Category: Uncategorized

About a month ago, I was watching a documentary about the career of actor Kirk Douglas, a man who I admire greatly. There were clips from his numerous roles including “Spartacus”, “Lust for Life”, “The Bad and the Beautiful” and “A Letter to Three Wives”. Through all his fictional personas, Douglas has attained a mythical stature, one that equates who he is to what he pretends to be.

I don’t live in fear of offending any actor by saying that their lies reveal truths about life and seduce us into belief. What offends me is the weight we give to their off screen views.

The same can be said of organized religion. It says that something is real, when it logically is not, yet we are in thrall to the seduction of lies. We fear of saying things that are disrespectful about mystical beliefs, holy tales and those priestly utterances that are given on top of the pulpit. Why do we cling so closely to ignorance? Why are we so afraid of calling liars liars? Does our religious upbringing and indoctrination in stories and special effects make us suseptible to the black magic of actors?

There is the cult of the performers in which our “celebrities” assume priestly functions. Then they lead us down a road to their [a]moral choice. George Clooney, now a respected political spokesman? His roles in “Syrianna” and “Good Night, Good Luck” have erased the line between who he is and what he pretends to be. And what if the gullible believers truly think that he has the answers to the Middle Eastern conflict merely because he played a spy on screen? Is he really the same person who denounced Senator McCarthy and exposed his lies? Murrow may have done great things, but we cannot trust that Clooney ghosting as Murrow somehow borrows the authority, intelligence and moral character of his muse.

When we believe “Munich” is really Munich in 1972 or “JFK” is really the story of Dallas on November 22, 1963 we suspend rational thinking. Most actors don’t have answers to the problems of this world– and their opinions don’t deserve the respect that the media circus acccords them.

See more Suburbia Salon photos .

On a recent Thursday evening in Studio City, Suburbia Salon was a hotbed of activity.

They were cutting, washing, tinting, blowing.

There was wine, laughter, lights, music, and affection.

A make up artist was showing a beautiful woman how to look more beautiful.

The rooms were full of life, love and energy……. and the salon lit up the night sky with its exuberant joyousness.

The saddest person could walk in here and be amused.

What gifts and artistry abound in this wacky and theatrical corner of the Valley.

It is infuriating to see this destruction and makes one mourn that people could destroy such beauty. Who will be blamed for the blast? Who will protest? Who will die?

NY Times:

Blast Destroys Golden Dome of Sacred Shiite Shrine in Iraq

By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 – Insurgents dressed as police commandos detonated powerful explosives this morning inside one of Shiite Islam’s most sacred shrines, destroying most of the building, located in the volatile town of Samarra, and prompting thousands of Shiites to flood into streets across the country in protest.

The golden-domed shrine housed the tombs of two revered leaders of Shiite Islam and symbolized the place where the Imam Mahdi, a mythical, messianic figure, disappeared from this earth. Believers in the imam say he will return when the apocalypse is near, to cleanse the world of its evils.

The blast took place at about 7 a.m. and shook the city of Samarra, a Sunni-dominated area that is nevertheless sacred to Shiites. The gunmen entered the shrine and handcuffed guards in the building, then set about planting the explosives, an official of the provincial governorate said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but the golden dome was entirely destroyed, as well as three-quarters of the structure.

“A bill introduced in the Ohio Legislature this month would bar all adoptions and foster care by gays and lesbians. It is among efforts in at least 16 states to put into law the view that children should be cared for only by a mother and a father or by heterosexual singles.”-USA TODAY, February 21, 2006

A UCLA demographer, Gary Gates, estimates that about 250,000 children are being raised by same-sex couples. Yet Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) would still like to pursue a bill making those children’s parents illegal under the law by forbidding same-sex marriage. We know the GORP ( Grand Old Reactionary Party) thinks warrantless spying is OK, but what about warrantless prejudice?

Since Mr. Frist also believes that a Christian home is the best home, maybe he should disallow Jews or atheists from adopting? How can you raise a child in a home where Christ isn’t? Yet we wisely counsel ourselves that religion is a private matter and permit non-Christians to adopt.

When a gay couple adopts children, the unspoken fear is that they will raise the kids to “become gay”. Yet if many gay people were born into heterosexual families, how come they don’t come out straight? If the ideal family is a father and mother, then why are so many of these male/female unions ending in divorce or enduring as miserable partnerships? There are thousands of poor and abused children in the nation who are crying out for a decent home. Who hears their cries? Not some churchmen…

As usual, conservative Christians are in the forefront to prohibit gay adoption. “These people can’t reproduce,” says Rev. Russell Johnson of the Ohio Restoration Project. A profound observation . Isn’t a failure to reproduce the single most likely reason for any couple wanting to adopt?

What about the immoral behaviorof gay people? The drugs, promiscuity and disease? What about the lifestyle of straight people? The accidental shootings, the spousal abuse, the ugly wallpaper? There are grown men who behave badly and they still can adopt….as long as they don’t proclaim their love for another man! But let’s forget about the adults and go back to what is best for the children….

What is the perfect kind of environment for a child? There is no “ideal”. We would all love to come from the richest, most loving, and eternally cheerful homes. But people go through hard times, get divorced, fired, sick, angry, bitter…and still (sometimes) manage to be good parents. If you deny a gay person the right to be a parent, you are denying that he is fully human.

I proclaim: all God’s children are human beings, despite the teachings of some of the “God-fearing”.

Can anyone refute this?

Of course many do. The loudest moral voices against gay adoption and marriage eminate from the old slave owning states of the Confederacy–the ones with “colored only” drinking fountains and “octoroons”. The region that broke apart families, so that slavery could endure, is now lecturing the rest of the nation on how to best promote family life.

Little do they realize that gays are actually saving family life by actively seeking participation in it.

CREDITS:

New York City Dept. of Emergency Mgmt.
Sepulveda and Victory; Lincoln Blvd in Venice : hereinvannuys
3 Brentwood Photos: David Liu a.k.a.”Dave of Cali”

Blizzard of 1888

“With 21 inches of snow falling over a two-day period — the third largest accumulation on record — the blizzard of 1888 hit New York City by surprise at the end of a warm March day. As two storms, one approaching from the south and one from the north, met over the City, heavy precipitation and winds gusting up to almost 75 mph resulted in snowdrifts up to 30 feet high. Roads and highways were blocked, steam train service was suspended, horse-drawn streetcars and taxis halted operations, and ships docked in New York’s harbor.

A New York Central locomotive derailed while attempting to push past snow drifts in the 4th Avenue tunnel, and many commuters were stranded on elevated tracks in unheated cars. It took 14 days for the City to completely recover. The mayor responded in early 1889 by ordering all overhead wires placed underground.”

-NYC Department of Emergency Management

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117 years later, the Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power has yet to bury most of its ugly, overhead wooden utility poles that mar so much of our city. Reader Deborah Wilson informs me that in 1991, Anaheim Public Utilities, whose customers enjoy some of the lowest rates in Orange County, began a a 60-year program to underground 12 and 69 kV powerlines communications and cable TV lines along major streets. Cities such as Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena are also working to bury their electrical systems.

San Diego started a program in 2002 according to the San Diego Metropolitan:

“Mayor Dick Murphy and Councilwoman Toni Atkins report
the final approval of a plan that will dramatically
speed up the undergrounding of overhead utility lines
within the city limits.

The California Public Utilities Commission approved
the proposal yesterday. It calls for an increased
surcharge on gross electrical receipts to pay for an
accelerated program.

“This plan will help create neighborhoods we can be
proud of, [or] goal No. 3 of my 10 goals to make San
Diego a city worthy of our affection in the year
2020,” Murphy says. “Removing these ugly overhead
lines beautifies our communities and creates more room
to plant street trees. It also makes our neighborhoods
safer by eliminating threats such as downed power
lines, tree fires and accidents involving poles.”

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Los Angeles always seems to come in last when it involves civic improvements. Why?

Top: Kester and Victory slum mall.
Bottom 2: Barcelona, Spain

Barcelona has mountains, palm trees and many Spanish speaking Catholics. Sound familiar?

Mayor Villaraigosa has never announced a plan to take the wide width of Van Nuys Boulevard and transform it into “Las Ramblas”. That’s because Los Angeles would never build five to eight story apartments, with ground floor retail shops, along a tree lined promenade. It would be “an unprecedented attack on suburbia” to quote one of our distinguished urban theorists.

If Van Nuys Boulevard, between Victory and Roscoe, looked like Barcelona, it could cause feelings of inferiority in Hummerland, a.k.a. Calabasas. We must not let that happen. The Daily News might scream about how Van Nuys is getting the advantages of a real life promenade while Woodland Hills only has a mall called Promenade.

Keep the parking lots, wooden utility poles, cobra lamps, auto repair shops, mini-malls, and ten lane asphalt roadway. Preserve the historic plastic signs, the litter, shopping carts and billboards. That’s the best we can hope for. We are a very poor city without the resources or imagination to do anything bold or innovative or……human.