Halloween on the cheap

It’s the happiest time of year! A time of generosity, family, and playboy bunny costumes. Every year I look forward gleefully to the Halloween season, with its fantastic television programming and free Milky Way bars, but I have to admit my last Halloween was a bust. So I started researching early this year, to make sure that the campy fun doesn’t end until November.

Here’s something cool to do before the parties around campus get into swing—and you don’t have to pay a cover charge.  From six to eleven on Halloween night, Santa Monica Boulevard will become a party ground for children at heart to troop around in costume. Every year West Hollywood hosts the Halloween Carnaval, which will culminate in an outdoor costume ball of expected raunchiness and glitter. Thousands are expected to roll out, so if you’re going, carpool or take the bus.

http://www.weho.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/detail/navid/339/cid/2183/

For the bus from USC, just take Metro 38 heading west from Jefferson and Royal to Fairfax and Apple, and catch the 105 to West Hollywood.

And if you’re feeling up to going out the day after, celebrate the Day of the Dead on Olvera St., located conveniently next to all the other historic neighborhoods (read: Chinatown and Little Tokyo.) Decked out with handicraft skulls on any day, it becomes a Tim Burton-esque paradise every November 1^st. It’s fun, and again free, and there’s good food all round.

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Save The Chimps!!! (By Listening to Buena Vista Social Club)

As I was doing my daily perusing around the internet I stumbled upon an article that shocked me.  It read

Chimps: Not Human, But Are They People?.

At first I clicked on the article expecting an article that would finally tell me that chimpanzees are just furry dwarves with hands for feet (something I always suspected after watching videos like this one)   But what I found out in the article was even more frightening than a chimp getting a haircut.  According to scientists, via WIRED magazine, the chimp population has now reached critical levels.  In recent years the number of chimps has fallen from 10,000 in West Africa to only a couple thousand.  I was appalled by what I had read and immediately needed to get a hold of the situation.  To help put things into perspective I listened to a band I had just discovered a band called Buena Vista Social Club.  A collection of all the great Cuban artists of the 40's and 50's they joined together in the late 90s with slide guitarist Ry Cooder to form this Cuban Super group.  Their afro-cuban beat helped me put things into perspective and realize that I can't do anything about the chimp population, but I can dance like an idiot in my apartment to "Candela".  So to help you forget your worries I am putting the song up here for your enjoyment.  Dance away.  

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Brit Brit Naked... Um Nuff 'Sed.

A little bit of pop culture for the blog.  Tah-dah!

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KSCR Top 30 from 10/6-10/12

Here's the top 30 albums played on KSCR last week:

1	JENNY LEWIS	Acid Tongue	Warner Bros.
2	NOAH AND THE WHALE	Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down	Cherry Tree-Interscope
3	DEPARTMENT OF EAGLES	In Ear Park	4AD
4	TV ON THE RADIO	Dear Science	Interscope
5	METALLICA	Death Magnetic	Warner Bros.
6	FUJIYA AND MIYAGI	Lightbulbs	Deaf Dumb And Blind
7	POLYSICS	We Ate The Machine	MySpace
8	COLD WAR KIDS	Loyalty To Loyalty	Downtown
9	WIRE	Object 47	Pink Flag
10	GASLIGHT ANTHEM	The '59 Sound	Side One Dummy
11	RATATAT	LP3	XL
12	DEERHOOF	Offend Maggie	Kill Rock Stars
13	HIGH PLACES	High Places	Thrill Jockey
14	JAY REATARD	Matador Singles '08	Matador
15	MOGWAI	The Hawk Is Howling	Matador
16	WALKMEN	You And Me	Gigantic
17	RA RA RIOT	The Rhumb Line	Barsuk
18	DAEDELUS	Love To Make Music To	Ninja Tune
19	HERMAN DUNE	Next Year In Zion	Everloving
20	HEARTS OF PALM UK	For Life	Hypnote
21	EL GUINCHO	Alegranza!	XL-Young Turks
22	PICA BEATS	Beating Back The Claws Of The Cold	Hardly Art
23	OXFORD COLLAPSE	Bits	SUB POP
24	CRYSTAL ANTLERS	Crystal Antlers [EP]	Touch And Go
25	MARNIE STERN	This Is It...	Kill Rock Stars
26	EARLIMART	Hymn And Her	Shout! Factory
27	SPINTO BAND	Moonwink	Park The Van
28	LYKKE LI	Youth Novels	LL
29	OKKERVIL RIVER	The Stand Ins	Jagjaguwar
30	BRIAN WILSON	That Lucky Old Sun	Capitol

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