While I wasn’t a fan of the movie, the MTV series is hard to look away from. It’s like the old car accident analogy except in this analogy the car turns out to be a man.

This show has to come back for a second season. What’s that Futon Critic? MTV renewed Catfish on December 19th of last year? Well good. Now let’s agree to never tell anyone that we watch this show.

In case you have a story to share, my brother found this on Rhode Island’s Craigslist page:

http://providence.craigslist.org/tfr/3805452838.html

Maybe I’ll submit my story about being a guy that writes about LA events when I actually haven’t left the house in months. I Catfished all of LA!

I think I’m just going to hand over my social calendar to KCRW because every time they invite me to anything it ends up being a blast. Last night, LA Snark was invited to be among the first to hear Pete Yorn and J.D. King’s new project The Olms.

The 50 minute-ish set will be played on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic on June 5th, a day after their first self-titled album becomes available. The Olms will play The Troubadour on June 3, so that will make for a busy LA week for the Olms.

You may already be familiar with Pete Yorn from his solo work and his radio hits (For Nancy,  Strange Condition) but who’s his new time traveling  buddy?

J.D. King is a classic country songwriter kinda guy that teamed up with Pete Yorn a while after the two became friends through J.D.’s girlfriend. Regardless of how these two met, their combined parts equal amazing songs and great harmonies.

Check out The Olms’ “Wanna Feel It” below and tune in to Morning Becomes Eclectic on June 5th to hear the full set along with an interview that was perhaps a little more awkward than Anne Litt had wanted.

The Olms Live on KCRW Set List

On The Line
What Can I Do?
Another Day Dream
She Said No!
Someone Else’s Girl
Rise & Shine
Love is All Around (Troggs cover)
Bottle of Wine, Etc.
Wanna Feel It
Twice as Nice

*All photos courtesy KCRW

Brazilian singer/cellist Dom La Nena’s US Debut, Ela, has been met with praise from fans and critics alike since its release in January and held the #1 on CMJ’s New World Music Chart for weeks. Dom will be in the LA area on June 1 and 2 at Make Music Pasadena and The Hotel Cafe.

Dom was recently featured on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. You can check that out here.

Check ou Dom La Nena when she stops by next week.

6/1 – Make Music Pasadena – Pasadena, CA
6/2 – The Hotel Cafe – Los Angeles, CA

I snoozed on attending Hollywood Forever events until this past year when I attended the XX’s performance. After that experience it’s going to be hard to pass up any Cemetery screenings or shows going forward.

Just announced: Grizzly Bear will play outdoors on the Fairbanks Lawn on Friday, August 9th.

More details below:

• Gates open at 7pm
• Tickets are $55
• 4 tickets per person / per household / per credit card purchase limit.
• Any customers violating this policy will have their orders refunded automatically without notice.
• The purchaser of the order must enter the venue with one of the tickets they purchased.
• IDS will be checked at the door.
• Tickets go on sale Friday, May 17th, 2013 – NOON (PDT) at: hollywoodforever.ticketfly.com
• You are welcome to bring: blankets, pillows, food and drinks.
• You may NOT bring: tents, hard coolers, chairs of any kind, dogs/pets.
• There will be limited parking on site for a fee.
• Ticket purchasers will be notified via email when parking will go on sale.
• There will be no overnight camping for this show.
• No one is permitted to line up before 6pm day of show.
• This show is outdoors and is rain or shine

www.grizzly-bear.net
www.hollywoodforever.com

I know some people may look at me and say “He looks like the kind of guy that eats dinner at the mall,” but I’m here to tell you it’s usually not true.

However, this past Friday I let my lady friend convince me that it would be acceptable to spend part of our Friday evening listening to a back end developer give a talk about web programming at General Assembly in Santa Monica. That was great and all (and there are a lot of cool classes coming up there soon) but afterward we were not willing to walk too far for dinner. I had recently heard about the Blue Stove in the Santa Monica Place Mall, inside Nordstrom.

So yes, in this one case, I did eat dinner at the mall.

It was interesting. As you can see from the photo above, our dishes were all fried. The things I’d noticed other patrons raving about were the Cilantro Lime Chicken Tacos, the Salt & Pepper Calamari, and the Short Rib Poutine so we went with that.

The Cilantro Lime Chicken Tacos were good, crunchy and fried, but tasty. I don’t ever really need fried food and I was hoping this would be a little fresher, but they did the job. They were tiny and came in a set of 4.

I ordered the Short Rib Poutine because I haven’t had poutine since I last visited Montreal years ago and I could not resist. Plus I just sat through an hour presentation about PHP, Python and Ruby on Rails so I needed the food equivalent of hiding under the covers for a while. This worked.

The calamari was also good. I’m from Rhode Island and I’ve had fried calamari with about 85% of the meals I ate growing up, and I will tell you that this was as good if not better than most I’ve tried.

Blue Stove also has a full bar and extensive wine list so this could be a good hiding place for anyone that happens to be married to a real Nordstrom enthusiast.

One selling point here is that Nordstrom apparently has a lot of amazing shoes, so if you’re an anxious shopper like me, maybe head to the Blue Stove and put yourself into a food coma before wobbling around the shoe section. I have my eye on some red dock siders.

Blue Stove
222 Broadway St
Santa Monica, CA 90401