Still Not Right at All, it Turns Out:

05/12/2007 10:10 PM  |  Comment (3)

Who Knew You Could Play That Song Live?: Toward the end of my days in Budapest, after nearly eight years of awful, coal-choked, freezing colorless winters, all I did was basically sit around listening to every Beach Boys record I could get my hands on, and one hell of a lot of E.L.O.

05/12/2007 10:10 PM  |  Comment (3)

Los Feliz, 1920: According to UCLA's groovy new photo collection, this was the first women's hospital in L.A. Long gone now, and very close to where the fire threatened homes this week.

Here's "Cowboy Sam Garrett demonstrating roping trick to children at Echo Park in Los Angeles, Calif., 1949":

Here's the Elysian Park Love-in of 1970:

And here's Muhammad Ali jogging with March Fong Eu:

05/11/2007 07:51 PM  |  Comment (0)

Not a Typo: Dick Cheney, in Baghdad:

The United States, also, has made a decision: As the prime target of a global war against terror, we will stay on the offensive. We will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

05/10/2007 09:23 PM  |  Comment (1)

And Now Catalina Is Burning up: I'd be shocked if Southern California didn't lose 1,000 homes to fire in 2007. Avalon webcam here.

05/10/2007 09:02 PM  |  Comment (0)

Our Back Yard Is on Fire:

That's the Griffith Observatory poking out over on the left. The homes on the ridge just on the other side of the flames include a Frank Lloyd Wright (as does the park from which Emmanuelle took this pic a half-hour ago). The Greek Theater is probably imperilled, though they've made it firefighting HQ. Dante's View, known to all of us who've hiked those hills for years, has been destroyed by flame. (Luckily, that's the worst of it so far.) Mandatory evacuations in some neighborhoods north of Los Feliz Blvd. Here's a classic L.A. shot for you:

L.A. Times has a good blog, and some flat terrific user-generated photos.

05/08/2007 09:09 PM  |  Comment (0)

Worse Than I Thought:

The last film that made Mr. Sarkozy cry was Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion." He once said he wanted Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" as his victory song.

05/07/2007 11:13 PM  |  Comment (5)

SeanCondron.com: Some people's ex-bandmates go on to get a job, grab a suit and tie, learn a trade, maybe make a few records. Or, you know, pick up a banjo and join a punk-rock circus.

Since I have decided that 2007 is the year to Finish Stuff, let it be resolved that we'll get Slip Disko digitized & remastered this year, in all it's, er, glory. Too bad about that whole "live solo acoustic" side....

05/07/2007 11:05 PM  |  Comment (0)

Tim Blair Battles a Marsupial: I know, redundant.

05/06/2007 10:53 PM  |  Comment (5)

Mark Steyn Has a Point About Modern France Here:

I notice, for example, every time I'm across the pond in my corner of South Kensington that one hears more and more French spoken on the street. There are somewhere between 400 and 500,000 French citizens living in Britain's capital. London is now the seventh biggest French-speaking city in the world. These are young talented dynamic people who like the same things about France the British and American tourists do — the vin, the cuisine, the couture, the Provencal farmhouses and the Cote d'Azur's topless beaches — but have concluded that it is no longer a society in which you can fulfill your economic potential. They would presumably be Sarkozy supporters, but, like many who feel the odds are stacked against them, they chose in the end to bail out.

Sarko's nowhere near a sure bet. As Jame Kramer wrote in her typically smart pre-election essay, "The real trouble with Sarkozy is that he is not demonstrably democratic." He has an authoritarian streak, a Napoleon complex, and (worst of all) he doesn't drink wine. Surely, French journalists despise the man, and we'll quickly hear more end-of-days claims of impending fascism than even back in the dark old days when the last deranged right-winger won office. More important than all, perhaps, France is a deeply conservative country that does not take change lightly.

Still, for the first time since forever, there are political happenings in France that are actually interesting. Either one of those two would have been huge improvements over Ducky Chirac, by virtue of not being Chirac. It'll be interesting to see where Sarko takes his first foreign trip....

05/06/2007 10:45 PM  |  Comment (1)

For My L.A. Friends Who Know Barry....: You know, funny guy, writes for TV, has a bit too much body hair for comfort; probably has an alarm that goes off in his head every day at 4:20. Anyway, don't forget that Barry has a blog, and it's very entertaining. Make sure to click on those Alec Baldwin spots ... amazing.

05/06/2007 09:48 PM  |  Comment (1)

Hi! What are you doing down here?