One news item that was mostly lost in the holiday weekend shuffle was that the Los Angeles Police Department has solicited celebrities to use twitter to spread the word about the closure of a prominent freeway.  The story was already pretty funny, then Kim Kardashian tweeted the wrong information… twice.  From Fox News:

What did California law enforcement expect when they enlisted celebrities to help warn the public of the impending closure of a major freeway?

Probably not this.

Kim Kardashian, one of several celebrities with Twitter followings in the millions, was asked by the L.A.P.D to warn her followers of the impending highway closure.

Kardashian complied, tweeting on Friday: “Remember this weekend the 405 Fwy is gonna be closed between the San Fernando Valley and the West Side!!”

Just one problem. The closure is in two weeks.

So the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” star tried to correct her mistake, tweeting: “Remember next weekend the 405 Fwy is gonna be closed between the San Fernando Valley and the West Side!!”

Wrong again.

Kardashian erased both initial Twitter messages and finally got it right: “Stay away from the 405 Fwy the weekend of July 16 & 17, it will be closed btwn the 10 Fwy and 101 Fwy North & South!”

Oh. My. Gawd.

My data isn’t fresh on this, but there was a time not long ago where the stretch of 405 freeway between the 10 and 101 was the single most trafficked road in the United States.  Shutting that down for a couple of days is like blocking off L.A.’s pulmonary artery; it just can’t function without it.  So, if the city is going to try to temporarily block it off, they can’t afford any mistakes. (more…)

Descending via u-haul from the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to live in this one-story ghetto some call Los Angeles was supposed to be only a three-year crisis of middle age, not eight and counting. And so here we are and we do try to make the best of things with some of the unique events only a Hollywood can offer.

As a matter of fact, just a few weeks ago my life peaked at the American Cinematheque after exchanging a few words with Pam Grier (male heterosexuals will want to click that link) before a big screen showing of “Foxy Brown.” To some, living with the knowledge that the best moment of your life has just passed and that you now have another forty years of all-downhill might be depressing … but not when you had zero expectations to begin with.

Prior to blushing and babbling before Ms. Grier, my life peaked in October of 2007 at a special screening of “Spartacus” in the Arclight Theatre’s world-famous Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. Watching director Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece on the big screen was one thing, having the film introduced by none other than its star — The Mighty Kirk Douglas — was quite another. (more…)

The other day I was asked if I thought I would ever come face to face with writer’s block.  I had to laugh.  Inasmuch as I generally write about things that annoy, frustrate or just plain drive me nuts, running out of material or losing the impulse to complain in print are among the very least of my worries. 

When you factor in that Barack Obama is my president, Joe Biden is my vice-president, Nancy Pelosi is next in line, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are my senators, Brad Sherman is my congressman, Antonio Villaraigosa is my mayor and Jerry Brown is lurking in the wings to be my governor, do you really think I’ll be turning my pen into a plowshare anytime soon?    

But at least now you might have a better handle on why I look back so fondly on what I have come to regard as the good old days when an American’s major complaint was that he had taxation without representation. 

On top of everything else, I live in Los Angeles and have spent most of my adult life laboring in Hollywood, a place that some people regard as less an actual location than a state of mind.  I agree it is a state of mind in the same sense that paranoia and schizophrenia are states of mind.  (more…)

I used to be what I thought was a liberal.  If, at the time, anyone had asked me to explain myself, I would have said that I opposed Jim Crow laws, that I believed workers were entitled to make a decent wage and work in a safe environment, and that American citizens shouldn’t be discriminated against because of their race, religion or national origin.

I quit being a liberal because I didn’t believe that members of particular minority groups deserved advantages denied to others; that illegal aliens weren’t entitled to anything but a swift kick to the backside; that being a devout Christian didn’t make you a bad person; and that capitalism was a system that worked, while socialism not only didn’t work, but, wherever it was tried, turned into a tyranny.

I honestly don’t know why there are so many liberals today and I certainly can’t imagine why they have such a lousy agenda.  I have come up with a theory, however.  Here in California, roughly 30 years ago, because of budget cuts, a great many people were released from insane asylums.  They wound up living in the streets, which explains the large number of homeless people, even though Democrats would have you believe that those are normal people who simply lost their jobs along the way. (more…)

To the delight of California’s illegal aliens, socialists, unqualified minority job-seekers and militant bicyclers who blow up Hummer dealerships in the name of suffering polar bears, smarmy San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday he is running for governor in 2010.  Newsom chose San Francisco-based Twitter─the de facto, mandatory communication tool for hip celebs and gossipy high school girls─to officially reveal his plans.  Indeed, inexperienced, over-packaged, provincial narcissists with radical agendas, cocaine issues, elitism fetishes, an undeserved sense of entitlement and contempt for the American way of life aren’t just for the White House anymore.  California has found change it can believe in. 

At a time when reckless, lightweight, non-achieving ideologues are all the rage in American politics; when nary a meaningful accomplishment is needed to move up the political ladder; when substance takes a backseat to teleprompters and pedestrian, car salesman charms; Newsom is trying to parlay his overly-bleached smile, expensive suits and camera-ready prop wife (not pictured below) into the most visible governorship in the United States.   (more…)