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…)

According to an LA Weekly investigation, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa “has very quietly accepted — and even angled for — free tickets to as many as 80 pricey events, then failed to report all but one of them, as well as failed to keep records of his actions or the sources of this largesse.”

From an article published today:

It is not known who gave him the tickets, or the precise number of these events Villaraigosa actually attended, although it is known that he frequently did show up. The 80 events, which appear on the mayor’s private official schedule, were recently sent by Villaraigosa to the Ethics Commission amid an outcry from the public over his freebies. The Weekly obtained a copy of the list. Click here to see the Weekly’s exclusive ticket-price values of Mayor Villaraigosa’s 80 freebies.

According to L.A. Weekly’s calculations, Villaraigosa has taken tickets worth $50,000, and perhaps as much as $100,000 — a staggering amount for an American politician at any level, and more than he could cover with his $223,000 salary and extensive family obligations.

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Help me out here. What’s crazier – the abysmal failure the stimulus has been in Los Angeles County (like everywhere else) or how outrageously wasteful the plan was to begin with?

Los Angeles County’s take of stimulus funds is by far the largest in California, which has received $18.5 billion in ARRA funds, intended to create 110,219.36 jobs statewide — a pricey rate of $168,264.08 per job.

But Hollywood is a different story entirely. Hollywood — the geographic Hollywood as found on Thomas Guide map page 593 — has received $23,338,327 in grants, loans and contracting. This money has created just 20.57 jobs. That’s $1,134,580.80 per job. And as interviews with recipients reveal, even that tiny jobs claim is clearly false, with many of the claims of newly created positions either impossible to verify or lower than reported.

Not even 20 full-time jobs have been created in Hollywood proper.

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How much access can a possible agent of influence for state sponsors of terrorism buy from President Barack Obama? For Jodie Evans, a progressive Hollywood activist, the going rate appears to be $30,400 for dinner and a conversation.

Last week in San Francisco, Obama headlined a three million dollar fundraiser at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports about 160 people paid $30,400 or more per couple for a private dinner with Obama followed by a reception costing $500 to $1000 that drew over 900 attendees. Among those at the dinner was the leftist, so-called antiwar group Code Pink co-founder, Jodie Evans.

The Chronicle reports Jodie Evans had a several minutes long conversation with Obama at the fundraiser.

Why does Jodie Evans merit such face time with the president even though she acts as an agent of influence for the anti-American governments of Iran, Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Middle Eastern terrorists?

Over the life of the campaign, Jodie Evans became one of Obama’s top donors, giving the maximum $2300 to his respective primary and general election funds and tens of thousands of dollars more to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint Obama-Democratic National Committee fund.

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Quick! Think fast – who’s making the most morally conservative films in Hollywood?
 
The answer may surprise you, but it’s none other than Judd Apatow. Yes, the writer-director of “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” “Knocked Up” and the new film “Funny People” might have a reputation for creating profanity-filled R-rated raunch, but in reality they’re actually films that uphold traditional values. And the fact that Apatow sneaks messages that are pro-life in “Knocked Up,” anti-promiscuity in “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and (SPOILER ALERT) upholds marriage against the temptation and forgiveness of infidelity in “Funny People” under the surface of all the dirty talk, means that he’s found a way to preach to far more than the usual choir and spread positive moral messages to those who might otherwise never choose to hear them.

I remember the night I first walked in to see “Virgin” back in 2005. I thought that it would just be one big sex comedy poking fun at the titular character. But as written by Apatow and the film’s star, Steve Carell, the film actually turned every convention one might have expected upside down.

Carell’s Andy had the “problem” of being a 40 year-old virgin, but after initally laughing at him and trying to get him laid, Andy’s co-worker friends slowly start to respect him. One who brags about cheating on his girlfriends winds up turning monogamous when he sees his impending baby on an ultrasound, while another may find his perfect match with a kinky gal but by the end it’s true love nonetheless. (more…)

In 1987, Andres Serrano submerged a small plastic crucifix in a glass jar of his own urine and called it Piss Christ. Not to be outdone, Chris Ofili daubed elephant dung on a painting of the Virgin Mary.

While some narrow-minded philistines complained, the artistic establishment heaped praise (and money) on these and works like them. The National Endowment for the Arts was so impressed with Serrano’s work they granted him $15,000 courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. For his effort, Ofili was awarded the Turner Prize, Britain’s most prestigious art award.

Other recent Turner Prize honorees include Damien Hirst, whose works feature livestock suspended in formaldehyde, and Tracy Elmin, whose nominated work was an unmade bed. The Turner Prize is named in honor of J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), renowned as the original “painter of light” (pace Thomas Kinkade). (One of the Stuckists, a group of anti-conceptual figurative painters who demonstrate annually against the Prize, puckishly said, “The only artist who wouldn’t be in danger of winning the Turner Prize is Turner.”)

Art and Popular Culture defines “transgressive art” as: “art forms that aim to transgress; i.e., to outrage or violate basic mores and sensibilities.” (more…)

Naturally those who enjoyed (and created) all the “art” and pop culture used to demonize and dehumanize George W. Bush (whoops!) are now crying “racism” with the turning of the tables. They’re worried, and this hollow cry is all they got because who knows better the power of this kind of imagery than those who have been using it for decades to further their goals of enslaving entire populations under the cruel yoke of Big Government.

Yesterday, when the “L.A. Weekly” went all crybaby over the Obama-Joker poster, they must have known that they themselves had published a cover portraying Bush as a blood-thirsty vampire. But all’s fair in love and war and this is ideological war where hypocrisy is a weapon, not something to be ashamed of.

The Left wants Obama-Joker nipped in the bud, and their goal is to stigmatize it as something racist before it shows up on t-shirts all over the country — before it catches fire. (more…)

The LA Weekly ”…only thing missing is the noose.”:

A new poster depicting President Obama as a version of Heath Ledger’s Joker character in The Dark Knight has appeared in Los Angeles[.]

It has a bit of everything to appeal to the drunk tank of California conservatism: Obama is in white face, his mouth (like Ledger’s Joker’s) has been grotesquely slit wide open and the word “Socialism” appears below his face. The only thing missing is a noose.

And yet, this is the same LA Weekly responsible for this cover during the previous administration: (more…)