Let’s see; Ellen Degeneris, Foreigner, Deepak Chopra, Marissa Tomei and hula hoops. I love when worlds collide in my inbox. Aside from the cultural references in play, it sounds like a pretty cool gig for Bryan Head, drummer about  town (and the country,) as well as holding down the rhythm section for LA’s Dead Rock West, the greatest band west of the Rockies. And who knows– if anyone can meditate while using a hula hoop, it would be Deepak. Tune in today and find out.

Hi everybody,

I’ll be on the Ellen Degeneres show Tomorrow, Tuesday the 6th with Foreigner. The show airs at 3 or 4 pm PST, depending on where you are. Also, Deepak Chopra and Marissa Tomei doing hula hoops (not with Deepak.)

Happy New Year!

Bryan

Next month, Head hits the road with Supertramp.

Warning! This man is an SP!

Long before inviting a TV audience to slap his nuts, Vince Offer took on the Church of Scientology.

Admit it: somewhere between the 10th and 18th time you’ve seen the commercial for Sham-Wow, you’ve been tempted to throw down $19.99 plus shipping and handling just so you can deliberately spill some Kool-Aid on your throw rug to test if the German made rag can actually suck it back up.

No, just me?

Well, then at least admit that, after you’ve wondered why in the hell he has to wear a headset microphone for a commercial (did the boomguy get sucked up by the Shamwow ultra absorption power?), you’ve wondered a little about pitchman Vince, before he began hawking micro-fiber towels and inviting TV viewers to slap his nuts. 

Fortunately, a little light Googling finds some surprising answers… Read the rest of this entry →

A little more than a  month ago, Jason Bentley became the host of KCRW’s flagship music program, Morning Becomes Eclectic, (9 AM to noon, weekdays,) also taking over as music director of the public radio station that makes its home at Santa Monic College. It was only by chance that I heard the announcement in mid-November from the morning DJ/music director he replaced, Nik Harcourt. (Harcourt still has a Sunday evening slot.)

I’ll be honest; even though Harcourt’s passion for music was obvious, I was not a fan of most of what he played and I was not a regular MBE listener. But Bentley’s eponymous evening KCRW program (nee Metropolis) was a favorite, and when he sat in occasionally for Harcourt I found myself repeatedly checking the real time playlist on their site to get the artists’ names. Whenever he subbed on MBE, he didn’t play the same sort of music that he played at night (it had a dark, electronic slant,) but I was definitely more attuned to his taste than I was to Harcourt’s.

December 1st was day one for Bentley, and the entire feel of MBE changed radically at the very beginning as he cued up the hauntingly beautiful “Sense of Touch” from Mark Isham’s soundtrack for the movie Crash. I was immediately hooked and since then, I’ve been tuning in regularly; if I miss the morning broadcast, I can listen in the evening on KCRW’s online station, although it’s trimmed to a two-hour version of the original three-hour program. All past programs are also streamable from the KCRW archives.

A couple of days ago, Julia wrote about the Christmas Tree disposal program in Los Angeles.  Here’s what Santa Monica’s program looks like.  The local drop-off point along California Street, between Lincoln and 7th, along the edge of Lincoln Park, was a veritable forest of discarded Christmas trees yesterday.

I’m still standing, after the jump

Happy New Year Neighbor!  Funny place to put your tree to celebrate Christmas…oh wait…I see. You haven’t heard about how to dispose of your tree in Los Angeles. I guess you don’t read LA Metblogs. Lucinda already gave you a lot of info on this. 

To reiterate, this weekend (Jan. 3 and 4) from 9am to 4pm both days, you can take your trees to drop-off sites all around LA.  For a full list, click here. If you want to start your “get fit” new years resolution, find yourself a saw and start hacking that tree to bits and it put it in the green bin. Great upper body workout and you save the gas to drive the tree to a drop off point.

If you leave your tree out, like the one pictured here, it will remain there until it decomposes or you hope Will Campbell drives by.

The Miss Havisham blog mysteriously disappeared without a word.  Equally mysterious the entire cast of characters returned on the Mademoiselle Gramophone blog.  Yes, Miss Havisham, Mary Kathleen O’Looney and the unnamed secretary have all returned.  There’s even an ongoing cameo with “psychiatrist” Dr Burchard, aka Petrea Burchard of the Pasadena Daily Photo blog.  This video is part of the series involving the complete and total mental collapse of Miss Havisham and yields few clues regarding the demise of the blog bearing her name.  

For the herding and snarks you need to make the jump. Read the rest of this entry →

Walgrove Ave. near Venice Blvd.

Driving around the West Side today was a thrill. I’m used to seeing the streets of big cities, such as New York and Washington, DC, empty on New Year’s Day morning. But the West Side streets were also empty as late as 4 o’clock this afternoon, which, along with the light fog, made for an eerie sensation. I assume it was a combo of (1) hangovers; (2) brunches; (3) vacation absenteeism; (4) Tournament of Roses parade watching; and, especially, (5) USC Rose Bowl watching. Whatever the reason, the empty streets reminded me that Los Angeles would be especially pleasurable with fewer people and fewer cars. I tip my hat to the bicycle commuters out there. As for the rest of us who live here and drive around town, I guess we can’t complain too much, since we’re part of the problem.  But at least we can enjoy one day of decreased stress.

Los Angeles ghost town, after the jump