When I was in LA I could have gone up to the Hollywood sign but never did, and uh, well, I’m not capable of regret anymore, but even if I was I wouldn’t regret it.

Having lived near downtown LA, I can tell you that like 50% of all car commercials are filmed within 2 miles and at all times expanding the shot like 5% would bring something into frame that would completely undercut the effect being evoked

Silversun Pickups – Lazy Eye (2006)

This is basically the closest my post-college (grad. 2005) years in LA come to mainstream legibility

rustingbridges:

why is los angeles where los angeles is

The first transcontinental railroad ran to San Francisco, and when a southern route was built the obvious western terminus was San Diego, but San Francisco elites feared the growth of another California power center so they pulled strings to get it redirected to Los Angeles, which was originally the agricultural lands feeding a Spanish mission and had no natural port. (They first built long piers around Malibu and then an artificial breakwater-protected harbor down by Long Beach.)

Then in 1892, the city was found to sit atop a major oil field and a drilling boom ensued, then in WWI the existence of a large labor force without strong left-labor organization like elsewhere on the west coast and in coastal shipping range of the wood-producing Pacific Northwest made it ideal to spin up a military aircraft industry.

Then after WWI, the booming Mediterranean-climate city drew a lot of immigrants from post-Ottoman lands as their national restructurings wrang out, then the motion picture industry relocated there from upstate New York for the weather and to get distance from Thomas Edison’s IP-enforcing goons, then in WWII that defense aerospace industry got even bigger, carrying the region through the Cold War.

max1461:

I’ve not encountered such a stereotype, but maybe it exists. I don’t think I’ve met any Armenians, so I can’t say if it’s true. Armenian followers: are you hotter than average?

In LA the stereotype was basically as West Coast Italians. Like, in the California version of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Carl would be Armenian.

One of the funnier details about me is I’m not only a trained fighter but trained by a Hollywood sensei so I can beat your ass in a way that looks legitimating

I’ve told the good ones already. Perhaps most fond of that time at a bar a guy tried to sucker-punch me at and went straight back to puff to his girl on assumption he took me down so I went over and dropped him with a right elbow, the bouncers were kind of impressed and threw him out down a flight of stairs

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

You know I don’t think I’ve ever seen a depiction of someone living on the first floor of one of those Japanese 2-story cheap apartment buildings, you know, perpendicular to the street with an exterior walkway for a hall?

The place I lived in Echo Park, 1026 N. Bonnie Brae St., was kinda like this, but it was 2brs ziggurating down the hillside with a dingbat parking area at the bottom

The house next door that’s an empty lot now was abandoned and used as a gang house when I moved in for…not Echo Parque, not Big Top Locos, what was the third one?

Anyway the clique leader, a guy called “Pounder”, stopped me on the street once and was like “hey, we know things are changing…” and wanted me to know it was cool and make me sympathetic.

A) I was into Veronica Mars at the time with “Thumper” and found it was hilarious that was a real typea SoCal Latino gang name

B) I did appreciate that! And it did give me confidence, one time I parked close to another guy on the street and his Mexican ass came out to threaten but I just laughed at him, until he trimmed his ask to “give me some more room so I can get away from my girl’s place in the morning before my old lady sees”

Anyway, one day Pounder was shot to death in his car on the other side of the lake and the guys assembled in this building on the other side of mine and some old heads showed up to overhearing I could tell talk them through it without anything rash, and then I posted about it on Livejournal and someone apparently found it and posted an R.I.P. Pounder comment (with context) that night

kontextmaschine:

You know I don’t think I’ve ever seen a depiction of someone living on the first floor of one of those Japanese 2-story cheap apartment buildings, you know, perpendicular to the street with an exterior walkway for a hall?

The place I lived in Echo Park, 1026 N. Bonnie Brae St., was kinda like this, but it was 2brs ziggurating down the hillside with a dingbat parking area at the bottom

Thinking about when I lived in LA a literal block from the Echo Park lake and I tried walking around it one night to calm my mind but then guys were emerging from the trees and by the bathrooms like “tsst, tsst” and I was like “oh shit that’s still a thing”

So the original freeway plan for LA included a “Beverly Hills Freeway” that would’ve been decked over Santa Monica Boulevard from the southern stub of the 2 (“Glendale Freeway”) to the 405

And it was still being planned in the 1970s but was never executed can you imagine oh phew, but the thing is the rest of the network which assumed it would be there was built intact, so with no freeway serving the southern foothill edge of the Santa Monica Mountains (like the 5 does the northern edge; the 10’s too far south and the 101 crosses the mountains) there was basically no good route west from downtown, some of the densest and most active parts of the city just became… obsolete for decades, and it was entirely possible to live like 3 miles down the road from some of the hottest spots in the country and know that you would never go there unless you made it like, a thing that you would plan days ahead, take up at least 1 out of your whole morning, afternoon, or evening, and combine several destinations into 1 outing

I mean I’m sure some people drove it to work every day, but Angelino commuters are crazy

It’s funny the shifts in meaning “I started out my post-college life in mid-2000s Hollywood” has gone through ever since

micro-usb-deactivated20230625:

It is funny how Jay-Z or Frank Sinatra doing a song about New York becomes this treasured piece of civic identity but RHCP largely being a band about Los Angeles just rolls off

(Because Los Angeles has never had a unitary civic identity)

kontextmaschine:

How have The Simpsons not done a WWI episode titled In Flanders’ Yard?

Hell, I got that and I wasn’t even on staff at one of the good Ivy League humor magazines

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

So when I was with those Hollywood managers a lot of our clients did voice work. I really appreciate it – it’s a way to actually make a career as a skilled thespian, not just try to become a celebrity – but in reaction to recent industry complaints of low pay I really have to point out that it represents wildly less time spent per unit of output than camera work – no time styling, costuming, doing makeup, physically getting on set for each scene, waiting for the crew to adjust lights and cameras between shots, redoing takes over and over (or having to memorize your lines in the first place), no driving around LA for multiple rounds of audition for roles you very rarely get…

We would see a breakdown for a commercial voiceover in the morning, send over the sides at 10am (“sides” are per-character audition scripts), the client would see them when they woke up at noon, go down to their basement recording studio in their slippers, record and send it in, record two full half-hour cartoon episodes of main character dialogue by 3, and then the next morning we’d come in to the office to see a 4am email from the casting director saying they got the part, there are like 5 casting directors (really, studios) in town so they already know our clients and their quotes are industry public knowledge so that’s go, she’d have attached the full script and the client would record it that day

Now, beyond this voice actors don’t have the influence to capture as much of a profit stream as live actors who draw on leverage accumulated through organization in the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the discrepancy in pay really exceeds that in input of work.

Let alone the way that this dynamic means you need more roles on a resume to matter, even as it’s more possible to use the same few VAs for every role – remember how there was like a movie trailer guy? “In a world” and all?

Of course this also challenges labor power because everyone with a home audio setup around the world – that is to say, every podcaster – is a potential scab and it’s not like if you occupy or picket your basement workplace anyone cares.

Which is to say, voice acting is now putting-out piecework with a global labor pool. VAs are hosed.

kontextmaschine:

kontextmaschine:

So when I was with those Hollywood managers a lot of our clients did voice work. I really appreciate it – it’s a way to actually make a career as a skilled thespian, not just try to become a celebrity – but in reaction to recent industry complaints of low pay I really have to point out that it represents wildly less time spent per unit of output than camera work – no time styling, costuming, doing makeup, physically getting on set for each scene, waiting for the crew to adjust lights and cameras between shots, redoing takes over and over (or having to memorize your lines in the first place), no driving around LA for multiple rounds of audition for roles you very rarely get…

We would see a breakdown for a commercial voiceover in the morning, send over the sides at 10am (“sides” are per-character audition scripts), the client would see them when they woke up at noon, go down to their basement recording studio in their slippers, record and send it in, record two full half-hour cartoon episodes of main character dialogue by 3, and then the next morning we’d come in to the office to see a 4am email from the casting director saying they got the part, there are like 5 casting directors (really, studios) in town so they already know our clients and their quotes are industry public knowledge so that’s go, she’d have attached the full script and the client would record it that day

Now, beyond this voice actors don’t have the influence to capture as much of a profit stream as live actors who draw on leverage accumulated through organization in the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the discrepancy in pay really exceeds that in input of work.

Let alone the way that this dynamic means you need more roles on a resume to matter, even as it’s more possible to use the same few VAs for every role – remember how there was like a movie trailer guy? “In a world” and all?

Of course this also challenges labor power because everyone with a home audio setup around the world – that is to say, every podcaster – is a potential scab and it’s not like if you occupy or picket your basement workplace anyone cares.

kontextmaschine:

So when I was with those Hollywood managers a lot of our clients did voice work. I really appreciate it – it’s a way to actually make a career as a skilled thespian, not just try to become a celebrity – but in reaction to recent industry complaints of low pay I really have to point out that it represents wildly less time spent per unit of output than camera work – no time styling, costuming, doing makeup, physically getting on set for each scene, waiting for the crew to adjust lights and cameras between shots, redoing takes over and over (or having to memorize your lines in the first place), no driving around LA for multiple rounds of audition for roles you very rarely get…

We would see a breakdown for a commercial voiceover in the morning, send over the sides at 10am (“sides” are per-character audition scripts), the client would see them when they woke up at noon, go down to their basement recording studio in their slippers, record and send it in, record two full half-hour cartoon episodes of main character dialogue by 3, and then the next morning we’d come in to the office to see a 4am email from the casting director saying they got the part, there are like 5 casting directors (really, studios) in town so they already know our clients and their quotes are industry public knowledge so that’s go, she’d have attached the full script and the client would record it that day

Now, beyond this voice actors don’t have the influence to capture as much of a profit stream as live actors who draw on leverage accumulated through organization in the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the discrepancy in pay really exceeds that in input of work.

Let alone the way that this dynamic means you need more roles on a resume to matter, even as it’s more possible to use the same few VAs for every role – remember how there was like a movie trailer guy? “In a world” and all?

So when I was with those Hollywood managers a lot of our clients did voice work. I really appreciate it – it’s a way to actually make a career as a skilled thespian, not just try to become a celebrity – but in reaction to recent industry complaints of low pay I really have to point out that it represents wildly less time spent per unit of output than camera work – no time styling, costuming, doing makeup, physically getting on set for each scene, waiting for the crew to adjust lights and cameras between shots, redoing takes over and over (or having to memorize your lines in the first place), no driving around LA for multiple rounds of audition for roles you very rarely get…

We would see a breakdown for a commercial voiceover in the morning, send over the sides at 10am (“sides” are per-character audition scripts), the client would see them when they woke up at noon, go down to their basement recording studio in their slippers, record and send it in, record two full half-hour cartoon episodes of main character dialogue by 3, and then the next morning we’d come in to the office to see a 4am email from the casting director saying they got the part, there are like 5 casting directors (really, studios) in town so they already know our clients and their quotes are industry public knowledge so that’s go, she’d have attached the full script and the client would record it that day