Otherpeoplesblogs

Two weeks

I had my annual Sundance rant ready to go, (this time in blog forum), but decided to skip it this year just so no one accused me of just having a case of "sour grapes".

Defamer has already left for Park City, as well as other an eastsider The Skunks of Los Feliz.

Jossip says Sundance is over-run by unofficial sponsors?!?! You don't say! (Ok, that is rant-ish. Sorry. But read Page Six. Again, sorry.)

Does Slamdance realize it is not 2003 any more? Do they know what they were asking for by accepting "Ringers"? Why? Are they looking for fans like these: Ringer 1 and Ringer 2.

If you ARE in Park City... check out Abel Raises Cain at Slamdance.

You ever miss Erma Bombeck?

My mother, like mothers all across this great nation, had the full Erma Bombeck library. (Or should I say, mothers from all ends of the middle class landscape. They probably sold the books at Talbots to go with their sweaters and scarves.)  Quite funny stuff, although a bit dated by the time I read them sometime in the 1980S.

"Does This Mean I'm a Grown-Up?" is a more casual, frazzled Erma.  Some great posts on how her mother feeds the kids candy, or the how the rules are different for her kids than they were for her.

I love that she crashed her husband's bachelor party with her girlfriends drunk, wearing mud masks, hair rollers, slippers, and big pajamas just as the strippers were rolling around and jello-wrestling. (For the record, they only crashed for 15 minutes.)

Found-A spiderpool

I finally finished reading the archives of Search for the Spiderpool. Turns out they found it, and have trekked up there a couple of times to take pictures.  I'm still fascinated, and am going to try to hike up their sometime myself. 

East coast moods, smarts, and cups

For the last couple of days, Devin has been complaining about the weather in NYC.  I teased him about it yesterday, but could tell that a second day of "obligatory '82 degrees in Southern California” comments would not go over well.

All of this brings to mind one of my favorite scores of the holidays, which I am using right now in honor of Devin's mood.

My partner received one as a part of a gift basket from a client, and having never lived (or even visited) NYC, he had no idea what it meant.  I, of course, flipped out.  Eventually, I asked if I could have it, (always a good idea to wait a few weeks before cherry-picking someone's gift baskets), and soon it came home with me.

I am not going to say the cup makes me feel smarter, or that the coffee tastes any better, but it does put me in a different place when I use it. All the Los Angeles sun in the world cannot compete with a blue cup.  (Besides, back with I dated the CMU/Berkley professor, I said I was moving to Los Angeles so I no longer had to think.)

I am glad to see that people with some pretty big brains also have the ceramic Greek cup on their mind. 

Falling in love with beautiful writing

There is nothing like stopping by a new, unknown (to you at least) blog that sweeps you off your feet with it's beautiful, skilled use of language. And when you find one where you know the romance will last, that everyday you will want to see what new words have appeared, it makes you glad that you bothered to learn how to read in the first place.

Danny Miller's "Andy Hardy's" blog seduced me tonight.  In my Mulholland search, his entry "Neuroses = Love" post crossed my radar. I delved deeper into his works.

Like me, he started his blog within the last month, sharing my same fears/dislikes of online journals as being too narcissistic in his "Is Writing in a Blog 'Real' Writing?" and "Are Blogs the New Narcissism?" I found it peculiar that an editor would worry about merits of the blog exercise, especially when C's agent encourages blogging, and as a matter of fact, all of his clients and the editors that shape them seem to have made an art on commenting on each others posts. (I will however say that they all post at LiveJournal and not TypePad. LiveJournal, with all it's quizzes, dancing icons, and avatar overload seems to me to be the New York Daily News of blogging. TypePad feels a bit more dignified, more New York Times, with the Blogger sites being the New York Newsday of the blogosphere. But I digress.)

Go and read his site. Read "Searching for Amy". Read "Name Dropper". I could list on and on what I feel with worth relating to, but he has already done so more eloquently than I ever could.

Searching for the Spiderpool

Late on Sunday night, I asked my partner to take me on one of my favorite (and most cliche) trips in Los Angeles - for a drive down the length of Mulholland Drive. Enough time has past since the rain that the main roads are now clear, but recent enough that the air is so clear you can see past Long Beach to the south to where the lights end in the West Hills to the north.

I've been addicted to the lights of Los Angeles for as long as I can remember. Even more so, I am addicted to the calm darkness of the Hills that divide the city. A mountain range! That divides one of the nation's largest cities! When I lived in South Florida, they always said that looking out to the ocean was one of the easiest ways to calm your soul. To hell with that, I say. Looking out on millions of people living their lives is much more reassuring.

I look to feed this addiction by searching for blogs that may have something to do with Mulholland Drive. Pictures, hiking paths I have yet to find, maps... anything. What do I get? 10,000 hits on David Lynch's film.

Buried in the Lynch links on Technorati, I stumble upon a mystery called "Search For The Spiderpool". (Warning: NSFW-Vintage Erotic photos.) Apparently collectors of vintage nude photos have been looking for a house where dozens -if not hundreds- of pictures were taken.

Thousands and thousands of cheesecake and nude photographs were taken during the late forties and early fifties. Virtually all of these pictures are the same in the respect that they could have been taken anywhere at anytime. They have no identity: they depict unknown models in unknown locations. The inside of any room looks pretty much the same as any other room. A stretch of beach, a grove of trees all look the same no matter where the location. The Spiderpool on the other hand is readily identifiable; it is a real place anchored in time and space. No where else on earth, as far as we know, looks anything like it. We can almost tell when and where it is. It has a character and an enchantment which speaks to us across the span of fifty years. It demands that we learn more about it. So we find ourselves on a quest that is equal parts mystery, nostalgia, and enigma; searching for a tangible link to the golden past. Join us.

welcome y'all and enjoy!i've collected vintage erotic pics for years but
i have always been fascinated with the mystery location shown in the "spiderpool" pics....happy, beautiful, REAL women posing in lingerie and nude on the grounds and beside an interesting tiled swimming pool that we have nicknamed the spider pool due to the big tiled spider on the wall ...my friends at alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.vintage are searching for more pics and info and i'll repost what i can...not possible to credit everyone but ALL THANKS TO ORIGINAL POSTERS!

What is amazing about this blog, is the amount of time and detail they have put into this search. Explore this part of their archives and look at the detail in which they have examined topography maps, looked for landmarks in the background, and have designed mock-ups of the shape and location of the pool.  (Actually, read through all of the archives, just to get a sense of it all.)

Fascinating. I'll be interested to see if they ever find the location, if it still exists.

Even in Gotham

The Gothamist, (the LAist's older silbling), has a great pic of Ben... in their prediction that the Steelers are going to win.

Going to burst. Partner had to run some errands... thinking of calling J and bothering him to talk football!

Who's Johnny?

Today was a completely random day where I couldn't keep my thoughts straight.  When my playlist stopped at "Who's Johnny" by El Debarge, (like you didn't see "Short Circuit"), I had to see if I was the only one out there with that horrid song going on in my mind.

One scan of Technorati later, I find some 25 year-old Notre Dame alumnus who had just posted about the song on his blog, Radio Free Timmy, just two hours previously. Other than the song, his rants are the usual politics you'd expect of a 25-year old Notre Dame grad.

Some how from there, I ended up on some Brit-chicks blog who works in film production. The name says it all, and I leave it to you, the reader to see if you think she's worth your time. http://www.girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/

Anyway, around 2pm things calmed down and I was able to get some work done.  One birthday party and a nice dinner out with friends later, my partner bought me one of these...

 

I'd like to see somebody else talk about a Steelers mylar balloon in their blog!

"I did what I had to do, and said what I had to say, to get what I wanted."

Of all the fun things I have seen today, the construction worker on Hollywood wearing a Steelers hardhat, the furry Louis Vuitton bag at Starbucks, (total purse envy!), and the "Entourage" shooting location/base camp at Franklin and LaBrea, this next item made my day.

(And I cannot believe it made me become what I detest, a person who stands in the middle of Beachwood and takes pictures. Not that I dislike the tourists, but they're hard to drive around sometimes.)

This person was surprised that someone in Los Angeles, in the Hollywood area, would do anything to get what they wanted?

I love this town, and I love every person in it, but don't think for a second that everyone isn't out for themselves. (Or for their friends for that matter, since ultimately, they will ask them to repay the favor.)

I wonder what went down here.  I think that the person who covered this car in signs should take solace in the fact that the driver could not have befitted too much by whatever happened, because ultimately, they are still cruising around in a late-model Honda.

(Side note, I think this is in a small way the universe repaying me for not being able to get my camera out fast enough to catch the small Mexican maid carrying the satchel that I know that an agency gave out for Christmas presents this year before she got on the bus.)

From Canadian Chicks to British Baristas and Back to Canada for Mittens

Funny what blogs you find yourself reading.

I was reading the Steelers messageboard, (I know... I know... I need to finish the intro page for the charity I work with), and found a link to a possible Steeler sign to have for the big game on Saturday. (Incidentally, nothing is going to beat the Cleveland Browns sign of "TO has BO" this year.)  Anyway, I decided to check out SuperSteve's blog, and had a few chuckles, because I, like most women in America, have had to say no to a boyfriend wanting a new power drill, a Velvet Elvis painting, and a Dogs Playing Poker at one time or another.

But what really made me laugh, was a blog SuperSteve linked to called Call Center Confidential.  Read through it, but make sure you scroll all the way down, (he doesn't make it linkable), to the November 29 entry about a meeting to curb stationary use. Hilarious.

From there I made it to Mr.Teacher's blog The Report Card, who alerts his readers to the Canadian Registry of Missing Mittens.

(Kitten joke not included.)