Fogarty and I ran into these walking crap factories in Hollywood yesterday. We stopped them and talked to them for a minute and they said they don’t have a regular beat. They just go where Herr Kommandant orders them to go and wave the flag. Oh yeah, and drop a few tons of horse shit all over the town they’re visiting. Way to make the locals really dig ya.

Click the thumbnail for a fullsize image.

Please put down the crack pipe.

Seriously. Almost 10 of you bitches* damn near ran into me this morning between the 101 and the Adams exit. If it wasn’t for my extra sweet evasive driving maneuvers Caryn and I would be toast. What the hell? Knock it off already, ok?

Thank you.

-sean

* Note: the word “bitches” is used to describe a small group of crack smoking reckless drivers, not women with bad attitudes or female dogs.

I cannot tell a lie: I have pooh-poohed theatre in Los Angeles. That’s probably because I assume (and I think, not entirely wrongly) that actors in Los Angeles do not want to be theatre actors. Actors in Los Angeles want to be in film and television, otherwise they’d be on stage in New York or London. But then we have South Coast Repertory and A Noise Within, the latter of which has just sent out its 2004/2005 season schedule.

To paraphrase Cole Porter, I love brushing up my Shakespeare, so I think I’ll be making the short drive to Glendale for at least “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Julius Caesar,” and maybe even Moliere’s “The School for Wives” and Pinter’s “The Homecoming.” Why the heck not?

But submitting to the lure of the glossy brochure is easy. My question for those of you in the know is this: Where else can one find consistently good theatre in L.A.? (Will, I can hear you typing already…)

Oh, and why don’t L.A. companies roll out the histories more often? Where all my Henrys and Richards at?

So earlier this week, I wondered what people would miss if they weren’t in L.A. & a surprising number of people responded that they’d miss In-N-Out.

On Wednesday night, I went to see an advanced screening of Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle and the tagline of “It’s What You Crave” made me think of the way people talk about Double-Doubles. You may have heard some buzz about the movie “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle” starring John Cho (the guy from American Pie 1&2) and Kal Penn (Kalpen Modi, the guy from Van Wilder). It’s set in New Jersey, and it’s about two guys who get the munchies and their adventures as set off for White Castle.

If you’re looking for something to watch this weekend, I would actually recommend the movie. I didn’t think that I’d find a slapstick/gross-out/stoner comedy funny, but I actually found it to be pretty clever and well-written.

And of course, if you’re in L.A., you can check out the temporary White Castle on Sunset Boulevard which is giving out 1 free burger per person, per day until August 11 to promote the movie.

You can win your own private screening by entering the Harold & Kumar Look-alike Contest, check the Harold & Kumar xanga sites for more details!

Is it just me or is STORMWATCH! being replaced by TERRORWATCH! Here’s the latest FBI Warning for LA by way of the LA Times:

Without offering specifics, the FBI advisory was sent to more than a dozen Joint Terrorism Task Force teams days ago in the hope that law enforcement officials would redouble their efforts to monitor suspicious activities and follow investigative leads on extremists, officials said.

At the same time, FBI officials and others in several cities emphasized that the latest warning contained no specific or corroborated information about a threat to Los Angeles or any other jurisdiction.

“We don’t have a time or a date or anything specific related to the threat,” said Bill Elwell, the FBI spokesman in Albuquerque. “We are just letting people know that we have this information and asking them to remain vigilant.”

…

“The credibility of the information we are getting in this case cannot be established,” the official said. “But in these times, when we have anything that has specifics, whether credible or not, we have to get that out to the local authorities.

OK, so once again there’s no specific information about when, where, who, why, how, or if, and the credibility of the source of this very uninformative information can’t be established. But never the less, you should be scared.

Ew. How scarey.

Sounds a lot like… OH JESUS EFFING CHRIST IT’S RAINING!!!! AHHHH!!! WE’RE EXPECTING UP TO AN INCH IN THE NEXT 24 TO 48 HOURS!! DON’T LEAVE THE HOUSE!!! STOCK UP ON CANNED FOOD AND BATTERIES!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!!!!!!!!

The Cowboys training camp is opening in Oxnard this week. Normally, this news would only be of interest to Cowboys fans. This year, though, there’s a new wrinkle: the city of Oxnard recently banned the famous star logo:

Well sort of. From the AP story: “Authorities obtained an injunction last month preventing the city’s largest and most violent street gang, the Colonia Chiques, from wearing the team’s clothing within a 6.6-square-mile ’safety zone’ in the heart of Ventura County’s largest city.” Apparently the Chiques “adopted” the logo a couple of decades ago as their symbol. City officials, however, have reassured anxious Cowboys fans that only gang members are disallowed from wearing the symbol.

Thank God there’s a “safety zone” where right-standing citizens are protected from seeing frightening ruffians in sports attire.

Also seen on the GLAAD website, an update on the previous post about the controversial homophobic ad in the L.A. Times:

The July 28 edition of the Los Angeles Times contains a column by Times writer Steve Lopez on his paper’s refusal to disclose its acceptable advertising standards and the absurdity of the claims made by Exodus International in its July 23 ad. “Randy Is Just Dandy — or Is He?” also humorously explores what Lopez calls “what looked like the largest singles ad in publishing history.”

Please continue to write the Los Angeles Times, thanking Steve Lopez for his outstanding column. And continue calling on its Department of Advertising Standards to disclose the standards by which it found Exodus’ defamatory myths acceptable for publication.

Yesterday, Doc on the ‘ROQ reported the news that the average home price in the state of California is now $475,000 (up 25% in the last month). In Los Angeles, he continued, it’s now $400,000. Hmm..that’s not so bad. But here’s my question: WHERE?! We’ve been looking for a house for a little while, and the only place we’ve seen with houses in that range is Highland Park. I already know if you want to move to Diamond Bar or Covina you can probably find something liveable for under $400K. But what I want to know is, for those of us that need to stay central, what are the hidden gems? West Adams? Beverlywood? Where can buyers still find an (relatively) affordable house that’s not in the ghetto?

P.S.: I searched like mad for the source of the numbers that Doc reported, but couldn’t find anything. If you know, hit me up.

Okay, okay, okay…I admit that this isn’t really LA specific. But with all the coverage of the Democratic convention going on, I thought it was good time to remind you to MAKE SURE YOU’RE REGISTERED TO VOTE, DAMNIT! After all voting is easy.

Technorati publishes a Top 100 of blogs with the most inbound links. As of a few minutes ago the tail end looks a little something like this:

95. Brunching Shuttlecocks 1386 blogs 1581 links
96. Dave Barry’s Blog 1385 blogs 1443 links
97. tin-men 1364 blogs 1401 links
98. ABRUPTO 1359 blogs 1832 links
99. Random Bytes 1353 blogs 1408 links
100. Television Without Pity 1349 blogs 1569 links

However, if you search for blogging.la, the results say we have 1364 blogs 2451 links, which should put us at #96. Technorati has been a bit shakey recently so I’m guessing the Top 100 list isn’t totally up to date, but that is pretty kick ass news either way.

w00t!