How Trivial is Trivial?

Went to Father's Office, on Montana Ave. in Santa Monica, for burgers last Friday. They had a box of Trivial Pursuit cards on the table. We stopped playing after we came across this science question.

LAX Theme Room

Finally had a drink at the LAX theme room. Its retro-futuristic styling was pretty sweet. Some nice details: the small elevators, which only go from the ground to the restaurant/bar, play a short lounge song en route, one that's exactly the length of the journey; the beer and soda dispensers make futuristic lazer sounds when activated, and the soda dispenser is shaped like a ray gun. The lights on the building itself gradually change colors, which is something I didn't do a good job of documenting.

It's worth a visit, though I don't recommend going for a meal: the prices are absurd.

The Original

East LA, July 2006

Zillions

East LA, July 2006

A Meticulous Descriptive Quality

In his essay "Why I Write", George Orwell notes that his writing, even when he was a teen, strove to have "the same meticulous descriptive quality". One thing he means by this is that he always strove to detail the concrete particulars of the things he experienced. This is something I really like in Orwell, but it's something I appreciate in other writers and documentarians as well. A. J. Liebling's profiles in the New Yorker, for instance, are replete with precise (at least according to Liebling's biographer) quotations of the figures profiled. In his profile of Hymie Katz, for example, Liebling quotes someone saying of Katz that he "is a man what knows to get a dollar".

It's hard to capture a sentence like that without distorting it by correcting it or just remembering the gist of it. Similarly, it's hard to capture the concrete details of the mundane things that surround us in everyday life, just because we tend to take them for granted, or not even notice them at all. Nat's recent post about the paintings on the side of hot dog vans at the National Mall in DC is an exception in this regard, I think, because it succeeds at capturing some of these details--in all of their concrete particularity--and thereby achieves a certain meticulous descriptive quality, of a sort that Orwell might admire. Check it out.

Minature Dentures

From a museum of minatures in Santa Monica. July 2006.

The Obvious Culprits

I should've said this in my previous post, but the freaks above are the culprits behind the pseudo-museum below. Here's a list of some of the patently false claims the "museum" makes.

Death, Inc.

I thought PJ would appreciate/be depressed by this. I had to restrain Meredith from assaulting the late night security guard at this "museum". I thought he shouldn't be held responsible for the wrongs of his employers.

Sunset Blvd., July 2006

Niche Marketing

Ralph's, July 2006

For the Weekend

Concepts for Sale

My first reactions:
(1) Frege wouldn't approve.
(2) Do they employ philosophers?

Westwood, Feb. 2006

Chinatown

This Chinatown doesn't come with any neon. But it's portable.

Party City, June 2006

Los Feliz Neon

July 2006

Chinatown Neon

July 2006

What the Pho

Near Koreatown. June 2006.