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Curating the City: Wilshire Blvd

If you are a history, art, or architecture fan, check out The LA Conservancy's new online exhibition Curating the City: Wilshire Blvd (via Glenda the Good). The site is a fun multimedia run of the whole length of Wilshire Blvd. from downtown LA to Santa Monica with great photos and information.

LA Radio Gone Wrong

Is it just my car's stereo or has LA Radio gone all wrong? Practically every station is playing Elton John and Billy Joel all the time. Ok.

And it is not just the usual suspects of KEARTH 101.1, but JACK 93.1, KLOS 95.5 (!?!?!?!?!?!? WTF???), and KOLA 99.9....

Dear Music Programmers, please only play Elton John, Billy Joel and Fleetwood Mac once very 2-3 hours. Please intersperse with other artists and bands.

Thank you.

AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please Watch

Every now and then a TV broadcaster uses his power for good, and this Wednesday, Jay Leno will be doing just that. Mindy Smith, the Americana Music Association's 2004 Emerging Artist of the Year, will be featured on NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," performing "Please Stay," from her sophomore CD Long Island Shores. A wonderful song, and a great album from a very promising artist.

The Briggs

The new Briggs is by far better than the old One Man Army.

Sorry, Heiko, I love you, but the Briggs are hittin' it and y'all are broken up.

Happy New Year all!

Charles Phoenix's Astro-Weenie Christmas Tree

Thanks to LeandaDLL for the video link.

Running Out of Time

Check out "Let's Stop Global Warming By Christmas" - animation to an original tune with a timely message.

I was told there would be no math....

...but this is just cool!

Thank You Hellbound Eddie

Eddie of Hellbound Hayride works at my local hardware store. I went in there this evening to buy some plumbers putty. I foolishly bought some elsewhere the other day and it was all dried-up and hard.
Anyway, I go to get the stuff tonight and Eddie helps me. As he handed me the little plastic tub of goo, I asked if I could squeeze it first. He just laughed and said "You can do whatever you want with it."

The Last Kiss, or Can I Kiss Ze?

Don't Ever, EVer, EVEr, EVER try to watch a movie trailer on WiMax (802.16 wifi, really only 2x better than dial-up, do not believe the hype. aka... Irish Broadband sucks). Really. Believe me. After the damned thing times out 13 times, you lose the plot of the trailer. Yes, the 2.5 minute trailer. Plot gone.

Now you ask, why is Ms. Jen, the woman who never, ever, never watches movies watching a Movie Trailer????

It is all Ze's fault.

]]> Ze is my new internet crush, next to JDD. Apparently, Ze and I have both attended SXSW Interactive during the lean times and I recognize his face, but I never met the man. Sometime during the midst of studying for my Master's degree exams a couple of months ago, I found a link to one of Ze's shows. Probably the fault of my morning reading on my mobile phone's browser of Metafilter on the Luas while commuting into Trinity.

If you don't watch Ze's daily vlog, then you suck. TV rots your brains out. Movies... bah! But your local professional art/political/opinionated hipster with a daily video show available only online? Now that rocks.

To support his bandwidth fees, Ze sometimes has a static advert at the end of his show. After watching yesterday's show today (sorry, I was busy all day yesterday with defending my Master's Project to internal & external examiners), I decided to click on the link to "The Last Kiss" that was at the end of Ze's show.

"The Last Kiss" - Zach Braff, aged 30, having his Middle-Aged-Guy-Crisis-Early. Now this is a funny premise. I had a good Young-Aged-Gal-Crisis-Early when I was 19 and am glad I got it over with. I wish Zach all the best of luck, esp. since both of his love interest hotties in the trailer were brunettes who belong to the itty-bitty-titty club. Any woman who makes it in Hollywood and does not get a boob job and hair frosting deserves an Oscar in my book.

With Lauren a bit out of commission as Barflies.net's film reviewer due to a long commute and a boyfriend, I guess that I, the woman who firmly believes that the only good use for a TV is for testing sledge hammers, should take up the mantle and review the trailers for movies that are advertised at the end of Ze's Show. I won't go the cinema to see them, I won't rent the DVD, I will watch the trailers online and report back to you all on whether you should brave the cinema or local Blockbuster on my behalf.

NEW ORLEANS WALTZ

Today marks the one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I don't think anyone could have predicted the emotional (or political!) effects of this disaster, even a year later.

Singer-songwriter Grayson Capps is a New Orleans resident who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. I met Grayson and got to see him perform in Nashville at the Americana Music Conference shortly after the disaster last September. His theme song from his current album at the time, If You Knew My Mind? A song called "Get Back Up." Grayson's a delight.

He's set to release his sophomore album Wail and Ride on September 26, but here's a link to the video for his first single from the album "New Orleans Waltz."

We love you, Grayson, and New Orleans.

Dublin is Not Punk Rock

I have 7 more weeks in one of the most un-punk-rock towns in the Northern Hemisphere. Really. Google Video is my friend, reminding me of good music and snarky bastards...

Darn it all, I like Campbell, Calif. Esp. the gluten free section of the Whole Foods in Campbell...

Happy Birthday, MTV

MTV Turns 25 August 1, 2006

MTV turns 25 tomorrow, celebrating their anniversary of 25 years on the air. According to this article from the Associated Press (and viewed at Yahoo! news), MTV is not celebrating because MTV wants to be "the perpetual adolescent."
With all the aplomb of an aging soap star, MTV staunchly refuses to grow older, preferring, like Peter Pan, to stay young forever.

But I can't forget where I was when I first saw MTV. I was 17 years old. Yes, 17. My boyfriend at the time had parents that liked a LOT of tv and had every cable channel known to man (I think there were three then). We raced home after high school to watch Total Request Video. The "I Want My MTV" campaign seemed totally cutting edge. We really wanted our MTV! I can remember thinking that David Bowie's "Blue Jean" was a cool video, and yes, I do remember in 1983 when the "Thriller" (Dec. 2, 1983) video came out.

]]> MTV debuted on August 1, 1981 in New Jersey. By the time we got MTV on the West Coast and in my little neck of the woods, it was two years old, a toddler, and had mastered most of the basic skills that would serve it well for the rest of its adolescent life - fast editing, loud music, hip images, lots of advertising. According to the article, only a few thousand people on a single cable system in northern New Jersey could see the first video, the Buggles, "Video Killed the Radio Star."

That was "back in the day" when MTV actually played music videos. When it was "thrilling" to see a black musical artist with a video on mainstream tv. Back when "Spring Break" (1985) was the most shocking thing on tv. By the time they invented reality television with "The Real World" and hit a new low with "Beavis and Butthead" (1994 for both), I had moved on from the boyfriend and the MTV.

Since then, I rarely see MTV. I hear that it is still on the air, although my sister says they don't play vdieos. I have never seen an episode of "Jackass" all the way through, never seen the Osbournes, and really don't know whatever happened to Puck. I realize that MTV is revolutionary, and that they made smart marketing decisions along the way (videos are boring, Spring Break and reality tv are not). Sex and violence sell, especially to young white men who want to be black in the midwest. And Martha Quinn was not as horrible as we all thought. Although, she was really, really bad.

In all, I do not celebrate MTV, I do not miss MTV, I do not want my MTV. Happy Birthday, MTV.

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT

]]> Even in the sweltering summer temps, nothing can beat the fun of a house party in Fullerton Hills. Rob McCann really knows how to throw a party, and it was awesome to view the lightening bolts flashing down around the city below while listening to the music of the Vaquetones echo throughout the canyon. Perfect acoustics! This guy really knows how to throw a party. Add good eats, good company and good music to the mix and you have a winner of a night. Thanks go out to Ms. Wanda for being DJ of the night, and to Rob and Betsy for hosting this lovely event! Last, but not least, thanks to the Miguel and the guys for bringing us such great music!

LA, Gas Prices and Peak Oil

If gas prices in Calif. are putting a pinch in your pocketbook, here in Dublin the prices are a Euro and twenty cents per litre. That works out to $5.74 a gallon at the best Euro to US dollar rates.

Robert Rapier at R-Squared has written about Peak Oil and LA. Go read it.

The LA Gay Rodeo

I think this year is the year I'll have to stop being an "LA Gay Rodeo" virgin. I've never been (in fact, I'd never even HEARD of it until I got the press release today), but my friend Tonya says it's a ton of fun. And I can't imagine anything cooler, so why the hell not?!

The LA Gay Rodeo takes place August 3 - 6 at the LA Equestrian Center in Burbank.