I’m happily married, so this new Russian-roulette dating service isn’t designed for me, but listen:

I just stumbled upon CrazyBlindDate – LA, and I gotta wonder: How many Angelenos who use it will meet the date of their dreams, how many will get stuck with horrible boorish losers who stiff them on the tab? And how many will just catch a good, old-fashioned case of stood up?
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Local blogger Neil Kramer has this crazy idea that all bloggers are created equal. In an attempt to prove it, he is hosting an experiment: bloggers sign up to interview each other and then post the interviews. When you sign up, the person before you in the comments interviews you; the next person to leave a comment is your interviewee. Simple, and wildly successful. I think there are over 200 people signed up as of this writing (possibly over 250 but hard to get an accurate count with trackbacks).

There is a running list of the interviews here. If you like, you can see the interview I conducted here, and an interview with me here.. And you can sign up for your own interviews here.

Image stolen from Citizen of the Month.

A few weeks ago on CNN, I was struck by a story of a Missouri teenager who committed suicide over MySpace communications. A neighbor mother (who is obviously the World’s Most Immature Mom) posed as a fictional sixteen year old boy to harass a thirteen year old girl, and her last mean-spirited messages are credited with pushing Megan Meier over the edge into hanging herself.

This isn’t about the case itself though, so much as the novel way it is being handled, here in L.A. The Times reported earlier this week that the case is being tried as fraud, here in Los Angeles, with MySpace as the victim. Prosecutors in Missouri couldn’t find a way to prosecute Lori Drew, so prosecutors here are trying to nail her with “defrauding the MySpace social networking website by allegedly creating the false account… [using] federal wire fraud and cyber fraud statutes.” This opens up a whole legally fascinating can of worms, regarding pseudo-identities on the Internet. The Times quotes Laurie Levenson, from Loyola law school, who remarked that an indictment “could raise 1st Amendment issues and questions about how to fairly enforce such a law on the Internet.”

I agree that this could set a much bigger precedent than just punishing a bored suburban mom for tormenting a kid. Would every MySpace false identity start being tried in L.A. courts? How would any of this apply to anonymous bloggers, or bloggers who write under false identity? It could end up a defining legal case for the Internet, something that college students study in constitutional law years from now. And is it really worth using the L.A. legal system to try this Missouri case? I can’t wait to see how it plays out.

Finally, you’ll know for sure when you’re actually commenting the real Paris Hilton, and not one of the 900 imposters floating through MySpace.

MySpace Celebrity is here, and it gives “actors, musicians, athletes, comedians and socialites” a chance to interact with their fans.

This does raise a few questions for the L.A.-based company.

1. How will the NCAA feel about college athletes on MySpace Celebrity?
2. How many hit songs does a musician have to have to be a celebrity? How many imdb credits does an actor need?
3. And what is the minimum income level to be considered an official socialite?

Many, many important questions, Tom. Do tell.

You probably have goals for 2008. You may or may not refer to them as resolutions.

While most of us choose not to broadcast our goals to the entire world, some people need that extra push. They turn to a site called 43things. Here, you list your goals, track your progress and talk with people who share similar goals.

Just for fun, I searched for goals matching “Be an actor in L.A.”

The amusing top 25 results, after the jump.
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Its official. 2007 was the year of the blog. I’m sure of it because Kitson on Robertson Blvd. has a giant window display that says so.

To celebrate, they’re hawking t-shirts and other apparel with branding from gossip blogs including Perez Hilton, TMZ.com, Pink is the New Blog, D Listed, and Just Jared.

What? No mention of LAist? (Ha! But seriously, if you want an LAist t-shirt you can buy one online for $2.99).

For some reason, I think this is less an actual attempt to profit from the merchandise than to con bloggers into writing about it and giving Kitson some free publicity. Suckers!

Here’s a few more snaps from the window display…
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You’ve heard of lofts blogging. Public toilets, too. But what about your favorite L.A. hotels?

Renaissance Hollywood is straight-up blogging, and has been since July 2007. Lots of fun news, straight outta Hollywood & Highland!

Did you know that new spa director Helen Storer comes to L.A. from Kirkland, WA, and that she began her career in the music industry with her own band?

I wonder why she made the move.

Photo of a blogger from palmsrick’s photostream

Buzzle.com calls Los Angeles one of the Top 10 Best Family Vacation Destinations in the world. Unless, you know, you’d rather go to the Swiss Alps or Aruba.

Home to our very own Hollywood, Los Angeles with its beautiful sunny weather and its host of beautiful celebrities, is one of the most famous family vacation spots today. From touring some of your favorite stars homes to visiting the different Bohemian zones, LA is famous for its nightlife, restaurants and its people.

Huh. We have Bohemian zones. Who knew?

I’ve had friends and family visit L.A. plenty. Even more that insist we “meet in the middle,” which means Las Vegas. Do you know anyone that has made this their family vacation destination?

One year ago this week Tony Pierce was deemed non-notable and had his Wikipedia entry deleted. This in spite of his being deemed the Blogfather of thousands of readers, having appeared on national television to discuss blogging, and, heck, just Googling the word “tony” once gave his infamous Busblog the number one result (he’s now in seventh).

Now that he’s moving on from LAist to manage the blogs at the Los Angeles Times, is it time for Wikipedians to reconsider?

In his new role at the Times, Pierce’s job will also be to “bring attention to the pros who write the paper.” Considering his track record at LAist, he could be the man to do it: during his tenure, traffic escalated from 125,000 page views per month to one million.

Pierce strenuously denies the site’s success had anything to do with its reduced focus on Los Angeles (see comments here), however, he does attribute it partly to his attacking commenters and largely on recruiting a small army of talented writers. It’ll definitely be fascinating to see not only how LAist will fare without him, but also if he can bring the same level of success to one of the world’s greatest newspapers.

His first day on the clock is December 17th.

Below, Pierce gives a little more on what he’s expecting while working on Spring Street, how blogging has gotten him girls (in Canada, especially), and goes no holds barred on whats wrong with blogging.la and the Los Angeles blog scene.
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The slightly dramatic redesign of LATimes.com shows that the folks at 1 Spring Street are finally getting one thing right. Make the page readable and usable.

Now if only they can make good on promises that they’re going to start welcoming citizen news stories, offering social-networking tools and perhaps, um, linking out to the rest of the Internets from story text.

Mmm. Smells like 1999 …
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In the vein of yesterday’s post on Lucy, the store cat at Skylight Books, and her battle with feline leukemia, I came across this site today (I think I’d seen it once before but it hadn’t registered quite what it was). Angeleno artist Amanda Visell recently designed this shirt, right, for the cause. Sonia Zjawinski’s “pet” project is a great one to support, and you can also give props to an LA artist doin’ her thang! I also just think it’s great they call them tripods. I’ve always had a soft spot for the concept of the “loaf cat,” a hypothetical cat with no legs, which you could pick up like a little loaf and take places, and she couldn’t hide under your bed when guests came over, and which would be, while somewhat sad, super cute.*

The web site itself is really quite cool, with info on doggie health and well-being, plus doggies & kitties you can help. So then you feel all good ‘n’ stuff. Purrrrr.

*Aware this is a little weird, but seriously, wouldn’t a cat shaped like a little loaf be sooo cute?! Eeeeee!

Sooo, after ten, count them ten, days on the New Job, they’re sending me to the Emmys to blog live. Not just locally, but–glory of stupendously distastrous glories, and possessed of an absolutely sublime capacity for monumental failure on a grand stage–it will be national as well. Ha! Hahahaha! Ahahaha! Ahem.

[Darth Vader voice] The FOOLS.

Ok, ok. No, I’m kidding. If there’s anything I know how to do, it’s blog. Yes? Right?

Kee-rist, I hope so.

I’ll be cloistered in what I presume will be a sweltering tent backstage with the rest of the media, for approximately ten hours, in formal dress, balancing a laptop and a camera, attempting to keep the snark from creeping into my posts as the hours pass, and, hopefully, I’ll be able to report back to y’all exactly what the experience is like when I get home at the end of the night–provided I’m not carried out of the place in a stretcher after collapsing when I misidentify the chick who does those Shoe Pavilion commercials for the gal who played Ray’s wife on Everybody Loves Raymond.

Heading out now to by some Naturalizer pumps. I don’t think they’ll let me wear my fabulously comfortable Burning Man desert platform boots.

The celebs I’m most excited about seeing…? See photo.

Over at la.foodblogging.com, Jonah has an excellent post that points out the value of local food blogs and compares them to the work of professional food writers, it’s worth a read. But I was surprised to read this info from an older post:

Whoops, I was reading the LA Times Terms of Service, which I would link to, but, well, just keep reading. I removed the direct links to the LA Times blogs because of their statement that:

Links to, and frames of, Latimes.com. If you operate a Web site and wish to link to Latimes.com, you may link only to the home page, www.latimes.com, and not to any other page or subdomain of Latimes.com.

What?!? Sure enough, check out the LAT Terms of Service, if you operate a website (FYI, a myspace page is a website) you are not supposed to link to any articles, just the home page. Oh wait, did I just screw that up? Oops. (Hmm, what’s the Spanish word for lame? Culeros? Mamones? Never mind, I’ll stick to lame.) Lame. Seriously lame.

I only get the weekend edition of the Times (they sneakily added Thursday to the weekend!) since I don’t have the time to read it daily. But now I’m thinking of canceling it all together as I mostly don’t have the patience to go through the whole thing looking for something of interest, it’s become a damn chore. They should be encouraging people and sites linking to the rare items of interest, not fighting it with this bogus TOS. Get with the times already.

(ps, pic above was graffiti spotted at Pita, Pita! I think the connection works!)

I used to be disgusted.

But now I’m just amused:

LA.com, the Daily News’ multi-million-dollar adventure in cutting-edge, boutique-minded narrow-casting live-portalism (geared mostly towards upwardly-mobile women in their 20s with extra cash) that went through a bunch of layoffs barely five months after launch in 2004 is now …

(drumroll, please)

… also a throwaway tabloid barely 20 pages long.

(*In digital form, not for your backyard. Sorry.)

Via Thrillist, I found a site where you can make your own “Hollywood” sign for your blog or website. You can sign in (free) and get the code for embedded images or simply make a sign and copy the image to your desktop.

Hooray for Hollywood!

A few more of my own sign ideas after the leap.
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