by Chris Barrus
I’ve had a variety of jobs over the years: fax machine repairman, auto deliverer, corporate spy, and various combinations of IT wrangler and network garbage collector. Couple months ago I added “television extra” to the list and here I am as “fifth guy from the left” (the tall one with his right arm in the air) in last night’s episode of Cold Case.
Dick Destiny notices that the CIA has been running recruitment advertisements on television, specifically King Of The Hill. I’ve seen the same commercials… running on VH-1’s The Drug Years show.
Apparently their irony sense is still impaired, or VH-1 has a better sense of humor than I thought.
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)
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…
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.
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).
Photo of shuttle Atlantis and ISS passing in front of the sun today from astronomer Thierry Legault. Hi-res version here.
Meanwhile, Atlantis’ landing has been delayed because of a “mystery object” floating nearby.
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:
(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.
As a full-fledged Discordian Pope (consecrated by RAW himself) I am most pleased to learn that 2003 UB313, a.k.a. Xena, a.k.a. the 10th Planet, is now officially known as Eris (the Greek goddess of discord). Eris’ tiny moon got the name Dysnomia (Dysnomia is Eris’ daughter, the goddess of lawlessness)
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Irvine-based Diedrich Coffee, conceding defeat in the coffee shop duel with Starbucks, agreed to sell 40 stores it owns to its Seattle rival for $13.5 million.
The local company will remain in business as a roaster and wholesaler of coffee beans. The sale includes all company-owned Diedrich and Coffee People locations. Franchise stores aren’t included in the sale.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this, but I thought that the coffee bar cold war wasn’t in danger of heating up anytime soon. The most irritating side-effect of this for us itinerant IT workers that Diedrich’s free Wi-Fi will disappear for Starbucks’ pay system.
To counter all the FUD that’s being expended on the new iTunes, all I have to offer is: I installed it. It found all my music. It synced with my iPod. It works fine. My only complaint is that the icon looks like crap on a light-colored background.
And finally! Something that I wanted over a year ago is now in…
Start/stop podcast downloads at will.
