Has everyone been loving the rainy overcast morning? I just got back from San Francisco and this weather is classic NorCal. Anyone complaining yet? No? I didn’t think so. I’m digging on the rain myself. And according to Twitter, a bunch of my friends are loving it as well.

* Photo by StuSeeger, Flickr tagged CC

I’m a big fan of interactive reality games. Reality as in live action, happening in this world we inhabit, not the world of bits and bytes. Introducing Cruel 2 B Kind developed by Jane McGonigal (who did Tombstone Hold Em last year.)

Cruel 2 B Kind is a game of benevolent assassination.

At the beginning of the game, you and a partner-in-crime are assigned a secret weapon. To onlookers, it will seem like a random act of kindness. But to a select group of other players, the seemingly benevolent gesture is a deadly maneuver that will bring them to their knees.

Some players will be slain by a serenade. Others will be killed by a compliment. You and your partner might be taken down by an innocent group cheer.

First game in the LA area is happening next weekend at the 3rd Street Promenade. Details, Rules, Registration.

Dear Uptight Grove Security,

April Fools! You can chill out now and have an ice cream from the nearby Farmer’s Market. You will not have to deal with a roving pack of misbehaving Santa’s starting a pillowfight with their bellymeat, a bunch of night Ridazz joining in on the mess, only to have an ambulance of sexy nurses show up to bandage the wounded topped off by a limo of French maids with feather dusters and vacuums show up to clean your precious green lawn.

No, that picture obviously can only come true in my mind. There will be no pillowfight happening at the Grove today. Take downtown instead.

Thanks,

-Heather

Just a quick reminder, the first LA Pillowfight is happening this Sunday at the Grove. Please review the rules:

1. You do tell everyone about PillowFight Club.
2. You do tell everyone about PillowFight Club.
3. If someone whines or has no pillow, you cannot hit them.
4. Everyone joins in the fight.
5. The one fight starts at the designated time – No earlier.
6. No tar, no heavy things in pillows.
7. PillowFights will go on until they’re done.
8. If this is your first night at PillowFight Club, you have to get feathered.

I might also add, don’t pillow anyone holding a lens (like a camera). I’ll also mention there is a really nice park across the street if mass exodus is in order. It’s a good thing it’s not happening at the La Brea Tar Pits, otherwise it would be a tar and pillow fight. Hey, that gives me an idea….

photo by wvs

I stopped by Machine Project on my way home from Barcamp#3 prep at Little Radio this afternoon and got to see the RPS (rock, paper, scissors) robot in action. It’s totally cool! With the click of a button the robotic hand changes from rock, to paper, to scissors. Check out the photo over there!

I’m totally bummed that I can’t make the rumble, but that’s only because I’ll be running BarcampLA3 the whole weekend. We’re going to be doing our own version of powerpoint Karaoke and offering Web 2.0 inoculations in addition to tons of great presentations. If you’re part of the geekterati come on down.

Oh and to kick it all off – I’m hitting Machine Projects talk on computer demystification tonight.

* photo snagged from Machine Project

Today we are having the typical sunny, mild, breezy, gorgeous weather that Los Angeles is known for. Who in their right mind would think Los Angeles has tornadoes? Earthquakes yes, but tornadoes, like in the Day After Tomorrow? Before I moved to LA, I was told that LA has the most tornadoes of any city in California, but they were never called tornadoes. They were called wind anomalies.

Even after this heated discussion a few days ago right here on blogging.la, you might think the only tornado you’ll find in LA County is at Six Flags.

But you’re wrong. Tornadoes happened in Los Angeles on a frequent basis. I’m not arguing that the tornadoes do as much damage as their Midwestern kin, I’m just saying they happen. And I am personally responsible for one of them.

* Photo by jjosh2004
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Deep in the Tunisian desert, a Kentucky farm story from 1955 inspired what would become the phenomenal box office hit E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

The film started out as Night Skies, and was inspired by a “true story”.

The evening is August 21, 1955. You’re visiting a rural Kentucky family for dinner. You go outside to get a drink of water from the well as the house doesn’t have running water. You see a strange object land nearby. You tell your friends what you just saw and they ridicule you. The subject is dismissed, until the dog starts making a racket. You grab your shotgun to see what is causing the disturbance. And what you see sticks in your mind until the end of your life.
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If you’re a fan of cheerleaders, you might want to head over to Hollywood and Highland. It seems to be crawling with bus loads of them – most likely for the Chinese New Year Celebration. What you may ask, I thought the Chinese New Year started last week? Well it did. But the Oscar’s were happening so the New Year celebrations had to wait.

Go Pig!

A few weeks ago there were these irritating sidewalk stickers advertising the movie Zodiac plastered up and down Melrose. WTF? Official advertising posted on sidewalk? Like those ads on the floors of the grocery store? I was horrified. This was crazy. I wanted it to stop. So I stopped, and took care of the problem my own way – pictures after the jump.
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If you missed the excitement in San Francisco this past week, don’t fret. The pillow fight club is coming to LA. Remember, don’t hit anyone with a camera.

* Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

I came across Steve Smith’s photographs of Suburban Desert, showing desert development and found them utterly beautiful. You can view them here. His photographs of the Salton Sea are also excellent. If you want to trip down another barren landscape, head over to his photographs of Ice Fishing Huts in Minnesota. I can’t even imagine an ice covered lake right now.

Where do 50+ frat boys go on Valentines day?

Hooters.

What do they eat?

Chicken Wings of course (with brush ups no less).

(Please do not ask me why I know this.)

There is a gorgeous sunset a happening.

Last night as I was on my way to a friend’s birthday party, I pulled up to a stoplight, right next to a car full of teenage boys. They were blasting some classic rock and roll (classic like Def Leopard), had their windows down and were generally having good teenage fun. Suddenly, one of the guys jumped out of the back of the car and ran to the sidewalk billboard, ripped off a poster and jumped back in the car. I was impressed, he ripped the poster off clean! (If you’ve ever tried to rip off a billboard poster, you know this is not usually the case.) The guys were laughing and the music was still rocking. A few notes sounded familiar to me, so I turned off my radio to catch the song. Instead of Def Leopard, it was Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing (which has a special place in my heart) blasting there on the corner of Sunset, in a car of teenage boys in 2007. (Those boys probably weren’t alive in the 80s!)

For a moment I wished I could change places with them. But the light turned green, I shifted gears and sped away to the freeway, while they turned onto Sunset – for a night, they are probably still talking about or will as soon as they get up.

My pal Danah Boyd went to a Hollywood Hill event from their Perfecting LA series. The focus of the discussion was “Transforming LA into a Sustainable City“.

My favorite project concerns “bio solids” (a.k.a. crap). When you flush your toilet, your feces is diverted to an old oil chamber where it is left to decompose. As this happens, the shit lets off a bunch of methane which is then converted into energy for the city. (Don’t worry – it’s clean by then.) How cool is that? Apparently, we’re the first city to really do this on a large scale. [Read more]

My favorite insight was this one:

… [I]‘m in awe of how conscious our city government is about these issues, how they are engaging with environmental organizations and city planners, how they are working on multiple levels to address environmental issues in the city, and how they are working to make it a better, more liveable city. I have to admit that i haven’t been that proud to live in land-o-Hummers but this event made me feel much better about Los Angeles, or at least those in charge of the government.

When I moved to LA (from more the eco-environmental-snobbery north) I was disgusted by the number of Hummers and other disgusting gas guzzling vehicles so prevalent here. Don’t get me wrong, I like me a big truck, but not on Sunset Blvd. on Saturday night.

So check this out. I was happily shocked to see that LA came in at number 25 on SustainLane’s City Sustainable Rankings. Check out our #8 ranking for regional public transit and we’re #1 for solid waste diversion! (What Danah mentions above.)

L.A. sits atop the recycling rankings (along with three other cities), and its 12 percent renewable energy use is surpassed only by Oakland’s percentage. A new commitment to bus rapid transit and light rail have kept commuter use close to 10 percent, helping L.A. earn a surprising #8 ranking in regional public transit.

Way to go LA. Keep up the good work!