Vote today and enjoy a free cup of coffee at Starbucks with "I Voted" sticker and more!

URL: American Cinematheque
PLACE: Egyptian Theatre & Aero Theatre

Happy Halloween! Dusk to Dawn Horrorthon at American Cinematheque!
American Cinematheque hosts all night horror movie night for Halloween every year, so we went there again this year :D

URL: Tortoise | Mitsuru Koga

ADDRESS: (MAP)
1342 1/2 Abbot Kinney Blvd
Venice, CA 90291
PHONE: 310.396.7335

Tortoise is having an exhibition of the Sea Stone Vases by Mitsuru Koga till end of upcoming weekend (November 02, 2008 Sun). The Japanese artist, Mitsuru Koga transforms ordinary object into minimalist design enhancing its own natural beauty.

URL: Replate.org
RELATED LINKS: People's Design Award | GOOD Magazine

v. (re • plate): To place unwanted leftovers, typically in a doggie bag, on top of the nearest trash can so that they don't go to waste.

KUSAMA: Princess of Polka Dots
RELATED LINKS: Yayoi Kusama | YouTube

I have recently come to find out about this documentary film about a Japanese avant-garde artist, Yayoi Kusama called "KUSAMA: Princess of Polka Dots" directed by Heather Lenz.

URL: ANIMAVI | AltBuild Expo

Animavi introduced their newly launched high-end sustainable furniture line at the Alternative Building Expo in Santa Monica with Venare! AltBuild Expo offers over 150 exhibits featuring manufacturers of green building materials, landscape and water conservation products, retailers, interior design products and furnishings... etc etc...

URL: Design*Sponge
RELATED URL: LA biz ladies meetup

I went to the LA biz ladies meet up by Design*Sponge at Design Within Reach on Beverly Blvd last night! Thanks Judy for the awesome information as always!! It was so inspiring to be there... and Grace was amazing and all the great speakers were full of good information... Great Great Great wonderful night! There must have been over 200 people (ladies) at DWR. It was tough to find a parking spot (took us about 20 minutes to park), but every minute there was worth the effort!

URL: Sia | MySpace

Sia performed tracks from her new album, 'some people have REAL problems', as part of special in-store appearance at Amoeba Music last night! She is an amazing singer... I caught her interview on indie 103.1 with Jonesy drive up to Amoeba, and she sounded like she has a cold with cough. But wow... that didn't affect her singing style or her energy. Awesome, Awesome!

URL: Living Desert

We went to Palm Desert for both Paul & Poppa's birthdays over the weekend. One of the things we decided to do was to go to the Living Desert. "The Living Desert is one of the most successful zoological parks in the country and offers visitors the most complete introduction to the natural desert."

URL: Cirque Du Soleil - Corteo

Stunning and magical show! Must see while they are in your town!!
Cirque Du Soleil is in town now performing Corteo in the tent under the Grand Chapiteau at The Forum, Los Angeles. This was our first time going to see their tent shows... and I was blown away by their performances, stage presence, set design, and the costume design. Very European, classical, and nostalgic style. It just took me away to a complete different world. Everything about it was just ...wonderful.

URL: Long Blondes
RELATED LINKS: MySpace | You Tube | LastFm

Awesome show at the Echo on Friday night with the Long Blondes, Nicole Atkins & the Sea, and the Boggs.

URL: Cinespia - Cemetery Screenings | MySpace
RELATED LINKS: Hollywood Forever Cemetery | Yelp | LA.com

Yay! We finally had a chance to go to Cinespia Cemetery Screening at Hollywood Forever Memorial Park!!

Every Saturday in the summer, Hollywood Forever Cemetery opens its gates to the cinespia cemetery film screening to watch classic films with their favorite stars (the dead ones). What a cool concept! And this is their 7th season :)

Permanent Vacation
AKA: What We Did On Our Holidays
YEAR: 2006 COUNTRY: USA/UK LANGUAGE: English
GENRE: COMEDY | BLACK COMEDY | DRAMA
DIRECTOR: W. Scott Peake
WRITER: Geoff Nicholson (novel) | W. Scott Peake | Gina Viola
COMPANY: Whatever Entertainment
CAST: Frank Harper | Gina Bellman | Phoebe Thomas | Jonathan Bailey |
David Carradine | Michael Bowen | Victor Varnado | Alex Reymundo

Cast & Crew only screening for Permanent Vacation (aka. What We Did On Our Holidays) was premiered at Fina Arts Theater on Tuesday night, April 10th 2007.

First Fridays at Natural History Museum
URL: Natural History Museum | First Fridays | MySpace

Enjoy First Fridays at Natural History Museum with cool live music & drinks while surrounded by dinosaur bones and animal dioramas!

We saw PLAID and The Submarines this past Friday. It was surprisingly pretty mellow, and I was able to get so close to the stage for both sets.

New Beverly Cinema (MAP)
7165 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 938-4038
URL: New Beverly Cinema | my space

ALL SHOWS are DOUBLE FEATURES (or sometimes more)
ADMISSION: $7.00 | $6.00 (Students) | $4.00 (Seniors & Children)

One of the coolest movie theaters in Los Angeles!
"The New Beverly Cinema has been in business continuously since May 5, 1978. When it opened, revival theatres were quite common in the U.S. and other parts of the world. Today, the New Beverly is one of the very last full-time double bill revival houses left in the entire U.S"

URL: The Oscars | NRDC

We really enjoyed watching Academy Awards this year!
Ellen was an awesome host, the intermission choreography performances by Pilobolus were amazing (I would love to go see their show!), and I was very happy to see so much effort put into running the event as Eco-Friendly as possible and encouraging people to be Green!

URL: Miho Hatori | MySpace | BLOG | Cibo Matto
Feb 9th (Fri) Hollywood, CA
@ Troubadour [AA]

I really like one of her songs "A Song for Kids" when I caught it on KCRW and have been wondering who the artist was :) She'll be playing at the Troubadour on Friday night at 10pm! It would be cool to check her out.

December 1st - December 10th 2006
URL: LA Auto Show

We went to LA auto show! My favorite display was Ferrari, very sexy and fashion oriented as always. They never disappoint me :) And Nissan did very nice display this year as well. I do like checking cars... but I can't help to check out who has the best display this year. I guess it's the nature of being a designer :P Out of all the concept cars, I liked DODGE Challenger. It has some retro feel with 80s flare to the design - looks like it could be right out of Japanese anime AKIRA. (pic top right)
One thing I was hoping to see here was to find more info on cool hybrid or hydrogen cars. So I was hoping to see more hyped cool theme of that, but it didn't seem to take big part in this auto show :(

URL: Cut & Paste
RELATED LINKS: Cut & Paste NYC 2005 | Live Art Jam NYC | Tournament Format
DATE: November 11th, 2006
PLACE: Rec Center Studio

If you are a designer, this is a great chance to get fame, be exposed, win Apple 13" MacBook & Wacom Intuos3 Tablet, and be judged by all these cool people you wish to work with - (Buff Monster/Emit/Eric Nakamura/Andy Mueller/Roger Gastman)! ...or just attend the event to see how it is!

URL: John Anson Ford Theatre | PHOTOS | PARKING
ADDRESS: (MAP)
2580 Cahuenga Blvd., East,
Hollywood, CA 90068

The John Anson Ford Theatre is a great place to catch shows!! It is one of the oldest performing arts venues in Los Angeles. The open-air amphitheater seats 1241 people and has a rather intimate atmosphere. There are beautiful areas where you could have a picnic beforehand in front of a waterfall or other parts of the park. You can either bring your own food/beverages for the picnic or you could try their dinners as well!

URL: CSS | MySpace
RELATED LINKS: Wikipedia | Chartattack

Another music band we love...
Paul & I saw CSS last night at John Anson Ford Theater as an opening band for Ladytron. We love Ladytron, and that is the reason we went to the show without knowing much about CSS. But we were just blown away by the cute little Japanese-Brazilian singer LOVEFOXXX. She had so much energy jumping up and down, rolling onto the crowd, taking off layers of her dress/outfit, making the crowd dance and sing!

URL: Million Trees L.A. Planting
RELATED LINKS: Blog 302

We volunteered to plant trees at Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park in San Pedro with the Tree People over this weekend. We got there around 8:45am and followed the signs for the Tree People event. We parked, signed in, and checked out the area. Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park is pretty cool park/campground, and they have a pretty big lake called "Lake Machado" in the middle of the park. I guess this lake is where the alligator Reggie is living at. (We didn't see Reggie today though.)

URL: Flavorpill

Flavorpill has been around for a while now, but this is one the best websites/services for getting GOOD resources on what's happening in town for creative events (Art, Design, Music, Film, Fashion... etc). Once you sign up in their mailing list, you get weekly newsletter (pic right) updates in your email for cool events around town... and read more about them. They have services for New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Miami. If you don't want to sign up to get mail magazine, you can just check online :) But, they send out very nice useful mail magazine (they do it right), so it's not annoying at all.

URL: The Dresden Dolls | MySpace
PLACE: The Orpheum Theatre

I have been looking forward for this event, and it's finally tonight (Oct, 10th)!!!!
The Dresden Dolls is performing at the Orpheum Theatre at 7pm! They are an amazing (punk/theatrical) band with full of energy... They definitely have their original unique style in the way they approach their music.

LA WEEKLY DETOUR was a blast!!
There were more bands and DJs we originally wanted to check out.. :) But, we got around to see BLONDE REDHEAD which was awesome, REDD KROSS (Amazing!!!!), then got more beer to walk over to catch Weird Science, The Elected, and Nortec Collective before Beck started... Pretty crazy plan ;-)

URL: Million Trees L.A. Planting
DATE: October 14th, 2006 (SAT)
TIME: 9:00am - 1:00pm
PLACE: Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park, San Pedro (MAP)
JOIN THEM: call (818) 623-4879 or email volunteer@treepeople.org
RELATED LINKS: Historical Photos of KMHRP Million Trees Events

What a wonderful exciting eco-friendly project to help save our planet!! And thanks
to Tree People for the opportunity to volunteer!!!

URL: LA WEEKLY DETOUR
RELATED LINKS: LA WEEKLY | MySpace (LA WEEKLY DETOUR)
PARKING: Where To Park

LA WEEKLY DETOUR is on upcoming weekend! It is the first time L.A. Weekly magazine sponsors Detour Music Festival - featuring: Beck, Queens of the Stone Age, Basement Jaxx, Peeping Tom, Redd Kross, Blonde Redhead, !!!, Nortec Collective, Blackalicious, Of Montreal, The Like, The Elected, OH NO! OH MY!, The Blood Arm, Everybody Else, The Howling Bells, and Wired All Wrong.... and DJ sets by: VHS or Beta, Weird Science (Steve Aoki/Kid Millionaire), Shepard Fairey and Travis Keller (more to be announced)!

RELATED LINKS: Photos of Awaodori | Japan Newbie | Awaodori | YouTube American Awaodori Dance Associations CONTACT: Fujii-San @ (310) 384-7910
Gardena Dance Studio (MAP) 1807 W. 166th St. Gardena, CA 90247 Sat: 6 - 8 pm | Sun: 12 - 2 pm	Little Tokyo at Mitsuwa 2F (MAP) 333 S. Alameda St. Los Angeles, CA 90013 2nd & 4th Friday: 5 - 7 pm

Awaodori is a traditional Japanese form of dance originated in Tokushima (Shikoku). There are many Awaodori dance festivals in the summer time. This dance/celebration goes back in Japanese history for 400 years. And you can experience Awaodori right in Los Angeles!

URL: Ladytron Tour - North America | Ladytron | MySpace

YAY :) Ladytron will be playing at various different places in Northern America! We just bought tickets to the show on Oct 17th! Here is the list of the shows in Southern California. I'm so excited!!

URL: GEYRHALTER DESIGN | Photos of the event

GEYRHALTER DESIGN had a party/art opening to celebrate their two year anniversary. It was an amazing party with so many people, red carpet entrance, Fabian's photographic prints on display, a variety of gourmet desserts (I want to know who catered... they were amazing!), and an open bar with amazing Austrian wine (I had Pinot Noir), DJ, and instant photo booth. I guess over 800 people rsvp'd (including some movie/tv stars)!

Antelope Valley Fair & Demolition Derby
ADDRESS: (MAP)
2551 West Avenue H, Suite 102
Lancaster, CA 93536
URL: http://www.avfair.com
ADMISSION: $8.00 | $15.00 (Demolition Derby)
VIDEO: What is Demolition Derby?

Going to see the Demolition Derby and visiting the Antelope Valley Festival over Labor day Weekend has been a family tradition between my husband and his father for many years :) Now I go every year to keep the tradition alive and have been going there for 3 years now!

Hollywood Bowl
ADDRESS: (MAP)
2301 N. Highland Avenue
Hollywood, CA
URL: ZERO7 | Hollywood Bowl
PARKING: Hollywood & Highland

Gotan Project, ZERO7 featuring José González and Sia, Herbert
KCRW's World Festival
More music weekend!!

I have to say... My favorite was Sia's song with ZERO7. Her songs were so emotional and full of energy. We get chills just thinking about it. We sat really far away... I think our tickets were $15 each. Sorry for the blurry picture, but that was as good as I could take a photo of Sia on their big screen!!

Sunset Junction 2006
ADDRESS: (MAP)
4019 Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA. 90029
URL: Sunset Junction | Street Fair
ADMISSION: $15.00
RELATED LINKS: REDD KROSS!!!
* most photos on this post were taken by Marie Gonzalez :) Thanks Marie!

Sunset Junction is LA's largest street fair! I've lived in LA for 7 years before, but this is my second year to go to Sunset Junction. So, it's still pretty new and exciting to me :) There are so many cool arty vendors, good fair food, and they have good music bands playing! Good place to visit as long as you can find parking.

The Blessing of the Cars
ADDRESS: (MAP)
Dronfield Ave At Osborne St
Pacoima, CA 91331
URL: http://www.blessingofthecars.com
ADMISSION: $7.00

This event was started about 10 years ago by Stephanie and Gabriel Baltierra, because they were so in love with their cars, they wanted to have them blessed! This event is a great place for people who have a lot of passion for cars (you might even say a little crazy), especially for old classic cars :) This event draws lots of different people (many with extensive tattoos) and the park where the vehicles are displayed also has a stage with live bands performing. There are so many different types of classic cars modified and unmodified. Some finished and many are works-in-progress. One guy even modified and painted his car to look weathered, old and rusted!!

Paul is thinking about taking our '64 Oldsmobile Cutlass next year! YAY!

Hollywood Bowl
ADDRESS: (MAP)
2301 N. Highland Avenue
Hollywood, CA
URL: http://www.hollywoodbowl.com/
PARKING: Hollywood & Highland (You can get parking validation at Kodak Theater)

If you visit LA in the summer time, you should definitely check the schedule for all the events at Hollywood Bowl. They have exciting events all summer long between June to September. Tickets usually go from as cheap as $5 to $100 (and more). I recommend purchasing tickets early and plan your summer in advance :)

Orange County Fair
July 7th - 30th
URL: http://www.ocfair.com

On the way home from San Diego, we decided to stop by at the Orange County Fair to see Paul's friend Sarah perform salsa swing. After the show, we ran into more of his friends from work, including Justin & Jenn.

Anyway... I tried the most horrific American Fair Food which ultimately wasn't as bad as I thought it would be!! Wow.. I've always avoided trying these foods, but I've been somewhat curious about them thinking... "Who would eat those!!??" Thanks to Justin! He was so determined to find his favorite food item... the fried Twinkie, so I stepped into my outer boundaries of stuff I would eat! We ended up trying some fried Snickers candy bars, fried Twinkie cakes, and fried Oreo cookies! (The Oreo cookies were pretty sick though.)

They sell everything fried! Even fried Krispy Kreme donut chicken sandwiches! I'm getting the chills just thinking about it. I wouldn't recommend this type of food for daily consumption, but I thought it was kind of fun to try something different and step into American tradition (Is it American tradition?). Someday, I want to introduce these horrific foods to my friends in Japan!! Yea, these types of foods will never be found in JP for sure. (I hope..)

COMIC-CON 2006
@ San Diego Convention Center
URL: http://www.comic-con.org

We went to COMIC-CON on Friday since Paul had his summer day off :) So, we made a plan with our nephew Davey and met him at the event.
Oh my goodness! There were soooo many people there even on Friday! CRAZINESS! I guess there are more and more people there every year (the attendance supposedly doubled from 2 years ago!)... and more and more new vendors show up that don't really have much to do with the comics industry. It was pretty overwhelming at time, but we had our own fun :)

My favorite area to visit at Comic-Con is checking out all the new collectible and art toys (probably going against a lot of the Comic-Con traditions). Also, I enjoy looking at all the NERDS who are dressed up as various characters in silly costumes!! (Please don't be offended, I admire and love nerds!) They are cool :)

Since we got there kind of late, we missed meeting most of the artists I wanted to meet... Oh well! But, I found a new toy/product called "mimobots" which I really thought was cool :)