Monday Hotsheet at 1:02 a.m.

JM, After the Wind; Palm Fronds on Talmadge, 12.30.07


Joseph Mailander a guy in la • elsewhere • email

Actually 3 a.m., but I didn't want to bottlecap the Sammy awards, so I posted down here. Our readers are wise: I'm happy with the awards, btw, more than I thought I'd be, even if I did get drubbed by David Zahniser, which I am pleased to have been. So next year, let's have a best civic photography award, so I can get drubbed by Gary Leonard too.

It's a good list; check it out again.

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Remember about twenty years ago---especially on buildings along Spring and Main where lots of hi-rises had windows you could open---when they used to throw the pages of those desk calendars out of buildings downtown on the last day of the year? Do they still do that? You would find those pages around downtown all through January.

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Someone in the Mayor's office keeps riding me about my on-the-cheap, first-yurt-then-build homeless housing concept, but Santa Barbara is already halfway there with their Safe Parking program. Steve Chawkins reports for the former fishwrap of record. About 250 people are "housed" through the low-maintenence program that costs the City, County, and private funds a scant $105,000. Remember, the next affordable housing bond will aspire to spend about $100,000,000---almost thousand times more to affect the lives of only five times more people.

Of course, with the Santa Barbara program, the developers don't make anything. So City of LA pols aren't interested---though people in Venice are.

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Nearly everything City Council does with ballot measures is fraudulent to some degree, and it has been now for some time. Orlov runs down the list of tax measures City Council has on tap for you this year. After S, Hahn wants a gang program tax, and LaBonge wants a parcel tax for transportation funding. If S is in the name of "modernization", try to imagine the duplicitious names they will come up with for those.

Declaring an emergency status for Measure S so that it only needs 50%+1 vote to pass (rather than the 66% usually warranted by a City tax) after giving City workers a raise was like calling the fire department after deliberately setting your neighbor's couch on fire.

No, it's not wrong to call the fire department, but you should also call the police department, too, because you don't just have a fire on your hands, you also have arson.

Similarly, S should be challeneged in the courts if it passes.

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Tony Castro files a report in the Press-Telegram on the dark side of the Getty, including the family stuff. Yours truly is quoted.

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Relax about your teen online, says a CSUDH prof. Worry instead about Captain Jack...