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The contest for tomorrow's Black Crowes/G.Love & Special Sauce concert at The Greek Theatre is over, but we still have more for you. This Sunday, September 21, My Morning Jacket plays at The Greek's amphitheater space for their 5th studio album, The Evil Urges, which was released in June (tickets can be bought here)
$1 of each ticket sale for this concert is being donated to 826LA, a non-profit charity organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills as well as helping teachers inspire their students to write. In that spirit, to enter this contest, you must write a 50-word or less flash fiction story that takes place in Los Angeles in the comments section of this post (it's pretty easy and fun, see an example below).
Here's how the contest works:
- Enter the contest by making a comment on this post (below). Comments must fit the criteria, stated below.
- The criteria of the comment is that you write a 50-word or less flash fiction (which is just a quick short) story that takes place in Los Angeles (classic example by Ernest Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn.")
- You may only enter once.
- The contest closes at 7:00:00 a.m. on Friday, September 19, 2008.
- One winner will be selected at random to receive a pair of tickets and will be notified via the e-mail connected to their LAist.com login. They must confirm the receipt of the e-mail by 12:00 p.m., Friday, September 19, 2008 or the tickets will be released to another winner.
- Tickets will be held at the will-call pick up at the event
Good luck!
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One week later the phone rang. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Mark. The guy that hit you.”
“Oh, is this about the car? Is there a problem with the insurance?”
“No. Actually I’m, uh, calling just to say hi. I mean, well, I was wondering if you wanted to get coffee sometime.”
Turning the corner, Manuel noticed a barricade straight ahead, three Crown Vics and four cops and tape, lots of tape. And fractured glass, strewn all across Fountain.
"This is why they shouldn't have these shops," a cop remarked.
Manuel, considering the days-unused scale in his trunk, nodded in agreement.
i already have tickets!
Late at night on my drive home I see the man in the suit. He's always standing near the corner of Santa Monica and Canon. How does his suit stay so clean? Does he have a home? What it's in his briefcase? Has anyone ever asked?
As Al Smith walked out of the Ambassador Hotel, beginning to taste the failure of his doomed presidential campaign, his wife tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Look at the shape of that deli, Albert. It's just like your hat!"
"Who'd ever want to eat inside my hat?"
So there I was, cooking bacon, hot dogs, onions, and jalapenos on my portable pushcart stove when a skinny guy in a fedora walks up and says "Hola amigo, tienes hot dogs vegetarianos?"
"Claro que si!" I responded as I handed him a bun loaded with onions and jalapenos. "$4 por favor!"
Cathy took on a second job at a restaurant, so she would have a little money saved up to go see her favorite band when they came to town in 2 months.
She worked many hours, as her favorite band had gotten quite popular and the price of tickets were simply outrageous. When the day of the concert finally came, she decided to spend the extra money on food for her family instead of going to the show. She later found a new favorite band that plays every Monday for free at her local bar.
I was on the eastside and I saw a scenester, I'm like, "Hey scenester, your like a hippie without the activism," He came over to me and grabbed my hand pricking my finger with a pin - ouch that hurts!, "You bleed like I cry at night" he said.
The great writer put down his pen, his thank-you note and his week in LA both complete with that final stroke. In that week, he had consumed the patience of his two oldest friends.
He needed to apologize, and hoped the note and the airplane ticket would be enough.
Rex shouted at the hooker, "It was like throwing a hotdog down a hallway!"
Nearby, Ann was mesmerized by the scene. She approached Rex and asked him an inaudible question.
"Hell Madge, I'm already soaking in it!!" came his reply as he rounded the corner never to be seen again.
oh, Im an idiot and overlooked the 50 or less words part
new slightly different version:
Cathy took on a second job, so she could go see her favorite band play in two months.
When the day finally came, she quit the new job. But also decided that she would rather support herself than some band, and stayed home that night.
Meeting Sunday mornings with dirty white had become customary. Not tonight. This night will be bright red and finally melt that ice cube lodged in her throat. Facing Monday morning as a failure is not an option. Not this week.
Riding a motorcycle through the Malibu mountains is a great time. However, getting stung on the back of your neck by a bee is not. The drivers that went by me, a jacket-less, shirt-less guy still with his helmet on, jumping around like an idiot, were surely entertained.
Looking like he came straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel the man in the suit and hat walked out of Phillipes after being refused a meal, turns out private detectives can’t make a dime these days.
Biggest road kill I ever saw was a beheaded cow in Simi Valley. I got real sad but then realized, "hey! burgers for everyone!"
Brenda wouldn’t have given Marty a thought if it wasn’t for the creative way he used his beard that first, drunken night on the lawn. She should have encouraged him not to shave. He bought a new razor. She’ll either remember him fondly or not at all.
“I had a great time,” she said. The response was only the low groan of the idling engine accompanied by the crackling hum of the radio. She shifted in her seat.
“Yeah, me too,” his voice faded into the dashboard.
“It sucks you gotta go to work so early tomorrow.”
“Yeah.”
He was skating down La Brea, weaving in and out of cars and pedestrians. He asked himself, "can i handle this speed?" And after thinking about for a second, powerslid for twenty feet on the smooth pavement because he was in fact getting out of control.
The LA streets are rough, but smooth at the same time. If you go down the middle it's not the same. The sidewalks are a different feel all together. I feel the bumps and love them.
The bear at Griffith Park was diminutive, A lot smaller than bears back home. And how about 'deer crossing' signs? I hadn't seen those since west Texas.
Los Angeles has infrastructure but no wildlife. Many buildings but few birds. Nathaniel West once said, "Yes, despite [its] appearance, [LA] was really a very complicated [city] with a whole set of personalities, one inside the other like a nest of Chinese boxes."
Yes indeed, a complex place with many moods.
"This financial meltdown might really kill business," Art lamented. "The guys who buy the stink all work Downtown."
"I don't," I said.
"You don't count. I don't overcharge you," Art countered.
He paused to inhale.
"And I couldn't make jack shit selling you a dimebag every three days anyway."
David Byrne was in his final encore at the Greek. She looked at her friend and asked if she was ready to go.
"Yeah, let's move".
Bob, someone they met and partied with that night, picked up the cooler and said "I'll take this".
We all scrambled downstairs and somehow lost each other. When she met her friend at the car, Bob was nowhere in sight.
"Where's Bob"?, she said.
"Lost him. Was there anything in the cooler you needed?", her friend asked.
She checked her pocket. Her pot was there. "Guess not."
They took off imagining Bob wandering the hills with the cooler.
Emerging from the metro at Hollywood and Highland, my gaze sweeps from the students rushing to class at Hollywood High to Captain America, my favorite of the “regulars;” from the homeless woman who naps by McDonalds, to the glossy 90210 billboard above my building. Thankfully, we're all in this together.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “LA bounces people like kids on a trampoline. Up and down.”
I didn’t tell her about my friend who flew off a trampoline and fractured his arm.
“This city will fracture your arm sometimes,” I said to only myself, the eviction notice in my hand.
My eyes weep. I already lost my chance.
My comments have already placed me on a blacklist.
"Oh greek, I'll find my way."
Walking into the office, he felt a tremor from his bluetooth to his wingtips. By the time he realized it was the Big One, it was too late.
He knew work would kill him someday; he just assumed it would be from some extraordinary cause, not his own, fallible, heart.
You, your broke ass and your goddamned BlackBerry – always texting, with your dramatic sighs like some fuckin big shot. The crunch, followed by your sad gasp, when I backed over it in front of Bright Spot made up for the bill I had to swallow thanks to your invalid card.
@Jimbo do you have any plans for International Talk Like a Pirate Day?
@the_groom007 probably drink some whiskey and do some self-promotion."
@Jimbo can I come?