Nobody Walks in LA

NocTOURnal LA is an event in Downtown Los Angeles meant to encourage people to walk the streets at night while checking out some very cool LA sites. We headed down there with a bunch of friends and painted the town...RAD!

Yes, I said "Rad".

The night started off with a band performing at The Grand Avenue outdoor stage. About 400 people showed up and danced to salsa music under the stars.

Next we wondered down Grand over to MOCA where they celebrated Night Vision-MOCA After Dark. This is Jude, Jeff and Lisa really excited as we headed over to the museum.

The museum stayed open late, with guest DJ's spinning tunes. We didn't stay long...other venues were calling our name.

Across from MOCA is the famed Walt Disney Concert Hall. Here we stopped for the Urban Garden Tour where we were to be guided through the gardens from 10pm to midnight. Here's a pic of the quiet tour starting to get under way.

Hmm, maybe a little too quiet for us. We decided instead to stop for a refreshment at one of Disney's outdoor bars.

Next stop: Redcat’s gallery and lounge. If you haven't been here yet, it's most def a place to go for a drink and an interesting show. Nothing was going on when we were there, but it was fun to walk around and check the place out.

Here are all the handsome boys:

Us being dorks outside the Redcat.It was a great night. After leaving Redcat, we walked down to our favorite watering hole Seven Grand and had a nightcap.

Who says nobody walks in LA?

We decided to give up our carefree, wild days to start a family. Well, sort of. In just two short weeks we'll welcome Daisy into our life. She's the cutie on the right. Daisy and her eleven (yes, eleven!) litter mates are half Labradoodle and half Labrador.

Heath's been reading The Art of Raising a Puppy while I've been watching just about every episode of The Dog Whisperer during my waking hours.
Remember- Exercise, Discipline and Affection. In that order.

In case you don't know what a Labradoodle looks like, look at this insanely cute picture below:


That plus this:

Equal too flippin cute! Can't wait!

Worst Blogger Ever Tries To Make Nice...

I know... Heath and I are terrible bloggers. We've neglected our one and only loyal follower (Hi, Phebs!) and pushed our blogging duties to the wayside.

We should be called Blah-gers.

In an effort to make nice, we've decided to commit to blogging more often. And I'm going to start by blogging every day for an entire week. That may not seem like a big commitment to some of you, but to us it's a huge challenge.

Hopefully we can make it happen. It may not be the best posts you'll ever read but it'll be a post, dammit!

So, here we go! Wish us luck!

Chicago Stars Under The California Stars

Last week we saw Wilco at the Greek theater. It was a hot day, which made it a beautiful night. There was an almost full moon, and the sound at the Greek was much better than usual. You could hear everything really well. The band sounded super-tight and confident as they ran through a set that relied heavily on the new record, Sky Blue Sky, and on the excellent Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.


This is actually the view from our seats...

Jeff Tweedy seemed loose, and content to relinquish much of the spotlight to the stellar lead guitarist Nels Cline. Nels is a phenomonal musician, and was definitely the hero of the night. Impossible Germany from the most recent record was a highlight. With it's intricate three guitar parts, the song sounds like an outtake from the second Television record.

Other higlights included a beautiful California Stars (which Tweedy pointed out was oddly left off the setlist the last two times they played in LA); and an epic Kidsmoke, during which Tweedy finally took the lead guitar, and which sounds much better live than it does on A Ghost Is Born.

After two hours and two encores, the show came to an end.

This is when the guy next to us decided to tell us that he thought we were talking too much during the show.

Hey passive-aggressive idiot -

1 - We've been to concerts at which we talk too much. This wasn't one of them.

2- It's a rock concert. People are gonna be making noise and saying stuff like "I love this song!"

3 - If you have a problem with my talking, the time to tell meto keep it down is during the concert... Not after, when there's literally nothing I can do about it.

4 - When you say things like "I just want to share some wisdom with you so you can adjust your behavior in the future", you come off like a condescending, pretentious douchebag.

5 - While you were stressing out about us talking too much, you missed a great show.

6 - More pictures of the show are here.

Inland Empire Screening Party

Last Wednesday night at the Hammer Museum, Filter magazine hosted a DVD release party for David Lynch's "Inland Empire".

Besides a screening of the film, the event promised a special musical perfomance by the director, a post-screening Q&A, free David Lynch coffee and Dewars and RedBull, silkscreened T-shirts created for us on the spot, DJ's, and more surprises.



The first surprise was that the event was seriously overbooked. I got there almost 2 hours early, and there were already lines stretching throughout the entire museum courtyard. There was a small group of people with handstamps that were guaranteed admission. The rest of us would have to wait and see.

While we were waiting, I was able to check out the merch booth. I bought a pound of David Lynch organic espresso.

Which was probably a good idea, since the free coffee was long gone.

It also turned out that the Dewars and Red Bull was only for the guests with the handstamps. A little after seven, we were ushered into the overflow theater. I got the last seat in the last row.

After a few minutes, David Lynch came out and talked to the crowd.

Then, David and a fellow musician sat down at the keyboards to create music. The result was a low, dissonant drone that sounded, well, like the soundtrack to a David Lynch movie.

I really enjoyed the film. See below for a link to the review I wrote for Laist.

Afterwards, there was a brief Q & A. Lynch was charming, and soft-spoken. A real character. He talked about the importance of ideas, and offered a little insight into how he works. For this film, he would have an idea for a scene, call everybody up, then go and film it. When he had another idea, he would repeat the process. It was only after a while that he started to have ideas that actually linked the scenes he'd already shot. After taking a few questions from the audience, Lynch introduced "the Valley Girls" from the movie.

They came out and reprised their shining moment from the film - performing a quirky choreographed dance to "The Locomotion".

Please check out Laist.com to read my original movie review, as well as additional coverage of the event.