Marshall’s blatantly biased decision in favor of her cronies at City Hall was reversed unanimously by the 9th circuit and again unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court, and yet she continued to violate their orders and judicial ethics at every possible point for almost a decade after the big courts remanded the case back to her with a note attached saying roughly: “Dear Consuelo and city of Los Angeles, are you fucking serious?!”
Continue reading Anatomy of a Hustle
Another homeless person by the name of Tyson…big guy [unintelligible] was on the sidewalk. I guess he…eh…he had this attitude that nobody liked him, nobody cared for him [unintelligible] and…um…after I calmed him down I offered him coffee he took it and he was [unintelligible] having a hard time but…[unintelligible]…I saw him three days ago and he said again thank you and he thought nobody cared about him. So he was talking about he wanted…[unintelligible]…so it’s just another example of we’re actually making contact with everybody out there I mean buying him a cup of coffee calm him down a little…
Continue reading John Irigoyen to Sad Homeless Man: Don’t Worry, I Care About You. Now Have Some Coffee and GTFO.
Out of the many mockable statements in this piece, we have chosen for today’s post this minor claim as our topic: “As Albert Einstein said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.”
First of all, Einstein didn’t say this, as anyone with any sense of history would have known immediately.1 Second of all, no matter who said it, it’s not just wrong, but stupidly wrong. Third, it’s a dreadfully overworked cliché. Finally, as with so many too-good-to-be-true misattributions, this is an instance of projection; that is, the author’s alienation2 from her own subconsciously perceived or imagined errors, turning them into imaginary characteristics of some delusionally constructed alterity.3
But for the sake of argument, we’ll assume that whoever wrote this little newsletter gem is right at least insofar as her own perception of insanity. Now what?
Continue reading By Its Own Definition the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance is Acting Craaaazy!
![Joseph Varet, who "approach[es] life as a kind of experiential art form," in the act of not thinking about how many homeless people per day his gallery will consume.](https://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2014.11.20.Joseph.Varet_.at_.HMD_.BID_.BoD_.meeting.png)
Here’s the story. Joseph and his wife, Esther Kim, whose marriage was the subject of a surreally sycophantic New York Times article in 2011,1 moved here from Houston or some other place east of San Bernardino sometime roughly around last week, and started a gallery named after an Ed Ruscha project, Various Small Fires. “After all, these are two people who approach life as a kind of experiential art form.”1 First they ran it out of their big-ass house in Venice2 but more recently moved it to a newly-purchased and renovated building at 812 Highland.
It seems that, according to Joseph, all the best contemporary art galleries in the universe are moving to this neighborhood like a bunch of sheep in the wake of Regen Projects’s 2012 relocation to Highland and Santa Monica. Joseph speaks at length about the impending Weltreisezielmodernenkunstheit of the area, which is about 4 blocks from where the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition does its nightly mitzvah. The GWHFC is opposed in this by the Media District BID with lawsuits, subversive attempts to outlaw sharing food in public, whining, disgraceful letters to the editor, and probably any number of other shameful tactics. Of course, Joseph, whose wife has “never caught him in a lie,”1 mentions none of this. What, after all, do hunger, suffering, misery, have to do with “developing the district in a positive and sustainable way?” “It’s the damage that we do and never know. It’s the words that we don’t say that scare me so.”3
You can read a complete transcript of Joseph’s remarks after the break. We were going to mock them in detail but our modest abilities can’t even touch the speech’s inherent auto-mock functionality. Read it and weep for your city, Angelenos.
Continue reading Joseph Varet Joins Media District BID Board, Announces Impending Weltreisezielkunstheit of Highland Avenue, Ignores Homeless
But of course, you don’t know what we’re talking about. Let us explain. At their meeting on November 20, 2014, the Hollywood Media District BID expanded the size of its Board of Directors from 17 to 19 members1 because they had two open spots and four applicants for them and why should they choose when they don’t have to? As the Dodo Bird said, “EVERYBODY has won, and all must have prizes.” One of the candidates involved in this board-packing maneuver was a perfectly nice-seeming fellow who was sent over by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, on Schrader between Hollywood and Selma, about three blocks east of McCadden.
Continue reading Cap’n John Irigoyen: Think of the Children! But Don’t Worry, Kids Aren’t Frightened by the LA Gay and Lesbian Center
Finally, though the courthouse has significantly scaled back its operations in the past couple of years, I understand that there are ambitious plans underfoot to centralize the county’s mental health and diversion courts into this facility. As such, with the anticipated crush of people — court employees, jurors, family members, and professionals — coming to Hollywood to do business each day, the services provided by the BID will help to enhance this experience for everyone.
Oh happy day! Imagine that you’re a mom or a dad coming to the Hollywood Courthouse to watch, e.g., your schizophrenic kid get locked up in Atascadero, where he will spend the rest of his natural life pumped full of thorazine and shut away in the restraint room but at least, thanks to the BID, you don’t have to step over a bunch of homeless people drinking Taaka vodka as you make your way into the building. Your experience surely would be enhanced, would it not? After all, what are drunken homeless people if not unwelcome reminders of the likely fate of the schizophrenic kid if he’s ever let out of the snakepit?
But that’s not the subject of tonight’s post.
Continue reading Freud, Jesus agree: Kerry Morrison finds LA County mental health court plans to be “hindering progress, in the way”
The safest thing, and what we were expecting, would have been to just not mention the hateful affair at all. Meeting minutes are a record of what was done in the meeting rather than a transcript of everything that was said. Since Sharyn’s report didn’t contain any action items it would have been totally reasonable to just note that she gave a report. But, for whatever reason, that’s not what happened.
Continue reading Hollywood Media District Goes Full CYA, Approves Falsified Minutes
Anyway, Besley’s description of what’s obviously an impending trainwreck3 moved Hollywood Property Owners Alliance Executive Director Kerry Morrison to opine thusly:
Continue reading Besley, Morrison: Hollywood’s Not Pleasant Cause it Ain’t Manhattan; TED-Talking Visionaries Will Fix Everything
We were going to use this post to make merciless fun of that person, but then we realized that maybe they’re sorry for what they done and we should be nice and invite them to repent by anonymously slipping us a bunch of documents or something. With that in mind, we are pleased to announce our new Invitation to Whistleblowers, which contains some hints on anonymous communications, encryption, and so on. Please have a look.
Image of Lex Luthor is ©DC Comics and first appeared in Action Comics Vol. 1, No. 23 (1940). It’s included here under the doctrine of fair use.
