LA Times has unveiled their new eEdition, “a reproduction of the print edition– online” for $12.99 per month. Considering that I just got a year of 7-day home delivery of the actual print edition for $75, or $6.25 per month, and they are offering print subscribers the online subscription at no extra cost, I’m wondering what the strategery is here.
Access to its archives is one thing LAT is offering as part of the deal, and they are also touting that it’s available at 5:30 AM everyday, unlike the online edition, which is available the preceding midnight, contains much more news and, um, it’s free– for now.
I guess this is a first step (and trial balloon) for the online paid subscription model we’ve been hearing about from other newpapers in dire straits– which means the vast majority of them.
Watch the Derby Dolls from the comfort of your own Intertube.
Tonight at 6:30, the Los Angeles Derby Dolls are taking the excitement of high-speed all-female banked track roller derby out of the Doll Factory in Historic Filipinotown and bringing it live to the entire planet via the World Wide Web.
Varsity Brawlers (the pretty team) will take on Tough Cookies (last year’s champs) in a full-length exhibition game streamed live to your very own home, office, or car (if you’re on your laptop, parked down the street stealing WiFi.)
Now how much would you pay? But wait! There’s more!…
Have you seen the trailer for Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, “Whip It?” I can’t wait to see it when it’s released this weekend. Barrymore, Ellen Page (”Juno,”) Juliette Lewis (”Old School,”) and other stars from the movie will be at the event for a post-bout Q&A. I’m told you can submit your questions online, too. There will also be a live half-time concert by Landon Pigg.
All for the low, low price of…FREE. That’s right! All you have to do is log in to www.derbydolls.tv at 6:30pm and it will all stream right out of the internets and into your eyeballs and ear holes.
I’m kind of excited about this, so there’s even more. Click the link and follow me… (more…)
It feels likedeja vu all over again. If Time Warner Cable (Roadrunner) is your ISP, and you have been having spotty Internet service all week, it’s not simply that Mercury is in retrograde. I have been having “server not found” problems all week, and called TWC tonight. They said they are having an L.A.-area-wide problem. They didn’t know if it’s hackers this time. I demanded credit for my lack of service, and they transferred me to another department (accounts or billing) . They then issued me a $15 credit for multiple days without full service. I thought that was a generous offering, since it represents at least 10 days of service.
Of course, that still doesn’t solve the service problem. In the meantime, don’t forget to save your blog posts and other online writings in progress, early and often.
(Travis, sorry for stepping on your post so soon, but I thought that, if others are being driven nuts by this problem like I am, they would want to know about this asap tonight. And if I wait, who knows if I would be able to publish it at all?)
With an About the Author bio that says, “If you don’t like what you just read here you can just get out of my country. Now how about that smart-alack. Follow me on twitters,” Christwire is such dry parody it almost passes for the real thing– a right-wing, Bible-quoting site seeking to save America from The Gays and other “weirdos.”
The lands were soaked with the combustible sins of perversions and marinated in the flammable juices of homosexuality! God is angry and his great power cannot be contained! …Fire falls upon California and great pillars of smoke shoots from his nostrils!
The holy pillars of smoke from his nostrils are filling up the lands of California! They are the harbingers of doom for the homosexual gay fornicators of Satan!
If you doubt this is satire (which is easy to do because Christwire has real ads for things like Ann Coulter books and a dating service called Christian Mingle,) a recent post called If You’re a Fantastic Pro-Family Republican, Does One or Two Same-Sex Encounters Really Make You Gay? asks, “If you have a great record fighting against the gays, doesn’t it cross out a few moments humping a younger man against the wall of some hotel room?”
“The idea that religious leaders are continuing to shape state law is just wrong.”
Remember last fall’s boycott of El Coyote restaurant in West Hollywood by supporters of same-sex marriage after it was learned an owner had donated money to the campaign to pass Prop 8?
El Coyote had a sizable gay clientele on Thursday nights, the unofficial “gay night” at the restaurant, which packed the place. That all changed in the aftermath of Prop 8’s passing when the owner’s name appeared on donor lists that were available online and publicized by some media outlets.
Demonstrators appeared in front of the restaurant, business fell off on Thursdays, the pilloried owner did herself no favors when she tried to explain herself, saying if she had a chance to do it all over again, she would do the same thing, citing her religious convictions.
Such a mess for such a mediocre restaurant.
Enter Tom Colicchio, Bravo TV’s Top Chef lead judge and owner of Craft, his first venture into the Los Angeles restaurant world, located in Century City. (more…)
"I’m a blogosphere virgin. I don’t read blogs. Blogs feel like they’re a dime a bushel. They’re endless. Like cockroaches..."
Out, gay-as-a-picnic-basket, proud, loud, blog-challenged and, by all accounts, liberal director Todd Holland inadvertently got sucked on to the Hollywood Liberal Shit List last week. However, the move looks to be temporary in light of his good-natured and at times bitchy response, in addition to being nominated this year for a directing Emmy for 30 Rock, the sitcom starring über-liberals Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey. His placement on the HLSL was further complicated by the fact that he got legally married to his partner last year before Proposition 8 was passed.
How it happened: At a panel discussion about gay Hollywood, Holland answered a question about whether he would advise gay actors in Hollywood to come out. Leave it to some nasty bloggers to take his response and “twist or warp” his words into anti-gay remarks.
The panel discussion took place at Outfest, the Los Angeles gay film festival held each July at The Directors Guild (a.k.a. Hollywood Liberal World Headquarters.)
So now the LA Times, LA Weekly and those spiteful, overly-sensitive gay blogs manned by (to use Holland’s word) “cockroaches” are tripping over themselves as he trips over himself to clarify and over-explain what he really meant or really meant to say– or more likely wishes he hadn’t said at all in the first place.
This spring, the Gay and Lesbian Centers in Los Angeles and New York partnered to sponsor Project Pushback, a viral video competition aimed at changing public opinion to favor same-sex marriage.
Out of 68 entries from across the nation, a panel of judges chose eleven finalists. Yesterday the winner who will receive a $2500 grand prize was announced, a video entitled Family Values created by LA-based filmmaker Andrew Putschoegl.
“We received entries from across the country but most of them were from Los Angeles and New York, being film centers,” Thomas Soule, communications director of the LA Gay and Lesbian Center told me. “The contest spurred people to get very creative in their approaches to changing hearts and minds about the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.”
Soule also said some of the entries will be shown at Outfest, the LA Gay and Lesbian Film Festival held each July at the Directors Guild in Hollywood.
The videos are all polished and professional, running the gamut from testimonials from real people to vignettes written for actors. There’s even a Blair Witch Project parody, which won the $1000 People’s Choice prize. But my favorite is the one where the guy says– actually, I don’t want to give it away so you’ll have to watch it and see why. (It made me cry.)
Los Angeles-based judges included Academy Award-winning producer Bruce Cohen (American Beauty, Milk); Rev. Art Cribbs Jr. of the San Marino Congregational Church; CA Assembly Member John A. Perez; Kirsten Schaffer, Executive Director of Outfest,; Judy Starkman, co-owner of convergencefilms.com and Emmy Award-winning director and producer Paris Barclay (In Treatment, Cold Case, The West Wing.)
Antebellum Gallery, the Hollywood fetish gallery owned by photographer-director Rick Castro, has entered the blogosphere. Surprise-surprise, it’s for adults only.
Keeping track of sexuality (and sex) in all of its permutations as it is represented in popular and fringe culture, Castro’s blog might just be a perfect addition for the enlightened age that Obama’s presidency seems to be struggling to usher in. (Now if Obama would just grow a pair.)
Recent posts have been about the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce’s 2010 list of honorees who will receive stars on The Walk of Fame, this Sunday’s celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Tom of Finland Foundation at Faultline Bar and reaction to the latest sexually-charged Calvin Klein ad campaign.
My favorite post so far: One Straight Guy’s View of Bisexuality– a video by Minneapolis Youtube star Rocci Berrini, who espouses about topics of the day from a slacker’s POV. And his seemingly clueless, common-sense, pro-gay marriage stance is actually one of the best (and funniest) arguments yet against the right’s clueless bigotry. Fight fire with fire, I say.
No good deed goes unpunished was the case when the Los Angeles Times initially unveiled their interactive map of LA neighborhoods a few months ago. Much bickering about neighborhood boundaries ensued, and so nearly 100 border revisions have been made, along with the addition of a lot more information about neighborhood demographics covering topics like personal income, education, ethnicity and, interestingly, marriage statistics.
For example, Silver Lake has among the highest numbers of unmarried males and females in the city. I’m guessing this may be an indication of the prevailing sexual orientation of area residents, long known as a gay bastion. It led me to wonder if sexual orientation was a demographic included in the map (although such data is not officially collected,) would marriage statistics fluctuate accordingly once same-sex marriage is legalized (again.)
Anyway, LAT assures us the map will continue to be a work in progress as they go on collecting information and reader comments.
Solair added you as a friend on Facebook. We need to confirm that you know Solair in order for you to be friends on Facebook.
Actually, I don’t know Solair. In fact, there are very few buildings in Los Angeles that I consider friends. Do I accept the request, or ignore? This is a decision not to be taken lightly, as I do not want to hurt Solair’s feelings.
I Will, I Will Mock You Verdell Wilson OK, igetrad. You win. No contest. igetrad red line a few years back. saw a dude with his shirt pulled up under his chin furiously picking away at scabs... girlvaughn Flossing. seriously. So disgusting. Also – agree with nail clippers. The sound of it makes me gag.
It feels like 
No good deed goes unpunished was the case when the Los Angeles Times initially unveiled their 
