Readers who happen to be old ladies:

Younger men are better looking, healthier, have more energy, are more fun, don’t need Viagra, and won’t die on you!

Such is the rationale for tonight’s California Cougar Convention.  While older men are considered men even though they show off their grays in the form of a young blond, society’s answer to the reverse situation is: predatory animals.  So, in the spirit of the jungle kingdom, the Society of Single Professionals (yes) organized tonight’s convention  for cougars and their would-be cubs at the Beverly Hills Crowne Plaza Hotel.  Thirty dollars will buy you access to the stalking, the pouncing, and the purring; in addition, the young cubs will vote to elect a Miss Cougar California (who must be 40 or over (that’s who an “older woman” is, apparently) and “legally single”) during the night’s dance party.

For those of you who want so desperately to cougar, but don’t know how, take the 6:30 class in cougaring at The Cougar School, free for paid convention goers.  I’m not exactly sure what this will entail, but I’m envisioning the scene from The Lion King where Mufasa teaches Simba how to pounce.  Cubs, heed the sign’s warning: If attacked, fight back.  Zazu should have been so lucky.

When mountain lions attack photo taken by jurvetson and used under a Creative Commons license.

If you’ve seen the comment thread of my follow-up post Tuesday on the matter of the two swastikas scratched into the concrete roadbed of 4th Street in Hancock Park, you’ll know that Councilman Tom LaBonge responded proactively, wasting little time getting Public Works personnel out to destroy the long-lurking symbols of hate that had been etched there so moronically however many years ago.

Indeed, biking by this morning I was relieved and pleased to find both swastikas (located between Las Palmas and Hudson)had been excised:

Sure, the end results might not be as cosmetically appealing as one might have wished for, but the patched pavement is certainly a great improvement over what was there before, thanks to Councilman LaBonge and the Department of Public Works.

So back on October 8th I wrote about my surprise in finding a second seemingly long-standing swastika scratched into the concrete roadbed on 4th Street in Hancock Park and dutifully harumphed both at the symbols of hate and myself for my failure to act in getting the first one removed when discovered a couple blocks further west more than a year ago. In closing that post I vowed to report it to the appropriate civic agency in hopes they could be erased.

First up I contacted the Bureau of Street Services (BOSS) and filed an online service request, which included an offer to meet personnel at the scene to point out the swastikas’ locations, as they are easily missed. Five days later when my request had not surprisingly been summarily ignored, I followed-up only to be politely told by a BOSS representative that regardless of the reprehensible symbols being in the actual street, such requests were not under their jurisdiction and that as a courtesy they had forwarded it on to the Department of Public Works’ Office of Community Beautification (OCB). How nice of them.

Not willing to believe that, On October 13 I went to the OCB website and filled out a removal request form, again detailing the nature and location of the two swastikas, and offering to meet workers on-site to show them where they were.

Yesterday, I got the following automated e-mail from OCB:

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A letter by Oscar winning Paul Haggis (Crash) wherein he renounces the  Church of Scientology, of which he’s been a  member for 25 years,  is making the rounds on various websites.

In summary, Haggis’ initial frustration arose from the San Diego branch’s support of Proposition 8, and, in spite of his appeals, the Church’s inaction over condemning the support of the anti-gay legislation.

“I told you I could not, in good conscience, be a member of an organization where gay-bashing was tolerated,” Haggis writes.

Haggis goes on to verify and condemn that the Church used private information gathered during an auditing session to smear a Church defector, a tactic the Church has long denied ever using.

“So, I am now painfully aware that you might see this an attack and just as easily use things I have confessed over the years to smear my name.”

The letter ends, “I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Scientology.”

But one thing he never does is recant any of the core teaching or beliefs of Scientology. His bone lies only with how the Church is run. (more…)

Cinematic Titanic! 5 NIGHTS/5 MOVIES at LARGO at the CORONET!

I was too busy celebrating my birthday to get my act together in time to post so you could get to tonight’s showing of “LEGACY OF BLOOD,” but look at it this way: Now you’re even more motivated to go see the other four movies.

What the heck am I even talking about, say ye? Well gather round and I’ll tell ye about the latest Joel (Mystery Science Theater) Hodgson and his gang, doing their now famous schtick-along to some classic film offerings.

MONDAY OCT. 26th,  7:30pm –  “DANGER ON TIKI ISLAND”
Living on an island near a nuclear testing zone has its downsides – i.e. being terrorized by one of the worst movie monsters ever!

TUESDAY OCT. 27th ,  7:30pm – “SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS”
See the fully re-riffed version of an MST3K classic… (more…)

My theory is that, like Halloween, one is either a fan of David Lynch’s films or not.  I am.  Recently, I watched Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” for the second time, and the first time since moving to the Los Angeles area.  It was quite eye-opening.

As for the film itself, I understood more the second time around.  “Mulholland Drive” simply cannot be viewed only once (unless you are in the category of unfortunate people who don’t like David Lynch films, in which case once is probably too much).  But then I did some research, and found out some really interesting things.  Since I rented and do not own the dvd, I did not know that Lynch inserted ten clues to watching the movie inside the back cover of the dvd box.
  Get a clue, after the jump

Bob Hope Patriotic Hall is one of those odd, old downtown buildings south of the 10 Freeway that seem to belong to an era that never quite happened. It ’s one of a scattering of big  structures, pioneers of some long ago developmental lunge preempted in the `50s by the I-10’s construction. Its ornate top story, with pitched roof and classical details, surmounts an overdecorated, underutilized 10-floor stub of 1926 masonry. It has a great arched lobby, like something our of a Venetian palace.  Its grabber detail, though, is its north-facing outside mural of  the “Spirit of 1776″– you know:  the drummer, the fifer and the other Revolutionary War guy, all in a perpetual stalled march up Figueroa Street toward Staples Center.

A few weeks ago, Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina announced a $45 million renovation of this memorial to the nearly-extinct doughboy veterans of WW I. (God bless them all–my own late father-in-law included.) I’d hoped her plans would include some suggestions for more and better use of this handsome but obsolete facility, but not so…. (more…)

I have fond memories of the boxy Volvo’s I used to own.  And probably less fond ones of seeing the Playboy sticker outlines on truck mudflaps.  Somehow I wouldn’t have thought to combine the two.

I guess it’s the neighborhood.  I am not sure whether the driver ahead of me on La Cienega was heading to the vegan Real Food Daily restaurant, or perhaps to the Live Nude Girls Girls Girls strip club, since they are right across the street from each other.

Today would have been John Lennon’s 69th birthday. His time spent in Los Angeles in the early 1970s is well-documented:

In June 1973 in New York, his wife, Yoko Ono, pushed for a separation and said he should take May Pang, their personal assistant, as his boy-toy while they reassessed their marriage.

Lennon and Pang in LA, 1974

In quick order, Lennon moved to LA with Pang and flung himself into what has become known as his “Lost Weekend,” an eighteen-month period during which he caroused, recorded some middling material, caroused, reconnected with Paul and Ringo, caroused– you get the picture.

From a rented home in the Hollywood Hills, Lennon lived out loud and large in public places in Los Angeles, making a drunken, coke-fueled spectacle of himself with stars and players of the day. When confronted by the press with criticism, he said, “So it was a mistake, but Hell, I’m human.”

Shortly thereafter, Lennon cleaned up his act.  He and Yoko reunited (in NYC, backstage after Lennon’s cameo during an Elton John concert) into renewed matrimonial bliss, had a son together, Sean, and lived a happy family life in relative seclusion at the Dakota until that fateful, sad night in December 1980 when Lennon’s fame tragically caught up with him.

From where we are with sexual politics in the early 21st century, maybe some wisdom can be gleaned from the way the Lennons openly navigated their relationship in the 1970s and the way it was received. Little public pillorying of John, no tearful media statements from Yoko, no desperate extortion attempts from lurking opportunists due to needlessly keeping secrets about the bumps in a relationship’s road, no knee-jerk accusations about employer/employee dalliances from self-appointed know-it-all scolds.

Just honesty about how a particular marriage of interest was going; forthrightness about monogamy and the lack thereof occasionally as a reality check; and not a speck of shame, contrived or otherwise, from anyone involved.

Imagine.

Heading west this morning, I stopped pedaling between Hudson Avenue and June Street on 4th Street through Hancock Park because some immortalized shoeprints caught my eye, probably from some young prankster who I could picture mischieviously scampering over the patch of wet concrete repairwork that had been freshly poured on the roadway however many years ago.

Then I turned and found this — signed, no less? — and promptly forget about the footsteps frozen in time:

It’s but a block and a half to the east of this one I chanced upon last November. Staring at it I wondered several things: how old it was, where the next one might reveal itself, and if the Bureau of Street Services would act upon or ignore a request (that I’ve since made) to have the repugnant symbols of hatred excised. I was remiss in tolerating that first one. Two will just not do.

UPDATED (10.13): Following my second request this morning to L.A. Bureau of Street Services via its website I received an email reply stating that the job doesn’t fall under their jurisdiction and that they forwarded it to the city’s Beautification Committee. Rather than wait to hear from that entity I filed a graffiti removal request via its website and am awaiting their response.