I guess you could say I’m pretty much in love. My significant other and I text each other frequent reminders of our affection, leave love notes in strategic spots around the apartment, and employ amusing pet names such as “Stinky” and “Stinky Pudd’n.” What we have yet failed to do, however, is commemorate our more-than-just-friends-ness by applying padlocks to the fence that blocks the under-street passageway crossing Hollywood Boulevard just east of its intersection with Vermont.

These can be found right at the corner of Hollywood and New Hampshire.

Walking east into Los Feliz Village on Hollywood, it’s hard to miss this particular bit of artistic commons, right at the corner of Hollywood an New Hampshire. Even harder is figuring out just what in the world is going on. Is it a forgotten art installation? A weirdly cryptic ad for the locksmith around the corner? No, no: It’s love. Sweet, sweet love. Hey, it’s cheaper than a ring.
Read the rest of this entry →

Not everyone gets Simpson'd

There are some of you – no, there are many of us – for whom Xena played more than a cultural touchstone or a convenient shorthand for lesbianism.  I know that you particular people would, given the opportunity, name your steed Argo just as readily as Adam named Eve Eve.  And for the big number of us who waited all Saturday afternoon for Xena to come on (or all day Sunday if you were crestfallen to find that the Dodgers took over Xena‘s afternoon time slot), this one is for you: Creationent will host the annual Xena Convention about a month from now, February 5-7, at the LAX Marriot.

This is the 15th anniversary of Creationent’s Xena conventions, which is testament to both the show’s detached nerdiness and its staying power.  Lucy Lawless – Xena herself to some, Number Three to more than some, and random Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me guest to still others – is going to be there (!!!), as will be Renee O’Connor, Xena’s trusty sidekick Gabrielle (think Kelly Martin if Kelly Martin traded her red rimmed, middle-class Life Goes On glasses for a staff and decidedly not-early ’90s boots).  There will be costume contests (reason enough to go); Lucy Lawless; a dessert party centerpiece contest; Lucy Lawless; and, oh, Lucy Lawless.

The bestest weekend package are sold out – this is, after all,  the Dinah Shore before The Dinah Shore – but there are second-to-bestest weekend packages still available, as well as general admission single day passes (scroll down towards the end of the page).  Ah, you’re going to go.  You just haven’t admitted it to yourself yet.

I’ve written about my frustration with our fine city’s parking control and the overpriced, frequently broken meters in Hollywood before.  But now, after my experience two mornings ago on Hollywood Blvd, I’m beginning to think that there is something more sinister going on.  Is it possible that parking control officers are giving tickets to cars parked legally, with the required amount of money in the meter for the time, figuring that people will just pay the $50 fine?  Is this a new fund-raising racket that’s on the down low in City Hall?

Because as we all know, paying a ticket is way easier than contesting a ticket.  It takes far far more time in frustration, just getting someone on the phone and sometimes going to a courthouse to physically contest it, than forking over your credit card.  It’s a no win situation and after one try at it, most people will just give up and pay the damn fifty bucks.  I know I did last time. After several fruitless tries, too much time on the phone, I gave up and paid.

But then, it happened again.  Monday, I stopped on Hollywood Blvd around 11:20 am.  I put in 8 quarters for 20 minutes… giving myself an extra 40 minutes.  I was gone 17 minutes.  When I returned I had a ticket.  Fifty bucks.  The ticket was issued seven minutes after I put in my money.  When I checked the meter, I still had lots of time left.  You can imagine my frustration.  It’s as if the city just wants to milk the public, good will be damned.  They know good and well that most people will just pay.  I immediately started down the road of thinking about how much time I was going to have to devote to this.

This time I don’t want to just give up and pay.  Yes, I will contact my council person (Thanks Eric Garcetti, for your offer last time to get in touch, I was working on a show and slammed, so after a phone call to parking control, I just paid).

But really.  What the hell is going on here?  Do these guys get bonuses for volume?  Do they check the meter at all before issuing tickets?  But most of all I was just disappointed.  What kind of city has LA turned into?   Grrrrrrr.

There are vanity plates (recently seen here and here) and there there is THE Vanity Plate! It’s silly and smug and I love it.

(I took this last summer on Pico in West LA before I left town and forgot about it. Found it after a year end review and had to post!)

My daughter has her first serious boy friend.  He is a Marine.  This past Saturday he had to fly back to Fort Leonard Wood.  They made it as far as the security check point and my daughter broke into tears saying “good bye”.  A TSA agent pulled her aside and asked for her Drivers License.  She was petrified, then the agent explained,” you give me your license and I will give you a pass to the gate so you can wait with him for his plane”.

Of course it helps that Antonio was in his Marine fatigues.  But still, how often do we bitch about TSA agents then we hear of something really kind done by one.  Made her day.  Made mine too to know there is a little compassion left out there for young love.

Pantages Hollywood just made it easier for you to make good on your resolution to see more local theatre, with the release of their own iPhone app.  (Click here to open the Pantages app page on iTunes.)

You can buy tickets by phone, get presale offers, discounts, YouTube channel updates, and check out nearby restaurants. And it’s free. Like an app should be.

Go see a show, Freckles.

Almost immediately after the final buzzer put a blaring exclamation point on the Los Angeles Clippers 102-91 win over same-stadium rivals the World Champion Los Angeles Lakers last night at Staples Center, rumors began to spread hot like wildfire across the twitoblogiverseosphere of a celebratory victory parade to take place along a 40-yard stretch of blockaded Centinela Avenue outside Clippers Playa Vista headquarters this morning.

Ladies and gentlemen, as of 8:30 a.m. as evidenced by the picture snapped while biking past the place, rumors of any post-win par-tay are false and it’s nothing but business as usual.

Official City Disclaimer: Any similarity to Centinela Avenue being shut down is entirely a result of the photographer’s timing coupled to the hour of day as well as a general lack of traffic due to ongoing economic factors, and not the result of any barricading that may or may not have occurred at taxpayer expense. Thank you.

Have you ever owned a pair of noisy pants? Perhaps some corduroy jeans that announced to the world whenever you were approaching? Well, listen up, because the Fowler Museum has an exhibition opening this Sunday (and an opening party Saturday night) that’ll put your pants to shame.

Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth (through May 30) is a travelling exhibition of work by a Chicago-based artist who creates elaborate mixed-media sculptures he’s dubbed “Soundsuits” due to the sounds they make when worn by performers.

Meet Me at the Center of the Earth is making its only Southern California stop at the Fowler and according to the museum’s literature, Los Angeles was important to the genesis of Cave’s Soundsuits. How so? The city’s 1992 civil unrest inspired the African-American artist to create a costume that completely erases the identity of the performer and acts as protection against prejudices.

Since these suits really need to be seen in motion, the museum will be staging a number of “Soundsuit Invasions” around the city, whose locations will be announced via Twitter and Facebook.

You’re going to like the way these suits look and sound. I guarantee it.

Image: Soundsuit, 2007, by Nick Cave.
Courtesy of the Artist and Tiago Ltd./Tiqui Atencio.

My friend Nate commutes through Inglewood every day.  He spotted this the other day and had to share with all of us.  Pic is used with permission and taken with his Blackberry (which is not known for great optics) but does get bigger with a click.

Dear LAX Cop Who Threatened To Write My Girlfriend A Ticket Last Monday:

I know you have kind of a thankless job. Really, I can only imagine the absolute nonsense you’re forced to deal with on a daily basis: People wanting to cross streets, people wanting to drive their cars on those same streets, people asking for directions to terminals — many of whom probably don’t display a fraction of the deference you’d like them to, given your position of relative authority. And probably less than .0000001 percent of them are terrorists, which doesn’t afford you much to write about in your weekly letters to Jack Bauer. The headaches you face must be tremendous.

So I can kind of understand why you started to write my girlfriend a ticket when she picked me up from the airport last week. You asked me where I was going, I told you I was quickly hopping into her stopped-in-traffic car, and then you ordered me, apparently under your breath, to get into the car via a different curb, one reserved for passenger pick-ups. When I didn’t obey, you showed me you meant business by threatening a woman who had no role in our prior interaction. And when I asked why you were writing a ticket, you were rightly annoyed with me, and said that you had already told me that I could only get into the car in the designated pick-up area. I’m so sorry I didn’t hear your mush-mouthed order over the echoing din of honking horns and revving engines. These stupid ears of mine! I really should have listened to you more closely, just in case you were commanding me to do something totally inefficient and pointless.

Sure, she was waiting in a line of cars that wasn’t moving at all, and sure, I didn’t have to walk into the street or disrupt traffic in any way to get into her car. Sure, her passenger side opened onto an empty curb, and sure, it took me all of three seconds to get into the car, during which traffic didn’t move at all. And sure, if you had just let us go on our way, it would have actually alleviated traffic overall, since we wouldn’t have needed to merge or change lanes. Sure, it would have saved everyone, including yourself, time and frustration. But you have authority to maintain, oh LAX Cop Who Threatened To Write My Girlfriend A Ticket Last Monday. And you can’t just have people flouting your rules and getting into cars willy-nilly. In a properly functioning society, the letter of the law always supersedes the spirit, and the stripes on your arm are all the proof of this anyone should need.

Thank you, oh LAX Cop Who Threatened To Write My Girlfriend A Ticket Last Monday. Thank you for showing me that order is only maintained through a healthy respect for authority, and that the best way to communicate with a recalcitrant citizen is to threaten a woman until he complies.

No more than 40 of these wide, comfortable reclining seats in any theater.

Have you heard about the new movie theater in Pasadena? Gold Class Cinemas is upping the ante for premium movie going experiences. It takes a lot of your gold to be part of the gold class, though.

Gold Class Cinemas opened in the One Colorado complex in December. I recently had an opportunity to see a movie there, and I was looking forward to seeing what all the hype was about. I was also looking forward to seeing Avatar in 3D, so let me get that bit out of the way first: story was beyond trite; have you seen Dances With Wolves? Visually stunning, though, and great use of 3D. Worth it for the visual effects alone.

Follow me past the jump to hear about the theater and the movie-going experience (and the money.)

Read the rest of this entry →

These Thursday movie nights have been going on a while at Betalevel, the brainy underground (literally) hive of geeky art & tech activity that spun off from Chinatown’s C-Level (from whose loins also sprang Machine Project). Don’t know what the hell I’m talking about? Click those links & give yourself a pat on the back for being a good culture student.

Every Thursday, this basement-level art-space/gallery/file-sharing meatspace/technogeekery HQ/poetry-reading hall/whathaveyou screens a film: 1st Thursdays of the month are Bollywood Night, 2nd Thursdays are Zombie Night, 3rd Thursdays are Keanu Night, 4th Thursdays are the intriguing Weimar Night and 5th Thursdays, when they occur, are Miscellaneous Night. The room isn’t huge, so there’s a warm, convivial atmosphere you usually only find in restaurants where everyone has to sit at long shared tables and is forced to interact.

Tomorrow, Bollywood Night features the noirish black-and-white “Pyaasa,” with a narrative that could have inspired Moulin Rouge: Vijay, a poet, is unemployed, broke, and can’t get published.  His family lambasts him. The husband of his former girlfriend steals Vijay’s writing and commits him to a mental institution. “Vijay takes to drink, gets in trouble with the law, ends up in a brothel. There he meets a prostitute who wants to help him get the recognition he deserves.” It just all sounds fantastic.

For the amazing directions to Betalevel, click here.

Guess what we’ve got free tickets to? Tickets that you can win?

Connect the dots to find out how to get in.

Read the rest of this entry →

On the Left: An old streetcar from the Pacific Electric Railway, On the Right: A new streetcar from Washington, D.C.

If all goes according to plan, streetcars will return to Downtown Los Angeles in four years. But, what will they look like?

I’ve argued before that they should be historic replicas of the Red and Yellow Cars that used to traverse this city when it boasted the largest street railway system in the world. I championed a streetcar that would complement the architecture of our city’s Historic Core instead of mimicking trains you would find in Portland or Seattle or Whereverville. One that says Los Angeles.

That is most likely not going to happen. But, what about a compromise?

The new D.C. streetcars were just unveiled this past December. They already bear a slight resemblance of Big Red. Perhaps L.A.’s newest streetcar could at least pay homage to the past with a clever paint scheme.

What an excruciating existence it must be, running a winery in Malibu. (Cielo Farms)

So I thought only Europe had “Appellation d’origine contrôlée” or “Indicazioni Geografica Tipica”–legally defined & demarcated areas where specifically-named wines are grown–but I guess the US has them too. D’oh! I can’t believe *I* didn’t know that. And I called myself a wine snob. If you’d like to sample wines from the uber-local “American Viticultural Area” known as the “Malibu-Newton Canyon,” Pourtal in Malibu is hosting a month-long extravaganza of  local hoity-toity booze. While you may have to jostle a few Malibuian boob jobs & facelifts to get over to their pouring station, it could be worth it just to develop a taste for the terroir.

My curiousity piqued about these local wine-growing regions (like, who the hell owns that little winery in the Sepulveda Pass that’s only visible from the Getty tram? What region is that?), I read up on these areas a little more. Looks like you can get even more specific with an AVA called “Saddle Rock Malibu“–you have to read the way these legally-binding boundaries are written up. It’s nuts. The map geek in me wants to walk all the “unnamed, unimproved road[s] that meander”. Sounds like a metaphor for life, eh? Perhaps the only solution is some of that local vino.

Click through to read some of these geek-tastic descriptions of the Malibu area’s wine regions. For info on Pourtal’s local wine tastings, go here. They include Semler & Saddlerock, Cielo, Rosenthal, Hoyt, Malibu Sanity, Malibu Vineyards and Griffin Family Vineyards.

Read the rest of this entry →