Anatomy of a Hustle

Consuelo Marshall: People of Los Angeles, this woman is NOT your friend.
Nine justices of the United States Supreme Court to Consuelo Marshall and the City of Los Angeles: Dear Consuelo and LA, are you fucking serious?!
I would like to recommend the book Anatomy of a Hustle to anyone who’s interested in practical aspects of the governance of the city of Los Angeles. It’s a memoir by Clinton Galloway of his attempt, along with his brother Carl, to get a franchise to bring cable television to South Los Angeles in the 1970s and beyond. They were thwarted at every turn by an astonishingly corrupt city government and an astonishingly corrupt federal judge, spawned in the bowels of City Hall itself; Consuelo Marshall. Things haven’t changed much over there.

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

Share

John Irigoyen to Sad Homeless Man: Don’t Worry, I Care About You. Now Have Some Coffee and GTFO.

Dear sad homeless man: Have some coffee and get the fuck out of my BID.
Dear sad homeless man: I care about you. Now have some coffee and get the fuck out of my BID.
Listen here as John Irigoyen relates a story of how he buys coffee for the homeless and makes them feel loved:

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.

Share

By Its Own Definition the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance is Acting Craaaazy!

I said WHAT?!  You must be crazy...
I said WHAT?! You must be crazy…
If you click here you will be able to read the Spring 2014 issue of the Hollywood Entertainment District BID’s newsletter. It’s chock-full of mockable goodness, but today our attention is focused on page 7, which contains an article called Combatting Alcohol Issues.

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!

Share

Joseph Varet Joins Media District BID Board, Announces Impending Weltreisezielkunstheit of Highland Avenue, Ignores Homeless

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.
Joseph Varet of Various Small Fires, who “approach[es] life as a kind of experiential art form,” in the act of not worrying at all about how many homeless people per day his gallery and the galleries of his colleagues will consume.
At their meeting on November 20, 2014, the Hollywood Media District BID expanded the size of its Board of Directors from 17 to 19 in order to accommodate two new members. You can watch here as one of them, Joseph Varet, introduces himself to the board.

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

Share

Cap’n John Irigoyen: Think of the Children! But Don’t Worry, Kids Aren’t Frightened by the LA Gay and Lesbian Center

Captain John Irigoyen of Universal Protective Services at the Hollywood Media District BID Board meeting of November 20, 2014
Captain John Irigoyen of Universal Protective Services at the Hollywood Media District BID Board meeting of November 20, 2014
Really, Cap’n John? Why’d you bring it up then, given that no sane person would ever suspect that they would be? Methinks the Cap’n doth protest too much. Our diagnosis is unintentional apophasis in the first degree.

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

Share

Freud, Jesus agree: Kerry Morrison finds LA County mental health court plans to be “hindering progress, in the way”

He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.
He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.
As outlined here, Kerry Morrison, Executive Director of the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, recently wrote to California State Controller John Chiang asking him to force the State Judicial Council to pay the $42,857.88 that the HPOA claims they are in arrears. Well and good, we suppose, but in her letter, we find this argument:

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”

Share

Hollywood Media District Goes Full CYA, Approves Falsified Minutes

Richard Nixon takes break from crying over spilt milk in Hell, speaks from grave, reminding one and all that the coverup is worse than the crime
Richard Nixon takes a break from crying over spilt milk in the republic of Hell to speak from the grave, reminding one and all that the coverup is worse than the crime
Long-time readers of this blog will recall that on October 23, 2014, Sharyn Romano of the Hollywood Beautification Team essentially confessed on camera that she turns a blind eye to the criminal activities of her subordinates. We spent the last month feverishly anticipating the minutes of that meeting, wondering what fantastical description of this faux pas might be presented.

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

Share

State Judicial Council Gets “No Benefits From BID,” Refuses to Pay Assessments Since 2009

"The use and function of a courthouse is not directly impacted or benefited by any of the services provided by the BID."
“The use and function of a courthouse is not directly impacted or benefited by any of the services provided by the BID.”
If you look here you will find correspondence between HPOA Executive Director Kerry Morrison and various people with the California State Judicial Council, which has not paid its assessments since 2009. It’s well worth a read if only to see Kerry’s hapless rhetorical sallies counterposed with the calm authority of the state’s lawyers.
Continue reading State Judicial Council Gets “No Benefits From BID,” Refuses to Pay Assessments Since 2009

Share

Besley, Morrison: Hollywood’s Not Pleasant Cause it Ain’t Manhattan; TED-Talking Visionaries Will Fix Everything

Visionaries converging on Hollywood in order to fix EVERYTHING.
Visionaries pouring out of a Kool-Aid drenched TED talk on their way to Hollywood to fix EVERYTHING, especially stuff that ain’t broke.
At the November 11, 2014, meeting of the Central Hollywood Coalition, kommisariat of the Sunset-Vine “Baby BID,” there was some discussion of visionaries doing something or another to do with “mobility”6 in Hollywood.2 One of the visionaries mentioned was Janette Sadik-Khan,5 late of the erstwhile nouveau-Napoleonic Michael Bloomberg NYC empire, who now works for Bloomberg-the-corporation spreading Bloombergian bullshit around the world as fast as they can shovel it out and also gives TED talks.1
Kerry Morrison about 36 minutes before she pronounced Hollywood "not pleasant."
Kerry Morrison about 36 minutes before she pronounced Hollywood “not pleasant.”
Bloomberg is one of these pezzonovante self-styled “reformers” like Eli Broad who thinks that because he’s a zillionaire he understands everything. Sadik-Khan is his Charlie McCarthy.4 These people’s zombie clones brought Los Angeles, among countless other horrors, Dr. John Deasy, who finally left this city with a stake through his heart and unsettling thoughts of Mark Berndt’s cookies dancing through his jug-like head. They’re probably up in the hills right now scheming to bring Michelle Rhee in to replace the guy. Of course, this kind of the-wealthy-gonna-fix-everything Kool-Aid is irresistible to the CHC-slash-SV-BID, a group whose entire foundational principle is “rich people must be smarter cause otherwise why is they so rich?” Hence their eagerness to let Sadik-Khan explain it all to you.

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

Share

CIM Group Supervillain Takes Break From Ruining Everything, Reads This Blog!

CIM Group taking aim on Hollywood
CIM Group taking aim at Hollywood
While grepping around in our server logs, we noticed that someone from CIM Group is a regular reader of this blog! You can see the raw November logs here. Note that the whois record for 12.96.123.68 shows that it’s leased or owned by CIM Group. There seems to be but a single user agent involved, so we believe that a single person at CIM is making these visits.

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.

Share