Like all major affairs in the media, the bout between NBC’s late night hosts Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien spurred a good deal of creative heckling in the month of back and forth over the future of “The Tonight Show.”
Every time something big goes down with major celebrities, the mass media is just one of the parties involved in event-naming, fun-poking and marketable mockery.
TeeFury.com sold a “CoCo and Leno-head” T-shirt for one day only on January 16.
And we can’t forget “CoCo,” Conan’s first nickname in his 17 years of television. “I’m with CoCo” spurred Facebook groups, Twitter conversations, an epic-looking graphic and even a rally in the rain outside NBC’s Los Angeles studios.
All from those in support of O’Brien staying on board at NBC.
And people call our generation apathetic.We mobilize when we need to, in support of those we believe in and against what we don’t.
But it’s important that we remember to utilize the tools of the Internet and social media to spur real-world change, because, frankly, nobody ever won a war by creating a Facebook group.
1. The bottom of my bill from an LA diner after going to a taping of Real Time with Bill Mahr. Apparently the servers take anything as payment — ass, cash or grass!
2. If you look closely at your Metrolink receipt, it’s really quite insulting. 1 round adult? At least I’m not square…
5. Good to know the staff at LAVENDA is Asian and Latina. Just another sign that people only seem to be comfortable around their same kind.
6. Free shower parking??! No way! I’ve been looking for somewhere to store my shower! Oh wait…wait…what the fuck is this place? Come and enjoy a free shower and parking? $10 off one hour? Something smells fishy here, LA…
7. / 8. These two go together — The Carl’s Jr. at Brea Mall got an award of excellence in 2007. Yet right below that is a sign saying some of the food ingredients may cause birth defects or significant harm. Yikes. Not sure how excellent that really is.
10. Apparently the honey at WINCO Foods is VERY, very fresh…
11. Taken at my girlfriend’s old church/Catholic middle school — gotta make the bible thumpers happy somehow.
12. / 13. #FAIL — here’s one for the failblog. The meters at Cal Poly Pomona read “FAIL” when they’re out of order. Now THAT’s comedy.
14. These two chairs have been sitting on top of my kitchen table for nearly a month now. My God-forsaken bitch of a roommate told me before I left for a weeklong trip that I needed to clear my things out of the common areas of our, er, his house. He moved some furniture around, bought one of those Roomba iRobot vacuum cleaners, and didn’t clean a fucking thing. But he kept the chairs on the table. Idiot.
15. Always funny — Super Trooper’s Farva LIVE at Brea Improv last night, telling a story about full frontal nudity. Nearly everyone in an audience of strangers has seen him naked, since we’ve all seen the powdered sugar shower scene from Super Troopers. Rad.
So my biggest problem with blogging is that I don’t take enough time to actually do it!
Right now, my schedule is pretty intense — Monday Wednesday Fridays @ Current TV in Hollywood (more on my experiences with LA public transportation to come). The other four days of the week are at The Apple Store in Brea. The rest of my time consists of sleeping, eating (yet another topic of discussion to come), drinking girlfriend, email, etc.
Though I do spend a lot of time on computers, I tend to be doing other things. Like devouring news, interning, and selling them.
Computers aside, let’s get to last week’s shows (I know, sooo outdated. so sorry. my post times should improve with the upcoming purchase of a long-awaited iphone (more on that later, again)…
The experimental indie group started a dance party at the Troubadour Sept. 27.
!!! (pronounced, sometimes written chk chk chk) rocked the house at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, one of my all-time favorite venues. Small club with two bars, and a very up close and personal stage.
Played a lot of good ones from “Myth Takes” and an older one called “Intensify” that was awesome.
An all-out dance funk party. The crowd was into it; touching, fondling and grooving to the somewhat homoerotic dance moves and hip thrusts from frontman Nic Offer.
And there was an awesome old-school cool black lady singing gospel-punk style backup, dancing and clapping when she didn’t have a part.
The eight piece Brooklyn ensemble definitely kicked ass, and the crowd interaction with Offer was great. He even went up to the green room at one point mid-set, not coming back to the stage until a few minutes into a new song.
Most impressive though? The Troubadour fans actually screamed and clapped loud enough, for a good long 1 or 2 minutes (gasp!) before the band returned. Which in writing doesn’t seem all that cool, but if you’ve been to as many rock shows as I have where the audience hammers out a clap for under 30 seconds before a group comes back, that’s just lame. If you’re gonna put on an encore, make sure it’s really worth it! I can’t remember what songs were played for the encore because it’s been too long, so we’ll move on.
——-
Rewind one night and I’m at the Glasshouse in Pomona. I love this locati0n. Mostly because I can catch great bands really close to home. I live a good mile away from downtown Pomona and have been taking the Metrolink from there to get to Hollywood lately. The train station is actually quite nice. A transit center for buses too. But I also love the Glasshouse because there’s now an amazing bar next door called Acerogami. Nothing on tap disappoints me greatly; but Perry Tollet, the owner of the Glasshouse, Acerogami, and part-owner of the Pomona Fox and Goldenvoice, apparently has a thing for Souther American beers…so besides the basic low quality bottles of domesticated Coors and Miller stuff, ask for the unique ones.
Getting to the point here, I went with my buddy Art to see Portugal. The Man. This is a band I will not stop talking about. You can watch or listen to a live performance in the KCRW studios here from a few weeks ago to see what I mean. The band’s live show has evolved greatly from simply performing excellent quirky indie numbers to turning the set into a full-on jam experimental jam session with a few pop morsels from their latest, The Satanic Satanist, to round things out.
Words can’t describe, so go here for yourself. I’ve still got a tune called “The Sun” sitting in my box widget over on the right hand side that you can download, free of charge. I’m sure the Alaskans by way of Portland (from Alaska, residing in Portland) wouldn’t mind. Share the love right
——–
TO finish this age-old update, I also caught Wallpaper (I know, crazy fuckin week) on Tuesday @ Cinespace. An entertaining performance for sure. Amazing? Naw, but we had fun. Wallpaper, I recently discovered, is a hilarious side project of Eric Frederic. Who is he? He is someone I’ve been following for years, fronting Locale A.M. and more recently Facing New York. FNY is incredible — an audio triceratops as Matt Embree of RX Bandits once referred to them as in conversation.
Wallpaper is more of an autotune R&B white rapper kinda thing that is ridiculous in far too many ways to explain. The dude’s wearing white jeans, a 70s style shirt, a gold chain, shades and a hat, singing about “going big on the weekend” in my personal favorite: T-Rex. See for yourself…thanks to my friend Claire for introducing me, not knowing who was behind the creation, and to my friend Grant who probably thinks its awesome:
Recent Comments