bloggie blog

Frequently people tell me my name suits me, that it is more or less in keeping with my essence. Fine by me, I say. The name Kevin Ashworth is a good name, and fitting for an actor who books roles of white-collar professionals with the names of Jim Bayliss, Brendan Walker, Robert Schuler, etc. But some people out there named Kevin Ashworth are not that type. Take this guy, kind of my opposite. I’m never going to go fishing in a storm and he’s never going to book a role as a federal attorney. But he’s still my people. Hope you caught one, Kev!

Before today, it had been a long time since I washed my car. I’ve never gone anywhere near that long without washing my car — in southern California. It was filthy. It was gross. It had a disgustingly thick film of filmy thickness all over it.

“Oh well,” I’d said to myself. “I’ll save a few bucks, it’s not hurting the car. Maybe I’ll wash it to celebrate my next booking, maybe not, we’ll see.” I didn’t really make a hard and fast promise to myself about that. I’m not saying that. But I am saying this: today I washed my car. Know what I’m saying?

I hate them. They are ugly. They advertise garbage, including acting and VO resources for the stupid. They take up parking spaces, or — grrr — some drive during rush hour, worsening traffic. You hate them, too, all of you except for my readers who are soulless.

Well. All we need to do is follow San Francisco’s lead, but from Ban Billboard Blight we learn that it’s been 2 years and 17 days since it came up in LA City Council. See Mobile Billboards: Bringing More Air Pollution, Traffic Congestion, Parking Problems.

Let us pray for progress. In addition to problems of pollution and other inefficiencies, there’s the visual vexation of blight. I moved here from Boston and the better aesthetics of driving around most larger streets there is something I haven’t forgotten yet.

Jonathan Coulton’s excellent cover of Baby Got Back and his original song Code Monkey have been favorites of mine for years. Recently, I have undertaken a project of listening to more of his songs in order to find another gem. I may have found it in Town Crotch.

My “undertaking” has simply been to listen to Thing a Week in its entirety. I recommend it to you, and what could be easier? The free 52-week podcast by the creative force who calls himself JoCo is still available on iTunes. Let me know if there’s a “thing” of his that you think is better than the 3 I mention here!

Friends in New York and Boston are starting to blog, email and tweet about the pleasures of autumn. Alas, fall is not the same here in Los Angeles. I miss fall! In lieu of actual autumn, my favorite time of year, I post this promotional banner.

You may click on it. It will take you to Amazon’s fall sale. Lame, I know. Like autumn here. (Summer and winter, on the other hand….)

When you are on a Facebook page that links to an external site, clicking on the link will take you to an intermediate Facebook page that starts with http://www.facebook.com/l.php before it takes you to the link you want to access. The JavaScript code Facebook uses reveals why they do this. The code says “UntrustedLink” and some other junk.

But if you trust the links, and if you want to bypass that intermediate business on any one Facebook page, just click this bookmarklet first and you will be good to go: [Trust].

I am captivated by this collection.

“The photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of a lost world — the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming revolution.” The photographs seem “shockingly modern” (per communicatrix), and fill me with yearning to travel in time and space. Or maybe Prokudin-Gorskii just makes me want to get away to the countryside. Whatever that means when you live in Los Angeles….

A few months ago I offered a bookmarklet that makes life easier for Safari users with IMDb Pro subscriptions. Today, an update. It works now in mobile Safari on the iPhone.

This bookmarklet by default will take you to IMDb Pro’s home page if you click on it when you’re not on IMDb. If you prefer instead to visit a specific IMDb page, like yours, enter it in the box below first. Whether you enter a URL below or not, if you’re looking at a regular IMDb page when you click on this bookmarklet, you’ll be whisked to the Pro version of that page.

So, enter your favorite “home” URL above, then drag this link to your bookmarks bar, and you’re good to go: [IMDb Pro].