(08.15.08) Recommends:

Bansky.

So today we're gonna continue on our art kick. Our friend Fellow Blogger -- we always just bold her name rather than link to her as she refuses to allow us to ever link to her blog because she's obsessed with "anonymity" and insists that she will be "fired" [note: it's doubtful whether she's even employed] by the mere act of our linking to her [aside: remember when people used to call links hyperlinks? Also: Hypercolor. People used to wear that. We submit that hyperlinks and hypercolor need to make a comeback] -- introduced us to the artwork of Banksy shortly after we relocated to Los Angeles [and probably after a night of us talking her ear off about our love of Shepard Fairey's work].

This introduction was a good thing and a bad thing. A good thing because his art is pretty and funny and insightful and just shows up on walls out of nowhere with no prior warning making it an all-around cool and necessary thing.

But the intro was a bad thing, too, because as it is we're pretty suspect at driving, and now when we're driving, our eyes are constantly wandering off the road, looking for Banksy pieces, rather than concentrating on not smacking into the person in front of us.

Here are four pieces we've been able to find.

Banksy Girl. This one is found at the Valero gas station at the corner of La Brea and Beverly.




Banksy Gardener. Same location as above.




Banksy Caveman. This one is found by the New Beverly Cinema, 7165 Beverly Blvd.




Bansky Rat. This one is on Melrose, just West of Orange Dr. This is our favorite piece we've spotted thus far.




To give you a sense of it's size, here's a picture from the north side of Melrose. The rat's gotta be 10 feet tall.




If you know the locations of any other LA Banksy pieces, please write in to let us know!

(08.11.08) Recommends:

Some Updates.

1. Matthew wrote in to update us on the missing song titles from our Horse Feathers post. The post now has the updated titles.

2. The other day we had this to Twitter. We went back to the scene of the crime when it was more light out and discovered that it's actually an MBW. But it's very Banksyesque. Here's a look:




3. Re Sunday's Obey post. This is less an update than a call for help. What we really want to be able to do is have the big picture of the mural, and then be able to click on each piece of the mural to have that individual piece pop up. We swear we've seen this done in Flickr but cannot figure out how to do it. Is this something that requires Photoshop? If anybody can help us out with this drop us a comment/email.

(08.04.08) Recommends:

An Evening of Horse Feathers.

Horse Feathers are a devastating two-piece band out of Portland, Ore. We were introduced to their music two-years ago next month by an impeccably-eared friend. We first blogged about them here.
So it was a foregone conclusion that, two years later while again living in the same city with our music discoverer friend, when Horse Feathers played the Troubadour we'd be in the crowd.




We've been listening to this band for two solid years, and until Saturday night had no idea that the violinist bares a striking resemblance -- at least in the dark from the balcony of the Troubadour -- to Harry Potter.




We recently began playing around with the video recorder function on our camera. So we tried to shoot some video of the show. The picture is obviously no good here, but the audio turned out decent. We'd like to figure out a way to turn these files into just sound files, but until then we present them below (we're not sure the name of the last two songs -- can anybody help? UPDATE:song titles have been corrected). We've been listening to them as background music since yesterday. We really love this band. They have a new record coming out next month and we could not be more excited for it.

Finch on Saturday


Walking & Running


Albina


Rude to Rile

(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?

(07.16.08) 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.

(12.02.06) Recommends:

Giving me something to talk about.

Holy goodness! I have not had anything to recommend since like the middle of October. And it's not for want of awesome things taking place in the world. It's because I've been completely out of the loop. No joke: this week alone I have spent the better part of two entire days thinking about this legal theory called "right of publicity", which is a "creature of state law", and I've been seeing how it intersects with, and is possibly preempted by, federal copyright law.

Why have I been dwelling on this issue lately? The answer to that would be long, and most definitely not be interesting to any of you, my dear readers. So. Proposition: send me an email, and tell me something that you have experienced lately that has inspired you. Seriously. I know people read this site (yes, yes, I know things people). And I'd love to hear what people are experiencing as I am hiding out. And that way, I can have something to write about.

Also: I recently made a Best of 2006 CD that I would be happy to send to anybody who is interested. Again, just drop me an email.

(10.20.06) Recommends:

Concert Photography, Vol. 2.

Today's photos feature Mew and One Thousand Pictures. Mew is from Denmark. They put out a well-received album earlier this year called "And The Glass Handed Kites." They have a "big" sound. As in, I can picture them playing in front of a sold-out Wembley Stadium. The music is very atmospheric, but tightly focused. Almost every article I've read about the band has mentioned Sigur Ros + Arcade Fire. I don't really hear either one, but I suppose I agree to the extent that the reviewers mean atmosphere + earnest energy. At any rate it was a very good performance. Opening up was One Thousand Pictures. Or 2/5th of the band. The singer said the rest of the band was at the hospital due to spider bites. We've all been there before. They have an album coming out in January 2007.

One Thousand Pictures @ Popscene; San Francisco; 10.19.06.


Mew @ Popscene; San Francisco; 10.19.06.


Mew @ Popscene; San Francisco; 10.19.06.


Mew @ Popscene; San Francisco; 10.19.06.


Mew @ Popscene; San Francisco; 10.19.06.


Mew @ Popscene; San Francisco; 10.19.06.


Mew @ Popscene; San Francisco; 10.19.06.


Mew @ Popscene; San Francisco; 10.19.06.


Mew @ Popscene; San Francisco; 10.19.06.


[Yes, I'm still figuring out how to take pictures in the dark. Somebody please help!]

(10.18.06) Recommends:

Being able to digitally record your dreams for future play back.

Okay, so probably Al Gore hasn’t invented this yet. Until that day comes, watching the following video is the closest I’ve ever come to such an experience. Wow. This video is a doozie. It starts off with a familiar enough scene. Bozo, giving the camera that half-seductive, half-psychotic smile followed by his quasi-marching-band-leader dance segueing into a quasi-River Dance that we can all remember seeing on WGN in our childhoods. But then a foreign language pops up. It's a sure sign you're dreaming when you see a familar scene, but everybody around you is speaking a language you've never heard, right? Pretty much from there it turns wacky very quickly. Following find a partial list of reasons why this video has been alternately blowing my mind and freaking me out all day:

--A low-budget, dancing frog.
--Everybody kissing Bozo’s nose, as if it’s the pope’s ring.
--Some kind of clown/werewolf in gold sequins, with long, flowing gold beard.
--A mass of children, violently jumping up and down, shaking pom-poms in unison.
--Random, clearly imitation, Muppets puppets, who quite frankly looked terrified to be part of this.
--Asian + other multi-ethnic jugglers.
--Asian fire-spitters.
--Asian magicians.
--Marching band with electric guitar players.
--Marching band with bearded electric guitar players.
--Marching band with mullet-ed electric guitar players.

If anybody has any details about the origin of this clip I would love to hear from you.



This video cannot be stopped.