While catching the turgid 1949 film version of The Fountainhead this week, I noticed that, in the climactic courtroom scene, all the jurors were men, and white ones at that. This reminded me of the 1957 film 12 Angry Men, which, as the title indicates, also features a completely vag-less jury. Next thing I know, I was up to my favorite form of multitasking: looking things up on the laptop while simultaneously watching a movie on cable. I found some interesting results about the history of women on juries in California, in which the Los Angeles area plays a major part.

Sit on this (jury), after the jump

You may not know the name Alex de la Iglesia. But any self-respecting fan of black comedy or horror films should. And yes, I’m pointing squarely at you, Mr. I’ve-Seen-Shaun-of-the-Dead-Over-42-Times.

For his latest film, The Oxford Murders, the Spanish director of Day of the Beast (El Dia de la Bestia), Common Wealth (La Communidad) and The Perfect Crime (El Crimen Ferpecto) has decided to do things a little differently. The movie, which stars Elijah Wood and John Hurt, is not only a straight-up thriller, but it was also shot in the Queen’s English.

Oxford Murders is finally being screened in L.A. tomorrow night (Saturday, June 6) as part of the 15th annual Recent Spanish Cinema film series. As a special treat, Alex de la Iglesia will be at the Aero Theatre in person to introduce the movie. Please note the film is playing with Agustín Díaz Yanes’ Just Walking (Solo Quiere Caminar), a crime drama starring Diego Luna, that also looks pretty badass.

Image: Alex de la Iglesia. Via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s Friday!  It’s National Doughnut Day, also known as National Free Doughnut Day!!  Yay!!  Krispy Kreme is handing out a free doughnut to each customer (which, honestly, is what a lot of the stores do when you walk in anyway.  Nonetheless, I am trying to make good on my New Year’s Resolution to Not Complain About Free Things, so, in the words of Forrest Gump, That’s all I have to say about that.).  Find your local Krispy Kreme here.  For Krispy Kreme haters, try Randy’s Doughnuts instead, where, for each doughnut sold, a donation will be made to the Salvation Army.  It’s not the same as a free doughnut, but who said that taking the high road was free?

“Hot Doughnuts Now” photo courtesy of ~db~ via Metblogs’s Flickr pool.

After the reader submitted Parking Tard a few days ago people have been on the hunt. This fine example was spotted in Santa Monica near 5th and Colorado, 6/4/09, by jeffro:

OH: “I used to drive an Escalade but I could barely get both my doors open in these tiny parking spot pairs. So I sold it and got this sensible Mini Cooper. Now it’s so easy to get my car right down the center line and there’s plenty of room to get the doors open.”

Ok, not really overheard, but you can imagine.

Alternatively: “it was a messy divorce. She got parking space #11 and he got space #12. Still no agreement on who gets the car.”

Crowds gathered at City Hall for the unveiling of the new PCC streetcars by the Los Angeles Railway Company. The PCC was the answer to the automobile. It was Transportation Week, and the Yellow Car took top billing.

The year was 1937.

Photo from UCLA Library Digital Collections

If you don’t ride a bicycle in Los Angeles but happened to read a story about how Santa Monica was just presented with a Bronze award for being a bicycle friendly community by the League of American Bicyclists might make you smile. It might make you happy to know you live in or near such a bike friendly community and you might mention that to friends and family when talking about how great the place you live is. If you work for local media this is a perfect excuse to write a piece patting the city on it’s collective back for a job well done.

What if you found out that the League of American Bicyclists never talked to anyone who rides a bike in town, but rather gave the award based on an application submitted by the city? What if you found out that not only do local cyclists not consider the city bike friendly, but are actively involved with what is often considered outright harassment against cyclists? What if you found out that the miles and miles of bike paths the city brags about having are often unusable & poorly maintained. Now, what if you were a cyclist and knew that the award was bullshit? Unfortunately, that’s what just happened. Alex over at WestSideBikeSide has more details:

The ultimate result is a city inoculated against criticism. Next time cyclists complain stridently of the trials of riding bikes in Santa Monica, officials and staff will point to the award and remark that our own people disagree with us. Nevermind that the League’s offices are located 3000 miles away in DC, their award will be used to resist outside pressure for change. Effectively, the League has just drastically increased the difficulty of getting the city to respond to cyclists. In essence, it has undermined the work of locals to force the city to change.

The LA Hot Dog Death March is just a few days away, and we’ve got your t-shirts, temporary tattoos, and attitude.

Ryan at losanjealous does not endorse it and will be praying for our survival.

Maria & Mike at Franklin Avenue think we’re trying to kill you.

Even Kevin Roderick mentioned us over at LA Observed (although he egregiously omitted Julia, the 1st half of the planning committee).

So. Are you coming? Are you willing to RISK IT ALL for GLORY?! Details are here.

I stopped by Oki-Dog yesterday for a little reconnaissance. Photos coming soon.

This license spotted in West Hollywood begs a few questions.  If obtained during the heat of an “I love Obama” moment, does the owner now drive around with a tinge of regret, like someone who thought getting a tattoo of the ouroboros permanantly inscribed on her lower backside was a grand idea?  Or, as my friend suggested, is the owner of this car a pastor?  Or did The Little Engine That Could, with a newfound sense of confidence, swap its preferred mode of transportation?  Perhaps the most pressing question is: Who was lucky, or unlucky, enough to get “Yes We Can:” completed vowel version?

In the op-ed section of yesterday’s latimes.com there’s a column from some guy named Dan Turner who decided after a few miles biking  along the L.A. River Bikeway from Griffith Park to Atwater Village to write about how the wretched waterway is sooooo grody and even moreso not worth the monumental amount of money and time and planning needed to make it ungrody.

Defensive as I am about the river like it’s my disabled kid brother, I’m not unrealistic about its condition or the gargantuan effort required for a headwaters-to-mouth revitalization that I won’t see realized in my lifetime. I just get a little fisty and expletive-laced when a guy gets on a bike for a single spin along a four-mile stretch and comes away as something of an expert putting his name to printed opinions under subheadlines that say stuff like: “At its best, the waterway is an above-ground sewer filled with nastiness and lined by graffiti-scarred concrete and smoke-belching industrial buildings.”

But the guy’s entitled to his opinion. He’s certainly not alone.

My real beef, beyond Turner’s limited, disgusted view is the timing of the piece. Why  would the L.A Times put a hater on a bike along the river in the week leading up to this Sunday’s annual Los Angeles River Ride — an important event not only in raising awareness of it, but also for LA County Bike Coalition, which organizes it.

If the Times wants to let Turner slag on the river from his saddle,  couldn’t it have waited a week when his discouraging and disparaging words might not have turned people off from coming out on their bikes, supporting a great event and seeing the place for themselves?

Obviously not.

I first moved to Los Angeles in January (2002) from Madison, Wisconsin, and while there are about ten thousand reasons to be thrilled about such a move (proximity to an ocean, the ability to purchase a kosher hot dog, PJ Harvey concerts…), it being mid-winter, the reason foremost in my mind for a long time was the weather. I, in fact, reset the homepage of my web browser to weather.com, zip code 53703 so that every morning I could get my daily dose of Schadenfreude (“Gee it’s a bit chilly today, I may need a long-sleeved shirt and a jacket. Oh look, it’s -5 in Madison. Poor sods.”). At the time I thought I would never tire of LA’s long strings of sunnyday-sunnyday-sunnyday-sunnyday. My local friends, in contrast, were delighted about the rare occasions when it was overcast. For my part I thought anyone who had spent eleven long years in Wisconsin, as I had, had already lived through a lifetime’s supply of crappy weather. I have a friend who moved to LA from Minnesota who used to tell the folks back in Moorhead, “We know it’s winter because of the steam that rises off our hot tubs at night.” What’s so wrong with endless summer anyway I ask you?

 

And then it happened: I crossed the rubicon. Read the rest of this entry →

Are you following the Mayor’s girlfriend on Twitter yet? Here are a few things I’ve learned so far from Lu Parker:

1. Lu is a Spurs fan
2. Lu has a dog named Monkey
3. Lu likes shooting guns
4. Lu has tweeted 50 times
5. Lu has ended 10 of her tweets with smileys

I will give $50 to the first reporter that gets Antonio on camera talking about Lu’s happy endings.

 

Out here in the SGV we’ve had the odd rumble of thunder since late morning.   The actual lightning and thunder with light rain has been going on for an hour.  Enough rain that it washed the dust off the car, but not enough to satiate my garden or end our drought.  Am liking this break in the June Gloom.

Pic by me with the trusty cell phone about 1:30 when we were caught in a quick down pour.

update 2:30PM…here in Monrovia we have heavy rain and rock salt sized hail!

Radio & Records, the leading trade publication for radio broadcasters, announced today that it will cease publication after June 5, dealing a major blow to an already suffering industry.

While I’ve already waxed poetic about the demise of R&R and the end of an era over at LAGenX, I thought it was important to mention here because R&R is local to Los Angeles. This is not case where a publication is only going to be offered online and not in print. R&R is closing up the ENTIRE operation.

The Nielsen Company, blaming the recession, had this to add:

The good news for some other companies out there is that we have many fantastic people who are now available to put their excellent talents, abilities and skills to work for someone else.

Nice.

The local economy will also take a hit with the loss of another convention. The R&R Talk Radio Seminar is held here every other year, billed as “the largest annual gathering of News and Talk radio executives, programmers and talent from across the country.”

Venice is one step closer to ending its de facto recreational vehicle campground status.  According to the Los Angeles Times, the staff of the California Coastal Commission last week recommended that the Commission establish so-called “overnight parking districts” (OPDs) throughout five areas in Venice, in which parking between the hours of 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. (or 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. in some of the OPDs) without a resident permit would be prohibited.  According to The Argonaut, the Coastal Commission will hold a public hearing and will vote on the OPD issue on June 11, beginning at 8 a.m., at the Marina del Rey Hotel, located at 13534 Bali Way in Marina del Rey.

Park here for more

An immigration reform rally in Los Angeles and more than 40 other locations nationwide on Monday addressed immigration rights for gay couples, although that information didn’t make it into this piece in the LA Times about the event.

And if you want to see the anti-gay marriage crowd’s feigning that civil unions provide all of the benefits of marriage fall away, take a look at this article on Politico about gay partner language when it comes to immigration reform. A bill is being introduced in the US Congress would include the term “permanent partner” to sections of immigration law that pertain to married couples.

All of the right wing’s subterfuge about “civil unions are enough, just don’t call it marriage” flies out the window.

From Politico:

The chasm inside the immigrant rights community has led the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops — a major partner in the drive for expanded immigrant rights — to withdraw its support from a House bill to be filed Thursday that would speed up reunification of immigrants with their families.

Including the same-sex provision in the family reunification bill “would erode the institution of marriage and family by according marriagelike immigration benefits to same-sex relationships, a position that is contrary to the very nature of marriage, which pre-dates the church and the state,” the bishops said in a letter to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.).

“The last thing the immigration debate needs is another politically divisive issue,” said Kevin Appleby, the bishops’ director of migration and refugee policy.

Another major ally, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, called the efforts to slip gay rights into the immigration debate a “slap in the face to those of us who have fought for years for immigration reform.”

Honda represents California’s 15th congressional district in Santa Clara County, the location of Cupertino, Apple Computer’s headquarters city. He’s been a long time advocate for the gay/bi/trans community.