Shooting In Santa Monica

By: Ben Tiernan

Sorry I'm a few days late on this one, but there was a shooting on the corner of 21st and Wilshire on Sunday Night. This picture is of the police activity that followed. According to one witness that I spoke with, a young man was shot four times by the police. He may have had a gun and he may have shot it in a club before the police arrived.

Since this is a few days late, I'm sure some other site has the story straight by now.

My Dead Cactus

By: Ben Tiernan

This is my dead cactus. This cactus died so that I might live...in my office without a cactus.

It was a present, so I tried to care for it and not to kill it like I would if I had just found it or bought it on a whim. But this cactus was a mouse to my Lenny, and my caring was clumsy and overpowering.

I watered this cactus so that it might thrive, but alas it dwendled, and turned brown and leaned flacid on the potted, soil floor.

Santa Monica Pier

Grunion Did Not Run

By: Ben Tiernan

Yesterday, the LA Times and local TV news shows covered the seasonal California phenomenon called the Grunion Run.

Not to be outdone, today, Tin Car covers the Grunion Run, in an exclusive story.

Grunion are small, silvery shellfish that live off the California coast and at low tide, during the Summer and on a full moon, they throw themselves onto the shore to spawn. The early-morning spawning ritual is known locally as the Grunion Run, and people head to the beach to watch the phenomenon and maybe pick up breakfast.

The picture above show's the coastline today at 6:05am just off the Venice Beach pier, and it is unequivocal proof that today - the day after beaches were covered with silverfish getting down in funky town - the grunion did not run.

That's right, this dogged reporter woke up at 5:45am and went to the beach expecting to report on the 2nd day of "The Run", but only found a deep low tide and an empty beach. Sure there were runners: Dogs ran, people ran, but nary a Grunion ran.

Of course, Tin Car is delighted to deliver this exclusive story to it's readers, and show proof positive that this blog covers the stories that no one else dares to cover.

Boating

My brother, who is awesome, bought a boat last month. This is no ordinary Budweiser and Sea-do, drive to the bay in my Durango SUV with the Miami Vice theme song pounding in my subconscious kind of boat. This is a Heritage piece. This is a transplant from "Heart Of Darkness". This is a boat where one thinks about rivets. It's wooden, with a long snout and a big diesel engine with an exhaust pipe mounted dangerously behind the leather captains chairs. It is old with a beautiful patina, and begs one to throw on their topsiders and learn about shellac.

Here's Jill having a good time.

Country Fun

By: Ben Tiernan

Dave and Suzy called my cell phone while Andrew was explaining to me the various stages in the season when they spray grapes with growth regulators. Andrew had spent the morning driving around the vineyards checking on the progress of the work-crews, and assigning their stations for Monday morning. I’d accompanied him in the passenger seat of the truck tending to my hangover and trying to avoid situations where I might have to speak Spanish.

Dave and Suzy with a Glock

Dave and Suzy were lost, which was a very reasonable thing to be since Andrew lives among hundreds of miles of vineyards with no distinguishing characteristics to the untrained eye, and vast, unmarked country roads. I told them to pull over, so that we could come find them witch we did with surprising ease.

As a farmer, we, the city folk, like to exploit Andrew’s access to vast, open, untamed space and tap into the lawless wilderness with decadent abandon.

As evidence, we wanted to shoot guns. Andrew recently bought a .40 caliber Glock to protect himself against home invasion because his home had been invaded one night. He also had a shotgun that he carried around in the back of his work truck to shoot at little birds that eat grapes off the vine.

Access to these wholly foreign, but significant cultural icons was too much to pass up. First, we shot the handgun, which was disturbing for a while as I considered that the tool in my hand was engineered specifically to kill people. Then I realized that, with it, I was just like Jet Lee and I cranked out shells rapid fire with my only remorse that I was not wearing a black suit and I didn’t have a gun for both hands.

Andrew and Dave were both much better shots than I was and Suzy, who was a novice, took to the sport with natural aptitude.


Next, we shot shotguns, or rather we shot skeet. The best way to put it would be to say that Andrew and Dave shot skeet and Suzy and I shot shotguns at skeet, but I could tell that the skeet were never very concerned when Suzy and I were up. The take away from the skeet shooting was that there is nothing on this earth that makes you feel quite as viril as cocking a pump-action, 12-gage shotgun.

Another take away was that when they protected the right to bear arms in the 2nd Amendment, they probably didn't have me in mind. When I'm popping off caps at wine bottles, I begin to wonder if perhaps the NRA lobbys too effectively.

On The Farm

I'm in a pickup with a shotgun and Andrew.

La Tia Lupita's

Tacos for breakfast at a catering truck in Delano, CA. That's Tia Lupita in the corner making tortias. She runs a tight ship.

LA To Bakersfield

I'm driving from LA to Bakersfield to visit Andrew. There's a ton of traffic - it's Friday afternoon. Dave and Suzy are coming up tomorrow.

On the docket for this weekend: Rodeo, whiskey, and can racing. Can racing is a game that involves shooting a can over and over until it leaps so far away that your poor aim prevents you from hitting it.

I'm trying to get into guns.

Jill told me not to shoot myself. I told her that I wouldn't shoot anyone. She told me not to lie.

More Is More

Jill and I are engaged, but the details of the proposal, the champagne, and the love are all a little mushy and not really tin car quality material. A month of premarital bliss has transpired now, and I’ve rarely had an emotion that wouldn’t qualify as schmaltzy. The rights of marriage are not typically the topics that get tin car’s readership going, that is until today when Jill and I participated in the gluttony of wedding gift registration.

The tradition of registering for wedding gifts is a tumultuous and emotionally complex event with the primary emotion being greed, followed closely by entitlement, and aggression. This delicate mental state is pressed into action by primal impulses of consumerism that originate in the brainstem of the children of free-market capitalism who are old enough to fornicate and carry debt. Scientists have speculated that the registry impulse is related to the slightly higher-level impulse function to dry-clean jeans.

As a novice at marriage, I was unfamiliar with the customs of the bridal registry, so I’ve done my best to infer some basic rules to help fellow novices feel more at ease with the plunder.

Here are the rules:

1. Get while the getting’s good

The mores of our culture are set up to give you one good chance to demand that your friends and loved ones buy expensive bobbles for your home, and if you don’t take advantage of this windfall, you’ll never get a second chance.

2. If it exists, register for it

One of the biggest faux pas of a bridal registry is not to want enough shit. Wedding guests are required to buy you a gift by social laws that are older and more binding than congressional legislation, so it is imperative that there is enough shit on the registry for everyone to find a contribution. When you register, the question is not if you need a 6th crystal, fruit bowl or even if you want it. The question is can you tolerate it. Quantity is the issue here.

3. Believe you live in a mansion

You may live in a five hundred square-foot apartment that is questionably large enough to hold a bed and a laundry basket, but shop like you’re filling a Hapsburg palace.

While the building of the registry is afoot, there are some dangerous ideas that may come slithering into mind and these ideas are to be dashed to the curb so you can focus on “getting yours”. Here are some thoughts that may arise that are to be treated lightly and with indifference.

• That’s a lot of money to ask people to spend on a creamer.
• We can’t fit all this in our house.
• I’m really quite sure I’d never use that.
• Won’t people get mad at us for asking them to spend so much money?
• Are the dishes that we already have really so inferior to these dishes?

Don’t let these kinds of corrupting thoughts confuse the issue of engagement. Stay true to the tradition and register like a pirate claiming his booty.

Coffee & Bacon

Coffee and bacon are the cigarettes and whiskey of breakfast.

Hooky

Dan Ho's Birthday

We came to Chan Dara...and saw Phil Jackson. Dan was eager to kiss Phil on the lips - he pushes his Birthday entitlement to the limits, but Phil escaped unmolested. Dan picked up the bill which was awesome. I guess that's what you're suposed to do when you're over 30.

Dan does everything right. He even sent out a gracious follow-up email to all the people that attended.

I'm turning 30 later this month, but I don't see myself picking up too many tabs. Maybe one or two, but if your reading this and your coming, don't think your floating by on my dime all night, you freeloading hippie. But I'm really glad your coming.

Vinoteca Farfalla - Follow Up

It turns out that Vinoteca Farfalla is not in Silverlake. It's in Los Feliz...so they're used to the bourgeois. No problem.

Vinoteca Farfalla

At a new wine bar called Vinoteca Farfalla with Vic. It's in Silverlake so you know all the neigbors groaned when they heard a wine bar was opening up...so bourgeois. I like it.

Melissa And The Scientologists

By: Ben Tiernan


I have a friend named Melissa, and she’s awesome. Among her many incarnations of awesomeness, she’s the Managing Editor of Television Week which sounds pretty damned fancy to me. MSN, which is a cable network, also thinks Melissa’s awesome. That’s why they choose her to espouse on the topic of Scientologists and the media. Here’s a a video of Melissa doing her thing.

Rogue Poet

By: Ben Tiernan

I thought that I was a fan of William Blake. His “Songs of Innocence and Experience” is quintessential stoner lit, and he’s revered as an engraver turned self-taught genius poet – which appeals to me. His public artistic life had the flash in the pan characteristics of modern celebrity, but his art endured, and that’s cool too.

He was a rogue artist whose work was related to the late 18th century Romantics, but kissing cousins at best. His work was better suited for the French Symbolists who were popular half a century after he died. His personal engravings, and those he produced for his own publications are cerebral, symbolic and way out there – again, totally unique an cool.

Turns out, he’s too far out there for me. I just can’t get into him like I used to. His poetry seems simple and a little crazy, and his engravings give me nightmares.

I grow old…I grow old…, I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

This is what I'm talking about. Scarry right?

Wage Slave

By: Ben Tiernan

While I was out having a few drinks with a friend, he told me a story about a coworker of his that travels most of the year for his job. This coworker is important to the organization and well paid, but the obligations of his position keep him on the road and away from his family.

One day, his young son asked him, “Dad, what’s it like living at the airport?” His son actually thought his father live at the airport. This makes me wonder, is his son a moron?

Good Song: Naked

Usually, I reserve something as trite as song sharing for my Myspace profile, because myspace is for desperate losers, but this song is so good...it's awesome.

Dig it...This person is naked. So what?

"Tsotsi" Not An Obscure Film

By: Ben Tiernan

Friends and acquaintances have informed me that "Tsotsi" is not an obscure film. I’d never heard of it before I saw it, and I really thought its cultural relevance ended at the inspiration for the game “Which Member Of Tsotsi’s Gang Are You?”

Apparently, it even won an Oscar – I believe it was for Best Movie Based On A Game.

Tin Car Gets 10 Page Views A Day

By: Ben Tiernan

Choke on that, New Yorker. Tin Car gets an average of 10 page views a day from as many as four unique daily visitors. That’s right, that’s four people that won’t be reading encrypted “Shouts And Murmurs,” or fancy “Goings On About Town”. Better not turn around, them’s Tin Car’s footsteps you hear behind you.

To those noble four readers who spend an average of 5 minutes and 50 seconds on the site, you are forward thinking and attractive. You are intelligent, well kept and expeditious. You are creative, moral and misunderstood. Tin Car understands you. Tin Car has your back.

To address Tin Car’s dismal readership, I’ve updated the promotional video with hip new music from “The Lonesome Architects”. Thanks to “The Lonesome Architects” for making beautiful music and for letting me use it, and thanks to David for giving them a call.

Here’s the updated clip. I entered it in a contest for videos under 1 minute to get some exposure. You can go HERE to vote for it. Four more votes can’t hurt.

Ancient Art

By: Ben Tiernan

It’s been a big music week for me: I saw the Black Eyed Peas tear up a charity dinner, I saw the Queens Of The Stone Age and I saw the Rolling Stones. First of all, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Fergie perform her hip-hop acrobatics to “Pump It” in a ball gown. The Queens of Whatever opened for the Rolling Stones, and I’m happy to say that the QOTSA rocked. What ever it is that I’d heard of theirs before was more manicured than the hodgepodge of sounds lost in distortion that erupting from stage Monday night. It was very cool.

I’d never seen the Rolling Stones live before. I’d caught a performance or two on TV at some major cultural events like the Super Bowl, and Live Aid, and personally I always thought their performances were a little lame. My experience with the Stones was that of ancient rockers cashing out on their once relevant rock anthems of youth and rebellion. Of course, I knew it was important to see the Stones, and I was genuinely excited, but my expectations were low.


It turns out that seeing the Rolling Stones live is like viewing a familiar masterpiece in person. It’s like standing in front of Michael Angelo’s “David” for the first time – you’re reaction is, “That’s awesome.” The analogy of Michael Angelo’s “David” and the Stones is particularly appropriate because their awesomeness is made even more impressive because they are so old.

Those skinny little Brits jumped around the stage like they were 45 years younger, and they sang everything. You don’t realize it, but every song ever recorded before 1989 is a Rolling Stones song. Beyond Satisfaction, and Jumping Jack Flash there is boundless world of songs that you learn at birth, and those are also Rolling Stones songs. I suppose I knew that old farts could rock too, but it was nice to see it proved.

WHICH MEMBER OF TSOTSI’S GANG ARE YOU?

By: Ben Tiernan

I saw a movie called Tsotsi this weekend. It’s a South African movie about a boy living in a shantytown who is a hardened criminal by his mid-teens. When he steals a car and shoots the owner he finds a baby boy in the back seat. It’s a lot like Savannah Smiles in pigeon Afrikaans.

Tsotsi is the leader of a gang of misfit thugs. Some are murderous, and some are happy go lucky, and while I watched the movie I thought that these were good modern archetypes. The thought led me to ask:

WHICH MEMBER OF TSOTSI’S GANG ARE YOU?

Choose which member of Tsotsi’s gang of delinquent man-boys you’re most like.

Tsotsi


Grew up on the streets of Johannesburg's shantytowns, making his home in abandoned drainpipes on the edge of these sprawling ghettos. Having lost his parents to AIDS at the age of nine he has no memory of his early family life. Tsotsi is the leader of a small gang, which is comprised of Die Aap, Boston and Butcher. He appears to have no moral or ethical problem with inflicting violence on anyone who stands in his way, and only tolerates his crew as long as they continue to serve his purpose.


Boston


Is much smarter than his companions. Unlike the other members of Tsotsi's gang, Boston is filled with an immense self-loathing and a hatred of violence. When drunk, Boston cannot control his tongue and constantly talks down to those he thinks are less intelligent than him.


Die Aap


Has been Tsotsi's loyal follower since childhood. He is big, strong and stupid but is happy to do as Tsotsi orders.


Butcher


Is the most bloodthirsty of Tsotsi's gang and thrives on inflicting pain upon others. Butcher has never known a moment of love in his whole life and is probably beyond redemption.


Let me know what member of Tsotsi's gang you're most like.

Nothing New Here

It turns out that Jedd, soothsayer that he is, already predicted the existential crisis I bitch about in “Little Boxes Of Life”. He wrote a paper about it three years ago called, “The effects of digital communication on face-to-face and voice-to-voice interaction; is e-mail a catalyst or crutch?” The title alone is longer than my whole post about the subject. Go to tin car Essays to read the paper.

Music Day: Have Rock Will Travel

By: Ben Tiernan

Time spent traveling on a train is pensive, philosophical time, or, at least it can be. For me, right now, I’m a bit hung over, and rocking out in my little cocoon of sound to a new CD from She Wants Revenge – which, by the way, rocks – and I’m en route from Solana Beach to Los Angeles. So, on the train I speculate about rock and travel.

It’s important to provide a sound track for travel…in life. People know this, that’s why there are millions of road-trip mixes. The association of travel and music is primal – there’s something basic linear about movement. Getting from hear to there paired with the fixed pace of footsteps or the wurr of engines simulates the basic sensation of the progress, and the steady reassuring tempo of a song.

Today, I like She Wants Revenge, which seems to be a self titled album. They employ satisfying bass-lines that lay footsteps to the wurr of my whisk up the coastline: punctuation to the sage and limestone blur to the east, and vast, steel ocean to the west. They have an 80’s, English, Mod thing going on if that can be said – I’ll have to check my lexicon with David and Tom. They feel English, and I think they even sound English, but everything I can tell from the liner notes, says they’re from Santa Monica.

Rock is the thing for modern travel. Hyper-speed progress leaves you no time to consider the your place in time and space. There is no consideration of the elements of the landscape: a tree, a house, and a fence. There is just landscape, and your place actually has nothing to do with the landscape because your place is in motion (relativity plays in here, I’m sure).

Rock always feels two steps ahead of me as my mind moves from chord to chord, rarely pausing and always quick-tempo. The elements blend as the tempo drives forward and there is no time for meditation. The state of the rock song is simply in motion.

I also have a new Eels CD: “With Strings Live, At Town Hall”. I haven’t listened to it yet, because She Wants Revenge rocks so hard.

Music Day: Self-Titled Albums

By: Ben Tiernan

Why do so many bands self-title their first album? It shows more than just lack of creativity, I think it shows lack of foresight and vision. What if they manage to pull together another album and that one rocks too? And what if they become rock idols after a few CDs? Don’t you want your magnum opus, your stake in the ground, your topper, your piece de la resistance to be the self-titled album?

How cool would that be if the White Stripes came out with a White Stripes album now? It would be like “This is the one. Rec my rod.” It would be the anointed album destined to tear a hole in the universe from which will poor the future of rock. Instead they probably blew the self-title card on some garage album that only David and Tom know about.

This may not be true, but I’m not going to research it.

Music Day: Hidden Tracks

By: Ben Tiernan

I also don’t understand bonus tracks or hidden tracks:

1) Why not just call them regular tracks? It’s not like they’re not on the album.
2) They’re never very good. They’re just more.

Music Day: Songs Or Tracks

By: Ben Tiernan

I don’t know why we have to call songs tracks, when they’re songs. I’m sure it has something to do with the magnetic strips and master reels and copyrights, but most people are neither sound engineers nor music industry lawyers. No one ever sings a track. I’m going to call them songs.

I'm No Luddite

By: Ben Tiernan

So this communing idea is a Romantic concept, but I think we all agree that there is an inverse relationship between the quality of experience and the amount of mediation.

(Someone should put a formula to that – the quantity of mediation – we can call it the mediation conversion: something like (Sense/Media Quality) x Shared Experience = Quantity of Mediation. I’d buy it.)

In any case, I’m just saying that shared experience and face-to-face communication is more satisfying than an IM.

I’m no luddite; I love my IM. I’m just saying.

Little Boxes Of Life

I don’t know what to feel about this life where my leisure is compartmentalized into an appointment format. Last night, I made jambalaya and hurricanes for some friends, this morning Jill and I went to breakfast with her friend from Philly and her new beau. Now, we’re off to San Diego for lunch with my mother. It’s all enjoyable, but the compartmentalizing of each experience makes me a little uneasy.

I worry that perhaps it is all disingenuous. The fusion of efficiency and meaningful human interaction feels counterintuitive. At work I have meetings with superficial objectives like, “let’s discuss the impact of the production timeline on the media plan. It will take one hour”. The objective of communing, however, needs fuzzy boarders.

Jill points out that I have very little free time so if I want to see the people I want to see, I have to carve out time for each of them. She’s right, of course, and the larger questions of work and leisure, life priorities, spending and getting all loom not far beyond this issue.

The roll of technology: cell phones, IM, email, on-line communities, personal media networks, etc. also play into the question: When we interact so efficiently does it lose meaning? With all this dialogue, do we ever commune?

The jambalaya was delicious.

Cosmic Silk

By: Ben Tiernan

Since I wrote Black Tie Formal about the 2005 Golden Globes, which was my first black tie event ever, I’ve had the opportunity to don my formalwear four more times. The attire is simple and appropriate – the kind of outfit you’d call a workhorse – and I like it because it was all off-the-rack stuff from Macy’s. I have a black suit, a black tie, and sleazy, Italian shoes buffed bright enough to guide ships in the fog. The suit is my tuxedo. There’s no bowtie and no cumber bun, but the traditional monkey suit seems old-fashioned and the shimmering silk necktie makes me feel in vogue.

There is something cosmic about that suit. Once I bought it I needed it. My brother got married and I needed the suit, some of Jill’s friends got married and I needed the suit; the Golden Globes came back around and I needed the suit. Andrew Eddy invited Jill and me to go with him and Lisa to a charity dinner and I needed the suit. It’s a hellofa suit. I’m wearing it later this month at an advertising event and next month in Seattle. Who knew you could go black tie in Seattle.

Here is a picture of me looking tense in my suit with some other people...



This flurry of black tie events makes me wonder – Is my suit a metaphor? Does the assumption of ownership cause the stars to align giving it purpose? Did my purchase of a formal suit somehow secure my brothers wedding? Does that fact that I own a black suit mean I will get invited to charity dinners, and industry events? How do they know?

Perhaps I should take this cosmic coincidence for a spin and see how it handles: hotel reservations in Europe with no plans to go – I’ll just see what happens. Porsches are awfully expensive these days, but maybe if I buy the keychain a Porsche will just manifest. I’ve never owned a company, but maybe if I start screwing people someone will just give me one.

I apologize if my stars aligning in anyway disjoint your stars. I promise I won’t be using them long. There is already a cigarette burn in my suit.

Awesomeness

I just made a Myspace profile, and it's awesome. It's so awesome that your computer may not be able to support all of its awesomeness. You may just see parts of the whole and due to your imperfect processing certain aspects may seem random, incongruous or even unfair, like when good people die.