Hey, look! Its “Sweatin’ Bullets” on a JesusPhone! photo by Sean Bonner.

Fightin’ Mad Mary discovers one poop-repulsed neighbor who’s filled their lawn with crap to get keep the dogs off.

Ensie has created a new Flickr group dedicated to the variety of “No Dumping This Drains To Ocean” signs.

LAist discovers charges on their Amex for three tickets to the Prince show at the Roosevelt (at $312 each) even though they only ordered one, and never were told the charge had gone through, and apparently this is only one of many problems plaguing the Purple One’s Hollywood Blvd. residency…

The Militant Angeleno says, “it’s not Summer until I visit the beach,” and thusly kicks starts the season with his annual 22 mile ride along the South Bay Bike Path.

Bloggers and their neighbors are apparently being targeted by the fuzz (and cranky neighbors) for having rowdy parties: Bootstrap Productions and Sink Into the Pacific share the tales.

Ed at the LA Times Pressmans 20 Year Club speculates on if and how the Tribune Company will be renamed following Sam Zell’s takeover.

Say what you want about William Mulholland: his granddaughter, Catherine Mulholland, who wrote “William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles,” “The Owensmouth Baby: The Making of a San Fernando Valley Town,” and “Calabasas girls: An intimate history, 1885-1912″ and who then went on to teach at Berkeley for many years, is a heroine of mine. Writing prolifically about the land in which she grew up, archiving the history of Los Angeles through the prism of her own family and her own experiences, her flinty personality and no-bullshit approach made it possible for her to blaze a trail as a woman writer.

I got to meet her the other weekend when the Canoga Park Historical Society assembled its local founding families (mine among them) for its 95th anniversary.

Her advice to me as a local writer: “You’ve picked a very hard thing to do–very, very difficult. But it can be immensely rewarding. Work hard, don’t listen to the naysayers, and don’t give up.”

More pics after the jump, as well as Dennis Zine’s anecdote about jogging at Lanark Park with a gun at 5am. Run Dennis Run!
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[couldn’t get a photo while driving so I borrowed this awesome one from RockInsider.com]

The 30th Lotus Festival is a mere two weeks away, yet I drove by Echo Park Lake today and the lotuses are occupying about 25% of their usual space.

A few are blooming - maybe a dozen - but that’s nothing compared to the usual population of that entire end of the lake.

Anybody know what gives?
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I spent many hours today at The Grove with Xeni for the official release of the iPhone. Here’s about 200 photos I took with my new Canon TX1. There’s tons of crowds, the first guy in line, and even some Kevin Smith. I took video as well, that’ll be coming soon. Here’s Xeni’s BoingBoing post about it. More soon…

Photo by Pete Southwood of “the rings” in Venice Beach… I remember a time not so long ago when I could actually take a trip on these things with relative ease… now I can barely stay on long enough to earn the blisters. (used under Creative Commons)

Quote of the week: “When testicles and ovaries are outlawed, only outlaws will have testicles and ovaries.” - Mayor Sam on opposing Walter Moore’s support of mandatory spaying or neutering for dogs and cats.

Kelly of West Coast Grrlie Blather survives jury duty by taking comfort in “The Secret”.

Peggy Archer, known to security guards for using her old socks as chemical weapons, gives “Tom’s of Maine” deodorant a test spin in a post entitled, “Well, that didn’t work out quite like I’d hoped.”

“Thunderbolt Fan” gives an update on what’s happening (or whats not happening) with the the Griffith Park recovery.

Curbed L.A. rounds up the best videos of “Bradley”, the civil rights challenged Glassel Park Neighborhood Council chairman, who is now questionably the most well known NC member in L.A., next to Bradley Westwater.

Justin Levine at Patterico’s Pontifications finds out that if you order your coffee “to go”, even if you’ll be sitting down, you’ll be able to save a few cents while skirting State tax laws.

Arthur Magazine is coming back! My favorite free, independently owned and operated transgenerational counterculture magazine announced it was done back in March 2007 and there has been a void ever since! Well fear not, the five-year-old LA based music, culture, politics and drug magazine announced that the zine will return from their sabbatical in early August of 2007. In the meantime if you’re jonesing for a freaky fix, you might wanna check out their blog that they’ve been updating pretty regularly. The dudes over at Arthur have also been announced some groovy plans for some CD and DVD releases as well as a book anthology of the best of the last five years of the magazine. Sounds pretty hippylious if you ask me, I can smell it from here!

Jeordie White AKA Twiggy Ramirez will be DJing rock n’ roll songs with myself tonight at The Bar from 10:00pm till 2am. You might know who Jeordie used to be from such rock bands as Goon Moon (which he does with Zach Hill from Hella & Chris Goss from Masters Of Reality and who’s also recorded Kyuss, Queens of the Stone Age, the new Duke Spirit, Mark Lanegan, UNKLE & others), Nine Inch Nails, A Perfect Circle & Marilyn Manson. Plus he’s friends with Liam Gallagher (the lead singer of the greatest currently active rock band on earth,OASIS), so you can’t get much cooler than that. The Bar is located at 5851 Sunset Blvd (Cross Street: Bronson Avenue) in Hollywood. Get there early for a booth but either way stop by, have some drinks and listen to some killer tunes.

In other semi-unrelated rock news, The Verve reunited this week and announced November UK live dates. The DL word on the street is that they will be playing a festival in Los Angeles sometime in March of 2008, which is a ways off but GODLIKE non-the-less. Can’t wait for Dicky Ashcroft and Nick McCabe to set foot on our side of the pond and lay down some headbangin’ riffs!

The virtual carcancha that cruises up and down the streets on the Eastside has developed a flat tire, so until the neighbor returns my can of fix-a-flat I present you with a D.I.Y. graphic suitable for stickering all over Echo Park, Silverlake, and the rest of the places on the other side of the river that are Not the Eastside. You may have already seen these small paper examples of direct action around town. This was designed by one of the persons involved with the Pocho Research Society which they describe as

“a collective of artists, activists and rasquache historians who reside in Los Angeles. Dedicated to the systematic investigation of space, memory and displacement, the PRS understands history as a battleground of the present, a location where hidden & forgotten selves hijack & disrupt the oppression of our moment.”

I’m not the only one that thinks the fight for historical memory is a worthy one. If you missed the report on KPCC yesterday about one of their latest actions, placing guerrilla historical plaques that commemorate gay and Latino bars displaced by gentrification, go here to read the transcript or here if you want to stream the audio, which is worth a listen.

Now you too can download the image, print it up on sticker paper, and join the ranks of those that fight against the Westside Cultural Empire. Onward Eastside Soldiers!

Click here for a slightly larger version.

Los Angeles gets a lot of grief for being home to an inordinate number of celebretards, pseudo-celebretards, star fuckers, and vain VIPs. Although the city is thusly stereotyped, it’s also home to a thriving population of unique and noteworthy people whose pursuits add diversity and depth to a seemingly shallow pool. Each week, LA’s Better Half will profile one distinctive Angeleno doing something remarkable and original. This week: Meet Charlie Cox, LA’s Premier Street Musician.
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I’m about to head out to see what the heck is up at the lines at the Apple Stores around town. With EVDO and Apple Wifi I should have suitable connection to liveblog what ever I see going down. People are lining up all over town in hopes of getting one of the only 200 phones Apple said each store will have available when doors open at 6pm. However, the inside scoop I got from super secret source: Each store will actually have 1000 or more. We’ll see…