Tag: losangeles

Airport

Went to pick up my mother at LAX. International Arrivals is great people watching. Today was also the day of Themed Plane Arrivals:

My mom’s flight was Singapore Airlines from Tokyo/Narita. Almost all of the passengers were Japanese business guys who immediately pulled the cellphone out of one pocket and the cigarettes out of another and rushed outside to use both. One spiky haired young Japanese guy wearing stripy weird clothing and Vans was met by an obsequious limo driver.

An Aeromexico flight from Guadalajara brought what looked like about 50 Mexican art students. All of them were about 20 and most of them were carrying some kind of portfolio. I think it’s time we woke up to the danger here. All those art students are swarming across the border and taking our barista jobs and/or seats at the coffeehouse where they can whine about not making it.

Finally an El Al jet disgorged lots of beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Jew girls all of whom had long flowing dark hair, big earrings, classic Mediterranean features, and huge smiles. They strode happily down the ramp and were immediately intercepted by nervous men in yarmulkes before the rest of us could get at them.

There was also a Sikh family of about 25 who all greeted each other expansively with a factorial number of hugs exactly in the gangway so no one could get through. This happens each time and I suspect it’s the same family.

Holy CRAP. Chris? HOLY CRAP.

LA radio host arrested on suspicion of kidnapping

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — A radio host and Hollywood music consultant was released on $1 million bail after being arrested at a nightclub for investigation of drugging and attempting to kidnap a 14-year-old girl, police said Sunday.

Chris Douridas, a KCRW-FM disk jockey, was arrested Jan. 6 outside a Santa Monica nightclub after witnesses reportedly saw him put a substance in the unidentified girl’s drink and carry her out of the club, said Santa Monica police Sergeant Jay Trisler.

The girl became ill and was treated at a local hospital before being released, Trisler said. It was unclear why she was inside the club.

County prosecutors were still gathering evidence in the case and awaiting toxicology results before deciding whether to charge Douridas, Eva Jabber, a deputy district attorney, told the Los Angeles Times.

An e-mail sent to Douridas, 43, of Pacific Palisades was not immediately returned Sunday night, and phone numbers listed under his name were disconnected. A message left with KCRW also was not returned.

A second man, whose name was not released, was also arrested as a possible accomplice to Douridas, Trisler said.

Douridas hosts KCRW’s “New Ground,” a Saturday program featuring new music. He’s also a music supervisor and consultant for film and television. He helped compile the soundtracks for movies such as “Shrek 2,” “As Good As It Gets” and “Grosse Pointe Blank.”

Douridas was nominated for a Grammy for his work on the soundtrack to “American Beauty.”

He also was a one time host for the PBS series “Sessions at West 54th Street.”

I didn’t even have to post to LJ, it was a good day

Went to the LA Auto Show with zebulon_y and friendly_bandit and had a good time. It was about equal parts “Wow neat!”, “Wow, that’s kind of..” and “Wow, that’s just fucked-up”.

All the car manufacturers were showing off their golf carts. I will complain about golf carts some other time.

I got a dirty look from the Dodge spokesdroid when I said “Check this out, 14 miles per gallon in 2006!” loudly at the Charger SRT. “Guess you’ve got to really like that cruisin’ lifestyle!” I bellowed at him cheerfully. I sat in my future girlfriend, the Mazdaspeed 6, and in my other future girlfriend, the Subaru Legacy GT. I was surprisingly impressed by some of the big campervan things. That mercedes van that Dodge brought over from Europe is nicely done. We did not go into the Hall of Supercars because it was stuffed with hu-mans.

The best thing there was in the aftermarket hall. Someone has made the ultimate spinner, and it wasn’t even on the wheel. It was in the back of an SUV on display. It had lights on it that made patterns, nice, but then when it started spinning the lights made pictures! Like the American Flag, and Famous Art Type Pictures, and Hip Hop Lifestyle Imagery. It was one of those things that went so far into stupid that it wrapped right back around into art. It needs to go into a museum right now.

We went to Kappo Honda and had good japanese food with Lisa. I consumed: Tonkatsu,, hamachi sashimi, special toasted onigiri with eel, and some chicken udon. It was very, very, very, very, very good.

DING DONG THE

Southern Californians who love popular music and occasionally find themselves reading about it will be doing the Snoopy dance for days on hearing that Robert Hilburn is finally retiring. I’ve hated that sack of shit for 25 years now. He had the worst attitude towards music, was so predictable that parody was pointless, thought he was important because he was a rock critic, and spent a career Not Getting It but Getting Paid For It.

His classic pattern was to ignore local acts who desperately needed the boost he could give them, because they weren’t at his level. And then, after they’d finally clawed their way up enough to get a good record out and some buzz from people who actually cared, Bob would arrive to bless them and announce that they were a fresh new face and Important, interview them at length, and officially apply his Seal of Rock Quality.

He compared anything good to Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, and later to U2. He treated music the way a bad high school teacher treats literature: only significant for its social and moral implications. He lived in a racist world where white college kids made social commentary and brown people and foreigners made happy dance music about which he could make social commentary. He took all the budget at the Times for his salary and travel costs, leaving the actual editing to overworked part-timers who were his superiors in every way.

Robert Hilburn was a fucking hack.

We’re gonna tramp the dirt down, Bob.

It just wouldn’t be the holidays

…without grim film noir news from Downtown Los Angeles. Of course the story doesn’t point out that the reason all the “services” for indigent people are in Skid Row is to keep them bottled up there, in one of the world’s most dangerous square miles. I used to talk to homeless guys downtown who wouldn’t go to the missions because they thought they might not make it through the murderers, stuff on fire, other murderers, etc.

Hospitals send patients to L.A.’s skid row

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Three hospitals acknowledged putting discharged patients with nowhere else to go into taxicabs heading to the city’s downtown skid row, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Representatives of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles and Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center said they were helping patients because skid row offers their best chance of getting services and shelter. They said patients are sent to skid row only if they are healthy enough.

“One of the challenges is that there are very few places that will take patients coming out of the hospital, even when they are medically cleared,” said Mehera Christian, a spokeswoman for Kaiser Permanente Metro Los Angeles. “There are just a scarce number of places in the community to assist our homeless.”

The hospitals were the first to acknowledge delivering people to skid row. A Los Angeles Police Department report had accused the three hospitals and several suburban law enforcement agencies of leaving homeless people and criminals downtown. The suburban departments deny the accusation.

LAPD officials agreed that the hospitals have few other choices, but said the practice only adds to grim conditions on skid row. They disputed the hospitals’ assertion that the patients were always ready for release.

Earlier this week, city and state officials pledged a new fight against problems in the neighborhood, including drug dealing that police say generates roughly one-fifth of the city’s drug arrests.

Officials at the three hospitals said they don’t simply dump the patients.

Hospital social workers usually meet with patients to try to connect them with agencies or groups that could help them, then provide them transportation, Christian said. She said about half of patients say where they want to go, and none are forcibly taken anywhere.

Joseph Epps, an attorney for Hollywood Presbyterian, said hospital policy calls for homeless and indigent patients to be transported by hospital van to the Los Angeles Mission on skid row or to receive taxi vouchers to go wherever they want.

LAPD Capt. Andy Smith said patients don’t always reach their destinations, and that he often sees “individuals with not one but sometimes two different hospital bracelets, and people with bandages on, people who are barely ambulatory, and we’ll end up calling an ambulance. Sometimes they are in such bad shape they are incoherent.”

LAPD Assistant Chief George Gascon said services should be spread across the area so skid row doesn’t bear too much of the load.

The hardest horking man in show business

switchstatement posted a link to this rappin’ Blue Blockers sunglass ad (mp3), and I immediately recognized the artist. It’s Dr. Geek.

In my Dark Ages when I was a 20-something yuffie with no reason to live, I rode the bus in Los Angeles. For ten years. It did not improve my disposition. I frequently had to take the Wilshire or Santa Monica buses across town, which is agonizing. They move at a crawl through heavy traffic, and going 10 miles takes two hours or more. At rush hour they’re packed with the poor, the drunk, the young, the old, the multiply convicted felons, and all of the 100% disabled insane people. All of us got to share each other’s vivid personalities, differing cultural sensitivities, and rich evocative aromas.

Dr. Geek was a regular on my trips from the Westside to Downtown. He was a very large man with an expansive manner, and he’d spent the day in the heat singing so his body’s natural glow was evident to all the senses. He often wore one of those huge foam cowboy hats you see at county fairs, and carried the tool of his trade: a gigantic boom box that seemed to have sharpened corners and weighed about 400 pounds, or half the good Doctor’s mass.

He would lurch onto the bus, boombox blaring, and announce to the world that “DR. GEEK IS IN!” Pushing backwards, not with malice but with an infectious joie de vivre, he’d get to about the middle of the bus and yell out again “IT’S DR. GEEK!”

For the next two or more hours, the Doctor was in session. We all got some free raps (he’d offer to customize without the usual fee), and if no one was up for it, he’d lay some rhymes out for us, freestyle. Sometimes he’d use the boombox and other times it was just an a cappella hip hop cornucopia.

The first time, it was a blast. The second time, it was a smaller blast. The third time, it sucked, especially since he kept backing into me with his wall-like back while he was caught up in the passion of yelling “I’M THE ORIGINAL/DR. GEEK/AIN’T NO ONE ELSE ON/VENICE BEACH” or something similar.

It was nice to see that he has a website and isn’t dead. At the time I wanted him to go away and die, but now I’m happy that the Doctor is still living large.

smog monsters

An interesting story in the New York Times (linked from automotivedigest.com) discusses the problems we’re having in Southern California improving air quality. Despite tremendous efforts, greater Los Angeles is in the bottom 3 metropolitan areas for air quality.

As the article points out, we’ve come a long way. When I was a child in the 1970s, a visit to the city meant a headache, burning sensations in the eyes, and a sulfurous taint to the air. On bad days we’d have smog alerts inland and in the city, occasionally bad enough that the authorities would tell you not to exercise or breathe very much at all, thanks.

Dissatisfaction with this state of affairs led to legislation, and since California is a huge market for automobiles the automakers and oil companies had to cave. Over the last 30 years emissions from vehicles have dramatically reduced. You don’t get a sick headache from a summer day in Los Angeles any more, and smog alerts are rare. The ruthless Air Quality people crack down on generators, drive through restaurants, even barbecues to keep particulate matter and ozone out of the air.

It turns out that further improvement may be a lot harder. We’re still stuck with the inversion layer that keeps everything squeezed down on top of Los Angeles. There was smog before cars because of this; the Spanish called the Santa Monica Bay the “Bay of Smokes” because it was so hazy from forest fire smog.

And the last big set of air polluters are beyond our reach. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are gigantic and essential to the nation, and they spew the worst possible diesel fumes. Locomotives, idling trucks, and ships are all egregious polluters and for various reasons are beyond the regulatory authority of the State. Locomotives are regulated by the federal EPA, for example, and ships by an International Maritime Organization. The U.S. hasn’t ratified the maritime treaty that would somewhat improve our ability to regulate marine pollution. The EPA says that locomotive fuel will become cleaner over five years starting in 2007. And diesel standards for trucks are progressively improving, but only for new engines, leaving an installed base of dirty engines that will be used until they finally die.

Unsurprisingly, shipowners and trucking company bosses are not enthusiastic about upgrading their fuel and engines. So it looks like we’re stuck paying a huge price for the nation’s import-export economy for at least another 20-30 years.

Once again I’m glad I live by the ocean, where the smog never comes.