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.

How are you gentleman? Yet another week of talking smack in the comments. Who said what?

• Half of L.A.’s businesses breakin’ the law! – Do you know what the law regarding credit card usage is? David Markland points out that it’s illegal to have a minimum charge, and everyone has an opinion about that.
• goddamn fucking election junk mail shit fuck – You think that last post inspired opinions? HA! Wil has had it with political direct mail, and so have a lot of people. But not everyone…
• Where would you photograph LA? – Wheaton checks in with back to back lotsa comment threads. This is a solicitation for suggestions of where out of towners might take cool non touristy photos around LA. Lots of ideas in this thread.
• 10 Reasons Why I’ll Probably Never Return to Knott’s Halloween Haunt – Theme parks on holidays. Cindy Mosqueda details the horror and scares the crap out of every single reader we have.
• Printing The Legend… – The Legend of the haunted picnic table has been blown wide open by Will Campbell and Norm Bates.

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!

Ack! I’m running late today so no witty commentary from me. Here’s the posts from the last week with the most activity in the comment threads. Check ‘em out:

• Is Rent Really A Racial Issue? by Hexodus
• M-O-M dismissed by heathervescent
• Shaking the Tree, Seeing What Falls Out by Sean Bonner
• Cat’s out of the bag on this one by Sean Bonner
• The King is Back in L.A. (for two days only) by Colleen Wainwright

It’s that time of the week again – we made some posts and you had something to say about them. Here’s the most commented on posts of last week:

• M-O-M dismissed – What started as a brief follow up news blip about an earlier post has spiraled into an all out war of the words in the epic fight over the difference between graffiti and gang tags. If the motivation, process, and result art different, are the two the same thing just because they both utilize spray paint?
• Hit and Run in Silver Lake – My car was parked outside of my house when a Hummer H2 plowed into it and then took off. Security cameras caught the whole thing, this is still developing and lots of great suggestions here.
• A New York State Of Mind – What to do with the cornfield? A New York firm has put up a proposal, except they some how made it 640% too large, suggesting a chunk of downtown including Dodger Stadium get leveled. Reactions are not exactly what you might expect.
• Petty Theft - Heathervescent’s continuing saga of trashmongers taking things out of her garbage bins, and readers arguing about how right/wrong/legal that is.
• Keep Burning Man Segregated – Los Angeles Burners took over downtown last week, including some places that weren’t delighted to see them. Comment thread is full of “Hippies!” and “Nuh uh!”

Holy crap! Did you know there are Podcasters, right here in LA? For serious! They even have a website to prove it. Check it out for an extensive list of folks in LA with audio recording equipment, server space, and rss feeds. As of this moment I haven’t listened to a single one of them so if they suck it’s not my fault. But I’m going to check them out right away, mostly I’ll be choosing by wittyness of the name. And if you want to actually get out of the house, turns out they have meetings that you can show up to and check out. Check it out!

It’s that time again – We said some stuff this week, and you said some other stuff back. Here’s the most active comment threads for the week:

1. What does that extra few bucks at Arclight get you? – Thanks to dumb movie booking policy I ended up at the grove and made a list of thing that happen there that will never happen at the Arclight. Some folks cheered, some whined, and others tried to justify people checking their voice mail during a movie.
2. What the fuck is wrong with you? – Eecue asks, in response to a point blank shooting of a toddler. Comments quickly went political discussing why this kind of thing happens more often in Democrat voting areas, and anti-gang policy on both sides of the isle.
3. LA Frog Hates AMC Theaters – A heated one! This was submitted by a reader, then demanded to be removed by the same reader. The comments are filled with policy, lies, and deceit!
4. Mr. Pylon Saves the Day – Jillian loves her Pylon. But is it a Pylon or a Cone. Is having one legal or illegal. Is Mr. Pylon’s first name Monty?
5. The Tyranny of the Beeping – The same number always calls Ben and just beeps. The comments offer suggestions of how he can end this cellular terrorism.

Want to see what planes are flying over us right this second? Here’s your answer. Real time tracking of arriving and departing flights from LAX from Passur.com. This site was pretty swamped yesterday, but should be more usable going forward.

Here we go again – this weeks most active comment threads:

• No Free Rocket Rides at The New Griffith Observatory – The Observatory is reopening and there are some questionable fees involved with it. The comments are full of people discussing the details and speculating how it will go over.
• Dear Neighborhood Trashmonger – Someone has been digging through Heathervescent’s trash and leaving it all over her driveway, on a regular basis. She vents, and the comments turn into a thread about if she’s insensitive to the plights of the less fortunate for complaining about this kind of thing.
• Warning: Obnoxious restaurant opening soon – This annoying gimicky raw food place from San Francisco is opening a location here in LA. Angelenos brace for the impact. I am disgusted, indeed.
• Does this mean I have two dogs? – A Coyote has moved into Cybele’s backyard. What to do? Lots of suggestions in the comments including something about a BEEP BEEP and a steamroller.
• And away we go….! – Dodgers vs. Mets. Jay starts the smacktalk and the commentors return the favor.

Of course if you don’t want to be limited to Los Angeles, feel free to check out some of the most active discussions on the entire Metroblogging network. And as a bonus just for today, it seems the #1 most e-mailed post on the network is Markland’s post about a Naked man running through Starbucks, eating pastries, and getting shot by rubber bullets. Clearly that is a story everyone needs to know about.

I’m trying something new with this post, if you like it, I’ll keep it up. As you know the comments are a big part of this blog and sometimes tell an entirely different story than the original post. The best comment threads include folks who know what they are talking about voicing their opinions and backing up their arguments. So, I thought it might be cool each week to take a look back at some of the most commented on discussions in the last 7 days.

• The Future of LA Mass Transit? – Wow, this on is really making a fuss. Damien Goodmon put together a map proposing what an efficient train map of LA *might* look like, if the city was actually focused on making it happen. The comments initially started with people doing backflips thinking about the utopia LA would be is this wad a reality, then came the naysayers and then came Damien himself to argue the points of contention. As of this moment there are almost 40 comments on that post and a great deal of info is being put out there to conside.
• Is There an Arclight Experience for Live Concerts? – We all know their is no better movie watching experience than Arclgith, but Cybele points out that concerts are seriously lacking in a lot of these areas. Comments are back and forth on how to get this experience, and if anyone should even expect it.
• Studio 60: Go Get Your Own Building – Some creative photoshopping has taken an iconic LA theater and turned it into a faux studio for a new network show. Is this good, bad, interesting, stupid, or does it even matter? Verdict is still out on this one.
• Costco Lostco (aka Tough Bananas) – Snappy answers for pushy sales people. Dickish or deserved?
• Naked man runs through Starbucks, eats pastries, gets shot by rubber bullets – The title says it all folks. Interestingly, this is also the most e-mailed post on the entire metroblogging network right now. I’m sure that says something about our readers, but not entirely sure what.

So, let me know what you think – is this worth while posting. Do you even care. Hello?

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.

The fine folks over at losanjealous just made a post that almost made me choke on my shredded wheat. They spent some time on the L.A. County Coroner Web Site and just wrote about the top 10 things they learned while there. My favorites are:

3. On the privacy page explaining in detail that they don’t use cookies, two cookies are set.
4. To help off-set monetary losses, the Coroner’s Office opened a shop called Skeletons In The Closet in September 1993.
7.The site is laced with punny taglines such as “Our Commitment Burns Bright”, “We Have Our Work Cut Out For Us”, and “Stay Cool.”
10. You will have nightmares after viewing the Unidentified Persons List.

The LAPD Blog received a lot of skeptical looks early on from people pointing out that a lot of the content was just their news releases posted in a blog format and with comments. Several people defended it noting that no one has a perfect blog on day one and it was going to take them a little while to get the feel for it. After reading a bit of it today I think they are definitely getting the hang of it.

While it’s still not lightning fast, they are responding to current events now. As everyone knows last week Paris Hilton was arrested for DUI and today Hollywood Patrol Division Commanding Officer, Captain Joseph Mariani has a statement about the booking, and the procedure followed. This is pretty cool, the actual captain of the division where she was busted has chimed in on the situation. But that is just top level, dig a little deeper and it gets even better.

Two weeks ago they posted a media release about an officer firing a non-tactical negligent discharge. This is a short piece about Officer Chris Walker who accidentally fired his gun while checking to see if his house was being broken into, but the comments are where it really gets interesting. Initially there were a bunch of complaints that this story would even be posted, to which staff blogger Lt. De La Torre pointed out the policy requiring that info to be made public. Shortly there after other officers started commenting, voicing their concerns and Deputy Chief Michel R. Moore came in and responded. While some of these officers are using fake names (for obvious reasons) it’s fantastic that their blog is allowing these discussions to even take place, duscussions that seem to have been hindred in the past.

It’s mid afternoon Friday, and chances are at this point you are sick of the crap you’ve been dealing with all week and are wishing you had different crap to deal with. You might even be ready to quit and go find so new crap right away, which, if that is the case, I’ve totally got some crap you could deal with. Our friends over at Suicide Girls just let us know they are looking for a new Model Manager. Basically a Model Wrangler, but “Manager” is a much nicer word. The full job description is after the jump, so if you are super organized and think making sure suicide girls are where they need to be when they need to be is the kind of crap you’d rather be dealing with then whatever crap you currently deal with, then check it out. There is a contact in the extended entry too.
Read the rest of this entry →

It sounds like Glendale might be the next city in/around Los Angeles to offer free wireless internet for it’s residents. The Glendale News Press has the story which states that the City Council has officially backed the plan and are now looking at (and for more) proposals from vendors to see who can provide the best service for the city. This is super exciting, and I really can’t wait until the news is when a city doesn’t offer this kind of service.