~ time to get ready for the convention at www.d2kla.org

~ are you looking for the photos of the new home for the southern california institute of architecture? in seven weeks, this building (*link removed) will be converted into the most intense, ‘avant garde’ graduate and under-graduate architectural school in downtown l.a., if not the world….

~ it might be late for a countdown, but there are now less than four hours until the first showing, at midnight, of ‘x-men’ in los angeles.

~ the mazda 323 still lies dead in the road.

~ why the angry red planet loathes cars, lesson 10: while phobos looked on, i spent an hour installing a new $129 alternator into the mazda 323. once i believed the job was complete, i attempt to start the engine, to no avail. i have the theory that the battery is discharged due to the abuse it suffered while the previous alternator is dead…

~ the angry red planet has been removed from service for the past week due to another two-pronged assault on its operations. last thursday, while the angry red machine rested alone, somehow havoc was wrought against its ‘tcp’ installations, causing internet connectivity to come to a halt and inspiring a half-dozen hikes to the local library to visit micr*s*ft’s support and downloads pages. a day after this ‘crash’, while driving through ‘mossland’, the mazda 323 suffered a fatal electrical problem which has rendered it useless to this day. it’s carcass sits in the road outside the angry red office, with its tags still fresh from the previous week’s $400 emission repairs.

~ the very first information that the restored internet connection was that lars ulrich had testified before the senate over napster [w].

~ after viewing a rock-and-roll show in santa ana on saturday, i explained to my companion the good-natured contempt i have often seen expressed towards drummers: ‘who’s that guy hanging out with the musicians?…the drummer.’ we challenged ourselves to name by name a ‘famous’ drummer, and the best only names we came up with were neal pert and the drummer for van halen, whose name i have subsequently forgotten in the past two days. i wonder how someone as prolific and clearly as renaissance as lars ulrich escaped our attention; after all, you may remember, he is testifying to the u.s.senate about napster [w].

~ the angry red planet is back after a four-day ‘holiday’ spent entertaining guests from no.cal. yesterday was, of course, ‘independence day’ in the united states, so the angry red planet packed the car with water and headed out of los angeles and into 1,000 palms in the california desert. without notice to the angry red planet, the refuge we sought is closed for july and august. so, we turned back and wasted a total of $28 on mel gibson movies…

~ there is a new skywriter in los angeles.