Public Eyebrow Groomer as seen on a Metro Bus

Since I began my adventures in public transportation earlier this year, I have seen a lot of rude, inappropriate and often strange behavior from my fellow carbon-based life forms. I have seen people carelessly put their shoes on bus seats.  I have seen someone leave a half-eaten sandwich on the floor of the train. I have seen a perfectly nice looking middle-aged woman forcibly push her way to the front of a line of people boarding a bus, just to be the first one on. I have shared personal space with people emitting body odors that would make a mortician gag. Yes my friends, I have been to hell and back and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

While annoying, I have grown to accept many of these acts of humanness as part of the deal when taking public transportation. Still, when I see something like today’s featured Metro rider, I can’t help but make a public mockery of it.

Today, while making my connection to the Metro Red Line, I sat across from this girl who was plucking her eyebrows. Maybe some of you think this is OK, but let me tell you, YOU ARE WRONG. Some personal grooming is acceptable on public transportation I would say. Like powdering your nose or putting on lipstick. However, anything involving body hair is an absolute disgusting DON’T. You wouldn’t shave your armpits on the bus, would you? Would she? I don’t know. Fortunately, I made my connection before I had to find out.

I exited my dentist’s Miracle Mile office not long after 10 a.m. this morning confronted by the absolute beauty of the day — its comfortable crystal clarity prevented me from beelining it on my bike to work. So I took the long way to Westchester. Instead of heading south to Culver City, I cut through Beverly Hills got up onto Santa Monica Boulevard and rolled that thoroughfare all the way to its end where I paused to enjoy the breathtaking views from the palisades before cranking it south along a near-barren beach bikepath to Venice and its pier from which I observed sea lions and dolphins before snapping the above shot of the solitary surfer surveying his vast empire.

Glorious days like this are enough to bring a tear to my eye.

This morning, Harold and I were sitting at the counter at Millie’s waiting for our breakfast and I noticed how the potatoes, pancakes and french toast all share the same tight grill space as the corned beef hash, bacon, sausage and pork chops. I’m not vegetarian, but I began to wonder if this is something that bothers vegetarians. Are you OK knowing that your rosemary potatoes are cooked within inches of bacon and the same spatula used to flip a hamburger patty is used to shovel those meatless potatoes onto your plate? Is it OK if meat juices touch your veggies as long as you don’t actually eat the meat? Are these potatoes still fit for a vegetarian diet? I don’t have a strong opinion on this, so I ask you vegetarians: How far will you go to make sure that your food is prepared in a meatless environment?

A fresh batch of rosemary potatoes are thrown on the grill

Millie's Busy Breakfast Grill

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…)