Category Archives: Gallivanting

Die Antwoord at Meltdown Comics

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I get “Rich Bitch”– the Die Antwoord song– stuck in my head a lot. Sometimes the earworm hits at awkward moments, like when I’m drooling over a Chanel watch that costs just under six grand at Costco. It’s hard to fight the urge to not roll into a chant of “rrrrrreeech beetch.” Sometimes, it’s irresistible. I’ve shouted it out through the window of my unimpressive car, dressed in my unimpressive clothes a few times. “I’m a rrrrrreeech beetch.”

I had the song stuck in my head once again as I drove to Meltdown Comics on Tuesday night. The Nerdist crew kindly invited me to stop by for the big event, a Die Antwoord music video marathon with Ninja and Yo-Landi Vi$$er in the theater talking about said videos. Boing Boing was hosting the event. Even though I just returned from a mountain excursion and am in the middle of moving, I couldn’t miss it.
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The Halloween I Covered a Stanley Kubrick Party Dressed as Wendy Torrance

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I bumped into Danny Torrance and the Grady twins.

Dr. Strangelove is my favorite movie. It’s one of those classics that my dad made me watch when I was in junior high.  It was before he got a universal remote, so he walked into the den and commanded me to change the channel.

“But, Dad, I’m watching something.”

“Liz, this is one of the greatest movies ever. Watch it.”

He was right. I was probably no more than 13 at the time, but this movie became an instant favorite. It’s one of very few movies that had a profound affect on my sense of humor, if not my whole worldview. I delved into Kubrick films, studying them one by one, not to memorize dialog or minutia– I never did that– but to try and figure out how he built greater themes over a period of time. I’m nowhere near the first person to gush about Kubrick, so I won’t. Really, I’m just trying to explain why I said yes to a last minute assignment.

The gig: Cover LACMA’s Muse Costume Ball for L.A. Weekly.

The reason I took it: The theme was Kubrick’s films. The event was also a preview for the Stanley Kubrick exhibition.

The results: You can read that on L.A. Weekly’s arts blog.
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Steven Severin Scores Vampyr at Cinefamily

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Outside of Cinefamily (Photo: Liz O.)

This was the first week of my second year as a full-time freelancer, so I dove head first into pitching new stories, as well as starting work on a non-fiction book proposal and a screenplay, and documenting as much of it as I could on Twitter and Facebook. It was an interesting experiment, and a successful one. I finished the week with five new story assignments, which might be a record for me.  That said, by Thursday night, I was more than ready to do something just for fun.
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Watching Dark Knight Rises at Mission Tiki Drive-In Is Worth the Drive

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Mission Tiki Drive-In (Photo: Carlos)

I didn’t think I would be able to catch The Dark Knight Rises for another few weeks. In fact, I had to decline a couple invites from friends to see the movie this weekend because I thought I would be working. Fortunately, I ended up without a weekend assignment (and, after Comic-Con, I really needed that break), so Carlos and I decided to drive out to Montclair to see the movie at the Mission Tiki Drive-In.

Montclair is in San Bernardino County, just on the other side of the county line from Pomona. It seems like it’s really far, but, in reality, it took us less than an hour to drive there from Los Angeles. Considering how often it takes more than an hour to travel fewer than 10 miles in this city,  I think we made good time. Plus, we got to see the latest Batman flick at a tiki-themed drive-in theater. That’s always a win.
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Go Ask Alice: The Made for TV Movie with William Shatner and Andy Griffith

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The show flyer for Go Ask Alice at Cinefamily. (Photo: Liz O.)

If you’re anti-spoiler and haven’t read the book or seen the movie, proceed with caution.

I don’t know how I went my entire life without seeing the made-for-TV movie based on Go Ask Alice, but we remedied that situation tonight at Cinefamily. As a boob tube aficionado, I really ought to attend their TV Tuesday events more often. It’s a shame that I missed the 21 Jump Street event a couple months ago. You can bet, though, that I won’t skip next month’s G.L.O.W. documentary.

But, back to Go Ask Alice. I humbly consider this book by Anonymous to be a work of genius. Don’t give me that lecture about how it’s probably not really a teenager’s diary. Even as a 12-year-old who only knew about drugs from the fried egg commercials, I understood it as fiction. That’s probably because I bought it in the same section of B. Dalton’s where I picked up my monthly editions of Sweet Valley High. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or not. It was frightening in the same way that Christopher Pike books were. It was as terrifying as that Sweet Valley High where Elizabeth Wakefield volunteers at the hospital and gets kidnapped. I think it’s called Kidnapped. In other words, it plays on the fears of kids who are too young to know how boring high school really is.
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‘Transmission: L.A.’ at Geffen Contemporary at MOCA

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Ben Jones makes the sun shine. (Instagram: Liz O.)

There’s a Mercedes in the middle of the “Transmission: L.A.” exhibition at Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. I didn’t take a photo, but it’s there, and if you have stopped by the event, then you likely saw it too.

Consider the car product placement. “Transmission: L.A.” is part of Mercedes-Benz’s Avant/Garde Diaries project, essentially, a series of cool events and artist spotlights funded by a car company.

In my younger days, I would have scoffed at this with typical indie snob superiority. It took a while for me to understand one of the greatest truths of the world.  No good idea will get off the ground without money. If corporations want to put up the money for people doing awesome, creative things, then it’s good for artists and it’s good for us.
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The Typo Terrorist Hits Melrose Avenue

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The Typo Terrorist hits Melrose. (Photo: Liz O.)

 

All I know about The Typo Terrorist is what’s on Tumblr and Facebook and Twitter.

Regardless, I saw this while walking down Melrose Ave. yesterday. Can’t remember the cross street, but it was right around Urban Outfitters.

As a random aside, why is there always a crowd at Urban Outfitters when there are so many cool, non-chain stores on the same street? I still don’t get that.

BubblePunch Relaunches Super*Market at Meltdown Comics

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Necklaces by Zambi Candy from Super*Market (Photo: Liz O.)

Last Saturday, BubblePunch relaunched the Super*Market event at Meltdown Comics, the Hollywood comic book store for whom I interview awesome writers and artists. BubblePunch is an event promotion team consisting of blogger Yume Ninja and accessories designer Michelle Nguyen, aka Chubby Bunny. (For more on Chubby Bunny, check out the studio tour Shannon and I did for L.A. Weekly last year.)

I stopped by the event for a little while after checking out a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic screening at Royal/T.

The Super*Market vendors set up shop in the store’s parking lot as well as inside Nerdist Theater/gallery, surrounded by work from the venue’s current show, “Muchos Kstew.” (More about that in “Lots of Images of Kristen Stewart”)
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Lots of Images of Kristen Stewart

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Hot Mouth by Kate Ward (Photo: Liz O.)

I met Kristen Stewart once. It was at a premiere for a movie I never saw, for a story I never wrote and our exchange lasted no more than two minutes. I don’t remember the exact conversation, I just remember that she seemed quite the opposite of everyone else I’ve met in my very limited experience of attending Hollywood events.

Red carpet events are a peculiar phenomenon. Though the carpet often isn’t red, the events are almost interchangeable. You have a bunch of reporters on the side of the carpet, each one given a space about the size of an 8″ x 10″ glossy. You wait for hours, in this case, in sunlight so bright that no amount of sunscreen could protect yours truly from a violent burn. You’re given a cheat sheet with the names and photos of the known attendees. You will reference this sheet a lot. Of course, a few more unannounced people will arrive and you will likely have no idea who they are even though they fall into that “celebrity” category. If– and this is definitely an if– you can score an interview with one of the stars, you’re given one or two questions and your goal is to keep them talking until a publicist drags them towards the next reporter. The actors are obviously well-rehearsed for these sorts of events. The ladies walk in very expensive high-heeled shoes as though they have been strutting with books on their heads since childhood. They pose for the photographers as though they spent decades practicing for just this moment in front of a mirror. Men and women answer every question as a sound bite. If they say anything that could be construed as kind of/sort of controversial, it’s only because that’s part of a carefully cultivated rebellious image.

I know this sounds cynical, but when you grow up in Los Angeles, you learn that nothing is real well before you learn how to drive.
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