Superheroes, nasty villains, and zombies will visit us as the Hero Complex Film Festival returns to Los Angeles on May 18-21, at the Regal Cinemas at L.A. Live. Cinema classics will be screened with stars and creators of the movies, such as RoboCop with an appearance by Peter Weller, Shaun of the Dead featuring director Edgar Wright, and A Clockwork Orange with Malcolm McDowell. On Monday, pioneer comic book creator Stan Lee (Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, etc.) will be there for a not yet announced screening. Although the $105 festival pass is listed as sold out, individual screening passes can be had for $20, which isn’t much more than a movie ticket on a weekend night nowadays.

See link above for full schedule and details.

Marky Ramone getting some California Sun

East Coast vs. West Coast rivals laid down their Glocks and picked up spoons last Saturday, as Marky Ramone, former drummer of the Ramones, flew in from Brooklyn to the Venice Whole Foods to promote his new pasta sauce. The sauce is called Marky Ramone’s Brooklyn’s Own Pasta Sauce, a fittingly complicated name from someone whose job it was to keep time for the rapid Ramones.

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Chances are, you were a fan of Jane Lynch before she was on Glee, even if you didn’t know her by name.  She has, after all, been in literally hundreds of television shows (Fraiser, NewsRadio, Friends, The X-Files), movies (The Fugitive, Best in Show, Talladega Nights), commercials, parodies, web series, cartoons, and so on and so on and so on, paying her dues for some two decades before finally – finally – earning the recognition she deserves in Glee.  Lynch just published a memoir, Happy Accidents, that follows her journey from thespian to lesbian to comedienne; ultimately, it’s a life lesson on trusting yourself, your decisions, and your life path.  Inspirational, right?

On Sunday, Live Talks LA hosts Lynch in conversation with her former Party Down co-star Adam Scott at 7pm at Club Nokia downtown.  And we have tickets to give away!  To win, leave a comment with your favorite Jane Lynch role.  I’ll choose a winner at random on Thursday morning.  Good luck!!

How can you not trust a hot dog with a halo??

Since 1949, Papoo’s Hot Dog Show has been filling the tummies of Toluca Lake residents and visitors with tasty hamburgers, sandwiches, fries and of course….hot dogs. Countless movie and TV stars have been regulars over the years. Though the owners and recipes have changed, it has always remained a great hole-in-the-wall place for some really good grub. Well today, Sunday August 28, 2011 marks the end of 62 years of Papoo’s Hot Dog Show.

Hot Dog Show holds a special place in my heart as I’ve been going there since….well before I was born! My mom worked there when she was 16, her initials STILL carved into the counter. In fact, I only just found out that my parents met there. If it weren’t for the Hot Dog Show, I wouldn’t exist! Having lived only 1 block away for most of my life, I can remember riding my scooter or bicycle up there on a regular basis. I always ordered 2 plain dogs with ketchup, fries and a Dr. Pepper. While I would wait for my food I would play either Galaga or Ms. Pac Man with the “WOOZ” (upside down “ZOOM”) button. With that “WOOZ” button I could fly through to the banana stage in about 4 minutes flat.

I’ll miss you Hot Dog Show and I’m not looking forward to the rumored Italian restaurant taking your place. At least we still have Dale’s Jr. Money Tree Hampton’s IHOP Copper Penny Bob’s!

Some of you have been around long enough (and are lucky enough) to have attended SUPERBALL – the crazy, eclectic, celeb-studded (but in a good way) event where damn near anything could and did happen.

Like all gigantic, out of control events, SUPERBALL kind of reached its peak and when the dudes behind it got busy with life, it went away for a while.

But nature abhors a vacuum, and out of the ashes of SUPERBALL came … TwentyWonder! A Carnival of the Mind, and a great cause too.

Plus, TwentyWonder just got featured on GoldStar. Discounted tickets are now $20 for a limited time. Jump on it, and then alert your friends!

Tickets: http://www.goldstar.com/today/los-angeles/2011/7/4

This Saturday! July 9th! From 6pm to Midnight!

21 and older with ID

VIP Tix include a souvenir medallion – very cool!

(hope this image cures the JumboTron effect – was posting from the phone)

The handmade sign on the front door of mobster James “Whitey” Bulger‘s former home on 3rd Street in Santa Monica reads: “Go Away. People Live Here”. That’s the message I’d like to send to mobsters in Los Angeles and across the country. But they seem to keep popping up near where I live, or vice versa.
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Coming back from the Hollywood Home Depot yesterday afternoon, my wife Susan and I opted for surface streets back to Silver Lake instead of the backed-up southbound 101, and boy am I glad we did. Heading east on Fountain I looked south as we passed Kingsley Drive to find none other than renowned and prolific muralist Kent Twitchell doing some touch-up refreshment work to his 1971 Strother Martin Monument mural. With Susan understanding my OMG as we went around the block to pull up across the street from him, I got out and went pretty much total fanboy, interrupting him apologetically to gush about what an honor it was for me to see him in action, and get a picture of him:

I asked him if there was any hope of restoring the Ed Ruscha mural that had been despicably painted out in 2006 (and for which he ultimately settled a lawsuit in 2008 for a reported $1.1 million). He said he hoped for its return but that it would be put up in a different location.

The one mural of his also unceremoniously destroyed whose return I’ve long hoped for is his two-story cool-as-ice-blue Steve McQueen Monument, painted the same year as the one above.

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Hey Kids – No wait, strike that – Hey Adventurous Non-Squeamish Over-18-Year-Olds!

The inimitable Ori (aka Ashley Blue aka GIRLVERT aka Oriana Small) has written a memoir that will twist your brain better than any Terence Malick movie ever could.

And guess what? She’s reading excerpts (and doing who knows what else) tonight at Largo at the Coronet!

Not sure if scanning the doo-dah in this image will work or not but do please find a way to attend. Knowing what I know, you’ll be talking about this for a while.

My buddy Hank Rosenfeld has a piece airing tonight at 8 on KPPC.

He’s talking about Hollywood screenwriter Irv Brecher and I’m guessing a lot of this stuff is from his great book, The Wicked Wit of the West.

You should check it out -

(Main page for “The Story” is here.)

((ooh, so linky! I’m actually writing a post NOT from my phone ~))

Apparently, Chateau Marmont would like to keep its hallowed grounds Twitter-free out of respect, I assume, for the privacy of their guests who often do insane things.  Jenn Hoffman found out the hard way: she was having a perfectly normal dinner, “there’s a few different celebrities there, no big deal.”  (Aside: That is your LA moment, right there.).  She catches Rachel Hunter engaging in all sorts of crazy, tweets about it, and then, when trying to make another reservation recently, discovers she’s been banned for tweeting about the incident.

Whether there’s an unsaid rule against tweeting and whatnot, I don’t know, because I’ve never been to the Chateau – my LA moments involve being stuck in traffic – but what say you?  How do you even enforce a rule like that?  If celebrities and marginally famous people and not-famous people can’t have a Twitter-free moment at the Chateau, where will they go?  Shouldn’t people over the age of 10 try to act not-crazy in public places anyway, because Twitter or not, they will be judged and ridiculed and that’s really the price you pay for acting like so in front of others?  So many ethical questions.

It includes:

– the reality show celebrity/mom telling her little kids about the “lady with a face like plastic”;

– the actor from “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”;

– the music producer-looking guy with the very long grey pouffy hair and dark sunglasses (yeah, that guy);

– the flight attendant asking you if you’re a particular actor, and then threatening to check the passenger manifest when you say “no”; and

– the Lady with the Face like Plastic.  It really was, and I guess I’m really back home.

Having heard it through the gearchain that a certain seven-time Tour de France winner had previously tweeted his interest and enthusiasm and participation in tomorrow’s CicLAvia, on something of a lark I queried the good sir earlier this eve to see if that was indeed to be the case. I’m pleased as punch to confirm that indeed, it is:

PS. Only his really close friends get to call him Mr. Armstrong.

People often ask me if Tina Fey is gay.  This is because, I think, and unfortunately for me, I’m the only gay person they know, and they assume that we all know who the others are, like Cylons or something.  The larger takeaway, though, is the implication behind the question: that very few women can have the strength of her talents, defy as many conventions, and not talk incessantly about how she should be defined as a mother first, unless she were a lesbian.  There’s a whole lot wrapped up in that implication, too much to deconstruct here, so I’ll just say: that is a terrible work of fiction that no one wants to read but for some reason keeps getting checked out.

For those of you (gay, straight, boy, girl, in between, on the fringe) looking for a little inspiration a la Fey, Live Talks LA is hosting the writer/producer/actress/comedian at the Nokia Theater on Tuesday, April 19.  Fey will discuss her upcoming memoir, Bossypants, with Steve Martin.  Tickets just went on sale on Friday; get them here.  My guess is that these will sell out, soon, so you better get on it, now.

For those curious about Fey’s essaying abilities (because being head writer at SNL, the creator/writer of 30 Rock, and the writer of Mean Girls isn’t quite enough), check out the last few issues of The New Yorker. An essay  first appears in the same issue as the fantastic article on Scientology, about “juggling” her career and her – blahblah – family (“What is the rudest question you can ask a woman? ‘How old are you?’ ‘What do you weigh?’ ‘When you and your twin sister are alone with Mr. Hefner, do you have to pretend to be lesbians?’  No, the worst question is: ‘How do you juggle it all?’”).

The second essay, in this week’s issue, is on the lessons she learned from Lorne Michaels (“Never tell a crazy person he’s crazy.” – I’m assuming she’s talking about Tracy Morgan here, but I may be projecting).  I hope Tina Fey and Rudy Giuliani do a book exchange, BossyPants for Leadership, just to compare and contrast styles.  If you have nothing going on – and, heck, even if you do – go to the newsstand, flip to page 22, and just read it.  It’s great.  It makes you want to buy the book or e-book.  And, yes, see her live from Los Angeles, on a Tuesday night.

An Evening with Tina Fey in Conversation with Steve Martin, Tuesday, April 19 at 8:00pm at the Nokia Theatre. Tickets are $29 (seat only)/$49 (premier seating plus Fey’s book)/$119 (prime seating plus Fey and Martin’s books). A signing will follow the talk.

What happens when you ask Suzanne Goin to look "fierce."

A producer friend of a friend once described his pre-Oscar ritual as something akin to a runner prepping for a marathon: “Eat.  Because you’re not going to until hours and hours later.”  That he has to go hungry during the 3+ hours of The Emmys or The Oscars is the worst thing about the gala for him (for people who actually are in it to win it, the worst thing probably is not being nominated or losing what may be your only chance to claim the “O” in “EGOT“).  Anyway, the reason why, say, The Golden Globes and The Screen Actors’ Guild Awards are better in his book is in part because you get to eat.  Eating is, after all, the panacea for all the ups and downs during any awards ceremony, whether it be The SAG Awards at The Shrine or your kid’s end-of-the-year award ceremony at The Overcrowded Multipurpose Room.  Anxious?  Snack, nervously.  Weren’t nominated?  Chomp, vengefully.  Didn’t win?  Nosh, sadly.  Did win?  Feast, gluttonously.  Bored?  Eat, mindfully.

Now, say you’re the chef who has to cater said eating awards event.  What do you do?  Suzanne Goin, chef and owner of Lucques, AOC, and Tavern, is doing the cooking for the Screen Actors’ Guild Awards this Sunday.  She and her entourage at Lucques Catering will serve some 1,250 people who are hungry/nervous/overconfident/not confident enough given the caliber of their work/there for the swag.  To ease the emotional roller-coaster, she will plate a lovely quartet of palate-pleasers that reflect local, seasonal cooking.

Clockwise from the top left: beluga lentils with carrots, pine nuts, and feta; slow-roasted salmon with ginger-mint chutney; slow-roasted lamb with chickpeas and feta salsa verde; a beautiful salad with blood oranges, dates, arugula, and parmesan; and a baked herbed crostini with parmesan and chopped thyme and parsley to bring it all together.  When each part is consumed, and why – well, to each his or her own.

And, because if you’re anything like me and sometimes like seeing how they made, say, Toy Story 3, almost as much as you like seeing the finished product, a couple of photos of the kitchen at Lucques:

For those of you not part of the SAG action on Sunday night, Lucques and AOC are both participating in DineLA.  Lucques is offering a three-course lunch menu for $28, and a three-course dinner menu for $44.  AOC is offering a three-course dinner menu for $44.  Given the caliber of the food at both restaurants – really, unlike other high-end restaurants, I can’t recall ever having a meal at either Lucques or AOC that I regretted – the prix fixe menus are a great deal.  Go on, snack, chomp, nosh, feast, eat.  Your emotions will thank you later.

Lindsay, we hardly knew ye

But I simply can’t resist -

I offer you – the publicity still for the new Lindsay Lohan comedy, “Three Hots and a Cot.”