Damian Kulash & Tim Nordwind of OK Go

Maybe not everyone loves a parade, but if you are like me and do, Los Angeles is a great place for one. Not only do we have the annual Rose Parade, but the city is also known for its Doo-Dah Parade, Hollywood Christmas Parade, those Lakers parades whenever they win championships and many, many more.

This past Wednesday, the band OK Go teamed up with Range Rover for an amazing event called “Dance Through Your City.” Essentially, they held a parade for many hours through the streets of the Los Feliz/Hollywood area. Using GPS, the route spelled out the band’s name, which could be visualized on the Range Rover Pulse of the City app. A mobile, musical work of art utilizing the streets and people of Los Angeles. How cool is that?

When I first heard about this event, I was saddened to know I’d be at work and not able to participate. What I didn’t know was that this parade was planned to go on for HOURS, meaning that I did get to take part in the evening. Since the route wasn’t published ahead of time, I was also surprised to learn it was going right by my workplace. I heard it go by, yet failed at finding a good excuse to run outside.

I was able to join up with paraders when they had stopped for a dinner break. The band changed from the brightly colored suits they wore during the day to the black suits covered with changing-color LEDs. Others were wrapping drums, trombones, guitars and themselves with electroluminescent wire. Everyone was encouraged to accessorize with glow sticks and all sorts of other blinking objects.

The experience of parading through the L.A. streets after dark, singing and dancing with other enthusiastic people is something I highly recommend. Part of the fun was the various folks running out of their houses, shops, etc. with quizzical looks or cameras. Some people shook their head, some people danced, and a few even joined in the parade. We saw lots of kids in pajamas. As I marched along, I couldn’t help but think that this was exactly the kind of experience that makes me love L.A.

For more parade goodness, check out the write-ups at LAist and Billboard.com.

Yup, this one’s for SUPERCHUNK, VASELINES, and TELEKINISIS.

The show is at the Music Box on Tuesday, October 19th.

What, you wonder, do YOU have to do to score two free tickets?

The first person to comment with a sentence (in English) using all the letters of the alphabet wins.

The shorter the better – Oh and “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” is out.

We attended a Writer’s Guild Panel a few years ago about his legacy and career and no one had a bad thing to say about him. He was clearly a man who was open to helping anyone out, offering support and creative criticism and encouragement to all who showed gumption and talent. His own work ethic was legendary, cranking out scripts after script and later, novel after novel.

Mr. Cannell’s work might not be considered “art” but he created entertaining, fun, full-of-life tv. He will be sorely and sadly missed by so many in the business, myself included.

David Horsley arrives in Los Angeles with his motion picture company, Nestor Films. They would become the first studio in Hollywood, at Sunset & Gower.

The year was 1911.

Photo From the Los Angeles Public Library

Kathleen is a stand-up comic… and a hilarious one at that.  She’s been on Jay Leno, tours constantly all over the US and has been a big hit on youtube.  Her particular brand of humor uses everyday life to poke fun of our eccentric, mundane human behavior.  She’s from the Mid-West, super accessible and then veers into outrageous antics.  Fun.

Sooooo, if you want to see her you can either buy tickets here, or in the comments section below, tell a good joke or funny experience.  The humor department here at blogging.la will choose four lucky people for a pair of tickets each.  But hurry, the contest closes in 18 hours (Friday at 11 AMish) and we need a laugh!  Don’t forget to put your real email address in when you register (it won’t be published) so we can contact you if you win!

She careened me towards the white picket fence at June and De Longpre, pulling my hair. I whipped her back around, kicking her in the stomach. We continued as I screamed from within the far reaches of my lungs to the passing cars who probably thought they were witnessing a chick fight, what with my female mugger.

It’s comforting to know that events like these are still taking place while the LAPD is running radar on Coldwater & Burbank to catch soccer moms speeding on their way to work.

We’re glad you’re OK, Esther. Thank you for sharing your story with us, and for standing your ground in your new neighborhood.

Perhaps the most recognizable string of letters in the world. A Real Estate Advertising gimmick turned into a Monument and saved by Hugh Hefner, not once but twice. What more fitting tribute to Tinseltown could you ask for? I love The Hollywood Sign.

On Friday the Thirteenth, July 1923, they dedicated The Sign. Thomas Fisk Goff, owner of the Crescent Sign Company, designed it at the behest of real estate developers Woodruff and Shoults. The whole crackpot scheme was the brainchild of H.J Whitley and Harry Chandler, owner of the L.A. Times.

I can almost picture Chandler, with a wild gleam in his eye, exclaiming, “Why, that’s just crazy enough to work!”

The original letters originally read “Hollywoodland,” were five feet taller than the current structure, and festooned with around 4000 light bulbs, plus a giant blinking dot below, 35 foot in diameter, to  ”catch the eye.” Because thirteen, fifty foot tall, white, blinking letters are far too subtle on their own.

They put it there to sell land in the hills. And when they were done, they just left it. Bastards! That’s so “ungreen.” Just leaving your garbage on the hill! What are you thinking!

I kid, of course, I love the thing, but that’s kinda what happened. It was never meant to be permanent, at all, let alone to stand up to decades of weather. And I’m sure many, many people felt that way about it as it started to deteriorate over the years. In the early Forties, the signs official caretaker got drunk, drove into the “H” and destroyed it. By 1949 the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the City of L.A. parks Department had come to a deal to repair the sign. The eliminated the last four letters and removed the lightbulbs. The Chamber of Commerce would have had to foot the bill for lighting the thing, so, yeah; no.

But it was still the original letters and they continued to deteriorate into a complete eyesore. By the 1970′s it was determined that it needed a complete overhaul, costing a quarter of a million dollars. To raise the money, the band Fleetwood Mac pledged to do a charity concert on the hill in 1977, but local residents put a stop to it. So, the following year, Hugh Hefner stepped in and held a charity auction at the Playboy Mansion, auctioning off individual letters at $27,777 each.

Thus, in August of 1978 they tore down the old sign and put up the one that stands today, this time on purpose. The letters are 45 foot tall and from 31 to 39 feet wide. No light bulbs. Hugh Hefner owns the “Y,” Andy Williams spotted for the “W,” and Alice Cooper bought the third “O” in honor of Groucho Marx. Warner Brothers owns the second “O,” and I suspect they currently keep The Warner Kids trapped in there, instead of in their old water tower.

Recently, a proposal to develop the surrounding land prompted the “Save the Peak” campaign. $12.5 Million dollars was needed to keep 138 acres adjacent to the sign. Donations came from all over, but at the eleventh hour, the Hollywood Sign’s Number One Fan, Hugh Hefner stepped in again, this time donating the final $900,000 dollars to save it.

Thanks, Hef. I really, really appreciate it.

I would respectfully like to dedicate this post to the Memory of Peg Entwistle. Rest in Peace, Star.

This post is part of the L.A.’s Greatest Landmarks series – click here for the rest of the series!

(image courtesy of Nacogdoches County Chamber of Commerce)

The Kiwanis Club of Hollywood / Los Feliz is holding their 46th annual Kid’s Day Pancake Breakfast Fundraiser this Saturday, May 8. The Kiwanis Club of Hollywood / Los Feliz is a non-profit organization that supports a wide range of charitable needs in the community with the help of member dues, donations and annual fundraisers.  The annual Pancake Breakfast  provides up to 60 percent of their annual operating budget.  The middle and high school students that sell tickets to the event maintain 50 percent of the proceeds for their respective Builders and Key Clubs, which Kiwanis sponsors and mentors.  In addition to breakfast, there will also be a raffle, balloon animals and children’s fingerprinting.

$3 doesn’t go very far these days, so it’s great that you can get a decent breakfast while supporting your community. Stop by this Saturday and chow down for a good cause. Details below.

Julie (Deborah Foreman) and Randy (a very young Nicolas Cage) are geography-crossed teenagers in love in 1983 Los Angeles. Not long after dumping her popular boyfriend, Tommy, Julie falls for Randy, who is from Hollywood. Her friends do not approve because, like oh my gawd, he’s “different.” He wears red and black instead of pastels, he slums it in a loud, dirty bar, and has friends who look like Sid Vicious. Grody to the max. I’m so sure.

In spite of how much Julie likes Randy, her bitchy “friends” convince her to “do the right thing,” which is break up with Randy and get back together with Tommy. They threaten her with the prospect of losing all of them and her social status. While truly conflicted, the desire to be popular prevails. What a total bummer. Randy is crushed and tries really hard to win Julie back, but she won’t give in.

In one last ditch effort to get the girl, Randy and his best friend crash the Valley High prom and make quite a scene disrupting the coronation of Prom King and Queen, Tommy and Julie. Fists fly and Randy and Julie steal away in the limo that brought her to the dance. Off they go, up the 405, to spend what can only have been an amazing night at the Valley Sheraton.

The premise of this movie, a modern day Romeo and Juliet, depends on Los Angeles playing a strong supporting role. You could even look at the L.A. portrayed in Valley Girl as multiple characters: The Valley, Hollywood, and The Beach. Now that I live in L.A., I definitely suffer from the problem of noticing, and often pointing out, the liberties that are taken in presenting the city. It’s something I didn’t think about before moving here in 1994. I find it fascinating to see how parts of Los Angeles are stitched together to create a version of the city that suits the needs of the storyteller.

L.A. is actually the first character you see and hear about as Valley Girl starts. A radio announcer says, “…they’ll be playing at the Hollywood Bowl…” as we hover above the Lake Hollywood reservoir looking toward Hollywood. We then head over the hills that house the famous sign for a reveal of The Valley. Well, it’s Burbank, but close enough. What I do find amusing is that instead of panning west into The Valley proper, we pan east into Glendale. Anyway, what-EVER! The first place where we encounter the Valley girls is The Mall. Duh. The location used for the opening sequence is the Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, not the Sherman Oaks Galleria which is often misstated on various websites. In addition to official location lists, there is a clear shot of a door handle at the mall that says Del Amo on it.

The generic beach where all the kids are hanging out is a minor, but pivotal character. It’s a more neutral location where you really have to look at some one’s hair or listen to them talk to see if they are one of “us” or “them.” It’s here where Julie and Randy (“what a hunk!”) exchange glances while Randy’s friend, Fred, overhears the address for a party in the Valley later that night. Randy’s initial reaction is, “I don’t wanna go to the Valley. I’m not in the mood to go to the Valley.”

Of course Randy and Fred do go to the Valley party where they stick out as being quite different from everyone else with their red and black clothing and their disdain for sushi. Randy talks to Julie, which the ex-boyfriend Tommy doesn’t like so he and his friends punch Randy and literally throw Randy and Fred out the door. Randy is smitten and says, “That chick Julie, she’s truly dazzling” and Fred replies, “yeah, but she’s not one of ours.” The guys barely pull away from the house when Randy stops the car, sneaks into the house. He manages to convince Julie to leave the party. She brings along her incredibly annoying and whiny friend, Stacey, who protests, “oh no, it’s those guys! They’re hoods, look at them!” She dragged along and exclaims, “I’m simply going to freak out and die!” If we could have only been so lucky.

The four are driving along what looks like Mulholland Drive and make a right turn into Hollywood. The girls are wide-eyed, as if they’ve never been to this part of town. Certainly they’ve never been there at night. Stacey says, “Julie, look!” at a guy who has been pulled over by the cops. By her astonishment, I can only assume that things like that never happen in The Valley.

They’re traveling, in Randy’s convertible, east on Hollywood Boulevard as they pass Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and just next to that, the Rainbow Bar and Grill and The Roxy, which are both actually on the Sunset Strip. Across the street is the Pussycat Theater, an adult cinema in West Hollywood that is now Studs. Randy calls out to friends hanging out or walking on the sidewalks. He’s clearly popular in this neighborhood and seems to know not only an ethnically divers crowd of people, but an actual punk dude. Stacey becomes more and more distressed. After continuing past the Nuart Theater (I think) and Musso and Frank, she states, “Look, I’m getting out of this car,” prompting Randy to say, “Okay, but if they attack the car, save the radio.” All we hear from Stacey is an ear damaging, “Juuuuuuuuuuuliiiiiiiiiiieeee…”

Club Central, which is now The Viper Room, is Randy’s “home away from home” and their next stop. There’s live music (The Plimsouls), mohawks, and apparently germs as Stacey put napkins on the chair before she sits down. At some point Randy says, “You won’t catch anything.” Stacey complains about the loud music, Fred says they are “living on the edge.” Randy and Julie kiss in the club and then some more while parking on a hillside overlooking the lights of Hollywood.

Julie is smitten and tells her friends, “he’s the most awesome dude EVAR!” and “man, he’s just like tripendicular.” The next day Randy comes to visit Julie in The Valley. One of the most well-known New Wave songs of the ’80′s, “I Melt With You” by Modern English, plays behind a montage of Randy and Julie hanging out on several occasions in The Valley at places like Du-Pars in Studio City and The Sherman Theatre in Sherman Oaks, which has since closed. Other prominent Valley landmarks include Casa Vega restaurant and a Winchell’s Donut House. As Julie and Randy take off from the prom at the end of the movie, the one last L.A. icon we see is the Sherman Oaks Galleria, once a shopping mecca and now a complex housing several chain restaurants, an Arclight Cinema, a gym, and a few shops.

Throughout the movie, both the Val kids and the guys from Hollywood are pretty judgmental of each other. It’s totally awesome that Randy and Julie throw caution to the wind and decide to not let the Santa Monica Mountains, or their friends’ attitudes (especially in Julie’s case) keep them apart.

Julie: “We go to normal parties, we go to normal places, we buy nice new clothes.”

Fred: “No different from what we do.”

Randy: “It’s the way we do things that makes the difference.”

This post is part of the L.A. Plays Itself in the Movies series. For a listing of posts in this series, click here.

The film that spawned one of the most overused Vegas quotes of our time isn’t about Las Vegas at all. Swingers is so L.A.

Location. Location. Location. For me, the thrill of watching Swingers is noticing all of the familiar locations around town. The characters in this film never stay in one spot for long, always on the move from one bar to another bar, to a Hollywood Hills party, then to a coffee shop for a late night breakfast. All in their own separate cars of course. It’s laughable, but even today I notice that most of my friends in L.A. drive separately, despite that we all live in close proximity of each other and are meeting at the same place.

When I relocated to L.A. in 2003, the very first bar a friend took me to was The Dresden Restaurant to see Marty and Elayne perform. Immortalized by the film, The Dresden remains one of my favorite lounges in L.A. Located at 1760 North Vermont Avenue in Los Feliz, The Dresden makes its appearance in the scene where Mike (Jon Favreau) hits on the Starbucks waitress at the bar.

The Dresden Restaurant

By-the-way, Marty and Elayne, who are featured in the film, have been performing at The Dresden for 18 years and you can still catch their show nightly.

Los Feliz Municipal Golf Course

Also in Los Feliz, Mike and Rob (Ron Livingston) hit the links at the Loz Feliz Municipal Golf Course, a 9-hole 3-par course located just east of I-5 at 3207 Los Feliz Boulevard.

Another famous Hollywood location used in Swingers is the 101 Coffee Shop, adjacent to the Best Western at 6145 Franklin Avenue. According to movie-locations.com, this is also where the filmmakers devised much of the script. I have spent many late nights in the 101 Coffee Shop, with its mid-century rock walls and retro brown booths, feeling like a member of Sinatra’s crew after a long night of boozing and broads.

Back in Los Feliz, the crew enters through the back entrance of The Derby in the scene where Director Doug Liman pays homage to Martin Scorsese’s famous tracking shot from Goodfellas. Now closed down, The Derby (formerly located at 4500 Los Feliz Boulevard) was hugely popular during the swing revival in the 1990s, which was central to the mood of the film. This is also where Mike meets and dances with Lorraine (Heather Graham).

After the crew departs the Hollywood Hills party scene, they pass a few other familiar locations such as Canter’s Delicatessen, located at 419 N. Fairfax Avenue (also seen in Enemy of the State), and Hollywood Star Lanes (torn down in 2002), the bowling alley best known for its role in the Coen brothers’ film, The Big Lebowski.

The Derby

If you’re still hungry for more Swingers trivia, check out the list below, swiped from IMDB:

• Trent’s license plate reads “THX1138″, a reference to George Lucas’s THX 1138 (1971).
• Vince Vaughn’s father plays the lucky gambler at the $100-minimum blackjack table.
• Jon Favreau’s grandmother, Joan Favreau, is the lucky gambler at the $5 minimum blackjack table.
• Some of the film’s casino scenes were filmed without a permit. At one point, they were asked to leave the casino by a police officer, who let them finish filming the scene before they left. If you look at the left side of the screen during the scene where Mike is betting on the $100 table, a police officer can be seen in the distance watching the filming taking place.
• 

  101 Coffee Shop

  The 1964 Convertible Mercury Comet Caliente driven by Vince Vaughn was actually owned by co-star Jon Favreau.

• The exterior and interior of Mike Peter’s apartment was the actual building and room that Jon Favreau lived in at the time the film was filmed. Favreau’s downstairs neighbor was actor Adam Scott.
• Nicole LaLoggia, the film’s line producer, also plays two roles in the film: she plays Michelle’s voice on the phone, and she appears as one of the bar patrons at the Derby (the brunette sitting to the right of Trent when Mike leaves the table).
• When asked to approve use of the theme music for Jaws (1975) in a scene, Spielberg saw footage of Vince Vaughn, whom he hired for The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997).
• The Word “Fuck” is used 95 times, “Bitch” is used 31 times and “Asshole” 13 times.
• The movie is loosely based on the experiences writer Jon Favreau had when he first moved to L.A. He had just broken up with a long term girlfriend and counted on his friends Vince Vaughn and Ron Livingston to cheer him up. The characters they play in the film are based on themselves.
• The “Bear” monologue that Trent delivers to Mike is almost verbatim something actor Vince Vaughn told Jon Favreau one night at a bar. Favreau liked it a lot and incorporated it into the script.
• When director Doug Liman first sent the script to studios, they were interested in financing it. When Liman said he wanted to cast the writer and his friends as actors, the studios backed off. The money to shoot the film was raised independently and Liman cast who he liked.
• Some of the bar scenes were shot in actual bars during business hours. A sign was posted near where they were shooting warning patrons that if they came any closer, they would be unpaid extras in the film.
• The sequence where Trent, Mike, and Sue enter the club through a side entrance closely resembles the way Henry and Karen enters a club in Goodfellas (1990), which the group refers to earlier in the film, calling it one of the best shots ever.
• The scene with Mike and Trent talking in the car on the side of the road was also filmed without a permit (not only could the production not afford one, it is actually impossible for any film production to acquire one to film on that particular highway). Originally they had planned to film just an establishing shot of the two of them in the car, and a shot of them driving away, and then film the dialog shots later. But director Doug Liman decided instead to film the entire scene on the actual side of the road. During filming, several police showed up, and demanded to see a permit. The assistant director held up the police by telling them that they had a permit, but it was in the office across town, several miles away. To get away with the rest of the scene being filmed, Liman had to pretend he was not filming, and didn’t look in the viewfinder, and used a microphone inside of the car instead of a boom. Most of the scene was filmed like this, with the police waiting just out of shot, and the two actors and the director pretending they were in fact not shooting.
• Since the filmmakers couldn’t afford to pay extras, the scenes filmed at parties were filmed at actual parties that were taking place, with many Hollywood up-and-comers in attendance. Among the people in the crowd of the first party (who turn and look at the group as they enter): screenwriters Stephen Gaghan and Mike White.
• The band in the film are retro swing jazz band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
• There is a reference to Reservoir Dogs (1992) while the actors are playing poker. They refer to the scene in the beginning when they walk in slow motion as “a great scene”. As the characters in Swingers leave the poker game to go to a party, they are shown walking in slow motion in a similar fashion to the scene in Reservoir Dogs.
• A Reservoir Dogs (1992) poster can also be seen in one of the scenes.
• The scene in which Trent angrily yells at Sue, after Sue insulted Mike, was written specifically at Vince Vaughn’s request. Vaughn wanted to show that beneath Trent’s bravado and swagger, he truly cared for Mike as a friend.
• Trent, Mikey, Sue, Rob, and Charles represent the five members of the original Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and Sammy Davis Jr..

(This post is part of the “LA Plays Itself in the Movies” series).