Man oh man, for a couple of local teams the CIF championship has turned into a national debate on sportsmanship.  The short version is that a pole vaulter from South Pas had just “won” the  Rio Hondo championship at the meet they hosted.  Not so fast says coach Knowles from Monrovia, your gal was wearing jewelry which is against the rules and she should be disqualified.  The refs agreed and voila Monrovia won the Rio Hondo championship.  Full story here.

The offending jewelry?  A hand knotted twine “friendship bracelet”.

Controversy ensued, South Pas has its collective panties in a knot, even swearing in the comments (recall South Pas is a “no cuss zone”).  Even national media has come out on this one.   (I fall into the camp its just kids sports and it shouldn’t have been a disqualification but even that upset some).

What say you on the topic?

If you were with me on last Saturday’s “Watts Happening” ride you were a treasured part of something pretty damn awesome if I do say so myself. And I do.  Trust me when I say that I went a little crazy putting in a fair amount of effort  researching Google skimming to pull together info for the places we visited. And trust me when I say everyone in attendance was very patient and appreciative of my longwindiness. If you don’t believe me you can read my copious notes cribbed from the internest.

But that was last Saturday and with next Saturday rapidly approaching we will be venturing forth on the Frank Lloyd Wride, featuring bike-bys of the four Hollywood residences Wright built between 1921 -1924: Hollyhock, Ennis, Freeman and Storer houses. Along the way we’ll be stopping at Frank’s son Lloyd Wright’s Sowden House (1926), and paying a visit to the Monastery of the Angels for anyone who’s always wanted to get a loaf of the nuns’ famous pumpkin bread. After the ride, anyone who wants to join me at Musso & Frank’s for brunch (flannel cakes!) is totally welcome. Distance is 18 miles with some short but relatively steep climbs so geared bikes are highly recommended (tentative route map is here).

Trust me when I say I’m not going anywhere near as crazy with the factoids this week, in part because I’m honored that members of the architecturally astute cycling group Bikehaus will be in attendance (including my friend Mike Kwan who’s celebrating his birthday that day!). And since those folks know their architectural shizzle and I’m just at best a Wright fanboy with a hooligan’s defensive adoration but nothing more than a cursory level of knowledge about the man and his manses I’m more than likely just gonna STFU then blather.

We shall gather at SilverSun Plaza, the stripmall at Sunset and Parkman Avenue in Silver Lake, for a 10 a.m. departure.

Per the Los Angeles Times, it looks like the LA City Council officially has joined a a growing list of other cities nationwide in boycotting – to the extent the city councils see possible, anyway – the hot state of Arizona.  The boycott comes as a protest against the passage of an arcane immigration law that grants Arizona police fairly wide powers to inquire anyone about their citizenship status (Kev-O had a good run-down of what to do if you are not protesting Arizona, go there to visit the rusty desert, and get stopped because you kind of, sort of look illegal and the cop is having a bad day, or a good one).  Our city council compared the law “to Nazi Germany and the beginning of the Holocaust, as well as the internment and deportation of Japanese Americans during World War II.”  This analogy, I think, actually is more apt to Joe Arpaio’s actions as sheriff of Phoenix and the rest of Maricopa County than the law itself, but I digress.

Meanwhile, Arizona’s governor, who signed the bill to much fanfare/fanhate, just doesn’t understand why all this is happening to the lil’ ol’ xenophobic people of Arizona:

“Why would they want to hurt the legal citizens?” Brewer says. “You and I, and everybody else in this state. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me.”

Womp, womp, Governor.  So sad, too bad.

On Friday, May 21, The Dan Band returns to Club Nokia. With thanks to our friends at Goldenvoice, LA MetBlogs has your tickets. Read on…

In early April we sent some MetBlogs readers to see The Dan Band. Here is what a couple of them had to say:

“This band is best when encountered as a surprise. Obviously, going to see them live, the primary novelty of the band is no longer a surprise, but, fortunately for me, there were still plenty of hilarious surprises in the live setlist.” ~Riki Ataki

“We had such a good time! Dan caught a woman texting during the show and took away her phone to send rude replies.” ~FlowerOfHighRank

I’ve got several pairs of tickets for next Friday’s show, so to win, leave a comment below telling me why you need to see The Dan Band live. Winners to be notified by email, so make sure I’ve got your correct address. Don’t want to take a chance? You can buy tickets here. A word of advice: guard your cell phones; Dan can be filthy when texting your friends.

Back when I lived in Philadelphia, my home was near a Pathmark supermarket that was in turn right across the street from a low-income housing project. I hated shopping there, because the prices were so ridiculously high — almost as though Pathmark knew that, right across Frankford Avenue, was a fairly captive audience of poor people without cars. The principle of the thing bugged me enough without having to pay three bucks for a half gallon of non-organic milk (this was in the early 90s) because I was in a hurry.

The LA City Attorney’s office isn’t accusing Ralph’s of price gouging per se, but the supermarket chain is on the business end of an overcharging accusation, charged by the city attorney with dozens of criminal counts of overcharging on things like salads and fish. I do a lot of shopping at Ralph’s, because I live within walking distance of one, but it’s not without its problems. For instance: My Ralph’s only ever has two checkout lanes open at any given time, which often forces me to use the self-checkout devices, which keep alerting the Ralph’s staff that I might be trying to steal something. But overcharging? Not really in my experience.

What about you? Are you surprised by the allegations? Do you suspect that your supermarket might be putting a bloated corporate thumb on the scale? Are you one of those sanctimonious types who tut-tuts at those of us who shop at the big-box stores? Or do you refuse to eat anything that isn’t partially hydrogenated and flash-frozen? Satisfy my curiosity, readers.

Oh, A-Ha. It seems that while I wasn’t looking, the band responsible for one of the most totally awesome videos of the 1980s announced a farewell tour. Will the landscape of popular music ever be the same, without those cheerful Norwegians challenging us to take on them? A-Ha’s “Ending on a High Note” tour coincides with the 25^th anniversary of their debut album “Hunting High and Low,” and they’re performing two shows this weekend at Club Nokia. Saturday’s show is sold out, but our pals over at Goldenvoice have hooked us up with two pairs of tickets for the show on Sunday, May 16^th, and those tickets could be yours!

Wanna go see A-Ha? Here’s what you gotta do: Comment below and tell me which now-defunct band from the 80′s you would pay a million dollars to see reuinted in concert! Make sure to use a real email address so we can get in touch with you. If you’re a winner (and, really, isn’t anyone who wants to go see A-Ha a winner on some level?) I’ll let you know by Saturday night.

In the meantime:

Ben Folds @ The Wiltern 11/14/08, Photo by Jodi

I’m not sure if you get as giddy as I do when I hear that Ben Folds is coming to town. I’ve been hooked on his live performances since his first L.A. show at the Roxy in October 1995 with his former band, Ben Folds Five (they opened for Heather Nova). It’s a real treat when he comes to the West Coast, where he has a pretty decent fan base. He often plays two shows and yes, I usually go to both. I never know when he’ll make it back to this side of the country.

This is an exciting week because Ben Folds is playing two nights, May 12th and 13th at The Music Box @ Fonda in Hollywood. While he often performs with a backing band, this tour is just him and a piano, along with special guest Australian singer-songwriter Kate Heidke-Miller. We have a pair of tickets to give away to the show on Thursday, May 13th. Leave a comment telling me a favorite Ben Folds song (solo or otherwise) that you’d love to hear live. I will be notifying the winner by email late Wednesday night.

One thing I love about my girlfriend is that she missed out on a lot of the best action and horror movies of the 1980s. Like, she still hasn’t seen Predator. While your movie-geek crowd might frown on this — I cite as Exhibit A the obnoxious way the crowd at the New Beverly Cinema boos any patron who admits to not having seen the feature on display — I love it, because it gives me the chance to watch movies like The Running Man and Clash of the Titans with someone who’s seeing them for the first time. And anyway, I didn’t see The Wizard of Oz until I was 25, so who am I to judge?

So you can imagine how surprised I was to find that she had actually seen the relatively more obscure Killer Klowns From Outer Space several times. Released in 1988, Klowns spent several months on cable TV rotation, which is where a lot of its fans were first exposed to it. I won’t waste your time with a detailed plot description of a movie titled Killer Klowns From Outer Space. All the synopsis you need is right there in the title. This is why Killer Klowns is better than The Unbearable Lightness of Being which was released in the same year. To this day, not a single person knows what The Unbearable Lightness of Being is about, including Daniel Day-Lewis, who starred in it.

But: Killer Klowns. This is a is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful movie. Sure, most of you might appreciate it for its camp value, but I hate anything with camp value (I’m looking at you, Glee), and I still love Killer Klowns. It’s pure, unwinking horror, only with comedy replacing the horror parts. It’s superb.

And it’s playing tomorrow night on the rooftop of Macy’s downtown (700 S Flower Street). Doors open at 6:45 PM; the movie starts about an hour later.

A final warning: Sadly, because of the nature of this movie, there may be juggalos present. Obviously nobody wants this, and with any luck they’ll be turned away at the door. Should you encounter a fan of the Insane Clown Posse, try to speak his language and he’ll probably leave you alone. Say something like “bring tha muthafukkin’ circus” or “I’m gonna punch your dick in the throat,” and he’ll probably wander off.

When I missed the world premiere production of Rajiv Joseph’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo at the Kirk Douglas Theater in Culver City last year, I thought I’d really blown my chance to see anytime soon what had been almost universally raved about as an extraordinary play from a daring new voice in American theater. I figured from Culver City it would next be off to New York and if I was lucky the play might make its way back to Los Angeles in a few years.

So when I learned it was going to be a part of the Mark Taper Forum’s current season, I was overjoyed at being given this second chance, and this past weekend I came away from the performance I saw absolutely astonished at the experience. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before, and I won’t waste time trying to wrap it up in a neat little summation when Moises Kaufman, the show’s director, has already done so when talking about the playwright:

“He takes a world that is part Quentin Tarantino and part Gabriel Garcia Marquez and he makes it work.”

Does he ever.

With a phenomenal and fearless cast anchored by veteran actor Kevin Tighe as the anthropomorphized title character, Bengal Tiger manages to be both uproariously hilarious and brutally harrowing — sometimes simultaneously. Set in 2003 Iraq, it is as insightful as it is intense.

Let this Tiger escape you and you’ll be missing theater at its most authentic, audacious, dynamic, and compelling. And there’s no knowing when it might return.

Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo plays through May 30 at
the Mark Taper Forum, 135 N. Grand Avenue; more info.

If you lost a dead body sometime in the past week and were at The Grove, seems like someone found it. They suspect it was sitting there for a few days before anyone noticed, so yeah, if it’s yours you can go claim it or whatever.

A Girl and Her Coachella

Yes, I realize that Coachella 2010 was a few weeks ago, and, especially in Internet speak, that’s just eons ago.  But, as they may or may not say backstage, better late than never, eh?  Rather than bore you with scenes of how surprisingly awesome certain bands were (Phoenix, really?), and how some of them were not so much (XX, I love you, but not at 6pm) – I’m going to just toss out a few things I spotted in the desert during the weekend.

Read the rest of this entry →

Here’s the thing about alligator sex: It’s weird by mammal standards.

See, mammals like you and me have what evolutionary biologists like to call a “ding-dong” and a “what-what,” and the way we mate is that we put the two parts together until one or both of the participating parties (OK, usually just one) has a Happy Moment. Sure, things may be a little different for monotremes like the echidna and the platypus, but if you’re spending an undue amount of time thinking about platypus sex you are probably a pervert and should be locked up.

Birds and reptiles do things a bit differently. They keep their sex organs in a revolting little flesh pocket called a “cloaca” (the plural of which is “cloaca”). When birds and reptiles mate (never with each other, except in the furry community), they briefly press their cloaca together. Wildlife biologists the world over agree that this process is, from a purely evolutionary standpoint, disgusting.

So why am I telling you about alligator sex? Because there’s potentially about to be a lot more of it going on in Los Angeles.

That’s because Reggie the alligator, the LA Zoo’s resident Alligator mississipiensis, is getting a new girlfriend today. Her name is Cajun Kate, which sounds like the name of the maid of honor at a shotgun wedding. By gator standards, I’m sure Cajun Kate is a real looker, though in the interests of full disclosure I should note that I have not seen her cloaca.

Reggie isn’t your standard zoo gator. In 2005, he was discovered in Machado Lake in Harbor City; despite the efforts of city officials and professional gator hunters, Reggie wasn’t seen again for two years, when he was finally captured and brought to the zoo.

Today, in addition to getting a new sweetheart, Reggie is getting an upgraded habitat, designed at least partially at preventing his escape. Only a few months after his capture in May 2007, he climbed a chain-link fence, leaving his enclosure, and got as far as a nearby loading dock before he was recaptured.

Reggie’s new digs, as well as Cajun Kate (who, it should be noted, is twice his age, which from an alligator standpoint is pretty hot), will be unveiled today at the zoo.

Nine-Thirty in Westwood

This is your last chance to enter to win tickets to see Nightmare Alley at the Geffen Playhouse, along with $100 for dinner at  Nine-Thirty at the W Hotel in Westwood! This giveaway is a collaboration between LA Metblogs and Goldstar, a locally-based company that works with venues to sell tickets to plays, sporting events & other cool stuff for half-price.

“Nightmare Alley” is based upon the 1946 noir novel about one man’s seduction into the seedy, mysterious world of the carnival sideshow during the years of the Great Depression, when he falls in love with a beautiful fortune teller.

The day you’d be going, May 16th, is on one of the Geffen’s “Wine Down Sundays” where they have free flowing wine in the lobby area before the show. Hooray!

To win tickets, just add your comment in the comments section here, telling me what character YOU would be in a carnival! One lucky winner will get to take a friend to dinner and a show.

Thanks to Goldstar for helping us give this away to you guys. If you’re not already a Goldstar member, go and sign up–it’s free, and you get weekly announcements of all the cool things around town–everything from comp tix to the circus (appropriate, no?) to VIP seats at Derby Dolls games and tix from Pee-Wee to the Dorothy Chandler.

I can’t tell you how excited I am that SoCal author and Kodachrome enthusiast  Charles Phoenix is presenting a vintage 3-D slide show this weekend and next! While well known for his kitschy retro Kodachrome slide shows, this foray into the third dimension is taking things to a whole new level.

This is a unique opportunity to see 3-D images like you may have never seen them before, along with commentary from one of L.A.’s most entertaining local treasures. The photographic journey will travel as far back as the Victorian era, a time when viewing 3-D photos on cards through a stereoscope was a popular form of entertainment, to the 1940s and 50s, when View-Master disks were introduced as an alternative to the scenic postcard. This is going to be an extravaganza not to be missed!

Charles Phoenix will be presenting his first ever retro 3-D slide show tomorrow, Sunday, May 9th and on Sunday, May 16th at 3pm at the Downtown Independent, which is located at 251 S. Main St., L.A. 90012.

You can click here to purchase tickets.

Today’s the day to Stamp Out Hunger. The 18th annual food drive is the country’s biggest one-day attempt to help needy families.LA Area Postal workers will be gathering food donations as part of their daily delivery route. I got my blue bag in the mail the other day and is now sitting loaded on the porch waiting for its pick up and delivery to a local food bank. Help stamp out hunger locally by leaving a bag of donations for your letter carrier to pick up as well.