station Fire photo by Brittany Bagheri and American Red Cross

People who live with fires think a great deal about what will happen “when,” as the phrase goes in the instruction leaflets, “the fire comes.” These leaflets, which are stuck up on refrigerator doors all over Los Angeles County, never say “if.” When the fire comes there will be no water pressure. The roof one watered all the night before will go dry in seconds. Plastic trash cans must be filled with water and wet gunny-sacks kept at hand, for smothering the sparks that blow ahead of the fire. The garden hoses must be connected and left where they can be seen. The cars must be placed in the driveway headed out. Whatever one wants most to save must be placed in the cars. The lights must be left on, so that the house can be seen in the smoke.

That’s from Didion’s essay “Fire Season.” You can get it here

And thank goodness…because Lord knows Pershing Square needs better lighting at night.

Ha! But seriously, folks, this isn’t just another boring old art show. These are people who create illuminated sculptures, lighted fashion, interactive light “happenings,” paint with light…beginning in the afternoon, Autumn Lights will fill Pershing Square with sweeping vistas of color, with about 50 artists doing all sorts of cool stuff with the visible, and possibly invisible, spectrum. There will be art (duh), projections, music, and illuminations that light up the surrounding buildings. No peeing in that dark corner, homeless dude! I can SEE you tonight!

Info on Autumn Lights is here; a full list of participating artists is here.

Just a few of the amazing things you can expect to see, below (click pics to visit the artists’ respective sites):

I have to say, I do wish they’d done this on the night of an Artwalk; it just seems like so many more people would have seen it. That one complaint aside, I’ll definitely be there.

When I think about charity, the first image that pops into my head is a zipper busting troupe of lingerie-clad burlesque dancers surrounded by distressed wood paneled walls, Gothic mirrors, 200-year old architectural trappings, the smell of British gastro pub fare – and of course, bingo!

On Sunday, September 27, Royal Clayton’s and Legendary Bingo will host “Bingo Burlesque,” a regular event that occurs on the 4th Sunday of each month. The funds raised at the door benefit local and national charities. So you see, since this is all for a good cause, it may actually be the only time that you can get loaded and drool over nipple tassles without having to worry about going to H-E-DOUBLE-HOCKEY-STICK, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, heathens.

On this sin approved evening, your $20 suggested donation will include a scorching Burlesque show, 10 thrilling games of heart pounding bingo and the hurts-so-good feeling that you are helping support a very special charity, Downtown Dog Rescue. Doors open at 6:00 PM and the show begins at 7:00 PM.

Downtown Dog Rescue was founded to assist the homeless community of dog owners. It is the only program in California, and possibly the United States, that specifically helps homeless dog owners spay/neuter, vaccinate, license their dogs, as well as offering a variety of services including crisis care, for the life of the dog.

Please call Royal Clayton’s at (213) 622-0512 to reserve a table for the event. Read the rest of this entry →

Mrs. Viola E. Williams. Mrs. Mae Baker. A line has been drawn in the concrete of Westchester.

The year was 1951.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

With the recent return of our Blogroll (check the right column, toward the bottom!), I thought it would be a great time to reinstate our Friday Bullets where we give some linky love to other L.A. blogs and bloggers.

Our Blogroll displays a few random links every time you refresh the page and I thought I was going to be able to do a “Bullets” segment by just refreshing the page once or twice. But it turns out our Blogroll is filled with abandoned blogs and links to people who aren’t even in L.A. anymore.

So do a girl a favor, check out the bullets below and then leave a comment if you think there’s a blog that should be added to our Blogroll. (We’re working on clearing out the bad links, yo!)

• Se7en (Social Sins) — JSto

• Pilipinos lub bessball — Darleeneisms

• “LA Sketchbook: Couple of guys” — LA Observed

• Moving is a pain but a good opportunity — Mofomon

• “Affable Man-About-Town” Seeks Los Angeles Street, For Long Walk — Franklin Avenue

Should your blog be on our Blogroll? Let us know!

“I am not going to stand here and let corporate America decide what language I’m going to speak,” an Inland Empire resident told KABC, in reference to a Wells Fargo billboard written in Spanish. (Apparently, he protested by refusing to purchase an English/Spanish dictionary or using Google Translator in an effort to keep the bank from tricking him into learning a few foreign words.)

I’ve never understood why anyone would care one bit what language a sign used. Without a doubt, dealing with cashiers or any sort of customer service types who don’t speak English can be frustrating, but not in a “get out of my country” sort of way – just in a, “if a business is going to repeatedly screw up my order because they hire a staff that can’t understand me, I’ll shop elsewhere,” sort of way. That’s capitalism.

“I think they should be in English as well as Spanish, because there are Korean signs down there and I don’t understand that gibberish,” said another Hesperia resident speaking at the city council meeting.

I’d call this out as racist, but there’s no reason to not believe residents would also complain if the signs were in French or German, so to be fair, I’ll just label it xenophobic.

More importantly, this issue raises an alarming issue: clearly Inland Empire really love to read billboards, otherwise why would they care? Finally, a win for outdoor advertising!

David Foster Wallace on failure:

His Infinite Jest , of course, was no failure, but for those who have tried, but failed, to read this behemoth of a book, who can blame them?  It is like a foreign language.  When it comes to big fat books in general, I break people up in three groups: 1) people who read the book¹; 2) people who did not read the book²; and 3) people who pretend to have read the book.³ Infinite Jest warrants a fourth and fifth category: 4)  people who glazed over the footnotes like they were too young to realize that footnotes help!⁴ not hurt!⁵ you; and 5) people who took the title to a weird place and read the footnotes, but not really the actual text it annotated.⁶

Over the summer, Skylight Books⁷ encouraged and supported a concerted city-wide effort to read Infinite Jest.⁸ What category these people fall into may or may not be revealed on September 22 at 8pm, when Skylight hosts Infinite Summer’s End David Foster Wallace Celebration to fete those who finished the book (or said they did) and to fondly remember the sadly short life of DFW.   Friends and admirers will be in attendance; cake and cookies will be served; and there will be discounts for books clocking in at over 800 pages.⁹ Because the film version of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men¹⁰ comes out the following week, directed by John Krasinski,¹¹ there may be some movie tie-ins as well.

UPDATE:  Just received confirmation from Skylight that Mr. Krasinski indeed will make an appearance to promote the film.  He’ll read from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men,¹² talk about the movie, and sign movie posters.  Cookies for everyone!

Infinite Summer’s End David Foster Wallace Celebration
September 22nd at 8pm
Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont
Los Feliz

Footnotes follow after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry →

Over 2 weeks old there are still 3 hot spots that continue to be difficult for fire fighters to bring into complete containment and alleviate concerns for the Foothill Cities in the SGV.

Those most threatened, like Monrovia,  have a manned fire information center where locals can ask questions and determine best for themselves what the risk is.  Right now for Arcadia, Sierra Madre, Monrovia, Bradbury, Azusa and Duarte to be in immediate danger the largest of the fire lines would need to climb one ridge, then another then work down into those cities.  In short, conditions and crew in place are such that it likely won’t be happening.  We will need to deal with the fine powdery ash and faint smoke smell until at least the 19th when containment is expected to be complete. Read the rest of this entry →