El Chavo is writing about stuff you don’t need and Your Daily Awesome has a picture of one thing that definitely fits that category. Because I believe in giving credit where credit is due, I ask you to head on over to Your Daily Awesome at http://www.yourdailyawesome.com/2007/08/29/for-sale-self-adhesive-sunroof/.
There is nothing like seeing a self-adhesive-sunroof to deepen your faith in people’s desire for and ability to think up junk.
“The Ruins,” by Scott Smith is terrible. Ignore the NYT review from last year, the Stephen King endorsement, and the fact that it will probably be a movie someday. It is uninspiring (no coming out of this horror tale feeling stonger) and stereotypically predictable (except for the part where the hill learns to ring like a cell phone–can’t say I expected that). Save your time.
Back in the day, a Slip n’ Slide was THE way to cool down on a warm summer afternoon. You’d gotten too old for the wading pool, so you brought out the yellow piece of plastic and launched yourself at the ground. If you were poorer or just resourceful, you did the same with lots of saran wrap or a tarp and some dishwashing soap. If you had nothing, you just swamped the lawn and dealt with the grass burns and green skin.
Nowadays, the Slip n’ Slide seems to have morphed with the jumpy thing kids have at parties. They don’t get scarred quite the way we did (unless they use lots of soap and end up on the sidewalk), but it does evoke the same summertime fun.
Mike over at Franklin Avenue posted a piece on a converted drive-thru dairy now carpet shop and his hope for the survival of one of its attributes. I too have been thinking about internal architectural conversions and marveling at what they say (or the story you can try to tell) about communities’ tastes and marketing in general.
Taco Bell goes to Aloha Food Factory in Alhambra and Der Wienerschnitzel goes to Ceviche Loco in Bell.
Of course, there’s also the IHOP gone sushi on the Westside, Bob’s Big Boy now Noodle Planet in Alhambra, and Sizzler gone El Pescador in Highland Park, but I didn’t have time to get photos of those. Any you like?
A while back I wrote about how several close friends (and a sister) were pregnant and expecting around this time of year. The breaking news is that, as of today, all but one has had her baby. In honor of them all and my new nieces and nephews, the following child-related, real-life things to look forward to:
Good luck to you all. Please humor me with the stories.
Went to the Arclight this weekend to see “The Bourne Ultimatum” with a friend who’d never been there. She was impressed by the assigned seating and the introduction that was given by an usher who promised, “the experience of a lifetime.”
She only had to wait an hour or so to get that experience. At the end of one particularly brutal fight scene (the one involving Desh, for those who’ve seen the film), the screen went black, lights started flashing, and the alarm sounded.
Fire alarm.
Really.
We all evacuated just long enough to walk around the building and back in through another door. Then we were told it was a false alarm. Only the best at this “once in a lifetime” theater.
Favorite L.A. Times correction this week:
Also, in some copies of the review the film ‘Blades of Glory’ was misspelled as ‘Blades of Gory.’
KPCC did a piece last night on the best high school movies. My top three are, in order, The Breakfast Club, Fame, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Others I can’t quite figure out how to rank: Heathers, Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion, Clueless, Pump Up The Volume, Dead Poets Society, Carrie, and both Greases.
While Fame is the movie that most closely approximates the feel of my high school (especially the lots of people everywhere all the time part, not the dancing on table tops part), there is something about the discovery of how different people see the world that earns The Breakfast Club the top spot on my list.
Your favorite?
Some days it’s a song that puts me in the mood to go out and take risks and have fun–Cafe Tacuba’s “Soy o Estoy” and Wicked’s “Defying Gravity” immediately come to mind. Other days, it’s more random urban activity.
Today’s reminder to throw caution to the wind, a squirrel that ran across six lanes of 50 mph traffic across Huntington Drive before my eyes. It was graceful and beautiful and alive.
¡Correle ardilla!
The best phrase that came across my computer today was “terrestrial sequestration.”
As opposed to “celestial sequestration” where the angels can’t get out of heaven?
¿Quien sabe?
Greeting the audience at the Hollywood Bowl’s tribute to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, guest bands Cheap Trick and Ministry kick off the evening by giving a shout out to the audience—”What’s up, old people!!”
Some drunk twenty-somethings in the audience responded in disgust ”bunch of hippies.”
Guess that tells you a little about who was with me at the concert.
In any event, this 37-year-old thought it was a great concert with Cheap Trick, Aimee Mann, Joan Osborne, and Ian Ball doing their versions of Beatles songs.
Two commercials make me completely crack up these days:
First, the ESPN take off on the running of the bulls, where sports team mascots chase people up a hallway (I can’t find the clip, but it is funnnnny).
Second, the Wendy’s Baconator commercial. There’s just something about cut-out technology and bacon. Here’s the link if you haven’t seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdF9liwZfuI
Then, of course, there are a couple of older favorites. And, yes, I know the Levi’s ones were creepy for a while.
http://www.ifilm.com/video/2419285 (Crazy Legs)
http://www.methodstudios.com/movie/281.html (I’m Coming Out)
and http://www.ifilm.com/video/2739661 (Shut Your Big Head Up).
I’m borrowing inspiration from Blog is a Mix Tape.
What are the five words that describe your life right now?
My favorite part of the newspaper is the “For the Record” section typically found on page A2. The blurbs there always make make me thankful I don’t have the job of writing them. They also serve as a reminder not to believe everything (anything?) I read.
Today’s lowlights:
“An Al Martinez column in the July 30 California section referred to the ‘post 9/11′ state law ‘meant to deny the right of terrorists to go around shouting that they’re going to blow us all into confetti, even though they display no weaponry.’ The law, California Penal Code Section 422, was enacted in 1988.”
“A caption in Monday’s Section A said that more multifamily units than single-family homes are being built throughout Southern California. The caption should have said that that is the case in much of Southern California.”
The world is so much clearer now.
Yesterday, I was telling a friend that “someone told me” the explanation for the phrase, “dog days of summer.” I told her the whole story about how the ancient Romans believed that these hot, humid days were the result of the anger of Sirius, the “Dog Star” and that they sacrificed a brown dog at the beginning of what they believed to be this evil period in order to be spared Sirius’ wrath.
She looked at me and said, “Who told you that? Vin Scully maybe? He told me and about another gazillion people the same thing–over the radio! You take all conversations with Vin so personally?”
Uh, yeah.
Last night, I was lucky enough to get tickets to watch the Dodgers play the Giants. In addition to being a crazy game to be in the stands for (the hatred between the teams’ fans is pretty bad), this game had the added attraction of being the one where Barry Bonds might tie or break Hank Aaron’s home run record.
Barry didn’t tie or break it, the Dodgers won 6-4 (with a dramatic 8th inning homerun by Nomar Garciaparra), and it was a pretty good game.
Also of interest were the following observations:
Photos below.
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