This week Metroblogging Los Angeles will look at other infamous Los Angeles murders that deserve the silver screen treatment. With last Friday’s opening of Hollywoodland, about the mystery surrounding the death of George Reeves, and this Friday’s release of The Black Dahlia, what better time to present the crimes and mysteries that fascinate some of the writers here at blogging.la?

In the meantime, I invite our readers (this means you) to share the crimes they’d most like to see adapted to the big screen… and if you do, you’ll be entered into a drawing for a Black Dahlia prize pack courtesy of Universal Studios, including a Black Dahlia one sheet, t-shirt, and hat.

To enter, simply leave your comment below, and be sure to include a valid email address so I can contact you if you win (if you’d rather not leave your email address online, feel free to write me instead at unsomnambulist at gmail dot com). I’m not judging the entries – this is pure luck – so feel free to be as brief or longwinded, and obvious or creative as you want.

Deadline is this Wednesday, September 13th at noon. One entry per person, No more entries being accepted, but feel free to comment as much as you want… Metroblogging writers are also encouraged to comment, but are ineligible for the drawing.

(photo by Winged Hussar at LA Taco)

[for the love of god only click if you want to see this REALLY BIG]

Yeah I did say I wouldn’t post any more about Felt Club but they’ve changed their venue and I feel you have the right to know.

Today (sorry I didn’t post sooner) marks the first indoor Felt Club, at their new venue, THE ECHO.

Hours are 11-6 TODAY, Sunday, and the address is

1822 Sunset Blvd., Echo Park

Just a heads up if you’re out and about on Sunday that the LA Triathalon is going on.

The Bike portion of the race cuts the widest swath across the city so look sharp for street closings.

Copious notes on the LATafficinfo.lacity.org site.

More after the jump.
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Dahlia expert Larry Harnisch has discovered what appears to be a copies of “Black Dahlia Avenger” signed by writer Steve Hodel to James Ellroy available on eBay. Larry’s posted his findings at both the 1947Project site and his own personal blog. LA Observed also mentions the the eBay auction, but doesn’t say if they happened to find it on their own (in which case they must be as obsessed by the Black Dahlia as Larry), or if they were tipped off by someone… either way, I’m unsure if the signed books are fakes, or if Ellroy gave away personally inscribed books by a self described “blood brother”.

A few seats are still left for The 1947Project’s “The Real Black Dahlia” Crime Bus to be held Sept. 16th and the 17th. This is an unique tour for Dahlia enthusiasts, as hosts Nathan Marsak and Kim Cooper have a wealth of knowledge on not only the investigation into Elizabeth Short’s death, but also unique bits of other morbid LA history. They’ll likely also share a theory into who killed the Black Dahlia that is more convincing, albeit practical, than any other.

EatingLA reported last week that Scoops Gelato was creating a special Black Dahlia flavor to commemorate the film release… now Kim Cooper brings the news that Tai Kim, owner of scoops, has created TWELVE new flavors inspired by the morbid death of Elizabeth Short.

Short joins the ranks of celebrated people with foods named for them, like opera star Nellie Melba (Peach Melba), chef Alfredo de Lelio (Fettucine Alfredo), Brown Derby owner Robert Cobb (Cobb Salad), Jerry Garcia (Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia) and Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon pastries).

The special flavors will only be available on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 16th and 17th, Friday, Sept. 15th and Sat. the 16th to the general public, and exclusively to Crime Bus riders on Sunday – the Crime Bus will find that Scoops is a featured stop on the tour…

Happy Birthday to my city of Angels! Sometimes, you smell like a monkey, but I love you anyway. And without Los Angeles, how could there be a blogging.la? Sorry about choosing sleep instead of that nine mile walk I’d promised to go on, but I needed some rest allow me more time to write about your beautiful birthday suit…

In what sounds like a genius guerrilla marketing effort by contestants on The Apprentice, a number of official looking freeway signs have appeared around L.A. telling drivers where to find the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes. The Daily Breeze points out that two of the signs were placed on the 405 conveniently near “another hoity-toity course — the Riveria Country Club.”

XM Radio will rebroadcast “five hours of music, jingles, sound checks and local color” from the archives of KFWB (AM 980). The clips will be from the 60′s, when the now all news station was spinning Top 40 hits. (source: Daily News)

City officials participated in a simulated terrorist attack last week, and the LA Times (who also financed the exercise) has the details of the frightening scenario and how our paid overseers handled the emergency. A good read for both Tom Clancy fans or anyone who wants an inside look into what the government has to deal with, and how the citizens, even in the best of all bad situations, will need to be ready to take care of themselves.

“Across from the mock-Uzi store on 3rd street at Los Angeles” the Slo-Mo Tourist has discovered downtown’s Bong Row. “every other store on this block was selling… glass bongs and hookahs of various sizes and boxes of the flavored tobaccos you put in them.”

Ron at LosAnjealous has the “Top 10 Notable Residents of Whittier”, with Tina Yothers just beating Richard Nixon to the number one spot. #3 are The Cold War Kids who perform on Friday at the Troubadour.

Zach at LAist is keeping count of all the candles on LA’s cake with a roundup of today’s commorative events.

If you’re still in town and need something to do, how about stopping by the LA Bloggers Garage Sale. At the moment you’ll find weird crap from Carly Milne, Calpernia, lyregal, coreyspears, jason’sroom, michael, popbytes, william, danrenzi and peggy (I hope she doesn’t bring any of those couches) and probably others.

Join us starting at 11 AM on into the afternoon.
Saturday, September 2nd
636 N. Curson (just south of Melrose)

What I’m selling after the jump.
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If you haven’t gotten hip to Karie Bible’s Film Radar, you probably don’t want to know what great movies and film events you’ve been missing. Film Radar can be best summed as whats fallen off the radar of Moviefone and other conventional film listings.

For example, from the email I arrived late last night, I found out about the following:

• The 3-D Film Festival will run in its red/blue spectacled glory from September 8th to the 17th at the Egyptian Theatre.
• Kevin Smith takes over Cinespace on September 6th for the View Askew Film Festival.
• Midnite movie at the Rialto this Saturday is Teen Wolf!
• The ironically wordily titled 10th Annual Los Angeles International Short Film Festival is running at the Arclight from September 5th Р14th.

There’s a full calendar at the website, but I strongly recommend signing up for the Film Radar mailing list – in addition to a weekly newsletter that breaks down whats happening at the indie film theatres around town, you’ll also get occasional invites for free, advance screenings.

News cameraman BeFrank makes no apologies in covering a fluff piece for the day (instead of his usual beat of cop shootings, drive bys, and other violent acts), and gets some great snaps (like the one at right) from behind the scenes at the first day of The Price Is Right’s 35th season. Which reminds me of something else I’ve never done in L.A…. join the studio audience and try to become a contestant on The Price Is Right – heck, that sounds like a great writers and readers field trip for blogging.la! Anyone wanna come on down?

Blogging.la contributor Travis Keller is a featured DJ on the bill for LA Weekly’s Detour Music Festival to be held Oct. 7th downtown. While you’re waiting for Travis to perform (or finishing your drink afterwards) you can also check out Queens of the Stone Age, Redd Kross, Shepard Fairey, and the one Scientologist who might make us give the religion a shot: Beck!

The deadline to get your pet spayed and/or neutered* and implanted with a microchip was this past Sunday. What? You didn’t know. No worries since “the county Board of Supervisors voted to postpone strict enforcement of the new law for six months.” This only applies to pet owners in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles. (from The Daily Breeze)

It sounds like the demand for cheap, illegal labor is about to go up in Los Angeles as the state Senate approved raising minimum wage to $8 an hour. The $1.25 bump is being rolled out in two steps, starting with “an increase of 75 cents an hour in January and another 50 cents the following year.” (source: Daily News)

Little known fact: the most active (and arguable interesting) comments in the Metroblogging network are at Karachi, Pakistan. One of the hot subjects revolves around a post where blogger MB suggests that they’d be better of if a number of their local leaders “just disappeared” or worse.

*In tribute to Bob Barker, I suggest both.

‚Ä¢ Today is the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Councilman John (at Mayor Sam) points out that NWNC President Jim Alger is being recognized in Biloxi today for using his own airplane and coordinating relief and rescue efforts that saved countless lives. But, John asks, “The bigger question remains, what has the Federal Govenment learned from Katrina? Are we ready for a large disaster in Los Angeles? Do YOU have a plan?”

‚Ä¢ The city of Glendale plans to celebrate its 100th birthday on Monday at the annual Old-Timers Picnic. Also on hand will be 100 year old Glendale resident Gertrude Ness. The Old Timers Picnic has been a “Glendale staple since 1907″ and had been held at the Casa Adobe de San Rafael since 1953… and if that doesn’t date far enough back for you, Casa Adobe was built in 1865. And some say Los Angeles doesn’t have a history (source: Glendale News Press).

‚Ä¢ A few months ago NBC4 LA reporter Joel Grover did an investigation into consumer fraud at area Jiffy Lubes. The reports led to five Jiffy Lubes (in Encino, Canoga Park, Glendale, Sherman Oaks, and Burbank) being closed for a couple days to “retrain” the staff. The Consumerist presents a video compilation of all four reports.

‚Ä¢ Congratulations to LA Observed’s Kevin Roderick for being named a finalist for the Southern California Booksellers Association 2006 Book Awards. His book, Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles, is up against such titles as Barkley: A Dog’s Journey and Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood. Winners will be announced October 21st.

‚Ä¢ Brandon at Down With Pants, a blogging.la reader/commenter (heck, I’ll call him a fan!), is soliciting managers for his fantasy football league. “Am I the only one who thinks it would f-ing awesome to compete head-to-head with your blogging friends during this football season?” If only I could compete with my fantasy football cheerleader squad…

‚Ä¢ LA Taco takes issue with an unwritten Riverside ordinance against $1 tacos they read about in the Press Enterprise, where writer Dan Bernstein describes being denied one taco a la carte: “The best she could offer was three tacos for $4.87. This, I later learned, may be an unwritten part of the city’s homeless policy… Higher prices — that three-taco minimum — supposedly discourage the ‘undesirables.’ ”

‚Ä¢ Rodger Jacobs returns from a week’s absence at 8763 Wonderland to present part one of Bogart Sleeps Here: A Trace Novella, a modern day LA noir.

‚Ä¢ The Hot Blog cuts through the spin on the Tom Cruise/Paramount breakup: “Cruise/Wagner was not fired. Their relationship with Paramount was not terminated. There was a negotiation for a new deal and the deal didn’t happen… Sumner Redstone made it a much bigger story with his shocking statement… which was shocking because it was so ineptly handled. A.F.S.P. Anything for Stock Price.”

‚Ä¢ Note to all PC haters who laughed at Dell laptops that kept catching fire: “Apple Computer is recalling 1.1 million laptop batteries supplied by Sony, citing a fire hazard, The Associated Press reports.” (via CNN)

‚Ä¢ Congrats to the Four Q BBQ team for landing several top five placements at last weekend’s Silent Valley BBQ Competition. (h/t BBQ Junkie) Four Q is made up of four Los Angeles food bloggers with a talent for ribs, rubs, and all things BBQ. (photo above from BBQ Junkie’s Flickr site)

‚Ä¢ “Subject Line Here”, a live reading by a collection of LA bloggers held a few months ago, raised over $2200 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society between box office and a DVD of the evening. Congrats to Shane Nickerson and the rest of the crew for putting it all together.

‚Ä¢ The writers at Independent Sources had their claimed antonovich.blogspot.com removed for violating Blogger’s policy against “impersonating any person or entity on a blog.” Without seeing the Google cache of the site, which has also been removed, its difficult to see if they were actually impersonating LA County Supervisor Mike Antonovich. However, Blogger only gave the guys less than 48 hours to respond to the allegation. They add, “Google — whose motto is “information wants to be free, except in China” — allows Blogger / Blogspot sites that purport to be written by George W. Bush, John Kerry, and Santa Claus… but LA County Supervisors are apparently out of bounds.”

‚Ä¢ A round up of actual labor oriented marches Labor Day weekend in support of illegal undocumented migrant workers at LA Voice. Mack Reed also points out a number of right wing bloggers “wringing their hands” over the issue.

‚Ä¢ Victor with LosAnjealous has been keeping an eye on Westside Rental’s “dubious” reports on fluctuating rental costs in LA, pointing out “the limited data with which they are attempting to depict a general economic trend cannot in fact be used to do so.” Oh, yeah, discussing charts and real estate sounds dry… but seeing a local blogger expose an influential business like Westside Rentals is worth checking out.

‚Ä¢ ValleyNews.com launched last Monday – great concept (neighborhood specific news), but the layout needs a bit of work (the front page is lame, and isn’t clear that you need to pull a neighborhood from the dropdown list to get anywhere). News items themselves make it worth the extra work.

If you’re looking for something to do on Friday night and you have a young adult in your family, then Dutton’s bookstore’s book party for “A Dog Called Leka” may be just the ticket. Writer Willard Manus will read and sign from his latest novel which officially hits the bookstores on August 26th.

Renowned author Willard Manus gives us this grand story of high adventure set on the beautiful Aegean Sea. “A Dog Called Leka” tells the story of Ben Edgeworth, an eighteen-year old boy, and his remarkable dog Leka, as they sail among the Greek isles in a catamaran built by Ben himself. The reader will join with the two adventurers as they face unexpected dangers, learning to survive by their wits and skill. Leka came to Ben as a hungry stray, searching the shipyard for scraps of food. He quickly proves himself to be a faithful companion in an extraordinary journey that will stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.

Book party for “A Dog Called Leka”
Willard Manus will sign and read from his new novel
Friday, August 25 at 7pm
Dutton’s Bookstore :: 11978 San Vicente Blvd. Brentwood
(ample parking behind the store)

That is a question that comes up from time to time and last week a blogger in Bangalore wrote a very long post about just that. I’ve spent the past week talking to the folks writing for us, and the people behind the scenes making it happen and I think I have a pretty good answer to the question. It all seems to boil down to the fact that there are people reading blogs for different reasons – some people just want to know it’s raining, while other want to know that it’s raining and that the author lost his umbrella on the way home from work. I like the stories about the unbrellas. If you’ve ever read blogging.la and wondered WTF we’re trying to do, this post is probably worth reading.

Please submit ideas and suggestions for this column or larger blog entries by using the “suggest a story” link in the sidebar at right.

• Sploid!, aka “”Drudge Report meets the Weekly World News”, is going 404. The Gawker Media/Ken Layne site was put up for sale a few months ago and hasn’t had any takers. For my money, Sploid! beats the funny pants off The Onion… all the more notable because all the stories in Sploid! are actual news items. (h/t LA Observed)
• BonBlogs is counting the hours until “Snakes on a Plane” opens this Friday… unsure if she’s aware that there’s multiple Thursday night screenings around town. Which reminds me, if only Sam Jackson spoke Parseltongue, “SOAP” could have been “Look Who’s Talking 4″.
• The Southern California Restaurant Historical Society (yes, there is one) will have a tribute to the Brown Derby this Saturday, August 19th from 10am-noon. The free event will feature discussions and presentations by “Jane Lane, Master caricaturist from the Hollywood Brown Derby, Mark Willems, author, “The Brown Derby Restaurant: A Hollywood Legend” and Rebecca Goodman of the Save the Derby Coalition.” Location: 4500 Los Feliz Blvd. (h/t LA Time Machines)

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As director Davis Guggenheim mentioned during the Q&A after opening day of An Inconvenient Truth at the ArcLight, Al Gore’s intention was always to bring his message of global warming and what we need to do about it to the widest audience possible AND do it by disrupting the environment as little as possible.

So now you can apply to be one of the first 100 people to bring the message to L.A.! They’re accepting applications for the first wave of training in Nashville; how you get yourself there is your eco-bidness. Maybe take a cue from local faves, the Ditty Bops or Midnight Ridazz and human-power your way there…

The Climate Project Training Program, via kottke.org, via WorldChanging.com