I told you all that the remake stank

Most remakes stink and True Grit, a Coen Brothers disaster, was no exception. Even the greasy, cheesy Oscars gave it a comprehensive thumbs down. All Coen Brothers movies get nominated f0r something, now that they are considered mainstream. They were able to wriggle out of the murky waters of “Independence”  after the glorious victory of Fargo. The Brothers Coen achieved this victory a long time ago in terms of popular culture; that is, fifteen years. To paraphrase Pop Icon David Bowie, “Five years, that’s all you’ve got!” from the ground breaking recording, “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.” That means that Bros. Coen began to their slide to obscurity at the veritable turn of the century. They’ve made some crazy good movies since then, A Serious Man being a recent example. It got nominated for best picture when it came out, but nobody really thought it would win, and it didn’t. I love Coen Bros. movies, but that wasn’t one I saw at the overpriced movie theater.

Like a Bad Penny

They always turn up again†

These poor kids are being forced to stand in the hot sun holding those stupid signs. They are exposed to all kinds of riff-raff on Hollywood Boulevard. Stand on that corner for just half an hour and you will know what I mean. You, the viewer, actually gets to see a moment where some gargantuan in a bra buttonholes one of the girls whose job is to hand out signs.   Another sign holder is an elderly gentleman who is probably lonely, and an obvious target for exploitation. Did you catch those seconds where the lady and her cohort are showing this poor (economically) man how to hold the megaphone while the lady read from the Bible. I mean the Holy Bible. I hope I said it right because I don’t want some Koran-burning, Islamophobes attacking me in an alley here in Hollywood. Artistically I think this is one of the best videos I’ve ever made. Instead of treating the Sun as an enemy, I collaborated with it and allowed it to rather edit the visual effect of the video. Does that make any sense. It reminded me of that made for t.v. movie with Sally Field called Maybe I’ll Come Home in the Spring. The director, Joseph Sargent, has enjoyed a stunning career directing t.v. movies and series. He even directed an episode of Star Trek back in 1966.

Marketing run amok!

†Thank you, Steven King, from “It” — audiobook (2010)

Concrete Hole Dwellers

Will the indignity never end?

I like to call the hole in the ground next door, the concrete garden. It’s a play on the novel by Ian McEwan, The Cement Garden. It was later made into a movie. He never wrote anything very good after that first tour de force, but his books do sell, and win awards as well. The women in the video got rather violent after I turned off the camera. They began to break bottles against western wall of their hole. It is the wall that abuts our building, so it got loud in here where the non-homeless dwell. The contractors in the upper left hand of the screen did little to fix the gate. See for yourself. That picture was taken five minutes before it was just posted.

Doesn't look promising

Was that the best these guys could do? And they wanted to put a building up on that spot? My God! That thing would have tumbled, all five floors, right all over the Pointe (my building). These half-assed developers won’t rest until they buy up my building and the one next to it and the one across the street from us. We’re the last pieces of rental property that are governed by rent control regulations on this stretch of the Yucca Street cooridor.

The number of rent controlled units decrease every year, yet the L.A. Times published an op/ed piece last May that called for the end of rent control. Trust me Paul Habibi and Eric Sussman (who authored said op/ed) there are no high-priced lawyers living in my building. It’s composition is mainly immigrant families and young people starting up with their lives as grown ups. It also seems to provide student housing for the Musicians Institute. The developers are tearing down all the rent controlled units anyway, so your arguments are unwelcome. Why don’t you weigh in on another issue, such as Ayn Rand and how great she is? Paul Habibi is a real estate entrepreneur, according to Wikipedia. (It’s too easy) Eric Sussman lectures at UCLA. When he isn’t playing teacher, he’s “president of Amber Capital, Inc., a 15-person real estate investment company, which has acquired, rehabilitated, developed, and managed over 1,575,000 square feet of commercial real estate since its founding in 1993.” Just another fucking developer! L.A. Times is not unbiased. It is a tool of the real estate investors, in the grand tradition of old man Mulholland, who has a beautiful two-lane highway named after him. It’s hard not to think that everything is a fix. But that’s how they do things in Los Angeles.
The Jefferson Project is all finished and they’ve hung out their For Rent sign. At three thousand a pop, I wonder how fast they are renting apartments? Now they have twenty seven units set aside for people with low income. This is out of two hundred and seventy units- a measly ten percent. I wonder what the income requirements are for these units? Who decides who gets them? There are a lot of working poor families in this neighborhood. Will the recipients be from this neighborhood? I bet it’s a lottery system, and the only people who got invited to play were friends of the family, if you will- nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

So let us agree that the development company that owns this lot on the corner of Yucca Street and Las Palmas Avenue is irresponsible in the way it is conducting the disposition of said lot. They are not making it a secure site. Anyone can camp out there, and now they do. The people who camp on their lot are not nice people. They are mean, ugly and probably drug addicted people. Would you want them setting up shop in the concrete hole next door to your home?

Only the Homeless are Free

Arrest? Who? Me?

This morning I heard a man yelling insults, obscenities and threats at 8 o’clock. I looked out the window and saw a tall African-American man with a shopping cart full of stuff garbage bags, and a small Hispanic man who was walking his little doggy. The man with the shopping cart, who I assume is homeless, was extremely upset about the man’s dog, which probably weighed all of one pound. The poor man with the dog couldn’t understand fully why the homeless man was upset. He was just trying to walk his dog. Just then a police car pulled up to a stop sign and the man with the dog flagged them down. The rest is history.

Those silver bracelets!

Well of course the cops spent a lot of time keeping him in handcuffs, and calling the Wilcox Station to see if he had any outstanding warrants. He must have had some kind of I.D. or they would have detained him and taken him back to the station for a fingerprint check, or whatnot. I ran downstairs to give a witness statement. I told them what I saw. Did they write it down? No. Did they ask me for my name or address or any contact info in case they arrested the detainee? No. That’s because they already knew that they weren’t going to arrest him for assaulting the poor guy and his dog. Luckily a passerby was able to translate between the victim and the cop. It makes me sick what goes on in this city, this town of Hollywood. There really is much to say. After everybody left, the cops let the guy go. I took some other photos and pics, so here you go:

That will learn him!

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ (below are videos)

Tammy Report

As you can mostly hear, but partly see, Tammy is never one keep her feelings bottled up inside. Maybe we can all learn from Tammy and start yelling “Fuck you!” at whomever we like. Oh, but I already know “people” like that. Today is one of those days when your Hollywood reporter-at-large wished the world would hurry up and run out of resources, that the last oil well will run dry. I want to be here, in the desert when it happens. But maybe that’s just the Tammy in me talking right now.

Gentrification Sucks!

Another reason to hate the Jefferson Project

Jefferson Project - Built by Scabs & Rats

Joe Hill, martyr

What’s the big deal? So they aren’t paying decent wages, maybe even paying illegal immigrants under the table to haul stuff away. Why is everybody getting their panties in a bunch? If it weren’t for unions, there would be no middle class in this country. Sweatshops would abound. Workers would be forced to labor for twelve or more hours at a time. There would be no OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). Hell, there would be no Department of Labor, whose Secretary serves on the President’s Cabinet. The last effect Secretary of Labor that this country had was under Bill Clinton. His name? Robert Reich. He served under Bill Clinton and was one of his chief economic advisors. The reasons why Obama didn’t tap him for his administration is beyond my comprehension. Maybe he asked and Reich turned him down? He’d make a better Secretary of the Treasury than Geithner, who has proven himself to be a complete corporate shill. But maybe he is doing a good job by Obama, taking the heat for his misguided pro-corporate policies. So how did I get all the way from the Jefferson to here? Well, there used to be strong labor laws in this country, but under Uncle Ronnie, they were dismantled by Congress (with the help of the pro-right wing Supreme Court). Now, all we have left of the vestiges of a strong union mentality in this country is Labor Day. I wonder how many middle class Americans realize that they have a day off to barbecue thanks to the blood, sweat and tears of labor agitators from the Great Depression era. I wonder how many people know who Joe Hill was. (Joan Baez does a great version of the song, “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night.”)

If it weren’t for labor unions, there would be no middle-class today –Russell Smith

Guess how much a unit is going for at the Jefferson? Three thousand dollars a month, that’s how much! With that kind of money backing up this never-ending project, one would think that they would hire members of Carpenters Local 209 to help build this…thing. But no! Every penny counts in this rat-eat-rat world of ours. Back in the old days, the Union would have had a nice gang of thugs to beat the living shit out of these scabs who are stealing jobs from dues paying members of Carpenters Local 209. It is sick-making when one realizes that construction workers, REAL construction workers, are some of the hardest hit people here in L.A. in this Republican-created Depression.

Call 972-556-1700 to complain!

One last insult to the workers of Hollywood. I saw Spiderman getting a ticket for being Spiderman. The world really is turning into an Orwellian nightmare. Watch!

Noise, noise, noise and I chastise the police force!

A video from CBS.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6633405n&tag=api

Oh, how I hate them. How I hate cell phones! Just shut up and watch the game! I am really quite quite shocked that nobody kicked his ass before the ball came along and schmooshed his nose!

October 2007

June 2010 – Day in and Day out!

Now

What do they “plan” on doing in this amazing city of Hollywood? I’ll tell ya! a whole lot of nothing. The amazing city of Jollywood is really the happiest place on Earth. I will tell you why. Because in the United States of America we are blessed with a unique  assembly of liberties and this is ground zero where the clash between liberties and personal freedoms occurs on a daily basis. For ten years I’ve watched it play out between skateboarders and city park staff. Between city employees who are really just trying to do their underpaid jobs, while at the same time, help these same kids develop some kind of personal growth with the backdrop of rampant, unbridled capitalism to misguide these under-parented children whose parents are simply struggling to put food in their mouths [period]. Sometimes I feel honored to be a witness to all this melodrama, while at other times I just feel like a victim!

Well the joke is on me. Neither the parents nor the kids give a hoot. In fact, most Americans don’t realize that this wee patch of land called Hollywood (zip code 90028) is  a big microcosm; or is it a tiny macrocosm of America’s culture clash? Here is where races, genders, belief systems, morals and the kitchen sink, collide, bounce against one another and spew new perspectives, and ideas. The energy and the tension are palpable. Here is where rent controlled properties are being quietly squeezed out by new luxury condos and apartment complexes.

Versus

Social Services? Whu? Police Protection? Huh?

The woman who is the subject of the two videos is a neighborhood fixture. It’s sad because she needs help. Serious help. And so does our neighborhood. In my make-believe world, one would call the police and report that a women is in severe distress and needs psychiatric and social services support. The police would come, and put her in restraints with the help of some kind of Emergency Medical Transport. From there she would be brought in front of a judge. Clearly the woman is incompetent and unable to make rational decisions on her own behalf. The judge would send her to the Los Angeles County Hospital. There she would be admitted for observation and treatment. After about two weeks of psychopharmacological intervention, as well as two or three interviews a week, she would be reassessed and sent to a half-way house transitional care to prepare her for life as productive member of society, or released to her family, in a worst case scenario- hospitalized for a longer period of time and put in the care of the State of California.

The Old County Hospital

Dream on!

Here is what really happens:

• I call the cops four times on June 25, 2010 (give or take a day).
• They can’t find the tree she is living under, despite detailed instructions, descriptions and the fact that I am not the only person who has called the police on her.
• After the second call, I am asked to meet the police in front of my building in order to show them where she is.
  • For one thing, you can hear her from the front of our building.
  • When I hobble down there with my cane, they’ve already left.
• I call a third time. The dispatcher keeps telling me “Hold on, hold on, hold on” in some weird mantra-like fashion.
  • I ask him, “Why do you keep telling me to “hold on?”
  • Angrily, he replies, “Well, then hang up if you want to.”
  • I want to hang up and I do so.
• After waiting another 15 to 20 minutes to see if the police are going to respond to my complaint, I conclude that they will not, so I call them again.
• Again I am asked to meet them in front of my building.
  • This time they are actually in front of the building!
  • I pulled my So-Happy-To-See-You face out of my pocket and insert it in front of my I-Really-Am-Sick-Of-This face.
• I am then subjected to the kind of creepy and humiliating treatment that borders on the Bad Lieutenant behavior.
  • The passenger says my name three times, “Are you blah blah blah?”
  • I affirm that I am blah blah blah.
  • He responds, “My partner is gonna love this.”
  • They are intrigued that I know her name. I tell them that we’ve both lived here for over ten years.
  • I try to bolster my reputation and standing in the community when I tell them that I operate a blog – ta dah! thehollyblog!
  • While the passenger laughs and repeats the name like it’s a stupid joke. The driver says, “I don’t know what a blog is.”
  • I just laugh and respond, “She’s around the corner, underneath the big tree on your left. Just follow her screaming.”
• They pull off. I watch from my window as they simply run her off of the property.

After I go to bed, my sleep is interrupted by her screaming and usual carrying on. To quote Shakespeare’s As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage.” Or even more glum, Macbeth’s soliloquy when he states,

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Who told?

Did you see the March 8 New Yorker?

Hurt Locker marches to victory

Clearly there was a leak. Don’t tell me the illustrator, Mark Ulriksen is psychic, because there’s no such thing. Culturally America is bi-coastal, with a vast wasteland in the middle. Stage actors from New York are no longer considered a sell-out when they do a Hollywood blockbuster, Cathy Bates cleared that all up after Misery and Fried Green Tomatoes.  So the cross-continental pollination continues, and a decade later, The New Yorker splashes a less-than-subtle spoiler on the front page. And then we here in Hollywood are supposed to act like we care when John Updike buys the farm? When great writers, like Pinter for example, used to go to Hollywood, it was with a fedora hat pulled over their forehead, sunglasses and a trench coat. They were ashamed to be associated with Hollywood and were considered sell-outs. Well, this is the last straw. When our subscription runs out, I’m going to see if we can get the Hollywood Reporter, or Variety. If we must stick to Condé-Nast, then I want Vanity Fair. If the New Yorker wishes to remain relevant, then why are they still publishing that gadawful poetry? I open to The Thundershower by Derek Mahon. It has nine stanzas. Oh, look! It’s trying to rhyme. Why should I give a damn about this thundershower? After 54 lines of ponderous mush, there should at least be an earthquake. Usually I read the cartoons while I’m on the throne. Talk of the Town? Who gives a damn? Ain’t my town! Okay, I’m going to stop deconstructing the New Yorker now, but it really pisses me off that someone at Borse-Porterhouse leaked the results to someone who gives good head, so good that it got him/her a position or friend at the New Yorker. Well, they say Nancy Reagan gave head like she was sucking for oxygen. Guess that’s what makes the world go round.

How long, oh Lord, how long?

I want my sidewalk back!

The bizzarely named Jefferson Project continues to ruin the lives of local residents. The eastern sidewalk from on Highland from Hollywood to Yucca is closed. When I first asked the site manager, Buba, how long this inconvenience would last, he assured me that it would only last “three weeks.” Three months later, I’m being told that it might be a couple more months. With  unemployment for construction workers in Los Angeles running at a mind-boggling twenty percent, these kind of boondoggles will keep the most incompetant, lazy and drug addled among you, busy as bees pollinating opium plants. Nice work, Bubba.

Most annoying commercial ever

With a spokesmodel named Flo, who looks and acts like she’s taking Provigil by the bottle, Progressive Insurance has won the hearts, if not the pocketbooks, of America. While I was cutting through the Hollywood and Highland complex to get to the CVS at Sycamore and Hollywood, I was assaulted by a Progressive-Insurance-a-thon. Here they are filming one of those commercials again. Where’s that tampon I can use to gauge out my eyes? Take a look and see if you can find Flo!

I’m back to stir things up!

Some say Hollywood Stinks

You might want to ask this couple what they think. One thing for sure, if you are near the Hollywood and Highland complex, you should feel fairly safe. The gentlemen below are an ever-present fixture. I would suggest that they spend less time lapping up those Starbucks lattés and blueberry scones.

The gentleman that they are hassling is a fixture at H&H. He is a precussionist. There used to be a troop of dancers and he provided a lovely backdrop for their performances. The police seem intent on making Hollywood as safe and sterile as possible.

It’s been a while since I posted a skank of the day. In the interest of fairness, today’s skank is a male:

Skank!

For the record, the day I snapped this shot, it was not even eighty degrees Fahrenheit and it wasn’t that sunny either. My definition of a skank is someone who walks around half naked. The reasons for this behavior should be self-evident – to get laid. Dude, are you that desperate?

Let’s take a look at today’s most pathetic homeless person and then call it a day.

Help them!

The Republicans will tell you that there will always be poor. But why is that? There’s that old saying that if you redistributed all the wealth equally among all the people in the country, then in a few days all that money would be reconcentrated in the same hands. That’s bullshit Capitalist propaganda. I know that if I got an equal piece of that multi-trillion pile, I’d do my best to hold on to it. Investments? Try buying a house, a car and a boat with money hands down! It would destroy the credit system as it exists today. The fact that we don’t even have usery laws in this country says much about our system. Okay, now some of this should be better left said on PoliticoGoGo. Good day and good luck!

Wallet lost – wallet found. How zen!

Funny thing happened on the way to the Pharmacy. When I went to the subway stop, I was greeted by a police officer and his sniffy dog. I asked the officer if it would be okay to take his picture w/ the Hollywood & Highland metro stop sign in view. He graciously assented. Isn’t it adorable?

Meet XXZYLO and Officer Haiden

Doggy didn’t think I noticed when he sniffed my backpack. “Just doin’ my job, sir.” He’d say, but it would sound like “Arf!” I took this pic this very morning on the way to Plaza Pharmacy at USC. One of the few pharmacies that will perform compounding. I was prescribed 100 mg erythromycin. So they have to buy big bottles of powdered erythro and pour it into a machine that measures perfect 100mg capsules. What happened to the good old days when everybody used triple beam scales? If it was good enough for my grandfather, well it’s good enough for me. Hell, we used it for other purposes, I won’t lie, but I’m not Bill Maher, living in a world of limited consequences for my behavior. So I’ll just leave it at that. The point I’m meandering my way toward is that the copay for these 100mg capsules of a drug that’s older than God, so to speak was a whopping $25! Ridiculous. Give me a prescription for 500 mg capsules and I’ll pay 2 and a half bucks. I can compound them myself. I do own a pill cutter. Cut in half, the pill equals 250, into quarters 125mg. Break a teeny-weeny bit off that quarter and Voilà! I’ve got my 100 mg pill!

Anyway on the way home, Russell the Sap buys a necklace from a woman on the subway. I drop my wallet, unknowingly and then miss my stop. Before checking carefully that I have everything, I bolt out the door at the next stop. I wait for the train to take me one stop home. It’s a long ride, let me tell you. I rush home. Cancel both of my debit cards. (Who has credit anyway?) Two minutes after making my online appointment for a new driver’s license, I get a call from X. She has found my wallet! Tomorrow Robin and I have to drive out to Van Nuys to pick it up. Damn! Freaky how things work out? I hope it’s not a scam, or a set up. I don’t want to die in a car trunk being forced to make withdrawals at gun point. I wouldn’t be able to comply, so they’d have to drive me out to the LAX airport parking lot and snuff me there, like in Jackie Brown.

I guess watching all those YouTube videos is freaking me out. All these nutjob right wingers calling Nancy Pelosi, Nazi Pelosi and phraseology like ‘rag heads.’ It makes me want to pack a suitcase and repatriate to France. When I look at Minority Leader Beohmer’s YouTube site, it makes me want to vomit. Americans have degenerated into slack-jawed troglodytes. You should read the commentary to some of his 30 second videos. Can you blame me if I want to go back to the land of my birth? They say the per capita income is $34,000/year. Wow! That’s a raise for me and my wife! Some right-wing woman with a hint of a French accent started laying into Obama, claiming he was trying to follow to French model of economics? What model is that, Madame? Oh, national health care! Oh and don’t forget, worker rights! God forbid that management be forced to negotiate in good faith with the workers they exploit!

Love thy neighbor

I hate bigots. This guy on YouTube was complaining that “mexicans don’t want to assimilate.” Why the hell should they? America stole this big chunk of land from Mexico. I’m just talking about California now. Let’s not go into the way we stole Texas, or New Mexico or forced them to sell us Arizona at gunpoint. Then the fascist neocons wonder why so many come here. It’s absurd. I guess if the immigrants spoke French, it wouldn’t be much of a problem. N’est-ce pas? If it were the other way around, these right-wing nut jobs would be doing anything and everything to cross that border; those very same Minute Men, and other fascists at large who call themselves patriots!

Obama greets the returning dead troops, the first president to do so, and the right-wing tries to demonize him over that. Now they’re trying to make hay over the Fort Hood massacre. Excuse me, but everybody on that base signed up for the honor to die for their country. This was not a terrorist attack and to call it one makes a mockery of all the dead in New York and Northern Virginia who were really killed by terrorists, not some random wacko! Have you seen Bill O’Reilly’s latest screed of filth? Making hay over this tragedy. It’s despicable. Loathsome. I’m done. Wait a minute! Bless you, Congressman Henry Waxman, where ‘er you may be!

Clear evidence that America is insane

When I read that article off of Yahoo News, that Madam Palin was more popular than the running mates, I came very close to vomiting. Has anyone taken a peek at her resumé? Am I the only one who’s witnessed her disgusting abuse of her children, dragging one into the limelight during the most difficult time in her life? And producing a mongoloid child, just to give herself cred with the GOP’s most insane members of the Christian Right. There is no way that you can tell this woman doesn’t have a nanny! That of course being one of the worst sins of the Christian Right. Here are some questions I’d like to ask Governor Palin:

• Were you sexually abstinent in high school?

• Did you ever take birth control; and if so, when did you stop?

• Do you think that you are as qualified as Joe Biden to step in, if the worst should happen? (Now I must ask my beloved readers to stop and think about McCain’s age and physical appearance. Scary stuff here folks)

That America got a kick out of her bitchy (yeah, it was bitchy) and vitriolic and sarcastic appearance at the RNC is proof, as clear as than that bottle of Absolute that this nation is insane and should be committed before more damage is done to the world! When I look at those two together, I get this creepy end of the world feeling, that forces behind the scene are pushing this electoral scenario, guiding us to the worst possible conclusion and just that much closer to the end of the world.

Remember when we were the good guys? If one our Presidents visited another country, he was greeted with mobs of school children waving our little stars and stripes, cheering. Now it’s different. He has to to be helicoptered into the country in the dark of night; only to be greeted in the morning by protesters, some of them violent, who would tear our President limb from limb if they could get their hands on him and this is in Western European countries, who used to be our closest allies. And now this man with one foot in the grave and this hateful harridan plan to move in where Bush left off.

Oh, deary me. Perhaps a jolt or two of Absolut for every voting citizen would make them see the way things are going more clearly. I’m just not sure anymore.