If you love baking and decorating cakes, than you should make a point of visiting Frances Kuyper’s Mini Cake Museum at the Hollenbeck Home, where you can not only meet Frances, but also learn some cake decorating history.

Known as the Cake Lady, Frances started off in 1950 simply as a self-taught cake decorator and from there evolved into a writer, demonstrator, instructor and consultant for many years in the retail baking industry. She’s even appeared in commercials and was even a regular on the Howie Mandal show for a time.

In 1994, she opened up the first Cake Museum in the US as a way to share her knowledge about cake decorating and pass that info to up and coming bakers. The first rendition of this cake museum originally was in a second home that she and her husband purchased to showcase the various cakes that illustrated the many and varied techniques used in cake decoration.

When her husband passed away, she moved to Hollenbeck Home and with Hollenbeck’s approval, was able to move the majority of her collection into one of the rooms. That room now holds over 150 cakes from Frances’ original collection.
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Work by Shawn McKinney

Clearly those assheads at Crate & Barrell weren’t listening to TACO when we mentioned many times that Hit n’ Run Crew ain’t nothing to fuck with. Yet, our warning unheeded, they allowed some barney to directly gaffle images by three of the crew’s well-known Los Angeles artists: Shawn McKinney, Brandy Flower, and Shark Toof. The photos of Hit n’ Run’s work was being sold on T-shirts among all the other Crate & Barrel garbage that is also probably stolen and at some Beverly Hills boutique as well. The whole story is on the Crew’s blog.

Stolen Work being sold on Crate & Barrel website (for $189!)

How long Crate & Barrel and other corporate designers have been stealing from emerging, independent creative types is anyone’s to research, but we’re sorry to see it happen to friends when what we’re truly excited about is the launch of their own line of gear branded famously with the sick screen-pressed kickass-ery they’re infamous for.

Work by Shark Toof

How public companies think they can get away with blatant theft is beyond us, but fortunately the poser has been ex-”posed” and the stolen goods are off the market.  I’m not a big 311 fan, but I think they said it best when they told us all to COME ORIGINAL!!

2684 Lacy St.  Los Angeles, 90031.   Starts at 3:33.  Ends at 7:77.

Los Angeles ~ CA

This is part 2 of a 3 part series. (Be sure to check out part 1 and part 2)

September 13, 2008 – So Low Brown – by GERMS at Tropico de Nopal (see more pics from the show)

September 18, 2008 – Futura – Strategic Synchronicity (see more pics from Futura’s show)
Futura’s solo show in downtown Los Angeles drew a very large crowd.

September 19, 2008 – Body Language at Nomad Gallery featuring Girls Gone Graff.
(see more pics from the show)
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SMOG KILLED MARILYN

Clicken to Magnify ~ Photos by KZER

The Nug Report ~ Herajuana OG

2008 heard the release of trippy, mellow, heroin-type music by bands like Beach House, CocoRosie, Magnetic Fields, Cat Power, Death Vessel, and a reunion of My Bloody Valentine. My only issue with this is my own lack of a skag habit to truly get into their excellent tunes. Fortunately, the herijuana came into my life to solve that massive problem.

Reports had told me this dope puts you to sleep, but I rarely believe the hype. Sure enuff, a couple of giant hits from the bong had me go from perky to drowsy as all get out within a few minutes. You are getting schleeeepy…A few minutes more, and I was headed to bed several hours early. Over the next few days, I grew a little tolerance to this bud, which is crossed with the prized OG Kush strain and had that excellent OG smell to its light green, innocuous looking tight nugs. Even with some resistance, I loved the waves of ecstasy that pulsed through my body, eventually easing me to a nice drowsiness. A very pleasant feeling and a truly devastating herb.

The Garter ~ 2536 Lincoln Blvd., Venice, CA  90291 ~ (310) -577-3741

Bubble Lounge ~ Every Wednesday @ 10PM

We don’t always get L.A. The Westside is full of gay merrymakers and their cool-as-fuck, hatin’-on-Prop-8-type friends, but other than a couple of scary corners we won’t direct you to, there are no great gay parties on the Westside. That’s why we love Bubble Lounge, which is like The Abbey gone shoreline. While gay gals and their pals mingle, we pick up the straight stragglers at this 1940′s-tinged bash, and seemingly everyone gets laid very direclty while laughing over how rad it all is.

But we digress, tonight kicks off Bubble Lounge’s move over to The Garter, which is the revamped and fabulous space occupying The Red Garter’s body. The party’s feet have gotten too happy, and a bigger dance-floor was required.  The chill, funtastic vibe of The Garter should go well with the friendly ladies and gents we’ve come to call friends at Bubble Lounge. We’ll be there tonight starting at 10PM, cuz we hear there’s free food to go with anything else we might choose to nibble on tonight.