(09.23.08) Recommends:

Remembering David Foster Wallace.

I didn't know Dave Wallace. I never attended a reading of his. I still haven't even gotten through Infinite Jest. But hearing about his death 11 days ago was like a punch in the gut. I've never before really experienced the sadness that I felt when I heard about his death, from somebody that I did not know. But for a few days the world seemed very heavy. I think Peter Sagal, the NPR personality, touched on why I felt such sadness, when he wrote:

one of the things DFW wrote about, pretty constantly, especially in his more informal commentary, was the experience of us all being alone in our heads, and desperately trying to break out of it. I remember reading one comment he made (wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for it) that the whole point of fiction, maybe writing in general, was to send a message from one isolated head to another, with the meaning: you are not as alone as it seems.

I spent those first few nights after hearing the news going through my bookshelves, reading short stories he had written, and interviews he had given, and lamenting that I once loaned away for life a book that included an introduction by a well-respected writer that was essentially just a comment on an interview he had once given (such was DFW's ability that other well-regarded writers were eager to get to write simply about his interviews).

Like I said, it's been 11 days now. And a sense of normalcy has returned, at least for me. But I won't soon stop reading, and responding to, his writing. So I thought today would be a good time to put up some of his work in this space, for my resource, and hopefully for yours, too.


The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub. (abridged version that he read on This American Life here)

Consider The Lobster.

Federer As Religious Experience.

(06.26.08) Recommends:

Without Words.

The latest from Andrew Bird in the NYTimes Measure for Measure blog.

(06.03.08) Recommends:

Goat Stew.
El Parian,
1528 W. Pico Blvd.

This post is years in the making. And as with most interesting Los Angeles food stories, it all starts with Jonathan Gold. Jonathan Gold is a food critic for the LA Weekly. But he's not your parents' food critic. He's like the mad scientist of food writing: on one hand, his stuff reads more like stories from back issues of Punk Planet than Gourmet magazine; on the other hand, his rock 'n roll aesthetic belies the fact that he was awarded a Pultizer Prize in 2007 (the first food critic so honored). He has also turned his writing into perfect little radio documentaries for This American Life (scroll ahead to 45:12 to get to his story).

It was from that radio tale that we first heard Jonathan Gold talk about the goat stew at El Parian. At the time, he was living off Pico Blvd and got the idea to eat at every restaurant on Pico. When we first heard this episode we pictured Pico being perhaps a five or six mile street with a high concentration of ethic restaurants. We thought it was a cute idea. Then we moved to Los Angeles. And drove along Pico Blvd. And let's just say, claiming you are going to eat at every restaurant on Pico Blvd would be roughly equivalent to saying you are going to eat at every restaurant in Kansas (and probably even a bit more audacious). It's the first time we sensed that Jonathan Gold marches to the beat of a different drummer. We knew we had to seek out El Parian.

It's a bit hard to find because it takes up two store fronts and one of the store fronts perpetually looks closed.



But as the little blue sign in the corner indicates it is open. In fact, when we called the restaurant we were informed that it's open from 7:30am-9pm. Which is to say, people really really like the goat stew here. And apparently are willing to come very early to get it.



The menu. Although it's a little blurred out, the menu says "A Bit of Mexico in Los Angeles."


And lest you think that El Parian is joking about playing by it's own rules, you flip the menu around and find this startling proclamation.



Here's a close up.


"We reserve the right to serve beer to anyone 0-4 Maximum." For anybody who has ever eaten at a restaurant full of screaming toddlers and thought, "god, nothing would shut those small children up like serving them four beers!", well, El Parian appears to be just what you've been seeking. However, they took one look at us and, perhaps wisely, served us Diet Coke.



We've been reading lots of food books lately, mostly about how we as a culture eat, what might be wrong with that way, and how might we move forward. And one of the things of which we're convinced is that the future of food is in transparency. El Parian already understands this because as you first walk in you hear the cooks thump-thump-thumping away at goat meat and you see vats of goat right from your table.



And out of those vats comes a delicious bowl of steaming goat stew. We devoured this thing at about 10:45am and did not have to eat the rest of the day. We have yet to find a friend who is willing to travel to El Parian with us, but regardless, we can't wait to get back.

(05.27.08) Recommends:

How Me Breaking Up With You Is Like Jon Lester Pitching A No Hitter Against The Kansas City Royals.

(05.12.08) Recommends:

Cheap Thrills.

This is Andrew Bird's latest installment in the Measure for Measure blog.

(More info here and here).

(05.06.08) Recommends:

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food, by Jennifer 8. Lee.

If you monitor the world of books (or, if you're like us and pay attention to a few sources that monitor the world of books for us), you most likely haven't gotten through a book-reviewing source in the past few months without seeing a review of this book.

The idea for it began with a March 2005 Powerball drawing. Powerball statisticians expected there to be 3.7 second place winners for this particular drawing (second place meaning correctly picking 5 of the 6 numbers drawn). Instead, there were 110. The winners came from every state in the country, but of them 104 had picked the same six numbers. What's more, under the rules of Powerball, if 110 people had all won first place (i.e., correctly picked all 6 numbers), the jackpot would just be split 110 ways. However, there is no such limitation on second place -- Powerball had to pay out 110 fixed amounts. And they suspected fraud. So, one by one, they interviewed the winners. What they found were 104 people who had put their Powerball number picking faith in the same string of numbers received from the fortune of fortune cookies.

From this story, Jennifer 8. Lee traces back the fortunes to the Chinese restaurants and develops her thesis that Chinese food is now more American than apple pie. Along the way for her search for the lucky fortune cookies, she tells the story of the modern Chinese restaurant in America. The history of fortune cookies -- where they're from, how they're made, who writes the fortunes, intellectual property litigation of the fortune cookie. The history of those stacks of Chinese delivery menus piled up in the corner that anybody who has ever rented an apartment has experienced. The history of chop suey. The history of General Tso's chicken (and why nobody in his home village has ever heard of it). Why, of all Americans, Jews have a particularly strong attachment to Chinese food (and what happens when the only Kosher Chinese restaurant in town might not be, well, kosher). The path -- almost always illegal and harrowing -- of the average Chinese worker to an American Chinese restaurant -- first from their home village in China to New York City, then to points throughout the entire U.S. methodically plotted by companies whose sole purpose is to track the best places for Chinese restaurants to be located (and the myriad struggles faced by the immigrants once they arrive in the US). The history of Chinese delivery and take-out and those ubiquitous take-out containers. The history of soy sauce, and a search for the greatest Chinese restaurant in the world.

The book is as entertaining as it is ambitious. It's like a mix between The Tipping Point, Fast Food Nation, your favorite episode of This American Life and just sitting around with your most interesting friend over Chinese take-out and tall bottles of Tsingtao.* Our biggest complaint is that it's only 300 pages -- it could easily be three times that length to allow some of the chapters to be explored a bit deeper and we're still sure it could be read in two days, even at that length.

The book is a charming page-turner and we can't wait to see what Jennifer 8. Lee comes up with next.



*An interesting aside. We wrote this post yesterday morning but didn't have time to post it until this morning. And in between we, by complete coincidence, actually had dinner with an interesting friend -- rather than Chinese, it was done-up up pub food in the LA via NYC style; rather than Tsingtao it was a "beer flight" of yummy beers. And this friend, by further coincidence, informed us that she wrote for her college newspaper with Jennifer 8. Lee. Blogging, like Chinese food, has mysterious powers.

(04.23.08) Recommends:

Having Friends and People To Look Up To.

So, from Thursday evening to roughly the time we got into our office on Tuesday, we felt certain that we were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. We like to exaggerate our frailties on this blog, mostly because self-depreciation is hard-wired into the DNA of everyone born in the Midwest.

But this was something different. This was the capital r real capital d deal. Periods of hot fever immediately giving way to the cold shakes. Periods of our body literally, uncontrollably, shaking. Periods of walking around with our eyes inexplicably welling up in tears. And our head having that fuzzy feeling that signifies it is soon to pass out. And this would just be while we were, like, walking down the aisle at the market. We had been through an intense few weeks at work and had other outside stressors (all of, and under which, culminated in us perhaps ruining one of the dearest friendships we'd developed in our time in Los Angeles) so we objectively realized that we were just a little stressed out and depressed about things, but still, the way we felt scared the holy hell out of us. And, honest to Christ, it was the closest we've ever come to worrying whether we were actually dying (though, truth be told, it wasn't the first time since we've been in LA that we've been concerned that we might be dying).

We say all of this crazy stuff happened from late Thursday 'till the time we got into the office on Tuesday. What happened to bring about the change you wonder? There were three steps.

The first step. Like most days, we got into the office and went to Fred Wilson's blog. We're not sure when we first started reading his blog, but here's the first time we blogged about it. We've never met Fred Wilson, and even though we live in Hollywood we don't have an ounce of star-fuckery in us, but we're pretty sure it would be a blast grabbing a beer with him. Homeboy is brilliant (and has good taste in music). And not brilliant in some sort of theoretical way, like many brilliant people we hear about, or professors we know. Brilliant in a way where we'll read a completely innocuous sounding post of his, then we'll find ourselves, nine weeks later, out at a restaurant with someone, talking about the internet (note: we, like all bloggers, are totally nerds who actually do sit around restaurants, even in places like Hollywood, talking about the internet, and how it's totally gonna change everything, man.) and we'll find ourselves repeating his at-the-time-innocuous-seeming-but-nine-weeks-on-completely-brilliant thesis. Or we'll find ourselves at the same dinner making some point, and then internally congratulating oursevles on making such a good point and then we'll start wondering how we actually came up with the idea. Oh wait, we'll next think, we didn't -- it was from Fred Wilson's blog.

The point of the background is that we got into the office and he had this post titled Hitting the Reset Button, in which he talks about going through mental health issues of his own over the last several days, and pining for a reset button to hit to get him going again. So we figured, if a Blogging Hero, and All Around Brilliant Dude, and a Guy Who Clearly Has His Shit Together, was feeling a little down and out, we felt permission to have our own recent struggles.

The second step. He also asked his readers to contribute some of their own remedies for the blahs and the blues. And some of the comments killed us including, but not limited to, the following suggestions:

***find a cute little kid with big cheeks and tug on them (we literally LOL'd at this one)
***I play Queens "Bohemian Rhapsody" really loud, just once (we actually tried this one and holy moly, we had a hard time stopping at just once)
***The only prescription is more cowbell (true, dat)
***i usually just do a boatload of cocaine (we, like you, were surprised to learn that George W. Bush reads blogs. Whaaaaat? You're surprised he knows how to read at all? Or is it Jenna with the powdered nose problem? Whatever it is, quit your hissing back there, yo)

The third step. Under the guise of Earth Day (and there was no actual connection with Earth Day, so don't go trying to draw connections, John Forbes Nash style), we started sending our old College Roommate emails recounting some of the crazy characters and encounters therewith from the Old College Days. This turned into a half-day, Battle Royale-style challenge of who could top whom with either the most obscure, over-the-top, or absurd, person, place, or thing from the Old College Days. And while we think we ended every email we sent yesterday with the same closing line, i.e., jesus! we wish we had started a blog back then! -- there is probably only one story we feel comfortable recounting here. It is also a story about which we had completely forgotten until yesterday. That: the power of the internet. The story: as follows.

One night, as is the tradition of wayward College Students, we went with friends to an Apartment Party. And as the night went on, the original group of friends started separating, and, um, certain new friendships were struck. And so, we ended up crashing at the site of Apartment Party. Which meant, the next morning, we had to find a Ride Home. So we wake up, and, err, survey the damage, and find somebody first willing/able to drive, and second who also happens to be driving in the same general direction as our apartment. We finally found that person. She will be called Hamster Girl. An important note so as not to besmirch her name anymore than this story already might: she was neither a reason we went to the party nor why we crashed there. She was just a person driving home in our general vicinity (it actually turned out she lived in our apartment complex; more on that later) and willing to let us tag along; all in all, we should have been very grateful. However.

However.

However.

How.

Effing.

Ever.

We opened her car door and got inside and thought we smelled something a little funky. As we strapped ourselves in, almost immediately our stomach began turning on itself. We instantly went into gag reflex mood. Seeing us nearly on the verge of vomiting, she nonchalantly started driving while turning to inform us that -- and we swear on all that is holy that the following is verbatim -- "I should have warned you about the smell, but there's a dead hamster somewhere in my car but I can't figure out where it's at so I've just left it."

At this point in our young lives we had only known "Where It's At" to be a Beck song, and not the Jeopardy!-style answer-in-the-form-of-a-question to: "Things I Don't Know About The Dead Hamster In My Car." From that day forward, we knew, at the least, to ask a few basic questions before entering into a stranger's car. As a side-note, the country's of the world send their best and brightest to American Universities. We hope they, too, become aware of these basic questions to ask.

We, while normally reserved and polite, demanded! to be taken to the nearest Burger King, and ordered this raging sociopath to buy us a Sprite to quiet our stomachs. It was probably no longer than a quarter mile [1] from Apartment Party apartment to our apartment, but we were certain there was no question we would have vomited without the Sprite.

Once we finally get back to our apartment -- the whole ride home with us pinching our nose with two fingers while leaving the remaining three fingers flailing, elbow arched beyond it's normal extension in a dramatic attempt to make Hamster Girl feel horrible, while deep down hoping for real for real that we didn't upchuck -- it turned out the Hamster Girl lived the building across from us. And she told us we "seemed cool" and that we "should all hang out and stuff." And stuff? We had no idea what other kind of dead, but location unknown, rodent chicanery could possibly be hidden in that and stuff but being so stunned at what had just transpired, and desperately seeking a warm shower and/or a Hazmat suit, we forked over our number and got the hell out of that car.

These were the days before Caller ID. Now that we think about it, Caller ID probably existed, but we were poor college saps, so any extra scratch lying around the apartment was inevitably invested in pizza and 32 oz. bottles of the Champagne of Beer (i.e., text books and stuff). So, after regaling our roommate with this tale, we proceeded with an abundance of caution anytime the phone rang for the next two months.

---

As you can see, after those three steps, it was pretty inevitable that we had no choice but to be over the 72+ hour Depression Bug.


--
[1] If it was merely a quarter-mile, you're surely asking, why did you stay in the car? A) It was cold out and the sidewalks of the city were filled with snow and ice; B) It was early and we were, how does one say, pretty spent from the previous evening; and C) We were still in such shock that there was an undiscovered hampster corpse somewhere in the car that our neural transmitters were probably going a little haywire.

(04.22.08) Recommends:

Why Bother?

In honor of Earth Day, here's a New York Times Magazine piece by Michael Pollan (author of, among others, The Omnivore's Dilemma) exploring environmentally conscience ways of thinking. No pun intended, but we really enjoyed this article's energy -- we found it to be an inspiring morning read.

(04.17.08) Recommends:

The LA64.
#51: The Echo.
1822 Sunset Blvd.

(explanation of series here.)

The Echo is another in the Pantheon of LA indie rock venues. We would start this entry off with an exterior shot of it but frankly, despite driving by the joint several times a week, we still cannot actually find it unless there's a show going on inside -- and hence a doorman standing outside. But rock shows are much more fun when you're on the inside anyway. One great thing about the venue is that it's, as the name suggests, located in Echo Park. So before even stepping in, it gives us a perfectly legitimate reason to stop in to the Short Stop, a dive that demonstrates that Neighborhood Locals, Hipsters, and Dodgers Fans are not necessarily mutually exclusive groups. The power of PBR knows few bounds.



We stopped by for a recent Afternoons show. Afternoons is an offshoot of Irving, a band that we really love. Below are some pics.








We really love the following pic because we are always very reluctant using a flash at shows. And luckily for us, this one didn't require the use of a flash because the sheen from the jacket worn by the gentleman in front of us let off sufficient light. We kiiiid, we kiiiid!



Okay, so here's the thing. If you think we're talkative on the blog, just imagine what we're like in Real Life. At one point in the night we took a breather from the joyous music. We started chatting up a friendly-looking female. Then, like 45 seconds into the conversation, we were left with this:



Figuring that we had literally charmed this poor girl to death, we took her pulse. Satisfied that her heart was making its normal tick-tock sound, we put our heads down and slyly bolted the hell out of the venue.

But not before grabbing one more pic of the band of the night.

(04.15.08) Recommends:

Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon.


Chabon, without question, is one of our most breathtaking writers. We have yet to meet a person who has read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay who does not list it among their favorite novels ever. Maps and Legends is his first collection of non-fiction. We've only just recently gotten our hands on a copy, but we've already had several of those Chabon-induced jaw dropping moments where we have to read a passage about fourteen times in a row just to fully admire the pretty sentences he can create. Here's an excerpt from the story My Back Pages:


"I started to write The Mysteries of Pittsburgh in April of 1985, in Ralph's room. Ralph was the Christian name of a man I never met, the previous owner of my mother's house on Colton Drive, in the Montclair District of Oakland, California. He had died, somehow or other, shortly before his house was sold. I always pictured him as a stooped, soft-spoken man in a cardigan, scorned by the world, who retreated to his laboratory where he turned into Ernest Thesiger and called wild Transylvanian lightning down from the skies. His so-called room was in fact a crawl space, twice as long as it was wide, and it was not very wide. It had a cement floor and a naked light bulb. It smelled like dirt, though not in a bad way--like soil and cold dust and bicycle grease. Most people would have used it for suitcases and tire chains and the lawn-darts set, but at some point this Ralph had built himself a big, high, bulky workbench in there. He built it of plywood and four-by-fours, with a surface that came level to the waist of a tall man standing. It might have been a fine workbench, but it made a lousy desk, which is how I used it.

I was living with my mother and my stepfather that spring, working as an assistant in my stepfather's optometry office and trying to get the hang of California. I had moved from Pittsburgh in December with the intention of applying to an MFA program out here. At the University of Pittsburgh I'd had three great writing teachers--Dennis Bartel, Eve Shelnutt, and Chuck Kinder--and of them Bartel had an MFA from UC Irvine and Kinder had studied writing at Stanford. Both gentlemen had said they would put in a good word for me at their respective alma maters. I'm sure Kinder did his best, but his effort could not avail, and in the end I found myself headed to UCI.

That winter I had been down to check out Irvine, whose writing program was staffed by a couple of novelists, Oakley Hall and MacDonald Harris. Of the seven first-year MFA candidates I met during my brief visit--they would of course be second-years when I showed up the next fall--all were at work on novels (three of which, by my count, were subsequently published--a pretty high rate). I rode the ferry and ate a frozen banana at Balboa Island, looked at the ocean, and wondered if Southern California would ever feel less strange to me, less of a place where people I would never know led lives I couldn't imagine, than Northern California did. There were lots of young women walking around in swimsuits and negligibly short pants and I suppose I probably wondered how many of them I would never get to sleep with. I was kind of on a losing streak with women at the time. I was in a bad way, actually. I was lonely and homesick. I missed Pittsburgh. I missed the friends I had made there, friends of whom I felt, with what strikes me now as a fair amount of drama-queenliness, that 1) I would never see them ever again on this side of the River Styx, and 2) that they were indissolubly bound to me by chains of fire. My loneliness and homesickness were of intense interest to me at the time, as were young women in short pants, novels, and my eternal-yet-forever-lost friendships, and when I read a page of Remembrance of Things Past (as it was then known), the book that was my project for the year, I felt all those interests mesh like teeth with the teeth of Grammar and Style, and I would imagine myself, spasmodically, a writer. I hope you can infer from the above description that I was not yet twenty-two years old."

(04.13.08) Recommends:

The LA64.
#52: Largo.
432 N. Fairfax.

(explanation of series here.)



The theme of yesterday was Homecomings. We started the day blogging about the topic, and ended the day with one at Largo.

First, a little about Largo. It's more dinner theater than rock venue. It has a tiny stage and a room with tables to fit about 100. In addition, there is a bar that fits another probably 10 people. The shows are very intimate, in part because the place is tiny, in part because the venue has strict anti-talking policies, and in part because artists come to Largo to push their boundaries and experiment in front of polite and well-versed audiences. The club is perhaps most known for its Friday night Jon Brion residency. Brion has used the Largo stage to introduce to larger audiences the likes of Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Elliott Smith, and Rhett Miller.

Which brings us to last night. Rhett Miller is a long-time blog favorite. Here's a old post/ode to the Old 97s that sums up most of our feelings toward Rhett and the Old 97s. We had heard whispers that Largo was closing this month [1]. We had also heard that Largo had called home old favorite Rhett Miller to put on two solo shows before the club closed. Finally, we heard that the set of shows was to be recorded and released as an album; Rhett's personal tribute to his years at Largo. With these facts and rumors in front of us, we headed out to Largo.

Table reservations at Largo usually sell out quickly. So your only hope is to show up and try to get a coveted bar stool spot. With doors set to open at 8:30, we rolled up at 8 and had no problem getting in.


In addition to music, Largo plays an important role in the Los Angeles comedy world. As such, many shows feature both comedy and music. Last night was no exception, as the comedy warm up act turned into something of a Rhett Miller roast. The room was really buzzing with excitement for the show -- probably nobody more so than Rhett.



This night was clearly important to him: his wife was in the audience, he played some of his all time favorite songs that will appear on the live record (off the top of our head we remember covers of Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, The Kinks, The Ramones, The Pixies, Tom Petty, Simon and Garfunkel, Pete Seeger), and he appeared to get a little misty eyed at times regaling the audience with old war stories both of Largo and of recording sessions in general, including a pretty funny one about a time Waylon Jennings recorded "Old Brown Shoe" with the Old 97s, which led to Rhett playing an awesome version in which he'd start off doing his best Waylon Jennings voice and then would flawlessly and effortlessly segue into full-on Rhett cowpunk glory.



It was a classic Rhett show. We've stopped trying to figure out why he's not one of the biggest rock stars on the planet. We just go and enjoy the shows now, unencumbered by what-ifs and why-nots. And last night, my oh my, it was special. There are few things we enjoy more than seeing great artists channeling their talents in intimate spaces, but when it's Rhett Miller on a night that was so obviously important to him -- well, that makes for a show that we'll remember for a long, long time.





---
[1] Largo as it as now known is, in fact, closing. However, the owners are opening a larger (and therefore presumably less intimate) space on La Cienega.

(04.11.08) Recommends:

Natural History.

This is Andrew Bird's second contribution to Measure for Measure, a blog we, um, blogged about here.

(04.06.08) Recommends:

The LA64.
#53: The Alexander Ruler of the World Building.
830 N. Van Ness.

(explanation of series here.)

As we've previously mentioned, when we first started[1] driving to work in the mornings we often tried to find secret routes! that would cut down on the commute time. As we've previously mentioned, this task, somewhat paradoxically, always always always just adds to the time.

However. Sometimes, when the secret routes! align just right, you are prone to see something the likes of which is rarely seen by human eyes. Like, e.g., the Alexander Ruler of the World Building. Before we get to a full shot of this building, the story must be properly set up. First, the area is completely residential, with nondescript houses and apartments. It is relevant to note this fact, because before the full glory of the AROTWB reveals itself, the driver stumbles upon this:



Now, accuse us of having our minds in the gutter, or of having an unrefined sense of architecture, but when we see a gigantic pinkish-purplish wall, we fully expect that the establishment will be called The Pink Poodle, or The Pink Flamingo, or The Pink Rhino, or The Pink Taco, or The Pink Burrito (are there strip clubs called The Pink Burrito? We don't know the answer to that, but we're pretty sure there should be). So, you can understand our confusion at seeing what we presumed was either a brothel or a strip club right there in the middle of an unassuming residential street.

At this point, we know what you're thinking: but this is LA, bro-sauce; things are just different here!

And you are right. This is LA. Things are different. And hence, instead of a strip club, you get perhaps the only thing more incomprehensible for a residential neighborhood.

You get this:



You get an apartment building decked out in full Ancient Greek theme. What kills us about this picture is that, to the dude walking in front of the building, there is absolutely nothing strange with this scene. It's like every morning, he wakes up, goes for a 7am walk, and passes an apartment building that non-subtly pays tribute to one of the most successful military commanders in history. No harm, no foul.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

---
[1] We use the phrase "first started" in a delusional attempt to persuade ourselves and others that we've learned and grown and matured as Los Angeles drivers. However, we were reminded again this weekend that we have learned nothing from our wayward driving past. On Friday, we were headed out on a Silverlake adventure with a friend much smarter and reasonable than ourselves. We were convinced -- convinced! -- that staying on whatever street we were on would take an offensive amount of time. So we hooked a left. We ended up roughly in Arizona. What John McCain and the Elderly Set previously had in common with Silverlake and the Hipster Set is unclear. What should be clear is that The Silverlake Adventure obviously didn't last long. [2]

[2] Of course, in reality [3], the Adventure didn't last long due to another Lesson Learned But Soon Forgotten, the details of which need not be rehashed here. Also: for the good of humanity, they need not be rehashed on any other blog.

[3] Reality has a funny way of requiring lots and lots of footnotes.

(04.04.08) Recommends:

Tangled all up in blue.

This is an article by Joe Posnanski in today's KC Star. For those of you who did not grow up either in Kansas City or reading the sports page of the Kansas City Star, here's some background blogging on Joe Posnanski.

This article is a Posnanski classic. In the span of the five minutes it took us to read the column, we laughed, we got goose bumps, we felt nostlagic -- maybe even a little homesick -- but mostly we just felt really happy. This article is a great way to start the weekend. It's getting us excited for tomorrow.

(04.04.08) Recommends:

Three Record Companies Team Up With MySpace for Music Web Site.

The last time we blogged about Myspace (at least in a context other than simply linking to a band's myspace page), was the last paragraphs of this post from last October. October '07 seemed to be the height of the VC/tech/enterpreuner blogosphere being dismissive of "low brow/white trash/ghetto" Myspace compared to the Ivy walls of Facebook. At the time, we said while it was easy to make fun of Myspace, dismissing it seemed stupid because there was clearly something interesting going on there with respect to the distribution and discovery of music.

Yesterday's announcement in the NYTimes confirms that our guts were right. Three of the Big 4 record labels have struck a partnership with myspace to allow their entire catalogs to be streamed at a new music site. The site will be free, with a subscription based model being considered.

We think this really has the potential to challenge iTunes. Myspace continues to try to change the game. It'll be interesting to see what happens, and it'll be interesting to gauge the reaction from the VC/tech/enterpreuner blogosphere.

(03.27.08) Recommends:

Measure for Measure.

Two of the most common themes that have emerged in this space are our appreciation of Andrew Bird as maker of some of the most compelling music we have, and our appreciation of the New York Times' embrace of the internet such that it has become one-stop news shopping. Today we were thrilled to learn that these two juggernauts are combining forces. Andrew Bird will be contributing to a new nytimes blog called Measure for Measure. The blog's description:

With music now available with a single, offhand click, it's easy to forget that songs are not born whole, polished and ready to play. They are created by artists who draw on some combination of craft, skill and inspiration. In the coming weeks, the contributors to this blog -- all accomplished songwriters -- will pull back the curtain on the creative process as they write about their work on a songs in the making.

Check out Andrew Bird's first contribution here.

(03.09.08) Recommends:

Not Overdoing It.

So yesterday was another action-packed day in Beachwood Canyon. We woke up super-early stizz, only to stumble upon a horribly visual car wreck in which the backside of a poor Mini Cooper was absolutely pancaked. Then it was off for some self-pamper -- calm down back there, it's been a rough month. We tried to get our hair in order, got to smelling pretty again, and got some fancy pants. Then it was off to catch an early show by the Dodos at Silverlake Lounge and an opening night reception at an art gallery. We dutifully recorded all of this via camera, but in our haste to upload the pics, we managed to destroy the chord that is needed for the transfer.

And this mishap caused us to realize that there's been too much stress in our lives lately and all of our hustle and bustle -- our need to be constantly on the move -- is probably a sign that we're trying to overcompensate for something.

Probably we just need to chill for a bit.

So then we hopped into bed and opened Life of Pi, hands down one of our favorite novels ever. There is so much about the novel that absolutely devastates us, but there is one passage in particular that we come back to, time and time, when we think that our emotions are getting the best of us. And we thought we'd share it with you all today.

I wept like a child. It was not because I was overcome at having survived my ordeal, though I was. Nor was it the presence of my brothers and sisters, though that too was very moving. I was weeping because Richard Parker had left me so unceremoniously. What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell. I am a person who believes in form, in the harmony of order. Where we can, we must give things a meaningful shape. For example -- I wonder -- could you tell my jumbled story in exactly one hundred chapters, not one more, not one less? I'll tell you, that's one thing I hate about my nickname [editor's note: his nickname is Pi] the way that number runs on forever. It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then can you let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day. I wish so much that I'd had one last look at him in the lifeboat, that I'd provoked him a little, so that I was on his mind. I wish I had said to him then -- yes, I know, to a tiger, but still -- I wish I had said, "Richard Parker, it's over. We have survived. Can you believe it? I owe you more gratitude than I can express. I couldn't have done it without you. I would like to say it formally: Richard Parker, thank you. Thank you for saving my life. And now go where you must. You have known the confined freedom of a zoo most of your life; now you will know the free confinement of a jungle. I wish you the best with it. Watch out for Man. He is not your friend. But I hope you will remember me as a friend. I will never forget you, that is certain. You will always be with me, in my heart. What is that hiss? Ah, our boat has touched sand. So farewell, Richard Parker, farewll. God be with you.

(03.08.08) Recommends:

The Craigslist Dating Blog.

My oh my. So we have this friend. He's smart and funny and gentle and outgoing and pretty much the perfect guy. He's everything we wish we were. But despite everything he has going for him, he is recently out of a relationship. And he's always recently out of a relationship. He's kinda girlie like that. So we took him out for "sympathy drinks" last night and convinced him that there were only two reasonable solutions to his problems. The first, start dating through craigslist. The second, blog the experience. Luckily our friend has taken our advice, and today passed along the blog. And now we present the blog that will do no less than change your entire life:

Craigslist Dating.

(03.01.08) Recommends:

Citizen Journalism!

So as we previously mentioned, we saw Cat Power last night. She used to have a reputation for putting on really shitty live performances. But, as we understand it, in the last few years she's gotten things in order and now puts on completely engaging performances. Last night included. Also, owing to the fact that we have friends in Los Angeles who are as generous as they are cool, we had a spectacular view of the show.

But what was particularly notable about the night occurred before the show. We got to the Wiltern a early, because it is located in K-Town, and we never, ever pass up an opportunity to drink Hite like a native. [Even though we're silly white people from Kansas[1], it can hardly be disputed that Koreans love us and think of us as practically half-Korean. South-style, yo. Stop laughing back there; this is all more or less true.] And when we got to the venue we noticed a sign posted on the Box Office[2]. The sign was a Public Notice of Application For Ownership Change. It listed the current owner as the Wiltern Theater. And the new owner as Wolfgang Puck Catering and Events, LLP. The sign also mentioned "on-sale general eating" whatever that means. So, does anybody know, like, what this means? Is Wolfgang Puck a reformed rock star who's going through a mid-life crisis and is now getting the band back together? Is the Wiltern going to be turned into a restaurant? Is Wolfgang Puck just going to be catering the shows? (And maybe some drum solos). We're confused, but we suspect that we can find the answer through fellow bloggers. So if people know what's going on, let us know.



[1] We were sporting a Kansas t-shirt last night. And before the show, while walking from the bar to the venue, we got a "Rock Chalk!" with accompanying fist pump. Then, while in the venue, an impossibly attractive female came up to talk to us because she had graduated from KU (as any KU grad can attest, there are many impossibly attractive girls at KU, the majority of which come either from the farmlands of Kansas, or from Minnesota. Strange, but true.). We mention these stories because one of our favorite parts of living in Los Angeles is that when we wear KU garb people approach, without fail, to tell us they either went to KU or are from Kansas. It literally happens every time we wear KU stuff. Honestly, we now wear Kansas apparel way more then we ever have before because these encounters make us really happy. We realize it might be corny to talk about things like a "sense of community," but we really feel it with our fellow Kansas ex pats. We also realize that it's strange that we strongly identify with our Kansas heritage when we did, in fact, leave Kansas, and all our friends and loved ones therein, when we left for California. But just because we left Kansas does not mean that we have forgotten it, or stopped thinking about it. We want everybody back home to know this.

[2] We would show a picture of this sign, but our camera is currently being held hostage by terrorists. Actually, terrorist, singular. Thus, we do not have access to it. So we took a picture of the sign with our camera phone, but we are bad with the technology and cannot figure out how to transfer the picture from our phone to our computer. So bear with our prose description.

(02.25.08) Recommends:

The Bureau of Communication.

We came across this page via the Daily Candy email, and it cracks us up. The premise is combining the powers of the internet and Mad Libs to convey all those unspoken thoughts that go through our heads all day. So if you're not sure how to reveal your attraction or repulsion to somebody; your regret or appreciation over things; to communicate, to celebrate, to observe; BoC might be just the thing for you. Just go to the site. Pick out a pre-created form. Fill it out. Email it off. "Let that which is unsaid be said." Attempts at humor are strongly discouraged.