Though the sun has been doing a bit of a peek-a-boo with us the past few days, we can't help noticing the increase in sunshine since we made it past last week's winter solstice. Hooray sunshine! Much as we like a nice blustery day, one of the main reasons we live in southern California is the intimate relationship with have with ol' Sol down here. Esteemed musician/composer/polar bear/lexicographer of hoot Mike Watt seems to...... [continue]

If you're reading this, it means you survived the various horrors of Christmas. No, we don't mean drunk Aunt Cindy's hair catching on fire at the dinner table. We're talking about the horrors of Santa's helpers... the ones our loving American parents don't tell us about. Knecht Ruprecht, who stuffs bad children in his sack and throws them into a river. The cloven-hoofed Krampus, known for raping young ladies (or even your mom) with his... [continue]

There's nothing like an over-elaborate Christmas lawn display to get us in the spirit of the season. Unfortunately, it seems that this year there has been some neighborly discord regarding a particular display in Hancock Park. You see, a nice Jewish lady in this nice Jewish neighborhood appears to have more of a sense of humor than her neighbors and, among other things, has erected a large Santa in her yard that asks rhetorically,...... [continue]

We're not sure if the realization of "Rambo IV" actually hinges upon the success of "Rocky Balboa" next week at the box office, but if it does, we're buying our tickets for the latter now. True, we've always loathed Rambo movies (perhaps even more so, Rimbaud movies), but something tells us this one could be different. If our favorite Lord of Flatbush can get the bankroll from "Balboa" to just bring a certain Eagle...... [continue]

We really love the TV special "A Charlie Brown Christmas," but it's hard to watch it with a an innocent eye after finding Donavan Freberg's blogs (first link rated "G," second link NSFW). See, Freberg was not only the kid on those ads for Encyclopedia Brittannica in the '80s, but also one of the voices of Linus Van Pelt. And after seeing photos of him online in his underwear and checking out his way-not-safe-for-work...... [continue]

We're thankful for so many things. Really. The only thing we had cause for regret rather than thanks this weekend was the fact that we missed seeing Alice Cooper run into our neighborhood grocery store for some spare cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving Day. Man, that would have been so cool. But like tons of other folks, we skipped town in order to visit family. And a great visit it was. Not only did we... [continue]

At the corner of Glendale Blvd. and Branden Street in Echo Park (or is that Silver Lake? Will we ever know?), a brave knight guards the threshold of what appears to be an abandoned storefront. There's lots of random crap behind the building, so something's definitely happening in there. There is no other signage on the building other than the knight on the transom, and the windows are either boarded up or obscured with... [continue]

We used to love reading the Sunday comics. All of them - from Peanuts to Rex Morgan. Even the ones we hated, we read. Okay, so maybe we didn't love the comics. Maybe it was more of a dependence on reading the comics than loving them. We sort of felt lousy each time we were unable to skip over The Family Circus and Ziggy, when we knew they would at best be unfunny and...... [continue]

We've never been that interested in Da Vinci's painting La Gioconda. This lack of interest briefly grew into a loathing when this lady we work with - a dithering fat lady addicted to painkillers - started reading The Da Vinci Code and wouldn't shut up about it. The loathing has mellowed but still, we just can't figure out why everybody cares so much about "the mysteries of the Mona Lisa": the model's true identity,... [continue]

A Drunken Spelling Bee. Wow. While we would like to thank the organizers of tonight's 4-Square Championships at the Met Theater downtown for including the brilliant concept of a "take a shot and then spell this word" battle in with their arguably more athletic festivities tonight, we've got some questions about the whole set-up: 1. Is there a study list for this, or are we on our own? 2. Is the word pronouncer going...... [continue]

Just in time for Halloween, Gothic Beauty magazine (not to be confused with the ever-popular Goth Beaver Hunt magazine) has published the results of the 2006 Dark Cities Survey and reported that Los Angeles is the Number One place in America to be a goth. Huh. Well, not to sound ungrateful for the honor, but if we're to judge by such goth gatherings as Bats Day at Disneyland, we're a little underwhelmed by the... [continue]

We never thought it would come to this, but it seems we have a genuine case of Halloween costume ennui. It just seems so wrong. Halloween is the gayest, sluttiest holiday of all, and here we are in one of the gayest, sluttiest cities in America, and we just can't... get it up to think of a good Halloween costume this year. We try to probe our impacted pop culture memories of the recent...... [continue]

We'd meant to give you a weekly offering of storefront art, but it's been a tough couple of weeks for us. First, we noticed that the bakery on Glendale Blvd. -- who had already painted over their wonderful rendition of the Cream of Wheat man with a plain white wall, only to replace it with a more freeform, swarthy, eerie version even better than the original -- had once again painted over their wonderful...... [continue]

We're not going to say that the Solutions audio repair store in Silver Lake drove Elliot Smith to suicide, because 1) we don't know that he actually ever took anything in the shop, 2) readers of this site don't seem to cotton to death-associated levity, and 3) wasn't there some speculation that he was actually murdered? But if somebody else happened to say that it did, we would have to say we understand completely....... [continue]

Gracious. We just got back from the Fifth Annual Interfaith Blessing of the Animals in Long Beach, where we took our beloved Pet Sematary refugee for a spiritual boost. We knew we were really in for something when we almost immediately ran into the pig pictured above, who obviously had no concept of a traditional luau menu main course. We'd write more, but right now we're suffering from acute Cute Overload. Enjoy the photos....... [continue]

Yeah, we see that the LA Times already provided us with plenty of food- and container-based puns regarding this event, but for some idiotic reason we can't resist telling you to get off your can and check out what's happening at the Westfield Fashion Square this weekend. Phew. Glad that's out of our system. It's the Canstruction design competition/canned food drive, come to our fair city at last. Competing teams work to make giant... [continue]

Oh man, Mom's in town and already she's all wah wah wah about how she wants to visit a museum. A real museum. Last time she was here she declared the Museum of Online Museums "not a real museum," and she got so confused in a bad way by the Museum of Jurassic Technology that she forgot to pick up the bill at dinner that night. Damn. You're not gonna let that happen again.... [continue]

On this day in 1979, a two- to three-kiloton nuclear bomb explosion (or something) was detected in the Indian Ocean about halfway between South Africa and Antarctica. No country to date has claimed responsibility. On this day in 1958, Joan Marie Larkin was born in Philadelphia. Upon relocation to Hollywood, Ms. Larkin became better known as Joan Jett and was responsible for blowing up the rock establishment with her all-girl band The Runaways. Now... [continue]

So, you get into work this morning, and the first thing that happens is you hear Janine from Finance complimenting the "fine, muddy grog" as she gestures toward her coffee mug. Then Andre claims his papercut is actually a swashbuckling injury. Uh oh. It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day again already? Your attempt last year to participate by adding "arr" to the end of every sentence came off a little limp, and your...... [continue]

We're big proponents of the idea that art is in the eye of the beholder. Questioning the definition of art is nothing new - Marcel Duchamp and his gang with their altered Mona Lisas, Jasper Johns with his flags and Ballantine Ale cans, and Richard Lair with his Thai Elephant Orchestra are but a handful of artists who have forwarded the idea that art is where you find it. In the city, there's a...... [continue]