My favorite Australian import The Temper Trap is back in town! They’re of my favorite bands from anywhere actually, and fantastic live. Like, I bought an actual physical CD at their show at the Roxy last year. That’s a big deal.

You’ve most likely heard The Temper Trap already, even if you haven’t heard of them. Their songs have appeared in just about every TV show and commercial (and one particular downtown LA-centric movie!) made in the past year and a half. Or at least it sure seems that way…

Their show downtown may be sold out already, but blogging.la has scored a bunch of FREE tickets to see The Temper Trap Friday night at the Fox Theater in Pomona (details here) in the beautiful San Gabriel Valley. You can take the 210 on the way back so you can hit the Sonic in Duarte!

We have four pairs of tickets to give away, so to enter the contest, just comment below and let us know what’s been your favorite TV appearance by The Temper Trap? Or at least, what’s your favorite track off their debut album, Conditions?

I’ll get you started with my fave:

But of course it’s more than just a street, or a particular strip of high-end stores. It’s a neighborhood filled with palm trees, small art galleries and contemporary architecture; a meeting place for locals on their lunch break. During a weekend afternoon the sidewalks overflow with those who just want to say they’ve been there and barely enter a single store. On a weekday night it nearly empties out entirely, with many stores closing at 5 or 6, creating a modern ghost town, with only a lit-up semi-bustling restaurant every block or two to remind you that yes, people do live around here, too.

Rodeo Drive's pedestrian walkway - from Picasa user Aurélien Boffy

I’ll admit, I’m decidedly low-brow in my consumption of local hot spots, and have never bought anything there besides cupcakes (lots and lots of cupcakes). It’s one of the few  tourist venues I know of that has surprisingly ample free parking, but I always take the 720 bus anyhow. There isn’t much history to be found here (aside from a couple of the old hotels now under new names and a few shops, much of the Rodeo Drive shopping center as we know it came to be in the 70′s). But it’s a highly walkable neighborhood to bring visiting friends to on bright, sunny afternoons – those afternoons where the streets are flooded with people, gawking and shopping, from all walks of life and all parts of the world, making up a little microcosm of multicultural Los Angeles itself.

Check out the rest of the L.A.’s Greatest Landmarks series here.

Angels Flight, archived image

Now I can really feel it – I feel the wooden seats that remind me of historic streetcars other cities have been spoiled to have. I poke at the hanging light bulbs I probably shouldn’t be touching. I feel the car rattling up the steep incline, and the California sun beating on my shoulders through the open windows. I drop a quarter into the old-fashioned fare box, save a souvenir ticket for my collage, and run my fingers along the woodwork outside the little building housing the operator, overlooking California Plaza.

I make sure to ride on each car – both Olivet and Sinai, whom I’ve come to know as individuals via their ridiculous Twitter Account.

The railway may have moved a bit from its original location 100 years ago, but it acts like a little time machine. Moreso than the new downtown skyscraper on the site of what once was, or a snazzy, remodeled loft inside an historic piece of architecture, the simple ride makes me feel as if I’m inside those black-and-white photos of Angels Flight I downloaded from library archives, and transports me to the Bunker Hill of yesteryear – when one might take the funicular to get back to work up the steep hill after a lunch date. I think of how I need to get around to taking this ride at sunset, who I need to bring along with me next time, and out-of-towners I should take here on their next visit. It connects us to the rich history of Downtown L.A., the kind you don’t get anywhere much further away from the river on which this city was founded.

And just like that, after a few brief moments, the ride is over. But it’s only a quarter, so why not take it back down the hill again?

Check out the rest of the L.A.’s Greatest Landmarks series here.

John Wooden and Bill Walton, 1970. Photo courtesy Vedia on Flickr.

I’ve been making some plans lately for the upcoming World Cup. I don’t follow soccer (football?) but I wanted to take part in the magnificent exercise in sports fandom that will be USA vs. England. Whatever their sport, fans tend to unite over great communal experiences like the World Cup, the Olympics, the Super Bowl or the Lakers in the finals.

We, as lovers of sport, also unite in recognizing legends, regardless of rivalry or affiliation. We all recognize the greatness that was John Wooden.

And all of us, Bruins, Trojans, whatever, felt our hearts sink a bit at the news that Wooden was “gravely ill”, and then when he eventually passed away last night. He may have been 99 years old and hadn’t coached in decades, but the loss of Wooden still leaves a big gaping hole in the sports world. Coaches with his level of success and, more importantly, his level of influence are one-in-a-million.

Well before I moved to California and learned about Trojans vs. Bruins (and on which side I stood), I learned about Wooden. I remember my 7th grade basketball coach preaching his wisdom to us in the locker room. His name is all over buildings in Westwood. My favorite monument to him is the bust carved out of wood that sits in the lobby at ESPN Zone in Anaheim (the “wooden Wooden”). He’s practically required reading for teachers and coaches of all levels.

Wooden represented the best of UCLA, of basketball, of Los Angeles, hell, all of sports in general. While normally I would be reveling in seeing the Bruins cope with a loss (like, say, in a football game), this time, I, and fans everywhere, will be right there with them.

Well, the drunks and people dressed up for goin’ out are starting to trickle in (our server seems entertained by them) and Queequeeg has arrived, so I must bid you adieu for the evening. But don’t forget, we are still here until noon, so if you happen to stop by for some breakfast or brunch, be sure to drop some cash or foodstuffs in our donation box while you’re here!

My chocolate milk came in the fanciest little glass. I’m actually going to get one of those Jell-O cups Julia blogged about earlier next.

The crowd has quieted down a little bit since I got here; it’s not much emptier, there’s just fewer rowdy tables. And maybe it’s just cause I am still waiting for my “second wind” to kick in and I’m projecting my sleepiness onto everyone else. But you wouldn’t guess it by how excited I (and Lucinda) were to take a picture with the prom kids!!!

The best is the girl sporting the classic “Date’s Tuxedo Jacket Over Prom Dress” look.

The service here is really fast! I actually had my Mac & Cheese in front of me before I finished writing that last post. They’ve got tons of employees working right now – which I guess should be expected, this place is a late-night eating mainstay, after all. The Mac & Cheese is pretty good, and so is the chocolate milk, even though it came from syrup.

All the staff is also extra-helpful now that over a dozen prom-goers just wandered in for a bite!! And so did Lucinda and Travis, who of course couldn’t resist sneaking up on the teenagers for a photo op (seen below with spoons on their noses). Some kids were also slow dancing to the live music coming from the other room.

Oh, and P.S. these Mi-Fi thingies are about 1/4 the size of what I expected them to be. They are almost credit card-sized. I now see why Lucinda called them “cute” earlier.

It’s been a looong while since I’ve visited this joint, and I was too distracted by the ridiculous traffic on Hollywood Blvd. a half hour ago to give one thought to what I wanted to order. This menu is so huge it’s quite intimidating. It took me nearly 20 minutes just to pick something out.

After being tempted by the smell of the meat being cut just a few feet away from my seat, I decided to do something different (OK, not that different for me) and order the Macaroni & Cheese. With a chocolate milk (hey! at least I didn’t order the Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich – which is a kinda ridiculous $4.25 on the big kid’s menu).

I must really be harking back to childhood diner food experiences, since it’s taking a lot not to devour everything in those delightful miniature cereal boxes sitting right in front of me, teasing me. And my eye was also drawn to one of the kid’s coloring book drawings posted on the wall behind the counter, of “Canter the Dog”.

The newly remodeled and redecorated theater was quite nice, of course. It looks basically like a smaller version of the original Hollywood ArcLight, so much so that I decided to dub it “ArcLight Lite” (Disclaimer: I’ve never been inside the ArcLight in Sherman Oaks, which I’ve been told is just like this place). Even the big clock in the lobby was duplicated (seen here in a photo by my friend Michael, whose iPhone photography skills far outweigh my own, even though I was armed with an actual standalone digital camera).

Sadly, the bar isn’t open yet! I mean, there were cool tables to sit around at, but the bar looked so sad being all dressed up but totally empty and sans booze. The popcorn was delightful as usual, a nice combination of classic movie theater taste and the real butter that provides that illusion of it not being that horrible for you. The decor was nice, including a wall of movie posters that ranged from classic to random and confounding (Twilight? really?) to totally freakin’ awesome (Revenge the Jedi, as seen after the jump). And I did like the bathrooms at this location better than the original’s, possibly because there were so many mirrors.

The theater lobby was smaller than I expected, despite having patronized it in its prior incarnation. I also thought there would be more general craziness when I arrived an hour before showtime, but it didn’t occur to me until I arrived that due to the reserved seating, there wouldn’t be people standing in line or basically having any reason to show up early. That, combined with the short amount of time it took for me to give the place a once-over, led to me having enough free time to wander into the old standby next door,  Yard House, where I was disappointed to learn that the half-price appetizer late-night happy hour is only through Wednesday (still ate plenty of wings, however).

But the place certainly filled up by the time I made it back into the theater, where I was greeted with Iron Man toy giveaways (I didn’t win anything), nice, comfy seats with headrests and a quality movie-viewing experience. Though that may well be attributed to it being a midnight, opening-day showing of a big sequel, so the crowd was enthusiastic before the movie and abuzz with nerd talk after. Or wannabe nerd talk, in the case of the girl in front of me who joined in the shouts of “OOOHH” from many dudes in the audience at the end of the teaser clip after the credits, waited a second, then said, “… I don’t get it.” (that was a highlight of my evening).

Overall, it’s a nice theater in close proximity to multiple places I consume chicken wings, which is always a good thing. But it obviously doesn’t quite have the clout of the Hollywood venue, or, at least so far, the frequency of awesome guest speakers and presenters. Definitely someplace I will go when the scheduling just doesn’t work and I can’t make it to the slightly closer and $3- or $5-cheaper theater at the Americana in Glendale instead. Definitely.

Oh, and apparently back then people said things like, “Who needs a car in LA? We’ve got the best public transportation system in the world!” Yea, that’s about when I started laughing/crying/exclaiming about how now they’re just picking on me, a car-free transit geek. It had been a few years since I’ve seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit, so I got caught off guard and a little emotional. But at first it was wonderful, when just a few minutes in one of those Big Red Cars with “Sunset Blvd” splayed across the top pulled into frame, and I was transported into some magical version of Los Angeles where the public transportation vehicles and the automobiles co-existed in happiness along our city’s major thoroughfares (I get so sad every time I remember that the big median down Eagle Rock Blvd. is just covering up where the Red Car tracks used to be!).

For most people, this is a movie about cartoons and a fun take on showbiz with the underlying theme of the big transportation shakeup in Los Angeles and the arrival of the freeway. But, for me, it’s a movie about the death of our once well-respected transit system set against the backdrop of this whole “Toon” thing. You see just as much of fictional neighborhood Toon Town as you do the watering hole across from Eddie’s office, which is located at the train terminal and is decorated with model trains, old signs, the light shining through a red “Pacific Electric” sign instead of a window, and a big huge map of the Pacific Electric Railway system up on the wall behind the bar. Someday I will own a bar and I will decorate it just like that. Or maybe I’ll just decorate my bathroom that way.

Basically, the cartoons are just there as a framing device to make the story a little more accessible, right? I mean, come on, the movie’s villain is out to buy up all of Toon Town (he already bought the Red Car system) just so he can build a freeway through it, then make tons of money by creating an economy of gas stations, off-ramp restaurants and billboard advertising spots. And who would ever want to live in a place like that?