Westward Ho!

I Are an Ingrid

Your result for Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz...

You Are an Ingrid!

You are an Ingrid -- "I am unique"

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

• * Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
• * Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
• * Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
• * Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
• * Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being an Ingrid

• * my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
• * my ability to establish warm connections with people
• * admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
• * my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
• * being unique and being seen as unique by others
• * having aesthetic sensibilities
• * being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being an Ingrid

• * experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
• * feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
• * feeling guilty when I disappoint people
• * feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
• * expecting too much from myself and life
• * fearing being abandoned
• * obsessing over resentments
• * longing for what I don't have

Ingrids as Children Often

• * have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
• * are very sensitive
• * feel that they don't fit in
• * believe they are missing something that other people have
• * attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
• * become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
• * feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Ingrids as Parents

• * help their children become who they really are
• * support their children's creativity and originality
• * are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
• * are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
• * are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz at HelloQuizzy

The Bed Bug Post

I've just experienced my first-ever spate of bed bugs this month. I had been afraid of them ever since I heard they were "back" -- I have a bit of a bug/rodent-phobia and the way people described bed bugs sounded like a nightmare. I guess it was bound to happen to me, living in a multi-family dwelling in a densely populated neighborhood where people toss their crap out on the street every day for the taking. My building manager says that the culprit this time was my neighbor in the unit below mine, who brought in a discarded couch that was infested with the bugs, and getting those out of the neighbor's apartment was lengthy, costly, itchy, and all around arduous. Pest control didn't get 'em all though, since a few strays lingered around and crawled upstairs to me.

Here's my advice to the afflicted, one day after my apartment was sprayed:

1) Don't freak out. Just take care of the situation. Call whoever needs to be called to make an appointment with a pest control professional, and light a fire under their ass until they get you what you need. Also, whatever they tell you to do, do it -- this will mostly be vacuuming, washing the hell out of your clothes and storing them in airtight plastic bags, and clearing your closets and shelves. Do it.

2) Inspect your belongings every time you take them out of your home. If you're feeling really vigilant, vacuum your outfit and bag. If you normally take a laptop with you, inspect that too. Don't bring anything that might possibly be infested into another person's home!!!

3) Worry more about the actual infestation than the bites. The bites are unsightly, but they don't itch for long, and you very likely won't notice the bites until after the bed bug has already had its blood meal. (YMMV, but I'm fine.) Most important, as far as scientists know, bed bugs do not transmit disease. Just take a Xanax, get some sleep, and concentrate on getting those little fuckers out of your home.

Just Say F No To Hollywood Bowl Security...

F Yeah Fest organizer Sean Carlson has had a stressful year, what with trying to keep a tour going on the power of a biofueled bus, and one of the Fest's major backers pulling out and leaving Carlson in major debt. His newest tsuris involves a Radiohead concert at the Hollywood Bowl, a friend's video camera, and some damning footage of four rent-a-cops getting aggressive with a nearby showgoer. I wonder if Radiohead or their management have any comment about what went down.

BTW, FYF5 is this weekend, so come down to Echo Park and show your love (and money) so hopefully this great festival can continue next year and for the foreseeable future.

Douchebars

Metromix on the douchiest bar in L.A.

Our waitress, Nikki, seems a pitch-perfect example of the douchebag's prey—the hot chick. A tanned, pretty Texan  with an awesome Valley girl twang, Nikki instantly lasers in on the concept of hot chicks with douchebags but emphatically insists she's not that type of girl. "L.A. is the city for that couple. I'm a personality person, and that's really rare here. I'm single." She does, however, get "bag-swooped" on a regular basis. "As the night goes on, they get drunker, they get liquid courage," she says. "One guy's cheesy pickup line was, 'God had a really good day when he made you.'"

Certainly, the joint's menacing mechanical bull must somehow symbolize the d-bag z-geist. Perhaps the d-bag is a modern-day bull fighter, a vigorous dandy swathed in magnificent garments, pirouetting nimbly before taking down the wild, potentially ornery hot chick. Or maybe the douchebag riding the bull is subliminally meant to suggest the hot chick riding the douchebag.

And Eater LA takes the thread and runs with it...

 

OMG have I not posted since February?

Sorry, sorry, I know. At first I just didn't have much to blog about, then I was having login trouble so I assumed my account had expired or something. But now I'm up and running again, here in my apartment on an unseasonably cool Saturday morning, twiddling my thumbs while a plumber does some work in the kitchen. (Also I've been posting at Facebook and Flickr, so at least some of you know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.)

NWS Spam

After the Virginia Tech shootings last April, my university set up an emergency alert system, where students could receive up-to-the-minute campuswide notifications via e-mail, text message, pager. I signed up and set my preferences for e-mail and texts. Didn't receive anything for several months and honestly forgot that it existed.

Cut to: our recent winter storms. Our trusty National Weather Service has been on the case, sending out regular announcements about flash flood watches, wind advisories, some containing cryptic subject lines reading "URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE." We got a lot of these, even during the more clement days where we could actually leave the house without an umbrella or a heavy coat. I got so bombarded that I had to cancel the txt msg notifications -- as much as I dig my "Radar Love" ringtone, I don't need to hear it every two minutes, unless there's someone really cool on the other side. I hope I don't miss out on any actual emergencies, but I can access my e-mail through my phone, so I should be covered.

This morning I searched my Gmail account (where I get my school mail forwarded) for "USC Information," the name of the service that's been sending us NWS messages. I may have deleted some and forgotten, but my inbox shows that I've received a whopping 57 of these alerts since January 25.

Here's one I just got, with the sage advice that I shouldn't go swimming in February.

National Weather Service reports/updated High Surf Advisory for the Los Angeles area.

...HIGH SURF ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 3 PM PST THIS AFTERNOON... A HIGH SURF ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 3 PM PST THIS AFTERNOON. SURF RANGING FROM 8 TO 12 FEET WITH OCCASIONAL SETS TO 14 FEET WILL AFFECT WEST AND NORTHWEST FACING BEACHES TODAY. SURF WILL SLOWLY SUBSIDE LATE IN THE DAY. A HIGH SURF ADVISORY MEANS THAT HIGH SURF WILL AFFECT BEACHES IN THE ADVISORY AREA...PRODUCING RIP CURRENTS AND LOCALIZED BEACH EROSION. ALL PERSONS SHOULD BE AWARE OF THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH WATER RELATED ACTIVITIES AND USE EXTREME CAUTION WHEN ENTERING THE OCEAN. WHEN IN DOUBT...JUST STAY OUT. WHEN VISITING THE SHORELINE NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN.

Sent by USC TrojansAlert to Weather 7 am - 7 pm (e-mail accounts, pagers, cell phones) through USC Trojans Alert

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Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Intoxication

 

Spotted today at the Fairway in Brooklyn: The Brewers of Lagunitas "Freak Out" Ale, commemorating the 40th anniversary (as of 2006) of the legendary Mothers of Invention LP. The Lagunitas brewery is in Petaluma, CA -- not sure if it's gotten any distribution in the Southland, but I haven't noticed it yet anywhere around L.A. I'm guessing it won't be on shelves much longer.

However, with this month marking the 40th anniversary of Lumpy Gravy's release, it's an opportune time for a new Ben & Jerry's flavor.

"Time Piece" -- 1965 Avant-Henson

Posting this for no other reason than IT'S WONDERFUL: Laughing Squid gives us a YouTube embed of an ancient live-action Jim Henson short film called Time Piece. I'm curious about the "eighteen-month run" IMDb says it had in a Manhattan cinema. Which theater, and did it preface a feature presentation, as cartoons and newsreels once did? Or was it just shown at MoMA as an ongoing exhibit?

IMDb:

Dislocation in time, time signatures, time as a philosophical concept, and slavery to time are some of the themes touched upon in this nine-minute, experimental film, which was written, directed, and produced by Jim Henson-and starred Jim Henson! Screened for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in May of 1965, Time Piece enjoyed an eighteen-month run at one Manhattan movie theater and was nominated for an Academy Award for outstanding short subject.

Wanting to know what Time Piece's Oscar competition was that year, I went to IMDb's page of the 1966 winners and nominees. For Best Short Subject, Live Action Subjects:

Winner:
	Poulet, Le (1962) - Claude Berri
Other Nominees:
	Fortress of Peace (1965) - Lothar Wolff Skaterdater (1965) - Marshall Backlar; Noel Black Snow (1965) - Edgar Anstey Time Piece (1965) - Jim Henson (I)

I wouldn't be surprised at all if these other shorts are on YouTube as well. Guess how I'm going to spend my Christmas!

Minor Threat Sauce: Goes Well With Circle Jerk Chicken?

"We have no plans for a Bad Brains dip," Orren said.

Saints & Sinners

The bar where I had my birthday is number 6 on Gridskipper's LA Bars for Getting Hit On by Unemployed Industry Douchebags. Context: the WeHo Standard is number 7. I feel so dirty...

So as not to be accused of undue sexism, I thought I'd throw in a bar where men can fall victim to the female version of the unemployed industry jerk. This lonely little watering hole on a desolate stretch of Venice… plays host to douchebags from either side of the gender line, and its female regulars will stop at nothing in their pursuit of a one-night stand. Once I was here with a male friend, and a girl he wasn't particularly interested in kept following him around, and when he didn't respond to her advances she threw a bottle at him. It shattered loudly, attracting the attention of the bouncer, and my friend was thrown out in the ensuing chaos. She may very well still be there, which is as good a reason as any not to go.