It rained today. So, I read this book and loved it. It's a really quick read.

Also, before stopping this afternoon to read the above book I listened to Dave Hickey talk to Robert Rauschenberg via iTunes and MOCA's podcast. Hilarious and inspiring talk.

I love how counter culture eventually becomes our popular culture. You saw it here first. Get ready to dance or be really irritated. Don't say I didn't warn you either.

When living in LA one gets accustomed to not having a lot of friends who are actually 'from' LA. Most people seem to move here from somewhere else pursuing a dream or whatever. To me, this tends to create a weird electric energy around the city. Lots of people around doing their best to fake it until they make it. There are lots of people who act famous or accomplished and or dress like they are in a famous band when they are actually still just trying to form a famous band, etc. A lot of people hate that 'fake' part of LA but I love it. I was born here and tend to stay here for the Holidays and it's nice because the city empties out as people go home to wherever they are from for a few weeks of 'reality' before they head back to LA's self-diagnosed 'fantasy'.

I'm not sure if the transient nature of the city is partly to blame for its lack of visible history but for whatever reason, LA has almost zero landmark history. I could go on and on about this as it is something I care about as a history buff.

The pictures I'm posting below are hardly exciting. I didn't even include any recognizable landmark to prove that these were taken where I say they were taken but that's because they don't need it. As of this posting the gross sidewalk below is gone or torn up. This morning the city started ripping up the sidewalk on the famed Sunset Strip -  a small section of the street home to some of the city's most famous rock venues: Johnny Depp's Viper Room where River Phoenix died on the street, the Rainbow where Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses played, and the Whiskey A Go Go where Jim Morrison famously said he wanted to fuck his mother - all in the spirit of existential rock n' roll angst, of course. This small famous section of land is hardly the rock mecca it once was. I sure as hell don't go there. I'm pretty sure the Whiskey will book any band from Bakersfield desperate enough to play the legendary venue and that can sell enough tickets to their friends for their first show to get on the stage. And, for some of those downtrodden reasons the powers at be thought what might be needed to revitalize the area is a new clean sidewalk. So, that's what they are doing. 

my favorite thing on 12/31/09