Archive for June, 2009

ForeclosurePorn

June 26, 2009

&;Bank owned home!&; screamed the sign.  I turned the Mustang up the street and joined dozens of other lookie-loos staring at the (mostly) empty Studio City house. The search for a REO has become the new status symbol.  It&;s also pornographic in the voyeuristic allure of going through  a very recently vacated home and staring at the left behind possessions of the former owners, while fantasizing about their lives and what brought them to this.  Sometimes its pretty clear; the Tarzana house I looked at last week turned out to have a $596,000 mortgage&;and a $251,000 second! The banks were still fighting over what they would recover while the moving truck came.   The Studio City house (at least with REOs realtors dispense with calling them &;homes&;) seemed to not only satisfy people&;s pornographic fantasies of the absolute lowest price, but may have belonged to porn people as well, judging (and I&;m not judging) by the framed 8&;10 theatre cards of &;Desire&; and the like, showing a pair getting down.  (Perhaps the home&;s female owner?) At least they managed to break out of the Canoga Park/Van Nuys porn ghetto, before they crashed back down to earth.  I found a Guess watch in the yard and thought of putting it in my pocket.  My son said, &;I wouldn&;t touch anything here.&;  He&;s smarter than me, and it also seemed like bad karma to swipe abandoned foreclosed possessions, so I left the watch, the porno placards and a burned copy of The Joy of Sex sitting there.

Tags:foreclosures, losing-houses Posted in Los Angeles in the Movies, Los-Angeles, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment &;

Park Packed withJobless

June 25, 2009

Balboa Park in Encino was packed this morning.  No special events; just mothers, children, families, single women, groups, you name it. Not really the homeless, either; their recreational vehicles were parked in the lot across the street, camping out for the 77th consecutive day. Jogging around the park, I counted over 200 people before 9:45AM.  I don&;t think they were going to work, either.  It was the reserve army of the unemployed, on the march  jogging strolling biking dog walking fishing.

Tags:Balboa-park, Encino, LA-unemployment, Marx-in-2009, outside-LA Posted in Encino, Los-Angeles | Leave a Comment &;

British Airways An Accident Waiting toHappen?

June 17, 2009

In a company designed to defy gravity and send hundreds of passengers hurtling at 500 miles per hour 30,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, it&;s never a good idea not to pay your employees. Similarly, Terminator Salvation or no, I&;d be a little leery of riding the roller coasters at the bankrupt amusement park.

Tags:amusement-parks, British-Airways, crisis-communications, public-relations-disaster, Six-Flags, Travel Posted in public-relations-disaster | Leave a Comment &;

News Media Illiteracy andIdiocy

June 12, 2009

Here are three headlines from June 11 (today) and June 10, 2009. The first two are from NBCLosAngeles.com, the third from the San Jose Mercury News. Tim Donaghy Kneecaped By &;Mobster&; in Prison Is that like a prison hookup thing, when your beloved makes you a nice cape for your knee?   Miss Califonia USA&;s Firing Deja Vu All Over Again Now the phone companies are running beauty contests?

Skelton near Tahoe is man missing since 2006 I can&;t do any better than a SF Chronicle poster, who asked if it was &;Red Skelton.&;   The truth is that this isn&;t funny anymore.  There&;s no excuse for not running a spell check before posting a news story or headline.  The reality is that we get the news media we deserve; how many viewers (&;readers&;) these days would spot these errors?

Tags:age-of-illiteracy, death-of-copyediting, media-incompetence Posted in Incompetent-news-outlets | Leave a Comment &;

KCRW Broadcasts Word&;Bullshit&;

June 10, 2009

The usually profoundly boring &;The Politics of Culture&; on KCRW got a lot more interesting today, as artist Ed Moses used the word &;bullshit&; in response to a question posed by the indecipherable Edward Goldman and station queen/dragon lady Ruth Seymour. &;I used to say 98% of everything is bullshit,&; was his exact, on-air quote, which KCRW seemed to like so much that they podcast it unedited. The irony, of course, is that Sandra Tsing Lo got fired for saying a magic word, possibly threatening the station&;s license with the wrath of the FCC, according to mama Ruth.  Perhaps Seymour should have fired herself?

Tags:Ed-Moses, FCC, KCRW.ORG, on-air-obscenity, Ruth-Seymour, Sandra-Tsing-Lo Posted in fair-and-balanced, FCC, KCRW-FM | 1 Comment &;