Archive for July, 2009

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Michael Vick may have visited stripclub!

July 24, 2009

Shocker&; Sometimes I feel despair at the puerility and sexual hypocrisy of the American media. Whatever you think of the guy, (dogfighting sucks) he&;s a guy, a guy who&;s been surrounded by swinging d**ks in the federal pen for the past 23 months.  Go see some naked girls dancing?  &;I dunno, Allen, I want to catch up on this CSI rerun&;&;

Tags:Allen-Iverson, dogfighting, Michael-Vick Posted in Sex and Society, Sports | Leave a Comment &;

The Dead: SoOver

July 24, 2009

Sadly, it probably is for The Dead and me, after 30-something years.  Some friends insisted on our getting tickets with them for The Dead at the Forum in May. I had last seen the (then) Grateful Dead in 1994, at a show at the execrable Sports Arena that was nonetheless memorable.  The concert was great, but I got moved none too gently by the LAPD because for some reason the area I was ticketed for was closed.  Later, the Sports Authority that runs the Sports Arena and Colisseum apologized and gave me a pair of LA Raiders playoff tickets&;fun, but the second scariest experience of my life after the LA Riots. Fast forward to 2009, when admittedly it would be hard for the Jerry-less Dead to compete with the spectre of the past. We got stuck in hellacious traffic for an hour and a half, and arrived half an hour late&;this version of The Dead, apparently, goes on and off promptly. The aisles were jammed with jamming twirlers, so we had to force our way to our seats.  Once there,  further force was necessary to remove the uncool people who had bogarted our seats. I wouldn&;t agree with DivinePossum&;s Tweet &;Fuck, the Grateful Dead are sooooo bad&;,  but I didn&;t feel transported, or even involved.   At least it wasn&;t a really bad scene&;and we didn&;t end up dead like this poor guy 20 years ago. Further observations:

Sadly, the Forum, home to Laker glory and so many great events, has become a dirty, run-down aging facility The Forum that night was the only place in Inglewood with no black patrons. Probably no connection, but they didn&;t bother to mix bass into the audio mix. I have no patience for rich kids begging for a &;miracle&; free ticket. The Dead is a guy thing; at least twice as many males.  Is it the stoner vibe or the lack of truly danceable tunes? There is nothing like a Dead show, perhaps, but I am not writing a set list. Every other concert venue has TV screens to see the &;action&; on stage.  Not the Forum; the picture below is a much better view of the concert than I got for my hundred fifty. Run by a church, the Forum is filthy and has enormous lines for the toilets.  I didn&;t appreciate the 20-something throwing up in front of us either.  High-end indoor concerts are not Woodstock re-creations. Call me old, but I like my fire exits unblocked.

The Dead, formerly the Grateful Dead, perform at the Forum in the Inglewood section of Los Angeles, Calif. on Saturday May 9, 2009

Tags:Inglewood-Forum, rock-concerts, The-Dead Posted in Grateful Dead, Music | Leave a Comment &;

NY Post Screws ErinAndrews

July 23, 2009

The NY Post is in its accustomed place, frolicking in the gutter.  As everyone on the Internet knows by now, Erin Andrews of ESPN was violated by some scumbag videotaping her in her hotel room without her knowledge.  Now the Post has piled on, actually publishing three naked pictures of her from the video.  (I&;m not linking; find it yourself.) Confronted by ESPN, which banned Post reporters from appearing, the Post&;s gossip sleazebags posted the following &;defense&;; &;No one would have known that a sick voyeur had secretly videotaped ESPN reporter Erin Andrews nude in her hotel room, if the Mickey Mouse sports network hadn&;t sent a letter to an obscure Web site demanding that it take down its link to a fuzzy video of an unidentified blonde.&;  In other words, ESPN created the &;news story&; by sending a cease-and-desist order to the scum posting the video. I&;ve defended Rupert Murdoch here before, but not now.  In its own way, this is as bad as the Obama monkey shooting cartoon.  Erin Andrews is not a Page 3 girl.  This is a criminal violation, and the Post has made itself a party to it.  

Tags:Erin-Andrews, ESPN, NY-Post, Obama-monkey-cartoon Posted in Rupert-Murdoch, Sex and Society, Sports | 2 Comments &;

The Decline of Style in theNBA

July 20, 2009

I&;m a big time pro basketball fan and I coach basketball to children at my local recreation center.  I love the Lakers, even though I can no longer afford to go to the games and think Kobe is a terrible role model to youth. As a coach, I preach the team game, particularly defense.  Nonetheless, I enjoy the style of the game, which is sadly declining.  From Kevin Porter (the &;Little Drum Major&;) to Darryl Dawkins (&;Dr. Dunkenstein&;), who named his dunks, to the incomparable Dr. J and Clyde &;The Glide&; Drexler, players played with style in the past.   Even Earvin Johnson got his nickname Magic for the things he could do with a basketball, like no-look passes. Before he was Earl the Pearl, people watching the young Earl Monroe at Philadelphia playground games chanted &;Black Jesus&; as Monroe pulled off one of his signature moves.  In high school, teammates called Monroe &;Thomas Edison&; because of the many moves he invented. Now, it&;s just about effectiveness, not entertainment; Kobe Bryant is celebrated as the killer &;Black Mamba&; while LeBron James is the king of power.  Style hardly appears in the All-Star game or even in the slam-dunk contest.  Dwight Howard showed some style last year, style he failed to show against the Lakers in the Finals. 

But this time, they let the little guy win. Today&;s race to have the most tattoos, or the fastest car, (driven by a gawky Polish center) is hardly about style. So does style equal selfishness?  Perhaps&;but Earl Monroe and Walt Frazier, two of the most stylish guards ever to play together, combined for a pair of NBA Championships 35 years ago.

Tags:Darryl-Dawkins, Dwight-Howard, Earl-Monroe, Magic Johnson, NBA, NBA-loss-of-style Posted in Lakers, NBA, Sports, Uncategorized | 2 Comments &;

ContrabandLightbulbs

July 20, 2009

I went to my local dealer and picked up 24 contraband 85 and 100 watt floods today.  The man had what I needed in the back; a few precious boxes of incandescent bulbs manufactured more than a year ago, before Philips and the rest stopped making them in a paroxysm of political (and ecological) correctness. The CFL and halogen &;long life&; floods I&;ve purchased at Costco have offered neither savings or long life, usually dying in my down cans within four months. They do deliver the cold dim light that smacks of diminished expectations, of Jimmy Carter and &;freezing in the dark.&;  Ask not for whom the fluorescents hum, they hum for thee. So I&;m hoarding.  I got your incandescent floods right here.

Tags:compact-fluorescent, freezing-in-the-dark, incandescent, political-correctness Posted in going-green, political-correctness | Leave a Comment &;

What Will Finally KillNewspapers

July 17, 2009

Newspapers have been taking a pounding.  Display advertisers, following the lead of the depressed car companies, department stores and furniture stores, are dying, drying up or disappearing.  Craigslist.org has hammered away on the classified ads.  And subscribers and newsstand buyers are dropping off, politically offended or just angry at the reduced product they&;re being asked to pay more for&;when they can get it for free on the Internet. Only one thing keeps local papers publishing.  On a foray to Beverly Hills, I picked up a copy of Beverly Hills Weekly from someone&;s lawn, saving it from the gardener&;s throwing it in the trash.  The free weekly is a rag of the first order, featuring random interviews with local non-entities and a boosterish write-up of how well the Beverly Hills High School touch football team played in a 7-on-7 tournament. What keeps this compelling read in business?  In the 20-page issue I perused, there were 5 pages of service directiory ads for truly local businesses; rooters, roofing, plastering, maid service, trainers and the like, lured by the un-Beverly Hills price of 10 weeks for $250.   But the real money-maker for this rag and so many like it has to be the legal advertising and public notices.  They should supply a free magnifying glass with every issue; one page had more than 80 fictious business statements and public notices! When public notices can be published on the Internet, newspapers will themselves be a &;fictious business&;, and the publishing game will finally be over.

Tags:death-of-newspapers, death-of-print, fictious-business Posted in death-of-newspapers, newspapers | Leave a Comment &;

LA Crime Story: Mortgage Fraud Beats BankRobbers

July 9, 2009

Used to be California/LA led the nation in bank robberies, with 357 in 2006 alone.  Perhaps Point Break&;s Presidential bank robbery team (that&;s Patrick Swayze as Bodhi as Ronald Reagan) wasn&;t such a fantasy.

We&;re still up there with these desperate people (A former policeman and Little League coach known as the &;Polite Bank Robber?&; The 180 pound &;Starlet Bandit&; in movie star sunglasses? A father/son bank robbery team, anyone?) but there&;s more people robbin&; with a pen and a calculator these days. According to the LA Times Peter Hong, &;The FBI&;s annual mortgage fraud review says L.A. leads in mortgage fraud, measured by reports from the agency&;s field offices. &;The Los Angeles field office received 9,971 &;suspicious activity reports&; in 2008; second-place Miami had 5,155. The report says fraud schemes include builders offering secret incentives to home buyers, such as falsely inflating a purchase price to make it appear as if a buyer has made a down payment when none was made. If the home forecloses, there is no home equity for the lender to recover. Other schemes the report identifies are scams in which a group uses a straw buyer to intentionally default on a mortgage, then buys the property at a discount from the lender through a short sale; and foreclosure rescue schemes in which perpetrators offer to help a borrower in foreclosure and surreptitiously take over the deed to the property.&; We may not have a football team&;but hey, we&;re number one!

Tags:colorful-bank-robbers, Los-Angeles, Los-Angeles-bank-robberies, Los-Angeles-foreclosures, Patrick-Swayze, Point-Break, Point-Break-live Posted in Crime, crime-and-punishment, Los Angeles in the Movies, Los-Angeles | 1 Comment &;

Is Britney a sincereconvert?

July 8, 2009

Unlike many other religions, Jews don&;t proselytize, which is why there are only about 14 million Jews in the world.  However, &;sincere converts&; can be and are accepted as Jews, with a long list from Ruth the Moabite to soul singer Jackie Wilson, Ivanka Trump, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Connie Chung, and Campbell Brown, but of course I like Elizabeth Banks best.

Often, the conversion process requires up to a year of study with a rabbi, immersion in a mikva for women or circumcision for men, and many other signs of  dedication.  Lindsay Lohan seems to understand the importance of sincerity in conversion; asked if she was converting, she said &;I&;m trying.&; Does Britney, who wears a Jewish star in the picture below, understand?

But if she become Jewish, she would be far from the blackest of black sheep.  I&;m not even talking Tom Arnold here.  Historically the worst would be Nero, who supposedly converted to Judaism to avoid God&;s wrath, but Liberian dictator Charles Taylor can certainly give him a run for his money.

Tags:Britney-Spears, converts-to-Judaism, Elizabeth-Banks, Liberian-dictator, lindsay-lohan, Nero Posted in converts-to-Judaism, Hollywood-and-religion | Leave a Comment &;

Michael Jackson onice

July 7, 2009

As his &;friends&; send him off, the whitewash  cover-up continues for this great man.

Tags:Macauly-Culkin, Michael-Jackson-victims Posted in Michael-Jackson, uncritical-press | Leave a Comment &;

Copy Editing Error of theDay

July 6, 2009

ABC News: Ethics Riots in China Leave 156 Dead Ethics, ethnics, (they&;re talking about Moslem Uighurs, an ethnic minority) who cares as long as it passes the spellcheck?

Tags:death-of-copyediting Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment &;

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