KEN LAYNE

Back in the Los Feliz/Silver Lake neighborhood, and there are several hundred great restaurants -- from cheap taco stands to elegant sushi joints, family Sicilian places to Indian Fusion palaces. I've tried not to eat at the same place twice, with a few happy failures.

There's no Fancy Dining happening; we're in a tiny temporary apartment and there's no place to cook, plus we've got a fucking useless electric stove, and chaos is all around, so until we move to the Official House next month we're doing a lot of Eating Out, or Take Out, and we've got a toddler. Anyway:

* Baracoa
* El Chavo
* San-Sui
* Tacos Delta (twice)
* Masa
* Palermo
* Leela Thai
* Restaurant SPAIN
* Mako (little tempura joint next to Los Feliz 3)
* Farfalla (twice)
* Cafe Tropical (thrice)
* Casita del Campo
* EATZ/Los Feliz Cafe (twice)
* Yuca's Tacos (twice)
* Coffee Bean
* Zankou Chicken
* India Sweets & Spices

The only chain I've hit is Starbucks (on Glendale) because I like Starbucks just fine when there's not a local place nearby. Oh yeah, India Sweets & Spices is apparently a local chain, although I haven't seen the other locations. And there are several Zankou outlets around here, although I've only been to the one by my old Scientology apartment on Catalina (now the home of Mr. Tony Pierce).

The comings and goings at a New York publisher are rarely of interest to me even when it's the same New York publisher I work for, but it's going to be awesome to have Choire Sicha as a fellow Gawker Media employee again. Here's the Wall Street Journal story.

Choire & Nick Denton & I started SPLOID together two years ago. It was a weird attempt at combining a Gawker blog with Tabloid.net and Drudge, so it didn't exactly change the media landscape or whatever. But working with Choire was absurdly fun.

He was great at Sploid and Gawker and Wonkette, where he was guest-editor for a while, and the New York Observer stuff he wrote was my favorite part of that paper/website. Hooray for Choire! Maybe I'll actually meet him in person one day.

murg: He's totally fine. We have no complaints, except for the American Idol contestants on either side of the house. And occasionally the kids drive too fast down the hill.
Sent at 6:37 PM on Wednesday
me: i was interviewed for the wsj today on why i like my job. i forgot the part about being paid to post this comment on the thread about what wonkette merch we should introduce: "Those are all pretty awesome. What about a jelly vibrator shaped like Dick Cheney?"
Sent at 6:41 PM on Wednesday
murg: I got interviewed by Reason today about why I like (hate) my job, so they can do one of those front-of-the-book Contributors abortions. I just said how it was fun to raid Nick Gillespie's talent, and to use all my extra money on top hats and monocles.
Sent at 6:44 PM on Wednesday
murg: Copy chief guy just came in here, whine whine whine, why don't we just turn the front page into a laptop, blah blah
me: Maybe they could get some fatigues and guns and shit, and grow beards, and go up in the santa monica mountains and then just start cold RAIDING houses and making people read a big newspaper!
murg: No, seriously, I went to the 4 pm dog-and-pony upstairs, and all the cretins were asking questions (after a dozen question about "resources"), about how we can "make five-year-olds read the newspaper" and such.
me: do they really believe there is some transforming power connected to pulped Canadian forest products covered in KING OF BIG SCREEN ads?
murg: Yes.