Just wanted to let you know about an awesome scavenger hunt game on the west side tomorrow afternoon, hosted by Wise Guys Events. It’s designed for teams of two and combines elements of a photo scavenger hunt and the spy game, Assassin. It’s super cheap for a few hours of fun and will be over in plenty of time for you to head to your evening plans.

Here’s some information I ripped from the event’s Facebook page:

Camera Assassins is the newest Wise Guys Events game! Play in teams of 2: that’s right, teams of 2! Get your future Amazing Race partner in on the action. It’s part photo scavenger hunt, part Assassin. You and your partner are racing to complete as many of the photo challenges as you can. The catch is, you can’t do them without the help of the other teams, and one of the other players is aiming to kill you. Unless your partner is.

Camera Assassins, the amazing game of double exposure! RSVP on their Facebook event page to play.

The cost is $20 per team, to be collected on game day.

Saturday, November 21, 2009
1:00p – 4:00p
Westwood Park – Meet at the Picnic Benches
1300 Veteran Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90024

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.

I exited my dentist’s Miracle Mile office not long after 10 a.m. this morning confronted by the absolute beauty of the day — its comfortable crystal clarity prevented me from beelining it on my bike to work. So I took the long way to Westchester. Instead of heading south to Culver City, I cut through Beverly Hills got up onto Santa Monica Boulevard and rolled that thoroughfare all the way to its end where I paused to enjoy the breathtaking views from the palisades before cranking it south along a near-barren beach bikepath to Venice and its pier from which I observed sea lions and dolphins before snapping the above shot of the solitary surfer surveying his vast empire.

Glorious days like this are enough to bring a tear to my eye.

Conserve Water! Drink More Broguiere’s Egg Nog!

“My name’s Jiggy and I approve this message.”

You can haunt/stalk the refrigerated sections of various grocers and minimarts in crapshoot hopes of finding some still on the shelves or maybe if you’re lucky that one bottle way in the back behind the buttermilk that some covetous bagboy buried there in some vain attempt of it eluding capture.

Or you can find the patience to wait until sometime next month when San Francisco-based Strauss’ reportedly awesome version of the holiday nectar arrives at whichever upscale marts carry it.

My wife Susan and me? We opt to cut out the gambling and the middleman and the interminable waiting for an out-of-town product and instead support our local awesomeness with a cruise out to the industrial flats of Montebello to go get some of the limited-time glass-encased lusciousness.

You should to too:

Broguiere’s Dairy
505 S. Maple Avenue
Montebello, CA 90640

My friend and fellow blogger Ann Erdman aka Pasadena PIO dropped the tidbit on facebook.  Tonight from 7PM until 3AM Saturday Pasadena PD will be running Sobriety Check Points in random locations around Pasadena.  My advice to the Old Town Pas partiers…take the Gold Line .

James Roday

To many of us, he’s the frenetic observational genius with a white hot wit Sean Spencer on USA’s Psych.  It’s a good thing to be.  As an admitted addict of USA’s original programming, I count on those characters to help me blow off steam after a long day of the intensity we call every day life in the City of Angels.  But I have to admit to being surprised (and more than a little excited) when I found out that James Roday was about to hit a local stage right here on theater row to perform a play with the theater company he founded (Red Dog Squadron).

Extinction, a play written by a classmate (Gabe McKinley) of James’ from his NYU days, is the story of two college friends on a wild trip to Atlantic City, a place they go to descend into their favorite vices with dark abandon.  But on this particular trip, something is different and results in a high stakes showdown between friends.  Co-staring with him is a close friend, Michael Weston, an actor who has been on many of the best shows on television from Six Feet Under to House.

I had the opportunity to speak with James and found out what I couldn’t discover with a little Google stalking.  My first question when confronted with someone having the courageousness to do theater in a city notoriously unappreciative of the medium is always about the dangers of that endeavor.  But he was unphased by it.  Red Dog Squadron was something he created as a way to keep himself anchored in the place that first made him want to pursue a creative life.  It was also a means to do all the theater he didn’t get to do between college and a fully formed career.  Like many actors coming out of school, he expected to pay his dues doing stage work while bartending to pay the bills.  But Hollywood came calling early on, rendering that transition unnecessary.

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According to Skylight Books, Gay LA is its bestselling GLBT title since 1996.  And, really, LA was pretty gay at some point.  To remind us about gay LA, Roots of Equality organized LAvender Los Angeles, a two-week long celebration and analysis of LGBT history and culture in our city.  The exhibit currently is open at The Exchange which, conveniently, also will be open during tonight’s monthly (and free!) Downtown Artwalk.  Just off of 5th and Main, right next to the Must Bar, the exhibit highlights LA gay, bisexual, and transgender culture from the 1880s to the present.  And by “LA,” I don’t mean “West Hollywood” – I’m talking about Pershing Square, bars along Main, and Le Barcita, endpoint of last week’s protest and rally.  After you’re done taking in a little local pride color, join the other hipsters, yuppies, artists, “artists,” loft dwellers, and their lovely dogs as they roam the streets in search of other open galleries in the gentrified sections of the Historic Core.

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.

Tough Cookies battle The Swarm on Saturday night. Photo by Stalkerazzi f/8.

The L.A. Derby Dolls 2009 season is drawing to a close. With only one regular season bout left (then the Championship in December,) now is the time to get to the Doll Factory for the most exciting fast-paced, full-contact sport in Los Angeles. LA MetBlogs has your tickets, so read on to find out how to get them.

The bouts have continued to get more and more exciting throughout the season. This Saturday, November 14, the action will reach a fever pitch as the Tough Cookies (2008 Champions) take on The Swarm. Both teams are undefeated this season, and will battle for the top spot in the standings.

Come with me past the jump to win your tickets to this epic bout. As a special bonus, I’ve also got your tickets to Sunday’s Baby Doll Brawl… (more…)

Those marvelous, magical purveyors of joy at Lucent Dossier will finally returned to a regular presence in their hometown beginning this upcoming Wednesday November 11th.  The new residency will be housed in the post apocolyptic meets vintage hot spot H.Wood in the heart of Hollywood through the end of the year.

If you’ve never experienced Lucent Dossier…. GO!  If you know why so many of us love these people to bits, now is your chance to play again and bring all your friends.

What can you expect from this latest incarnation?

Let the night take you away and if you please, indulge in a rose water foot bath, Post Portal Post Office, uplifting aura readings, Sweet Teddy Bear Tea Party and herbal elixirs to cleanse your soul.  What Lucent does best is create wonderlands for our guests to lose themselves in, so let us be your guide into a fantastical realm where brilliance and insanity fuse together in an exotic kind of ecstatic bliss.

H.Wood is located at 1738 N. Orange, Los Angeles, CA 90028.  Parking can be found in the Hollywood Highland Complex (rates are $2 for 4 hours with validation!)  Dinner is available.  Doors open at 8pm.  The show begins at 9 p.m. and lasts through to midnight.  Stay afterward until 2 a.m. to dance.  General admission is  $15 adv/door (Or join the Lucent Dossier mailing list for discount ticket “secret password.”)  VIP Table reservations are available by contacting H.Wood.

This friendly gasoline machine has been dispensing sage advice for over ten years now.

I used to work at the nearby mall–there’s an afterschool art-education program there, and I used to teach art to kids there. Whenever I could, I’d go here for gasoline. You can find it at the corner of Woodman and Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks (map).

It’s not the cheapest gas in town, but it’s clearly the most articulate.

Read the rest of its sagacious advice after the jump…

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