RIP Kobe and Gianna

Conflicted -- an Ardmore hometown hero became an L.A. superstar, but with a huge honking #MeToo closet skeleton that's hard to ignore.

Cory Doctorow told me recently that trying to place complex humans in a single position on the good-bad continuum leaves you with an incomplete solution, much like trying to determine if light is a particle or a wave. Humans have quantum-like indeterminate personalities that are not reducible to a single metric.

RIP Kobe and Gianna.

I admit it! I ❤️ XLNT tamales!

WAR at the Sunset Grill, mid 1970s. (L-R) Charles Miller, Lonnie Jordan, Howard Scott, Harold Brown, B.B. Dickerson, Lee Oskar. Not pictured Papa Dee Allen.

When Gustavo Arellano asked for XLNT tamale fans to represent, I answered the call. Arellano was working on a story for the Los Angeles Times.

I told Gustavo that it all started for me when I worked with the band WAR, at Far Out Productions at 7417 Sunset Boulevard, next to the iconic Sunset Grill, right after I moved to Hollywood:

"Los Angeles web producer Dennis Wilen first ate XLNT tamales fresh from a slow cooker at the Sunset Grill in Hollywood when the Philadelphia native had just arrived in the city in 1977 and still enjoys their slightly spicy, not-too-greasy flavor.

When I moved here, I discovered a whole new world,” he said, “and that flavor takes me back to that time of wonder and exploration. I’ve graduated to other tamales, but I always go back to them."

Read the fascinating history of XLNT tamales here...

I got a nice write-up in Philadelphia's Jewish Exponent

I like being an "active adult" –– especially considering the alternative.

You can read the story beginning on page 16 of this online PDF.
Here's how it starts out...

Dennis Wilen's Big List o' Websites (PLUS BONUS SPINAL TAP VIDEO – TURN YOUR AUDIO UP!)

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This video recreates the landing page for my 2001 Spinal Tap website. I built this so long ago, we had to use Shockwave/Flash.

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I'm working on my resume and I created this big list o' websites I built and/or ran.

Not too shabby!

PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS 1995-2019

• Creator/Webmaster/Artist/Writer Disloyal Jews of America
• Webmaster Menendez Murders
• Webmaster Write On Online
• Webmaster Guided Goals
• Webmaster Rights Universal
• Partner/Managing Editor POCHO
• Webmaster Lalo Alcaraz
• Webmaster Spinal Tap
• Founding Editor AOL’s Brentwood Patch 2011
• Webmaster/Web Editor L.A. Jewish Journal 2006-2009
• Webmaster Los Angeles County Museum of Art 2005-2006
• Webmaster End World Terror 2004
• Senior Web Developer Yahoo! GeoCities 1998-2000
• Webmaster/Producer Milken Family Foundation 1998
• Webmaster Harry Shearer 1995-7

The birds are singing out back [video]

Here's about a minute of birdsong, shot on the western edge of my apartment complex back yard. We're overlooking Hamner Drive in Upper Bel Air.

Let's go back to 1975 with words by me and music by Leo Sayer

Thanks to my Facebook friend Sonny Casale I now have a written record of the Leo Sayer concert I recorded in 1975 for WMMR.

We don't know WHERE my review ran -- he's still working on that * -- but I seemed to enjoy the show.

Here is my review, and here's my recording.

Hope you enjoy the show too!

* UPDATE: PHONOGRAPH RECORD MAGAZINE, APRIL 1975

I got a nice shoutout at the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneers (video)

My friend and former Metromedia FM radio station WMMR colleague T. Morgan -- holding the mike in the photo -- (that's friend and colleague Michael Tearson on the right) had some nice words to say about me at the Philadelphia Broadcast Pioneers meeting last week.

Morgan tells the story of how I put a brand new radio station on the national map and made a star out of unknown, un-signed Billy Joel.

T. and M.T. spoke about WMMR's 50th Anniversary.

The printed materials Morgan refers to are here.

The "How Dennis Wilen Made Billy Joel A Star" saga was retold recently by Victor Fiorillo in Philadelphia Magazine.

I'm famous for 15 minutes yet again!

Here's the video, all cued up to right before my mention: