If you are currently sitting at your office behind your desk contemplating suicide by stapler because you are so bored and have nothing to do in the evenings this week, feel free to consider Metblogs your own personal saviour because we have your plan.

Wednesday! Johannes Grenzfurthner from the Austrian artist/prankster collective monochrom will be speaking at Crash Space, a hackerspace in Culver City (of which I’m a member). His talk, “Of Drunken Machines and Horny Relays” will be something of a workshop about building DIY hedonistic machines. Starts at 8pm, free for members $10 suggested donation for the general public. More info can be found on crashspace.org and you can RSVP on this Facebook event page. Crash Space is located at 10526 Venice Blvd, Culver City.

Thursday! Laugh Night: A Benefit for Art Share Los Angeles! We’re told this will be immensely funny. Half a dozen headlining comics (including Greg Behrendt, Donald Glover, Karen Kilgariff, etc) will be taping standup sets for The Sound of Young America, and 100% of ticket proceeds benefit Art Share LA, which provides free arts instruction to Los Angeles students. Tickets are $8 or $6 if you can prove you live downtown somehow. More info on Maximum Fun Dot Org. Art Share is located at 801 E. 4th Place, Downtown.

This Saturday, February 27 will be a Hot Hollywood Night! Your votes have been counted and the winner is Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles with a follow up trip to Boardner’s! Roscoe’s won with 48% of the vote, the other two contenders splitting the rest evenly at about 25% each. Clearly you all are jonesing for some fried, maple goodness and I can’t say I blame you as I voted for Roscoe’s as well.

Here’s the plan for Saturday:

5:00pm meet up at Roscoe’s on Gower. Eat some tasty chicken and waffle goodness, try not to spill maple syrup on yourself.

6:30 (or so) head over to Boardner’s for a post chicken COCKtail (get it?!?), some great Hollywood history and look for the ghost of the Black Dahlia in this classic Hollywood bar.

Roscoe’s House of Chicken and Waffles
1514 N. Gower (at Sunset)
323-466-7453

Boardner’s
1652 N. Cherokee (at Hollywood)
323-462-9621

Did you know Roscoe’s has a Facebook Fan Page?  You do now!

Thanks for voting and see you all there!

Hey Westsiders:  tomorrow (Tuesday, February 23) The Open Daily is celebrating its launch by giving you free coffee and pastries!  The Open Daily is a new daily newsletter and blog informing you about all things Westside: Restaurants, politics, family fun, events, history, art, you name it! They want to get to know you so come by Venice Grind tomorrow morning from 8:30 to 9:00 am.

To get your free cuppa joe, go to their Facebook event page and RSVP then come by for your morning rev-up. There will also be gluten-free pastries to nosh provided by Yvonne’s Gluten Free Goodies.

If you can’t make the launch party, sign up for their free newsletter and start getting your daily helping of Westside action. You can also submit your event listing to be included in their newsletter.

See you tomorrow at Venice Grind to celebrate The Open Daily!

Venice Grind
12224 Venice Blvd.
Mar Vista
310-397-2227

Andrew Koenig, perhaps best known for his role as “Boner” on Growing Pains in the ’80s is being reported missing by friends. He was last seen on 2/14 in Vancouver.

From the comic’s comic blog yesterday:

“Andrew Koenig (AK-47, the video guy on “Never Not Funny,” and “Boner” from “Growing Pains”) has been missing for a week, last seen 2/14 in Vancouver. Didn’t make his flight back to the US on 2/16. The Vancouver Police are involved, and lots of people are looking. Could you reblog this and help get the word out? And say some prayers or think some positive thoughts?”

I thought it might be worth posting here in case anyone local has heard from him or has more information. I’ve met Andrew. He’s a friend of my husband and a nice guy. We really hope he’s okay.

Please feel free to repost.

If you’ve seen Andrew since February 14th, contact Detective Raymond Payette of the Vancouver PD at 604-717-2534.

“[A] massive project of prison construction was initiated during the 1980s – that is, during the years of the Reagan presidency.  Nine prisons, …, were opened between 1984 and 1989.  Recall that it had taken more than a hundred years to build the first nine California prisons.  In less than a single decade, the number of California prisons doubled.  And during the 1990s, tweleve new prisons were opened, including two more for women.”

– From the Introduction to “Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Angela Davis

Between 1977 and 2004, the population of incarcerated women in California has soared 1,522%.  This statistic, combined with the above quote, compels one of two conclusions.  Option 1: For whatever reason – must be something in the water – women collectively have become more prone to commit crimes that carry prison sentences.  Option 2: Something that is not Option 1.

The supermajority of female inmates whom I’ve represented (as an attorney during the parole hearing process) were involved in crimes stemming from abusive relationships: she either killed her abuser, or, at her abuser’s direction and in fear for her (or her child’s) life, was involved in a felony that led to the death of a third party.  The law, however, has been excruciatingly slow to begin to understand these circumstances.  If there ever was a an example of how the judicial system was created by and for men, this is it.  That is my way of saying that Option 1 is not the answer.  It’s really not even an option.

Option 2, then.  Who better to discuss this with than the author herself, Miss Angela Davis?  She’s coming to A New Way of Life, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing living and job assistance to paroled women, in Watts tomorrow.  The afternoon meet, greet, and talk is a fundraiser for the organization – $50 for those who want to attend a VIP reception with Ms. Davis, $10 for those who want to be present for the discussion immediately following.  Yeah, you can dismiss all this as leftist rants about how we all want to release criminals onto our white streets and terrorize our innocent children – but that’d be like choosing Option 1, wouldn’t it?

A New Way of Life’s Angela Davis event will be held at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee’s Phoenix Hall, 10950 Central Ave. 90059.  The VIP Reception is from 2-3; the discussion will immediately follow from 3-5.

Unedited, just came to my inbox. You lucky bastards.

Dinosaur Jr. will be playing a free, surprise show at the Troubadour on Tuesday, February 23rd, thanks to the T-Mobile® myTouch™ 3G Fender™ Limited Edition and MOG. The doors open at 8 p.m. & the show is at 9 p.m.

Send an email to dinojr@mog.com to get your name on the list (does not guarantee entry // must be 18 or over) and be sure to get there on time, this show will fill up fast!

Pedestrian-friendly. Horse-and-carriage-friendly. A neighborhood where the bank, gym, church, and dentist were all within steps of each other, at the California Bank Building.

The year was 1899.

Photo from the USC Digital Library

All over my neighborhood are electrical control boxes that, about a year or so ago, suddenly became public art projects. I’m not kidding: It happened within the space of about three or four days. I walk a lot — I’m in walking distance of three grocery stores, two movie theaters and about a million restaurants — so I’ve grown pretty fond of the zillion-fold increase in public art, so over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing it with all of Metbloggery.

We’ll start with this peace-and-apatosaurus themed box at Vermont and Maubert, between a Bank of America and a little fast-food mini-plaza. More pics after the jump.

I just now realized the centerpiece of this image is being dreamed up by one of the many faces below. I like that quite a bit, as I often find myself daydreaming about dinosaurs and magical castles. Rock on.

Read the rest of this entry →

This is a beautiful video of LA that looks like it’s made up of a bunch of tilt shifted stills all stop-motioned together. Even if the suggestion that this is the East Side is going to send some people into a full blown tizzy fit. I didn’t name it, I just thought it looked pretty.

1:09 a.m. Taken while biking home after an hellaciouslyIsayhellaciously long day/night at work. Tired as I was, I couldn’t resist stopping across the street and freezing this Hollywood landmark’s moment in time.

CarbonNYC's Star of Me photo used through Creative Commons

Fellow members of the tribe know there’s never been a better time to be Jewish; it’s among the odd list of things now-sexy, formerly-not (like women over 40, people with glasses, and geeks). Beginning tomorrow and running through Saturday, the Jewlicious Festival at the Alpert JCC in Long Beach promises to be a fantastic celebration of that sexy hipness. Their site explains that the event “unites trend-setters, artists and spirit seekers; Ashkenazim, Sefardim, Persians and Mizrachim; atheists, agnostics, skeptics and believers; designers, activists, jocks, and hipsters.” On the weekend agenda is food (of course), music, presentations (Matisyahu is among the presenters), workshops (including boxing workshops by WBA super welterweight champion Yuri Foreman), comedians, yoga, drum circles, wine, movies, djs… In short, a heck of a lot of fun.

Tickets are reasonably priced and vary according to whether or not you’re a student ($63 for all weekend including meals–what a deal I have for you!) or a young professional ($109 for the weekend) or just want to go to a concert or wine tasting. But be warned weekend tickets are only on sale for a few more hours.

It was my birthday last weekend, and I determined it would be a lovely idea to go to the Japanese garden at the LA Arboretum & drink a cup of green tea in the tea house there, which I remembered doing with my parents when I was a kid. My boyfriend & I piled in the car with walking shoes & bottles of water and made it there in about a half-hour–fantastic time. Parking was a cinch. The $8 entry fee was reasonable. The sky was clear, the weather lovely. There was just one hitch.

The LA Arboretum does not have a Japanese garden or a tea house. I’d been thinking of Descanso Gardens.

I was a little heartbroken, but we resolved to press on. And our persistence was rewarded with one of the most relaxing days I’ve had in years, spent wandering the grounds, following tiny paths through mammoth grasses, investigating “Lucky” Baldwin’s Victorian cottage and pursuing peacocks like an eight-year-old.

More photos and better resolution here. The Arboretum is always having cool classes like Japanese ikebana flower-arranging and botanical watercolor painting, so you should absolutely check it out.

Fans of the Quentin Tarantino’s last film take note, Upper Playground was teamed up with some amazing artists and the Weinstein Company to produce INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS: The Lost Art of the Film which will be a benefit for Haiti. The exhibition will feature a poster created for the movie by David Choe, Sam Flores, Estevan Oriol, Grotesk, Jeremy Fish, Patrick Martinez, Alex Pardee, Dora Drimalas, Munk One, N8 Van Dyke, Rene Alamanza, Morning Breath and Skinner Davis. Each poster will be produced in a limited edition of six (6) and be sold for $300. Each one will also be signed by Quentin Tarantino himself. These go on sale tonight at 6pm at the Upper Playground gallery at 125 East 6th Street in Downtown LA. The opening runs through 9pm, and that is the only way you can see these in person. So, you’ll be there tonight too then?

Full details and pics of some of the other posters here.

The Polls are still open for Classic Eats #9. Click here to vote! The voting will remain open until Monday, February 22 when all will be decided. Classic Eats is scheduled for Saturday, February 27.

The current leader is: Hot Hollywood Night with 48% of the vote.

The options are:

Hot Hollywood Night: Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles and Boardner’s
Burbank Bonanza: The Smokehouse
Westside Alka-Seltzer Fest: Tito’s Tacos and Johnnie’s Pastrami

As ever, we’ll start around 5pm so you can stop in then move on to the rest of your Saturday evening events. Or stay all night!

Clicky past the jump to read more about each.

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Most folks know me around here because of what’s between my legs. And by that irresistible attention-getter of an opening line I am of course talking about the BICYCLE I so often ride around town.

Anyway and ahem, while group bike rides, such as last weekend’s “8 Presidents Ride,” are something I enjoy organizing and doing, I’m occasionally known to get in touch with my pedestrian side and go for some pretty monumentally long walks — these in addition to Franklin Avenue blogger Mike Schneider’s always awesome Great LA Walks.

In 2006 with Don and Lisl, two other intrepid and  like-minded LA Metblog-reading crazies, I set out from Union Station and walked Sunset Boulevard 25 miles all the way to where it ends at Gladstone’s on Pacific Coast Highway

Then in October 2008 I was joined by friend and fellow Metblogger Julia, along with friends David, Jeff and Amanda and walked the 28 miles of Western Avenue from its beginning in Hollywood to its end at the San Pedro cliffs overlooking the sea.

So I told you all that to tell you that my next in a semi-irregular mostly biannual series of silly walks is scheduled to take place on the sixth day of the appropriately named month of March — and will be a far less WTF-inducing distance of 15 miles (tentative route map) that starts and ends at Hoover and Jefferson and whose route will stick primarily to Jefferson and Adams boulevards across the interesting neighborhoods they traverse and will include an ascent to take in the spectacular panoramic views afforded by the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook State Park.

Even better: since the shorter distance means we don’t have to get stepping at the crackadawn, the walk will get moving at a far more civilized hour of 10 a.m. Hope you can join me.