Interesting Layne E-mail to Luke Ford…. : Who has, in many respects, the best L.A. media site going.

01/18/2003 08:34 PM  |  Comment (1)

All Right, Pribik, Game’s up. Get the Hell Back to Work:

01/18/2003 08:01 PM  |  Comment (2)

Mockup for Riordan’s “Los Angeles Examiner” Near Completion, LA Biz Journal Reports: As I just posted over at LAX:

The LA Business Journal today breaks news about the long-awaited Richard Riordan newspaper project: It will be a free weekly tabloid, it will be called the Los Angeles Examiner, a 50-page mockup issue is scheduled to be printed next week, and the target start-up is this summer (early June, actually). "Contributors to the prototype include comedian Billy Crystal, producer Lynda Obst and former New Times Los Angeles columnist Jill Stewart, said Tim DeRoche, a former Riordan aide who is heading up the project," the LABJ reported. There are quotes from DeRoche, Riordan, Ken Layne, and several industry analysts. As for the site you are reading, "It is not clear what will happen to the LAExaminer.com Web site, which Layne founded with Matt Welch, also a member of The Examiner's editorial staff. 'Most likely we will continue LAExaminer.com for what it is,' Layne said." Stay tuned!

01/18/2003 01:01 PM  |  Comment (4)

Key Difference Between L.A. and New York: In New York (which I hear is being renamed “Gawkeropolis”), people see celebrities at bars, obsess over them, and then purge their sins by calling Hollywood “vile and irritating.” Here, there are two kinds of people: Those who notice the celebrity and don’t care, and those who don’t notice the celebrity. UPDATE: In a funny follow-up post on the NY-Frisco cat-fight, (featuring the one-liner “people in New York actually read books instead of burning them”), Elizabeth Spiers promises a forthcoming “L.A. Sucks” issue. Using the Bush Doctrine of Pre-Emption, allow me to fire off the first yawn.

01/17/2003 02:25 PM  |  Comment (8)

California GOP Takes Whole ‘Civil War’ Thing a Bit Too Literally: The public train-wreck that is our State Republican Party has become so hell-bent on self-destruction that the various camps are actually fighting about something that has next to zero relevance to the history of California: The Civil War.

You already know the backstory: a bitter rift between the Conservative Grassroots wing and what we might call the Riordan Moderates; inflamed by the universally hated presence of Dubya’s local bagman, Gerald Parsky (who, among many things, has a long-running legal dispute with Bill Simon’s late Nixon-Administration Dad). The Angry White Wing is backing party Vice Chair Bill Back, while the RINOs (Republicans in Name Only, as the slur goes) are plumping for Silicon Valley lawyer Duf Sundheim.

Here’s the new stuff: On Jan. 4, the Contra Costa Times reported that in 1999 Back tacked onto a Republican newsletter he sent out to 500 people this idiotic essay by cultural conservative William Lind, musing about how America would have turned out better had the South won the Civil War. Sample:

[G]iven how bad things have gotten in the old U.S.A., it's not hard to believe that history might have taken a better turn. Slavery of course would be long gone, for economic reasons. Race relations today in the Old South, in rural areas and cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, are generally better than they are in northern cities, so we might have done all right on that score. When southerners say they have a special relationship with blacks based on many generations of living together at close quarters, they have a point. The real damage to race relations in the south came not from slavery, but from Reconstruction, which would not have occurred if the South had won. […]

America's entry into World War I … might not have happened. Southern sympathy would probably have been with Britain and France, but the North, with a large German population, might well have lined up with the Kaiser (the Irish would have liked that, too). No American entry into the war would have meant no Communism in Russia and no Hitler in Germany. That's not a bad bargain.

It is highly unlikely that the Confederacy would have embraced the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness that is fast becoming the official American state ideology. So at least part of North America would still stand for Western culture, Christianity and an appreciation of the differences between ladies and gentlemen. Decency might have taken its stand in Dixie, along with some other good things such as an appreciation for the merits of rural life.

The notion that this country would be better off if my ancestors had remained enslaved, and considered less than whole people, is personally offensive, abhorrent, and vile. It is particularly offensive because my own party's vice chairman distributed this bigoted propaganda in an official CRP newsletter. […]

I am sick and tired of being embarrassed by elected Republican officials who have no sensitivity for issues that alienate whole segments of our population. Republican leaders who consort with the Council of Conservative Citizens, highlight stump speeches at Bob Jones University, reminisce about segregationist campaigns, and sympathize with the bigoted views -- and the very real possibility that others in our party affiliate with the Free Congress Foundation and groups with similar offensive ideology -- perpetuate broad public opinion that Republicans harbor racist and bigoted ideals. […]

Black Republicans are expected to provide window dressing and cover to prove that this is not a racist party, yet our own leadership continues to act otherwise. People judge people by their experience of them, and by their actions, and when those actions do not match their words, actions become the more honest means by which to measure a person.

I, for one, am getting bored with that kind of garbage. Let me offer this suggestion to Mr. Reeves: ‘Get over it, bucko. You don’t know squat about hardship.’ […]

I personally don’t give a damn about your color … so stop parading it around. We need human beings of all human colors in our party to pull their weight, so get in without the whining our get out. […]

Your sniveling letter makes me sick, young man; you are a superstar because you are a black Republican, and you love it. Now I wonder if you can make it as just a Republican ... like the rest of us. And don't try any of that Jesse Jackson, Maxine Waters racist garbage on me.

Most of the poor devils had no experience fending for themselves, so they fared worse than before the war and during the war.

Reached by phone at his office, Back said he would "rather not give an opinion" on Ridgel's letter.

"I will consult with my wizards and we'll get back with you," he said.

Back called later and said he disagreed with the statements "regarding slavery and Reconstruction and their impact on African Americans." He said he sent Ridgel's letter by e-mail to party members because "we got a lot of calls from people who heard about it and wanted copies of it."

Ridgel said Back believed that it "was horribly destructive to the party" to discuss the matter publicly.

"For the good of the party, he is not going to defend himself in public," Ridgel said. "If he feels that way, I'm sticking with him."

01/17/2003 01:57 PM  |  Comment (6)

Interesting Henry Copeland Interview by The Digital Entrepreneur’s Steve Carlson: I especially liked the parts where he talked about me.

01/16/2003 12:56 PM  | 

LAX Items of Interest: Muchos kudos to Amy Langfield, for taking in the foster child that is LAexaminer.com for the last several months, and congratulations on getting her hands back! I’ve posted a couple items over there of potential interest to y’all: firstly, the horrid news of a murder-suicide in the Armenian family that runs the Hollywood landmark Zankou Chicken; secondly, a bit on this remarkable column by state GOP Chair Shawn Steel, blaming Dubya’s California hatchet-man Gerald Parsky for the Republicans’ election debacle. The upcoming party convention is really shaping up to be a Night of the Long Knives….

01/16/2003 11:29 AM  | 

Catching up on Some Faves: Sure, these Dr. Frank excerpts are old, but I hadn’t read them until tonight, and they brought me great pleasure. First, on the thirst of British womenfolk:

New Year's […] is the one night of the year when the average American tries to drink as much as the average Briton does on an ordinary week night. (I gave it my best shot, but, as usual, I couldn't even come close to keeping up with my slender, young British wife. Drinking with an English chick is fun but perilous: it doesn't matter how long you can manage to soldier on-- you still run the risk of being called a "girl's blouse" when you finally have to admit defeat.)

Next, some wisdom about rock music:

If you're serious about returning to the basics of rock and roll, there are really only two legitimate topics: cars and girls. To indulge in other subject matter is to run the risk of Art Rock, which, like unintentional vapidity, is treacherous territory. The Clash aside, most "political" punk is chiefly notable for how easily-parodied it is: anti-Reagan and stuff man, yeah.

01/15/2003 09:47 PM  |  Comment (3)

The Tennessee Cloning Sect Strikes Again:

01/15/2003 05:17 PM  | 

Which California Quarter Design Do You Like Best?: I can’t really decide. The coins either choose one of five main state symbols -- the Golden Gate Bridge, nature, the Gold Rush, Hollywood, beaches -- or try for some awkward combination thereof. This is my favorite of the combos … but there’s no getting around what is the state’s deservedly dominant icon, Nick Denton bedamned.

01/15/2003 05:12 PM  |  Comment (1)

Dozens and Dozens of Topical Lightbulb-Jokes: Ted Barlow, apparently, has lost his mind.

01/15/2003 04:38 PM  | 

Old Time ROQ and Roll: Kate Sullivan, who needs to write a book about the influential L.A. rock station KROQ, drove to Pasadena yesterday to look at the ROQ-of-the-eighties’ humble origins:

It's a small, old two-story office building, the kind of place that might have once been a general store downstairs and the owner's residence upstairs.

The studio was upstairs. I have seen a group photo of all the DJs lined up on the metal staircase out back. Raechel Donahue told me the first time she went there, she stepped on an empty vial of coke on the stairs.

They used to do shit in the parkng lot---water balloon tosses or BBQs or Wendy O. Williams destroying things. Robert Palmer quit Power Station in that parking lot. The band was leaving the studio and their limo got trapped in a crowd of psychotic Duran Duran fans. So Robert Palmer got out of the limo and walked away. Caught a cab at the Pasadena Hilton down the street. (Where KROQ also broadcast from earlier, where Rodney got his start.)

Van Halen used to climb up those back stairs and try to sneak in the window to give the DJs their pressing of Running With the Devil.

Missing Persons knocked on the back door one night and asked them to play their little 45. April Whitney put it on right away. That happened all the time.

01/15/2003 03:46 PM  |  Comment (2)

Dept. of Different Approaches: Yesterday, DSL didn’t really work in our neighborhood. This was unfortunate, since it was our first full day back in America, after living off-line for a month. So, besides wasting much time on tech-support hold, we tried to take care of some other things. Down the street at the Havrilesky household, the outage produced a response far more interesting to read. Sample:

"Behind that door," she says. "There are tall men with cold drinks in their hands. They have summer homes on the shore. They drive luxury cars with leather seats and navigational systems..."

01/15/2003 02:46 PM  | 

George Harrison and Dissent, 13 Months Later: In December 2001, I wrote a strange column for WorkingForChange that attempted, with questionable success, to draw an analogy between the juvenile way I reacted to the media beatification of the then-recently deceased Quiet Beatle, and the way in which some on the anti-war Left were reacting at the time to “flag-waving patriotism.” A bit confusing, and made more so by the headline: “His Guitar Never Gently Weeped: George Harrison fans fall into the same anti-dissent crowd they claim to abhor.”

Some time during my Christmas vacation, the column must have wound up on some alt.georgeisgreat discussion boards, because I started receiving clumps of curious e-mail messages. Thought you might be interested in reading some. It’s long, so if you want to go down to the next post, click here .

This is as close to 15 minutes of fame as you are going to get. You seem to lack the kill instinct.
George is dead. If you can't kick him now when can you? Give us gory details of being with whores even if it's a lie. He can't fight back. He left 150 million to his family.. HE EMBRACED THE HYPOCRISY. IT'S PART OF BEING A GROWN UP. This is all explained in godfather I.
"we're part of the same hypocrisy senator"
Have a holy and merry christmas
(ha ha)

--

Hey Mr. Matt,

You know me not, but I just ran into your year old article about George Harrison being a bogus spiritualist, or whatever.

Just to let you know, he did in fact get me started on my spiritual quest, and though it may have happened eventually without him, at 16 I was a huge fan, and his having the cover of the Bhagavad Gita in his Living In The Material World album, led me to read it cover to cover. I'm no longer a Krsna, I guess you could say, having found the real truth about this world. But I respect the true spiritualists in the Krsna movement, (there are a few), as well as other true spiritualists, and feel fuller for having taken that route.

So, I think it's fine if George did indeed indulge in a few worldy delights. I'll always hold him in high regard for having at least put some things on the table, so to say.

--

Well it just seems as though you are a man of immeasurable intellect.I admire your quick wit,and your often grandiose exaggeration of the percieved world.In regards to Harrison....you certainly have a lot to say about this sad,and sometimes depressed individual who was obviously searching for something in his life..as his songs often spoke about..There is peace in some music.For those few moments during a persons listening,a song can often take you away from your current state..Sometimes an even blissful relaxation from an otherwise silly and confused world.Harrison knew this...as an artist..as most do.Music is the escape.The man was definately not perfect.Not many of us are.You writers are an interesting breed.You get a Thesaurus,and a reasonably good understanding of the truth,and wham!!!!Your enlightened individual.It seems like your missing a little of the human factor that you talked about in your article.

--

If you were an artist, maybe you'd have a different understanding of artists and their mentality, their failings and frailties, and wouldn't be threatened by them so as to call them names. Calling people names lowers you to the level of the people Artists write songs about. It detracts from the articles' credibility. Idolizing an artist is not a good thing, either. They are not ideal representatives of my viewpoint, but I applaud them for using their position to try to influence change. You should, too, despite their obvious limitations as people.

you don't see any hypocrisy in your own writing? I'm surprised "Working for Change" published it.

If the debate behind the scenes about Terrorism, National Security, Iraq, etc, (within the ranks of the Pro-war faction) is so spirited, it's still amounts to an argument about how to do the wrong thing. Between pro-war and anti-war Factions the debate is spirited and often not Civil at all. It's filled with vitriol, ignorance, and generally consists of not-very-intelligent people insulting each other. If, among the pro-war faction, there is dissent, it IS being stifled; Colin Powell for a brief moment was against action in Iraq. For the last several months he has kept his opinion to himself. Why? Because Bush will have his ass if he contradicts the imperial president? That's how it seems. The only dissent you will hear from within the pro-war ranks is from those who expressed dissent and are now unemployed - they may still be pro-war but expression of their views cost them their jobs. If Dissent isn't welcomed, then dissent is Stifled. Anything less than encouraging debate is tantamount to stifling it. And Arguing about whether to use a Nuke on Iraq or whether to send in troops is NOT Dissent; they're both in agreement that War with Iraq is a foregone conclusion and now only the when and who and how remain to be discussed.

Humans are Fallible. Humans are Hypocrits. You are one, as is every other human, artist or not. The harder you try to expose one human's hypocrisy, the more you appear to be the hypocrit trying to divert attention from your own failing.

Pride may be a sin, but it also is the foundation of Bigotry and Hatred and Racism and intolerance. It is also in Human nature. Just because Harrison was Fallible, because Crosby was a Druggie, does not reduce the importance of their contribution nor does it impune them. They had the backbone to stand up for ideals which needed to be brought to the attention of all of us. They should be applauded for trying to represent a higher ideal, no matter how unachievable that ideal may have been. And if nothing else they should be applauded for making some people THINK or view a problem from a different perspective even if only for a moment.

Dissing them or exposing their seedy sides can't be undone by complimenting them on their artistic skills. It's tantamount to saying they should have shut up, or should not have stood up for those ideals. That is equivalent to the most unamerican thing you can do - take away a person's right to think and believe and say what they believe is important. I was at a Santana Concert recently where one person sitting near me was heard to say (during a portion of the show where Santana was talking about Global politics in between songs) "Shut up and play your guitar" .... So Sad. Maybe Santana wanted people to THINK as well as DANCE. He causes me do both.

When I lived in Colorado Springs I was surrounded by Fundamentalist Christians and they all protested loudly that John Lennon's "Imagine" was a communist plot. Artists and Alternative-lifestyle people were hounded and harrassed out of town until the town met the Fundamentalists' idea of conformity. Zero Tolerance is what's in store for anyone in that town who's Gay, Multi-racial, Non-Christian, Alternative, or merely different. When you apply for a job you are asked what church you will be attending. No joke. American Taliban for real. Their hypocrisy lay in the notion that Lennon's writings should be destroyed, burned, buried, etc. There was no respect for Lennon's Artistic freedom, there was no alternative interpretation of the words, there were no choices; "You're either with Lennon or with US" just like today with George Bush. It's ironic that the description of a good patriot is being written by the worst "Patriots" in the history of this country.

In the debates regarding National Security, Terrorism, Iraq, etc I don't hear the left wing telling everyone to shut up, and I don't hear them calling people Commies or calling the FBI on them. However I have seen this behavior from the Right wing, repeatedly.

Which do you espouse? Patriotism = Silence ? or Patriotism = Speaking up for a higher ideal no matter how unattainable that ideal may be? You said people are lamenting the Stamping out of Dissent here. That's pretty ironic, too, consider.... If dissent were stamped out, you'd not hear any laments about it, they'd be stamped out too. So I agree with your assessment that Dissent is not being stamped out. However, it's being discouraged, controlled, manipulated and dissenters do so today at grave peril to their freedom. A 61-year old US Citizen in San Francisco worked out at a gym every day and debated the Afghan War with some of the guys at the gym on a daily basis. He argued that the war was all about oil, that it was a sham, etc etc. One day, the FBI showed up at his door insisting on grilling this guy. That was because someone within earshot of his Dissent called the FBI on him. He was harrassed by the FBI because he dissented, and this harrassment was made public strategically so as to discourage further similar dissent from others here. America as you knew it as a kid is gone. You may be in denial of that. Freedoms and Civil rights have been abridged and the Constitution is being shredded.

Please do not trivialize these changes that result in the harrassment & jailing of dissenters who are citizens and have rights. Just because dissent isn't really being stamped out doesn't mean it's not under threat, or that the GOP isn't TRYING to stamp it out. They're giving it their best shot. Smart people know it will never work. It's still scary though.

you seem to have come dangerously close to the notion that these artists, due to their fallibility, should not have stood up for the ideals they did. I'm disappointed.

To underestimate the intellectual level of debating going on inside the Monolithic pro-War Front as you seem to think many of us Anti-War folks have, you have to imply that we anti-War folks think we're the only ones with intellect. That's simply not true. However, you may be over-estimating all people's intelligence just a tad. Hitler wasn't Stupid, nor is Bush. However neither am I. There may be millions of various Pro-war opinions, expressed articulately, seething behind the facade of Pro-War ideology. That doesn't give Pro-War ideology any more credibility. Highly intelligent people simply make more glaring mistakes than ignorant people. Highly intelligent people still do stupid things for stupid reasons and are embarrassed. Highly intelligent people are no more likely to have a speck of compassion than ignorant people. In Fact, highly intelligent people have a higher rate of Suicide, emotional disturbances, and other social/behavioral anomalies. The level of intellect of the Pro-War faction is not lost on me, it only makes more apparent the fact that highly intelligent people with grand ambitions make larger more obviously bad mistakes and are capable of incredibly wrong thinking. Highly intelligent people also lack common sense. I worked around PhD's all my life and believe me, they need an average guy around to help keep it together for them - they're "out there". Brilliant people are nearly impossible to change, e.g. a Genius Alcoholic's denial is so strong it's impossible to convince them they have a problem or are sick.
Notably, Highly intelligent people are the EASIEST to hypnotize.

I look at it this way - Highly intelligent Pro-War people debating details with each other about how to proceed with their War is equivalent to a group of highly intelligent Nazis debating on exactly how to slaughter all the Jews effectively.... They're all debating the best way to do the wrong thing. They're still wrong. A Genius with a closed mind is still a Genius. It's also a waste. Denial is a Human Failing and trait, and exists in Left and right-wing people equally. While the pro-war faction debates with itself, the faction as a whole is made up of people in denial that there may exist a (or several) non-war alternative. The same (but opposite) is true of the anti-war faction. Many of us are in denial that War may actually be "necessary" or "Just", ever.

I was just surprised that you called Crosby "Creepizoid" (it felt exactly like the Right-wingers who called me a Commie, up in Colorado) and felt it necessary to use George Harrison and David Crosby as examples somehow. An intellectual wouldn't have needed to resort to name-calling to make a point, and that sounded like name-calling. The only reason people call each other names is because they're unable to articulate or debate the issue at hand any other way - it's the same tactic Homer Simpson uses to make himself look good - by making someone else look bad. I thought that was pretty lame. Crosby and Harrison were "Working for Change" sending messages with their music. By your works, are you Working for Change? you did get me to think quite a bit. Thanks.

Sorry for the Verbose nature of this letter. Thanks for reading.

--

Yes, I have too have long recognised G. Harrison as a hypocrite. Always complaining about taxes, etc. Claimed to be spiritually humble, yet lived in the biggest mansion of all the Beatles - 165 rooms, I do believe.

Well, perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the quiet gardener's life was his obsession with Formula One motor racing. He was a Formula One junky, lapping up the noise, macho bravado, and wanton waste of the earth's resources. Indeed, at one post-race press conference he repeatedly interupted the speaker to raise a point about a driver's dubious race tactics.

--

You write in too many ways impossible to distinquish. Try using less big words and get to it. You are not a dictionarian..just a writer

--

I just read your 2001 article "His guitar never gently weeped" about George Harrison. I think it was wrong of you to say such things about the man. Of course, he wasn't perfect. No one is...why point out his mistakes and shortcomings when I am sure, Mr. Welch, that like everyone else you have some too. Would you like a journalist writing about how bad a person you *actually* were when he or she really didn't know you? All you really know, or I should say knew, about him is what other journalists like yourself published in a newspaper or by other means. And also--I don' think that you were really a Beatles fan, because he was a Beatle. Why would you attack someone that you claimed to be a fan to? I am a Beatles fan. I KNOW they were not perfect. I KNOW they had problems. And I also know that there are other people like them all over the world that have the same problems. Why don't you go out into the world and pick out EVERYONE you see that has a problem and diss them in a public fashion? I don't mean to attack you. I really don't. I just didn't think it was right or fair to diss him. He may had had many problems, some we most likely don't even know about, but people loved him--his wife, son, and so forth. They could have been hurt by what you said. I am sorry if I hurt your feelings in anyway. I really am sorry, but I just wanted to make a statement.
Thank you!

A High School Beatles Fan

01/15/2003 09:43 AM  |  Comment (3)

L.A. Boosterism of the Day: From native child Kate Sullivan:

Goddamn, I love downtown Los Angeles. Its grandeur is epic and polluted, just like its humanity. Walk down Broadway some time--there are faces in the facades, and little planets and stars. The old Herald Examiner building, empty but proud, the movie palaces turned Latino churches, the ginormous Aztec (?) mural, the families out for a Saturday stroll in the shops. Grand Central Market--we ate there after the thing; it was packed and bustling with chilis and pig heads everywhere, sawdust on the floors, colorful neon signs, espresso and burritos and chop suey and shit. Angel's Flight trolley wasn't running today but it sure looked pretty. A butch lesbian janitor lady cleaning out the trash cans with the worst rat tail you ever saw. She had her thing going on. I felt like John Fante was maybe sitting at one of the tables sipping a beer, watching. Whenever the New York Times or any other snobs accuse L.A. of cultural vapidity, I laugh.

There were some good, reasoned, logical speeches. Then there were the lame ones, such as the one trying to turn the Iraq-thing into a debate on the government of Cuba and its blah blah heroic fight blah blah against U.S. terrorism blah. Look, people, Cuba is a dictatorship that jails and kills dissidents. Amazing country, amazing people, incredible history. Shitty government.

Why is it OK, among some Lefties, for certain governments to oppress their people, but not others?

01/14/2003 09:42 PM  | 

Latest National Post Column From Me -- 'America's Secret Weapon: The Facts': In which I basically encourage the U.S. to start a blog (without actually mentioning the word), as a way to confront that persnickety global PR problem. That is, if the aim is to rebut lies, and not spread propaganda.

01/12/2003 08:59 AM  |  Comment (4)

Hi! What are you doing down here?