Top 3 Date night Restaurants

http://www.3drunkengoats.com/
Three Drunken Goats - Spanish tapas restaurant with amazing vibe and amazing food. I love going here! Definitely try the bacon wrapped dates with chorizo, the artichoke and goat cheese croquettes, golden beets with hazelnuts, herbed goat cheese and arugula. They have great happy hour prices if you're in that area M-F, 4-7pm. The spanish wines are delicious.
2256 Honolulu Ave, Montrose, CA

http://www.vivolicafe.com/
Vivoli Cafe - This Italian restaurant is real Italian food made by Italians. Everything about it is so amazing. I've tried half of the pasta dishes here and they're all amazing. Great prices, great desserts. Not the best acoustics, but still fine for conversation.
7994 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood, CA 90046 (other locations listed on their website)

http://www.takamisushi.com/index.html
Takami Sushi - Downtown Highrise with upper class/hipster vibe and delicious sushi. I'm not a huge fan of the vibe, but the restaurant is very impressive. Beautiful view. Try the lobster roll. The sushi is definitely overpriced/expensive, but it's still delicious. I like to think of it as "paying for the experience." Very classy place.
811 Wilshire Boulevard, 21st floor, Los Angeles, CA

AM at Spaceland

AM played a great show at Spaceland last night. The band sounded really tight and several people who were there for The 88 seemed to be won over by AM. Good times.

Clutter

(my personal living room/dining room clutter)

I've been trying to expand my collection of interior design and architecture ideas. By doing so, I've also been exploring a website called "The Selby" (interesting people and their creative spaces). And I've noticed that nearly every home has extensive clutter. This is mostly contradictory in the modern design world, where modern homes have this clean, minimal look.
(click here, beautiful design work)
Yes, looks great, but where do they put their clutter? I mean we all have it, despite some efforts to purge ourselves of it, and it seems to grow more each year. I think Sam and I have bought three bookcases/shelving units over the last year just to somewhat take a hold of this thing we call clutter. I'm wondering if anyone out there has different creative ways they deal with clutter. Feel free to post pictures or comments. I'd love to hear from you.

Ryan Adams: La Cienega Just Smiled

Beautiful song by Ryan Adams:

La Cienega Just Smiled - Ryan Adams
"Ah the night...here it comes again"
It's on with the jeans, the jacket and the shirt
How'd I end up feeling so bad
For such a little girl
And I hold you close in the back of my mind
Feels so good but damn it makes me hurt
And I'm too scared to know to how I feel about you now
La Cienega just smiles..."see ya around"
And I hold you close in the back of my mind
And raise my glass 'cause either way I'm dead
Neither of you really help me to sleep anymore
One breaks my body and the other breaks my soul
La Cienega just smiles as it waves goodbye
"Ah the night...here it comes again"
It's off with the jeans, the jacket and the shirt
How'd I end up feeling so bad
For such a little girl
And I hold you close in the back of my mind
Feels so good but damn it makes me hurt
And I'm too scared to know how I feel about you now
How I feel about you now
La Cienega just smiles and says, "I'll see you around"

Sia: Breathe Me

(Sam took this picture with the lensbaby of me at Union Station)

I have been listening to thesixtyone lately, which is a website kind of similar to pandora, but you can rate songs and bump them up the "charts". Anyway, it has been a great source to discover new music and I wanted to share this beautiful song with you, "Breathe Me" by Sia. I heard the song and tried to find a copy of it online...found the video, really awesome video. I'm working on a similar stop-motion-photography project, so it was inspiring to watch:

Phoenix!!

Phoenix was phenomenal. They are one of my favorite bands, from Paris, and it was just such a treat to see them live in Los Angeles at the Greek Theater. They started the show playing 3 of my absolute favorites. The last song they played, everyone was screaming along: "Falling, falling, falling, falling"... (This is the song they sang on the tonight show on Sept 15th: http://www.tonightshowwithconanobrien.com/video/categories/season-1/1094645/). Everyone was dancing and singing along, standing the whole show. The show flowed great, not a lot of down time. I've known of them for about 3 years and was super excited to finally see them. Definitely a great experience.

Idyllists Photo Shoot at the Jesus Wall

I shot the Idyllists (www.theidyllists.com) at the Jesus wall (this photographer's loft in downtown LA) this past Sunday. It's tough shooting 6 people, but I'm really excited about the photos we got. Here's a few:

The Idyllists are: (from left to right) George, Colin, Ian, Daniel, Sam, Nick (and Matthew, M.I.A.)

The Idyllists were such great sports and beautiful subjects. Thanks to everyone, including Meg O, a.k.a. toots.

Glendale hike

(click on picture above to see larger version)

I hiked this beautiful trail in Glendale on Sunday with Courtney. Perfect overcast cool weather. Loved it.

R.I.P. Switzer Falls

(click on picture to see larger view)

Due to the recent fires in Los Angeles, one of my favorite hikes has been burned to the ground. I wanted to post a few pictures in memory of the beauty there...

Also here's a link to a group of recent fire pictures...
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/09/wildfires_in_southern_californ.html

(click on picture to see larger view)

I will miss you, Switzer Falls.

Flagstaff

I'm from Flagstaff, AZ...where there's not much to do as a teenager. Now I look back and wish I had taken advantage of the hiking in the summers, but I did get to hike Mt. Elden the last time I went back. Beautiful weather, I'll include some photos from the hike below.
But first, please enjoy a movie that my brother Robbie made with some friends. It's at the home where I spent 8 years of my adolescence. This is what high-schoolers come up with when they get bored in Flagstaff:

Discovering New Music

A new band I've found that I've been quite fond of: AM. I found their music on a website called thesixtyone.com, then bought their CD at Amoeba the next day. I'm also planning on going to see their show at Spaceland on Sept 22nd. :) AM sounds

Click on Play button to hear one of my favorite songs...

• The Other Side by AM

More AM music on iLike

Metallica

These are photos from last year...I just never got around to posting them. I got invited to a private Metallica show, the pre-show of their Death Magnetic tour. Having worked on the game, it was a thrill to be able to see them play live in a great venue, and be able to get so close to the stage during the show.

Island time...

(click on picture to see larger version)

This weekend Sam and I got to spend a relaxing time on Catalina Island. So good for the soul... to get away and to feel like you're on vacation so close to home. Here are some night time pictures I was excited about:

(above: the casino from the boardwalk)

(below: paintings on the walls of the casino exterior)
(below: you could see the LA fires from the island)

(above: at the top of the Wrigley memorial)

(below: panorama of Wrigley memorial)

Concert Review: Flaming Lips and Franz Ferdinand

I went to see Franz Ferdinand last week. Quite crowded and hot! Here are a few shots that I got from the show. I was pretty far back so they're not amazing, but still fun shots.

The show was pretty cool. They played mostly their new songs, which I'm not into as much as the others, so I only knew about 1/2 of the songs. But there was a lot of good energy in the room.
Towards the end they did an electronic jam for about 20-25 minutes and we all got bored and left. :\ The rest of the show was really great though.

I also saw the Flaming Lips a couple weeks ago. Overall it was such a fun show. You can't help but smile when these big canons blow out tons of confetti and they release giant balloons out into the crowd. They had a crew of dancing bunnies and chickens up on stage and visually it was just incredibly stunning. (not my picture, but great shot!)

There were down sides: the sound was really weak, especially the vocals. And some of my favorites, like Yoshimi, were sung with only vocals and keyboards, not the full band, which was a little disappointing. But the beginning and end of the concert were so invigorating that it made up for the down sides.