They were soldiers from the Spanish-American War who served under Theodore Roosevelt. They were known as Teddy’s Terrors.  They gathered at First and Broadway in Los Angeles.

The year was 1904.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

Found wheatpasted to a junction box on the north side of Venice Boulevard a couple blocks west of Hauser. I couldn’t skid my bike to a stop fast enough this morning to double back and snap this vivid vulgar take on Archangel Michael Jackson kicking Lucifer’s red ass straight outta heaven (click image for the bigger picture).

Certainly it gives new meaning to “Beat It”

They Told Him Don’t You Ever Come Around Here
Don’t Wanna See Your Face, You Better Disappear
The Fire’s In Their Eyes And Their Words Are Really Clear
So Beat It, Just Beat It

Not to get too bogged down in the religilousity of it all, but Saint Michael, aka the Prince of All Angels (and whose name in Hebrew translates to “Like Unto God”), was the leader of the army of God during the Lucifer Riots (some call it an “uprising”), and ultimately cast the devil out of paradise.

Michael Jackson was a singer, not a saint.

But subject matter aside, there are some interesting symbolic choices in this depiction. In most representations of St. Michael — and certainly in paintings of this biblical beatdown — he is shown bearing a sword. Yet here we have Jacko moonwalking over Satan having cast down his arms.

Who’s bad!?

It feels like deja vu all over again.  If Time Warner Cable (Roadrunner) is your ISP, and you have been having spotty Internet service all week, it’s not simply that Mercury is in retrograde.  I have been having “server not found” problems all week, and called TWC tonight.  They said they are having an L.A.-area-wide problem.  They didn’t know if it’s hackers this time.  I demanded credit for my lack of service, and they transferred me to another department (accounts or billing) .  They then issued me a $15 credit for multiple days without full service.  I thought that was a generous offering, since it represents at least 10 days of service.

Of course, that still doesn’t solve the service problem.  In the meantime, don’t forget to save your blog posts and other online writings in progress, early and often.

(Travis, sorry for stepping on your post so soon, but I thought that, if others are being driven nuts by this problem like I am, they would want to know about this asap tonight.  And if I wait, who knows if I would be able to publish it at all?)

Did you see the sky tonight at dusk? It made me think of David Lynch’s description of LA.

I arrived in L.A. at night, so it wasn’t until the next morning, when I stepped out of a small apartment on San Vicente Boulevard, that I saw this light. And it thrilled my soul. I feel lucky to live with that light. . . .

Even with smog, there’s something about that light that’s not harsh, but bright and smooth. It fills me with the feeling that all possibilities are available. I don’t know why. It’s different from the light in other places.

From Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. You can buy it here

I’m not much for gates along Ballona Creek — especially in the wake of last year’s attempts by residents to close off access near Culver Drive and Sawtelle in hopes of detering crime. Thankfully such misguided efforts were never carried out — or at least continue to be postponed.

But I’ll make an exception in the case of the below gate, found at the Inglewood Boulevard access to the Ballona Creek Bikeway in Mar Vista (and closed only for purposes of this picture), because it so wonderfully replaces its predecessor, a nondescript, rusting and bent blockade of the craptastic chainlink variety:

(click for the bigger picture)

Since I exit the bikeway here coming to work in the mornings and re-enter it coming home in the evenings pretty much every weekday, I’ve been monitoring the progress being made on this little pocket park beautification effort for the last couple months. And it was last night on my way home that I found the final piece of the project installed which marvelously depicts a flowing creek’s edge scene with a heron looking on as two egrets angle for a snack.

Other than the gate being one of three funded through the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (the other two are  upstream at the creek’s Sepulveda Boulevard access and downstream at McConnell Avenue), I couldn’t find any information about the artist, but this one looks very similar to the one found a couple blocks west at Centinela Avenue, which was done by Brett Goldstone. Goldstone also did the Great Heron Gate on the Los Angeles River at Fletcher Drive.

Nike says this raglan shirt “is sure to become your stadium-staple.”  Oh, I don’t know, what do you think?

While Trojans and Bruins are mortified, for entirely different reasons (my devoted Trojan sister expounded her reaction with just 6 letters: “OMG WTF”), I personally think the more offensive shirt is the one after the jump:

Read the rest of this entry →

Local son Dan Finnerty and his Dan Band have become a celebrated comedy band, with their dude-ish covers of female power ballads (like “Total Eclipse of the Heart” in the movie Old School and “Fame” in The Hangover) keeping crowds laughing around the world. Well done, Dan.

I’m sure you’d love to go see this show. It will be fun.

If you want to win a pair of tickets, leave a comment telling me what song YOU’D like to see Dan & his men cover. For me, I’d like to see him do “Cornflake Girl” by Tori Amos or Sarah McLachlan’s “Silence.” That would be dope.

Info on the show, at Club Nokia, is here.

Scion, the Toyota automobile brand based in Torrance, aims its vehicles at hipsters and those who fancy themselves as such. During a recession, I don’t know if hipsters have more money to spend than other demographics, but they love an open bar.

This Saturday evening they’ll find one at Scion Space, the car company’s Culver City gallery where Installation Five, an exhibition of artist self-portraits, opens. It’s the last stop in a cross country tour (in its fifth year) that started in Detroit and traveled to Miami, Phoenix, Minneapolis, New York, San Jose, Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon before rolling into Los Angeles this weekend.

The roster of artists, most of them drawn from the design and illustration world, includes many who are from or based in Los Angeles. (List after jump.)

The self-portraits will be auctioned, at the gallery as well as online (at Artnet.com,) beginning September 12th to benefit Creative Capitol, a non-profit arts philanthropy started in 1999 that funds  “artists pursuing adventurous and imaginative work in the performing and visual arts, film/video, innovative literature, and emerging fields,” according to its website. Read the rest of this entry →

I admit, before visiting Madame Tussaud’s this past Monday, I’d never heard of the “uncanny valley,” but my friend Colin explained that’s exactly why the place is so damned creepy. Tussaud’s, which insists upon being called an “attraction” rather than a “wax museum,” is in fact, an attraction filled with wax figures. (Some might call that a “wax museum,” but hey.) I had been to Tussaud’s in London about a thousand years ago as a teenager on a family trip, but I didn’t know they’d opened a Hollywood branch until Goldstar was offering “free” (with a $6 service charge) tickets. I bit. I’m always up for free kitsch. And it was well worth the price of admission. (Note, Goldstar’s tickets, as of today, are $9-12.50.)

We took the red line from the very canny San Fernando Valley. Tussaud’s is right next to Grauman’s Theater and, as such, is focused on red carpet wax folk. Joan Rivers greets you at the entrance and everyone from James Dean to Justin Timberlake is hanging around inside. The place is undeniably spooky in a bright lights/big city kind of way. If you’ve seen enough horror movies, the effect is, needless to say, even worse. Tussaud’s figures are just lifelike enough to make you want to shy away from them. There weren’t a lot of visitors when we were there and that made it seem more than a little like Elton John was going to come to life and start chasing us around trying to choke us with a boa.

Read the rest of this entry →

Summer Fun Time Society (SFTS), a group who has been “slappin’ the shit out of boredom since oh eight,” is putting on fantastic event tomorrow night called ROBOsoup 3.1-Technology & The Future at the Downtown Independent. This is the third installment of their “Art Soup” series which brings creatives together into a forum “in which they can gain exposure in an art arena that isn’t bound by the bureaucracy of the L.A. art scene.”

What will you get with your $5 admission to this happening? Well, there will be screenings of Bronx Executioner, a 1989 cyborg flick, and Metropolis, the classic 1927 silent film starring its iconic robot, Maria, in the gorgeous remodeled theater, 8-bit music, a DJ party on roof, planetariums, 3-D photography, a photo booth and more!

Click through for more robotic details

I didn’t really give these billboards much notice – I’m pretty jaded to advertising – so it took a complaint by my friend Rodleen’s on Facebook to grab my attention.

To promote the newest season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” HBO has posted numerous billboards around LA showing the victim of suicide by hanging above the show’s star, Larry David, asking via text, “Is it me?”

It’s humor befitting of the show. But is it appropriate to post all over the city?

Rodleen’s take: “I understand humor can be dark, but a poster depicting suicide is truly brutal to the heart.  It has the potential to drive someone to the edge.”

While I haven’t heard much about these billboards, today in the LA Times Steve Lopez writes about how a billboard depicting a vagina for an Absolut vodka ad in Los Angeles remains up, while another one critical of Mercury Insurance, purchased by a consumer watchdog group, was removed after a complaint by Mercury. Read the rest of this entry →

I’ve beaten the dead horse about the things you can find when you give yourself the chance to look at the city out from behind a windshield. One of my passions is the “streetfiti” I discover either on my bike or my feet — most of it rather happenstance, such as this amazing one I found today. I’ve passed the bus stop on the west side of La Brea at Wilshire hundreds of times, but it was only on this morning’s bike commute that I happened to be stopped behind enough cars at the red light to be immediately adjacent to it. And looked down.

(click for the bigger picture)

Unlike most of the concrete hand-scrawlings I find that feature a name and maybe a year, this one provides both and in greater detail: it’s signed “G.I. Shoes” (or at least “Shoes” is my best guess) and posts a definitive date of “5-12-44.” But in conjunction with the date and name, it also offers some rare and compelling (if misspelled) biographical information “Returned from Itay” (Italy is my guess). Given the date and the “G.I.” it all points to the writer being a soldier who arrived back in Los Angeles after serving his country during World War II and felt compelled to immortalize his homecoming in some fresh concrete. Sixty-five years later, it’s still there.

Where was this taken? This was taken here.

Previous snapshots:
Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook • Inter Here • Stunflower •
Dueling Coyotes • Restoration Era • The Domain Of The Green Lynx •
Why Is This Alligator Lizard Smiling? • Bearing Witness •
Right Thing • Street Art Drive-Bys •

Aw, free days at the museum are meant for pictures like these.

The recession has created at least two things: 1) a lot of people with idle time and no money; and 2)  a cry for art to adequately reflect our discontent, anger, and haplessness.  Ok, the second one is not readily apparent, or maybe it’s not true (it should be true); nonetheless, during the first weekend in October, 22 museums will swing open their doors and let the idle masses stampede their way into their halls, a la the early days of the White House, and contemplate their existence or whatever else pops into one’s head when staring at purple walls.  Museums participating in “Museums Free for All” on October 2 and 3 will offer free general admission to the mostly unemployed public on one or both days (you’ll still have to pay for any special ticketed exhibits).  Participating museums include the California Science Center, the Grammy Museum, MOCA, and the Natural History Museum.  (Note also that the Getty is “participating” on both days, but message to Los Angeles: the Getty is free all the time.)

The full list is here.  Stampede away.

“BB & The Bear” photo courtesy moeberg via the Metblogs flickr pool.

I can’t even begin to tell you how stoked I am for this show. I keep missing their Campout festivals in Pioneertown, so a chance to see both Cracker & CVB in one night is some level beyond getting your chocolate in my peanut butter & my peanut butter in your chocolate. Also, one of my cats’ names is Cracker, which is nice.

Wanna go? Summarize your fave Cracker or Camper Van Beethoven song in a haiku. We’ll pick a few winners to go enjoy the show.

I’ll go first:

Where the hell is Bill / Looked everywhere, but he’s got / Better shit to do

Ta-dah! Info & tickets can be had here.

LA County Fair

It’s that time of year again. The 2009 LA County Fair took advantage of the Labor Day weekend to open its doors. Opening Day is always exciting because you get to see everything so fresh. The fair will run until October 4th, so you have plenty of time to pick the best day to visit.

The Fair is offering $1 admission Sept. 5 – 7 between 10am and 1pm.  That means, tomorrow is your last chance to take advantage of this deal. Throughout the park, there are other cost-saving deals for the Labor Day Weekend, such as $1 fountain drinks between 1pm and 4pm and $1 carnival rides between 4pm and 7pm.

This year, we spent a lot less time eating and drinking and more time walking the fairgrounds. I’ve only missed 3 years since 1984, and used to go up to 3 times a week in college. This was the first time I had realized that there is an NHRA museum and a train museum run by the LA chapter of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society on site. Be sure to check them out. The NHRA museum has  $1 entrance and with so much to look at, including the original Batmobile from the 1966 Batman TV show, it’s well worth it.

Also, worth catching is the Jursassic Planet exhibit (I have video in my Flickr photos linked below). It’s educational and just plain cool watching the dinosaurs move. If you have young ones, they may want to stay outside the hall. My three year old did not enjoy being in there and most little kids did a lot of screaming. As always, the new baby animals are a treat as are all the wonderful insects and reptiles on display in three different sections of the fairgrounds this year. The Home & Garden theme this year is Gateway to Africa and even I have to admit to being impressed. This is the first year in a long, long time that the theme was unified and tight, from the greenhouse all the way to the top of the hill.

So, wear some comfy shoes, get some sunscreen and have fun at the Fair. If you want to live vicariously for the moment, you can visit my flickr set.

LA Country Fair
1101 W. McKinley Ave.,
Pomona, CA 91768