Events

TOWN HALL FROM FLANIGAN TO FRIEDMAN

Leave a comment

        It’s Friday and I showed just a bit late to Bottega Louie for breakfast, which in my case is a cappuccino. Why I let the annoying guys at the bar buy me drinks I do not know, but it did make them go from annoying to down right pleasant in a matter of minutes and yes this is all well before noon. And yes my beloved readers I am now writing with a considerable amount of alcohol pumping through the system…Last time this happened I set my sights on the disgraceful use of the public plaza at LA Live, but on this occasion I shall compare a Town Hall event Downtown to one on the Westside.

            First let me say that Town Hall Los Angeles is a great organization that does a mind-bending number of events and they’ve been here doing what they do for 72 year or so. Currently lead by the engaging Jon Goodman PhD Town Hall should be considered more than just a place for free speech, but really a vehicle to all who live and work Downtown to become involved in what I will label for the purposes of this blog as a civic lifestyle component. Until attending the Town Hall roundtable with James Flannigan, Senior Economic Editor, The New York Times, I did not consider civic events a lifestyle possibility—consider myself corrected. This was simply one of the better events I’ve attended of any kind.

            The story begins with Carmen Rodriguez, City National Bank / Downtown Mover and Shaker. Carmen, worried about my lack of civic involvement offered me two tickets to the James Flanigan event. Continue reading TOWN HALL FROM FLANIGAN TO FRIEDMAN →

Arts & Culture

GET THE RIGHT GUY

1 Comment

Foreword by Stan Lerner: Because it is before the weekend and downtownster has a considerable number of female readers, I’ve decided to post the following excerpt from my very funny novella “Get The Right Guy”. Ladies if you like this blog and desire to buy the novella you may do so at http://www.gettherightguy.com or as an ebook for your Kindle ebook reader on Amazon and if you prefer the old fashioned way, Metropolis Books on Main Street. All that being said please read on and enjoy, while remembering that this unfunded startup survives on the sell of my books—HINT.

 Ladies, since so many of you have wanted to read my book for men, “Get the Right Girl,” I have decided to write you your own book. Now, I realize that you have good intentions when you go snooping around “Get the Right Girl.” But it is indicative of a far greater problem, which we will attempt to solve in this new book.  In my book for guys, I was trying to turn them back into men. In my book for women, I am going to enlist your help in this effort. However, at the same time, I do want to have a serious discussion about the type of woman the right guy is looking for.

What qualifies me to advise you? Well growing up with a mom and two sisters, for starters. Perhaps even more valuable is this painful fact of my life: I have dated so many of you, I have frankly become an expert through life experience. Also, I am your average thirty-something bachelor and I am qualified for that reason alone to tell you what men are truly thinking about you.

Just to define average, let me tell you more about myself so that you truly know where I’m coming from. Continue reading GET THE RIGHT GUY →

Travel

Dear Boss — Letter From The Intern

Leave a comment

Dear Boss,

Given that as LA-natives we all hail from the land of eternal spring, it is hard to wrap our heads around the idea of actually seasons. However, London is definitely a city that boasts all four, with spring and summer being irrefutably the most becoming. The changes in attitude in the city anytime a ray of sunshine is present are blatantly obvious. It seems as though everyone in London is convinced that each sunny day could be their last, and flock to parks to celebrate the sun and take full advantage. Saint James in particular becomes overwhelmed with people lounging on its green grass and enjoying the “Marry Poppins”-esque landscape. I’m not kidding, boss, this park is so picturesque that it looks identical to the chalk painting that everyone jumps into at the beginning of the film. God, maybe that’s why I love London so much- it completely reminds me of Mary Poppins. Continue reading Dear Boss — Letter From The Intern →

Travel

French Quarter Fest – Part II

Leave a comment

We had dinner at Café Amelie on Royal, a quaint courtyard establishment that served a perfect duck and had a bottle of wine that I’d only previously drank at Magnolia on Sunset, an Evolution from Oregon that is just splendid.  We drank coffee and took in the sounds of the night, the entire day slowly beginning to catch up with us.

After catching a few acts on Bourbon, boomers dancing and swinging each other about[1], we hoofed it back to Frenchman just in time to catch The Hip Shakers repeat performance at The Apple Barrel. It was a little quieter on the street and a trio sang old country songs on the corner.  We swayed along for a little while, but the walking and the drinking and the dinner finally began its inevitable tucker, and we decided to turn in for the night.

The next morning we awoke bright and early, the sun shining and warm through our balcony doors.  We headed to the Gumbo House for breakfast, where their ‘Lost Bread’ is a huge favorite of mine.  New Orleans style French toast, it’s kind of like having a slightly healthier version of fried dough for the most important meal of the day. Continue reading French Quarter Fest – Part II →

People

On The Hunt For Ed Roski

Leave a comment

In my quest to interview the great man himself, Ed Roski Jr., I got passed off to the company’s official downtown spokesperson, their Senior Vice President of Corporate Development Fran Inman. Then they told me, Mr. Roski doesn’t give interviews.

 Actually, the exact words were ‘slim to none,’ and ‘slim’ is enough of a chance for me. So, when Fran offered to meet me for lunch to talk, I accepted.

 Here we are having lunch— me, Fran, and Stan (The Boss). My boss is chatting affably with her about how she came to Majestic Realty. She tells us that she met Mr. Roski through mutual friends at a tailgate party, while living and working in Nevada during the casino building days.

 Stan talks a lot, which is great because I don’t. Fran asks about our business model and our writing style at Downtownster.

Continue reading On The Hunt For Ed Roski →

Good, Bad, and Ugly

EARTH–MOVIE–GOOD

Leave a comment

Some of the greatest movie-going experiences of my childhood – and life – as well as that of so many others of my generation, were those through the Disney True-Life Adventure films. Not only were they educational and entertaining, but they sparked interest and raised questions in impressionable youth – including myself- which is now evidenced today in people like Al Gore and ecologic and environmental activists whose thoughts and opinions were shaped by those images of nature and wildlife that Walt Disney captured. For years now, we have missed so much by the absence of Disney’s True Life Adventures and its nature films, and I, for one, am ecstatic that the brand has been resurrected in the 21st Century with Disneynature. And what better way to inaugurate the film series than with EARTH.

Continue reading EARTH–MOVIE–GOOD →

Arts & Culture

BREAKFAST AT BOTTEGA LOUIE PART THREE

1 Comment

Foreword by Stan Lerner: the following novella “Breakfast At Bottega Louie” is a work of fiction meant to give the blog reader a unique literary experience. “Breakfast at Bottega Louie” is a love story that examines the intersection and repair of two broken lives. I am writing it daily and will post it as such—and I promise there will be an ending, although I have not yet punctuated it in my own mind. If you care to comment as to where you would like the story to go—please do so!

BREAKFAST AT BOTTEGA LOUIE PART THREE

          Post Breeze’s departure I sat at Bottega Louie and resumed work on a script long overdue to be finished. Hollywood is a funny little place filled with men and women that split at the seams with self-importance all according to a formula that calls for the less the talent variable to be supplanted by the arrogance constant in every possible calculation. It’s enough to make anyone with even the slightest skill wish that they didn’t have it—so they could then join the ranks of the Hollywood Happy. Me, I do it (write) because I can no longer bring myself to masturbate five or six times a day. Rather, I put my words on paper, usually a hundred pages or so, and let the creative executives do so in the round.

            Currently I am writing the screen adaptation of my novella horror classic titled “Blast”. “Blast”, only available as an ebook for Amazon Kindle, is a gory affair. Kids throwing a rave in a defense plant left vacant and full of death implements of every possible kind. There is teenage rape, cop killing, drug abuse, best friend infidelity…Excuse me I have to yawn…Oh, and the always classic biting off of the bad guy’s penis while being forced to commit oral copulation—always a crowd pleaser that one is. No doubt the MPAA will think this masterpiece deserving of an R rating, anything less would ring disappointing to me. No. I’m not a sellout. I feed these sows this ever increasingly bad slop hoping that they will one day bankrupt themselves, financially speaking since there is no moral account for me to raid amongst this band, and cause their likes to leave the town allowing the type that don’t use the word commercial in every other sentence to once again make motion pictures.

            Later that day—lunchtime, I stood in my high-rise two-bedroom two-bath condominium trying to digest not a peanut butter sandwich I had not eaten yet due to Breeze’s excitement at the improvement she had made to my office, which she insisted I see at once. Continue reading BREAKFAST AT BOTTEGA LOUIE PART THREE →

Travel

Another Letter From My Intern

Leave a comment

Dear Boss,

       Greece is great, let me just open with that. Sure, I’m only basing this on one day in Athens and then another day spent on pilgrimage to the temple at Delphi, but as far as I’m concerned, Greece is great (and yes, I acknowledge the repetition, but given how great Greece is, the redundancy is necessary).

       We first arrived in Athens at 2:00 in the morning, with high hopes for our hostel which had been advertised as one of the world’s 10 best, though I was sold at the mention of a free breakfast. Continue reading Another Letter From My Intern →

What's happening

Perez Hilton Commits Gay Hate Crime

3 Comments

 On Sunday night Miss California Carrie Prejean should have been crowned Miss USA, but lost because she answered the question posed to her by Perez Hilton, real name Mario Lavandeira, honestly—and to the majority of heterosexuals correctly. The question? Does she believe in gay marriage? Her answer: a polite no offence, but no.

            With LA Live’s plaza empty, President Obama’s trip to Latin America, war with North Korea and Iran on my mind, not to mention a whole essay worth of economic discourse to write why would I write about a fat, no talent, gossip monger and his beef with a beauty queen? I caught Carrie Prejean being interviewed; she’s beautiful, articulate, and very smart. When she was shown a video of this vial creature who would be nothing, but the nobody that he truly is if he used anything other than a knock off of someone else’s name (Paris Hilton if you’re completely clueless) ranting and raving and calling her a bitch; Carrie Prejean, simply mentioned that she was a Christian and that she loved and forgave the cretin.

            Well, I’m not a good Christian as you might have gathered and I’m weary of this trend in our culture where the best of the best, the Carrie Prejeans of the world, are brought down by the dregs and misfits, the Mario Lavandeira’s of the world. But let me go back a few years.

I was in the process of editing my novel “Stan Lerner’s Criminal”, I’ll spare you the plug, and I would often meet my editor Lawrence at the Coffee Bean on Sunset and Fairfax. Those of you who are familiar with my writing might have understood me, to have in the past, been one of the regulars at the legendary Coffee Bean on Sunset Plaza—don’t be confused, I was. But to meet with Lawrence I would trek down the street and subject myself to, what was, not as desirable a scene—no offence.

            As we perused through the 800 pages of “Criminal” and the red ink of Lawrence’s grievances I could not help but to notice his constant distraction. “Why do you keep looking over at that freak?” I asked. “This is why I prefer you come down to my Coffee Bean.” I stared over at the potato sack with arms and legs that sat up against the back wall with some kind of queen fashion statement of a Hello Kitty hoody pulled over his head. “This is what’s ruining our country. I mean, I know it’s a free country but freedom without some sense of purpose or responsibility can actually be a terribly destructive force…”

            “That’s Perez Hilton,” interrupted Lawrence. “You’re right. He does totally creep me out.”

            “That’s what?” I asked.

            “Perez Hilton,” answered Lawrence, not getting that I had never concerned myself with those who are known for being known—and that’s it. “He has a blog.” Lawrence directed my computer, which was also on the table to Mario’s website.

            “So, he’s the queer version of Paris Hilton? Continue reading Perez Hilton Commits Gay Hate Crime →

Travel

French Quarter Fest, New Orleans, LA Part 1

1 Comment

While most of my friends and half of the entertainment industry headed out to the desert to get sunburn, ingest substances, and see the last remaining Beatle (Ringo doesn’t count) at Coachella this weekend, I decided to take the chance to get away from Southern California, get away from triple digit temperatures and secret after-parties, get away from card trading, ecstacy and paparazzi, get away and head to New Orleans for their annual French Quarter Festival.

According to the forecasts, Nola was going to be in the grips of a thunderstorm for the whole weekend. Preferring lightning and rain to the furnaces of hell, AKA Indio, CA in April, I packed my raincoat and headed to the Airport on Friday morning. Continue reading French Quarter Fest, New Orleans, LA Part 1 →

Cutting edge focus on lifestyle at the city center, Los Angeles