OK, it’s not Friday, but I’m going to blog about cats anyway. After Krissy posted her desire for an apple oufit for Noah, I have to admit I want to make a fruit helmet for Tippit.

Wouldn’t Tippit look cute in one!

Found via Boing Boing

One of my current favorite bands, She Wants Revenge, performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night. I have seen this band a few times at a local club, so it was cool to see them on their first nation-wide performance. They played their song “Tear You Apart”, but understandably had to change the chorus from “I’d love to fuckin’ tear you apart” to “I’d really love to tear you apart”. Other than that I thought they sounded pretty good.

I expect big things from this band in the future. Their self titled CD doesn’t come out until January 31st, but they already seem to be getting a big buzz.

They are kicking off a national tour soon. To see tour dates and listen to some of their songs, check out their MySpace page. They also have a couple of videos on the She Wants Revenge website.

I also just noticed that the video for Tear You Apart will be out on mtvU.com on January 30th.

I consider myself a little bit of a monkey, so it’s quite a shock that I’ve been peeling bananas from the wrong end all my life.

It seems monkeys peel bananas by pinching the non-stem end. I don’t have any bananas to test this on, but can’t wait to try out this technique.

I saw this on Kottke.org and thought it was fun. Bloggers are making lists of cities they have spent one or more nights in. The * indicates multiple, non-consecutive nights. Here’s my list:

Los Angeles, CA*
Austin, TX*
Las Vegas, NV
Toronto, Ont
Udora, Ont*
Orillia, Ont*
Chicago, IL
Monument Channel, Ont (on Georgian Bay)
San Francisco, CA
Sunnyvale, CA
Big White, BC
Carnival Pride (Cruise Ship off the coast of Mexico)

Overall it was a very slow travel year.

This is great. Someone has come up with an anti-telemarketing counter script. This provides a great script to follow the next time some annoying telemarketer calls. It might not stop the calls, but you might feel like you got some revenge.

Found via Boing Boing.

The Los Angeles County Environmental Health Restaurant Rating site is a must visit site for an L.A. area diners. Here you can find out what inspection score any restaurant in the county got. L.A. rates restaurants on a 100 point score with ‘A’ being 90-100 , ‘B’ is 80-89, and ‘C’ is 70-79. We never go to any restaurant that didn’t get an ‘A’.

Even though I bought tickets for the Nouvelle Vague show at Tangerine last night, we didn’t see the show. We got to Tangerine and there was a line to get into the lounge. We stood there for a little bit before we realized the line was not moving, so we went to the front of the line and said we had bought tickets. It turns out the people in line didn’t have tickets, and we could get our tickets via will call. I gave my ID to the girl and she started looking up my name, but couldn’t find it. Strange. Luckily, we had the receipt along so we showed her that. She looked at it for a little and pointed out that I had bought tickets for Thursday’s show which was the day before. Doh!

I really should learn to double check things before click the ‘purchase’ button.

I just bought tickets for the Nouvelle Vague show at Tangier on Friday, and I was glad to see they did not use Ticketmaster for the tickets, instead they used a service called Virtuous. I have been getting sick of paying Ticketmaster’s outrageous fees lately. I bought tickets for the upcoming Cake/Tegan & Sara show and the tickets were $35 each, but the total came to $93.45. That’s $23.45 in fees! Yuck!

In contrast, Virtuous only charged $3.00 per ticket as a fee, and in addition:

Every Virtuous ticket purchase helps support people in need, close to home. How? 10% of our profit from each ticket purchase helps support the local food bank serving the community hosting the event.

For example, each ticket purchased for a Los Angeles event will help the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank obtain and deliver much needed food for the 350,000 individuals they serve each week through their network of over 1,070 charities in Los Angeles County.

How great is that? I hope more venues start using Virtuous.

Arrested Development may be the funniest sitcom ever. It’s such a shame no one watches it and it is in danger of being cancelled. (Although there is word that Showtime may pick it up.)

One character’s name is a funny one: Bob Loblaw (Say it out loud), and here is a bit from last night’s show:

Bob Loblaw: Actually, I was going to stay in my office tonight and work on my law blog.

Tobias: Of course— the “Bob Loblaw Law Blog.” Wow. You, sir, are a mouthful!

Another really funny bit was when Tobias was a combination Analyst and Therapist, so he shortened it to: Analrapist.

We went to Locanda Veneta for Michele’s birthday.

The restaurant was small and dimly lit, which made it romantic, but the tables were a little too close together for my liking.

The wine list had a half decent number of wines on it, but was on the pricey side. We had a bottle of the Concannon Petite Syrah for $52.

Appetizer was Melanzana alla Parmiggiana (grilled eggplant stuffed with mozzarella in a tomato basil sauce, baked “au gratin”) and Burrata Caprese (Burrata Cheese and tomatoes, served with olive oil and balsamic vinegar). The eggplant was good, but was overshadowed by the excellent Burrata. We will definitely be ordering that one again when we go back.

For main course I had a special: gnocchi with black cabbage and ricotta in a white bean sauce. The original white bean sauce had bacon in it, so I had them substitute it for another white bean sauce that they had. The gnocchi was good, but not great; I think I am still spoiled by the Gnocchi we had in Venice last year.

Michele was tempted by a special that night, a crab risotto with pomegranate seeds, but went with a regular menu item, the homemade black ravioli filled with fresh lobster served in a creamy saffron sauce. It was very good and Michele was very happy she ordered it.

Dessert was the Il “ Trio” Locanda: vanilla crème custard with caramel sauce, chocolate custard with fresh raspberry, and Panna Cotta with a fresh raspberry sauce. All three were very good and it was a great desert to split.

The service was good. The waiters and bus boys came with everything fairly quickly and cleared things well, but they never we needed to refill our wine glasses ourselves.

Rating
Food: 8/10
Atmosphere: 7/10
Service: 7/10

Locanda Veneta
8638 W 3rd St
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(310) 274-1893