How sweet is this?  On Monday, LA DOT started a public beta for receiving live tracking information of your friendly neighborhood DASH service.  If you go to http://dtdash.com on your computer or phone, LADOT has provided four equally convenient ways for you to get your bus information:  1) you can live track your downtown DASH using Google Maps; 2) for the minimalists, you can simply use drop down menus to plug in your route and stop to get expected arrival times; 3) for those of us without Internet-equipped phones, call (213) 785-3858 and navigate the phone menu to hear arrival information; and 4) for those of us who don’t like talking to machines, but don’t mind texting one, figure out your stop number, and send a text to dtdash[stop number] to 414111.

Now, if we can get this set up for the MTA, that would be awesome.

Or: Taking the “Public” Out of “Public Education”

I think as a student, you always expect your fees to go up.  But 32%?  Oof.  Students and those with supportive parents are going to face a mid-year increase of 15 percent to student fees and tuition, then (ouch) another 15 percent increase effective summer 2010.  A panel of UC Regents meeting today – in front of hundreds of students protesting on campus – just agreed to the fee hikes.  This comes at a time when the same Regents are asking $913 million from the state to cover budget shortfalls and, um, in the middle of a recession that is so bad that student lenders are playing hardball when it comes to renegotiating student loans.  The full UC Regents Board will meet tomorrow to approve the approval, at which time more protests are planned.

What should the Regents do instead of barricading public access to education?  Some helpful suggestions here at the Remaking the University blog.

The stars are shooting between midnight and 5am.  Unfortunately, we don’t have a dark sky preserve anywhere near us, so a friend suggests that we catch the show at Echo Mountain (a three mile hike at the end of Lake Avenue off the 210 in Pasadena) or the top of Mt. Hollywood in Griffith Park.  Any other ideas?

An artist rendering of the November 12-13, 1833 Leonid Meteor Showers, courtesy the Wikipedia Commons.

If you miss the walk, the exhibit is open until November 20 and has fairly generous hours.  There are other LAvender Los Angeles events at the space, including a walking tour of prominent gay locales on Saturday.  The full schedule can be found here.

The LAvender Los Angeles exhibit is located at The Exchange, 114 W. 5th Street (between Spring and Main), and will be open today from 12pm-9:30pm. Other galleries on the Artwalk have their own operating hours, and, judging from past experience, the streets really crawl after 7ish.

Pretty nifty A R T photo taken by Sean_Yoda_Rouse via the Metblogs Flickr pool.

Younger men are better looking, healthier, have more energy, are more fun, don’t need Viagra, and won’t die on you!

Such is the rationale for tonight’s California Cougar Convention.  While older men are considered men even though they show off their grays in the form of a young blond, society’s answer to the reverse situation is: predatory animals.  So, in the spirit of the jungle kingdom, the Society of Single Professionals (yes) organized tonight’s convention  for cougars and their would-be cubs at the Beverly Hills Crowne Plaza Hotel.  Thirty dollars will buy you access to the stalking, the pouncing, and the purring; in addition, the young cubs will vote to elect a Miss Cougar California (who must be 40 or over (that’s who an “older woman” is, apparently) and “legally single”) during the night’s dance party.

For those of you who want so desperately to cougar, but don’t know how, take the 6:30 class in cougaring at The Cougar School, free for paid convention goers.  I’m not exactly sure what this will entail, but I’m envisioning the scene from The Lion King where Mufasa teaches Simba how to pounce.  Cubs, heed the sign’s warning: If attacked, fight back.  Zazu should have been so lucky.

When mountain lions attack photo taken by jurvetson and used under a Creative Commons license.

A true Stargate fan could read this from the back of the room.

I had lunch with a few people recently in which the conversation started and ended with a mention  of “The Plan.” Non-Battlestar Galactica associates quickly booed and told us to leave the table if we were going to talk about it, and, not wanting that, we had to cease (but really, if you’re going to have a whole movie about the Cylons, why oh why would you leave Lucy Lawless out?).  In contrast, I have an inkling that a fair number of you are unabashaed BSG fans and that an ever fairer number of you were/are fans of Farscape and Stargate SG-1. I bet some of you even loudly registered your protest to Sci-Fi brass after the network abruptly, and meanly, cancelled Farscape before its 5-year contract was up.  Lucky for you, there are fan conventions in town for both Farscape and Stargate SG-1.   Starting tomorrow and running through the weekend, Creation Entertainment is hosting the annual event at the LAX Marriot.  Stars will be in tow to commiserate and commemorate, and, of course, people will be dressed up to the gills.  Best part: On Friday, Gary Jones (Stargate’s Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman) and Dean Haglund (you know, Langley) will participate in a celebrity cabaret called Starhole.  Yes, that’s right, Starhole.

Ticket prices vary depending on what days you go, and what a la carte items (i.e., autograph sessions) you want to add to your cart.  For more information on prices for the Stargate convention, see here; for Farscape, see here.

I always understood the general rule to be: one in 10 people is gay.  This ratio, which apparently has been oft-repeated to a point where it still remains lore 10 years after I first heard it (the gay population apparently has not adjusted for inflation), is a nice shorthand for: it could be you.  (One of my favoritest people of all time, Jane Lynch, interviewed with Terry Gross on NPR yesterday, and this was her reaction to her 20something realization that she is gay: “Oh man, really?”).  The threat that you could be the one left holding the rainbow flag is the greatest fear tactic of all: it results in the simultaneous internalization and externalization of one’s homophobia.  This is, in part, what moves certain people to go to the polls, draw the little iron curtain, and, in the comfortably private, if not stuffy, polling station, mark a mark that will seal the fate for all those ones in tens, if not themselves.  And they are, of course, protecting the children.  Remember the children!

Yesterday – one year after Prop. 8 passed here, and one day after a similar referendum passed in Maine – Equality Network organized “Death to Discrimination,” a march-and-mourn protest and rally in Silver Lake.  The LA Times estimates that 60 people were present when the march started, but grew to a bit over 200 as the march marched up Vermont and down Sunset towards its destination in front of Le BarCito at Sunset Junction (overall, a decent turnout, but a far, far cry from the 700+ people who RSVP’d for the event on Facebook — like certain people I’m sometimes frustrated to know, you’ll always have flakes).  As the speakers began their spiels to the converted, the number of people dwindled – slowly at first, then “exponentially faster,” as Narinda Heng, my fellow mourner, observed.  Tip to future organizers: a rally and protest aren’t the Oscars.  Keep the speeches short well before the orchestra starts to hum its boredom.

A handful of pictures from the post-march rally, after the jump.

It’s not over.

… Thompson stopped his car after passing the two cyclists and shouting at them to ride single-file. One cyclist ran face-first into the rear windshield of the doctor’s red Infiniti, breaking his front teeth and nose, and leaving his face scarred. The other was sent hurtling to the sidewalk and suffered a separated shoulder.

Thompson told the response officer that the cyclists flipped him off, so he hit the brakes “to teach them a lesson.”  Thompson’s version is decidedly more benign: he says he pulled over to take a photo of the riders and thought he had left them enough room to get around his car.  Which one sounds more likely?

Two lessons spring to mind.  First, statements you make after an accident can be used for and against you in court, so talk to anyone at your emotionally-charged peril.  And second, don’t effing use your car as a weapon to “teach” someone a lesson.  No apples for you.

Photo courtesy frequent commentator waltarrrrr via the Metblogs Flickr pool.

Virgina Masen's custom customization.

One of the most awkward things about being part of a minority is that you are at once the local spokesperson for the Minority, and the first person the Majority goes to for comfort.  For example, the day after Prop. 8 passed, I was sitting in my office, my little fit of depression tempered by a little relief that the American electorate actually went out of its way to make sure Mr. Obama won.  Someone walked into my office, and the first thing she said to me was: “No one should sit on the back of the bus!  No one.  Can we talk about this at lunch?  I’m really upset” and walked out.  I felt like I had been hit by a bus. And this is the response I had over a course of several days, from all sorts of people.  Well, better late than never.

The gay rights movement, like many minority groups, learned that in order to get things done, you really have to swallow your pride (that’s pride with a little p) and enlist the help of the majority group who sits in the positions of power and finally – finally – is sympathetic to your cause, is willing to gamble its political currency, and take the credit for it all once the goal is realized.  Enter FAIR (Freedom Action Inclusion Rights), an organization quickly organized after the passage of Prop. 8.  At FAIR’s request, Shepard Fairey created a poster intended to galvanize the movement as well as his Hope poster did for the MoveOn set.  The result is slightly more affecting than American Apparel’s retro, almost whimsically passive “Legalize Gay” tshirts:  his is a gnarled fist with the words “Defend Equality/Love Unites” above and below [insert snarky comment about his source material for the fist here].  You can buy shirts and the poster on FAIR’s website here (the politics of inclusion necessitates the politics of fundraising), but if you want to show all your gay friends that you really care, come out to Andaz in West Hollywood on November 12th.

There, FAIR, in conjunction with HOMOtracker and Mr. Fairey, will debut the Love Unites Shepard Fairey Equality Project and launch an online auction of select posters signed and/or “customized” by certain celebrities (from the looks of it, Virginia Madsen really took the time to hone her scrapbooking skills with hers).  Advanced tickets are here; it’s $100 for a VIP ticket, which includes appetizers, swag, and pool access, and $30 for general admission (which, fyi, also gives you access to the open bar).  Tickets are tax deductible, and all proceeds will go towards the fight for marriage equality (which is our stand-in for – say it with me – the fight against homophobia).  As if you need more reason, Mr. Fairey will be there himself to spin a few discs in a special DJ set.  And, because parking in WeHo is such a pain, try taking the bus.  I’ll sit in the front.