Went and saw Latinologues at the Coronet Theatre, West Hollywood. It was brilliant and hilarious even though a lot of the jokes went over our heads (naturally). The improv performances were trully awesome. Forest Whitaker was there and for the first time I didn’t bring the camera.

Then we saw The Star Wars Trilogy in 30 minutes which was fast and funny. “Now I don’t have to sit through the Star Wars Trilogy. I have just seen it all in 30 minutes” - eddie

Also had dinner/supper with Jorge, Sandra, Ricky and Gabe at Swingers on Beverley Blvd and listened to some of Jorge’s and Gabe’s bizarre animation school/art school stories.

Tomorrow we’re going to head out to Santa Monica and do some shopping in Third St Promenade. It’s Astro Boy’s birthday on Sunday, and there will be a special 2-hour opening reception in Little Tokyo where I think we’ll see lots of animation people.

Link: The Tezuka website

I have a Tiki-Mon set!

We sent our some copies of Lava Palaver a couple of weeks ago before leaving Syd. This was a sneak preview of a movie intended for video, and technically we heard there may have been some problems getting the files to run smoothly on CD…

Anyway, the CD we sent to Hanford LeMoore of Tiki Central Forums did work, and I received this feedback:

Over the weekend I played Lava Palaver … what ablast! It’s very funny, it had me laughing out loudthrough the whole thing. I am very impressed with it.
I think it really captures the right kind offun loungy tiki mood that frames the Tiki genre correctly. Kudos to fwak!

Thanks, Hanford!

When we’re back in Sydney we’ll definitely output to video or DVD. Maybe even show some of this on the web…

More lucha in LA! Sunday, May 4th, 5:00 PM “Battle of Cinco de Mayo”, Lazaro’s Ballroom, 1951 South Vermont Ave, Los Angeles. (1 block south of Washington). The card looks great. Details on the FPU messageboard.

 

1st Voice Recording Session

We had the first ML recording session today which went for SIX HOURS straight, and involved a room full of at least 10 people including the DVD crew.

I wished I had taken pics of Carlos (Rikochet), Kimberley (Buena Girl) and Candi (The Flea)… maybe next time. Other voices were performed by some Canadian actors whose names I don’t quite remember (doin’ it direct from Canada) and Benito Martinez (Lone Star).

L to R: Eddie, me at the back, Michael Diaz, Ken Kessel, Joel Kuwahara. We are all sitting facing the recording crew and booth.

Links

Astro Boy in jewels
The Dullest Blog In The World
Smart Cars!
Hundreds of cats (in Russian)

Lucha Libre next week

Revolution Pro event: Saturday April 12th, 2:00pm Bell Time
at the Frank & Sons Arena 19649 San Jose Ave. City Of Industry. (“Evil” Lone Star, huh?) See the card on the FPU messageboard.

This one’s for Michael, Evan, Gavin and Jonathan @FWAK:

OK guys, you’ve heard us talk about Amoeba Music and asked you if you want us to bring you anything from L.A.

Any CDs? Videos? DVDs? Seriously, tell us what you want.

Below is a pic of Amoeba Music taken from upstairs (the Video/DVD section). What you see here is only a SMALL section of the whole place. Maybe a quarter of the size. There is every music genre you can possible think of, including cheaper used-stuff (CDs, cassettes, vinyl).

Eddie in the video section

Well, we got carried away as always and got ourselves a heap of booty!

• Arling & Cameron: Sound Shopping (CD)
• Let’s Do Rocksteady – The Story of Rocksteady 1966-68 (CD)
• Chicano Spirit Vol 2 - A selection of heavy latin funk tracks from the early 70′s (CD)
• Disco D’nB (CD)
• Ursula 1000: All Systems Are Go (CD)
• Octagon y Atlantis in La Revancha (VHS)

• Santo vs Los Villanos del Ring (VHS)
• Santo and Blue Demon Vs The Monsters (VHS)
• Santo and Blue Demon Vs The Satanic Powers (VHS)
• Twist - a film by Ron Mann (DVD)

We’ll be going back there, so email us and let us know if there is anything you want us to look out for.

Had lunch with Joel today in a little Sicilian restaurant ïn Sherman Oaks. Curiously enough, you order your choice of pasta (spaghetti, rigatoni, linguini etc.) and you only get two choices of flavouring – meat sauce or marinara sauce. Eddie’s rigatoni with marinara sauce was literally THAT. A plate of pasta and a topping of red sauce with nothing in it. Bizarre.

Some ML news:  It seems that the Build-Your-Own-Wrestler game on the ML website  might be progressing to a new level of coolness! Nothing is confirmed yet but if we are lucky this second season (fingers crossed!), we might soon be able to create wrestlers and also make them WRESTLE EACH OTHER in an online point-scoring game. How cool is that? As I said, this isn’t definitely going ahead, but it COULD happen…

P.S. The above wrestler pic was stolen from this page. Not that I am too lazy to build one myself. Believe me, I have tried a hundred different combinations already…

Hey Darren, thanks for your subscription, your frequent comments and the plug!

One challenge about keeping a weblog is resisting the temptation to write about anything and everything especially matters related to “production” and “confidential professional stuff”… So if our daily entries seem somewhat frivolous (ie, all we write about is food, movies, and shopping) remember, there’s plenty more goin’ on…

Tonight after work, we went to Tower Records (just round the corner!) and bought ourselves a boombox. Either this or two months without music. Then had dinner at El Rancho nearby on Ventura Blvd where the carne asade had the texture of rubber…

Sherman Oaks is not too bad. There’s a Whole Foods supermarket 3 minutes away. Heaps of restaurants on Ventura.

Some memorable eating places we’ve been taken to for dinner (over separate trips to LA):

• Authentic Cafe (Beverly Blvd, Fairfax) – Matt Dillon was there the first time we went.
• Fred 62 Diner (Vermont Ave, Los Feliz). We first met KR here and he told us all about the history of his publication. In fact, we’re kinda drawn to ALL diners as we don’t have these in Australia. Canter’s in Fairfax was also cool, being open 24 hrs.
• Firefly (Van Nuys?) Had dinner with WBA execs and the Network. Good food!
• Katana (Sunset Strip) Excellent variety of Japanese food. One of those places where you want to try everything on the menu.
• El Cid (Sunset) – Flamenco show and dinner
• Dr Hogly Wogly’s Texas BBQ - There was a lot of meat here. More than we’d ever seen in our entire life. Good stuff though we’d just spent several weeks on a no red meat diet!
• Musso and Frank Grill (Hollywood) – Very old L.A. We can just imagine Raymond Burr in his Perry Mason heyday escorted to his table where he orders his sirloin steak with mashed potato and loads of butter….

Lunctime at WBA, we have a choice between burgers at

why does that F word always make us giggle?

…  Hana Grill (Japanese fast food), Quiznos (subs), PF Changs (Chinese restaurant) and The Cheesecake Factory. More observations on the dining experience in America:

• Serving sizes are BIG
• Drink sizes are BIG with unlimited refills (eg, coffee)
• LOTS of condiments and sauces
• CHILLI in America is different from CHILLI in Australia. In America, Chilli = Beans. Elsewhere, Chilli = Chilli peppers.

Peter (story editor) brought his son into WBA today. Jake was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, taking in all the sights, asking us Flash drawing questions, and suggesting some really funny story premises. Amazing kid. Jake is TWELVE years old!!! and he is learning Flash animation.

There is so much drive and talent in this town. We really are grateful to be here.

Off to bed now. Good night…

Today Michael Diaz asked us if there were any places we wanted to go to in LA or California. Sander had suggested a trip to Las Vegas….

After a visit to Booksoup tonight, (we bought Insight Guides: California and L.A. Bizarro) I am starting to wonder if two months will be enough!

• Downtown LA
• Tijuana - this is a definite!
• Roadtrip to San Francisco
• Eddie wants to check out Santa Barbara and the
• Santa Monica Mountains
• Anaheim. It’s about time we made it to Disneyland!
• Palm Springs. Christopher mentioned a Tiki-themed motel…
• Tiki Ti tiki bar (drink menu)
• The Madonna Inn. It’s so kitsch I gotta go there! Take the room tour!
• Cartoon Color Company to stock up on animation supplies for Fwak!
• And there will be more….

Last night we had dinner at Toi (punk rock Thai restaurant) on Sunset Blvd, then saw Spun. For a drug movie, I thought it was everything a drug movie usually is and it was entertaining in a drug-movie sort of way. Fast, trashy, gruesome, and ultimately TRAGIC.  I think this review pretty much sums it up.

Once the pizzazz of quick cuts and graphic novel touches has washed over the normal tell-tale signs of substance abuse by all the characters, you’re left with another drug movie that feels as if it’s trying too hard to be Trainspotting, without the spiffy production design.

…Because you can read between the lines, or simply take it all at face value and come out realizing that Spun isn’t taking itself any more seriously than the characters within take their own lives. Expect much rapid eye movement and automatically raised eyebrows.

Eddie: “Looked great but spent two hours waiting for something to happen.”

Short note to Sandra (if you are reading this): ~ We enjoyed hanging out with you guys last night and seeing the movie. If you want to start blogging, here are links to free weblog hosting sites: www.xanga.com, www.blogger.com, www.pitas.com Go Sandra!

… At Mel’s Drive-In on Sunset. It never ceases to amaze us how yellow American cheese is. We picked #201 “Rock-a-Hula-Baby” by Elvis, but the jukebox played something else awfully-croony.