Public Eyebrow Groomer as seen on a Metro Bus

Since I began my adventures in public transportation earlier this year, I have seen a lot of rude, inappropriate and often strange behavior from my fellow carbon-based life forms. I have seen people carelessly put their shoes on bus seats.  I have seen someone leave a half-eaten sandwich on the floor of the train. I have seen a perfectly nice looking middle-aged woman forcibly push her way to the front of a line of people boarding a bus, just to be the first one on. I have shared personal space with people emitting body odors that would make a mortician gag. Yes my friends, I have been to hell and back and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

While annoying, I have grown to accept many of these acts of humanness as part of the deal when taking public transportation. Still, when I see something like today’s featured Metro rider, I can’t help but make a public mockery of it.

Today, while making my connection to the Metro Red Line, I sat across from this girl who was plucking her eyebrows. Maybe some of you think this is OK, but let me tell you, YOU ARE WRONG. Some personal grooming is acceptable on public transportation I would say. Like powdering your nose or putting on lipstick. However, anything involving body hair is an absolute disgusting DON’T. You wouldn’t shave your armpits on the bus, would you? Would she? I don’t know. Fortunately, I made my connection before I had to find out.

In a quick follow up to Lucinda Michele’s post about local tattoo artist Jeremy Swan who was going to attempt to break the world record by completing more than 801 tattoos in 24 hours…

He did it. Quick matchbook math on that says he did one tattoo every 1.6 minutes to pull that off. Which seems about right, I was there at midnight and had an appointment to be in the first hour (because who wants to be in the last hour?!) and was the 12th person to get tattooed. It was kind of a madhouse:

I got these two and he spent about a minute and 10 seconds or so on each. Maybe. Same for the friends I went with so he was off to a good pace. It was super fun to be a part of the event, congrats Jeremy!

My work took me past Jeremy Swan’s Broken Art Tattoo shop on Hyperion today, to shoot some photos for our website. When I realized what a nice, cool guy he is, I decided I had to help however I could. You see, Friday is the day–that’s 24 hours, there–that Jeremy tattoos over 801 people.

Well, that’s the plan, at least (info). Here’s the man in his own words: “November, Friday the 13th, I will attempt to beat the world record of ‘most tattoos done in 24 hours.’  I have learned that the actual number to beat is 801 tattoos set on Nov. 17, 2008 by Hollis Cantrell.  That is an incredible amount of tattoos to do in 24 hours. I began to wonder if I should still do this…This is twice the amount of tattooing I had anticipated.”

But he’s got a lot in his favor: he’s a great artist, as you can see by the photos, and he’s offering four designs to keep the process streamlined: one, a cute little bat; two, the classic “LA”; third, a heart with wings; and fourth, lucky number 13–since it’ll be Friday the 13th when he does this. And you can’t argue with the price: $20 for the first, $10 for each additional one. You can check out Jeremy’s blog here.

Stop by even if you’re an indecisive wuss like me and not gonna get ink done: they’re gonna have live music, tasty food, booze, t-shirts with a custom design you can see in this photoset I just made, and a raffle for cool stuff.

OHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGODOHMYGOD. Seriously, I am slobbering stoked about this. Say what you want about recent Death Cab: Gibbard’s early work with the band, like in “We Have the Facts And We’re Voting Yes,” and his collaborations with Dntel (The Postal Service came about as a result of their first correspondence, the song “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan”) is just fantastic. And Jay Farrar, the other half of Uncle Tupelo (the seminal alt-country outfit that split to form both Wilco and Farrar’s Son Volt) is a great songwriter.

But even I am flabbergasted at what Farrar’s attempted: setting the words of Kerouac to music. The album “One Fast Move or I’m Gone: Kerouac’s Big Sur,” primarily composed by Farrar with collaboration from Gibbard, sounds like the perfect storm of awesome. Apparently the two musicians realized their mutual love for the writer of “On the Road,” while they were involved in the production of a documentary of the same name about Kerouac (which screens tomorrow at Arclight with a Q&A with the director & producers; the film includes reflections on Kerouac by Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Sam Shepard, and more).

The duo is bringing their makeshift band, which is composed of other Death Cab, Son Volt, and Mountain Goats members, here to LA for two of the 6 US dates they’ll be playing. They’ll be at Largo at the Coronet this week on the 22nd, and the El Rey on the 23rd. I am SO there.

Last weekend, we went to see the new exhibit, Race: Are We So Different? at the California Science Center. On FriendFeed, I posted some quick thoughts on what I saw, but wanted to let the exhibit soak in before I wrote on it. I do not know how much of what I saw was colored by being black or that I was raised around people from all over the world or just by the fact that I’ve lived most of my life in Los Angeles.

On my first quick walk-through of the exhibit I was overwhelmed. There is a lot of information; lots to read, several videos and interactive media to play around with. The exhibit is very American-centric and seems to be geared toward black/white or white/Asian experiences.  The information on the Science Center’s website doesn’t quite prepare you for what you will actually see.

RACE explores the science, history and personal experiences of race, helping us understand what race is and what it is not. The exhibit provides guests the opportunity to think and talk about one of our nation’s most challenging issues and encourages us to rethink our assumptions of race and human variation. Through multimedia, interactive exhibits and imagery, RACE gives guests of all ages the opportunity to think and talk about a topic that touches our lives daily.

I don’t know that the exhibit itself, is actually useful or educational. As I mentioned in my FriendFeed post, my husband (he is Eastern European) said “This exhibit should be titled ‘White People are Bad’.” I didn’t understand what he was saying and I still don’t get it. From an historical context, I guess that could be construed. I teased him saying he was getting defensive. He said, “I’m not from here, I don’t have these hang-ups.” But just from our conversation, I decided to watch the handful of white (looking) people at the exhibit. (more…)

Sometimes frequent commenters distinguish themselves often enough with witty prose, clever insights, cool tips, spirited defense (when we’re assailed by trolls), and just-plain-neat-ness that we here at Metblogs take our relationship to the next level. You saw it with Burns!, now an author, who started out as a passionate & well-spoken (well-written?) commenter. Now I have to introduce you to Mr. Hooks, who, while he demurely passed on my invite to become an author (he’s a busy man, after all), has come to almost all our Classic Eats events and meetups and has become–dare I say it!–a Friend.

The friendly Mr. Hooks is becoming Chef Hooks tomorrow night, and you all will get a chance to meet him as he becomes the latest Friend to cook in the “Friends Cook at Canelé” series–occasional Tuesday nights when the bistro/tapas/wine bar opens up its kitchen to select lucky bastards (I think you have to call them & ask, plan a menu within their price point, and just be downright righteous) to curate & cook their own recipes in a dinner service.

Chef Hooks’ own recipes, featured tomorrow, include sweet corn soup with avocado crème frâiche, cilantro oil & bacon lardon and pan-fried skate wing in brown butter lemon sauce with apples, young leeks, and a cauliflower purée. Dessert is a riff on the summery fave of strawberry soup. Your very reasonable cost for this three-course price-fixe is about thirty smackers.

Our compliments to the chef!

I admit, before visiting Madame Tussaud’s this past Monday, I’d never heard of the “uncanny valley,” but my friend Colin explained that’s exactly why the place is so damned creepy. Tussaud’s, which insists upon being called an “attraction” rather than a “wax museum,” is in fact, an attraction filled with wax figures. (Some might call that a “wax museum,” but hey.) I had been to Tussaud’s in London about a thousand years ago as a teenager on a family trip, but I didn’t know they’d opened a Hollywood branch until Goldstar was offering “free” (with a $6 service charge) tickets. I bit. I’m always up for free kitsch. And it was well worth the price of admission. (Note, Goldstar’s tickets, as of today, are $9-12.50.)

We took the red line from the very canny San Fernando Valley. Tussaud’s is right next to Grauman’s Theater and, as such, is focused on red carpet wax folk. Joan Rivers greets you at the entrance and everyone from James Dean to Justin Timberlake is hanging around inside. The place is undeniably spooky in a bright lights/big city kind of way. If you’ve seen enough horror movies, the effect is, needless to say, even worse. Tussaud’s figures are just lifelike enough to make you want to shy away from them. There weren’t a lot of visitors when we were there and that made it seem more than a little like Elton John was going to come to life and start chasing us around trying to choke us with a boa.

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The Untidy Germaphobe

Today in LA fashion I bring you the “Untidy Germaphobe,” as spotted on the Metro Red Line to Union Station. Yeah, yeah, I know. Criticizing fashion on the Metro is too easy, but I go with what I know.

When I first saw the “Untidy Germaphobe” sitting across from me on the train, I only noticed his surgical mask.

“He must be wearing that because of the poor air quality due to the Station Fire,” I thought to myself, smirking arrogantly at my own reflection in my iPod.

Then my eyes moved down to his hands, which were tautly sheathed in blue latex gloves, perfectly color coordinated to match his jaunty mask.

“Hmm. Germaphobe,” I nodded, feeling quite satisfied that I had him all figured out.

Glancing over one more time, I took in the rest of his ensemble, which continued to vex me for at least three more minutes, or however long it takes to get from Hollywood & Highland to Sunset & Vermont.  The gloves and the mask seemed to match a Mysophobic personality disorder sure, but what the hell was going on with the rest of his scene? First of all, his clothes and boots were visibly filthy. Not approved Germaphobe attire. Second, he smelled like he had not showered in quite some time. Definitely the type of violation that could get you kicked out of Germaphobe Camp.

Taking all of the above into consideration, I finally narrowed this guy down to one of three stereotypes, placing the most weight of course on his peculiar outfit (who wears a snow hat in LA during a heat wave?):

1. Recently discharged Vietnam War veteran

2. Construction worker from the 1950’s

3. Anti-government militia soldier

I can’t decide which one, so I’m leaving it up to you fine readers to decide. What’s this dude’s deal? Feel free to offer your own guess.

Walking around Venice today I saw the above flyer taped to a wall. Actually about a hundred of the above flyer taped all over the place. Walls, light posts, street signs, even trash cans. Nothing was safe from Chad’s reach. You might think this is adorable or cute or even romantic. Of course you might also be a fool.

Lets look a little closer at this-

There is no contact information for Chad, so even if Carina does see this at face value she has no way to get in touch. UNLESS! Unless she already has his digits and simply hasn’t used it yet. And if that’s the case lets paint a picture of how that might have played out. Carina is flying back from a rough weekend in Vegas and gets stuck next to this guy Chad on the plane. Maybe they start off with some small talk, Carina just trying to be friendly and hoping it’ll end there, but no such luck. Chad won’t leave her alone and in efforts to get him to STFU she answers his pestering questions and says she lives in Venice but doesn’t say where. The whole flight Chad is trying to get her contact info and she’s not budging so at the end Chad gives her all his contact info then goes home expecting to get a call right away. Which never comes. Each day Chad gets more anxious about not hearing back from Carina and after a month of no calls (yeah, check the date on the flyer) he prints up a bunch of these and plasters them all over Venice hoping she’ll see them and be reminded of her undying love for that dude she met on the flight that she barely remembers because of her massive hangover. Of course she’ll never really see them because she actually lives in Boyle Heights or something and was just trying to run interference with the Venice bit.

Or maybe it is cute and adorable and Chad is just a huge dumbass and forgot to put his contact info on the flyer.

Well, thanks to Metblogs and all you lovely people (ok, two people in particular) the kittens I posted about have a lovely new home!

I want to thank Metblogs readers Edith & Dan, of Alhambra, for adopting the kittens now known as Moxie and Marvin!

Moxie & new kitteh-mama Edith hanging out.

A few more images of them in their new home behind the jump. (more…)