|
|
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
| |
2:21 pm - Hmm... a touch close for comfort
|
We dropped into the Trader Joe's in a strip mall along Santa Monica Blvd., west of Fairfax in the Russian section. Nothing newsworthy there.
Note the small businesses along one side. Note particularly the aquarium right by the fish market.
I dunno... I dunno... "Mom, my goldfish died" might become "New Special on Golden Lucky Fish Filet".
Or maybe it goes the other way... "You'll love this fish, the Norwegian Blue... it prefers kippin' on its back... beautiful scales..."
current mood:  Wry
|
|
|
| Friday, June 27th, 2008
| |
10:43 am - Irony tastes like formula
|
So this news story appears a little while ago:
"NC 'Big Twins' tip scales at a combined 23 pounds"
In North Carolina, Sean William Maynard and Abigail Rose Maynard are born. He's 10 pounds 14 ounces, she's 12 pounds 3 ounces. Both healthy. They were born at the Sara Lee Center for Women's Health.
Wow! Twenty-three pounds of twins. That's great news. What fun.
I'll back up. Big babies. Born at the Sara Lee Center. Sara Lee. As in pound cake. The Sara Lee Center for Women's Health.
Okay, I'll go back to writing restaurant reviews now.
current mood:  Discombobulated
|
|
|
| Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
| |
10:53 pm - Damn.
|
|
| Friday, June 20th, 2008
| |
4:18 pm - Now You Know Where to Go
|
Following up on that:
http://www.dininginla.com/
That's the new site. All lovingly compiled and arrogantly written using the b2Evolution blogging software.
Go there! Please! Think of the kittens!
current mood:  accomplished
|
|
|
| Friday, May 16th, 2008
| |
12:04 pm - It's my own fault, really...
|
I've always wanted to write my own food blog, geared toward my own experiences in L.A. I like to write, I love to eat, I've already got some entries ready.
O'course, me being the spectacularly unmotivated 'Beast that I am, I always get hung up on the specifics of the site: should I make an HTML site? Should I install some blogging software so that I can use the search and categorization functionality? Should I install some real estate PHP software and hack it? Should I make it in Flash using XML? And then my indecisive brain would go off and think about tacos or sex, and I'd do fuck-all about it.
I had a name for this wonderful site: "To Live and Dine in L.A." I came up with it five or six years ago.
Now I finally dig up my notes, and see that the domain name was taken a couple years ago. By some stupid cable show who will never make a website for it.
Bastards! Reprobates! Shameless hussies! How dare you take advantage of my brilliant idea (that tons of other people have also independently thought of) and inherent laziness!
At least www.doomweasel.com isn't taken. Isn't that a great domain name? If I had the slightest idea what to do with a domain like doomweasel.com I'd register it.
current mood:  Scandalized
|
|
|
| Monday, May 5th, 2008
| |
12:37 am - Losing parts of one's life
|
I once wrote this back when we first moved to Silver Lake:
---------------------------------
Some things in life are so - sweet - that they help to strip away some of one's cynicism and bitterness.
Across the street from our apartment is a small, battered two-story house, with outside stairs leading to the second floor, on which lives an elderly gentleman. He is tall, wispy and white-haired in a Peter O'Toole kind of way, and has a quiet smile that we see sometimes when he is outside smoking and chatting with two of the other old men who live nearby.
This elderly gentleman is always busy: he takes energetic walks up our forbidding Tularosa hill, works endlessly on his front lawn/garden, and wakes early. He has a dog - a pug, I think - something definitely along the lines of small, inclined to plumpness, and friendly-looking. The dog strikes me also as elderly.
It's just the two of them. An old man, and his little dog.
And they have probably lived there forever. They take walks together, and smile at you when you pass by in your car on your way elsewhere. When he talks to his neighbors the dog is there too, sitting in the sun and nodding sagely. Sometimes he just sits at the top of the stairs, with his dog, petting the dog and probably having a pretty good conversation with him. He and the dog are the best of friends. It touches the heart, if you have one.
I have never properly met them, and I do not know their names, but I know they're there, and they're our neighbors. Which is a comforting thing, for Bianca and myself, who rarely know our neighbors and harbor a healthy disrespect and distrust for much of the world.
I can only hope they will always live there... because the world will be much less sweet when they do not.
---------------------------------
Over the years we've lived here, we discovered that the man's name was Mike. The dog? Spike. Mike and Spike. Perfect.
From a small memorial on his front lawn, we discovered that Mike had passed away on April 28th. He'd had a stroke and other complications. Spike is living elsewhere, presumably with Mike's son. We keep thinking of Spike and how he must be feeling the loss and not understanding it except as a hollow void in a dog's life. We think he will join Mike soon, and we think it will be good because they will be together, although we are sad because we know we will never see either of them again, ever. We look at their house and wonder what will happen to it, whether someone with money will come and try to fix it up and sell it to other people with money, who will never know the steady friendships and legacies of this neighborhood.
Wally, a white mop of a dog that lived with my sister's family, also passed away recently after far too few years.
Right before April, the resident patrol hound of Silver Lake, Bingo, also died. We attended his memorial service on the 6th, and he is now part of the mural on Sunset and Hyperion.
April was a bad month. I am too emotionally exhausted for this.
current mood:  sad
|
|
|
| Friday, February 15th, 2008
| |
10:56 am - Some Kind of V.D.
|
Valentine's Day, of course, not the other V.D.
So I get home from school and Bink and I go to Malo, which is our new restaurant to gush about even though it's been there for quite a while and we only just started going a few months ago because we're lazy and unmotivated.
Really nice evening: carnitas de al pastor, shrimp Diablo, chipotle new roasted potatoes, chips and salsa, and really well-made tequila drinks. Tongues burning and brains buzzing.
The guy next to us has that vaguely handsome-but-battered look that women seem to like (a bit of Vince Vaughn from Swingers era here, the guy who played Nate on Six Feet Under there). He busts out his own mixer to make him and his slender and vaguely exotic date/girlfriend/wife blended margaritas. They're very nice and apologetic about the noise, and laugh loudly and confidently.
They leave afterwards in a dark Suburban, and I shake my head a bit at his shirttail hanging out and his white sneakers. A bit frumpled, even for L.A.
Then we realized: oh. Hey. That was Johnny Knoxville.
At least I think it was him.
It's been a while since we've done the "brushed shoulders with celebrities without knowing it" thing.
current mood:  In love with L.A.
|
|
|
| Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
| |
11:13 am - Commercial cluelessness
|
I'm almost getting used to the fucked-in-the-head robbery of culture in order to pander to consumerism. Almost. I hear the ghost of John Lennon endorses Nike, Chase credit cards and diapers. Robert Plant sings about Cadillacs. They don't, really, but it creates some kind of false connection for those American shoppers easily led by an "OMG I'm empowered because I remember this song" leash.
I was thinking about those Royal Caribbean cruise commercials and their usurping of the Iggy Pop song "Lust for Life" in order to sell imagery of pasty, vaguely Anglo-Saxon families (socially valid mommy, daddy, boy, girl unit) leaping into swimming pools, jet-skiing, climbing up fake mountain walls, exercising on stationary bikes, eating fun dinners.
Brrrrumm-bum bum, badum bah badum bum heeeah comes Johnny, yeeeah, looks so fine, wheeee look at us! Cruises are FUN! C'mon, kids! Parent-approved safe activity on a cruise line I used to think had a shred of repute.
Here, then, are the first few lyrics of "Lust for Life," as penned by Iggy Pop:
here comes johnny yen again
with the liquor and drugs
and the flesh machine
he's gonna do another striptease
hey man where'd you get
that lotion? i been hurting
since i bought the gimmick
about something called love
yeah something called love
that's like hypnotizing chickens
well i am just a modern guy
of course i've had it in the ear before
'cause of a lust for life
So, a garage-glam-infused song about survival after heroin, commandeered for white suburbia on vacation. Perfect Utopian logic.
current mood:  Caustic
|
|
|
| Thursday, January 24th, 2008
| |
11:23 am - Needlessly disseminated cultural irritants
|
Today's notable item to which I've given a few moments of thought:
Regarding those web ad banners for financing your home, getting a degree, etc.:
Whoever makes those banners with the little 3D dancing human figures:
You know, the little figures who are line-dancing like they've had their rectum busted or are carrying a load in their slacks:
Whoever makes those:
... Stop it.
current mood:  Huffruntled
|
|
|
| Tuesday, December 18th, 2007
| |
6:05 pm - Xmas Muzak and the Urge to Kick Puppies
|
So which Christmas song is your least favorite?
I have no ill will toward most of the actual Christ-related music: little drummer boys and merry gentlemen resting on silent nights can pass me right by without any internal howling.
It's the generic happy-go-lucky, Dickensian winter pap, the simpering "All Season Long, Your Favorite Holiday Hits" programming that KOST-FM leaks on you in the Laundromat. Cases in point:
Certainly, "Jingle Bell Rock" is annoying, with its little tinkling guitar sting. No surprises there.
"I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" is the archetypal hymn of white oppression (may all your Christmases be White). Even when Bing does it. Especially when Bing does it.
"Carol of the Bells" is a swarm of choral bees that slams against one's cranium until madness sets in. Bianca flees the room when it comes on because she doesn't want to hurt anybody.
"The Christmas Song" is its own private circle of Hell, since whoever's performing it is compelled to sing. It. Really. Slowly.
Chest.
NUTS....
roastinnnnng...
... on?
... an open fiiiiiirrre....
*Go start some coffee*
JackFrostnipping....
at your nooooooooooooooooossse.....
The one, though, that brings the uncontrollable twitch in my eyelid, a knot in my lower gut, a rising river of seething contempt for my fellow man, a thumb poised and quivering over a large red nuke button, must be "Winter Wonderland." By a long shot.
It's usually rattled off in a horribly jaunty manner worthy of the most emasculating Caucasian musicals of the '50s, you see, but it also never ends. Never. You could be winding down finally, "walking...", thank Heaven, orchestra swells, "in a Winter...", smiles everyone, smiles, big finish: "Wonder... LANNNDD!!!"
Wow, thank goodness that's finally over, I can get on with my li
"IN the MEADOW we can BUILD a SNOWMAAANNNN..."
... AUGH! AAAAUUUGH! NYYAAAAAHHH, and off we go into another stanza of Parson Brown and frolicking in the Eskimo way. Torture. Torment. Hatred.
"Happy Holidays" multiculturalism my ass. It's Christmas.
... Do I sound biased?
(Bah Humbug)
current mood:  Helplessly Inundated
|
|
|
| Thursday, December 13th, 2007
| |
3:00 pm - Branding the Afterlife
|
Hmm... how can I generate more capital off of people? I know! I'll cash in on their grief and their shallow attachment to consumerism! How about this: because I know you love Precious Moments figurines so much, when you die, you can be buried in a casket that's branded with the Precious Moments® logo! Or your cremains can be preserved in a specially designed urn.
Oh. It's been done.
So, let's see: Eternal Image sells "brand name funerary products that celebrate the passions of life." When you kick off, they've got branded caskets and cremation urns for Major League Baseball, Precious Moments, the Vatican Library Collection, and Star Trek... and there's the American Kennel Club and Cat Fancier's Association for when your pet shuffles off this mortal coil, too.
The Star Trek urn is especially coffee-table worthy:
*picks up* "Say, this is cool... is this one of those laser-clock things that..."
"That's grandpa's ashes."
"Urk!" *clank*
And this... this... wow. Thirteen teams to choose from.
"Yea, *snif*... my friends, Roy has finally slid into home. Finally caught that pop fly from Jesus..."
I like the disclaimer for the Cat Fancier's Association and American Kennel Club urns: "Please note: This product is for pets only." ... Aw, dang.
From the About Us section: "We combine the power of brand-names with 21st century materials and composites that won't rot." ... Ah, shouldn't we find another euphemism here? Perhaps "that won't suffer from degradation"..? And hey, if you want expertise on brand-name with materials that don't rot, contact your local McDonald's...
Also from the About Us section: "Mytych challenged himself to find an industry where branding -- and licensing -- had little or no impact to date. After months of research, Mytych hit upon what may be licensing's last frontier -- the funeral industry." ... It's all about money, folks. At least they're honest.
I'm surprised NASCAR isn't there: "Ah wanna be buried in a race car when ah die!"
current mood:  Woebegone
|
|
|
| Monday, November 26th, 2007
| |
11:35 am - Common Scents
|
There are certain olfactory woes experienced when a single bathroom is shared by the entire floor of an office building.
Basically it, and the hallway outside it, smells of cabbage and ass.
There is an industrial-sized can of Glade Country Garden sitting on the counter, but it is the height of uselessness. All it does is make the bathroom smell of potpourri and cabbage and ass.
I need to go buy some Oust or something that does the whole "kills the bacteria that cause odors" thing.
current mood:  Distracted
|
|
|
| Friday, September 21st, 2007
| |
6:15 pm - The Greatest Deli of All Time
|
My good friend Dennis works near me in Glendale now, so all is well with the world, or at least infinitesimal parts of it.
He's just introduced me to Billy's on Orange Street. Billy's is the Greatest Deli of All Time, like I just promised you.* I've seen it before: it's tucked between a multilevel parking garage and an empty storefront that used to be a Christian bookstore that sold poorly designed cards and porcelain items. (Take this as a warning to make sure your religious merchandise is well-designed.)
Anyway, Billy's. Billy's is a deli that is larger inside than it looks. The food is good--at least the Hawaiian teriyaki chicken breast on sourdough with melted jack cheese was, and damned so--but what makes Billy's the G.D.o.A.T. is a particular waitress.
I do not (yet) know the name of this goddess among food servers. She's short, not quite elderly, and if she suddenly appeared as the coach of your baseball team you wouldn't be surprised at all. She greets you with a "Hey, Baby!"
Her forte is dirty jokes. Just like your dad (should have) told. Within two minutes of our sitting down she was leaning conspiratorially over our table:
"Okay. So this guy calls in to work. He tells the boss, "I can't come in today, I'm sick." The boss says, "You don't sound sick." The guy says, "Well, I'm fuckin' my sister right now, that isn't sick?" ... and she walks away while Dennis and I snicker.
Awesome. Totally awesome. The world where waitresses who must have worked there for decades tells you dirty jokes. She's back four minutes later: "So you know how to circumcise a redneck?... Kick his sister in the jaw."
I am so goddamned pleased with the fact that this grand lady of blue plate specials exists. Long Live Billy's, and its resident tenured jester.
* Oh, and the whole Greatest Deli claim: please don't come clamoring with your more-Jewish-than-thou rantings about how THIS OTHER deli is way by far totally the greatest deli ever and it's in New York and I wouldn't know a matzoh ball from a testicular tumor. My true deli knowledge is not that extensive, so please consider my tongue planted firmly in cheek, and kindly fuck off.
current mood:  Enervated
|
|
|
| Friday, September 14th, 2007
| |
11:12 am - Me as a target consumer
|
So I've got a MySpace account, yes?
(Don't judge. I whore myself out to any online community that'll have me. If there's a community, there needs to be a Polarbeast on it, just like if there's a lap, my cat must be on it. Friendster, Facebook, Tribe, Hi5, LiveJournal, Yahoo 360, et cetera. Come on over and be friends with me so there are more threads supporting my frail digital psyche over the abyss of nonexistence.)
Anyway. I'm tickled by the fact that when I log in, the ad space below my info is populated with stuff that supposedly reflects me and the self-indulgent twaddle I put in my Interests and About Me sections. Let's see what we have:
Conan the Barbarian Store
Conan the Destroyer Collector's Edition DVD, Buy Now. Only $11.95
www.LegendaryHeroes.com
Witchblade - The Anime
Available on DVD Sept 25th Visit Site for Exclusive Scenes
funimation.com/witchblade/
New Anime DVDs
Looking for something new? Browse Japan's latest - from Geneon
www.GeneonAnimation.com
Bloating and Gas Relief
Find out why every second American is chronically ill. Get well now!
www.gcnm.com
... One ad for a Conan store with very little merchandise, two ads for anime, and one to ease gastrointestinal distress. I can't decide whether that's good or bad. Am I an animated musclebound hero with tummy cramps? May be. May be.
current mood:  Insouciant
|
|
|
| Monday, September 10th, 2007
| |
10:32 am - Underworld!
|
Went to the Hollywood Bowl last night to see Underworld. Paul Oakenfold with Carmen Rizzo opened for them, which should give you an idea of how big and respectable Underworld was in the '90s.
A most excellent show. A little light on the visuals, I thought, since they're well known for Tomato graphics playing across huge screens, and the Bowl is not an ideal place to have an electronic group (there's no room to dance with all those benches), but exhilarating. They played mostly stuff from their upcoming album and from A Hundred Days Off, which I know a number of Underworld fans aren't so hot about since it was after D. Emerson left, but they included enough older floorfillers to make it worthwhile. Remember "Cowgirl" from the Hackers soundtrack?
I actually saw Underworld live before I died. We actually danced between the benches to "King of Snake." Wonderful, wonderful.
current mood:  Antsy
|
|
|
| Thursday, August 2nd, 2007
| |
10:46 am - Picture New York...
|
... Without pictures of New York.
Something I heard on KPFK Pacifica Radio: the Mayor's Office of Theater, Film and Broadcasting is responsible for issuing permits for filming. They're considering new rules (without having first a public discourse) that would severely limit one's ability to actually FILM in New York.
The details are at the website ... but basically in order to use a camera in a public location for more than a half hour, you have to get a permit... and a million dollars of insurance. If you use one tripod for ten minutes, the rules apply, including setup and breakdown time.
Who can work under these requirements? Hardly anyone. This means that any person who, say, conducts interviews on the street, or is filming an independent documentary on deli sandwiches, or even filming a child's birthday party, can be subject to arrest for not having a million dollars of insurance and a permit.
Why would they do this?
I don't know... but I imagine it helps out the police force, some of whom would like a freer hand in arresting whom they want. Are you filming a protest on your cell phone camera? You can be arrested for not having a permit and insurance. Are you capturing the beating of a minority on your video camera? You can be arrested. Imagine if Los Angeles got the same idea, or Philadelphia.
Call me paranoid, call me a liberal, beat your chest and ask me how I dare accuse the police force and political officials of New York of anything but the highest standard of ethical behavior. But the fact remains is that photographers and filmmakers DO have the right to film in public, per our lovely First Amendment. New York officials do not have the right to take this away.
(Go sign the petition. Steve, Dennis, Andrew, Dustin?)
current mood:  Adamant
|
|
|
| Wednesday, August 1st, 2007
| |
7:16 pm - Oh My Poor Eardrums
|
So I'm at some fairly mainstream restaurant in Glendale, sitting in a booth and enjoying my solitary repast. Three women enter, and are seated behind me. So far this is perfectly acceptable.
The problem with this is that one of them spoke.
Oh, not to me or anything. No, she merely spoke. This is bad because this woman has the most nasal, the most skull-penetrating whine of a voice I believe I've ever encountered. A real head-hammering, window-shivering, dentist-drill, making-terriers-howl-a-block-away drone that I swear made the hairs on the back of my head flatten with each exhalation.
Y'know how in Jurassic Park when the Tyrannosaurus's steps make water ripple in a cup? It was like that, except on the opposite end of the tonal scale.
I do not know how her companions did not wince as her words peppered them like miniature sonic jackhammers. Maybe they're tuned differently. All I know is that I was almost laughing with the sheer pain of it, an "oh my GOD sweet mother of mercy on high I cannot OW believe the nasal yowling this OW bitch is creating, ow! OW! Wow!" expression on my face.
Afterward I walked to my car, with an occasional uncontrollable kink of the head, like a dog who has an itch in his ear. Amazing stuff. Wish I could have recorded it.
current mood:  Disbelieving
|
|
|
| Monday, July 2nd, 2007
| |
5:22 pm - When You're Here, You're Family, sort of
|
The phrase "fuck Olive Garden" in quotes yields 126 results on Google.
I'm adding to that tally.
Since my two sisters and I live in Ventura, Moorpark and Silver Lake respectively, we tend to conduct family gatherings in the (hot, dry, dusty-ass) Valley, at chain restaurants. This means we're at BJ's or Olive Garden or some other comfortably vanilla place rather than any bastion of epicurean enlightenment.
While I am never a fan of the O.G. on my most forgiving day, Sunday's experience was a lesson in gastrointestinal insult. Our waitress exuded a sort of friendly apathy, but could handle only one request at a time. Food arrival was staggered.
The taste... ah, the taste was woefully absent. Bianca pushed a bored fork through white-sludge-in-red-water masquerading as cheese ravioli with marinara. I had some sort of alleged chicken served with wilted broccoli over a sea of pulpy oriechiette pastas shaped like Gilligan's hat. Neither of us cleaned the plate. Even the chocolate gelato I hopefully ordered for dessert was left unfinished.
You have to have a pretty shitty pasta for Polarbeast not to finish it. You have to have even shittier gelato for Polarbeast not to finish it. We spent the remainder of Sunday with stomachs hurting, and today still brings an occasional wince as my body tries to figure out who assaulted it.
Fuck Olive Garden. Let's copyright that.
Remind me to tell you how Olive Garden mangles single malt whisky. And for your browsing pleasure try Googling "olive garden food poisoning".
current mood: Irritable
|
|
|
| Thursday, June 14th, 2007
| |
10:20 am - Paternalisms
|
A year ago I met my eighteen-year-old son for the first time.
He's now nineteen, freshly returned from Costa Rica, actually sunburnt, and happily e-mailing Bianca back and forth.
I'm still tripping over the concept of Father's Day applying to me.
current mood:  Almost Calm
|
|
|
| Monday, April 30th, 2007
| |
2:22 pm - Ah, Glendale. The "Jewel City."
|
You might recall my diatribe about the plaques across the street. If you don't, scroll down two or three entries.
But here's something else fun:
That's a lamppost in front of the police station and City Hall. There's a row of them along Broadway.
The City of Glendale notes them to be patterned after a representation of an Indian symbol or a Greek-inspired design. I suppose that's true... the posts were put in in the '20s, they're left-facing, and Nazis flipped it and turned it 45 degrees. But it's fun to point at and make accusations.
Oh, that plaque across the street, the one that says "Defending America from Terror"..? It's been covered by a blue tarp for a couple weeks.
current mood:  Running on Fumes
|
|
|
|
|
|
|