Category: Uncategorized

The new deadly attacks in London have gripped the world’s news media for the past two days. The death toll is atrocious, the violence obscene, the random killing purposeless.

We saw Queen Elizabeth visit victims in the hospital, and Tony Blair vow that the terrorists will not destroy “our way of life”. London, which only three days ago celebrated the victorious city’s selection as the host of the 2012 Olympics, is now engaged in the gruesome and noxious task of forensic and criminal crime scene collection.

The people of Iraq, let us not forget, live in a country that is something like the tunnel under the Charing Cross Station. Sudden death, blood, body parts, explosions, darkness, smoke, the stench of corpses, twisted metal, shards of glass, burnt clothing….these are the offerings presented to the kingdom of Bagdad everyday.

Our democratic leaders only offer us year after year of war, as our public treasury is wasted in a fight that can only end in catastrophic annihiliation. Once, the mighty West imagined that we could civilize the darker corners of the world and uplift the savages to our higher standard. We laughed as the Berlin Wall fell, and then we turned on “Seinfeld” and tuned out the world. Now we watch from behind closed circuit cameras as the maniacal Muslim thieves of democracy, rationalism and intellect steal our precious constitutional freedoms bit by bit. The fuse that ignites the bomb in the bus will eventually incinerate the paper document which so proudly hails, “We the people….”

An excerpt from the Declaration of Independence:

“He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.”

They were writing about King George of England.

Tarzana is the epicenter of ickiness in the Valley. Say what you will about “impoverished” Van Nuys, with its broken down apartments and tacky business district. Yet Van Nuys has good bones. There is the beautiful 1933 city hall, a modern and sensitively designed government building, the beginnings of a revival of bungalow houses, a brand new landscaped bus route and possibly the Valley’s first historic district. The mostly Latino population is basically polite, and practice such outmoded practices as allowing a driver to merge into traffic in front of them.

Tarzana, by contrast, is a grotesque and sprawling 1950’s and 6o’s junkpile of blacktop baking in the noontime sun. Near Reseda and Clark Streets, huge parking lots scream with honking horns, as aggressive and rude people shove their way into Gelsons. There is a generous amount of immigrants of here, but they aren’t Spanish speakers. Instead, they mostly come from the letter “eye” nations. Cell phones and cigarettes are their passport. “Thank you” or “excuse me” are unspoken here.

There is a wonderful Jewish bakery here, but surrounding it are dozens of shops peddling junk: nail salons, hair products, candles and Russian souvenirs. Completely absent in this man made hell are trees, grass, water, fountains. Billboards and wooden power lines deface Reseda Boulevard, which itself is a road without rules. Speeding drivers, with ear piercing woofers and noxious music blasting, race to exit and enter the 101. Walking, solitude, peace…..are you kidding?

Along Ventura, east of Reseda, there are slutty women’s stores selling purple gauze midriff tops and mini-mini skirts with glued on sparkling plastic, beaded sequin bra tops. Psychic readers, Indonesian coffee tables, mass -produced poster art and the ubiquitous falafel restaurants line the “upscale” street. A mini mall calls itself “Wall Street”, a name sure to appeal to the money conscious Botoxed mommies in their Lincoln Navigators who jam the front parking area.

Burbank Boulevard is the northern border of the “Ugly District” and this speedway is full of elderly and medically impaired drivers turning into the Tarzana Medical Center, and those angry younger ones in the SUV’s who are desperate to step on the gas. The bellowing smoke and fumes from the freeway, and huge piles of trash are the street sculpture of this area.

Even the “Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf” on Reseda and Ventura is dirtier and more unpleasant than other locations. There is less graciousness, less room and more trash. The Mexican style restaurant chain Sharkys also has a branch nearby but the interior smells of the restrooms more than food. Can anyone eat without indigestion here?

Tarzana is fabled as the place where Edgar Rice Burroughs once had a magnificent rural ranch. He is fortunate to have died many years before his beloved region descended into an urban jungle of unimaginable grossness and vulgarity.