A bit belatedly, let me announce...

Scorpion Bombs

The Frames' latest album, Burn the Maps, willl be released in these United States next Tuesday, February 8, by ANTI. ANTI's artist page for the band has a free download of 'Dream Awake' from the album, along with two tracks from last year's Set List. With my grubby little ears all over Burn the Maps already, I can guarantee that it is at the very least a worthy successor to For the Birds, their last studio album.

Fans of The Frames should also note that Another Love Song, from 1991, and the fantastic live version of 'Fitzcarraldo' featuring Jan Hruby from 2003's odds and ends release The Roads Outgrown are available from their site for free download.

Rogue Wave, Zach Rogue's ass kicking trio from San Fran-cheesy, released an iTunes exclusive EP on January 25th. It contains a cover of 'Seconds' from U2's War, which just may be the best U2 cover ever, along with "Exhumed & Groomed" versions of 'Falcon Settles Me,' 'Man-Revolutionary' (for some reason missing its exclamation point), 'Sewn Up', 'Endless Shovel', and 'Endgame.' All of those songs appear on their excellent 2004 Sub Pop release Out of the Shadow. In fact, if you've never heard Rogue Wave before and 30 second iTunes clips aren't enough for you to go by, you can download two songs, 'Every Moment' and 'Endless Shovel', for free courtesy of Sub Pop.
"Exhumed & Groomed" means fantastic soundboard live recordings remixed and mastered. The whole EP is a steal at $5.94, or pick and choose for 99 cents a song.

If you hate The Faint as much as I do, the odd new 'game' promoting their song 'Drop Kick the Punks' will provide a welcome opportunity to watch them fall and bleed. If you like The Faint, well, the best i can do for you is point you to their audio page, where you can download 6 album tracks and a baker's dozen remixed tracks. That and recommend you get off your pansy ass and find some better music.
Don't say I never did nuthin' for you.

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."
- Henry Kissinger

The province of group "city" blogging, while far from the grammatically correct, spell checked world of academia, has the same problem.
Talk about small stakes. Hank would be proud of the cock-waving going on over at LAist.com.

Let's break this down for you:

Some guy in New York who runs some site about that has-been 'burg decides to start a site about our beloved city of the Angels.
He then somehow gets his hands on MSPaint, makes hisself a fancy-dancy graph that is virtually meaningless, but implies he's better than another LA blog, and it starts a shit storm around the insular world of blogs about LA.

Who the fuck cares?

Well, we do. We're petty little people. And everybody loves drama.

LAist has some good content, but we gotta say, if you're gonna make a chart that supposedly says how you're better than the other chain-store blog in town, at least make it look snappy. For that matter, maybe you should hire someone to overhaul your whole site, and make sure they use a program other than MSPaint.

Oh, and for the love of Chachi, why do you post an interview with the Z-list guy who wrote Urban Legends and Jake 2.0 and looks like he's a fucking Ali G. character?
[ed.: because he lives in "Beverlygrove" and knows about secret parking. Duh.]

w00t! w00t!

[ed.: for a measured, rational take on this whole thing, check out what LAVoice has to say.]

A couple of announcements regarding the site:

1. h2bh has now completely migrated to infrequent updates, so please let us know if you see any lingering problems, particularly with humor. The writers are also living on a new, dedicated diet of coffee, booze, cigarettes and hard drugs, so hopefully that will result in better performance and speed. If you are noticing strange phrases, shoot us a note and we'll flip you. Flip you for real.

2. Not to toot our own horns, but h2bh is now the most smack-talking blog in Los Angeles. By a longshot! We can't thank our writers enough- and we can't wait to show you the few posts we'll be introducing over the next couple of months. Bring down the smack, y'all! (The smack data from our friends at laist.com is courtesy of their site)

Talk to you sometime!

UPDATE:
LAblogs covers la blogs' smack talk and fails to mention us. You know what? Where we come from, people get shivved for shit like that.

UPDATE II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
Our spoof gets spoofed. Surreally!

Reuters reports that cocaine prices remain steady, despite attempts from the man to keep them down.

Up.

I mean drive them up.
Hang on, I have to do some blow.
. . .

Now I’m broke and it’s no joke,
It’s hard as hell to fight it - don’t buy it!

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, psychiatrist and ground-breaking death theorist, has stepped into the practical application of her field. After talking a big game for years, Kubler-Ross finally put her money where her mouth is by dying earlier today.

P.S. Kicking and Screaming is still not out on DVD.

P.P.S. She was Swiss. Swiss chicks make us hot. But not dead ones. I mean, we're not sickos.

Leave it to an Angeleno to take a fascinating little piece of NY art, adapt it, and in the process ruin it and the neighborhood. And this is SIX MONTHS after the New Yorker covered it.

H2BH spied the LA incarnation of "NECKFACE!" scrawled on walls at Sunset & Gardner (above) and Sunset & Western. Absent are the accompanying doodles and characters. Just fucking "NECKFACE!"

Fotologger and fan NECKIE 4 Prez has has photos of other tags along Sunset, an improvement to the Lucy's near the 101, and defacing the Elliott Smith memorial.

H2BH wonders how many other graffiti artist draw their inspiration from the New Yorker. When will fans of Rob Mankoff and Bruce Eric Kaplan start plastering their second rate wit all over The Grove?

Wanna go to Vegas?
Hate the drive?
JeBlue's SuperFly (Hey, we like jamming two words together!) fare sale from LongBeach ends August 26th.
They can get you to SinCity for $29* each way. And $39* to Oakland, if you don't require any There there.
$59* to SLC. Mormons. Yay!
$89* to Ft. Lauderdale. WTF is in Ft. Lauderdale?
And only $99* to Beantown, DC and NYC. If you feel like you need to spread your LA vitriol on the HasBeen cities of the east.

You can also go to some other cities we've never heard of (there are cities in Vermont? When did this happen?) Check it all out here.

AirTran (formerly ValuJet. 'Til that whole plane-fall-down-go-boom thing.) also has some deals, and they actually leave from LAX. Baltimore $120, Dallas $119, DAYTON, OH $104 (I think that's a misprint. The ticket to Dayton is free, but to get back you have to pay $500.), and some other places. Check 'em out if you're feelin' brave.

ATA also has some great deals 'til August 30th. Including $79 to Chicago, Philadelphia and Indy, and $99 to Boston, Miami, New York, Ft. Lauderdale (WTF?), and South Bend (if you wanna fight for your right to be Irish.) Check 'em all out.

Southwest also has a $39 to $99 systemwide sale that ends on the 27th. Available from anywhere except the O.C.

Disrespectin' the Duke's airport. For shame, Southwest.