Hey Look, Emmanuelle Wrote a Nice Piece About Patrick McGoohan & The Prisoner for Reason Online!

01/15/2009 12:23 PM  | 

Here's Something That Makes Me Sadder Than Headline-Writers Losing Their Jobs: A radio station I actually liked is going off the air. Hopefully something with a similar spirit will spring forth with a stronger signal.

01/15/2009 11:16 AM  |  Comment (1)

For the Same Reason Priests Live in Red Light Districts, I Guess: There are many types of people I do not understand, but really high on that list are people who live in L.A. and complain about billboards. If I didn't understand English, I would have bet that this website was objectively pro-billboard, since some of those images are quite attractive.

Look, it's a commercial capital, people. Audio-visuals. Stuff to catch your eye while driving. Why, sometimes people even incorporate crass commercialism into the structure of their buildings! Washington, D.C. has a billboard ban, and do you know what? Washington, D.C. sucks.

I found this link at Joseph Mailander's Street Hassle website.

01/15/2009 09:35 AM  |  Comment (4)

Now, You Don't Even Need to Say "I'm Not Drunk, I'm Tired" Anymore!

01/15/2009 07:06 AM  | 

Obama From the Cheap Seats

01/14/2009 11:49 PM  | 

Preston Gomez, RIP: Dude was just a giant of baseball, and not only of the Southern Californian or American variety. After a brief MLB career he managed the Havana Sugar Kings to the AAA championship in 1959 with Fidel Castro in the stands, against Gene Mauch's club with a 2Bman named Carl Yasztrzemski (if that doesn't screw with your brain, you're not a baseball fan). It was one of the greatest minor league teams ever, and the last time pro ball was played in commie-land. Even though Castro banned him from the island for a decade, and most likely treated his remaining family like shit, I'm sure this became untenable after Gomez became even a bigger pride of Havana by being named manager of the San Diego Padres in 1969. Forever after, whenever he'd meet the old bastard, he'd make sure to say "um, why don't you free your country, asshole?" (not a direct quote), and El Caudillo would just laugh and change the subject back to "Tony" Perez or whatnot.

He was fixture for the Dodgers organization, but the Dodgers organization got real goddamned stupid under Tommy Lasorda (a malady that will persist until he is wheelbarrowed away from Chavez), and so the Angels snapped Gomez up for nearly three decades, to basically give as much wisdom as he was able. He got hit by a car last year and never really recovered; otherwise he would have lived to 97, like all Cubans. I never met him, and they'd only interview him once in a while, but he was always super-classy and salty at the same time, speaking blunt truths about headstrong and talented young players like Francisco Rodriguez. Of all the people in baseball who I'd want to tape-record for 10 hours, he was always in the top five. He'll be missed.

01/14/2009 12:30 PM  |  Comment (2)

One Reason I Can Never Quite Stomach Kurt Andersen: Even when he's doing something reasonable, like defending L.A., he sounds like this:

I'm not bedeviled by the place's fear-driven mono-industrial pecking order.

01/14/2009 01:42 AM  |  Comment (1)

I Kind of Didn't Know This Existed:

01/13/2009 10:09 AM  |  Comment (3)

SAY THE NAME, DAVID CARR!!!

01/12/2009 04:07 PM  | 

The Comments on This Super-Long Marc Cooper Post Bashing the New Times' Handling of the LA Weekly...: ... remind me very much of what I do not miss about Southern California journalism. Try to ignore the vitriol for a moment (pretty hard to do, considering there is, among other things, heinous charges of complicity in an alleged suicide); and instead focus on the extraordinarily cavalier approach throughout toward facts ... and then consider that the participants are largely journalists.... Ugh.

01/11/2009 11:10 AM  |  Comment (1)

Hi! What are you doing down here?