Month: September 2006

Mr. Rogers: Jedi mind control master

In 1969 the US Senate had a hearing on funding the newly developed Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The proposed endowment was $20 million, but President Nixon wanted it cut in half because of the spending going on in the Vietnam War. This is an video clip of the exchange between Mr. Rogers and Senator Pastore, head of the hearing. Senator Pastore starts out very abrasive and by the time Mr. Rogers is done talking, Senator Pastore’s inner child has heard Mr. Rogers and agreed with him.

[youtube]3Sd7TcVH670[/youtube]

Optimus Mini Three

The Optimus Mini Three looks kinda cool – a three button keyboard with tiny organic LCD screens as the buttons. Sure it’s gimmicky, but it, er, pushes all the correct nerd buttons.

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If I had one though (and this is completely contingent about there being Mac drivers for it – which don’t exist yet), I’d program it to display a random selection of display graphics from 2001: A Space Odyssey. I always dug those screens in the background that displayed cryptic status reports for “ATM” or “NAV.”

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The Indestructibles

Scrubbles goes through his iTunes library looking for “the indestructibles” – songs that have been done by at least three different artists and hold up enough that folks keep them around. Looking through my library, I find:

“Alone Again Or” (Love, The Damned, Calexico)
“As Tears Go By” (The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, Nancy Sinatra)
“Codeine” (Buffy Saint-Marie, Gram Parsons, The Barracudas, Spiritualized)
“Goldfinger” (Billy Strange, Shirley Bassey, Man… Or Astroman?)
“It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry” (Bob Dylan, Kooper/Bloomfield/Stills, Robyn Hitchcock)
“Misirlou” (The Cardinals, Freddy Martin, Harold Grant, John “Bucky” Wilkins, Woody Herman, Dick Dale)
“More Than This” (Roxy Music, Robyn Hitchcock, 10,000 Maniacs)
“Ode To Billie Joe” (Bobbie Gentry, Lee Hazlewood, Popdefect)
“When The Levee Breaks” (Memphis Minnie, Led Zeppelin, Kristin Hersh)

Long Beach’s oil islands

Curbed LA and the LA Times talk about the history of disguised oil drilling rigs just off the coast of Long Beach, but neither article mention the names for the man-made islands…

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The islands are named after four astronauts who were killed in the line of duty in the early space program. Grissom, White, & Chaffee (the three islands closest to shore) were killed in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967, and Freeman was killed in 1964 when his T-38 was struck by bird in 1964. Here’s the ubiquitous Google map.

Billy’s Deli, Glendale

In an utterly synchronistic event, both me and The New Diner independently visited Billy’s Deli in Glendale.

I first ran across Billy’s in the mid-80s when I was busy filling going through the Thomas Guide pages and figuring out where in LA county I hadn’t been yet. On that first trip to Glendale, I had a pretty good corned beef sandwich there and filed it away for further information in case I didn’t want to make the drive to Canter’s or Nate & Al’s. Billy’s has been around since 1948 and I doubt that the inside has changed much since then. Pretty remarkable given all the construction that’s going on in downtown Glendale right now. I suspect that in a couple years, Billy’s is going to be like that Chock Full O’Nuts diner in New York City that held up the completion of One Liberty Plaza for years.

The food at Billy’s is the oldest of the old-school comfort food. I had the corned beef plate with potato pancakes and it had just the right amounts of fat and grease to maintain authenticity. The bread and apple sauce are pretty stock though, and for the price ($13) I’d skip the corned beef plate and go straight for the sandwich instead. Is it good? For the most part. Is it satisfying? Heck yeah!

I can’t wait until the weather cools down enough to order the matzo ball soup (which if memory serves, is pretty outstanding there).

Have A Delicious Corned Beef SandwichBilly's Deli - Corned Beef PlateInside Billy's DeliThe Wall Of Billy's Deli

Banksy

Pop-art-snarkster Banksy hit town over the weekend and kicked over the anthill of LA hipsterati. Chaos ensues, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. For all of the verbage expended on the health and well-being of the elephant (the elephant was fine), no one cared about the poor cockroaches stuck in the case with the Paris Hilton CDs.

I liked these two:

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(Pictures from Supertouch Blog)

I wasn’t cool enough to get into the Thursday night opening like Supertouch was, but in the interest of adding to the inevitable Defamer Privacy Watch posting, I did see Kate Flannery (Meredith from The Office) there.