Recommends:

(07.02.11) Recommends:

2011-07-01T19:53:00.000-07:00

Enough Already.

So. I grew up in a household with a mother who was constantly correcting grammar. Were the corrections that she was making actually, like, correct? Yes, they were. How do I know this? Because I was a child. I didn't know anything then. So, whatever she said was correct. I'm not a child now. Yet probably I know less now than then. [1] However. My thoughts on grammar -- like Barack Obama's thoughts on gay marriage -- are "evolving."

My evolution is multifaceted, I suppose. It comes partly from annoyance at the self-righteousness of those who take up the self-appointed mantel of Grammar Police. Particularly because these are often people who, on the one hand, are so eager to express to you that they know how to differentiate between "your" and "you're" yet, on the other hand, whose actual expression is such that it is clear that they cannot make distinctions that are less than marginally more sophisticated, e.g., when to use "who" vs. "that" or when to use "regard" vs. "regards" or, good heavens, in a move that would make my mother blush, when to use "good" vs. "well."

It also comes from my reading of Steven Pinker. He managed both to confirm every suspicion that I ever had regarding the fraudulence of the Grammar Police while focusing me in on the idea that "grammar" is really two distinct concepts.

First, there is grammar as a system of understanding; e.g., in English, the subject-verb-object construction. e.g., "I drank soda last night." If you ask an English-speaking child what he did last night he might say "I drinked soda last night." Or: "I dranked soda last night." But he would never say, "Soda night I last drank." Thus, grammar is a system, a type of math requiring a basic set of rules and equations so that we may all communicate with each other. And it should be clear that nobody messes up this form of grammar [2]. This is what I call capital G Grammar. But this is not what the Grammar Police are after. (This would be much too subtle for the Grammar Police.)

Second, there is grammar as style. This is the "who" vs. "that" problem. The split infinitive problem. The double negative problem (e.g., ever experience Grammar Police labeling English language double negatives as "So Ghetto" while labeling French a "Romance Language"? Even though the basic "ne...pas" construction of French language is a...double negative. Whoops.[3]). This is grammar that the Grammar Police latch onto. This is what I call lower case g grammar.

Okay, all of this is by way of introduction. It's my way of saying that I'm composed of two sides, one of which does experience an increase in blood pressure when it experiences people maligning language -- i.e., lowercase g grammar -- while also understanding that these infractions rarely, if ever, interfere with Capital G Grammar.

However. There are some things that even my Grammar v. grammar enlightened mind cannot handle.

Today's example: "I was lucky enough to..."

Following find common forms of this construction:

"I was lucky enough to go to Harvard."

"I was lucky enough to get a job at Google."

"I was lucky enough to make an investment which made me a millionaire."

No. No! You were lucky. Not lucky enough. Lucky. As in:

You were lucky to go to Harvard.

You were lucky to get a job at Google.

You were lucky to make an investment which made you a millionaire.

This is either false humility or delusion at its finest.

Lucky enough suggests that your lot in life is mostly due to something that you, um, did. And while I believe that's rarely the case, let me be clear. I fully believe that people who went to Harvard are smart. And worked hard. And received good grades and test scores. And so forth and so on. And deserved to be there. Fine. So say: "I deserved to go to Harvard." Or: "I worked hard and got into Harvard." Or: "I went to Harvard." Or my preferred edit: "I was lucky to go to Harvard."

Cuz you know what: you were lucky to go there. There are millions and millions of people who would love to go to Harvard. So stop with the enough already.

Saying you were "lucky enough" does two things.

First. It suggests that you, in all other respects and acting alone, were qualified e.g., for Harvard. And that it was a mere scintilla of "luck" that caused you to be at Harvard. When in fact it was almost certainly the other way around: you were mostly lucky and merely happened to do some good things along the way.

Like: Were you, e.g., born in the U.S. or were you born in Sub-Sahara Africa? Were you, e.g., the progeny of very smart parents? Were you, e.g., born fully functional or were you born with Down Syndrome? Etc etc? Was it the former?

Oh, it was?

Was the reason that you were born in/with the former due to hard work?

Oh, it wasn't?

Wanna know why?

It's because you weren't "lucky enough," dick face: you were just lucky.

Second. It suggests, as mentioned above, the most obnoxious form of false humility.

"I went to Harvard. That's a place of smart people. I'm a smart person. But it's uncouth to say so. So I'll say that I went to Harvard because I was lucky. It could have been any of us. It just happened to be me. I was lucky. I mean, lucky enough. All the rest of it was my raw smarts."

A closing note. This is not meant to be construed as a rant against Harvard! Harvard is totally cool and amazing. I somehow just kept typing it in above.

And the optimistic part of this rant is that, somehow, I come across really smart people constantly. Even people who went to Harvard! Really successful people. In all manners of the word successful. And the overwhelmingly vast majority of these people do not use the "lucky enough" construction! They actually just say "lucky." It makes my heart sing. And it makes me think there's something to my "false humility" conjecture. Probably there's a little insecurity mixed in with the false humility.

So sad. Because if only they were "secure enough" or "humble enough" rather than "lucky enough" they might be interesting people.

Regardless. Hence forth, please refrain from the "lucky enough" construction, people! And when you hear it, as you inevitably will, give the speaker a dirty glance! Because in the end, "lucky enough" is a much more offensive misuse of grammar than anything the Grammar Police will ever mention on their Facebook status feeds.

---

[1] Which is to say that this post has any number of "grammatical errors." But I've already beat you to the punch line. So you have nothing to gain in mentioning them to me. I already know. Even if I don't, like, already know. See what I did there?

[2] Unless there was some sort of severe neurological deficiency that made expression of this mathematical equation impossible. Which, in an unfortunate way, reiterates that grammar is fundamentally about communication and not style.

[3] Also, what does it say that the romance languages derive from something called Vulgar Latin?

(06.28.11) Recommends:

2011-06-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Curious World of East Hollywood, Circa 2009.

So, I just logged into my blog account. I used to do this more frequently. Alas. Once I logged in again, I opened up a partially completed blog post. From March 2009. It had many photographs of East Hollywood. I'll call it East Hollywood. Is East Hollywood actual and/or acceptable nomenclature? That's a funny thing about cities: vernacular which strikes up fierce controversy within a city relegated to mere words outside of it. E.g., in Los Angeles, having a debate about what is considered the West Side vis-a-vis the East Side strikes up all manner of ostensible controversy, touching on your inner thoughts and/or fears on race and economics and history and gentrification and hipsterdom and empire and manifest destiny and repressed childhood memories and dreams and dreams deferred and insecurities and hope and change and progress. And so forth and so on and etc. And etc. A discussion simultaneously interesting and overwhelmingly stupid: is the discussion food for thought or is it empty calories?

Outside of Los Angeles, I imagine most people think of Eastside/Westside as a rap rivalry created in the 90s, the westside of which is Los Angeles. Are gangstas Westside? Well, I'll let you pose that question to your favorite LA resident, or editor of your favorite LA blog (who may or may not be Ohio born and raised. Whatever.).

Anyway. I'm drifting. And probably hungry.

There was a certain amount of commentary on the blog post from circa March 2009. Commentary that was, on one hand, somewhat interesting, but on the other hand, destined never to be finished. So I've decided to publish anyway. With just the pictures.

This is a glimpse of my views, circa March 2009. Some of these views are no more: erased from the landscape, casualty to the slow, steady march of time. (march of '09, march of time -- i'm trying here, people!)

Maybe I'll come back some day and fill in with commentary. But what's that line? Something like, words should only be spoken when they say more than silence.

(05.20.11) Recommends:

2011-05-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters.

So, if you've been paying attention to the news -- real, quasi, pseudo, and otherwise -- lately, you've been hearing a lot of discussion of the "debt ceiling" and whether Congress should raise it. You have, e.g., the Patriots for Profit crowd off making noise in one corner. And then, e.g., Timothy Geithner is making equal and opposite noises in another corner. Things have become so desperate that CNN has even trotted out a FAQ to help us sort through all of the issues.

A helpful reminder: CNN is viewed primarily by the institutionalized and the incarcerated. The network's fearless, hunky leader, ~~Quinn the Medicine Woman~~ Anderson Cooper, was once host of reality television show The Mole. Becoming a "news" "reporter" for CNN is probably most properly viewed as a demotion. End tangent.

Anyway. Debts ceilings, the future of Western Civilization, etc etc. Honestly, the details of the story are mostly relayed to me by various correspondents, as I can rarely bring myself to watch television and even when I do I insist on turning the volume off and instead listening to old Sea Wolf songs.

But here's the thing. Every time I think of the topic, I know that I'm supposed to have a Position that I should get righteously indigent about. And yet, instead, my brain drifts off to a place I walked by on a recent night:

Following are several key things to notice:

1. This Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant is several stories tall.

2. EBT -- that's polite talk for "food stamps" -- is welcome at this KFC which, as has previously been mentioned, is several stories tall.

3. The restaurant sells enough product to keep the hundreds of thousands of square feet of the interior of the restaurant completely illuminated at 10pm, well past closing time, and yet many of the light bulbs announcing the name of the restaurant have burned out. I presume this is because when employees are asked to climb a ladder hundreds of feet to change said light bulbs most die of cardiac arrest before reaching the top.

All of which is to say: even if we get this debt ceiling thing figured out, we still have a very long ways to go.

Oh, yes: our 12-piece bucket of freedom drizzled in gravy still glows like a shining city on a hill, or like the flickering incandescent light bulbs of a neon fast food restaurant sign.

Or something. Or whatever.

But: But the garden that you planted remains.

(08.11.09) Recommends:

2009-08-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

Scenes from a Recession, c. 2009.

lot, gower & melrose.

(01.19.09) Recommends:

2009-01-19T13:14:00.000-08:00

Ericailcane.

We learned about Ericailcane this weekend while we were walking down LaBrea. If you've been around LaBrea and Melrose lately perhaps you've seen this giant [some type of animal(1)] eating a car:

Further research revealed that this mural went up as part of Ericailcane's new show Man Is The Bastard at the nearby Carmichael Gallery. The gallery has a nice, er, gallery of photos from the show up on the website, if you can't see it in person.

But lovers of whimsical ink on paper work should give Ericailane a try.

(1) We use the term 'animal' with some trepidation since it appears to be wearing a very civilized pair of shoes.

(01.02.09) Recommends:

2009-01-02T19:36:00.001-08:00

New Year's Resolutions (Written on, and From the Prosepective of, My Blackberry Curve).

1. Lose the smudges. I want to come standard with a protective cover that prevents unsightly smudges and tiny micro-fractures in the screen. I'm becoming the Tammy Faye Baker of mobile devices. Ugh.

2. Flash people more often. I want to come with a web-browser that supports mutliple tabs and Flash (and a media player that can be easily minimized).

3. Become a sharp shooter. In a world under the reign of Web 2.0, convenience is increasingly valued over quality. But If I marginally increase the quality of my camera, I'll be Panglossian.

4. Learn to speak in tongues. When users are riding on the metro and publish blog posts to, e.g., Mobile Blogger, html tags should be recognized. (In reality, this is probably more of a Gmail issue. But, alas, the unexamined life is not worth living.)

5. Get fatter. My keys should be a little bigger, so even novices can confidently type with the meaty part of their thumbs rather than tentatively peck with the nail portion of their thumbs. (The BB Bold -- that tramp -- has the perfect sized keys, but I have the perfect amount of "clickiness")

6. Get braces. The F and J key -- or some appropriate combination -- should come with little notches, like on a standard keyboard, so even novices will be able to type while looking at the screen rather than looking at the keyboard.

7. Get timed. Changes in time zones and day light saving should occur automatically. Does this really not already happen?? Don't think it does. There's both a BB and "network" source for time and date, but nobody wants to take they time to figure out the difference.

8. Be nicer to friends. Texting a number not already in the address book takes too long. You have to scroll all the way up to the Use One Time (or whatever) option. As a result people never use me to text and everybody thinks I hate them. Sad face. (Of course, if my friends were really friends, they'd have BBM and this resolution would be mooted. Hint, hint ppl. Srsly.)

9. Get Logged. My call log feature is laughable. I know I'm a mobile computing device first and a phone second, but really, c'mon.

That's my 949 suckas!

(12.28.08) Recommends:

2008-12-28T08:30:00.001-08:00

Airport Confessions.

(Or, People Who Grabbed Our Attention This Year, Written While Flying To Denver).

The other day while on the way to the airport, we blogged about the events of 2K8 that grabbed our attention. Today we thought we'd pass the time on the first leg of our flight back blogging about the people (in the news) who came to dominate our attention this year. We're doing this on the fly, literally -- rim shot! -- so we'll miss some people. And naturally there will be some overlap from our list from earlier in the week. But here goes (and in no particular order).

1. The People Behind the Planet Money Podcast. Planet Money is a blog/podcast put out by NPR (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money). It is only a few months old, but consistantly put out what we thought was the best reporting of the financial meltdown in both its weekday podcast and in particular it's two, hour-long episodes produced in conjunction with This American Life. One of the things we find annoying about a lot of traditional journalism is the amount of assumed knowledge contained in a typical story. What we love about Planet Money is that takes on big economic issues and unpacks them in a manner that is digestable for a non-economist listener, but without dumbing down the content. The show doesn't assume you know what a CDO is. In fact, the reporters admit they're not really sure what certain things are (in fact, they often get the experts to admit that they aren't always sure what's going on -- simple enough definition of a bubble or a dubious scheme, we'd say). So they go hunt down the story and present it link by link. Clearly and systematically explaining each link and linkage. For our money, Adam Davidson is the star of the show.

2. Paul Krugman. We were first exposed to Krugman -- and hence to his enormous impact on the field -- as econ undergrads back in the late 90s-early 00s, before he started his stint as a NYTimes columnist. We mention this time frame because today some people view him as purely a political or partisan voice. While we've agreed with almost all of his critiques of the Bush Administration, particularly over the past three plus years (during which he increasingly took off the gloves, and was often alone in the wilderness as one of the lone, legitimate, mainstream voices doing so), we were never really convinced it took a first-rate, world-class -- indeed, 2008 Nobel Prize winner -- Economist to point out the failings of the Bush Administration. But as the financial crisis began unfolding in front of us this year, suddenly all the pieces that Krugman has been presenting over the years fell into place. During his time at the Times you arguably could have been forgiven for thinking he was just another member of the liberal elite ego machine, but in 2008 you simply couldn't say you were serious about understanding what was going on in the world financial markets without reading Krugman's column (and perhaps re-reading some of those 2004-06 wilderness era columns) and blog, and listening to him lecture.

3. Barack Obama. It's a funny paradox. The pace of Obama's meteoric rise has been perhaps unprecedented. But the length of the campaign was also perhaps unprecedented. Which made it easy to occassionally lose site of how inspiring we found Obama. After he gave The Speech in 2004 we -- along with most of our family and friends -- instictively knew he would win the 2008 election -- he hit a nerve that was so raw, so exposed, so waiting, yearning to be hit. 2008 was the year that instinct became reality. It'll be a year that history books will both, to paraphrase Lincoln, significantly note and long remember. And it's because of Obama.

4. David Plouffe. We both detested yet were inspired by Plouffe's incessant emails. Detested because the role of money in politics gives us the heebie-jeebies. But inspired because every time he asked he received so much goddam money. There is a fine line between money corrupting and people who normally don't care pitching in because they finally give a damn. Plouffe made us feel it was the latter that was happening. Plus, those "homemade strategy videos" he would sent out were pretty sweet, right?

5. Nate Silver. If you seriously followed this election, between September and November 04 you spent more hours at work checking FiveThirtyEight.com than working. The week after the election, you checked it like a man who loses his leg in war reports being able to feel his amputated leg. We're only now getting over it. We all know these three things to be true.

6. Shepard Fairey. 2008 was the year he went from being known as the guy who created an image that was widely influential in certain cultural circles, to creating the defining imagine of an historic election. There's no need to attempt to overstate Fairey's role in getting Obama elected, but there's no question that his iconic-imaging of Obama will go hand-in-hand with history's recounting of the election.

7. The Pirates. First we thought the stories were just kind of funny and odd and seemed out of place. Then we thought the Pirates were making a brave, populist stance against foreign overfishing. Then we feared that the world economy was certainly going to collapse and we were headed to a life based on the movie Water World. We still have a few more days in '08 to come up with a new story line. But the fact is we were glued to pirate stories this year.

Plane is landing. Perhaps more later.

(12.24.08) Recommends:

2008-12-24T06:16:00.000-08:00

Taxicab Confessions.

Stories That Grabbed Our Attention This Year, Written While in the Cab to LAX.

01. The election. This probably tops most people's list. From primaries to caucuses to FiveThirtyEight to that awful Sarah Palin person to the election of BH Obama, it was literally a year-long ride.

02. The near collapse of the world economy. Who thought we'd read with such interest stories about the TED spread and the commercial paper market. Every day tried to top the previous day in over-the-topness of bad news.

03. Pirates. A mixture of childlike fasination, admiration of the perhaps dubious populist stance of the pirates, and a fear that due to point 2, pirate economies would become more prevalant, we couldn't read enought about this.

04. Nebraska Anti-Abandonment Law. So NE passed a law meant to encourage parents who couldn't carry the burden of a baby, to turn newborns in rather than abandon them. Problem is, no age restriction was written into the law and something like 50 children, many as old as 17, were immediately given up. Law was amended in an emergency session.

05. Suicide of David Foster Wallace. If anybody could have put stories 1-4 into context of modern culture, it would have been Dave Wallace. When he checked out early, we feared mass confusion had finally carried the day. We all carry on, but with heavy hearts.

06. Myspace verdict. It's always hard to talk about the import of case law until years later when it's impact can be fully analyzed. But this case makes it a federal crime to violate a private company's terms of use. The back story makes this result easy to handle for casual observers, but it's theoretically taking us into murky waters.

Well, that's all the time we have. We're being lectured on taxicab credit card use by the driver and can no longer concentrate. What is up with the cash entitlement complex of cab drivers? I know it's marginally inconvenient for you, but it's marginally inconvenient for me to pay for the price of the ride. So it evens out, okay?

(12.23.08) Recommends:

2008-12-23T13:53:00.000-08:00

Scenes From Little Armenia.

So the other day we were out walking around, exploring Little Armenia, which is a little neighborhood nestled roughly between Hollywood and Thai Town and which, incidentally (and somewhat inexplicably), has a pretty decent $20 all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant which has all of these elaborate restrictions on the all-you-can-eat meal, including an ominous, though we're guessing never enforced, threat written on the menu that you are being timed, and if you eat for too long you will be asked to leave. The place specializes in spicy sushi rolls, complete with a "if you can eat a certain amount of such and such spicy roll, we'll put your picture up on a wall." Again, all somewhat inexplicable.

Anyway. As we were saying. We were exploring the neighborhood and came across the following sign:

And the sign seemed pretty perfect. Here we were, in this pretty hard to explain neighborhood, during a time when the country and, in fact, literally the entire world, has been gripped by an almost palatable sense of weariness and nervousness and relentless bad news. And then we saw this sign and realized that though the people walking along the street might have differet lots in life, might be at different points in life, might be aiming for different goals in life, there are certain things that are common to us all. It's a useful thing to keep in the back of our minds, as we go about our day to day lives.

Update: More from Curtis Kulig here.

(12.18.08) Recommends:

2008-12-18T22:40:00.000-08:00

Introducing: The Red Line Diaries.

So, there's no question that we've become bored with this blog over the last several months. We've spent much more time engaging in short Twitter bursts, and playing around with other mobile blogging platforms. (In fact we're -- err, I'm -- typing this waiting on the metro platform on the way home from work, so please excuse the lack of links). To this end, we're developing a new blog -- working name The Red Line Diaries -- that we hope to debut, and link to in this space, very soon.

Ooop. Here comes our train. Talk soon.

(12.03.08) Recommends:

2008-12-03T05:58:00.000-08:00

Scenes from Crazy Hook.

Anybody who's been following our Twitter feed knows that we've been pretty obsessed with all these Pirate stories from the last few months. So, in the spirit of staying abreast of current events, we recently hit up our favorite neighborhood in Los Angeles, for a night out at Crazy Hook, Koreatown's very own dot, dot, dot pirate bar/restaurant.

One of the things we love about Koreatown is that its bar owners and restuaranteurs are not shy at taking on novelty themes (pirate bars, robot bars, etc) and not being too cool to actually really run with the themes. For intstance, take the Redwood Bar and Grill, which is located downtown and which we mentioned yesterday. It is billed as a pirate bar, but other than maybe a pirate flag and the bar having lots of dark wood and thus giving off a vaguely nautical feel, it's a "pirate bar" mostly because "hipsters" say it is.

Yeah, Crazyhook has pirate flags:

And, yeah, the interior is dark, wooden, and generally feels like you're on a boat.

And it has a pirate greeter who bares a striking resemblance to Grateful Dead guiatarist Bob Weir (in the foreground, and skeptical friends in the background):

It also has, of course, the obligatory one armed/one hooked pirate who would like to take his picture with you:

But lest you get too complacant around the pirates, know that they usually kidnap and string up at least one female patron nightly:

(note: this fact is more or less made up) There are pretty much dangerous pirates lurking in every dark corner of the place:

Of course, in addition to really taking the themes seriously, the other thing that Korean establishments use that, for reasons unbeknownst to us, their US counterparts have not gotten smart to, is the Booze Botton:

The genuis of the Booze Button is that the servers leave patrons alone to enjoy the company of their companions until the moment the group hits the button, then, seemingly out of nowhere, a server arrives leaving your group with exactly what you want when you want it (namely, centimeters and centimeters of yummy beer)

After a few centimeters of beer and the Crazy Hook sign starts showing up in all sorts of funky colors:

(12.02.08) Recommends:

2008-12-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

Signs You'd Probably Rather Not See.

So we recently visited Santa Monica with a friend. We were on a seafood eating excursion. Our destination was to be Enterprise Fish Co. It should be noted that there was a general reluctance on our part to visit this place because it contains some sketchy info on its website. If you don't click through the link, just know that it advertises a portion of the restaurant that offers "bottle service." Question Mark. Bottle service? At a seafood restaurant? Really? How can that possibly be necessary/justified/non-completely-obnoxious?

We were skeptical.

We were in the mood for oysters.

We gave it a try.

Here's a look at the place from the outside:

Now. We happen to love seafood. But we know a lot of otherwise reasonable people who do not. Some of these people don't like it because they don't like the "fishy smell." We can understand that, we just happen to be fine with the smell. The smell of raw sewage and/or possibly feces, on the otherhand? That's pretty much been universally discredited as an acceptable culinary aroma by now. It's unclear, however, whether Enterpirse Fish Co. ever received the memo, because when we went to open the doors, we saw this:

Yes, shut down because of a "sewage" violation. Yikes. Here's a copy of the code for those interested.

Bottle service was strike one. We're afraid sewage violations are strike two and three. Sigh.

(12.02.08) Recommends:

2008-12-02T07:03:00.000-08:00

The Hackensaw Boys.

It's been a rainy/misty/foggy start to the holiday season here in Los Angeles. And, for some reason, rainy/misty/foggy holidays makes us want to listen to bluegrass and drink beer with friends in a setting that features lots of wood, or fake wood paneling if wood is too expensive (and what with the economic crisis we're in, this is probable). We're completely serious about this. We're not sure why we feel this way, but we do. Sort of like how listening to the Strokes' album Room on Fire makes us think of driving around Kansas City with a gentle snow falling.

Well, as an aside, now that we think about it, we actually understand that Strokes connection. We were in the year between graduating college and moving on to our next adventure. We lived in a part of town that was ostensibly hip and as a result our car was broken into three times. The first two times, during the fall, just the windows were smashed but nothing was taken. We actually took this somewhat as an insult because we had hundreds of CDs strewn about the car and not a single one was taken. We figured the thief thought we had bad taste in music and were deeply offended. The third time was during the early winter, and apparently wanting to preserve energy during the cold season, the thief got tricky/steathy. We entered the car. Started it and headed to work. Silence. This seemed weird so we looked down at the car stereo. Only to see that the car stereo had been stolen. Again, all of the CDs we had were entact, but we happened to have the aforementioned Strokes album in the CD player so that one was lost. And in the interim, rather than just going to buy a new car CD player and a new Strokes CD, we would drive around with our laptop open, playing the CD through our laptop speakers (we happened to have, cough cough, downloaded the album prior to purchasing it). Because the part of town we lived in was more ostensibly hip than actually hip (we mean seriously, if this was an actual hip part of town the thief would have left us a goddam thank you note for allowing him/her to behold such an impressive CD collection; at the least s/he would have taken them all to look cool around friends. Not that we haven't gotten over the snub or anything), there were many nights were we'd have nothing interesting to do. So we'd drive a long loop around the city, listening to the Strokes Room on Fire as a light snow fell. The end.

Anyway. Moving on. Here are some pictures of a show that the Hackensaw Boys recently put on at the Redwood Bar & Grill, a random pirate-themed bar downtown. Pirate bar, of course it is. The Hackensaw Boys are a rowdy countrypunkbluegrass band and they put on a very entertaining live act.

We also recorded some sound. We like this first song because it's about The End Times Coming. And with transformative American authors commiting suicide, and worldwide financial meltdowns, and major/historic elections, and stories of pirates hijacking ships appearing with near daily regularity in the NY Times, and bad-action-movie-plot style attacks in India, all occuring within months of each other, it kinda sorta seems like this song might be on to something.

We like this next song because the band announces they're from Virgina, and if you listen closely, you can hear people in the crowd saying, in a nod to the McCain/Palin campaign and a nod to the memory of George Allen, "Welcome to America" and "the realVirgina?"

Finally, this last clip we like because, well, because the singer insists on making "Pirate noises" as the band looks for its missing fiddle player, and because the banjo player -- we've got a rather large soft spot on the banjo -- seems to get a little bored waiting and breaks into some killer banjo soloing. Yes, we went there: we just said killer banjo soloing.

Now, if you've gotten this far you may be saying to yourself: Man, it's kinda strange that you're into bluegrass music played in a manic style. Or: Man, it's kinda strange that there's a pirate-themed bar so far away from the craggy coastline of Somalia (Note: we think it's some sort of rule of AP Style that the NYTimes cannot draft an article about pirates without mentioning said pirates' proxmity off the "craggy coastline of Somalia," craggy being a word I've seen used in print perhaps never prior to Pirategate '08).

However. We submit that the strangest thing to come of all of this is that when we took the subway home -- from Union Station to the Hollywood/Vine station -- we noticed the top of the inside of Union Station is covered with hanging -- strategically or otherwise -- male manequin/blow up dolls -- or, omg, is it possible that they're Real Dolls; oh yikes, please say no. We're not kidding around:

(12.01.08) Recommends:

2008-12-01T10:28:00.000-08:00

WSO Update.

Holy moly it's been, like, years since we've updated here. So much has been going on in the world since September that the blog felt a little uncalled for. Plus, we've been cheating on Blogger and spending much of our online time spouting nonsense on Twitter and Tumblr. But now we've gotten over ourselves, and figured we could start sharing here again. It's the holiday seasons. Recommendations are needed. So last time we updated it was about the WSO show at the Hotel Cafe. Below are some of the sites and sounds we captured. (Note: we are on the verge of converting a bunch of .mpg files to .mp3 files, so the days of you having to click on a video that has little or no visible video and only sound are almost over. Recommended: patience.)

Some sites:

Some sounds:
Tilt

Ten Dead Dogs

(10.15.08) Recommends:

2008-10-15T17:35:00.000-07:00

Wild Sweet Orange at the Hotel Cafe.

We're lifting our head above water here to let people know that tomorrow a blog fave band, Wild Sweet Orange, plays at a blog fave venue, Hotel Cafe.

Here's some WSO tunes to get you in the mood.

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

Wild Sweet Orange -- Either/Or -- mp3.

---

Previous write-ups on the band can be found here and here.

Previous write-ups of Hotel Cafe can be found here and here.

(10.08.08) Recommends:

2008-10-08T17:12:00.000-07:00

This American Life's Exploration of the Financial Crisis.

We've extolled the virtues of TAL on the blog many times. Most likely we're just preaching to the choir when we say it's one of the most important cultural voices coming out of this country. But their handling of the current economic crisis -- breaking it down into understandable terms -- exceeded even our expectations of what we thought the show was capable of producing. We don't think it's hyperbole to suggest that these two episodes might be the most important pieces of journalisms we'll consume this year. If you haven't listened already, you really need to hear these.

The Giant Pool of Money. This is the original episode; originally aired 05.09.08.

Another Frightening Show About the Economy. The follow-up episode, created due to the overwhelming popularity of the first episode; originally aired 10.03.08.

(09.24.08) Recommends:

2008-09-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

Thoughts Ahead of President Bush's Address to the Nation Regarding Our Current Financial Crisis.

Okay, so we just heard that the President is going to address the country tonight. Obviously he's not known as the most articulate and/or thoughtful president that our nation has ever produced. So who knows what he'll say. But for some reason we now have a particular section from the Andrew Bird song Tables and Chairs stuck in our heads. Can't you just picture an episode of the Simpsons where an animated President Bush addresses a weary nation with the following:

I know we're going to meet some day
In the crumbled financial institutions of this land
There will be tables and chairs
There'll be pony rides and dancing bears
There'll even be a band
Cause listen, after the fall there will be no more countries
No currencies at all, we're gonna live on our wits
We're gonna throw away survival kits,
Trade butterfly-knives for Adderall
And that's not all
Oh, there will be snacks there will
there will be snacks, there will be snacks.

Maybe tonight, when the president begins to speak, we should turn down the volume on him and listen to this song instead.

(09.23.08) Recommends:

2008-09-23T09:07:00.001-07:00

Remembering David Foster Wallace.

I didn't know Dave Wallace. I never attended a reading of his. I still haven't even gotten through Infinite Jest. But hearing about his death 11 days ago was like a punch in the gut. I've never before really experienced the sadness that I felt when I heard about his death, from somebody that I did not know. But for a few days the world seemed very heavy. I think Peter Sagal, the NPR personality, touched on why I felt such sadness, when he wrote:

one of the things DFW wrote about, pretty constantly, especially in his more informal commentary, was the experience of us all being alone in our heads, and desperately trying to break out of it. I remember reading one comment he made (wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for it) that the whole point of fiction, maybe writing in general, was to send a message from one isolated head to another, with the meaning: you are not as alone as it seems.

I spent those first few nights after hearing the news going through my bookshelves, reading short stories he had written, and interviews he had given, and lamenting that I once loaned away for life a book that included an introduction by a well-respected writer that was essentially just a comment on an interview he had once given (such was DFW's ability that other well-regarded writers were eager to get to write simply about his interviews).

Like I said, it's been 11 days now. And a sense of normalcy has returned, at least for me. But I won't soon stop reading, and responding to, his writing. So I thought today would be a good time to put up some of his work in this space, for my resource, and hopefully for yours, too.

The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub. (abridged version that he read on This American Life here)

Consider The Lobster.

Federer As Religious Experience.

(09.11.08) Recommends:

2008-09-11T08:05:00.000-07:00

Overcast Days.

We don't know what this says about us, but we've always found grey days and rain calming. You don't get much of that here in Southern California. But we've got one of those days today, at least downtown. We feel soothed. It's gonna be a productive day.

Overcast days also recall to our mind the opening credits of the Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart which is, without question, one of the finest opening scenes of any movie, ever.

(09.09.08) Recommends:

2008-09-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

Man vs. Nature: Before vs. After.

In the red corner we have the Mobil horse, an ExxonMobil brand.

In the blue corner we have a Skullphone mural adorning the Small Bills art space.

"Art is science made clear." Jean Cocteau.

(09.08.08) Recommends:

2008-09-08T18:00:00.000-07:00

Signs of the Time.

It was another weekend of beautiful weather, so we woke up early and went for a walk. We noticed that, from certain vantage points, it appears that Hollywood High School is sponsored by TV Guide.

This, we figured, probably helps explains a lot. Such as, why there are very few bookstores in the area. We know of three: Book Soup and Borders, neither of which offers a very reasonable parking situation, and Counterpoint Record and Books which doesn't offer a very reasonable, you know, selection of books. As such, we usually just walk down to our neighborhood newsstand [as can be seen, the newstand is international and, thus, cosmopolitian, and therefore all watchers of television may infer that Rudy Giuliani does not approve.]

High-school-brought-to-you-by-television probably also helps to explain trends such as, people who live in an area known for lots of traffic and not lots of parking buying vehicles such as this:

People who buy Hummers are unquestionably amoung our easiest -- and most deserving -- citizens to mock, but even so, isn't there something terribly sad about that "For Sale" sign in the back of the window?

There are multiple ways out of our Hummer days, and Hollywood is embracing at least two of them. While we firmly adhere to the notion that art made with mission statements is not art, we nonetheless enjoyed coming upon this:

But street messages are a routine part of life here. We were a little bit more taken aback when we saw this:

Maybe as a result of the renewed energy debate that our country seems to be undertaking, we'll no longer have to rely on David Browne Berds to remind us what the real things look like.

A Note For Those Who Yearn To See More Wildlife in the City: for the next two weeks, you have a chance to see the City of Los Angeles put 100 goats to work downtown. We're completely serious about this. Read more here.

Of course, without TV sponsoring high school, how many of us would not know about Arby's? That would be an unequivocal disaster, for we all know that Arby's roast beef sandwhiches are, in fact, delicious.

(09.06.08) Recommends:

2008-09-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

The Coolest Street Sign in Los Angeles.

So we had a meeting this afternoon in Studio City. We pretty much don't know anything about Studio City, but we do know that from where we live we can get there by taking Laurel Canyon Blvd. And when we were headed South, headed home on that street, we came across the above street sign. It is so awesome, right? We're thinking that has to be a piece of street art. But who knows. Maybe it was a warning from the city: if you insist on taking these curves, while talking on your cell phone, as we know is your wont, eventually you will die.

If anybody has any info on this sign, please leave a comment or send us an email.

(09.04.08) Recommends:

2008-09-04T16:08:00.000-07:00

Favrd.

Favrd might be the greatest website ever. Seriously, go there now.

(09.02.08) Recommends:

2008-09-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

Scenes From a Long Weekend.

With the holiday on Monday, we had a chance to get out and do some exploring.

Traffic. Downtown.

Market. Echo Park.

Utility box. Echo Park.

Paint store. Echo Park.

The following picture nicely captures two truths about Los Angeles. One, LA has a reputation that its citizens are health- and image-obsessed. Whether there is truth in the sterotype, the fact is, there must be more donut stores in LA, by any measure you wish to use, than any place in the US. Probably you can't go more than 100 yards without seeing a donut store. Two, LA does have a staggering amount of diversity; it's really a wonderful thing. Off the top of our heads, we can think of Thai Town, Korea Town, Little Armenia, Historic Philipinotown, Little Tokyo, Chinatown. And those are just the ethnically named neighborhoods. But that doesn't mean the city is always harmonious and coming from Kansas, there's a kind of cognitive disonance when you witness racism here. In LA, which is less than 50% white, discreet ethnic groups throw blame at other discreet ethnic groups. There seems to be tension between Korean people and Black people, for instance. Other groups seem to have a problem with the increased influence of the Hispanic population. Etc, etc. On the other hand, racism in Kansas is more likely to manifest itself in some kind of abstract form: the place is 90% white, so somebody might carry around a notion about "colored people" or "immigrants" in general destroying the country, but in this world view Koreans, Blacks, and Hispanics are all the same and they're all the enemy. I guess it just proves a universal rule: with enough time on their hands, humans have the capacity to complain about anything and lay blame on anybody.

Cafe Was -- still can't figure out if the sign is clever or cheesy. Hollywood.

Qat, it's a Scrabble word you really need to know. Hollywood.

Stormwater ordianance sign. Hollywood.

Of course you would expect palm trees to line the boulavards in a neighborhood that calls itself Country Club Park.

Ice Fade is a pretty awesome name for a barber shop. Slauson Ave.

City bench.

Stencils. Hollywood.

There's something about the way "human" appears on this sign that mezmerizes us. Washington Blvd.

Utility pole art. Hollywood.

The Los Angeles City Council recently enacted a one year moratorium on opening fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles. The story got national coverage, including this NY Times piece in which Jonathan Gold notes that South Los Angeles is the home to the best barbeque in the city and wonders how the ban will effect on that culinary tradition. We thought of the article as we waited nearly 90 minutes for our order from Phillips on Crenshaw Blvd.

Doorway entrance art. Hollywood.

We should just mention now: we ate lots of barbque over the weekend.

You can't make it down Melrose without being inundated by MBW artwork. Some of it we like, some of it we think is overload. We like this one.

Car wash. Inglewood.

MBW stencil. Hollywood.

We love this sign/advertisement/artwork. Not sure if it should be interpreted to mean that the car lot caters to a religious clientelle, or the car lot is suggesting that you'll need to rely on some kind of religious miracle in order to prevent your purchase from being a lemon.

Building. Hollywood.

No, seriously: holidays are made for eating.

Less talk, more rock. LaBrea Ave.

It turns out that it's not just neighborhoods called Country Club Park that are lined with Palm trees. Miraculously, almost every major street has them. Mid City.

The truth about Hollywood (we report, you decide).

Evidence #1:

The original street artist?

Industrial building. Compton Ave.

School days. Slauson Ave.

Motel. LaBrea and Slauson.

Valentine to Los Angeles.

When in Rome.

Old economy.

Fruit cart. Echo Park.

Market. Beverly Blvd.

Political pundits keep saying that Labor Day is when the electorate begins paying attention to the general election season in earnest. If elections were won on window signs, this thing would be a blow out.

Water. Wilton Pl.

Palm trees, blue skies, donuts. We came. We saw. We conquered. Los Feliz.

The clouds rolled in as the hills ate the sun, and as quickly as it came, the long weekend faded away.

(09.01.08) Recommends:

2008-09-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

More Space Invaders.

The cool thing about street art is that once you understand what you're seeing, you start seeing it all over. The last time we checked in we blogged about Space Invader. And sure enough, we're starting to see these pieces everywhere we go.

First up, the Invaders at Wilcox and Hollywood Blvd.

Heading south, next are the Invaders at Gower and Melrose.

Finally, heading west, the gigantic Invader, currently mostly covered by the gaudy advertising from Black Jack at Martel and Melrose.