Festivity

The LA Weekly's Detour Music Festival, held each October in downtown, has been a reliable good time for the last three years. We were a bit stunned when the paper announced last month that the festival had been placed "on hiatus." Our hopes for a Detour revival have been dashed with an announcement on the LAW music blog that the paper:

is debuting a new annual music event called LA 101, which will take place this year on the concourse at the Gibson Amphitheatre on Tuesday, November 3.

And there's a twist:

The party, which celebrates the annual Best of LA issue, will not only highlight the best in music, but also shine a light on the area's most innovative food and culture.

i.e. more advertising/sponsorship opportunities. The musical lineup does sound promising so far...

The musical line-up for LA 101 will feature Silversun Pickups, whose Swoon is one of the sturdiest, and best selling, rock albums of the year; Portland drone-rockers the Dandy Warhols, and Matt & Kim, who just last night snagged an upset win at MTV's Video Music Awards for Breakthrough Video; their clip for "Lessons Learned" features the pair stripping as they walk through Time's Square.

Previously on FBLA: LA Weekly Declares Detour Festival On Hiatus

This morning the LA Weekly announced via thier music blog that Detour, the paper's annual outdoor music festival held in downtown L.A., will not happen this year. The festival has been declared on hiatus, but no indication was given as to when the festival would revive. The paper did suggest it would host some kind of music event this year:

There are rumblings, however, of a different kind of musical event for the fall, to take place one of the city's gorgeous open-air facilities. If the upstairs whispers are true -- and this is just rumor at this point -- the event would make for a glorious triple-epiphany of an evening.

More details on the "holiday" here. Found via Neatorama.

The politically correct name for this holiday is Administrative Professionals Day, but it doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Regardless, if there is a secretary/administrative professional in your life- whether they work for you or for your employers- we're quite sure they are overworked and underpaid. Take him to lunch, buy her flowers, even a damn card- it's almost certain to make the other 364 days of your year a little easier.

A culturally insensitive Simpson's clip to celebrate this special holiday-

We just found out that today is an official holiday- International Women's Day. Never heard of it. So we did a little reading. According to the IWD website, "International Women's Day has been observed since in the early 1900's, a time of great expansion and turbulence in the industrialized world that saw booming population growth and the rise of radical ideologies." The theme of IWD this year is "women and men united to end violence against women and girls."

We have no idea how we are supposed to celebrate.

Apparently, neither does anyone else in the local media. We couldn't find IWD coverage by any media outlet in Southern California. At least President Obama didn't forget- he said in a statement:

We will not sow the seeds for a brighter future or reap the benefits of the change we need without the full and active participation of women around the world.

We only know about the President's statement because we read about it in a Chinese newspaper. Come on, people.

Paul McCartney will head the festival - which would explain why he was talking to Stephen Colbert.

Also the The Killers, Morrissey, Amy Winehouse and Leonard Cohen are going to be at the show.

LAT's Geoff Boucher has a whole thing on why an ex-Beatle headlining Coachella is weird.

We think they were all cool when they couldn't pay their rent. Now? Sellouts.

Complete list of the line-up after the jump.

continued...

Purple tickets are still in the news. Seriously. A week after the swearing-in ceremony, folks that had those tickets, some didn't get in - some got stuck in a tunnel huffing fumes for an extended period of time, (some people have that going on without a ticket of any color) are still outraged (think whining) about their experience.

WaPo's Mary Ann Akers reports:

During yesterday's late afternoon Facebook session with Gainer, here's how Hank Bennett of the District of Columbia, a member of the purple tunnel group, proposed compensating the doomed ticket holders:

"I recommend that you work with the President to set up another event at a DC location, like the Verizon Center or the new Nationals Baseball Stadium, where the President Barack Obama stops by and talks to those who had Purple tickets. He would only need to stop by for an hour or two. He could give a speech, shake hands, take photos, etc."

Bennett asked Gainer to "take this and other ideas to the President personally."

We were also Purple Ticket holders. It was uncomfortable and crowded. But it wasn't the New Orleans Superdome. Just because there is someone at the head of government that reads grownup books doesn't mean that government in all its forms works flawlessly.

Plus for every one Purple Ticket holder there were ten people that would have happily sucked on a little exhaust to be there.

Okay, first off - we saw our new stalker Christopher Hayes of The Nation at this ball too! We should never put up our schedule on the Internet. You never know who will randomly show up where you're going to be.

Anyway, this was the Obama Staff Ball - the final official event put on by the Presidential Inauguration Committee. Arcade Fire and Jay-Z preformed. The actor Kal Penn, who everyone in the crowd knew as 'Kumar' took the stage. He was a surrogate for the campaign so he spent his time on stage outing by name all the staffers who 'tried to kill him' by texting while driving through snowbanks.

Vice-President Joe Biden and his wife Jill made an appearance and then President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama took the stage. The new president said something to the effect of,"You guys are great." To which someone next to us said,"Hire me!" Hm. Seems to be a theme developing. Free beer dude.