Lorange Blog

Like birds and packets of taco sauce at Del Taco all balloons should be free. Free to drift along ocean breezes and bring joy to little kids. What evil being would do this? At the Del Taco @ La Cienega and Cadillac on 12.21.10. Sorry for the grainy video.

we are sick. December in LA means one week of popsicle cold one week of crazy winds one week of record heat one week of rain. We are overloaded in sweets and family and sickness and work and love. I haven't felt luckier and blessed any more so than I do right now.

So yesterday Will Campbell wrote about his experience having an old pair of sunglasses fixed in his post  The Epic Saga Of How It Took 10 Years To Get My Favorite Sunglasses Fixed In An Hour By The Greatest Eyeglass Repair Shop In The History Of History on Blogging.LA A simple repair sometimes can be more meaningful when the damaged item is a symbol of your past, your present and in my case, my future. I too had a pair of glasses fixed by the best eye glass repair shop in the metro LA metro region:  Paul Gross Eyeglass Repair in Glendale, CA  ( yelp reviews ) Below is the comment I left on his post summing up how my life changed with that eyeglass repair. Okay maybe Paul Gross the person didn't directly change my life with that one business transaction but I do believe it played a role in my future I'm so glad you wrote about Paul Gross Eyeglass Repair!!!  There was a point when I was so poor that when my only pair of glasses broke I didn't think I coul...

Going through some boxes looking for something or another I found my stack of concert ticket stubs from back in the day. Back in the day meaning before I moved to SoCal, still aimlessly in the Bay Area catching whatever shows I could afford. I kept to the the small bars and venues so I'm thinking my best friend Corey bought this for my birthday  ::cough:: this thursday the 21st:: cough. $15 was a bit too rich for my blood. This was just as Smashing Pumpkins were exploding nationwide, pre SNL show, and before they went arena rock. (For you LA folks the Warfield is similar to the Wiltern.) Because the internerds are amazing you can stream/DL that actual concert here if the embed doesn't work below this sentence.

Band: The Joy Formidable    ( myspace , facebook ) Song: I Don't Want To See You Like This Why: This video doesn't make sense to me. And that is besides the point - this band is great live. Here are some pictures and words on Joy Formidable's first show in Los Angeles on August 11th 2010 after the jump (click link below the video). ( vid link )

Lovely voice on the other end of the phone. I took this picture, listening as you spoke of your day.  Closer. From passing thunder clouds the rain never reached the ground.

You probably already know that Google makes nice and cute instructional videos on the products and services they offer. This one for Google Mobile search is perfectly absurd. h/t to mashable

Band:  ROBOTANISTS   ( facebook , myspace youtube )  Song:   Exiled State of Mind Why:  Let's be honest here. Many of use are transplants in this beautiful city of Los Angeles. Some of us moved here for love or to escape memories or to chase a dreams. At some point you realize that this is a city doesn't care what your past was and yet still loves you for who you are. Some days that lack of caring is too hard not to take personally yet many of us would not live anywhere else.  If you're planning a retreat, trust me it gets better. Any city is what you make it out to be - this city is just one of better ones to try it in because it doesn't matter why you are here. We all have our reasons and they're all valid. Sometimes it's all about letting go of the Why that brought you here and embracing the What you are going to do about it. So maybe you'll relate to this slowed down modified cover of Jay Z's "Exiled State of Mind" by one my fa...

When I'm having a bad day at work, like I am today, I think about the smile in your eyes; It cheers me up.

Sometimes I'm uploading pictures onto Flickr and the words that coat these moments are not there. Those words never make it here. No reason. Laziness, selfishness, or ?  So I lived more and wrote less; I don't think that was a bad thing. Here are a few photos from April, May, and June when I was on "break". The words will follow soon. April: May: June:

Unknown Reader you should know that I love BBQ chips. I love the traditional flavors, the baked style, the cheap 99 cent store brand with the rubbing alcohol aftertaste. I love them all. If you have a bag of BBQ chip and I have a bag of BBQ chips and I have a hand and my hand reaches across the room and starts to eat your BBQ chips. I eat your BBQ chips! I eat the them up! Anyhow I saw this new (to me) flavor of chips at the grocery store: Well let me tell you something about Lay’s® Tangy Carolina BBQ Chips: It's a trap! They taste like Ketchup to me which is not tangy or BBQ-y. Oddly many online reviews say it has mustard in the recipe plus vinegar too, but my first thought was the cheap Hunts ketchup, not Heinz, Hunts. Regardless it's a weird taste. All sorts of yucky. Yet I still eat them. I have to because I love BBQ chips and I do what I say I'm going to do.

I know The LA Street Food Fest has been blogged about everywhere else and as of this morning the event is sold out save for the $70 VIP tickets. My understanding is that the event planners reorganized the event to address the overcrowding cluster-fudge that occurred last time by moving to a larger area, pre-sale only tickets and limiting the total number of tickets sold.  Really with those changes and the original $ 45price for all you can sample/eat/drink this sounds like a winner for attendees this year. Though I'm not going I thought should post this for my [redacted]'s [redacted] who will be there selling this Japanese hotdog hybrid : The Dogzilla .  It's featured in the first minute of this NBC4 clip/demonstration showing off all the types of food at the LA Street Food Fest.   If you're not going this weekend, The Dogzilla can be found at most Little Tokyo street festivals. Dogzilla on  facebook , twitter , yelp View more news videos at: http://www.nbc...

I love monkeys but I even thought this was odd. Then I corrected myself and said out loud to no one: No, that's pretty damn awesome. I love early morning walks in my neighborhood with a fresh cup of tea from Coffee Bean in one hand and a camera in the other.

[A very old draft that I was referencing on the previous post ] It wasn’t even 5AM and I’m running down Vermont, down Franklin and stopped only when I stood at Western Blvd's northern most terminal. People have walked down that street from here to the beach. 28 miles. crazy . It’s only 5:10 AM. I run up to Los Feliz Blvd and start heading back home. I look for coyotes. I know where they lie and I run because 'I don’t run'; I had thought about running but I didn't run. So now I do. And the coyotes follow. http://www.flickr.com/photos/slapayoda/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Ah Hollywood, good morning to you.   6:45 AM I started my run this Saturday morning, breaking sweat in the first few feet of this Los Angeles heat wave. 3 blocks in I eyed the snarky alley cat that paced me down the opposite side of the street. I didn't see what I thought I would though. I didn't see many joggers, most avoiding a run in 80 degree heat; 85 degrees by the time I made it home a hour later. There were no coyotes that laid in wait, much too early for the wise raccoon , and tables missing from the sidewalk breakfast joints. Animals and furniture take every chance to sleep in on hot summer days I suppose. 8 weeks ago I messed up my knee.  Every 4-5 days I would jog 5 miles through the hills of Los Feliz and the flats of East Hollywood when I had the great idea to try 10k (roughly 7 miles) without a long enough break from my run a day earlier. My right knee had other thoughts, completely giving out 2 miles in. I could place some blame on my old shoes...

The second invite only Blogger Prom has been announced with a new venue and theme. I couldn't be more excited! Blogger Prom 2010 Wednesday Sept 22nd at Yamashiro Restaurant Theme: Hollywood Confidential  "..old-school glammy, glitzy charm (or classic down-and-dirty grit).." This event is important to me. I pre-volunteered months ago at the first mention of Blogger Prom 2010 to correct my biggest mistake, not talking and meeting enough people at last year's prom. I realized that to be part of something I needed to take a part in something in a meaningful way. I want to be considered a blogger, a writer if I'm feeling nasty and those things require me to write not just in my notebooks offline and not without the real interaction of other bloggers. To be surrounded by the writers of words that make me laugh, smile, cry and even to buy and try new things is the true beauty of blogging events like this. So yeah I'm blogging again. This 3 month ...

Band: Thrushes    facebook / myspace / website Song: Crystals Why: This is probably my favorite song of their latest album Night Falls in that sweet shoegazery - noisepop sound that I love so much.  Really, very few bands do this sound well and Thrushes is one of them.  According to the email this morning announcing this video it was mentioned that it was filmed during Baltimore's Snowpocalypse in February (not to be confused with Seattle's Snowpocalypse of course). I still wonder how people live in the snow for months at a time. It was probably 72 degrees in Los Angeles during that same period in February! Anyhow... Thrushes: facebook / myspace / website "Crystals" from the album "Night Falls" on Birdnote Records, 2010 Directed by Guy Werner Shot & produced by Kevin Blackistone, Rob Hatch, Guy Werner Edited by Guy Werner & Bennii Denrich

This is my mom and Sunday was her birthday. She spoiled me growing up maybe to compensate for being the middle child, maybe I needed it at first, maybe because she still talks about when I was an infant with a crazy high fever and how she panicked not really knowing what to do. With me shivering with fever chills my mom wrapped me up in multiple blankets which of course doesn't help and I would guess my dad seeing me getting worse finally convinced her that despite what little money my family at the time was not to be worried about and a trip to the ER was a must (You have to remember this is before most folks used HMOs , where you paid out of pocket for the dentist, for the optometrist, and especially for ER visits).   Well I ended up in the emergency room where I'm told the doctors gave her grief about what she thought was the right thing to do wrapping me up like that.  The hospital staff quickly swept away from my mom's arms and placed my infant body int...

[My brother turned 40 in 2007 and invited the whole family to Vegas for a weekend of fun. My sister and then husband flew in from Rhode Island, my mom from the Bay Area and I drove through the desert (that post says more - says everything). I did a quick recap of the trip here but never finished writing about the conversations like I said I would. So here they are and a little more] In Vegas, you only need to stand outside a casino side entrance a few minutes to meet a crackhead. Encounter#1: Outside Excalibur chatting with my sister when a lady walks up to us asking where we're from. She looks like a normal middle age mom, not homeless, not selling us anything just a little too friendly - something was odd but I couldn't put my finger on it. My sister answers with Rhode Island but clarifies that we are actually California natives. This excites the lady and she states how she can relate, explaining she lives in Hawaii. My sis and I are not tracking this course of conv...

03.07.10 It was a long day.  The Ex requested that I return my kids a few hours later than normal which meant I had time to be flexible with scheduling meals and planning out our day. coordination This Sunday I was up early before the kids so I made an assortment of breakfasts to greet each one as they stumbled out of the bedroom: leftovers for myself from last night's dinner and for them scrambled eggs and toast served with cut pineapples and grapes. We got ready and went to the store for I don't remember what but there was still the typical diffused glow of a LA morning that said nothing of the previous day's rain. Mother Nature can be so Hollywood sometimes, quick to change scenes and always looking camera ready. Then it was Laundry Time! (I mention doing laundry a lot - I sort of love doing laundry) as the kids did their homework and when that was done we watched bootleg Invader Zim episodes online, a show I now totally love but loved even more so this downtime...