in hollywood at 6am

in the mist:

In the twilight hours, that liminal space between sunset and sunrise, the eyes and ears are prone to trickery. The imagination takes over; hazy objects resemble ghosts, and faraway sounds evoke werewolves. But on the precipice of Sunday morning, amid Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s tombstones and mausoleums, the misty fog and leaning palm trees, Bon Iver provided an ethereal soundtrack to sunrise.

It was dreamlike as indie folkster and Wisconsonite Justin Vernon walked onstage with his band, Bon Iver, around 6 a.m. It was almost completely dark when the band opened with Brian Eno-esque layers of sound — their guitars and beards bathed in an icy hue from the blue stage lights — and awakened the slumbering (and some still partying) masses sprawled across the lawn. “We’ve never done anything this weird before,” Vernon said, between the slow-burning stomps and sweet falsetto acoustic solos from Bon Iver’s 2008 album, “For Emma, Forever Ago.”

these are mere examples of the wonder that is the Pop n Hiss music blog, which this month will go past 1 million pageviews.

it took me over a year to get LAist past that milestone so to have a blog thats solely about music be able to pull that off is quite a testament to the men and women who contribute to that fine url: latimes.com/pophiss

when i went to bed at 4am on saturday night i poked my head out the front door to see if the paper had arrived yet. no luck. but then i thought, oh man look at this fog. the kids at the cemetery are probably loving this right now.

hope sandavol of mazzy star plays there tomorrow night.

live hip hop shows are such a hard thing to book that its a little amazing that not only was this pulled off but that so many people attended including Heavy D, Nas, Queen Latifah, The Roots, De la, and Ludacris. But I guess if you’re Common you can get whoever you damn well please.

and since Common works with Kanye, Kanye was rumored to appear…

from the always reliable, joyful, and masterful scott sterling:

“He’s still going through some things, trying to deal with everything that’s happened because of a choice he made, so he couldn’t make it tonight” Common said, obviously referencing West’s meme-generating mike grab from Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV VMAs. “But he still wanted me to send his love to everyone.”

With that, West bounded onstage to the opening strains of his song “Good Life” to the obvious appreciation of the audience. West’s girlfriend Amber Rose conspicuously bounced along to the music from the side of the stage, even grabbing the attention of the spotlight operator for a few moments.

Running through songs like “Make Her Say” (Kid Cudi’s take on Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face”), “Flashing Lights” and his verse from Jay-Z’s “Run This Town” with Common, Mos Def and Talib Kweli, any lingering resentment toward West for his actions at the MTV event were nowhere to be seen in the partisan crowd (video here).

what i like about scott and so many of the music writers at the times, these are people who love music and its nice to hear them be excited in their reviews.

But first a word from the Editor of the paper:

Colleagues:

I’m pleased to announce that Sean Gallagher, managing editor of latimes.com, will fill the masthead-level position of managing editor/online, effective immediately.

Sean has played a key role in the growth and continued improvement of our website, including overseeing the recent redesign that has won much acclaim from our readers and industry colleagues. In his new position, Sean will be responsible for the overall reader experience on latimes.com and the rest of our nearly dozen other digital efforts, which we will continue to expand.

He will work closely with section editors and his colleagues on the masthead, particularly Jon Thurber, managing editor/print, to ensure that the needs of the paper and the site are being met and that our coverage on these platforms is complementary. This includes coordinating and implementing the daily news and features report for our online readers, supervising the large and talented team of your colleagues who produce latimes.com, and helping with the continued integration of our print and Web efforts.

Over his 16-year career, Sean has mastered virtually every facet of online publishing, whether running a news report, producing home pages and building new sections, or working with sales, marketing and IT to develop new products. He joined latimes.com in 2006 as an associate editor; in that job, he helped coordinate the news report and then oversaw the expansion of the Health and Business sections online.

In the three years since, Sean has worked with almost everyone in the newsroom, educating and training staffers about the workings and wonders of the Web, helping with the integration of the print and Web staffs, and finding solutions to vexing technological problems. He also was a member of the Reinvent Committee, formed in 2007 to recommend improvements to the paper during this period of rapid change.

Before joining The Times, Sean was Web director of sddt.com, the website of the San Diego Daily Transcript, where he ran the daily news report. He previously spent more than five years at nytimes.com, where, among other things, he rebuilt and then ran the Science and Health sections and was a producer on the home page. He also worked at the Village Voice as a researcher and at Scholastic Books as a production editor.

Sean is a 1993 graduate of Fordham University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in media studies with a focus on print journalism.

Russ Stanton
Editor

Sean’s a great guy and the perfect choice for the gig. Sean’s incredibly knowledgeable, fun to work with, and not at all afraid to try new things.

he and i work beautifully together and if he doesnt take meredith’s office, i told him that im gonna take it.

although no one could truly replace meredith, if anyone could come close it would be Sean. prepare for some awesomeness on our site the likes you aint never seen before.

Tony watched football all day Sunday, then had sushi and saw a film.

uz i love love stories

and it reminded me of the first time i visited Europe.

i was 20 when i flew in, alone. i turned 21 in florence. and i flew out of amsterdam a changed young man.

changed in one sense because it impressed me how many Europeans knew more about US politics and policies than Americans. and even though they were polite in their questioning, whether i was in paris or munich or sweden people asked me about homelessness and how did we live with the fact that some of our countrymen were sleeping in the streets while many of us snoozed in luxury.

i told them that america was cold blooded and hard core. and even though there were a few social services, there was so much shame and judgement tied to receiving handouts and it was so small that for the most part either you made it, or figured out how to survive, or you were kicked to the curb. and likewise, if you made it big, there would be no limit as to how much you could earn.

i said, you have a chance to be homeless, and you had a chance to be donald trump. and at one point of his life donald trump said that he was poorer than a homeless man because he owed millions.

now when i go back to europe i dont allow myself to get tied up in such conversations. instead we drink wine and eat giant fish and make love beneath the stars. because the alternative: thinking about the root of all evil, is such a bummer.

which is why michael moore is such a genius. he can bring up topics that are total downers (the decline of the us auto industry, the decline of the us health care industry, 9/11, etc.) and make huge audiences laugh.

last night our hollywood audience not only laughed, but applauded several times during the two hour film. yours truly even teared up a few times. its hard not to when you see “average” americans going through the ringer (and creating miracles).

but in the end, just like in europe, we dont know what to do with the problem at hand, and moore doesnt really help us, which is the only flaw in the film. are we supposed to revolt? and if so against who? the atm? are we supposed to take our savings out of the market? and put it where? certainly not the evil banks. the mattress? into small businesses? but isnt investing being part of the problem?

all i deduced was that because “democracy” is moore’s solution to capitalism, and since, if we are to believe his film, politicians on both side of the aisle are corrupt, then we should revolt at the polls and continue to vote da bums out until we have representatives who wont give gov’t bailouts after the people said no.

quit being partisan, and start voting people out of office whenever they do badly? and do it for the betterment of the country? if that is his solution, then i think that might be something most people could get behind.

me, i’ll be under the stars with the french girls.

A-