Terrorists and Mountain Lions on the loose in Los Angeles!

An earthquake is predicted in the near future, a guy with grenades was arrested a few blocks away, and now these two news items from today:

LAPD Receives Threat Against West LA Mall

The Los Angeles Police Department issued a threat advisory after federal officials received an unsubstantiated potential threat of an attack against an unspecified West Los Angeles shopping mall Thursday.

Additional patrols will be put on the streets and shopping mall operators are being asked to enhance the level of security, according to a department statement.

Federal officials received the threat indicating an attack would take place at a shopping mall near the Westwood Federal Building. No specific mall was named. The credibility of the source is unknown, and the information has not been corroborated.

Great. I'm having my third interview only a block away from the Federal Bldg. at 4pm for the COMPANY that I've been trying to work with for months. If some fucking terrorist shuts down the city, I'll be so mad I may have to enlist.

Mountain Lion Reports, Griffith Park Area

Los Angeles officials say they are going to post warning signs in Griffith Park after several reports of mountain lion sightings.

A parks department spokeswoman says a park ranger, a city public works superintendent and several equestrians all reported seeing the mountain lion in a northwest section of the park.

All the news stations are giving tips on what to do to avoid getting attacked by a mountain lion. They don't, surprisingly, advise skipping the park and instead heading for a local mall.

Up the River

Finally, what I've spent the past couple days on... between lunch, browsing blogs, and sleep.

First is the image I was given to work with, art work by Native American artist Michael Horse. A lot of his work, like this one, are paintings of Indians using vintage "paperwork", like sheet music, land sales contracts, marriage licenses, and more. Fun stuff, to say the least - this is why I'm not an art critic.

Rene is trying to produce a comedy about Native American's, and received Michael's blessing to not only use his work, but distort it at will.

And thats where I come in. Using an antiquated Microsoft program called Image Composer, additional art work by the artist, and some cool new fonts I found on the web, below is what I came up with. There's a number of changes I'd prefer to be made, but there were things Rene wanted... I'm still pretty happy with the end result.

Besides the new text, and erasing all the old text, more subtle changes include giving the horse an eye, changing the American flag into a British one, giving the man the Monty Python treatment (dropping his jaw and giving him some teeth), and bringing some color out of the painted Indian. I'm sure that had I been using Photoshop... which I have, but have no idea how to use... I could have finished it in half the time, and made it look twice as good.

?????

Two things I've noticed lately.

The first, there's a banner outside of the McDonalds at La Brea and Santa Monica advertising, in big letters, for their Fruit and Walnut Salad. In tiny letters underneath it reads: warning, contains nuts.

More foreboding are the words on the new box of Arm and Hammer Kitty Litter.

"Safe to use around pets."

Salute

I spent all day working on the poster I'd hoped to post... but, it still needs tweaking. However, I did swap out my picture of Astronaut John Glenn with patriot Pat Tillman. The intent, by the way, is to swap out the pic every week or so with another real life adventurer.

I'm not much of a sports fan, but I do remember reading about Tillman turning down a $3.5 million dollar NFL football contract to enlist with the army shortly after 9/11. And he shied away from media attention. This made him an immediate hero. He was the only soldier fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq that I knew by name... so when I heard he was killed a few days ago in Afghanistan, it reminded me of the real risk every soldier is in, by choice.

The only real regret I've ever had in life has been not enlisting for a few years with the military. I have a healthy disregard of authority, but also feel a deep loyalty to the country. Selfishly, a bigger reason I wish I'd been in the service would have been for the experience and the adventure. With my bad eyesight and asthma I likely would have been assigned to a recruiting office, if accepted at all... and likely would have gone AWOL just so I could sleep in instead of going to a desk job. So, perhaps, my real life has been more exciting than it would have been in the military, short of the likely dishonorable discharge.

Blog-Tracking May Gain Ground Among U.S. Intelligence Officials

Article from Yahoo! news...

...some analysts say U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials might be starting to track blogs for important bits of information. This interest is a sign of how far Web media such as blogs have come in reshaping the data-collection habits of intelligence professionals and others, even with the knowledge that the accuracy of what's reported in some blogs is questionable.

Still, a panel of folks who work in the U.S. intelligence field - some of them spies or former spies - discussed this month at a conference in Washington the idea of tracking blogs...

Go here for the full story.

Dry Heat

Los Angeles is hot, hot, hot today. A dry heat that isn't as bad as the humidity of the mid-west, so definitely more bearable. Still people in L.A. complain about it endlessly. At least for the first few days when these heat waves hit, it seems to slow life down a bit. If you're in traffic, not a good thing. But everywhere else, even a Monday feels like a lazy Sunday.

I spent my day at the casting office, manning the fort. Renee, the casting director, and Jeff have been out scouting for a Pocahontas at a pow-wow in New Mexico. The office has a horrible air conditioning system, so I made an effort not to move much. Most of my day was spent trying to figure out places to send notice of an open casting call they'll be having in New York on Saturday... the trick is to concentrate it where the most Native Americans would see it. I blitzed the offices for every reservation in the tri-state area I could find. But then I hit a brick wall. I called the new Museum of Native American Studies in New York, and ended up talking to the curator of the film and video wing. Everyone she suggested I talk to Renee was already friends with, or had approached. And every actor or actress she suggested seemed to have been discovered by Renee. Either this means there really aren't a lot of Native American actors out there, or Renee knows everyone. Maybe a little of both. Anyway, if anyone knows of any Native American actresses between 16 and 25 who would like to be opposite Colin Farrell in a huge new movie from New Line, the folks who brought you "Lord of the Rings", directed by Terrence Mallick, lemme know.

Part of my day was reserved for making a one sheet/teaser poster for a small film Renee is trying to put together. I'm obsessive when it comes to creative projects, so I'll likely be up late tonight working on it, and never bill her for the extra hours. I'll post the results later.

I'm also spending some time developing a new, political based blog. I'm still trying to figure out the focus of it, but know it has something to do with cutting through all the bullshit issues both Kerry and Bush are trying to distract us with so readers can vote this November based on what counts... or something like that. Alas, I'm trying to recruit a few guest bloggers from both ends of the polictical spectrum. I'm looking for people who aren't so on the party bandwagons that they can't be objective, which is incredibly hard to find. So, if anyone out there is interested, contact me. Mainly, the "guest" bloggers would just need to post a few articles or opinions every week, with some light editorial focus.

Enough for now. Next post will have pictures.

L.A. Times Festival of Books, Day 2

After realizing how long it took to type the Day 1 synopsis up, links, pics, and all, I've decided to keep this one briefer. Besides, the panel that I'd go most into detail into is being rerun on C-Span.

The author/speaker who most struck me today was Michael Ignatieff, who I'd like to formally endorse as President of the United States based only on listening to what he said today. In a panel with very sharp opinions of the war ("Iraq One Year Later: Wrong to Get In? Right to Get Out?"), his seemed to match mine, and, I believe, would be that of most of the mainstream public if the proliferation of TV news hasn't required people to be so black and white.

He was for the war, mostly due to his up close view of the terror and destruction Sadaam had brought upon the Kurds in Northern Iraq in the early 90s. He made it clear that upon a return visit last year, they were a dramatically more prosperous people, citing new roads and hospitals having been built, as well as the general atmosphere. He also defended the concept of a pre-emptive war. But what he was viciously critical of was the Bush administration immense exaggeration of the evidence of the threat Sadaam posed in order to gain public support, and, in short, abusing the very thing he promised to bring to Iraq: democracy. He hammered the Bush administration relentlessly, mostly on their lack of a thorough plan for "post-war" Iraq. He said Nader, on the other hand, had a plan: "Pull out of Iraq, and let George Bush win the election." He said he had even less nice things to say about Kerry. It was refreshing to hear someone so pro-democracy also not adding an endorsement to the list.

His book, by the way, is The Lesser Evil : Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, and not out until May 1st... so maybe I'll earn enough to splurge on it by then.

Between panels, I munched down a Wetzel's bagel dog - a hot dog with a bagel acting as a sort of bun - kind of like a corn dog - but - uh, no wonder I'm packing on the pounds. I also swung by the Kids area to say hi to Tim Egan, the guy who did the art for my Christmas CD compilation, who was signing copies of his new book Serious Farm.

I missed being able to see three authors so I could see a panel on the future of dissent with Arianna Huffington, who was there to plug her new book Fanatics and Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America. I voted for Arianna in our recall election, mostly because I think she's hot... especially for a woman in her mid-50s (maybe its that Greek accent). I also hoped they'd discuss blogging, which they did. But, the panel ended up being too much fluff - nothing new, no great, fresh ideas. Half the panel seemed worried that dissent, criticism of the government, was on the decline as Ashcroft publicly called for people not to challenge the administration in the build up to the Iraq war. They also repeated an opinion I'd heard all weekend, that embedding reporters was a disservice to the press, since journalists can't be objective while they're relying on the subjects to keep them alive. And in the end, it seemed like everyone was in agreement that the internet and the large number of bloggers out there were keeping dissent alive and kicking. Best quote of the day came from Katrina vanden Heuvel who said, "The only thing this administration has to fear is the end of fear itself," echoing another repeated opinion from the weekend, and that I've been saying all along, that if Bush wins, it will be because people are voting out of fear.


Of course, while walking between seminars, people watching, standing in lines, and browsing the vendor booths, I had all sorts of killer ideas and observations to post... but, they're lost on my tired mind. Maybe if I trained myself to keep a pen and paper with me...

L.A. Times Festival of Books

I was originally going to post my two days at the Festival at the end of each evening. Unfortunately, before finishing last night the idea of watching TV won out. Ironically, I fell asleep with the C-Span coverage of the Festival on. Here's Day One - Day Two should be posted in a few hours...

L.A. Times Festival of Books - Day One

As stated before, i was most excited to see the Festival panel called "Down and Dirty: Breaking the Bad News", based on the title. Moderator/author Mark Bowden, who write Black Hawk Down opened by commenting that he had no idea what that meant, or what the panel was supposed to focus on. So, he just had everyone discuss their books. Fortunately, the other panelists/authors were interesting enough to make the hour more than worthwhile.

Donna Rosenthal was the only writer who didn't have a book about war - her's, The Israelis : Ordinary People in an Extraordinary Land, dispels many myths and stereotypes of your average Israeli, pointing out that the richest people in their country are Christian, and that the most popular Israeli name is Mohammad.

David Zucchino was an embedded reporter who accompanied the armored brigades that led the first, brutal assaults into Baghdad, that he recounts in Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad.

Finally, George Crile, also a producer for "60 Minutes", gave his analysis about how America created the monster that we now call terrorism as an active result of "winning" the Cold War. I believe he goes more into depth on this in his book Charlie Wilson's War : The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History, but it goes something like this: the unbeatable Russian army was finally defeated in their war with Afghanistan, due in no small part to our assistance, training, and arming of the many radical Afghan tribes. But after the war, we left, leaving the Afghans with not just the guns and the training, but the mentality that it was all about force and defeating the enemy, whereas we should have made an effort to leave behind a couple hospitals, rebuild some schools, maybe some factories.

The next panel I went to was a little more "whimsical". Called "Creative Non-Fiction: How I Got the Story", it featured authors with recent books on subjects as varied as the history of penicillin (Eric Lax's The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat ) and another on American sub-cultures (Hampton Side's Americana : Dispatches from the New Frontier).

The two author's who's books I wanted to buy immediately after hearing them speak were Carlo Rotella and Martin J. Smith. Carlo is an English professor, and looks like one - skinny, glasses, a little geeky - but writes about boxing. He doesn't look like th kind of guy who spends a lot of time hanging out at gyms, talking to boxers and trainers across the country, about a sport that involves beating the crap out of one another. I've never been a big boxing fan, but his giddiness in describing some of the trainers and boxers made me put his newest book, Cut Time : An Education at the Fights on my Amazon wish list.

Martin's book Poplorica : A Popular History of the Fads, Mavericks, Inventions, and Lore that Shaped Modern America contains over twenty pieces on little thought of events, gadgets, or people who have a tremendous effect on the way we live our lives today. The story he shared was about the history of the lawn... yeah, the one you mow... and how it was a bestselling book from 1870 called The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds of Small Extent that made framing your house with a patch of grass a social necessity. Other topics include how the air conditioner was in no small way responsible for Ronald Reagan's presidency, and the history of the TV dinner. He said that his publicists were pitching the book as "Bathroom reading for the NPR crowd".

I had tickets to a third panel, the title of which already escapes me, but I decided to take a break to walk down to the flower shop to say hi, and to get a burger for lunch.

When I returned to the Festival, I was welcomely surprised to see that William Gibson was speaking just before Karen Hughes. I've never read Gibson, but know that he is credited as being the guy who coined the term "cyberpunk" and is considered a futurist, a claim he denied more than once during my short time listening to him speak. Hughes was fun to listen to, but read too much from her book, and as good of a speaker she is when it came to politics and the Bush adminsitration, it was hard to forget that she is still on the White House payroll.

Claire asked me if I was inspired by the day... which made me a little cranky, because the answer was no. Instead, it made me realize how much work writing really is. Blogging alone is hard - imagine having to keep to a single subject, having a particular goal, trying to make a point. Suddenly, there's so much more to think about and - well - I'm not very good past a first draft yet. Usually the moment I share a story idea with somebody I lose the passion to write it... and I rarely have the patience not to tell. Even this single blog was a challenge, to complete most of my thoughts. I've even skipped ahead of a number of key paragraphs to write this last paragraph first.

Lit at Both Ends

If my great great grandfather and her great great grandfather hadn't died horrible deaths Kari Newhouse and I never would have met.

The date was April 27, 1865... 2 am in the morning. My great, great grandfather was a Union guard on board the Sultana - a sidewheel steamboat that was heading north on the Mississippi. The ship was overcrowded with over 2,000 passengers, mostly soldiers who had recently been released from grueling Southern prison camps like Andersonville and Cahaba. One of these ex-POWs was Kari's great, great grandfather. I imagine both were sleeping, dreaming of home, when one of the ship's boilers exploded in a fireball that tore the ship in two. Scores of sleeping soldiers were blown to bits, or catapulted through the air. Those that survived found themselves in the unrelenting current of the swollen Mississippi River. The ship, made of lightweight wood and heavy iron, was a floating, flaming casket. Most of the soldiers couldn't swim, and there was barely a lifeboat aboard. Most had to choose between jumping into the icy river and drowning, or burning to death. By dawn over 1500 men were dead or unaccounted for. It remains the greatest maritime disaster in American history.

I first met Kari's mom, Pam Newhouse, at an annual reunion of descendants of the Sultana disaster five years ago in Knoxville, TN. She was known as one of the experts on the tragedy, and I'd been buttering her up a little because I was researching the Sultana as a film project (and work on still today). When Pam heard I worked occasionally for MTV, she told me her daughter was a musician and that she'd get me a CD. I explained that I really couldn't do much... MTV just airs videos, it doesn't make them... and barely airs videos at that... but mostly said this because I expected that her daughter's demo would suck. Alas, I was blown away by what I heard - some great rock/alternative tunes... really, really good music. I was an instant fan. Months later, Pam tells me Kari is moving to L.A... and it turns out that she's only moving a few blocks from my apartment in West Los Angeles.

We finally meet in July 2000, and make an instant bond. We get a along great. I haven't had a girlfriend for years, and hope that it turns into something bigger... but - I feel no spark. Bummer. But, awesome friend. One night when we're hanging out at her apartment - she's drinking an Amstel Light, I've got a Coke - she comments how amazing it is that almost 150 years ago our grandfather's were on a boat together... and now here we were.

Anyway, I helped Kari find some work, and book a few shows around town. She introduced me to Claire.

Tonight I got to introduce Kari Newhouse and band as they performed for the record release party of her new CD, "Lit at Both Ends". Kari always sounds great... tonight was better than ever. She even gave away customized lighters as a promo item. Neat stuff.

Anyway... check out her site, listen to a few tunes, and order her album. Awesome stuff. And when she grabs a Grammy, you can say you heard it here first.

www.karinewhouse.com

And it all started with our great grandfather's agonizing deaths.

Yet another lame-ass post

What a non-week. A few false alarms on jobs, too many set backs financially, and now... its Friday. So, on the bright side, I have the FREE L.A. Times Festival of Books to entertain myself with over the weekend.

Tonite is my friend Kari Newhouse's record release party for her new album "Lit at Both Ends". I'll write more about the event, and how I know Kari, on Monday... but she called and asked if I'd emcee the event. I don't know quite what this means, at least for a record release party. But, she said show up a little early and she'd give me the script. So, its an honor.

A few random notes and thoughts...

Since I'm broke, and no job lined up until X Games for the summer, there's no way I can justify going to Coachella to see the Pixies play. Just found out today that it sold out, so its too late should my fate change drastically in the coming days. Which is fine, in a way, since the idea of all those crowds of sweaty, muddy people gives me the shivers. Alas, the money will be better spent on getting my wisdom tooth removed so I can stop shoveling aspirin into my mouth.

If people don't leave comments, I don't know if you're reading the blog. I may not respond, but please, just click on the comment button and say hi.

And, really, thats it for now. I need to re-set up my phone so i can send photos here instead of just stealing pics from other sites.