Tag Archives: Mike Malick

Almost 1200 More Newly Published Media District BID Emails Now Available

There’s not much to this morning’s post, but I did manage to get another 1200 Media District emails converted to PDF and posted on the Archive. These are highly miscellaneous both in terms of subjects and senders/recipients. As with the previous batch I was not able to batch-export the attachments. However, because the emails came to me as .eml files I am able to reconstitute attachments individually,1 so if you spot any that you need drop me a line and I’ll forward it/them along to you.
Continue reading Almost 1200 More Newly Published Media District BID Emails Now Available

Share

Off With Their Heads!! Preordained Coronation of Laurie Goldman as Queen and President of Hollywood Media District BID Succeeds by Single Vote in Face of Abortive Palace Revolt Led By Ron Groeper and Friends

Laurie Goldman and Mike Malick, attended by LIsa Schechter and a bunch of parrots, look down from their haughty thrones upon Ron Groeper and some tarts.
Laurie Goldman and Mike Malick, attended by Lisa Schechter and a bunch of parrots and minions, look down from their haughty thrones upon Ron Groeper and some tarts.
The Hollywood Media District elected its officers at yesterday’s Board of Directors meeting and you can watch the whole thing here. Mike Malick, current president and chairman of the nominating committee, presented an approved slate of candidates, chief among which were Grub-meister Laurie Goldman as president of the Board and also, possibly due to Kissinger’s law,1 Mighty Mike himself as vice-president. Then, as is not only customary but probably legally mandated, Mike asked for nominations from the floor and Bang! Off went the fireworks. Not only was there was a fascinating dispute about the corporation’s bylaws and Brown Act requirements but also, O rarest of Board meeting events! an unexpectedly contested election which installed hand-picked putative shoo-in candidate Laurie Goldman as Board President by a mere one-vote margin, setting a tense and bitter tone for the rest of the meeting, perhaps the rest of the year.
Ron Groeper expressing disbelief (horror?) at yesterday's Media District BID Board meeting.
Ron Groeper expressing disbelief (horror?) at yesterday’s Media District BID Board meeting.
First, and for some reason, some show folk whose names we didn’t catch chose this moment to ask about how board members are replaced and could they get their compatriot in. Mike Malick explained that candidates were recommended by the nominating committee to the board. This prompted a response from Ron Groeper about the legality of the process proposed by Mike which included a reading from the bylaws, never a feature of the meetings of an organization which is harmonious and happy. In any case, the Brown Act precludes board action on non-agendized matters, and so, says Mike Malick, on to the election!
Continue reading Off With Their Heads!! Preordained Coronation of Laurie Goldman as Queen and President of Hollywood Media District BID Succeeds by Single Vote in Face of Abortive Palace Revolt Led By Ron Groeper and Friends

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

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

Christmas Comes Early for Apple Fanboy Steven Whiddon

Apple fanboy Steven Whiddon wondering if he's going to get a MacBook Pro or a lump of coal
Apple fanboy Steven Whiddon wondering if he’s going to get a MacBook Pro or a lump of coal
About 22% (seriously, almost 14 minutes) of the October 23, 2014, meeting of the Hollywood Media District BID Board of Directors was devoted to an interminable discussion about buying new computers for the BID’s secret headquarters on Highland Avenue. You don’t have to watch the whole damn thing, and we have links to various subclips after the break. The upshot is that Steven asks the Board for $7000 to buy a MacBook Pro, a Mac desktop, and an iPad and they vote to give it to him.
Continue reading Christmas Comes Early for Apple Fanboy Steven Whiddon

Share

Irigoyen/Malick: A Wish Comes True!

John Irigoyen not only defuses mentally unstable homeless situations, he also gives them a pony!
John Irigoyen not only defuses mentally unstable homeless situations, he also gives them a pony!
You can listen to the following words of wisdom, from John Irigoyen’s security report to the Hollywood Media District BID at their meeting on October 23, 2014, concerning the situation described in our first post right here. This is a small part of that report along with a comment by Mike Malick at the end.1

John Irigoyen: And last but least, a little disturbing but, you know, [unintelligible] and unfortunately because somebody made a complaint about my officers harrassing somebody my company got involved did a thorough investigation [unintelligible] did not see anything wrong [unintelligible] I’m still standing [unintelligible] my officers [unintelligible] for right now that’s my report. [unintelligible] any questions?
Continue reading Irigoyen/Malick: A Wish Comes True!

Share

Steve Whiddon, Looking to Destroy Bus Shelters, Instead Finds Epic Ethnomethodological Fail

Harold Garfinkel righteously, like Peter Pan, moved to rapture by his own brilliance
Vexatiously intelligent sociologist Harold Garfinkel righteously, like Peter Pan, moved to rapture by his own brilliance

Right here you can listen to the following words of wisdom from the October 23, 2014 meeting of the Hollywood Media District BID Board of Directors:

Mike Malick: Uhhh….OK. Bus stop shelter removal.
Steve Whiddon: Yeah, I think I wanted to take…uh…the temperature in the room for two…um…bus stop shelters that are…um…close to Highland and the Kodak Building. I know that they seem to be [unintelligible] placed for…uh…for some activity, um, [unintelligible] even waiting for the bus, so, have you guys discussed this before?
Unidentified Interlocutor: No.
Continue reading Steve Whiddon, Looking to Destroy Bus Shelters, Instead Finds Epic Ethnomethodological Fail

Share