Not only did the Dodgers win their opening game this season, they did it by beating the hated San Francisco Giants.

Oh, and did I mention that they shut them out? Yeah, the final score was 5-0. Bite it, Giants!

In an interesting bit of trivia goodness, I just heard on TV that the Dodgers beat the Giants 50 years ago today, which obviously means that we should just pull out our record books from 1958 and place our bets for the rest of the year accordingly.

Also, as the season drags on, and the Dodgers are stranding 14 runners as they go down in flames to teams that your company’s softball team would beat, remember this: The Dodgers shut out the Giants on opening day. Trust me, we’re going to want to hold on to this one.

Hey, shhh. C’mere. A little birdie told me:

Tonight we are doing a show with Jay Reatard (myspace) show with Mika Miko (space of my) at All Star Lanes in Eagle Rock.
This will sell out so arrive on time. And there will be free Dewars from 8:30 to 10:00pm.
Hope to see some of you tonight.

Hit that, cats & kitties. xoxo, LMK.

PS…Also, I want to make a correction to my earlier post for the free tix to the Ghostland Observatory show: it’s the 18th, not this Friday. Buh! Sorry. And to make matters worse, I also effed up the date of the “Where the Action Is” tour: it’s SATURDAY, not this Friday. I’m fixated on this Friday, apparently.

What makes living in L.A. more unbearable, LAUSD or the lack of a middle class?

I asked some fellow teachers, “In one quick sentence, what is the worst thing about LAUSD?”
Their responses?
• “LAUSD is too big.”
• “LAUSD is too bureaucratic.”
• “LAUSD lacks a clear vision.”
• “There is too much outside interference by superiors.”
• “LAUSD is the DMV, court, and post office, rolled into one.”
• “The worst thing is that one sentence is not enough to describe how bad it is.”

On the other hand, we have the lack of a middle class. If we take the middle class to mean those households with incomes between $35 and $75 thousand, then only 30% of LA qualifies.

The lack and diminution of the middle class is having a negative impact on our local economy. But LAUSD is undermining our ability as a society to develop a thriving middle class by providing a shoddy education to a generation of students unprepared for higher education.

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Poll closes Thursday at 3pm.

I like my feet. I like to get pedicures and paint my nails, usually red. I like to wear sandals and yes, on more than one occasion I’ve had a stranger (always a man) comment on how lovely my feet are. Once, I even had a very conservative man, dressed in a business suit, come up to me while I was ordering lunch and tell me that he hoped I had a boyfriend who worshiped my feet because they were mighty enticing. I got my lunch and skedaddled. I don’t know why it unnerved me so much to think of him fantasizing about my toes, but it did.

So if you’re one of those lucky few who are turned on by feet, you’re gonna love this exhibition: “Fools for Feet” opening on April 1st at the Antebellum Gallery, 1643 N. Las Palmas Ave, in Hollywood. They are advertising it as the first exhibition dedicated to the beauty of the sole. The Antebellum Gallery is a fetish gallery so it should be a wild event. The opening runs from 6-9pm with a five dollar cover. Oh and wearing flip-flops…. or at least sandals is encouraged! And if you are so inclined, there’s all kinds of other events while the show runs through May 1, like, Foot Worshippers Tea Party, Tickle and Torture and Foot Lover’s Workshop!

I know it sounds like an April Fools gag, but the folks at Script Frenzy are serious about seeing you write a screenplay between April 1st and 30th. I wrote about the last Script Frenzy in June of 2007, so here’s a rehash:

The way it works is beginning April 1st, you start hammering away on your screenplay. Every so often (day, week, whatever) you upload what you’ve written to Script Frenzy, which keeps track of how many words you’ve written. If you write 20,000 words, or 100 pages - what they estimate to be the length of an average feature screenplay - you can call yourself a Script Frenzy “winner”.

To keep you going, fellow writers meet on their very active message boards sharing writing tips, boosting each other’s egos, and trying to keep themselves and everyone else from falling by the wayside.

If you need some face time with fellow hacks, member Samproof is assembling “write-outs/meetups” over the weekends at Solar de Cahuenga in Hollywood.

And what better timing to write a screenplay? Aren’t you still inspired by the awesomeness of the WGA during the strike?

It looks like the guys over at Angelenic are hanging up their keyboards – or, at least, using them less. The little blog that could focuses on Downtown Los Angeles, and it grew into somewhat of an authority over the past year on new development and restaurant openings. Stephen Friday has moved on, and while Rich Alossi maintains in his latest post that he will still give updates from time to time, it sounds like life has caught up to two writers who turned their love of DTLA into a daily journal of its growth.

When you read a blog on a regular basis you are never truly prepared for it to be over. In 2008, it’s like your hometown newspaper saying they’re done. Sure, it’s happened before. But, it still leaves that empty feeling in your stomach. The sad reality is that this will happen again. It will happen to Defamer. Blogdowntown. LAist. Caroline on Crack. Curbed. It will happen to the biggest of webzines, and the littlest blogs. It, too, will happen to MetblogsLA. Not today. But, some tomorrow.

I want to thank Rich and Stephen publicly for their dedication as friends and citizens of L.A., in this, my very own last post on mbLA. Recent developments in my own life have forced me to scale back on a few things as well and unfortunately, I will not have time to contribute further to the site. The authors here are like family, and have made a profound influence on me and the way I see this city. I wish them, and you, well.

• The Dodgers came “home” to the Coliseum over the weekend. Rene’s Ramblings was there. He sat in Section 26 Row 56. He was the guy wearing blue.
• Words For My Enjoyment hates people that eat while driving. He presents the Auto-Eater Driver’s Examination Test. Learn the proper way to make a left turn while eating a Taco Bell bean burrito.
• Scribe Skid Row gives us a first-hand account of getting his life turned around by getting his California driver’s license and signing up for continuing education classes.
• The Rogue Wave takes in a show by the Magnum Opus players. They “perform unsolicited screenplays in horrible condition which have been sent to an unnamed mainstream Hollywood film company.”

Within a few lines of the opening, the nature of the script was painfully clear. Mis-formatted, awkwardly worded and full of unnatural-sounding dialogue with tons of spelling and punctuation errors. And every gaffe was performed, as written, by the cast.

• And attention Silver Lake and Echo Park: You are not Eastsiders. West Hollywood: You’re not necessarily Westsiders. Glendale: You’re in the Valley. Deal with it. The Militant Angeleno puts his foot down on Eastside-Westside debate. The discussion is over… at least until the comments begin.

Esotouric isn’t just a great tour company. I consider Kim & Richard–who helm the ops–to be fellow travelers, in our love for this city and in our appreciation for what lies beneath the surface. So I’m always championing every little thing they do, from 1947project.com to their efforts at historic preservation and their fantastic tours. But this particular tour they’re leading this Friday Saturday (wooopsie!) is super-special, because it focuses on two things I love: LA, and music.

The “Where The Action Was” rock tour, partnering with & starting off from Amoeba, covers everything from Beatlemania to folk rock, glitter rock & punk: teen riots at the closing of Pandora’s Box (inspiration for Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”) ; the latenite Canter’s Deli scene (eventual home of the Wallflowers), underage groupies at Rodney’s English Disco…I’m fascinated by this stuff. This makes history FUN. Plus they’ll cover the great clubs, recording studios, boutiques, hipster hangs, radio stations and record stores from those crazy days.

Because they’re nice they relented & gave me a pair of tix to give away to bLA readers! Get your chance to win ‘em after the jump!
(more…)

A Mansion is defined as “a very large, impressive, or stately residence.” A McMansion is defined by the OED as “A modern house built on a large and imposing scale, but regarded as ostentatious and lacking architectural integrity.” McMansions are generally built by developers in large subdivisions to appeal to…to…uh…people who think they are moving into a large, impressive or stately residence. Like porn, you know a McMansion when you see one. Buy hey, if people want to live in cookie cutter houses in Stepford like comfort, more power to you. However, if you want to come to my neighborhood full of sweet 1930’s and 1940’s houses, knock one down and fill the entire lot with a cheap ass Tudor-ish or faux plantationesque house, please, move to Texas or you may find dog poop thrown in your back window. (I would have thrown it into your backyard, but you don’t have one.)

Where would I find this dog poop as a non-dog-owning person? Why on the sidewalk or my front lawn, of course! Because that certain someone believes he or she is too French well-heeled to actually dispose of feces with their hands and a plastic bag. I like dogs, but I don’t own one because I don’t like dealing with poop on a large scale. (Trust me, cat litter scooping is much easier…) If you are going to own a dog and walk the dog in public, you must clean up after your dog. Why is this so confusing to some of you? Just do it! Don’t make me get all Cesar Milan on your ass.

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(Poll will close on April 3.)

Review the other 64 Worst Round I options so far.

64 Worst Things About L.A.
In case you missed it, polls are still open for some of the 64 Worst entries, including two from this weekend:

• Lack of Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Transplants
• Parking Tards vs. The Grove
• Curb Sneakers vs. LADWP’s Festival of Lights
• Lack of Left Turn Signals vs. Parking at Trader Joes

We’re not even halfway through the first round of this series, so keep checking back to help us narrow down the field!

New Author recruitment drive
Later today we’ll begin sorting through submissions for new Metblogs authors. If you want to drop your name into the hat, check out this post.

What did you do this weekend?
Were any readers part of the 100,000 strong crowd at the Coliseum Saturday for the Red Sox vs. Dodgers game? Worse, anyone get caught in the traffic? Or did anyone see or do anything else worth boasting (or complaining) about?