All Night Menu

Extra quarters and counter seating for all customers of Donuts & BBQ.
May 31
Randy Travis and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the bus, Los Angeles, 1991

Randy Travis and Arnold Schwarzenegger on the bus, Los Angeles, 1991

May 30
May 29
May 28
“Took this shot of jazz genius Miles Davis on my first visit to NYC, 1978. My sister said, ‘Miles lives down 78th Street,’ and there he was. This was during his lost, underground period so I was lucky.  Miles’ cavelike apartment is no longer there, razed for a blue glass condo.”

“Took this shot of jazz genius Miles Davis on my first visit to NYC, 1978. My sister said, ‘Miles lives down 78th Street,’ and there he was. This was during his lost, underground period so I was lucky.  Miles’ cavelike apartment is no longer there, razed for a blue glass condo.”

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“This woman was yammering non stop, but Miles was polite to her. And to me.” Memories of spotting Miles in the wild, from Ken Mac, who runs the excellent photo blog (G)REENWICH (V)ILLAGE (D)AILY (P)HOTO.

“This woman was yammering non stop, but Miles was polite to her. And to me.”

Memories of spotting Miles in the wild, from Ken Mac, who runs the excellent photo blog (G)REENWICH (V)ILLAGE (D)AILY (P)HOTO.

May 26
Carl Sagan, 1979

Carl Sagan, 1979

May 25
May 24
Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod’s slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefstreaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshirt neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wair and never—do. Though sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun Trinkst Du die süße Milch des Euters. See! It displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother’s milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan’s land. Thy cow’s dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclabber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum! Ulysses, p. 396-397

Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod’s slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefstreaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshirt neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wair and never—do. Though sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun Trinkst Du die süße Milch des Euters. See! It displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother’s milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan’s land. Thy cow’s dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclabber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum!

Ulysses, p. 396-397

May 23
Florence Griffith Joyner, the fastest Los Angeles native in history. 

Florence Griffith Joyner, the fastest Los Angeles native in history. 

May 22

California Jam, held on April 6, 1974, attracted over 250,000 paying fans, but when Black Sabbath’s manager pitched them the gig, he would have had to admit this: “Well, it’s not in Los Angeles, exactly. It’s at a raceway in Ontario, which is probably the single smoggiest place in the United States.  And you’ll be appearing in broad daylight.  After Black Oak Arkansas and before Deep Purple.  And you’ll be playing underneath a giant rainbow.”

One of the tests of a great band is to see how they function in inhospitable conditions.  I saw Spiritualized last night in the Wiltern theater, and their attempted celestial bombast turned to mud.  Anyone who says it’s impossible to obliterate a room that isn’t right for them needs to watch Sabbath play “Killing Yourself To Live” in the smoky sun of a hot Ontario afternoon.  Under the rainbow.

Stop someone between the ages of 45 and 60 on the street in L.A. and the odds are fair—if they’re wearing sneakers—that they will have a story about Cal Jam.  Eight stadium bands appeared on the bill, and it’s said that the stagehands simply wired together all the available touring rigs to make the speaker system.  Eagles and Earth, Wind, and Fire were at the bottom of the bill.  They probably played around lunchtime.  Most people remember Deep Purple’s set, which concluded with Ritchie Blackmore exploding his Marshall Stack.  In those days, this complex pyrotechnic maneuver was achieved by telling a roadie: “When I point at you, throw on the gasoline and then torch it.”  Personally, I’m more amazed by the visual dynamic of Black Sabbath.  Not only Ozzy, full-throated in purple fringe, but the tension created between Tony Iommi’s zen motionlessness and Bill Ward’s spastic contortions.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer closed the night, and in an absurd and desperate bit of theater, Keith Emerson tipped over his giant wooden Hammond organ and tried in vain to smash it like he was Jimi Hendrix in 1967.  Alas, by that point, the instruments, like the songs and the shows, had become all too unwieldy.