Throwing a real-life wiener dog into the mix when delivering spoken haiku kinda lands you as the ringer, but our own Will Campbell also spake a lovely passage. Missed the haiku? Don’t know what we’re going on about? There’ll prolly be a Hot Dog Death March next year. Start training now!

To see all the amazing contestants, please click here! Thanks to Chal for shooting these.

The Dean Of City Hall Reporters has arrived at LA Metblogs. Over many a maté [NOT a latte], Mr. Marc Haefele & I conspired to unleash his killer prose upon you unsuspecting readers.

Haefele has been digging up the dirt on City Hall and LA politics for more than 25 years, in pubs as scrappy as my own LA Alternative, various & sundry weeklies, and as award-winning as the LA Times and KPCC. Where he talks. On the radio. (For those who can’t hear him, he has a deep and sonorous voice, gentle yet infused with childlike glee when describing his car chases up the 405, pursuing the smoked-windowed vehicles of mysterious political donors).

A quick Google of his name will land you with a good idea of his pedigree, but what’s most impressive is his passion for Los Angeles, a maté made right, South American adventures, barbecue, his lovely lady, and his cat, not necessarily in that order. I hope very much this blog will be added to that list. Welcome to LA Metblogs, Mr. Marc Haefele.

Don’t miss his 1st post, below, and here.

Hello Metblogs Community,

I’m thrilled to join the madcap Los Angeles Metblogs team and hope you will relate to whatever it is I decide to contribute each week. My posts will likely be about shopping around Los Angeles, things chicks might like, innocent gossip and tips on the best bars to pick up the dudes (please let me know if you have any leads). Maybe I’ll even drop some names of people you don’t know and drop some mad cash in your store – so look out! I’m a coming!

(Photo courtesy of Courtenay Gasking)

On the personal side, I moved to Los Angeles from Atlanta in 2003 where I received a B.A. in Communications from Oglethorpe University. I’m left handed, have a motorcycle license and enjoy vintage clothes, good scotch and bad poker players sitting on the other side of the table.

Thanks for having me. If you want to keep up with the mundane goings on in my life, I invite you to follow me on twitter.

Love,

MissRFTC

Ok kids, it’s the 21st and no more metblogs author submissions will be accepted. I thought about extending the deadline since I got a rush of last-minute applications, but I figure if you can’t even apply on deadline, what makes me think you’d blog on a regular basis? Ha! Silly me.

So, I was looking for an image of a club bouncer standing menacingly in front of a door, as if to say, “Sorry, it’s a private party tonight” but googling “door bouncer” brought up so many images of babies in bouncers (that’s what those boingy thingies that hang in doorways are called, yes?) I figured I’d just use one of those. Hence our charming photo, left.

If you sent your email in, and you didn’t get a bounceback, well then I got it, and you’ll be hearing from me shortly if you haven’t already. We’ve now got about two dozen folks who applied, which is flippin’ sweet, and frankly you’re all just fabulous little winners in my book already.

No decisions will be made until after New Year’s, but once that ball drops, baby, you may be blogging with our team of illustrious blogging rockstars before you can say “Now where’s my press pass?”

That’s right–it’s LA Metblogs’ first “Classic Eats” evening this Saturday. We’re doing it a little early because (1) we figure you might have plans for later that night and (2) Clifton’s Cafeteria closes early.

I’m attempting to make some silly bingo games in time for the get-together and I’m planning on raffling off a day of guest blogging on LA Metblogs (raffle tix are free for all attendees, I ain’t tryin’ to raise money).

We’ll meet up at Clifton’s at 5:30pm for “slightly depressing kitsch” (as stated on Chowhound), because there’s no kitsch like slightly depressing kitsch. Really, I just want to eat cubed jello out of those thick bakelite cafeteria bowls under the watchful gaze of fake deer. I can’t believe I’ve never been to Clifton’s, so I’m really looking forward to this.

Around 6:30 or 7 we’ll wander, stuffed with meatloaf and lemon meringue pie, over to the Bonaventure Hotel to enjoy after-dinner cocktails at their 360-degree rotating rooftop lounge, the BonaVista.

While we plan to create some sort of prepaid meal package for these events in the future, we’re goin’ lo-fi for our first event and you enjoy the privelege of purchasing your very own food (we ain’t gettin’ rich offa blogging)! So exciting!

Here’s our upcoming.com invite and Julia’s original post on the whole shebang.

Just a heads-up to ask all our readers to focus their collective brainpower on the small parcel of Burbank on which we, the intrepid authors of bLA, shall be competing in our first-ever Trivia Bowl this evening (an annual trivia competition organized by the Asian American Journalists Association). I for one suck at trivia, but I’m sure that my compatriots, including Frazgo, Matt Mason, Markland, Will.I.Am, Ruth666, Mack Reed and a few bloggin’ friends and dedicated readers, shall more than make up for my unhealthy preponderance of memory devoted to obscure facts about proto-Renaissance art and Ukranian egg decorating.

I’d say some of us would twitter the event live, except that I think that might make it too easy for me someone to cheat, so you’ll hear radio silence from us until the event is over.

I’m interested to see how well we’ll perform again teams that are mostly comprised of lawyers & journalists. As someone who’s fused her memory so inextricably into the Web (I keep so much of my data and information archived here on the wunnerful world of the webernet that I scarcely can function without it), I suspect I may actually be able to recall very little when severed from the hive mind. I guess we’ll see. As a philosophical discussion, I’m curious as to whether I could make the argument that the Internet has actually become a part of my memory, and, as such, my self.

All that BS aside, cross your fingers for us! We’ll be sure to report back.

Quirky, clever & ingenuitive, Wolf Parade are bringin’ their swingin’ show to the Fonda for two nights: Friday the 18th & Saturday the 19th! Opened for by Listening Party, the Parade o’ Wolves are sure to kick (bite?) ass. You wanna go? Sure you do! Win your tickets by entering, in the comments below, your favorite appearance of “wolves” in pop culture. I’m a particular fan of the Mod Wolves in The Mighty Boosh. You?

Be sure to leave me your email so I can contact you iffen’ you win. It’s really easy to win, actually: I usually don’t have a slew of entrants, so your chances of winning are quite swell, eps. if you’re clever and witty ‘n’ stuff. I cannot be bribed, but charm will get you everywhere.

I’ve been awake an absolute stupid amount of time the last 4 days getting this in working order (in fact it’s been something in one stage of development or another for almost a year) so I’ll keep this announcement brief. New sites, we has them. There is a lot for me to show off but I’m exhausted so it’ll have to wait for later this week. While we finish migrating things there’s going to be a bunch of weird things happening on the site and things breaking and not working as expected. Please hang in there and all should be running much smoother in a few days. In the meantime, hope you like the new look!