(07.31.08) Recommends:

Starting Your Day With a Breakfast Burrito.




We regularly sustain oursevles throughout the day on nothing but nuts and Diet Dr. Pepper. We are also regularly early risers, but today woke up at an hour that was uncharacteristically early even for us -- we're noticing a case of Wednesday-onset insomnia and we think it's our immune system not being able to handle what has heretofore been a disappointing season of Project Runway -- so while driving around aimlessly before work (read: while sitting in traffic because there is traffic regardless of the time or day around these parts), we decided to finally stop in and give D/Los Burritos (not sure which one it actually is) a try, breakfast burrito style.

Well, it was an unmitigated success. We walked out of there with a bounce in our step ready to tackle another day in the world. It's gonna be a good Thursday. And we can't wait until the next case of Wednesday-onset insomnia.

(07.29.08) Recommends:

5.8 Reasons Why It's Acceptable To Drink A Beer Over Lunch Today.



More here about the earthquake that shook our office today in downtown los angeles.




UPDATE: The earthquake was lowered to 5.4. We are more than willing to give our extra 0.4 worth of beer to this person.

(07.28.08) Recommends:

Quite The Sales Plug.

For a few months now, we've been kicking around the idea of purchasing a scooter. Large parts of LA are not covered by the metro line, large parts are not pedesterian-friendly, and oddly, at the same time, large parts aren't really car-friendly, either: the streets are too narrow; the stop lights rarely seem to be synched up; there are rarely turn signals, resulting in at least four drivers attempting to turn on every yellow/red light, at least two of whom with not use their turn signal; the main requirement to be a driver of a city bus is to be completely unreasonable; gas is $4.50 per gallon and on and on and on. As a result: we've become very interested in the idea of buying a scooter.

So on Friday we noticed this article in the Boston Globe for the Vectrix scooter. The numbers are insane. It's electric so it gives off zero emissions. It costs one cent per mile to run the thing. It gets the equivalent of 357 miles per gallon. The California Air Resource board will subsidize $1,500 of the purchase. Apparently the thing can even go on the highway.

Since we've read the article, all we notice are scooters around us; we've become like those women, desparate to become mothers, who break into tears at the sight of a baby. Next up in the due diligence process is learning about the Vespa.

Update: The Vespa LX. A very handsome looking scooter, yeah?

(07.25.08) Recommends:

A Blogger in the White House.

So yesterday we ranted about the old guard media. While we were hammering out that post, Barack Obama was, as you know, giving a speech in Berlin. There was a lot in there that we've heard before: skinny kid, funny name, goat herders, army cooks, coming to america, Kansas, Kenya, etc.

But near the end he slipped something new in there:

Now the world will watch and remember what we do here...Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe?

There's a blogger in his campaign who has his ear. And that's a very good sign. It also makes sense. Obama understands the power of networks. He started off as a community organizer. During the primary he leveraged the internet to reinvent campaign fianance (click on this very cool pdf for a graphical depiction of the reinvention). He knows that the power of this country lies in its citizens. As more and more of those citizens share their wisdom and talent with others through tools like blogging software, sources like CNN will be forced to change or die. Having a president with blogger advisors will not change the health care system or cure the economy or the environment. But we're convinced that having a strong blogging culture is a step in the right direction.

(07.24.08) Recommends:

Understanding that if CNN Really Is The Most Trusted Name in News Then We Are All Really, Really Fucked.

So, we have this friend, Fellow Blogger. She's among the smartest people we know. Both book smart and current event smart and generally just smart at life. So once a week or so, she'll send us a ridiculous headline from CNN.com. A common example is something like "54% of Americans think we may be headed toward a recession." Or "George Bush doesn't think we are headed for a recession." Everytime they are Very Serious headlines from a Very Serious news source. And everytime they are completely and utterly useless.

We never check CNN.com unless we get these articles, but we always sort of figured Fellow Blogger was just cherry picking the worst articles.Umm , we now seriously doubt this. For this morning, we casually checked out CNN.com. And this is what greeted us (click for larger image):



Yikes. Where do we even start with this? First of all, the fact that there are Black people in America? Is this really a Live! Developing! Story! And not just that but do we really need Your! Reaction! to the fact that there are Black people in America? I mean, is this Turn Back The Clock To The 1800s Day on the Internet? Moving on to Latest! News! check out those stories.

Is marriage only for white people!
Black people not playing football!
Mississippi closed for the day!
Kids playing with sawdust and paper!
Helping whales help themselves!
Video sluts pissed off that people think they're slutty!
Kid Rock! At the Waffle House!
All this, plus super heroes and Salman Rushdie!

Huh?
Huh?
Huh?
Huh?
Huh?
Huh?
Huh?
Okay, my head just split in two; no more, please!

I guess this should not be too surprising. CNN, the television station, is pretty absurd. There's Lou Dobbs, a border-line xenophobe. Larry King, a border-line robot. Anderson Cooper, who used to be the host of reality game show The Mole, and who often produces Hard! Hitting! Journalism! a representative example of which is how the fact that prostitution is legal in parts of Mexico is evidence of international sex-trafficking. And, lest we forget, there's Wolf Blitzer. Who can forget Wolf Blitzer, just last week, on the Situation! Room! running around, mouth agape, eyes bulging out of head, convinced that No American could possibly understand that the New Yorker is a liberal magazine known for producing satirical cartoons (the same Americans who, before this morning, were unaware of the existance of Black Americans).

So here's what we're thinking about this morning: As newspapers continue with massive lay-offs and the unending tide continues toward the internet and 24-hour cable television for news, should we be concerned that CNN.com, presumably one of the most trafficed web properties, offers up almost nothing but steaming piles of horse shit?

We, unlike Wolf Blitzer, believe that the vast and overwhelming majority of reasonable Americans understand that the New Yorker is liberal and the cover was satire. To that end, we are hopeful that the vast and overwhelming majority of reasonable Americans understand that CNN is completely full of shit and offers, perhaps, 5% news and 95% foaming at the mouth nonsense.

Two questions we have this morning. Is this a reasonable hope? And, even if it is a reasonable hope, what pressures, if any, does the success of CNN.com (and CNN) put on sources who actually are trying to enlighten, educate, edify our society?

(07.23.08) Recommends:

The Track "Ten Dead Dogs" from Wild Sweet Orange's "We Have Cause To Be Uneasy" (Canvasback Music, forthcoming, July 29, 2008).

As we mentioned in our last update, we haven't been blogging here lately as much as usual, as we've been playing around lots on Twitter and we've been fumbling around on Tumblr -- one anonymous tumblr that if you're savvy enough and/or have too much time on your hands you can find by scrubbing this blog, and another double secret Tumblr that we can tell you right now you'll never, ever discover, so don't even bother asking.

In addition, we've been listening almost exclusively to this WSO track, Ten Dead Dogs. We first saw WSO back in March -- my goodness, has it really been over four months since that show?? -- and about a month ago their full-length debut showed up in our mail boxes.

Let's back up though. When we say we've been listening almost exclusively to this track, we actually mean we've been listening almost exclusively to the first forty-five seconds of this track. As we Twittered earlier, the first :45 might be our favorite music released this year. Not an understatement: on the rare occasions in which we drive to work, our commute takes up to forty five minutes, which means we regularly listen to this part of the song 60 times in a row. But it's not just us who are crazy: we introduced this song to Law School Friend -- one of the few humans whose picture has ever appeared on the blog here, here, here -- during her ridiculous July 4th cookout. Last weekend, when we hung out with her again, she informed us that she had not been able to stop listening to the song. We may or may not be exaggerating when she said she listened to it 45 times consecutively.

While that may sound quaintly amateurish compared to our devotion, it is still a sign, we think, that this song is like E. Coli: some people will come in contact with it and won't notice anything every happened; others will have their bodies completely overtaken for 5-7 days before returning to a normal state; large numbers will die. Okay, probably this song won't kill you, but it will vanquish any chances you have of being productive, because you'll find yourself having to stop to hit the "back" button to start the song over. You'll do this repeatedly -- so you can try to copy his enunciation on "apartment," so you can try to hit the high note on "omen," so you can do that little "buh da doom" part, so you try to match his voice on "I watched the sky turn from blue to black to red and yellow, too," they'll be others, trust us -- until you notice that it's an hour later and all you have to show for it is the sad realization that, despite your best protestations, it probably wasn't lack of time committment to singing in the shower that prevented you from being a rock star.

Okay. Enough talking. On to the music, maestro.

Wild Sweet Orange -- Ten Dead Dogs -- mp3.

(07.16.08) Recommends:

Not Choosing the 'Format' Option on Your Camera.

Hitting format, it turns out, formats the camera's memory stick. Formatting the camera's memory stick, it turns out, erases everything on the memory stick. See, it's technology. It's all so obvious.

Anyway. In addition to playing around elsewhere in the blogospohere lately, we've also been silent around these parts because everything we heretofore were going to post now no longer exists. Enter: slow, pained, expression. So, what you would have seen, had we not been so Webst2.0pid.

1. A self created photo-tour of the street art of LaBrea Avenue, including all your street art faves -- Shepard Fairey! Banksy! MBW! The band Slayer! (the effing band Slayer!! Not even kidding about that one. Sigh)

2. A video of Albert Hammond Jr. + band performing at Spaceland.

3. Sheaprd Fairey's new Kobe Bryant pieces at Hollywood/Gower.

4. A Fourth of July photo-blogged cookout.

5. A photo-blogging adventure of Mazinga-Z,host of the finest happy hour in Korea Town, if not all of Los Angeles. This place is festooned with comic book wallpaper and robots and full of impossibly beautiful Asian women, at least three of whom will be smoking cigarettes. Indoors. And in blatant contravention of all California laws. Because Mazinga-Z is, apparently, its own sovereign Asian territory.

6. Pictures of Stevie Wonder at the Hollywood Bowl. (doh! doh! doh!)

7. And about 80 other pictures about which I either cannot remember or am repressing from memory.

Man, man, man. Losing lots of pictures, it turns out, is crappy.

(07.14.08) Recommends:

Two New Additions to the Blog.

For the past week or so we've been playing around in other areas of the blogosphere. The focus of this blog has always been a bit random, but there seems to be a directional shift in focus over the past several months. We've been wondering if there might be more cohesion to the blog by segregating certain blog topics (e.g., quick, straight-up music recommendations vs. photo-blogging adventures vs. etc) among various blog tools (music blasts to twitter vs. photo-blogging to blogger vs. somehow incorporating tumblr and/or flickr). We're still batting around ideas in our head, and welcome any advice, design or otherwise. Two additions to the blog that we'll quickly mention:

1. First. Twitter at the upper right hand column. As mentioned above, we may use this for short music blasts or for other things too short for a full-length post.

2. Second. You'll notice a new tag, "90068." This tag corresponds to our zip code, and we've added it so our feed will be picked up by outside.in so we can leverage their new GeoToolkit service. Go here for more info on outside.in. We recommend all fellow bloggers who read us to start geo-tagging as well.

(07.03.08) Recommends:

Airborne Toxic Event's video for the acoustic version of "Moving On".

Okay, that title was a bit of a mouthful. But regardless. This is probably the coolest music video we've seen since that awesome video of Arcade Fire playing in an elevator (here).

Also: it's brining back memories of the Smashing Pumpkins video for 1979. (here)

Furthermore: it reminds us of our own concert photography, which is to say it's a bit too dark to see clearly, but you're convinced that something awesome is going on in the picture.





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[link via the essential radiofree silverlake]


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more airborne toxic event:
here.
here.
here.

(07.01.08) Recommends:

Thoughts I Have Never Had.

1. I should fill my car with gas because burning gasoline makes everything cleaner.

Apparently, however, some people do think this, as evidenced by this incredible sign spotted this morning on Beverly Blvd. just west of downtown.




Man, we're really missing George Carlin this morning.