We are very excited to have assembled a crack team of Donut Experts who will be serving as celebrity judges at the Donut Summit!  The judges will vote in all of our voting categories (more on those soon!) and will also select a donut to win the Judges’ Choice award.

Our expert donut judges are:

Billy Vasquez, The 99 Cent Chef

The 99 Cent Chef’s blog is one you should be following, if you don’t already – it’s a tasty ode to cheap, creative cooking, largely using stuff you can find on the shelves of your local 99 Cent Store.  Our own Frazgo interviewed the Chef a few years back, and you can read his interview here.  Billy has been blogging and posting how-to recipe videos since 2006, when the writer’s strike inspired him to help people eat on the cheap.

And when it comes to donuts, the 99 Cent Chef doesn’t mess around.  He took on the heavy hitters and made his own Krispy Kremes in the video below, which, at current count, has over 160,000 youtube hits:

Jenn of Just Jenn Designs and Just Jenn Recipes

Jenn is a designer (if you don’t love her big bundts greeting card, you probably don’t have a soul) and a food blogger, and certainly knows her way around a donut or two.  From tasty plain baked donuts,  to chocolate sour cream donuts; from mochi donuts, to strawberry milk donuts, Jenn has written some of the most creative donut recipes I’ve seen.  And I am completely in love with her totally cute coffee and donut cupcakes!!

Shelley, the Fry Girl

We loved Fry Girl donuts at last year’s Donut Summit!  Shelley has a portable mini-donut maker, and you can hire her to do donut catering for events and parties.  Her donuts are tiny, homemade, melt-in-your mouth taste explosions (and I do not use the phrase “taste explosion” lightly), and they took home awards last year for Best Yeast-raised donut, Most Visually Appealing, and Most Unconventional donut.   Since Shelley’s donuts were such a big hit, it seemed only natural to have her back this year as an expert donut judge, and we are really glad to have her.

And, of course, we want to thank Intelligentsia for providing us with coffee to help the judges cleanse their palates between bites of donut.

From the Skirball Bridge (click for embiggification), taken at the midway point of today’s 47-mile Autocalypse Now Ride.

Trees are a big deal in Santa Monica. Sometimes they get manicured. Sometimes they get cut down and cause a controversy. In this case, on 11th Street near Santa Monica Blvd., a lone protester has made a stand on a tree stump. The handwritten note taped to the traffic cone on top of the stump reads:

R.I.P. *Here remains what was once a beautiful TREE cut down under our very noses. When will [our] city cease this action?

Hopefully, the city had a good reason to cut down the tree, i.e., that it was dead or dying, rather than just some form of aesthetic tree gentrification. I did see some newly planted trees nearby on the same block, so perhaps that is what will happen here too.

Hmmm.  Earlier this week I posted a ‘rumor’ that the 405 wasn’t closing.  Well, it IS closed, but the traffic all around it is moving just fine!

I just drove to Ojai for the day and I zipped up the 101 right past the 405.  Not even a slowdown!

And last night and this morning, the city of LA is quiet, quiet, quiet.  Seems everyone really IS out of town or hibernating.  It’s kind of nice.  Seems like a normal city.

Perhaps we are the most normal city in the world! Everyone emulates us.  And personally, I think we have the best life-style on the planet! Viva Los Angeles!
And hell, Viva Carmegeddon! It’s tamed this puppy!

Carmageddon?  Karmageddon?  Is everything on your GTD list this weekend within a 2 mile radius?  Or are you really jonesing to drive that automobile around to hit up a food festival or two?  Decisions, decisions.

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You would not believe your eyes, if ten million fireflies, lit up the world as I fell asleep…

Addictingly catchy, Owl City is a great band to see in concert & they’re on tour with their new CD “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” Adam Young tells us that…

The music and lyrics conspire to make listeners feel as if they were stepping into another world — a verdant musical dreamland where “reality is a lovely place, but I wouldn’t want to live there,” as [he] sings on the opening track “The Real World.” Images of abundance, like a backyard of butterflies (“Honey and the Bee”), blossoms filling a room (“Hospital Flowers”), and “sunsets that dazzle in the dusk” (“Dreams Don’t Turn To Dust”) unfold alongside starry-eyed imaginings of cherry bombs staining blackbirds red (“Kamikaze”) and dipping one’s toes in the galaxy (“Alligator Sky”).

They’re playing two shows!!
7/21 || Owl City with Mat Kearney, Breanne Duren @ Club Nokia
7/23 || Owl City with Unwed Sailor @ Fox Theater Pomona

Thanks to our friends at Goldenvoice, I have a bunch of tickets to give away to lucky Blogging.LA Readers! Please leave your comments below (and specify which concert you’d like to attend) and I will pick some lucky winners Tuesday July 19th @ 12PM PST. **Update** Winners picked.  Still have a pair for FOX Pomona, if anyone still wants!

You can also buy tickets here: http://www.goldenvoice.com/shows/details/?id=31090

Unlike most of the general city citizenry who’ll be doing its collective best to get away from the autocalypse this weekend, I’m just too curious not to get on my bike and go for a looksee by riding up into the eye of that storm that is the Sepulveda Pass tomorrow morning (July 16).

The Autocalpyse Now Ride

If you’re partial to longer rides and interested in coming along, I’ve charted out what’s roughly a 47-mile route that will begin and end at the Happy Foot/Sad Foot sign at Sunset Boulevard and Benton Way in Silver Lake (here). In a nutshell it will involve heading upstream along the Los Angeles River Bikeway in to Burbank where we’ll then access the Chandler Bikeway to North Hollywood and then the Orange Line Bikeway to the Sepulveda Basin. After a sidetrip to marvel at the monochromatical Kafka-esque vastness of the Sepulveda Dam spillway, we’ll make the climb up to the top of the pass where we’ll pause to fathom the rareness of the entirely dried up Interstate and perhaps imagine in the marked silence that there might be a valley-bound zombie horde made up of UCLA students and reanimated corpses from the Los Angeles National Cemetery trudging toward us from Westwood.

Presuming I’m not the only one on the ride, If I’m feeling particularly talkative I might regale you with the tragic/triumphant connection I have to the Mullholland Bridge that makes me kinda sad to see it demolished.

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anarchosyn's photo used through Creative Commons license

LA Observed pointed out yesterday the sad contrast between two recent reports, one which identifies a substantial increase in the number of “high net worth individuals” in LA–people so important they have their own acronym (HNWI)–and the other that gives an overview of the growing demand on LA county food pantries. A number of reports about the economic recovery have claimed that job regrowth has mostly been in low paid and unskilled jobs, and perhaps LA is seeing the effects of that trend.

The number of people accessing food pantries has increased 73% since 2008 while the amount of funds and food supplies are not keeping pace, and in some cases are decreasing (take the LA food bank, which is receiving 800,000 pounds less a month from the USDA than it was at the start of 2011.

At the same time, the number of people whose “investable assets” exceeded one million dollars increased 8.8% over last year. Only Houston saw a higher increase. So if you’re one of the many who feel like the middle is getting squeezed right now and there are more and more people living in one extreme or the other, you may well be right. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…. And people wonder why I persist in calling myself a leftist.

The other day the entire world collectively pointed and laughed at the obvious publicity stunt unleashed by JetBlue, where they announced plans to offer $4 fares from Burbank to Long Beach to avoid carmageddon. But flying seems pretty fast right? I mean, you are in a plane and all. But how fast is it really? Fast enough to beat Wolfpack A? Seriously, easily the most elite street cyclists in LA, possibly in the country started doing the math and think they can make that trip faster on bike than JetBlue can in a plane. You know what? I think they are right. I’ve seen the hustle in action. I’ve seen Wolfpack A win race after race. I think this is totally legit. Several folks are already trying to get JetBlue to accept the challenge. Let’s see what happens!

UPDATE: IT’S ON! Details being finalized right this very second, but this is happening. Point to point. It’s a battle of commuters. A house in Burbank to the Long Beach Aquarium. More details soon!!!

Last weekend a few of us got together for a delicious craft day to assemble our supplies for the Donut Summit.

Key materials: donuts, enthusiasm. Check…:

…and check. Photos by Ben Simpson of Hodomania (with the exception of the blurry donut shot above, chez moi)

More adorable photos of your awesome bloggers when you click through!

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Its so weird I can’t even make it up.  Jet Blue is offering flights Saturday only between Burbank and Long Beach for $4 each way.  Details HERE.  Why its almost as cheap as the train or a bus.  Could be an interesting way to kill some time Saturday if you have no plans and “rack” up some air miles too.

Hat tip to the NBCLA folks for finding this story first.

That makes my most bizarre finding on the topic yet today.  What strangeness to avoid the 405 mess this weekend have you found?

Sure, it’s no Cinnabon, but Soundgarden’s show at The Forum next Friday is bound to be rockin.

Soundgarden was one of my favorite bands as a teenager. I plagiarized some of their lyrics in one of the first poems I ever wrote. The first band t-shirt I ever wore, which I stole from my older brother, was from their Superunknown tour circa ’94/95. I felt like a rock star when all the other kids in the 8th grade kept asking what the logo—a superman symbol with a ‘?’ in place of the ‘S’—meant. A couple years later, the song “Pretty Noose” was on repeat in my head the first time I ever ate mushrooms.

Now blogging.la has the chance to make one lucky reader feel like a rock star with a free pair of tickets (mushrooms not included) to see Soundgarden and The Mars Volta play next week here in LA:

KROQ presents
Soundgarden
The Mars Volta
Friday July 22, 2011
The Forum
Show time: 8:00pm
Door time: 6:30pm
Age: All Ages+
Complete Details | Buy tickets

For a chance to win, tell us about a Soundgarden (or The Mars Volta) memory in the comments section by 12noon on Tuesday, July 19th. Bonus points if you’ve plagiarized any of their lyrics for bad teenage poetry.

I have no problem at all admitting that Fucked Up is one the few bands that have surfaced in the last few years that have really caught my attention. Beyond that, they’ve got a strangle hold on it. Seriously, just watch the video above for “Queen of Hearts” from their newest album and just try to tell me there isn’t something seriously awesome going on. When was the last time you saw a music video with actual actors?

I’ve been pretty obsessed by these guys for quite some time and after I saw them play a while back all of my suspicions of their greatness were confirmed 10x. And now they are coming back, and I have a pair of tickets to give away. They are playing at The El Rey on July 26th with Trash Talk and FIDLAR. If I were you I’d just say screw this risk and go buy tickets right away. But if you are feeling gambley and want to try and convince me why I should give you these tickets free then do it in the comments below. Sometime in the next day or two or three I’ll scream “THAT’S IT!” and people around me will think I’m nuts, but what it will mean is no more comments and then I’ll pick whoever makes the best case. Or makes me laugh. Go for it.
photo by Daniel Boud

Fact or fiction?
Is the closure of the 405 going to be postponed?
If this is correct, you heard the breaking news here first!!!
If not, hey rumors are sometimes wishes to the Gods.
Here’s the story:
I got rear ended on the 405 recently. So yesterday, after going through the endless drama of paperwork and details of the accident, my car was ready to be picked up. While at my amazingly fabulous car shop, Saab & Raffi (they fix anything and are really, really excellent… and very reasonable), anyway, while there, I met a guy who worked for the MTA. And he didn’t just say he worked for the MTA…. he was wearing one of their badges. He told me and another woman waiting that the closure had been called off. That they got an email that morning saying it wasn’t ready and that it was delayed indefinitely.

Hmmm. I questioned him intensely. He checked out. And he seemed straight up.
But then again, I’ve read nothing in the news that backs this up. They would have announced it by now. Right?

Or maybe they are just messin’ with us and waiting til the last minute so traffic is a breeze. Who knows?

Rumors like this could just be wishes to the Gods. Just thought I’d pass this little nugget on.

Photo by Burger Baroness and used under a Creative Commons license.

Just in time for our upcoming Donut Summit, the LA Times last week published a great story on the background and history of last year’s Donut King, Donut Man.  Owned by third-generation Japanese American Jim Nakano, Donut Man opened in 1974 with Nakano manning a fryer and his wife, Miyoko, taking care of the order window.  The rest is donut history:

With the treats came lore: Roy Rogers ordered a buttermilk bar before heading out on hunting trips. Elvis Presley, a jelly man, sent his karate instructor to pick up raspberry-filled doughnuts.

The tidbits are fascinating: Nakano was born in Boyle Heights and was only 2 when he and his family were sent to internment camps in Poston, Arizona:

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