Los Angeles singer-songwriter Brandon Mayer and his band The Hidden Powers celebrated the release of their second album with a performance for friends, family, and douche-y guestlist keepers who wear their hair in upscale bobs straight out of 1989.

Enjoy the pix!

»continue reading Brandon Mayer & The Hidden Powers @ Tangier, 10/24/07

Why is there a payphone ringing?

There’s forty of us or so, standing outside Department [redacted], courtroom of Judge [redacted] M. [redacted]. We had been told–no–asked–no–importuned in the juror holding tank: there’s a trial coming up that’s going to go 25 days, who’s in? It didn’t go quite like that but close enough. Who’s in? We need people whose jobs pay for extended stays at L’Hotel Stanley Mosk. 25 days. Who’s in? The lady with the clipboard goes around the room naming names. As an operative for a very secret segment of the [redacted government paramilitary agency] I have clearance to be on a jury for, like, ever. Yeah okay I’m in. Fine fine clipboard lady says to forty of us or so. Show up Thursday. Now go home.

Thursday. 9:52 am. We mull the forty of us or so outside Department [redacted] awaiting further instructions. A payphone rings. The clerk comes out and reads names. Mine and that of 11 other people are not among them. But they sent us here on Tuesday? A payphone still rings. Go back to the juror tank. Await further instructions. We leave. Sit on grimy burlap couches squeezed together like ice cube trays, read Variety-sized magazines about industrial chemistry. They summon us to the front window. Give us your badges and go home. Your jury service for a year has been fulfilled.

And so Losanjealous shows up for jury duty and gets sent home because the robots of law forgot our names. Fine. But I have a nagging question: who’s calling a payphone in the halls of justice? And letting it ring 30+ times? And nobody picks it up? Is there some kind of koan at work here? If a payphone in a courthouse rings thirty-plus times and no one feels like it picking it up. . .you tell me. Because I’m already burnin’ rubber on Thadddeus Kosciuszko Way headin’ west by south-west to Enterprise Square to get my afternoon beer-buzz on! Here’s to Polish patriots! Here’s to liberty! Here’s to drinking! YOW!!!

A few words from the Artist Statement provided by exhibited artist Sharon Ben-Tal:

My work investigates ideas, repetition, gesture, and the physicality of imprint. My process is characterized by much research, labor-intensive experimentation and consideration.

As I wandered around the small Culver City-adjacent gallery housing Ms. Ben-Tal’s work on Friday night, it occurred to me that my work too investigates ideas of repetition and gesture. As in I repeat myself while gesturing at things. And hell yeah I love to investigate ideas. But I’m not going to charge people $5,000 a piece for it. Maybe that’s my problem.

Ms. Ben-Tal continues:

With this newest body of work I have chosen to diverge from a single theme and instead allow wonder, metaphor, and play to tickle the spirit of my curiosity.

»continue reading Bandini Art Gallery Opening: “Black Tie Informal”

A shadowy PR agent from the bowels of cyberspace solicited Losanjealous to provide ‘coverage’ of Angeleno Magazine’s 7th anniversary celebration. With the promise of corporate-flavored martinis, I took the lead.

Friday night. We arrive to the fashionable Helms Bakery district of tony Culver City, if by fashionable you mean cavernous. It’s a furniture store. HD Buttercup. We’re not on the guest list in spite of numerous e-mailed reassurances. “It’s fine” says the party girl with the clipboard who gives us each a plastic drink bracelet. I am no longer favorably disposed toward this happening.

We walk, the initiated, down a hallway with posterboard Angeleno magazine covers flanking us on easels. They do a similar thing at the Church of Scientology, but no way are you getting free martinis there. We walk surprisingly far. What is this the Tom Bradley terminal? A drink kiosk! Now we’re talking. Good-looking waitstaff dressed in slim corporate T-shirts mix drinks while referring to a printed recipe. What’s it going to be, a martini, a pomartini, a white cosmotini, a frankenstini? The tip jar overflows with pre-stuffed 5s. I get a lemondropini and insert a buck.
»continue reading Angeleno 7th Anniversary Event

Listen. I like sexy ladies as much as the next guy. And sexy fishnets. And sexy spotlights. And sexy Chinese characters hanging on unpainted brick. I like all that stuff. I used to live in Hollywood for chrissake. But I will be blunt, you need to have drunk a couple of gin and tonics before you sit through Southern/goth/rock/trash/cabaret/vanity project Taking the Jesus Pill. That’s where I made my first mistake.

The show is one of these things where there’s chicks dancing on platforms as you walk in, everyone sits at booths and tables just like at a cabaret, there’s an air of sex and booze etc. Everything is sexy and dark and hardcore and cool and rockabilly and Jesus and mojitos and cool. I am in the mood, really. Entertain me.
»continue reading Taking the Jesus Pill@KingKing, August 30

There is a ratio in modern times that demands attention: it is the amount that something is talked about divided by the number of people who actually saw it. I call it the Modern Ratio. The Modern Ratio of Steven Seagal’s performance at the El Rey theater last week is approaching infinity.

I was there. But I won’t write a review. I will give an impression. This isn’t an attempt to be smart or different. This is an admission of failure. I had some ideas going into the theater. I mean, Am I going to criticize the hell out of this! But after 45 seconds I realize, No. This is bigger than me as usual. Just come out of it and bear witness.

My name was on the guest list thanks to my colleague. As I approached where the guest list was and the guy stewarding it, I thought about the concept of a guest list for Steven Seagal. And his band Thunderbox. As in, who would not be on the guest list? I was thinking with about 2 microjoules. This guy asks me, Are you going to take any pictures. I had the weird thought, I’m not thinking at all right now. I’m not prepared for anything. I was hoping to park my car and pass through walls into the presence of Steven Seagal. I have to answer a question. To which there might be a wrong answer. What would be a wrong answer? I remember an e-mail from my colleague with password hints from which I incompetently configure the phrase, I come from a website called LAXpressions. I didn’t say this but I might as well have said this. No I’m not going to be taking pictures of Steven Seagal. But seventy other people with cell phones will. I am allowed to pass.

I seem reasonably together as I write but I was not together that night. It took only going into the lobby. My intellectual fortress breached and sacked. Where did this kind of ninth-rate Hollywood bullshit go to all these years? The last time I remember feeling like I was eighteen and who-are-these-jerks was when I was eighteen and I went to an MTV Rock and Jock game, and I was amazed that the stands at Pauley Pavilion were only 16% full. Who wouldn’t want to be at this free event? I thought in my eighteen year-old mind. And within an hour I already knew that there was some secret universe where bullshit like this was conceived, and happened, and attracted people with breast implants, but no one knows who had the idea, why is it here, and why are these people here? Why are these people here? Advantage-seekers are everywhere, but what advantage here? Yet that must be it. I have a comp ticket and seek the mystically schlocky (and why me, but that’s another article). What do these people have to accomplish?

»continue reading Seagal ‘O6: Losanjealous Sets The Record Straight

These LAPD essays were given to me by some 12 year-olds I met recently.

If you were a Los Angeles police officer, how would you help solve the problems in your neighborhood or community?

“I think one of the problems facing police officers is that if they could recruit some young people to be police then it would be better. Something I would do if I was a police officer is I would go into neighborhoods and see which of the young kids look like they would be a good police officer. You can see it in there eyes if they could do it. I would go into convenience stores and I would go up to the counter and buy something and then I’d “accidentally” knock it off the counter, and if a kid behind me instantly caught it before it touched the ground and gave it to me and said “you dropped this sir” and walked out of the store like nothing even happened, I would watch this kid and see if he would be interested in becoming a police officer. You could also do things like throw a ball in the street and say “hey kid there’s a ball in the street you should get it” and if he doesn’t go into the street that means he also might be good. Women can be police officers too.”

Henry Gomez
8th grade
Thomas Starr Jordan Middle School

“I have a confession to make: I’m not 14 years old, but I have written a hilarious screenplay! It’s called ‘Ms. LAPD’ and it follows the story of a Beverly Hills beauty queen who loses a bet with her dad and has to enter the police academy. I would describe it as ‘Training Day’ meets ‘Private Benjamin’”

Donald M. Gustafsson
Fairfax High School
Class of ‘64