The Jewish Journal’s Danielle Berrin steals my photo (original here).
I’m honored Danielle used my photo (she’s way hotter than Perez Hilton who also steals my photos, though at least he adds some of his distinctive art work to them). I just wish she’d give me some credit. I’m getting tired of gorgeous women using my body (of work) for their own pleasure without even saying thank you. I’m not just a piece of meat. I’m not an animal!
UPDATE: Danielle now gives me credit, but no linky love.
I’ve passed this guy many times. I always thought he was scary and weird.
I stop by to interview him this morning but he’s not at his regular spot — dancing beside the gas station near Burton Way.
I finally find him alone with his piled-high red shopping cart in an alley. He’s dressed in black spandex as usual and shuffles papers in a folder.
He’s grimy and disturbed.
I extend my hand when I introduce myself. He won’t shake hands. He says he doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t want me to take his photo.
He keeps saying, "No, no, man. I appreciate it."
He moves away from me.
I leave him alone.
LOS ANGELES — The newest sensation at the center of Hollywood’s fashion scene isn’t a famous designer or starlet. It’s a 56-year-old homeless man who spends his days dancing on roller skates.
John Wesley Jermyn has been a fixture in West Los Angeles for more than 20 years. Nicknamed "The Crazy Robertson" and "The Robertson Dancer," he is a constant presence on a stretch of Robertson Boulevard that has become the city’s trendiest shopping corridor and a prime strolling spot for tourists and movie stars. Among locals and online, there’s much speculation about Mr. Jermyn’s personal history, including one oft-repeated rumor that he’s a secretive millionaire.
…A star athlete in high school, Mr. Jermyn was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the 1969 Major League Baseball draft. He attended Pepperdine University and played a season for a Los Angeles Dodgers’ minor-league team in Bellingham, Wash. (He hit just .205 and made 12 errors in 63 games, according to the Society for American Baseball Research.)
The current issue of Rolling Stone magazine, its special 40th anniversary issue, reveals almost all one needs to know about the current state of the cultural left. The issue features interviews with people Rolling Stone considers to be America’s leading cultural and political figures — such as Al Gore, Jon Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Cornel West, Paul Krugman, Kanye West, Bill Maher and George Clooney, among many others.
It brings me no pleasure to say that, with few exceptions, the interviews reveal a superficiality and contempt for cultural norms (as evidenced by the ubiquity of curse words) that should scare anyone who believes that these people have influence on American life.
First, the constant use of expletives.
As I wrote in my June 5, 2007, column, "’Buck Fush’ and the Left," "Higher civilization has always regarded the use of expletives in public (outside of, let us say, theatrical performances) as a form of assault on civilization . . . ."
That is why the amount of public cursing on the left and the way curse words are accepted as part of public and formal discourse may be as significant to understanding the left as anything the left says. It is the left’s way of showing rejection of the values of the middle class and of America’s Judeo-Christian civilization.
My Nov. 13 videotaped interview with Chasity James at Coffee Bean on Sunset Blvd. Part Two
James writes on her new site cupcakekiller.com:
Halloween was boring and ridiculous. It was a night filled with waiting around and a mean, fat Goth bitch. That’s right… I said it. It all began when I found out my friend Zita was not riding with me to a party we were going to. She decided to ride with a bunch of people who decided to pick up some chick who lives in Burbank… at 10pm… on Halloween. Of course they get stuck in major traffic for almost 2 hours! Did the bitch in Burbank have two broken legs? Why couldn’t she get her ass up and in a car and drive to the party on Sunset and Labrea? So I end up waiting…and waiting until I get bored. So I text my "friend" Neil and see what he’s up to. He invites me to his house for a bit before he goes out. When I arrive to Neil’s place he is already heading out and invites me to a Goth party. Very hesitant to go, I decide it’s a good idea to go and kill some time before meeting with Zita and her clan of crazies. So I follow Neil and his friends to Crenshaw and Pico Blvd where white, gothy kids don’t belong. I finally figure out we aren’t going to a house party but to a venue having a Halloween party. I’m actually getting annoyed writing this so to make a long story short my night was ruined because Neil and his friends were assholes. The one who stood out was his friend Olga who is the fat, Goth bitch I mentioned earlier. She was super nasty to me for no reason at all. I figured she was one of Neil’s bitches who was super jealous of me.
Neil Strauss is the author of the book The Game: Penetrating the secret society of pickup artists.
He teaches average nice guys looking for love how to become asshole pickup artists looking for vaginas.
Here’s my related Halloween report with pictures and video. Here’s Chasity’s MySpace page.
Part Two with Grover McKean, former assistant state treasurer Interview With Political Organizer David I. Shapiro
Bill’s new book is Big Daddy: Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics.
Now on to the pictures. There were some nappy-haired hos at this august gathering. Check out Bill Boyarsky.
Not many people know that Bill and Al Sharpton share the same hair stylist.
Bob Hertzberg puts the moves on Mrs. Zev Yaroslavsky.
And that Kevin Starr. He hit the bottle pretty aggressively (given my Seventh-Day Adventist heritage, I regard two glasses of wine as aggressive, while consuming three — unless it is Passover or Purim — is just asking to be raped).
I wish I could’ve been Bob Hertzberg, sitting up from with Connie, whispering sweet nothings in her ear.
Janelle Wong, head of USC’s Jesse M. Unruh’s Institute of Politics, with poet-publicist Edward Headington Joel Fox, Joel Berman Randall Unruh, professor Randall Unruh, professor Pic Kevin Starr Constance Rice Constance Rice Bob Hertzberg Bob Hertzberg Bill Boyarsky Jesse M. Unruh’s granddaughter Jessie Unruh Jesse Unruh David I. Shapiro, political organizer David I. Shapiro, Faye Doug Jeffe, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, Mrs. Boyarsky Linda Unruh, Brad Unruh, Bobby Buescher, Corey Bouche Allison Rentel, Grover McKean, Bernie (?) Allison Rentel, Grover McKean, Bernie (?) Allison Rentel, Grover McKean, Bernie (?) Allison Rentel, Grover McKean, Bernie (?) Camera of Death MySpace page.
David Shapiro responds Nov. 16 to my email:
Dear Luke:
I surprised myself, a bit. You did not know it but I have spent 30 years antagonizing those who used to hire me professionally by championing the cause of those who own and operate their own taxis in Los Angeles, and those who lease their and the fleet franchise big wig’s cabs. It is a battle against interests like the organised crime monopolists which my movement in Los Angeles broke through after a seven month battle between December, 1976 and July 1, 1977. For years I was used to standing before the large cameras on the shoulders of camera operators accompanied by their reporters. In recent years I have experienced none of that. So when you approached me, my intent was to touch base with people like Carman Warschaw who knew me well in the old, old days as an operative within the ranks of those who opposed the Unruh wing of the Democratic Party. My dad was an original lawyer for Leo Harvey. Also, appreciating the Boyarsky invitation, I was not sure whether or not I should feel sheepish about my question which I felt was essential in a roomful of nothing but Unruh supporters.
When you approached, it was confusing to me about who you were and why you would single me out in a room-full of luminaries. You pointed a fixed camera and flashed the taking of a picture of me which was also a confusing interruption of my mind-set at the moment. I am so part of the pre-computer savvy generation that it did not enter my mind that you were a combination of tv photographer and accompanying journalist of the past.
What triggered was a result of my long having looked forward to Bill’s book announced to be in the works for years. He was an important figure at the L.A. Times during the height of my taxi organizing, and before that, along with his wife Nancy, as Sacramento bureau chief I think, for A.P. Through Kit Dreyfuss. whose husband had been a distinguished reporter for the Times, I have become acquainted with Nancy and Bill. I would not have been invited but for my relationship with Kit.
My deep interest in the book was a result of my wish to understand the truth behind my "60’s whole-fold immersion in L.A. County’s and California’s politics from my jobs which gave me an opportunity to look closely at how "democracy" and checks and balances were faring amid the perceived terrible threats from fascistic elements in the form of the John Birch Society and organizations like "The Christian Anti-communist crusade" who before my eyes were trying to take over The Palos Verdes Peninsula Library District. When I campaigned in East L.A., well-dressed guys with eagles in their lapels were in the voting areas trying to intimidate people there from reaching the polls. The civil rights movement, and Murrow and team-like reporters of that era, were showing the frightening conduct of sheriffs and their dogs and firehoses. The black-lists and Senator Fritz Burns Red-book and HUAC were ever-present in my parents household.
I sneaked away from my political employment to picket under the watchful eye of mounted sheriffs at the first housing project in Torrance intended to integrate a white bastion. One did not do that if you wanted to be political professional, then. All of this before Otis Chandler, out of Stanford, took hold of the Times, ending decades of reactionary journalism exasperating and worrying folks within the aura of Chaim Shapiro and his brothers Aaron and Abram. Aaron’s son was Academy Award-nominated screen-writer Paul Jarrico, who should have been the Hollywood 11th. His testimony to HUAC, portrayed by Kevin Spacey at his memorable memorial at the Writer’s Guild Auditorium, was always in the house-hold. I visited the Fisher Gallery sculpture garden memorialising the words of many blacklistees before I came to the Peterson Building gathering.
I so much wanted to read a fair and balanced work from Bill. My mad scanning of the book indicated to me, preliminarily, that I was going to be disappointed. Hence, in part, my question. I have yet to read the book. We shall see.
If you have the interest, Google the L.A. Times archives under my name, especially the 1978 article written by Ken Fanucchi (sp?) who literally lived with me and my mother to research his story which got wide distribution. Also note that my mother and I got a huge bemused kick when Bob Scheer’s article in the Times about the history of Jews in L.A. posed my dad’s pic with the moguls and lawyer-barons. His researcher told me that Chaim appeared everywhere as a founder of educational and philanthropic organizations.
You have given me hope that maybe there is a reporter left who might look into the truth of the taxi story, a horrible example of the result of the cowardice of even the most humanistic and progressive politicians. No one, ever, covers the Taxi Commission of L.A anymore. Also there is a recent study by two UCLA professors, Gary Blasi of the Labor Institute and the Law School being one to give you more understanding.
New Videos: Frances Fisher, Zach Braff, Minnie Driver, And Sarah Silverman Talk Science Guy Bill Nye, Calista Flockhart, Rob Lowe, Cathy Griffin, Ben Stiller At WGA Protest
Protest Video Uncensored Protest Video Uncensored Protest Video Uncensored Protest Video Protest Video Protest Video Rob Lowe, Calista Flockhart At Protest Protest Video Jack Black Joins Protest Ben Stiller Joins Protest Protest Video Julia Dreyfuss Julia Dreyfuss II Protest Video Protest Video
Stills: Pic Desperate Housewives star ? Pic Matthew Perry Matthew Perry Pic Pic Pic Frances Fisher Frances Fisher Frances Fisher Zach Braff Zach Braff Minnie Driver, John Horn Minnie Driver, John Horn Minnie Driver Zach Braff, John Horn Zach Braff, John Horn Pic Sarah Silverman Sarah Silverman Sarah Silverman Sarah Silverman Sarah Silverman Sarah Silverman Sarah Silverman Science Guy Bill Nye Science Guy Bill Nye Calista Flockhart Calista Flockhart, Rob Lowe Calista Flockhart, Rob Lowe Calista Flockhart, Rob Lowe Calista Flockhart, Rob Lowe Calista Flockhart, Rob Lowe Calista Flockhart, Rob Lowe Calista Flockhart, Rob Lowe Minnie Driver Minnie Driver Minnie Driver Minnie Driver Minnie Driver Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Ben Stiller Ben Stiller Ben Stiller Ben Stiller Ben Stiller Ben Stiller Ben Stiller Ben Stiller Pic Jack Black Jack Black Jack Black Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Pic Lisa Edelstein – Actress from "House M.D." pic Cast of "Jericho" Cast of "Jericho" Cast of "Jericho"
Newspaper reporters tend to identify with their cinematic brethren because writers tend to look out for other writers no matter what genre they work in. One New York Times article from this week noted with no irony how book authors will suffer if Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart’s shows, now crippled by the strike, don’t get back into production soon. Also, from a distance, the Writers Guild strike shimmers with heroism for liberal journalists at the Los Angeles Times (which has no union) and the New York Times and Washington Post (which have weakling unions). They’re living vicariously through their comrades’ glorious struggle.
This identification runs deeper than labor politics. Where their predecessors once hoped to write the Great American Novel, too many of today’s newspaper reporters and editors will confide over drinks the big screenplay they want to write based on that murder story they covered, that business takeover, that guerilla battle, that crime caper, that city hall corruption saga, and so on.
So imagine you’re a major media mogul, a captain of the film and television business, a shaper of global culture, one of the anointed few who can green-light major entertainment projects.
You’re faced with a massive, once-in-a-lifetime shift in mainstream consumer behavior from traditional mass media, including film and television, to new activities that you do not control: the Internet, social networking, user-generated content, mobile services, video games. It’s been snowballing since the mid 90’s, for like 12 years — 12 years of denial and obfuscation — but it’s really rolling fast now.
Many of your current lifeblood properties are not growing anymore or are in outright decline, and you don’t own enough of the vital new properties to offset that, nor are you certain how you would make money with the new properties even if you did own them. And the consumers you rely upon for revenue are so frustrated with your company’s inability to supply them with what they want, when they want it, that digital piracy of your content has become mainstream and socially acceptable behavior practically overnight, and all of your efforts to stop it seem to only make it worse.
And your company’s culture is not prepared to deal with the shift. Your company was founded 50 or 80 or 100 or 150 years ago by different people in a different time, and the overwhelming majority of your people now — smart and well-meaning managers and bureaucrats, but still managers and bureaucrats — have to be retrained and reoriented toward entrepreneurial thinking in a viciously dynamic and startlingly fast-changing world not of your, or their, creation.
Is this really the right time to pick a fight with the writers over royalties from DVD and Internet sales, leading to an industry-wide shutdown and massive economic pain for all sides in the world of traditional scripted film and television content?
The truth is, the web – that thing that brings us email and MySpace and cats playing the piano on YouTube – has a kind of Wal*Mart effect on the entertainment choices offered to the audience: there’s a lot more to choose from, most of it’s pretty awful, and all of it is going to be a lot cheaper. When you combine the digitization of content with unlimited bandwidth, what you get is a cheaper, more efficient system. And Brentwood was not built on cheap, or efficient. This town – and all of us who work here – all of us, writers, agents, actors, lawyers, studio executives, all of us here in the second grade classroom called Hollywood – have a stake in preserving this great big slushy inefficient mess of a system, that makes pilots that never get aired, buys scripts that never get produced, makes movies that no one sees, produces series that get cancelled.
I feel like we’re all hanging out in the hardware store on Main Street, bickering, while they’re building the SuperWalMart out where the interstate meets the state highway. To the writers – to my colleague – I say, the web is going to force us to radically alter our expectations about residuals. We will probably end up getting less. That’s what market efficiencies do. Let’s figure out how to adjust to that.
Anderson was a starting forward for the school’s basketball team.
I was the editor of my school’s newspaper, the Hillmen Messenger.
We made a home movie in April-May of 1984. We had to edit the footage in the video camera (and then added music from the radio).
I last talked to Shannon in 1992 (update 2009).
We read the news together for our school’s (Placer High and then Sierra Community College) cable access chanel 8. Video from circa 1983.
Covering Placer High basketball with Joe Hamelin. More More
I wasn’t such a great interviewer. I intruded too much with my own opinions. A good interviewer uses non-judgmental questions so the subject feels comfortable being honest. Once you start to pronounce judgments, your subject easily becomes defensive.
Black model Chasity James writes on her new site cupcakekiller.com:
Halloween was boring and ridiculous. It was a night filled with waiting around and a mean, fat Goth bitch. That’s right… I said it. It all began when I found out my friend Zita was not riding with me to a party we were going to. She decided to ride with a bunch of people who decided to pick up some chick who lives in Burbank… at 10pm… on Halloween. Of course they get stuck in major traffic for almost 2 hours! Did the bitch in Burbank have two broken legs? Why couldn’t she get her ass up and in a car and drive to the party on Sunset and Labrea? So I end up waiting…and waiting until I get bored. So I text my "friend" Neil and see what he’s up to. He invites me to his house for a bit before he goes out. When I arrive to Neil’s place he is already heading out and invites me to a Goth party. Very hesitant to go, I decide it’s a good idea to go and kill some time before meeting with Zita and her clan of crazies. So I follow Neil and his friends to Crenshaw and Pico Blvd where white, gothy kids don’t belong. I finally figure out we aren’t going to a house party but to a venue having a Halloween party. I’m actually getting annoyed writing this so to make a long story short my night was ruined because Neil and his friends were assholes. The one who stood out was his friend Olga who is the fat, Goth bitch I mentioned earlier. She was super nasty to me for no reason at all. I figured she was one of Neil’s bitches who was super jealous of me.
Neil Strauss is the author of the book The Game: Penetrating the secret society of pickup artists.
He teaches average nice guys looking for love how to become asshole pickup artists looking for vaginas.
Here’s my related Halloween report with pictures and video. Here’s Chasity’s MySpace page.
My Nov. 13 videotaped interview with Chasity James at Coffee Bean on Sunset Blvd. Part Two
