Anastasia Mann, President of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council, alerts me that:

Any hillside streets marked for Red Flag Day parking restrictions will have cars towed today. This is the FIRST day that the Red Flag (wind related) warnings are in effect for the CITY of Los Angeles.

Prior to towing, LAFD (the Fire Dept) will attempt to locate vehicle owners/drivers. However they do not have to do this to tow the vehicle.

In short, this means that the combination of Santa Ana winds and dry atmosphere make us at higher risk for fires, and moving cars from the Red Flag zones will allow fire crews easier access in the case of trouble.

More info:

CERT Red Flag Teams info

LAFD training info on Red Flag parking restrictions

The Museum of Neon Art needs your help. They are having a party and silent auction on Saturday, December 9th. The auction is located at Design Within Reach in Beverly Hills, and there will be work from many amazing neon tube bending artists. Your donation is tax deductible as MONA is a 501(C)(3). Read on for more info and the flyers.
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Photo by Lasagna Boy of an ice cream shop at the Fairfax Farmers Market selling turkeys. Huh? What? Has anyone here had an ice cream turkey?

TJ Sullivan points out that only 1.8% of Los Angeles area homes “are affordable for households making the median income of $56,200 a year,” making L.A. “the least affordable in the entire U.S.A.”

Is it just a coincidence that the Robert Kennedy assassination story, “Bobby”, is opening the same weekend construction of a new L.A. Unifed school began, on the site of the Ambassador Hotel, where the film takes place?

Hadley from LA Taco indulges in the California Institute of Abnormal Arts and brings us a review and pics from what may be our city’s quirkiest location.

Councilman John with Mayor Sam’s office brings news that an attorney with LA’s (arguably) top law firm has joined the battle against Prop R… albeit not for free. Donations being sought.

Regarding the judges decision not to serve a prison sentence on George Weller, the elderly man who killed ten people when he drove the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, Tony Pierce opined, “Santa Monica has just declared that if you’re old and white you can unmercifully kill nearly a dozen people, including children, and get away with murder.” While I agree with everything else, what does race have to do with it?

Here’s another reason to be thankful for LA City Nerd: he points out that you don’t need to feed your meter or observe street cleaning restrictions on Thursday OR Friday.

The local crimebloggers of 1947 Project get a write up in Rolling Stone alongside former Metblogger Steve Huff.

Speaking of crime, Stephen Blackmoore alerts us to a rash of shootings around L.A. that are ushering in the holiday season.

Joan Luchs, chairperson with the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council, sent some of the area’s residents an email warning regarding the “90# Spam Scam”.

I received a telephone call last evening from an individual identifying himself as an AT&T Service technician (could also be Telus) who was conducting a test on the telephone lines. He stated that to complete the test I should touchnine( 9 ), zero( 0 ), the pound sign ( # ), and then hang up.

Luckily, I was suspicious and refused.Upon contacting the telephone company, I was informed that by pushing 90#, you give the requesting individualfull access to your telephone line, which enables them to place long distance calls billed to your home phone number.

Alas, urban legend reference site Snopes.com says that while the 90# scam is possible, the risk to residential customers is slim to none:
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Computer crashed, RSS feed got backed up, couldn’t face the pile of unread posts, blah blah blah. Sweatin’ Bullets is back after a brief hiatus.

photo, “Death In the Port of Los Angeles”, by GaretFS via Flickr

Mel Gibson may be a dork, but X17 are unethical scum. Am I the only one offended by paparazzi staking out Alcoholics Anonymous meetings? (h/t CelebLover via Digg)

Before he became a big famous tv commercial star living off his residuals, Shane Nickerson made his living writing for blogging.la. Well, maybe I’m talking out of my ass, but Shane recently posted two of his recent commercial appearances at the Nickerblog – one for his beloved Dunkin’ Donuts, the other for Toyota.

The creators of Adult Swim’s “Tom Goes to the Mayor“, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, present “LA Guyz”, a mockumentary about their lives in L.A. (h/t Locke40 via Digg).

Eric Garcetti encourages residents to bring their families to his Glassel Park field office for a FREE flu vaccination on Wednesday from 9am to 11am.

LosAnjealous reviews “Hair Wars”, a Paper Magazine event held at Rudy’s Barbershop near Sunset Junction. Intern Shane has some snaps of battling styles, including the “Hairy-Copter”.

LA City Nerd thinks we deserve to be in the top 10 of our country’s best “arts destinations” – last year we were only #12. Embarassing, Nerd suggests, due to who beat us out: Columbus and Portland.

LA.com took a break from their usual entertainment news to bring us a clip about PBJ Fight Hunger Day. L.A. local Nicole Scofield wants to feed the hungry the direct way: by handing out PBJ sandwiches. Her group is meeting at 11am at the fountain in the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. More info is at her MySpace campaign page (which I can’t check from here because my office has banned MySpace, as well as YouTube)

I think this is actually a really great idea. If I’m not working on my BarCamp presentation tomorrow, I’m going to try to hand out some sandwiches somewhere in L.A. Maybe I’ll just carry a bunch in my backpack to hand out in my travels over the course of the day – it’d be totally easy to hand out sandwiches from a bike.

And while we’re on the note – Thanksgiving is coming up, and I’ve sent my check to pay for ten dinners to the Los Angeles Mission for Thanksgiving on Skid Row. If you can’t hand out sandwiches, the food banks and shelters can always use your help this time of year as well.

We just made a pretty exciting announcement – You can now read all the Metroblogging sites, including blogging.la super easily from any Helio mobile device. Of course if you don’t have a Helio then this isn’t *that* exciting for you, but for those of us who do it’s pretty awesome. We’re right off of the main Helio web start page under “Surf Helio” next to The Onion and Maxim. Full announcement is here. Enjoy!

My friend Amber Tamblyn is doing a couple of poetry shows later this month. The first one in LA is on Friday the 27th at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Hollywood. Randomly I ended up at a free comedy show there last night, which was actually pretty damn funny, although I was a bit drunk after a few drinks during the rooftop BBQ we had with our floor-mates beforehand.

I also want to take a second to say that Amber is not anti-semitic, I am a Jew and she hardly ever tries to get me to check out her new waterless shower or walk-in oven. I’m bringing this up because a few years ago at a drum’n'bass halloween party I took a photo of her wearing a smily face shirt that had a hitler mustache and it made its way into this post on IMDB. As you can see the shit hit the fan. Seriously though, Amber is not a bigoted Jew hater, in fact in an interview somewhere she said she wants to marry a Jewish boy some day. I’ve been meaning to log in to IMDB and post a response, maybe I’ll dig up my login. I just responded to the post linked above.

Full info about the four upcoming shows after the jump.
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Andrew at Here In Van Nuys comes to the aid of a vigilant robbery victim and tries to chase down the perp in the most exciting blog entry I’ve read all week.

One of my favorite venues, The Shrine Auditorium, plans to sell “naming rights” for $2.5 to $4 million a year to one corporate cabal or another. “The goal is to raise the Shrine’s profile, pay for upkeep and needed improvements and, the owners hope, even lure the Academy Awards back to its stage.” Metroblogging’s Shrine Auditorium has a nice ring to it… (source: Daily News)

New LAist scribe Adam Rose hits the ground running with his first post railing against USC haters by going over their main “smack-talking points”. Among them: “USC fans are bandwagon… Of course there are bandwagon fans in Los Angeles. Does anybody else remember what Laker car flags looked like? They were yellow.”

Both 8763 Wonderlands – the house where the infamous Wonderland murders took place, as well as the site 8763Wonderland.com – are going through some dramatic changes. The house, where porn star John Holmes resided, is for sale (source: Curbed LA)… and writer Rodger Jacobs who started his website after producing a documentary on the murders (and consulting on the Val Kilmer film, Wonderland) is moving from Burbank Glendale to Nor Cal for an indeterminate time.

If you, uhhh, happen to, uhhhh, know where $12,000 worth of stolen… um… stolen pot plants happen to be, contact the PLAD. Stephen Blackmoore at, uhhh, LA Noir knows…. uhhh… where’s the nearest 7-11?

I figured I’d just come clean with that headline and this is blatant self promo. A few weeks ago I did a phone interview with John Linder at the Baltimore Sun for his ‘Blography‘ podcast which is online and available now. Check it out here. This was recorded live at the beginning of this month before the events in Montreal and Bangkok so when I was talking about major news happening in cities and our blogs rallying and becoming a focal point for first hand info I wasn’t referring to those cities specifically however it has been wonderful to see that in practice again over the last few days. There is also talk about paying bloggers, blogs changing the world, and of course the umbrella. Overall I think this turned out really well, and hope you enjoy it. It’s just shy of 18 minutes.

3000 mile roadtrip compressed into a 4 1/2 minute video. Kris Reynolds of SkeletonMedia.com taped his entire trip from Portland, Maine to Los Angeles – minus the mandatory stops at Cracker Barrell.

ZumaDogg (now writing at Mayor Sam) explains why Police Chief Bratton supports drivers licenses for undocumented workers:

…the licenses will have a big red mark on it… (the licenses) will require multiple forms of documentation… And the person from LAPD who I spoke with, says the general feeling is that this can truly be a way to DOCUMENT the currently UN-documented. So that in itself can help, whereas the State will have a record of these currently undocumented residents/help ID people who are here.

Sha in LA is a misogynist loose* when it comes to her love of Los Angeles streets – she lists her twelve favorites, but none are from Burbank:

The only redeeming aspect to driving in the Burbank area…left hand turn lanes with accompanying green arrow. Hallelujah. I’ve never seen so many left hand turn lanes with arrows. It almost makes it enjoyable to go on errands during my lunch hour. Can’t wait until L.A. implements the same, which is coming soon yes?

Andrew at Here In Van Nuys gripes about the urbanization of North Hollywood and recalls “the destructive policies of the last 50 years have ruined much of what once made this a pleasant area.”

I remember last year reading a plethora hype followed by bad reviews of the Los Angeles Lobster Fest… alas, this year there was NO hype, but I did stumble across this review: “Not sure if i’ll go back to this one. The lobsters were kind of small and filled with water. I cracked a claw filled with water and it gave me a facial.” And, it looks like lobster fans didn’t miss much – as per previous complaints, on top of an $8 admission (that the web site boasts wasn’t increased) $17 will buy you a pound of Maine Lobster… maybe a deal, but theres only one kind of lobster at a so called “lobster fest.”

*see comments

[click/big]
HA ha! Fooled you -

JOHNNY RYAN CRASHES and BURNS
@ Secret Headquarters
Friday September 15th, 8pm-10pm

Secret Headquarters is pleased to announce an art
opening with the lovely and talented JOHNNY RYAN.

Johnny first developed his hilarious drawings in the
self-published title Angry Youth Comix. Now published
by Fantagraphics Books, Ryan’s AYC has become the
international bastion of lowbrow humor cartooning.
Ryan’s utterly unpretentious taboo-tackling is an
infectious bombardment of political incorrectness.

Secret Headquarters
3817 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026
323-666-2228 (phone)
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As you may have heard, unfortunately there was another school shooting today. This time it was in Montreal at Dawson College. One of our fellow Metrobloggers, Jay, works at Dawson College and just posted his first hand account of what he saw today. It’s a pretty horrific story, but also absolutely amazing. He writes:

“I then went to speak to a coworker to see if he knew anything, he knew nothing more than I did. He and I, along with a handful of other folks in the print shop were just kind of listening to more gunshots and screaming, trying to figure out what to do next because the shots were getting louder, therefor closer. A few other stragglers entered my area for safety and I was “manning the door” with yet another colleague while the others (approx. 12 people) were taking cover in the back area, out of view form the main door.

“My colleague then spotted a young girl looking for cover in the hallway and ran out to help her. There was another gun shot as he got the student to the ground… he was hit in the shoulder and ran back to the print shop. I have no idea what happened to the student, I don’t know if he knows either. He will be fine, I’m no expert on bullet wounds, but it looked like it went straight through.”

Definitely worth reading the whole story for yourself.

Patt Morrison just interviewed “The Black Dahlia” novelist James Ellroy and Dahlia expert Larry Harnisch on 89.3 KPCC, and will be available for streaming rebroadcast online shortly. According to Larry’s blog, it looks like a rift between him and Ellroy has been resolved.

Ellroy will also be reading from the book from 7:30pm to 8:30pm tonite at the Barnes & Noble on the Third St. Promenade in Santa Monica, and tomorrow night at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove.

Mack Reed at LA Voice points out an article revealing Larry Harnisch’s theory as to who killed and severed Elizabeth Short, and in the comments it appears that Larry has taken offense to Mack’s posting of a crime scene photo. Speaking of the crime scene, Mack points out that he’ll be with the IAAL-MAF bike ride when its path goes by the Norton lot this week.

If you haven’t taken a peek at Universal’s official site for “The Black Dahlia”, you’re missing out on a few neat features, including an interactive map of shoot locations, a documentary on the seedy underbelly of the city called “Dark LA”, and “LA: Then & Now”, a slide show of vintage photos compared to more recent pics.

Sunday’s “The Real Black Dahlia” Crime Bus is sold out, but it appears a few seats are left for the Saturday ride. Click here for more info.

I’ll announce the winner of the Black Dahlia prize pack tomorrow, and on Friday I’ll also post my back to back reviews of both Hollywoodland and The Black Dahlia. I also had a chance to speak with the legendary, Oscar winning production designer of The Black Dahlia, Dante Ferretti last week, and will post about this as well as the locations featured in the film in the coming days.

It isn’t a vacation or even premiere passes, but if you’re interested in winning a prize pack of Black Dahlia movie goodies check out this post here. Entry deadline is today at noon… but with less than ten entries (so far) your odds are relatively good to actually win something!

Since Disney “bought” Pixar Studios (in spite of the numbers, I think it’s Pixar who are the ones who now rule over Disney), it was inevitable that Steve Jobs would announce a Disney iPod. This comes part of an announced exclusice deal for iTunes to make downloads available for other flicks from Disney, Pixar, Touchstone, and Miramax. My prediction is that this deal, along with similar recent ventures by Amazon.com and others, will be nixed by the same type of anti-trust laws that kept studios from owning theatre chains.

On Monday, Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill that makes it an infraction “to take more than 25 copies of a free newspaper to recycle it or prevent people from reading it.” (source: Editor & Publisher) Lil Mike at Metroblogging San Francisco covers this (among other recent “Shwizenjigger” controversies) with sharp analysis including: “No wonder the prison guard union has endorsed his opponent… can you imagine how boring prisons will become if they are full of newspaper thieves?”

Is LACMA looking to change its name? Curbed LA reports that they’ve been asked their opinion on changing the Los Angeles County Museum of Art into THE MUSEUM OF ART Los Angeles County.

Peggy Archer discovers the hard way that there are only three gas stations in Beverly Hills, along with “a certain type of woman there – bleached blonde hair, botoxed yet somehow pinched faces, overly yoga’d bodies, nose jobs, cheek, chin and breast implants, liposuction, bleached teeth, Hermes bag, blank stare.” Not to spoil the story, but that breed of woman didn’t help Peggy out with her stalled car.

Erica Zabowski of the LA Independent provides a little background on some of the unknown celebrities found along the Hollywood Walk of Fame, including such names as Elmo Lincoln, Licia Albanese, Fed Niblo, and Little Jack Little. In twenty years, I imagine another writer will include Ryan Seacrest in a similar article.