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Wil Wheaton has an important PSA over at Blogging.LA. Apparently OJ — you know, the guy who was found responsible by a court of law for killing two people ten or so years back — is being allowed to charge for autographs at an upcoming comicon. I think Wil’s commentary stands well enough on his own. Go read it.

OK, it’s actually a really good album. You can download it here. I’ll be out by Amoeba tomorrow night. I do believe I’ll have to pick a copy up.

Dear band that I’ve never really heard of before,

Hey, whatup Harvey Danger? Would you believe that I’ve never heard of you before today? It’s true! I tend to not pay a lot of attention to music that was recorded within the last five or ten years, which I guess means that I’m not “hep” or whatever it is the kids are calling it these days. Anyway, you were a complete unknown to me until today.

Man, you crazy indy rocker kids and your wacky ideas about marketing. I read somewhere on the internet today (perhaps on Waxy?) that you were releasing mp3’s of your latest album for free as some sort of promotional stunt. Something about getting new listeners, exposing more people to your music at basically no cost to yourself. That’s a wild idea! I was pretty sure it wouldn’t work, though. After all, how can a band be successful without a major label spending lots of money on them to push their music out through radio-payola land? Your stunt just can’t work.

Since it was free, however, I fired up bittorrent and pulled down a copy of your album. I’m putting it on to my iPod right now and I think I’m going to go and listen to it as soon as it’s done transferring. From the song I heard while I was writing this, I’d say that it could be a pretty good album. Heck, if the rest of the album is this good I just might go out and buy the CD (I like having the physical artifact — go figure). But your “give the music away to build a larger fan base” strategy still can’t work — it’s just not the way things are done. Even if I do go out and buy your CD….

Sincerely,

cp

Welcome to the LA County Fair
Originally uploaded by corey_porter.

The Bramlets, The Kid and I went to the LA County Fair (photoset) this past weekend. It’s truly wonder of nature, the fair, and easily the best excuse to stuff corn dogs in to your face, drink watery American beers and spend some quality time with livestock. Plus: mullets! Mullets galore! You’ve never seen so many! Hoo boy.

The Kid geeks out over the animals and the old-timey/blacksmithy stuff. I get in to the photo contest and some of the artsy-craftsy things (plus: corn dogs). It was the Bramlets’ first time, so they were taking everything in. Good times. Good times indeed.

One of the oddest things about this trip is that we went on the day when ZZ Top was to play. Now, we don’t get a lot of the ZZ Top here in LA County. That’s really more of a San Berdoo thing. The crowd was impressive. I saw one obese 60-something woman in a mechanized wheelchair with a ZZ Top t-shirt on. I don’t think that could be topped.

One thing I can recommend to anybody thinking about going to the fair: show up early. We got there around 10:30, and it didn’t really start to get crowded until after 2:00 (at which point it really started to get crowded). Also, if you show up in the AM, the “standard” parking only differs from “VIP” by fifteen feet or so.

I put a LA County Fair photoset on Flickr. I hope you enjoy it.

Today I’m sitting next to The Kid while he does his homework. This is a fine arrangement because I can easily point him in the right direction if he gets stuck. When he does get stuck it’s usually because he rushed through a question in one way or another. I know this because I was the same way. I presume that my parents were as well. It would only be fitting for that to be the case.

After two false starts on a particular question — the first after reading 1/4^th of the problem, the second after 1/2 — I found myself saying to The Kid and writing in an IM the following:

AArrrrrgh! READ. THE. WHOLE. QUESTION. BEFORE. YOU. ANSWER.

My mind flashed immediately back to my parents telling me the exact same thing several hundred times during the course of my academic career. I know that my parents are in Lawrence, Kansas right now, laughing out loud at me for reasons that they can’t quite comprehend, and I’ll tell you what: I can’t wait to laugh at (although really it’s with rather than at) The Kid when his children do the exact same thing.

Dear Right Now,

Have you ever had one of those days when it’s been forever and a day since you’ve written a proper letter but it’s late and you just got done watching your team lose on Monday Night Football which means that you have to buy wine for dinner and you’re tired and you should really go to sleep because you have to wake up in six hours or so but you don’t want to because you really feel like you should bang some sort of letter out? Yeah, me too.

Yours,

cp

We’ve been JAMMED!
Originally uploaded by corey_porter.

The Kid and I went to the Pasadena Farmers’ Market this morning to buy some berries. We’re both big fans of blueberries and strawberries, so they go very quickly every time we have them in the house. The Farmers’ Market is a really good chance to stock up for the next few days at a somewhat cut rate.

Because I’m a giant dork, I took the camera out with me and took a few pictures (photoset linked to above). The Kid watched over my shoulder while I was entering titles and captions for a few of them, and when I keyed the title for this one in, he absolutely terrified me. “There’s only one man who would dare give me the raspberry!” He said. We finished the though in unison: “Lone Starr!”

I swear that I am not trying to teach him to do this. Honest. You believe me, don’t you? Please?

Johnie’s is opening up for six hours and six hours only on October 2nd. Lebowski fans will recognize this as the fine family restaurants where Walter tells The Dude that he could get him a toe by 3:00 — with nail polish. The one-day-only reopening is part of the Los Angeles Conservancy’s Curating the City: Wilshire Boulevard event (Johnie’s is usually only open for filming and the like). I’d really like to go to this — out of respect for The Dude, of course — but I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t be lousy with hipsters. Perhaps a screening of TBL — with white russians, of course — on the first will be called for instead.

Seamus on the Rack
Originally uploaded by corey_porter.

A momentous day in Pasadena history, today the Home Brewery of Mediocre Magnitude sold its first bottles of beer. As luck would have it, I was able to be customer number one, purchasing a sixer of Brother Seamus, their Abbey Dubbel style ale.

I had this particular beer for the first time at Connie-Lynne’s party when Clancey brought over all of the HBMM’s current offerings. Now, all of his beers are good, but this one is well beyond good, closer in fact to “damn” or “holy crap.” It’s the first surprisingly impressive beer I’ve had in a good long time (since NB’s La Folie), and I’m imminently pleased to own some of it now.

As per the label, Brother Seamus is an Abbey-style ale (Chimay is a good example of this style). It’s brewed whole-grain with cinnamon and ginger added in, and the combination really works. What’s even more impressive is that it was HBMM’s first whole-grain brew.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Clancey did a bang up job on the labels as well. At the tasting the labels were black and white and told us little more than the name of the beer. The current generation is big, colorful, well-designed and informative. You can see all of them on HBMM’s beers page.

For your viewing pleasure, I’ve put up a photo set of my Brother Seamus purchase. Do enjoy them.

I am HBMM customer #1. More news and some photos later on this evening.