Driving past Rhino Records on Westwood tonight, their entire marquee sign was given over to a very simple message: ‘RIP John Peel 1939-2004’. I found that very touching, though at the same time wondered how many of the other drivers on the rush-hour street would know who Peel was. Probably not many. Even though I ...
A small kid on a corner on Sunset in a bright-green Incredible Hulk costume, holding a sign advertising some nearby video game shop. The sign almost as big as him. A group of kids outside a tiny side-street recording studio. Half of them arranged behind artlessly positioned musical instruments — a basic drum-kit, a keyboard ...
Driving north along La Brea towards Wilshire the other day, I had a bit of a flashback. Up above the buildings on the left-hand side of the street was a huge billboard, pushing reruns of Malcolm in the Middle on some cable graveyard. ‘TV’s funniest show, five days in a row!’ it bellowed, below an ...
To USC last night, to see Michael Moore on his Slacker Uprising tour. It was a fascinating couple of hours, a curious mixture of hippyish old-school Woodstock earnestness and multi-media Daily Show satire. The two didn’t always fit together smoothly, but the effect of that was to reflect poignantly, in a way that ...
I think I’ve worked out what Los Angeles is for. What it does. It struck me the other day as I was driving to work from Santa Monica to East LA. Forget the motion picture capital stuff. That’s just a front. On Lincoln, in Santa Monica, I watched a girl test drive a new Vespa ...
It was probably nothing, she’s probably just fine, but she couldn’t have looked any more lost than she did while I was watching her wander up and down the street on Lincoln. The window at the diner booth I was sitting at might as well have been only one way, so clearly could I see ...
Currently playing on iTunes is the new-ish Mull Historical Society album ‘This is Hope’. It’s every bit as baroque as ‘Loss’ and ‘Us’, every bit as giddily catchy in places and perversely dissonant in others. Colin Macintyre is one of those people who’s way too talented to ...
Once upon a time, and scarily not-so-long ago, I was lucky enough to work somewhere that also happened to be a big Internet hub in Britain, and which — because of that — was one of the first places to get the Mosaic web-browser. World-changing stuff, but it just seemed curious at first. Quirky and ...
It’s true I tell you. A. and I spent a wonderfully peaceful and bucolic afternoon last Sunday at the LA Open Cricket Tournament, organised by the Southern California Cricket Association at Woodley Park in Van Nuys. It was the last day of the three-day event, involving twelve teams from as far away as Chicago and ...
To Beverly Hills, early yesterday morning, in my informal capacity of IT-guy to my Famous Philosopher Friend. He’d called me a couple of days before to say that he was having problems with a new printer he’d just got, and now neither printer nor computer (an Apple G4 Cube) was working properly. It’s not ...