Category: Uncategorized

For now is the time for your tears

Gregory Haidl, son of ex-sheriff’s official, to be freed from prison Saturday
From Times wire services

The son of an ex-Orange County assistant sheriff gets released from prison Saturday after serving his sentence in a videotaped sex assault case.

Gregory Haidl, 22, is being paroled from Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga after serving part of a six-year sentence. He was given credit for good behavior.

Prosecutors described Haidl as the “maestro” who directed his friends in the assault of an unconscious 16-year-old girl on a pool table.

Haidl and friends Kyle Nachreiner and Keith Spann were convicted in 2005 of several counts of sexual penetration with foreign objects for the 2002 attack at the Haidl home in Corona del Mar.

Haidl is the son of former Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl.

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME. THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE… CAMARILLO?

This just in:
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN OXNARD HAS ISSUED A * TORNADO WARNING FOR… SOUTHWEST LOS ANGELES COUNTY IN SOUTHWEST CALIFORNIA INCLUDING THE CITIES OF MALIBU… PACIFIC PALISADES AND TOPANGA … * UNTIL 945 PM PST * AT 836 PM PST… NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WITH ROTATION CAPABLE OF PRODUCING A TORNADO. THE CELL WAS LOCATED 5 MILES SOUTH OF MALIBU MOVING NORTH NORTHEAST AT 25 MPH. IT SHOULD AFFECT MALIBU AND PACIFIC PALISADES BEFORE 900 PM PST.
Instruction:
IF IN MOBILE HOMES OR VEHICLES…EVACUATE THEM AND GET INSIDE A SUBSTANTIAL SHELTER. IF NO SHELTER IS AVAILABLE… LIE FLAT IN THE NEAREST DITCH OR OTHER LOW SPOT AND COVER YOUR HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS

writer’s bonk: Edward Hopper on the 560 to Lakeview Terrace

I’ve been trying to write about Los Angeles from the pedestrian-and-bus perspective from my decade there, and it’s not flowing. I just get some bits and snapshots:

The asphalt from this perspective is way more broken and sticks up higher, so that waiting for the bus is like looking out at a moonscape.

Way more businesses are closed that you think when you drive by. The flyers stuffed into their mail slots have soaked and rotted into papier-mâché.

Shitty parts of town are dark. The streetlights are weak and few. Even in the day time a place like East Hollywood or Hyde Park is dark somehow.

People are friendly when you’re on foot, and you can talk to them and hear their stories. It’s only when you’re en route to your car and back that the city is socially forbidding.

The emotional memory is harsh. It’s very lonesome and demeaning to wait so long for a bus, knowing that you’ll wait so much longer for the transfer, while watching the city zoom by you and the other lost souls on the bus bench.

The L.A. buses smell like a drunk guy. No matter how often they’re swept and cleaned, the cheap beer and sweat and smoke and just a bit of vomit never quite leave.

Only the poor, the old, the young, the disabled, the addicts, and the unsuccessful criminals ride the bus in that town. A decade in their company is humbling.

zap.

Having electromyography (EMG) isn’t so much fun. First they zap various parts of you with electrical current, and then they stick needles in you and make you strain your muscles.

This was the second time I’ve had it so it wasn’t as bad, because I knew what to suspect and that it wasn’t going to kill me. But yecch.

Fortunately, it seems that the nerve conductivity in both of my arms is fine. And to be fair, the only time anyone HAS an EMG is when there’s something sufficiently nasty going on that you’re willing to have 45 minutes of discomfort.

The interesting part was listening to my muscle electricity as noise, rather like the static on a short wave radio. When I strained against pressure as instructed, I made VERY LOUD static.

Someone check on the busboys at Jerry’s Deli

Long-time readers may remember my theory that the world is overrun with clones of the long-dead Andy Kaufman. Every day there is more evidence of this.

You’ll note on that post a link from a commenter to Andy Kaufman Lives and/or “If I Faked It.”

It’s done in classic psychoceramic style, and it’s about an even split in my mind whether it’s genuine crackpot material or “a viral.” Or Andy, who would have mixed the two anyway.

The O.C. Weekly mentions this site in one of its articles about our local barking mad school board member Mr. Steve Rocco, who was accused more than once of being Andy.

Apparently torgo_x‘s latest link to my post has awakened the beast again.

Drums in the deep

Kelly Ramsey passed on this gem from Warren Ellis’ “Bad Signal” mailing list, causing me to resubscribe to the list. Here it is:

bad signal
WARREN ELLIS


It  occurred to me today that Mormon politician Mitt Romney’s
candidacy is, in  part, an experiment to see if America can
handle the idea of a figure of  authority who also believes himself
to be wearing magic underpants.

If that's so, then I think you guys are twelve years away from  a
Scientologist running for President.

And I think you know which  Scientologist I mean.

You're welcome.

-- W