the photo above of Alie Ward, left, of Metromix about to be licked by the $5 Guy’s little doggie outside the Secret Headquarters thursday night was good, but the lede for her story about the Baker Lofts was even better: “Do you think she’s on ecstasy, or just really nice?”
in today’s Campaign ’08 section, Kate Linthicum asks the excellent question “why do we vote on Tuesdays?” she interviews Jacob Soboroff of Why Tuesday who not only answers the question but in the piece we learn that most lawmakers don’t know the answer which is, “It turns out that Congress chose Tuesday for a voting day in 1845 to make the process easier for citizens of an agrarian society. Back then, farmers needed to vote on a day that wouldn’t interfere with the three-day Sabbath or Wednesday, which was market day.”
regular Soundboard contributer August Brown has a nice long piece about LA punkers No Age in the Calender section today. apparently the duo are at a crossroads of breaking through to the mainstream but trying to do so without the cost of their punk rock – or Vegan – sensibilities: “We played a show for Fuel TV, and they didn’t tell us that the show was sponsored by Snickers,” Randall said. “So 10 seconds before we played, I found a marker and wrote ‘Go Vegan’ on the back of my guitar. If they’re going to try to force Snickers down your throat, here’s something different.” Brown also noted that the kids on the MTV message board who became aware of the band thanks to Fall Out Boy Pete Wentz’s new MTV show are torn by the originality of the boys and their original video concepts: “I don’t understand it, but it’s cool” and “I feel stupid because of this video. It is really messed up. Please stop showing it on MTV.”
the hero complex has been on fire this weekend thanks in part to Geoff Boucher‘s coverage of The Dark Knight’s record-breaking opening weekend. but i hope his feature on Milwaukie Oregon, home of Hell Boy, and also a little publishing company called Dark Horse which puts out tons of sweet ass comics that are slowly taking over the world. meanwhile Dark Horse is slowly employing the whole town: “Dark Horse is a pop-culture content company that has grown so steadily over the last 20 years that it currently occupies six separate storefronts along Main Street, and with 150 employees, it’s now one of the top five employers in the town of 21,000. Dark Horse made its mark as an upstart, indie publisher of comic books, but now its ventures go well beyond that, which is why its founder, Mike Richardson, hops a flight to Los Angeles every week to tend to Hollywood pursuits.”
and now some sweet answers to Ask Tony
on sunset last night as i was drinking wine outside the Secret Headquarters and immediately someone yelled F YOU< F YOU! SOMEONE CALL 9-1-1. and as we walked over to the scene of the crime, one guy tried to take out his phone and it went flying. and i tried to take out my phone but before i could there was a faint sound of a siren in the distance.
and i looked west toward hollywood and i still considered calling 9-1-1 but there it was, an ambulance. almost like it knew. almost like it was destiny. help was on its way nearly before it even knew to come.
and all these cyclists who had been riding with the dude waved their arms at the ambulance and clearly it wasnt coming for them but it had to pull over because the car who hit the bike and carried the rider across the entire intersection was still parked a little into the intersection and now 40 bikes were encircling it all, so the paramedics stopped, flipped over the lifeless body ripped off the legs of his pants and his shirt, and started doing their thing
i started doing my thing and this dude was all, what are you doing? i said taking pictures duh. he said why. i said cuz im a blogger.
he said what the f does that mean. i said it means i write about los angeles, and this stuff happens a lot in LA.
he said thats f;ed up. i said yep which is why its good to document it. he said no, that youre doing it. i said well thats where youre wrong, feel free to move along.
he said, well if youre going to write something write about how there should be bike lanes, i pointed at the bike lanes on sunset. he said write about how there should be bike safety. and i said how about i write about what i saw and just leave it at that.
and just then a guy on a bike approached me and i said did the car run the light? and the guy said, i feel bad cuz i was behind the guy about 30 yards and i hate to say it but the bike may have run the light, not the car.
and if you look at where the car was, sunset sorta curves so the car wouldnt had seen the bike until it was literally on top of it. all the car probably saw was the green light, it accellorated, and bam whats this bike doing on my windshield.
the driver tried to say something to the pack of bicyclists but all they said was F YOU SHUT UP F YOU. and they wanted to beat him up but they probably knew too, that one of their bros, on a bike ride after watching a bike race downtown, had run a red light and hit a car and was now ironically so lucky because an ambulance just happened to be heading down the street and picked him up.
but the weirdest thing was two fold. the cops came a good 20 minutes after the crash and the firetruck for some reason arrived after the ambulance had already left.
after we finished our wine, piled into sarahs car, drove to midnight tacos, and argued about juries and what they should know and what they shouldnt.
