I moved. I like it. I’d been saving my golden bedsheets for the new place. I like them, too.

In other news, I went to the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip last night and didn’t find it obnoxious at all. Pictures should be up on Prefix soon.

The whole thing was actually fun, and people were friendly and unpretentious (apart from those two stereotypically wasted Hollywood girls with their striped highlights, fake tans, VIP passes and desire to punch other women for absolutely no reason, but at least they gave the rest of us something to crack up over. Honestly, you should’ve seen them, with their plastic boobs bubbling out over their tube tops… comedy gold.)

Seriously, I can’t go out in Echo Park and end up chatting with lots of friendly, funny people — I’m not saying they don’t exist, I’m just saying that I don’t end up talking with them. I’m horrifically unfriendly myself, of course, but that’s what made last night so remarkable. People were just that nice.

Good thing my parents’ ‘plane didn’t land yet. They’d turn right round and go all the way back to Heathrow if they felt that.

The BBC website’s funny:

Travelling for work is nice. It’s luxurious to be miserable on a balcony.

I’ve got an Edendale preview for yous, so don’t miss it.

PS — Remember to bring your hazmat suit.

Dodging the FCC, etc, courtesy of Little Radio.

How to Start Your Own Pirate Radio Station

It includes everything from the equipment companies to avoid, how to pick your frequency, legal issues and the fact that apparently in California there’s a law that states no vehicle without a driver may exceed 60 miles per hour. Nice.

I haven’t made it to Little Radio Summer Camp yet this year. I have no idea what’s up with that.

(Rancho Bernardo Inn, San Diego)

I’m sometimes a travel writer, which is lovely. You get paid to go to luxurious places and treated fantastically.

Sometimes you feel like you have two completely different lives, though, because travel writing pays very little. When you come home from your top-notch spa-resort holiday and realise you don’t have enough money to get your broken shoes fixed, it feels a bit confusing.

It’s a nice problem to have, of course.

MALIBU, AGES AGO: When you find a place so unlike home that it amazes you know end and you try as hard as you can to imagine ever being unhappy there but can’t because when you’re there it seems impossible for anything so low as sadness to exist, don’t go back years later on the anniversary of your break up from the boy who took you there in the first place.

Particularly, don’t go back with the friend that he dated before you and never got over.

Ouch.

However, if you are silly enough to do all that, following it up by getting plastered at a Circle Jerks show in Redondo Beach should sort you out.

A tertulia is “a kind of literary salon, only more fun” in Spain and Latin America, said the invitation from Laura.

“Our cheap domestic knockoff is really just an excuse to gather some of our most fascinating creative pals for conversation, confabulation, imbibification and — we dare to hope — a few performed works from the troubadours, jesters, songsmiths and assorted scribblers we count among us.”

Sometimes Downtown goes magical. I’m not kidding. Narrow brick alleys with fairylights balance out 90-degree heat beautifully. Cocktails and good company on beat-up corner couches help.

(The drink to which the title refers is the Orange Blush, pictured below. We wanted mojitos; they had no more mint. We requested a sweet-yet-refreshing mystery cocktail; the bartender was ingenious.)

…is green and full of irregular shapes.

If it’s raining, though, you can go indoors and see lots of stolen treasures brought home by officially sanctioned pirates and stored at the British Museum.

Over the weekend — proudlybroughttoyoubyXanaxandSmirnoff — I found out that the reason the Ancient Egyptians drew their owl hieroglyph with a broken leg was to immobilise the cursed birdies if they sprung to life.

I also learnt the words for different sorts of owls in various African languages, thanks to Owl Pages, and that in Northern India hearing nine owl cries means good fortune, Tasmanian farmers who get caught running around naked in their fields can use the excuse that it’s the traditional method of scaring off owls, and that a pregnant Welsh woman who hears an owl will bear a blessed child, but a pregnant German just gets a standard baby girl.

(Hibou by the magnificent Marion M)

Also, Genghis Khan’s life was saved by an owl, once. Nice. In Cameroon, owls are too evil to have a name.

Anyone who’ll fix me up with an owl’s eye on a string around my neck, Morrocan style, will get an exciting prize.

PS — Shot Islands at the El Rey for Prefix last night and it was quite wonderful in every way.

So, yes, it’s tricky to shoot at The Wiltern.

It’s entirely normal to only have three songs per band, and I know it’s not uncommon to have your camera taken away from you after your three songs are up, but being escorted in and out seems a bit much, particularly when the designated picture-taking spot is really rubbish and you’re the only person shooting.

Their stage is pretty; it’s frustrating to know that some really good pictures are being taken by photopassless people in the pit, when I’m stuck 15 feet away on a weird little ramp. I could do much better, obviously, with a different lens and an increased ability to use my brain properly, but it’s still a shame that the access is so restricted. My pictures are from the show are pretty awful. I started hyperventilating in Chango trying to edit them.

Devon Williams slipped in some appropriate advice for the audience — “You know, you don’t have to come to venues like this. You don’t have to buy overpriced tickets to see shows sponsored by beer companies. You could go to The Smell. Do you know where that is?”

(Shot for Prefix.)