Paradise Backyard

For Juan's birthday, someone (Juan, Carlos , I don't know) came up with the Paradise Backyard theme. This theme is based on the legendary club Paradise Garage, a club that none of us ever attended on account us being children in Los Angeles at it's peak. We knew the club's greatest hits thanks to a list in the back of Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (a must-read). Carlos, Nelson and I took the hit list and went through our own collections. I think that between the lot of us, we had most of the tracks. (None of us, though, had Klien & MBO "Dirty Talk," which I have been looking for on vinyl for years.)

Carlos, aka DJ Kid Charlemagne, made us all scream when he did a spot-on mix of Kraftwerk's "The Robots" and Yazoo's "Situation."





I didn't get any photos of Nelson DJing, but I did shoot him getting all pensive by the bonfire.



Fire photos were the popular last night.









Since I've essentially retired from DJing, I was backup last night. This was my set.

Stevie Nicks "Stand Back"
Alexander Robotnick "Problems D'amour"
Yello "Bostich"
Donna Summer "I Feel Love" (Patrick Cowley mix)
Yoko Ono "Walking on Thin Ice"
Chicago "Street Player"
Dinosaur L "Go Bang"

It was fun. I do miss DJing sometimes, but I don't know if or when I would ever play a club again, mostly because of severe time restraints (like, last night, I had to leave at 11 because I had to be up this morning for an 8 a.m. phoner with someone in the Netherlands). But also, I guess that part of it is that I feel disconnected from what's popular right now. Like, I just can't get into the whole things-that-try-to-sound-like-Daft Punk movement, despite my love DP. Nor can I relate to the Serato phenomenon. The more people tell me how easy it is or how many things you can do with it, the more I don't want to use it. I like vinyl because it has clear technical limitations. For example, you have a relatively small range in which you can adjust the pitch. Because of those limitations, though, there is great room for creativity. It's a challenge and you have to push yourself in terms of selection and technical precision to make the set work, but there's no better feeling than meeting a challenge.

Sometimes...

I think I need to stop reading Perez Hilton and move to Europe. At the very least, I should stop reading Perez Hilton.

It's bad enough that I waste my time scrolling past posts about teenage hasbeens-in-training while searching for one item on the further adventures of Pete Doherty (not a lot of those lately). Today, though, I think was the final straw. Today, he poo-pooed Tintin to the sound of Perezophiles asking "What's that?"

The Olympics Are Over

One thing about China, it knows how to put on a spectacle. Death-defying stunts, Jackie Chan singing, fireworks.

"Are you sure those were fireworks and not just a cover to bomb Tibet?" asked my brother.

According to NBC, they had over one million "volunteers" for the effort.

"Well, if that's what they want to call them," quoth my mother.

Mom had some doozies tonight. When a group of little girls in pigtails and pastel dresses came on stage, she proclaimed, "Oh my God, don't tell me that's the gymnastics team!"

I guess my TV-watching schedule will go back to normal now. It's been a while since I've indulged in Adult Swim.

It's a Tortoise! I think.

I assume it's a tortoise because it's not in water. Whatever it is escaped from someone's yard and ended up under a car around the corner from my house. It was one of those moments where you have no choice but to turn around, stop and whip out the cell phone camera.

Synchronize It!

Sometime after the '84 Olympics, I took to choreographing synchronized swimming routines in my grandparents' pool. By myself.
A few years after that, my mother, having found great humor in a little girl synchronizing routines that only she would be performing, signed me up for lessons. That summer, I realized something that no little girl watching the Olympics can understand.
Synchronizing swimming is hard.
Basically, you're doing all these high kicks, underwater pirouettes, etc. in unison with your team mates while swimming. Like, when you're doing a kick, you're also doing a sort of breast stroke whilst hanging upside down underwater. Oh, and you can't touch the floor. That's about all I remember from actually trying the sport.
This week, I kept checking the stations to figure out when synchronized swimming was going to air. Today, I caught the team freestyle competition. I thought that Spain had kicked everyone's ass until Russia performed.
Here's a video I found on YouTube. Enjoy it before someone has to take it offline.

More Stories

It might not be easy to find if you aren't in the nightclub profession, but, if you see Club World, read it as I have a whopping three stories in the July installment.  

First, I did the cover story, an exclusive at that, on the new soundsystem remodel at Pacha in London.  If you're a gearhead, you will want to read this.

Second, I have a piece on nightclub record labels, with special emphasis on Wierd Records in NYC and Spaceland Recordings out here.

Finally, I wrote a piece on the good stuff coming out of the L.A. club scene, focusing on Compression, Droid Behavior and M/R/X-Wolfpak.  The piece also features photos of Baseck and BIRTH! taken by yours truly.

Another Deadline

Actually, I think, two deadlines.  I'll be back tomorrow.

L

Boo!

So, according to a video on Perez Hilton, the Katy Perry crazy-mom story is a fake.

Boring.

At the Exit

For the past few months, I've seen the guy at my exit every time I come home from the clubs.  He sits just barely under the street lamp, his legs huddled into himself.  He seems to be half asleep, but still holds his change cup out in case someone has a few quarters or maybe a dollar bill.

Seeing homeless people on the freeway offramps in the Valley is commonplace and has been since I was a child.  They seem to hit the freeway in shifts and, if you're a local, you will know exactly who you will see at each exit at a specific time.  When the day comes that you don't see your guy or girl, you start to wonder what happened.  Soon enough, though, someone else will take over the spot.

The New Guy at my exit in the middle of the night is different, though.  Where the others are frail from years, maybe even decades, of hunger, he still has healthy build.  His clothing, a button down shirt and air of shorts, look as though they were once nice.  And then there is his face, marked with dirt, but still free from creases and a permanent sunburn.  He looks to be in his early 20s.  If he were any older, the streets would have aged at least ten years.  

He has to be new to the streets.  He seems to shy to have been here for more than a few months.  

I imagine that he's a local.  If he were a transplant, he probably would have gone to Hollywood or maybe Downtown or Santa Monica.  I think about how his friends must all be in college now, or starting their first jobs, or doing other things that people do when they are finally on their own.  He is clearly on his own, but it's not the stuff of teenage dreams.  

Funniest Thing I Read Today

I would like to go on the record and say that I cannot stand Katy Perry's song "I Kissed a Girl," on account of the production sounding too thin for my taste and the lyrics being, frankly, insipid.  However, this news bit about Ms. Perry pissing off her evangelical parents is pretty damn.  Yeah, it's always L.A.'s fault.  Every single time.  No such thing as girls kissing girls in Santa Barbara.  Not even on Halloween in Isla Vista.

Summer Sucks 2008

Charlie said that he never thought there would come a time when going out meant considering the price of gas. Yeah, we all thought that. Alas, this has been the case all summer. As for myself, this means that getting on the guest list isn't enough of incentive. I have to consider the price of parking and alcohol in the establishment to offset the fact that even now that the gas price has lowered to $3.99 or sometimes less (yippee?), it's still just over $40 to fill an empty tank.

And so, our friend Charlie had a house party. This was the theme.



Despite the party taking place in a garage/yard. It wasn't much different than a club. There were cool kids and photo booths.



Security



And lines for the bathroom.



We made name tags for ourselves.



I chose an Olympic theme, inspired by our friend Juan. Carlos laughed when he saw it.

"Why did you draw a picture of your dad?" he asked.

"Don't you know, all Armenian guys look alike?" I answered.

DJ Nelson Sanabria, who has played with some of the world's techno giants, provided the tunes.



For this event, he spun the Greatest Hits According to LA Natives Hovering around 30. That means lots of NWA, Depeche Mode and Morrissey. Carlos and I got all excited when he played The Smiths "Half a Person," as we had been singing it in the car earlier that day. We must have all heard it on Indie last Friday. Then I demonstrated how one dances to Martin Gore's tune "Compulsion."



And, of course, because we are part of this new-fangled MySpace generation, we all had cameras and spent today looking through each other's photo albums.

Call Me Azrael

It's sort of amazing that my brother had never been to a goth club before, considering that a) his favorite artists are Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus and Nick Cave and b) I'm his sister. But, then again, maybe it's not so amazing that he had never been to a goth club since he's one of those "prefers not to self-identify" types.

And so, we went to his first goth club last night. It was Ruin, held for the last time at Monte Cristo, which is right next to the old Bullock's Wilshire building/Southwestern Law School. We walked through the thin, upstairs maze leading to the door, entered the spacious, red-lit club with the cool view of Wilshire Blvd., and then headed out to the patio, which was filled with art and goths.

Henceforth, I was supposed to refer to my brother as Azrael. I think he said that as a joke, but you don't joke with me like that because I will proceed to call you Azrael while howling with laughter for the rest of my life.

I told him that my nome de goth was Lucretia, or maybe Lucrezia. It was bestowed upon me by a friend and only used in conversation a few times, somewhere between such catchphrases as "I'm just a cold, dark candle in the cruel, white world" and "I'm so goth, I shit cobwebs."

"As in 'My Reflection?'" he asked, referencing a Sisters of Mercy song.

"Kinda, but more like Borgia," I answered.

"That's good," he said, setting up the Sisters' punchline. "I don't really want to dance the ghost with you."

Azrael was feeling out of place because he is actually quite a conservative dude and was dressed in a black polo shirt and pants that were probably made by Ralph Lauren. I told him the he should have worn that poet shirt he has from an old Halloween costume and maybe those tights left over from a college skit.

"The tights ripped," he said.

"Too bad, that would have been resplendent."

Resplendent is an inside joke for us, stemming from the episode of King of the Hill where Bobby joins a coven headed by a character voiced by David Cross. I'm kind of surprised that neither one of us managed to work the term "dog quaffer" into a sentence.

"So, does this place get more jumpin' later on?" Azrael asked me.

"It's a goth club, I don't think jumpin' is the appropriate word."

"Okay, does it get more angst-filled?"

"Yes, yes it does."

Back inside, Azrael observed the dance floor, where ten or so people were spinning around to The Knife.

"You know, if the dance floor got packed, someone could lose an eye," he said.

"I think I've seen that happen before." Okay, maybe not an eye, but definitely a sense of balance and articles of clothing.

And so we retreated to the patio once again, where the members of Flow Temple were dancing with fire. I took a few photos.











As Azrael learned that night, goth clubs can be fun. You've got costumed patrons, fire dancers, good music (for the most part, at least). But in order to enjoy ye olde goth club, you have to keep a sense of humor, otherwise your experience won't be so resplendent.

Razorake Podcast

Last month, I recorded a podcast for Razorcake. Now you can download it.

And, if you haven't done so already, don't forget to read my piece on Anime Music Videos for the LA Weekly.

To combine both bits of media, here's an Einsturzende Neubauten AMV I found on YouTube.

Ara Abrahamian, A Swedish Perspective

Certainly, you have already read about Ara Abrahamian's temper tantrum. I wish I could have seen it, but, alas, the videos have already been removed from YouTube. So, was he robbed or is he being a sore sport? Here's a video made by one of Abrahamian's countrymen.

Anime Music Videos in the LA Weekly

I started working on the idea of this story last year.  I spent at least an hour a day watching clips on YouTube.  Then I started going to cons, found some people whose work I absolutely adored and took it from there.  Thank you to everyone who took the time out to be interviewed for the story.  I really appreciate your help.

First Dance

I had been promising to take my cousin to a nightclub since she was eight years old.  Now that she's 18 and one week away from leaving L.A. for college, I finally took her out on the town.  We went to Dance, which is the all-age (I think, judging by the lack of alcohol) party at Arena thrown by two of the promoters from Bang!, which is the club where I used to spin.  It's a fun night, pretty much packed by 10:30 and filled with kids who look like either anime characters or old school ravers.  

There was this one moment, though, that I can't erase from my unfortunately sober mind.  Steve Aoki was DJing, and by DJing, I mean occasionally fiddling with a computer to cue stuff-you-have-already-heard in between bouts of go-go dancing and, literally, posing.  So he plays "Kids" by MGMT and he runs to the front of the stage and starts prancing around shirtless (it wasn't that hot)  before singing along with the song into a fully functioning microphone.  Is he a DJ?  A rock star?  A messiah?  I have no answers.  All I know is that I had never seen anything like that before and I hope that I never have to see that again.

The Hipster Wars Are On

Carlos directed me to the hipster cover story from AdBusters.  I don't have anything interesting to say except, damn, check out the comment section.  

Allergy Anime Eyes

I saw this link about contacts that give the effect of anime eyes on Boing Boing today.  And when I read about the new hot item from Japan, I thought, I totally have to get a pair.

Then I remembered that I have anime eyes, a 100% freakishly natural set to go with my penchant for flat-ironed hair, miniskirts and really big shoes.

And then I remembered that I have a phobia of sticking things in my eyes and I can't even wear liner on my lower lid because the orbs will produce a deluge of itchy, allergy eye tears.

So the contacts probably won't happen.  But they're really cool.

The Coach Has Left the Village, The Gymnasts Have Been Fed

"We should write a parody called 'Bela Karolyi's Dead,'" said the text message from B. Monsoon.

We should. After all, no Olympics is complete without Bela Karolyi kvetching about "cheating," poor judging and convoluted scores.

Poor Bela.

This is why I watch the Olympics, not for the feel-good features, commentators who talk just to hear themselves, or even the sport itself.  No, I watch to see Bela Karolyi get irate.  He's been a part of my TV life since 1984, when the games were in my hometown, but I still had to watch Mary Lou Retton get the perfect 10 on the small screen.  Bela was there lashing out at someone.  And he was there, although played by someone else, in the made-for-TV movie Nadia.

White chalk lines the uneven bars.  

Undead, undead, undead.

That made my night.

* Just in case you never heard the original, you can listen to "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus over here.  Also, I was thinking about changing it to "Bela Karolyi Said," since he's still alive and all.  I don't know, I'm not very good at the Weird Al thing.  If you have some lines, add them to the comment section.

Balls Hate Me, Children Hate Me

Why is it that whenever balls go flying, I'm the one who gets hit?

There was that time that I was eight and playing Monkey in the Middle with my uncles and got whacked by a softball, thus causing my ear to swell ridiculously.  Then there were my pathetic attempts to play basketball and volleyball, attempts only made because some people figured that my height might make me good at those sports (but, I sure showed them).  Then there was today.

I was at my grandma's house for my cousin's going away party and there were some boys playing toss-the-football on the grass.  I was standing as part of the crowd on the patio when I heard my brother, who was standing next to me, shout "Heads up!"

As soon as that last syllable of the warning hit my eardrum, the football nailed the bottom part of my head and my neck, while throwing my right shoulder forward.

"Ow, shit!"

I turned around and the kids continued with the game.  No apology.  Not even an acknowledgement that one of them threw too long and the other can't catch a football.

One of the parents apologized and that was only because my sister proclaimed loudly, "Well, an apology would have been nice."

"Eh, it's no big deal," I said to the father.

I lied.  Of course it's a big deal.  Four hours later, my shoulder still hurts.  And what the fuck is wrong with those kids that they can't apologize for themselves?

Mi Mis

Got through the day on less than three hours of sleep.  Haven't done that since college.  

By 1 p.m., I was feeling alright, having benefitted from the effects of two diet sodas.  The caffeine, though, has since worn off and now I feel like I'm walking through a dream.  A very boring dream.

Time for a nap.

5:30 a.m. Eternal

As it would so happen, 3 a.m. rolled around and I couldn't get the call to the U.K. to connect.  Tried and tried and eventually got through about an hour later.  Interesting considering this is the only phone card with which I have had no previous problems connecting.  Maybe I should try Skype.  (Anybody ever use that?)

But then the interview happened and went for some time.  In fact, I just got off the phone all of ten minutes ago.  (It was a fascinating interview, but you'll have to wait to read it.) And despite the fact that I thought I might fall asleep whilst dialing the phone call, I now cannot get to sleep.  I shall try, though.  

3 A.M. Eternal*

The thing that really sucks about living in L.A. is that we are, in terms of literal time, behind pretty much everyone save for Hawaii and maybe a few other places I never call.  This might not make much of a difference were it not for the fact that when you cover music, particularly electronic music, you end up having to do phone interviews with people in Europe fairly often.  Now, most of the time, you can make arrangements to try and get the interview at a halfway decent hour in the morning, usually that means 8 a.m., but sometimes you can push it to 9 or 10.  Other times though, usually when you're down to deadline and you want to get the interview done before Friday so that you can write the piece over the weekend, you will end up doing the interview much earlier, let's say, 3 a.m.

Right now, I'm waiting for 3 a.m.

The thing about those middle-of-the-night interviews is that you can't sleep, because if you do (or at least, if I do), you might not wake up in time to check the recorder, the calling card, et cetera.  

In an attempt to kill time, I went out on the town.  Met up with my friend Daniel at the Troubadour so that we could catch Darker My Love.  It was crowded and I must say that I wasn't feeling too hot, but a fun time was had.  We hung around the bar well after the show ended, walked down to the grocery store, cracked jokes about the club with tons of paparazzi and no celebrities.

But you can only stay out for so long.

Now, I'm home watching Burn Notice.  I doubt this will put me to sleep.  I know One Life to Live is on at 2, but if the show is still airing that asinine time travel story line, I might be toast.

Tomorrow, I mean later today, is really going to suck.

* KLF might keep me awake

"It Should Never Have to End This Way"

OMD "Enola Gay"

I was pretty young when I first heard this song, young enough to have no idea what the heck Enola Gay was. Then I learned. Years later, in high school, we had to read Hiroshima in class and the song had new meaning.

Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Just something to ponder.

War brings out the worst in people.

Sean Carnage Monday Nights Third Anniversary

Here are some more photos from Monday night's bash.



BIRTH's going down.



Yup, BIRTH! went down.


Leopard Dude from behind. Love the way the hat and shoes offset the cat suit.


I want a mask like this. (By the way, that's Winners)


Winners doing Jazzercize.


I.E. with Winners backup dancer.

Sean Carnage Monday Nights

I blogged about Sean Carnage's anniversary party over at the Weekly. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

Below is a bit of video I caught during Winners set. Their sound went out right around the same time my battery did.

Photos: M/R/X-Wolfpak, 8/02/08

Over at the LA Weekly, I blogged about Wierd's new compilation in connection with the listening party at M/R/X-Wolfpak. After the listening party, there were bands. Here are some photos.

VV Morgue (please note the awesome ruby slippers).









Magick Daggers (less pictures because my batteries died)

The Lost Story

Razorcake #45 is out now. My contribution is called "The Lost Story." The plot line goes like this:

Liz flips for new band.
Liz starts to write freakin' awesome story on said band.
Liz's place of employment bites the dust and the story is now left without a home.

And here's the band in question.


Secret Stealth.

Watch out for the next issue of Razorcake. I turned in the story yesterday and it's going to be real head-spinner. It also has nothing to do with music.

Le Weekend: TV Screenings and More

Last summer, I hosted a segment for Locals, a travel TV show told by, um, locals.



Tomorrow, Locals will be screening at 2 p.m. as part of the Independent Television Festival. Another screening will take place Monday night at 7 p.m. You can pick up tickets here.

Also, Saturday night is M/R/X-Wolfpak. I wrote a preview for Play over that the LA Weekly.