I love these cheeky little trucks tossing barbs at the competition.  But I think Fresh and Easy would get more mileage (no pun) on the fact that their little trucks run on an eco-friendly bio-diesel if that was more prominent than the barbs.  Pic by me with the trusty cell phone cam, it does get bigger with a click.

When Smoking Was Cool, an art exhibit opening at Black Maria Gallery on Saturday, takes on “the American propensity for legislating social behavior,” in this case, using ever-rising tobacco taxes as a jumping-off point.

While the exhibit will take note of the movement to define certain social behaviors as taboo, whether it’s smoking, drinking alcohol or easygoing attitudes about sex, its aim will be to examine the hidden motives and powerful interests behind the politics of social legislation.

Sam Saghatelian, curator of the exhibition and a participating artist, says in the press release, “The point is that government and corporate interests often single out targets for the legislation of social behavior because it’s politically and financially expedient to do so, and not necessarily for the wellbeing of the public as they claim.”

Featured artists include Paul Chatem, The Pizz, Shark Toof, Anthony Ausgang, Sarah Stephens, Stacy Lande, Christine Karas-Gough, Shannon Keller, Brett Manning and Harry Sudman

When Smoking Was Cool opens Saturday, Oct. 17th, artists reception from 7 to 10 PM; exhibit runs through Nov. 14th. Black Maria Gallery, 3137 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90039.

It was a year ago tomorrow that I learned his name: John McGraham. A homeless man who was a fixture in the neighborhood radiating out from 3rd Street and Berendo where he could often be found, McGraham, 55, was attacked and murdered there October 9th, 2008, reportedly doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire with a flare.

I biked by there this morning to find the above poster McGraham’s family mounted to the long-empty dentistry office outside of which he had lived and so brutally died.

Such unfathomable violence galvanized the community and after more than three months of intense investigations detectives from LAPD Robbery/Homicide Division arrested 30-year-old Benjamin Matthew Martin in Ranch Mirage, Riverside County on January 22. Though unemployed at the time of his arrest, Martin had reportedly worked as a barber in and around the area where McGraham was killed.

Read the rest of this entry →

The PA holds cue cards for "Keanu" while "Pappas" looks on.

The longest running theater show in Los Angeles celebrated its two year anniversary on Saturday at the Dragonfly in Hollywood. Point Break LIVE! has been extremely successful, and with good reason. It is one of the most entertaining theater pieces in my memory; even better than Cats. (Okay, granted: most shows are better than Cats. Point Break LIVE! is exceptionally good, though.)

Point Break LIVE! is an absurdist stage adaptation of the classic 1991 movie starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. The twist to this show is that at every performance the role of “Keanu” is performed by a member of the audience (hence, the cue cards.) Because the show has been running for two years, I’m certain there are dozens of reviews more eloquent than mine just on the other side of a Google search. This is not so much a review as an unabashed endorsement.

Buy tickets. See this show. Now! I’m already planning to see it again with other friends.

Point Break LIVE! is a spectacular interactive theater show with comedy, stunts, special-ish effects, hot half-naked surfer dudes…everything you could want in a big budget action movie, but on a seriously diminished budget. There are so many delightful surprises in this show, I don’t want to say too much for fear of spoiling any of the fun. I will include this, though, from the Point Break LIVE! ticketing site:

“This show is not for the squeamish, uptight, faint of heart, or the easily offended. Theater snobs probably won’t get it. If you are looking for a traditional theater experience – STAY THE F**K AWAY FROM THIS SHOW.”

MetBlogs readers don’t fit any of those categories, so you should all enjoy it immensely. Point Break LIVE! runs Saturday evenings at the Dragonfly in Hollywood. Get tickets here.

PRO TIP: When you collect your tickets at the box office, you’ll be offered a “survival kit” for a buck. Take it. It may be the best dollar you’ll ever spend. Seriously.

Spotted in Culver City last night. I really want one of these for some reason…

Last weekend, we went to see the new exhibit, Race: Are We So Different? at the California Science Center. On FriendFeed, I posted some quick thoughts on what I saw, but wanted to let the exhibit soak in before I wrote on it. I do not know how much of what I saw was colored by being black or that I was raised around people from all over the world or just by the fact that I’ve lived most of my life in Los Angeles.

On my first quick walk-through of the exhibit I was overwhelmed. There is a lot of information; lots to read, several videos and interactive media to play around with. The exhibit is very American-centric and seems to be geared toward black/white or white/Asian experiences.  The information on the Science Center’s website doesn’t quite prepare you for what you will actually see.

RACE explores the science, history and personal experiences of race, helping us understand what race is and what it is not. The exhibit provides guests the opportunity to think and talk about one of our nation’s most challenging issues and encourages us to rethink our assumptions of race and human variation. Through multimedia, interactive exhibits and imagery, RACE gives guests of all ages the opportunity to think and talk about a topic that touches our lives daily.

I don’t know that the exhibit itself, is actually useful or educational. As I mentioned in my FriendFeed post, my husband (he is Eastern European) said “This exhibit should be titled ‘White People are Bad’.” I didn’t understand what he was saying and I still don’t get it. From an historical context, I guess that could be construed. I teased him saying he was getting defensive. He said, “I’m not from here, I don’t have these hang-ups.” But just from our conversation, I decided to watch the handful of white (looking) people at the exhibit. Read the rest of this entry →

One of my favorite Europeans is giving a talk tonight at one of my favorite art/tech/supercenters right here in LA. Johannes Grenzfurthner, of monochrom fame, will be talking at Machine Project about, well… about failing. Here’s an academic description of the talk but really the description isn’t going to sell you – you are either the kind of person who knows that any talk Johannes gives is endlessly entertaining and worth driving hours to see, or you aren’t. So, see you there?

I spotted this in Monrovia’s Library Park this afternoon.  Pic my me and will get bigger with a click.

Somewhere in Culver City lies this storage unit.  And in this storage unit lies all my stuff.  My stuff fits into the smallest storage unit I could find (4′ x 4′ x 3.5′), which is pretty impressive considering that my home has only one closet.  This is a result of me getting rid of lots of stuff when I moved to Southern California after a lifelong stint on the East Coast.

See, I did what I think a lot of other people do: move out here with the least possible baggage, literally and figuratively, to start a new life.  Many of us come here with the idea that (1) it’s something we need to try once in our life; and (2) we’re going to try it for a year or so, to see if we can “make it,” whether professionally, socially, in the arts, as a complete reinvention of self, or whatever that term may mean to us.

Inside my storage unit, aside from things like luggage that I use, are boxes filled with books and other items that I can’t seem to let go of.  One such item is a framed painting that my mom painted decades ago as a student.  That painting got as far as the open trunk of my car at the Goodwill in Gaithersburg, Maryland, my hands grasping each side of the frame, before I decided that, one day, it may be the only thing I have of hers that she actually made.

My “year or so” California trial is about to reach its three year anniversary.  And I’m still traveling light.

Today would have been John Lennon’s 69th birthday. His time spent in Los Angeles in the early 1970s is well-documented:

In June 1973 in New York, his wife, Yoko Ono, pushed for a separation and said he should take May Pang, their personal assistant, as his boy-toy while they reassessed their marriage.

Lennon and Pang in LA, 1974

In quick order, Lennon moved to LA with Pang and flung himself into what has become known as his “Lost Weekend,” an eighteen-month period during which he caroused, recorded some middling material, caroused, reconnected with Paul and Ringo, caroused– you get the picture.

From a rented home in the Hollywood Hills, Lennon lived out loud and large in public places in Los Angeles, making a drunken, coke-fueled spectacle of himself with stars and players of the day. When confronted by the press with criticism, he said, “So it was a mistake, but Hell, I’m human.”

Shortly thereafter, Lennon cleaned up his act.  He and Yoko reunited (in NYC, backstage after Lennon’s cameo during an Elton John concert) into renewed matrimonial bliss, had a son together, Sean, and lived a happy family life in relative seclusion at the Dakota until that fateful, sad night in December 1980 when Lennon’s fame tragically caught up with him.

From where we are with sexual politics in the early 21st century, maybe some wisdom can be gleaned from the way the Lennons openly navigated their relationship in the 1970s and the way it was received. Little public pillorying of John, no tearful media statements from Yoko, no desperate extortion attempts from lurking opportunists due to needlessly keeping secrets about the bumps in a relationship’s road, no knee-jerk accusations about employer/employee dalliances from self-appointed know-it-all scolds.

Just honesty about how a particular marriage of interest was going; forthrightness about monogamy and the lack thereof occasionally as a reality check; and not a speck of shame, contrived or otherwise, from anyone involved.

Imagine.

Is this the first cool-weather Friday this fall? With the drop in temperature and the shortening daylight, it seems perfect for (symbolically, anyway) shaking off summer’s heat by stopping by LACMA’s outdoor Friday Night Jazz event this evening, tucked behind Chris Burden’s glowing Urban Light sculpture. This weekly free-admission series finishes its season November 6th.

Tonight, violinist Lesa Terry, music director of the Women’s Jazz Orchestra and Women’s Jazz Quartet, leads an ensemble drawn from the LA jazz scene.

Lesa Terry & Friends, 6 PM tonight at LACMA, 5905 Wilshire (at Fairfax) Los Angeles 90036. Free admission.

Hotel President Herman B. Sarno was joined by film starlets Heidi Heidemann, Beverly Anderson, and Kathy Marlowe, comedian Jack Carson, film Actress Connie Towers, and singing star Byron Palmer for the ceremonial groundbreaking of the luxurious Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel.

The year was 1955.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

MAFA "Featured Artist" Rouzanna Berberian

Art is the word in the SGV this weekend. Specifically FREE Art shows and receptions in Pasadena and Monrovia starting Friday night running through Sunday. Pasadena will kick it off with ARTNight on Friday and host its ARTWalk on Saturday.  Saturday is the first day of the Monrovia Association of Fine Arts (MAFA) 46th Annual “Celebrate the Arts” that runs all weekend.

The featured artist at this years Celebrate the Arts is Rouzanna Berberian. I’ve enjoyed her art since I saw her first exhibition a couple of years ago. She uses very bold, expressive brush strokes with equally powerful colors in her paintings to stir some deep emotional connections. She can be found in space 6 in Monrovia’s Library Park located in Old Town Monrovia at 312 S Myrtle Ave.

In conjunction with MAFA the folks at NuVein will be hosting a Comic Con at the Monrovia Library on Saturday only. Additionally NuVein has numerous musicians scheduled to play through out Old Town Monrovia as well as Library Park adding to the overall festivities of the weekend.

Both the Pasadena ARTWalk and the Celebrate the Arts will have numerous kid friendly venues where they can can learn about art as well as create their own art. Read the rest of this entry →

Heading west this morning, I stopped pedaling between Hudson Avenue and June Street on 4th Street through Hancock Park because some immortalized shoeprints caught my eye, probably from some young prankster who I could picture mischieviously scampering over the patch of wet concrete repairwork that had been freshly poured on the roadway however many years ago.

Then I turned and found this — signed, no less? — and promptly forget about the footsteps frozen in time:

It’s but a block and a half to the east of this one I chanced upon last November. Staring at it I wondered several things: how old it was, where the next one might reveal itself, and if the Bureau of Street Services would act upon or ignore a request (that I’ve since made) to have the repugnant symbols of hatred excised. I was remiss in tolerating that first one. Two will just not do.

UPDATED (10.13): Following my second request this morning to L.A. Bureau of Street Services via its website I received an email reply stating that the job doesn’t fall under their jurisdiction and that they forwarded it to the city’s Beautification Committee. Rather than wait to hear from that entity I filed a graffiti removal request via its website and am awaiting their response.

Earlier this week I alerted you to the LA Opera’s first ever costume sale and now I bring you this, just in time for Halloween costume shopping.

The Movie Wardrobe Sale Takes Place at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel - Second Home to Hot Stars Like Us

There is going to be another amazing sale this weekend, the Hollywood Studio Collection’s wardrobe sale. A portion of the proceeds from this sale will benefit Childhelp, one of the world’s largest organizations that aids victims of child abuse and neglect.

Thousands of wardrobe pieces from various movie sets will be sold during the three-day event that consists of both vintage and contemporary clothing, shoes, décor, accessories and props that have been used in some of today and yesterday’s most influential blockbuster films. The sample sale will offer rare and one-of-a-kind items that would normally be sold for thousands of dollars, for as little as $10.

The sale takes place at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel this Saturday, October 10 through Monday, October 12 in the Oscar Room on the second level of the hotel.

Admission is only $5. For more information, visit www.TheHollywoodStudioCollection.com or call (818) 812-6068.