Dismal performance, indeed. Boks admits to increases in intake and euthanasia on his blog, writing that “we at LA Animal Services are as disappointed with these results as are our critics.” Okay–I guess disappointment is one of the feelings inspired by the news that as of now, euthanasia has gone up 24% since last year, and intake 20%. Better adjectives to describe the range of emotion I’m feeling include outrage, helplessness, and sorrow.

In an analytical rant, “Not An Animal Activist” blames Boks’s “numbers games” and propensity for “warehousing” animals for the surge in intake and euthanasia. Read it and weep, then tell me what the hell to do. As it is I give my time and money to a no kill shelter. What next?

Meanwhile, Boks writes that “marketing is not our strong suit at the moment. We don’t have a public relations staff, nor do we have a volunteer coordinator at the moment to run our mobile adoption program.” Why not? This is Los Angeles. There are a lot of creative, passionate, animal-loving people here with free time and experience in public relations and marketing. Surely Boks could find one, or two, or five to share the volunteer duties of running a mobile adoption program and marketing older, bigger dogs. So, why isn’t it happening? Boks is supposed to provide leadership, not vom-inducing excuses.

Suddenly I was a stage mother blinded by ambition.

“Of course!” I said, all but throwing Ganymede’s leash at actors Brooke Lenzi and Charlie Weirauch.

Here’s Ganymede’s official debut. I think you’ll all agree that he’s a born star. Oh, and that the sketch, filmed on Spaulding in Miracle Mile and called “Amazing,” is pretty darn funny.

Because I haven’t already linked to it enough times, you can watch it here.

Hilarious pic from Itchmo.com

“Who is that?” I asked Charlie Cox, resident musician there.

“Gwen and Gavin,” replied the somewhat smug couple standing with him.

“Oh,” we said, and continued on across the park, where we started kicking a soccer ball around.

A few minutes later, the paparazzi had joined us, and my man was saying hello to someone behind me. I turned around and there they were: Gavin on his knees with 2-year-old Kingston, and Gwen standing behind them. For a few strange moments the tables were turned and they watched us, entertained by our soccer ball-chasing dog. A few cordial words were exchanged–the same kind of interaction we have every weekend with dog-happy children and their young parents–and then they were gone, back to the screens of our TVs and pages of our magazines.

The Shojin

333 S. Alameda St. Suite 310

(Little Tokyo Shopping Center 3F)

Los Angeles, CA 90013

The event, which will take place in the Sunken Garden and is free and open to the public, will “capture the market imagery from Soyinka’s book of poems titled Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known. The market will be complete with international merchants, performances of all kinds, and staged readings by accomplished international actors, including Danny Glover, CCH Pounder, and Michael Learned.”

I’m pretty bummed out that previous obligations will keep me from attending. If you go, post your review in comments.

Click for more details.

From the LMU site: This market will be working from 6-8:15pm. We will have vendors from every culture—from Ethiopians performing coffee rituals to Salvadorian pupusas; Chinese herbalists; Greek retsina vendors; there will be people selling books, art, trinkets, rugs, spices, and incense—there will be cafes, hookah bars, etc. There will be strolling musicians as well as break-dancers, Latin dancers, belly-dancers, etc., entertaining throughout (many of these groups are student run). LMU will not only be represented by students but by professors who will be doing what we do all day at a University: selling ideas. Professors of Classics may be selling speeches by Plato; professors of Philosophy might be selling a Kantian reading of evil. Against this backdrop we will have a group of student “actors” and members of the community representing people and situations commonly found in the marketplace…street urchins, thieves, beggars etc.

At 8:30 the performance will begin—erupting in the marketplace and lead by the “market muse”, a wonderful and talented dancer, Mecca Andrews. There will be lots of African drumming and dancing as well as Yoruba songs throughout the performance. The performance will be both inter-cultural and ecumenical. Assembled religious groups and leaders will emerge dressed in their representative clothes. They will join in a procession which will culminate in a call to worship given by all participating faiths. The poem will then be read in concert of all actors who participate in various spots throughout the marketplace—the entire piece ending as the audience processes into the Chapel for the final poem, a call to tolerance and understanding called, “A Vision of Peace.”

One other important part of the piece is its emphasis on social justice. The poem celebrates the marketplace as a space of tolerance and global understanding and it also traces those things that can and do destroy this kind of utopian vision: racism, nationalism, and fundamentalism. As part of the spectacle we will be projecting images of the banned books and the “notorious persecuted.”

The program was launched by the U.S. Postal Service and is being paid for by Clover Technologies Group, “a nationally recognized company that recycles, remanufactures and remarkets inkjet cartridges, laser cartridges and small electronics. If the electronic item or cartridges cannot be refurbished and resold, its component parts are reused to refurbish other items, or the parts are broken down further and the materials are recycled.”