This Should Be Interesting

July 01, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Today Kathy and I fly to Denver for my cousin Jeremy's wedding. We fly out of Ontario Airport, though, since it turned out to be significantly cheaper to get a direct flight from there than it was to get one from LAX. You wouldn't think that would be too big of a deal -- Ontario's only a few miles further from Downtown than LAX is, and LAX traffic can be a pain.

Complicating matters, though, is the fact that we're trying to get to the airport without a car. I don't have one, and Kathy's sister needs Kathy's to get to the summer school class she's taking at Pasadena City College. Metrolink runs tantilizingly close to the airport, but the connections to bridge the last few miles are virtually non-existent. The cleanest option I found was to take Metrolink to Fontana -- well past the airport -- and then take a 40 minute bus ride on Omnitrans line 61.

I didn't want to make the trip take that close to two hours, though, so right now the plan is to take Metrolink's San Bernadino line to the Upland station and then take a taxi. I just called an Upland cab company, and in theory there should be a cab waiting for us when we arrive. The train leaves Union Station at 11:20am, and is scheduled to put us into Upland at 12:17pm, which should give us lots of cushion for a 2:25pm flight.

And now with that all (hopefully) taken care of, I need to go pack my suit into a hang-up bag. Friday to Sunday trip, so we'll be going light.

Google Old News

June 30, 2005 by Eric Richardson

One of the searches I do regularly to see what's happening is a Google News search for downtown "los angeles". Just now I had quite a start when I clicked that link, sorted by date, and found the seventh story to be:

11 Die After Train Hits SUV KABC, CA - 1 hour ago ... That train had left Union Station at 5:48 am bound for downtown Burbank. ... Rick Godinez of the Los Angeles Fire Department said early on. ...

It was quite a relief to go to the linked story and find "last updated: 1/26/2005". I don't know what tripped Google into thinking it was a new story, but it scared me for a second there.

KCRW Podcast Listenership Up; Technical Problems Follow

June 30, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Several different sites, including LA Observed have noted that the launch of podcasts in Apple's iTunes store has led to a huge jump in the number of people listening to the KCRW streams.

Unfortunately it also seems to have led to some technical issues on the station's side. My download speed has roughly been cut in half, but more importantly files are showing up in the podcast RSS before they show up on the server. Yesterday morning the 6/28 files for both Which Way LA? and To the Point gave 404 errors even though they were in the respective feeds. Today the 6/29 file for Which Way LA? did the same thing. As of right now, that's still the case.

Update (3pm): I just noted from the file timestamps that To the Point's 6/28 and 6/29 shows both appeared around the same time: 6/29 @ 3pm. Which Way LA?'s 6/28 show appeared 6/29 @ 5pm. In contrast, other shows have appeared on their air date, at approximately 6:30pm.

LAist: A Little Too Full of "Theirself"

June 27, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I know, I beat LAist up a lot. But I swear it's just that "they" constantly give me a reason. Today the object of my ire is a piece on the LA Times' coverage of the slumping box office.

A story in the paper today which talks about the slump in box office for films in the USA and worldwide. The article blames the slump, in large part, on the poor quality product coming out of Hollywood. Too many sequels and other junk. Sounds familiar. Are we the first to say that most Hollywood films are not very good, especially lately? No. Have we been saying it recently and quite a bit? Yep. Does that mean the LA Times is reading LAist? Who knows?

Here's the thing: I'm pretty sure that everybody who's covered the "slump" has laid that out as a thing people are complaining about. In fact I bet you could go out on the street and poll people and come up with "poor quality product" as one of the top two answers. And I guarantee you that 99% of these people would have never heard of LAist.

Thirty seconds on technorati searching for box office slump found me plenty of month old entries blaming poor product. For instance, how about this one from 5/27:

As time goes on, Hollywood films get more and more inane, and as globalization continues, people are being exposed to films of a different, non-Hollywood nature. I think the public is beginning to get the idea that Hollywood sucks. It's time the movie industry adapted.

Or maybe this one from 5/12:

From other entertainment options to a lower quality of flicks to way too much Ashton Kutcher, all of the theories have been, well, theorized.

A month and a half later, LAist trys so desperately to hint that even though, yes, other people have mentioned the idea, the fact that the LA Times deemed fit to print it could just possibly mean that its reporters read LAist and found the not-so-unique idea there. Please, get off it. You're a group blog obsessed with the editorial 'we' that loves ads. Let that be enough.

Making the Grauman Rounds

June 25, 2005 by Eric Richardson

We went and saw Batman at the Chinese tonight. Only at the Chinese can you sit four rows from the back and still be amazed at just how big the screen is.

Beforehand we ate at the Pig'n Whistle. Though it's a little overpriced when it comes to drinks (I ordered Coke and it turned out to be a $3.50 glass bottle), the food's really good and you can't beat the interior for character.