This installment goes out to all the readers who have never actually visited LA proper. You’ve seen it on television. You’ve seen the westside. The beach. Venice. Beverly Hills. Century City. The downtown skyline. Dodger Stadium. Staples Center. You’ve seen studio lots. You’ve seen Capitol Records. You’ve seen the big sign.

I am here to tell you in no uncertain terms that those images while sometimes lovely do not represent city proper. If you come to city proper. Particularly east of say, La Brea. This is by-and-large all you see. This, and taco trucks. Everywhere. If you plan to come here. And you are not expecting or do not care for the above. Please, just do not come. It is super fucking crowded already. I personally couldn’t love it more.

Holy bittersweetastic chocolate-covered chariots, I’ve been meaning to hit this place for ages. Super Tortas, ladies and gents. This place has so many things going for it right out of the gate, beginning with the fact that it has the word ‘Super’ in the name of the establishment. Mark ‘em with me.
Font: Judas Priest rocker. Logo: Li’l Debbie Oatmeal Pie™ fronting zorro mask and ‘stache roughage. Location: Close to home in the heart of s(t)eamy tinseltown. Tinseltown! All manner of silly, all manner of disgust one could ever choose but a stone’s throw away, night or day. Fountain and Vine. Just around the corner from the bar I used to frequent whenever the dj collective threw free redstripes.

Downside. The parking lot here is an absolute nightmare. I have no idea how it works. Cars are stacked on one side, but there are permits required. The other side might be useable, briefly, but the slots are numbered and every.single.number. has a car’s ass already straddling it. It is possible that you can’t even use this parking lot, legally.

Enough of that and on to the food. Whether you like your tortas al pastor, cubana, milanesa, DF, sin queso, con frijoles…Super Tortas has you covered. They’re super. And, unsurprisingly, they’re tortas. So basically the name makes sense. If you like rice and beans, you can order rice and beans. The chips are crunchy, just as you’d expect chips to be. The salsa is red, like you like the salsa to be. The salsa is also green, like you also like the salsa to be.

Closing note. I should probably also mention that unlike previous reviews, I’ve never actually eaten here. Hell no. I ate at the farmer’s market before writing this. Apparently, it’s a chain. I have every intention of eating here soon but this review could be total bullshit for all I know. It could be way off base. It could be right on. It could be a happy medium. You decide. The parking bit is accurate, I feel. Sending this one to the people. First comment with an actual review gets medium horchata paid for. This is not a joke. Go read this review. It appears legit. At the very least, he didn’t start his post with ‘holy bittersweetastic.’

Super Tortas
1253 Vine St Ste 8
(323) 469-8912

Intern update!
Mair the Intern wrote this week:

hey. i’ve been feeling under the weather. i’m trying
to write the review, but my brain keeps on farting.
give me a few more days. thanks, mair

Intern. Thin ice. Risking incomplete vs. credit. LJ need performers. Gurgitators. Performing Gurgitators. Step up. I’ve resorted to writing reviews of establishments I haven’t actually visited.

Troubadour, 01/06/06

Video clips
Last Night, pt. 1
Last Night, pt. 2
The End Has No End

Notes: Lo-res shakey digicam video. QT .mov format. Garbled, bassy sound–turn speakers down. Watch for lovely young lady pole-dancing on the light fixture in Last Night clips.

CYCLONE RACER, THE PIKE, LONG BEACH, 1956

Two well-suited women, both toting enormous handbags, are upstaged by three trashcans in the foreground and The Cyclone Racer – one of the great wooden roller coasters, in the background. Roller coasters are where architecture and transportation become one. Roller coasters are archi-tation or transport-tecture.

Billed as “the greatest ride on the face of the earth,” the Cyclone Racer Roller Coaster was a Long Beach landmark and the Pike’s most thrilling attraction for nearly four decades. Built in 1930, the all-wooden coaster had two side-by-side tracks. The ride began with the cars starting together then racing all the way to the finish. On the last dip, the cars dropped ninety feet down a fifty-degree angle at eighty miles an hour. Over the years the rickety roller coaster claimed the lives of more than a few drunken sailors who ignored the “DO NOT STAND UP” sign.

The Pike was a waterfront carnival a la Coney Island in downtown Long Beach. Conveniently located at the end of the Red Car line, it began just after the turn of the century as “The Walk of a Thousand Lights,” a boardwalk for a fashionable hotel and plunge. By World War II, the Pike had become fifteen colorful acres of thrill rides, freak shows, penny arcades, shooting galleries, shows, bars and tattoo parlors catering to a less than wholesome Red Car-riding beach crowd and the thousands of salty sailors stationed in Long Beach. Cotton candy, hot dogs, hamburgers, fish and chips and fried shrimp were the food fare. Movie theaters, bingo palaces, dance halls, a plunge, bumper cars, a merry-go-round, a double Ferris wheel, coin-operated fortunetellers and the Tunnel of Love were all labeled with animated neon signs. The atmosphere was loud with carnival barkers, blaring jukeboxes, merry-go-round music and screaming thrill seekers on the rides.

In 1969 the legendary Roller Coaster was demolished. Little by little the run down remains of the pike were torn down as the property was slated for redevelopment. Today, not one remnant remains from one of Southern California’s earliest amusement and entertainment centers.

Here’s to the two ladies, the Cyclone Racer and you!
Charles Phoenix

P.S. see and read more about the Pike in Southern California in the 50s

Visit Charles’ site, God Bless Americana, or join his Yahoo Group.

THE SETUP
The greatest percussionists of all time have assembled for the ultimate drum off. Keith Moon, Tommy Lee, Max Roach, Sheila E., Joe “Mama” Besser–they’re all here. It’s a no holds barred competition so anything goes.

THE QUESTION
Who is crowned the greatest drummer of all time and why?

To enter the contest, leave your response as a comment below along with your preferred contact email.

THE REWARD
Our three favorite answers will win a pair of tickets to see the nation’s top undiscovered drummers compete in Guitar Center’s Drum Off Grand Finals at the Wiltern on Saturday, January 14. The event will feature a headlining performance by punk legends Bad Religion, a special collaborative performance by Travis Barker (Blink 182 and The Transplants) and Adrian Young (No Doubt) and an opening performance by The Bronx.

THE DEADLINE
Thursday, January 12 at 12:00 noon PT. Excessively long drumroll please…

For the less adventurous, tickets for the show are also available for $15 online.

UPDATE 1/14/06: On sale Sat. 1/21/06 10:00 am. $30.

Listen up, all you twee motherfuckers…
New on the losanjealous Concert Calendar…
An indie lover’s dream double bill…

Belle & Sebastian / New Pornographers U.S. Tour Dates

3/18 @ Wiltern, Los Angeles
3/19 @ Wiltern, Los Angeles

Perhaps an undersized venue choice given the raw indie drawing power of these 2 acts? Will the Wiltern stage buckle under the sheer combined indieness of these 2 septets (octets?–who can count that high?)?

No on-sale date yet, but we’ll have it here, so check back.

Looks as if Los Angeles-area Krispy Kremes are going to be stripped of their rights to use the name. Mama KK in North Carolina is yanking the license to all 28 So Cal stores. Something about money or something. At least one area entrepreneur is surely thrilled to hear this news.

Whether or not the orphaned KK’s can/will stay afloat as indie donut slingers is surely of the utmost concern to you, but alas remains to be seen. If they do, watch for that phenomenon where a former franchise pod rechristens itself with a trademark-skirting mutation of the national name, usually recycling the signage. Jons in Hollywood comes to mind. Obviously it was a hell of a lot cheaper just order the “J” from the Big Letter Store and swap out the “V” and keep the market. All those endless local variations on Tommy’s also come to mind: Tomy’s, Thomas’s, Tommie’s, Tommmy’s, Thoemiey’s, Johnny’s, and so on.

Note to operators contemplating shutting down: adding Chinese food to a donut-based menu can help a store stay afloat. Chinese food and donuts are a well established one-two culinary punch that everyone loves.

Since anagrams are all the rage around here today, here are some wacky ideas for K-R-I-S-P-Y K-R-E-M-E to scrabble their existing signage and reinvent their businesses, only springing for the odd punctuation mark:

Perm? Yes, Kirk! — Hair salon (change name to Kirk, if not already)
Kerry? Me Skip. — Ralph Nader ’08 local headquarters
Perk My Skier — Coffeehouse (Big Bear Mtn. location)

You get the idea. Have at it. Maybe throw in an extra letter or two or even add ‘Hot Doughnuts’ to the mix to strike comedy gold. I steered clear of all ‘sperm’-based anagrams. Though I fear you commenters may not.

UPDATE 1/6/05:

Good ol’ laobserved links news that Krispy Kreme Korporate caved and will keep it’s So Cal franchisees. We don’t want to say that our post yesterday had any influence on this reversal, but draw your own conclusions.

Screw KROQ–here’s how to get tickets.

$15 advance + service charge. Tickets go on sale via FAX ORDER ONLY on Wed. 1/4 @ 2pm.

No faxes before 2pm, orders received before then will be shredded.

Two ticket limit per person. No transfers of tickets allowed,
if you purchase 2 tix, your guest must be with you in line.

Transfers will only be allowed from parent to child where the parent has purchased the tickets on their credit card. In order to transfer you must have a copy of their photo ID with a note and a signature releasing the tickets to you.

You must also have the same last name or address as your parent that purchased the ticket.

Also, screw KROQ.

If Cal Worthingon’s lighthearted ads are a throwback to the shiny optimism of 1950s-era California (“pussycow” references notwithstanding), then the ads of Larry H. Parker showed us a grimmer, more materialistic side of life. My recollection of these comes mainly from watching the back-to-back episodes of the Twilight Zone that KTLA aired every noon during the summer.

Freaky as the T-Zone was, what made a stronger impression was Larry Parker’s commercials: a litany of wronged and/or injured citizens, each one inflated with self-righteousness as they announced the hefty verdicts or settlements that Larry had won on their behalf, and included the unforgettable formulation “Larry Parker got me” followed by some outrageous financial figure. This wasn’t about justice, it was about physical suffering translated into cold cash. The capper, though, was the African-American gentleman who appeared at the very end of the ad and famously proclaimed “Larry Parker got me” [dramatic half-pause] “2.1 million.” Sounds like a lot of cash, eh? Well, as anyone who was a kid in the 80s could tell you, it was a dead-ass fact (read: urban legend) that the reason they only showed the client’s head in a small frame was that he was paralyzed from the neck down. Other rumors added that he only had one leg. Some even had it that he was just a head and torso. Now how does that 2.1 million sound?

The cultural impact of the Larry Parker commercials reached far beyond just the pool of intended injury-suit clients. For one thing, dyslexic rockers “Korn” [sic] gave Larry a shout-out in their ballad “Wicked”: “I won’t choke like the Buffalo Bills, sittin at the pad just chillin; Larry Parker just got 2 million, oh what a fucking feeling.” In fact, Larry’s commercials may have helped change the way lawyers advertise. In order to counter expectations that injury victims were automatically entitled to loads of cash, regulations were passed preventing lawyers from announcing specific dollar-amount recoveries. In the kind of meta-twist that would give any cultural studies maven a hard-on, Larry responded to this move by bringing back the black quadriplegic spokesman, who now teases the audience with “Larry Parker got me . . . well, you know the story.”

The Parker legal juggernaut continues to chug along, apparently more robust than ever. And because I have no doubt that Larry would file a defamation suit against me if he read this, let me note here that this post was done in the spirit of lighthearted jest, is not meant to be factually accurate in the least, and is thus protected by the First Amendment. And in all fairness, I should note that Larry Parker’s firm sponsors a scholarship to underprivileged youth who demonstrate both academic skills and a propensity for gratuitously suing their classmates.

I look in my coffee and what do I see, I see double-0-5 tryin’ to piss on me. Not a great year for me folks. Lots of setbacks. A lot. My landlord gives me a cease and desist. No bass playing after five. We have a few “words.” My Christmas stocking includes a fax of a dental bill. Ho ho ho. ’005 was full of crap like this. Made me feel like a real Persona Non Grata (trans: “Person Without Cheese”)

Anyway, I bring up all this negativity because it’s by concentrating on the negative that hope brightens things that much less faintly. You, the readers of Losanjealous, gave us a very special gift. You voted us World’s Best Gay Blog. For that we thank you. I know we had stiff competition (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha). I personally try to reach out to everyone, but if in so doing some read my writing as gay, or homoerotic, or camp, or in some way expressing a discretely different wavelength, flickering in the crease of the cocktail napkin, the spring up the escalator, or in the semaphore of books stacked too neatly at the corner of the library table (Castles of Scotland, a mylar-bound People from 1998, etc.), then I say what the hell, thank you. I mean we all have something to hide right? I don’t even like coffee. So thank you. All fifteen of you. (Just kidding. I do like coffee. . .but I have been known to drink tea ;P)

And we (?????–ed.) at Losanjealous want to reward you. I Bill DeMarco do hereby establish the Bill DeMarco PerfectSmart card. What does it do? It gives you options. Perfect. Smart. The PerfectSmart card. How do you get one? Simply find your favorite Bill DeMarco’s Los Angeles column and write an anagram of it. The whole thing. And no duplication of words from original to adaptation. (i.e. none of the entries will have the word “coffee” in them, or “the” for example) One entry might start “Llib DeMacro’s Log Asneles” for example. Easy.

What can you get with the PerfectSmart card? Access. Access to a world of options. I write a lot. A lot of great stuff. Most of what I write is treatments and screenplays. Collect PerfectSmart points and you can win and read Bill DeMarco treatments and screenplays before anyone else does. . .and see what everybody’s talking about!

Here are some thumbnails of what I’m working on. Some network, some cable, some just in a frame above a urinal. I don’t discriminate. Neither should you (yeah I can see how I do sound gay, that was totally natural for me). Interested? You should be. You know where you are. You know what you’re doing. Time to live a little. Can you say hungry? Bill DeMarco can. Here’s what you can look forward to:

500 Points:

To Protect and Serve–Officer Sam Martinez must balance being a cop and a sexy lady. Episodic.

Habeas Corpus–lawyers use forensic science to win cases. Episodic.

Lips Together, Teeth Apart–picks up where characters in play left off. Episodic.

300 Points:

Packed to the McGills–Mike McGill has 138 adopted kids and one big problem: he’s single. Episodic.

Texting Stacey–teenage prodigy Stacey Martinez navigates the stormy worlds of high school and online dating. Episodic.

100 Points:

Here Goes Nothing–TBA. Episodic.

Double Dribble–retired basketball star raises twins. Episodic. (not my most inspired work–DeM.)

Present Company Excepted–five sarcastic roommates cope with each other and the suicide of a friend. Episodic.

Never Mind!–two hot music execs use forensic science to sign bands. Episodic.

50 Points:

Off The Deep End–programming for children. Instructional.

Gay Cops: Gay cops. Episodic.

These are just a few of the rare birds to be found in my zoo of hits. And there are oh so many more of those where those came from. And just as well written, with just as much buzz. Sneak a peak before. . .it’s. . .uh. . .um. . .

As you can see it pays to read Bill DeMarco. Welcome to the first year of the rest of your life.

Nappy Yew Hear Form Lonsajeulaos.cmo!!!

Visit our concert calendar for a full show list, links to buy tickets and our picks.

***Recommended Show of the Week***
Wolf Parade @ El Rey
Now that the Rose Parade is over it is time to focus on the Wolf Parade. The Montreal quartet opened the 2004 Queen Mary All Tomorrow’s Parties. To express regret for their late-night drunken debauchery on the boat (which included fire extinguishers and a seance) they named their 2005 album Apologies to the Queen Mary. Hopefully their next album won’t be called something like Sorry For Burning Down the El Rey and Everyone In It.

MONDAY
Nada

TUESDAY
Wolf Parade @ El Rey

WEDNESDAY
xbxrx @ Smell

THURSDAY
Nouvelle Vague @ Tangier

FRIDAY
Strokes @ Troubadour
Nouvelle Vague @ Tangier
Odetta @ McCabe’s
Barrington Levy @ House of Blues
David Garza @ Largo

SATURDAY
Peanut Butter Wolf @ Little Pedro’s
Richard Buckner @ Spaceland

SUNDAY
Nuttin’ Honey

Get this list delivered to your inbox by joining our Yahoo Group.

Sitting here, warm, dry, watching the sopping Rose Parade (It’s magical!) on KTLA HD. Watching Lance Burton, Master Magician, deftly performing yet unable to keep himself dry with sleight-of-hand. I begin to reflect as I do each year. Thoughts cascade the waterfall of my mind. Hickory Farms’ Christmas Celebration coffee has some type of flavored shit in it. Remember this. It is time, finally, to make my new week’s resolutions. If you’re like me, a year is far too broad for goals to be of any use. Simply ineffective. Am I really going to remember my resolutions in August? In April? Next week? Forget that. I make resolutions one week at a time.

This week:

• Watch this game
• Figure out when the hell that Sparklett’s guy is appearing next and pre-emptively cancel delivery, post-haste
• Brainstorm fundraisers to get Dave Hart‘s puppets industrially scoured. Be honest, if hand puppets received a public health rating his would be hard-pressed to come up with a “C”…(Did these people use sani-gloves?)
• Consider posting some bullshit story about Chinatown in order to be able to use newly-rediscovered two-year-old photos
• Determine if there’s enough material in my New Year’s toast with Canter’s Lightshow and FlameDrink Man to merit a full post
• Look for a job
• Watch the entire Sopranos: Year One series before it disappears into the On Demand void eternally
• Define and write up the rules for Central Library: Hide-And-Go-Scare
• Do something about that pile of crap on the corner of the desk
• Do the dishes
• Cough up 3lbs expectorate from lungs
• Send out plagiarized CDs

Update, 1/3/06! I completed five of my New Week Resolutions yesterday. Not a bad ratio for one day. Newest New Week Resolution: Buy flashlight and battery-operated boombox immediately, I’ve been without power for the last 24 fucking hours