That is a pencil eraser sized chunk of hail, one of about 30 billion that just rained down on us in downtown. I tried to get a photo of more than one but they were melting pretty much the second they hit the ground. Nutty!

Did anyone else just get hailed on? I’m over in Hollywood and I’d swear that last downpour let loose some teensy little hail. They were about the size of, um, lentils? And melted rather quickly. But they sure sounded noisy and bouncy.

Apparently I am not doing a very good job of superheroing my neighborhood of chinatown. The police have currently yellow taped my block and helicopters are overhead looking for a criminal of some sorts. I must stay inside. My only hope is that the perpertrator is some hipster with stickers gone awry. Personally I think this is a pretty shitty way of getting me to blog.

My digicam just ran out of batteries…grrr. The police are currently two blocks up from this pic. Please avoid…unless you have roast duck to deliver to me.

Anyone from LA (or surrounding areas) going up to BloggerCon? I was thinking it might be cool to get a bunch of people together and carpool up there and back. Any takers?

Some might say the aftermath of this wreck on the 5 Freeway South at the Glendale Boulevard Bridge gives new meaning to the term “roadside vegetable stand” while most commuters will call the clean-up effort by a far more ominous name: Sigalert.

Not sure of the how and the why, but as I rolled north slowly past this totaled 18-wheeler with its crushed cab and its cargo box torn open like the world’s largest sardine can, I said a prayer for the rig’s driver and sent out some extra hope that the rest of us on this rain-slicked day will take a little heed along with a little foot off the gas.

…so be honest, how many of you expected the silly season‘s most powerful, chilling, and clear-eyed political protest song to come from Eminem? There’s a blogad to the right where you can see the video for his new song “Mosh.” The servers are getting hammered, so be patient. Or strap on your tricorn, eyepatch and parrot and hit the p2p nets – I’m sure Marshall won’t mind.

My wife and I have always intended to get to the new Getty, but there was such a crush when it first opened that we figured we’d wait…and here we are still waiting. We’ll get out there, I promise.

In the meantime, fellow metroblogger (from our DC affiliate) Tom Bridge has posted a thoroughly spiffy gallery from his trip to the Getty today. If you’ve procrastinated as badly as we have, or even if you haven’t, go have a look!

Mike Outmesguine has this scoop over at The Wireless Weblog – Mayor Hahn has a panel of bigwigs putting together a plan for us LA types with laptops to get our wi-fi on city-wide.

îI want Los Angeles to remain at the leading edge of innovation and creativity,î Mayor Hahn said. ìWe need wireless access to the Internet everywhere in the city ñ not just in select locations. I believe that Wi-Fi and ënext generationí technologies will help us bridge the digital divide.î

More can be found in this press release.

This doesn’t apply to people in Los Angeles County but if you live in Alameda, Merced, Napa, Orange, Plumas, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, Shasta, or Tehama – or know someone who does, you should go check out the Paper or Plastic campaign. Voters in those counties will have e-voting or traditional paper voting options and there’s some things they should know before making that choice.

November is National Novel Writing Month. While it’s not a specifically Los Angeles activity, there will be local meet ups at coffee houses all over the LA Basin.

Everyone’s got at least one novel in them, and why agonize for years over that manuscript? Valuing quantity over quality, NaNoWriMo is a seat-of-your-pants approach to writing. On November 1st some 30,000 people all over the globe are going to be putting their plots to the test. Signups have already started – check out their website for complete details on the challenge.

NaNoWriMo founder, Chris Baty, will also be visiting Los Angeles to promote his book, No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days.

I’ll be going for my fourth win this year, you can read my travails and triumphs as I go along on my blog. And if you’re really interested in viewing lots of other bad fiction, see this site that lists oodles of blogged NaNovels. (Past winners also include Kathleen McGivney and Will Campbell.)

Ah yes, Halloween doth approach and an election shortly thereafter, and with the two come neighbors who festoon their frontyards with graveyards and goblins and political placards.

Walking the dog last night and passing this display a few doors to the south of me I couldn’t help but scoff at the irony and then wonder (and take a pic ó†yes, I carry a cam with me practically everywhere) why the Halloween-happy homeowners could so miss the juxtapositional implication of standing a Kerry/Edwards sign smack dab in the middle of so-faux headstones for Freddie [sic] Kruger [sic], Vampyra [sic], Vlad the Impaler, Boris Karloff, and others spelled correctly or not.

Sure, I hear you. You’re saying the irony might have been intentional. Maybe they’re Bushies having a snide laugh at the democrats’ expense? Doubt it. First because the Kerry/Edwards sign’s been proudly flying solo in that yard for weeks. And second because it’s a medically proven fact that most republicans are irony-deficient.

I’ve been in New York all weekend and while the food was great and it was fun seeing friends, I’m so glad to be back in LA. I know a lot of people think I’m on the pipe for this, but damn, Los Angeles is really my favorite place I’ve ever lived. It’s home.

After holding out for a long while out of spite, I finally tried the nearby Cobras & Matadors in Los Feliz for a sampling of their Catalan menu of seafood, cured meats, cheeses and charcuterie. If this restaurant was a date for the evening, Cobras & Matadors would be a 32 year old in marketing, attractive, worldly in a KCRW sort of fashion, dressed casually flirtatious but refined enough you’d still respect her, and has a habit of becoming increasingly louder with each glass of wine she puts away. I had mixed reservations about dining here because it replaced a former favourite steak establishment, The Hillmont, where the meat was carnivore-satisfying yet affordable, and the side dishes were executed favourably well that they deserved merit and mention all on their own accord. Bros before ho’s, and this Spanish lady of the night had taken away my beefy, brawny buddy. Out was the long communal tables and open spaced interior of the previous establishment, replaced with the candlelight chic interior of intimately placed tables, but mysteriously paired with the most uncomfortable chairs I’ve had to endure since my bus tour of central China. I suspect prisoners sentenced to death by electrocution would recognize the ergonomics of these chairs, a strange furnishing choice in an otherwise lovely interior setting.
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I was in Downtown L.A. a little while back and snapped this photo:

According to the lacity.org page on the Sister City program:

Los Angeles began its Sister City program in 1959 with Nagoya, Japan. That was over 40 years ago and since then the Los Angeles Sister City program has grown and now includes 20 Sister Cities located over 6 continents. This is the largest number of affiliations in California.

Did you know Los Angeles had so many sister cities?

The program is supposed to provide “opportunities for city officials and citizens to experience and explore other cultures through long-term community links.”

Anyone have any ideas on how to take this into our own hands? I was thinking we could do our own Sister Metblog City program and stage simultaneous robot protests?

I’m not much of a star gazer, but I had to mention that Lisa Bonet and her beau (didn’t recognize him) showed up at the coffee shop we were chilling at on Friday night. They pulled up in a totally low-key, older Honda and seemed completely cool and unpretentious. And she looks amazing. I don’t know what I expected her to look like, but Ms. Lilakoi Moon is aging very, very well.