Regular readers know that a few times each year the wonders in my noggin spill over onto my keyboard. With all the scandalous news of late – from Boston to Benghazi and the IRS to the NSA – the wonderings have become a flood. So strap on your waders and let’s dive in:
I wonder … what ever happened to coverage of North Korea’s tyrannical, bizarrely unstable dictator, Kim Jong Un? Mere weeks ago the world was poised on the brink of nuclear war with the polyp from Pyongyang. Today? Crickets.
I wonder … who is the sadistic person who designs hotel shower valves without the words “Hot” and “Cold”? I also wonder how much water is wasted trying to figure out how to get the right temperature from those infernal things?
I wonder … if anyone is concerned about the student body at Morehouse College in Atlanta. I mean, if it’s true (as we’re told repeatedly) that gender, race and social diversity are critical to the quality of higher education – does that mean the students at Morehouse College where President Obama gave the commencement address in May are being shortchanged? After all, they attend one of the most narrowly defined student bodies on the planet – all men, all black, all of the time. Hello, ACLU?
I wonder … if anyone else thinks Toyota should have named its popular Prius hybrid the “Pious” or better yet, the “Pass Us”?
I wonder … if anyone else thinks the word “fruition” gets funnier the more you say it?
I wonder … how anyone will ever again be able to walk a dog when plastic bags are banned from the face of the earth? Not to worry, at the rate government intrusion into our lives is growing, I’m sure we’ll soon have a Department of Doggie Defecation along with a library of regulations for federally-approved production, retrieval and disposal of canine emissions.
I wonder … if you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn?
I wonder … how our President can say “If there’s a step we can take to save even one child, we should take that step!” to a wildly cheering audience of gun-control zealots, yet only days later be the first President ever to honor and praise the attendees at a national gathering of Planned Parenthood; an organization responsible for ending the lives of hundreds of thousands of babies since the 70s. Can you spell “hypocrite” boys and girls? Whoops, of course you can’t. You’re not alive.
I wonder … why our State Department didn’t claim that the two cowardly Boston bomber brothers were motivated by an offensive anti-Islam YouTube video that nobody on the planet has seen?
I wonder … how fast we mere citizens (aka: “sheeple”) would have our bank accounts seized and be thrown in prison if we tried the same tactic at an IRS audit as Lois Lerner (director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division) used during her congressional hearing last month? “I’ve done nothing wrong and I refuse to answer any more questions.”
I wonder … why, as the brilliant African-American economist Thomas Sowell has asked, it is considered greedy to want to keep the money you have earned but not greedy to want to take somebody else’s money through higher tax rates?
I wonder … how any politician or pundit can say with a straight face that we the people have nothing to fear from the omnipresent government monitoring (spying) on each and every one of us – all the while the disgusting IRS scandal continues to grow in scope and importance?
I wonder … speaking of the obscenely arrogant, criminally corrupt and hyper-partisan IRS, what level of financial-terrorism we will all be subjected to when the IRS bloats its staff of thugs to enforce the coming onslaught of taxes and penalties facing every single American once Obama-care is in full force next year?
I wonder … how this all ends? I’ll see you ‘round town.
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Being a lifetime Southern California resident, I’ve always been extremely appreciative and regularly in awe of the dangerous work done by our many thousands of wildfire fighters when faced with blast furnace temperatures, hellacious Santa Ana winds and thousands of acres of tinder-dry brush that cover our Southland.
Fighting out-of-control fires during hell-on-earth conditions is just business-as-usual for firefighters in this part of the world. The equipment and methods may change, but the size and regularity of the conflagrations remain as deadly and destructive as ever. It’s not for nothing that Southern California’s four seasons are said to be drought, flood, wind and fire.
That said, what does seem to be different lately is how the bureaucracies involved in with these all-too-frequent crises handle the media during the events themselves. Take the recent Powerhouse fire in the Saugus-Santa Clarita Mountains just north of us.
Over the years, we’ve gotten used to watching televised press briefings that feature an exhausted and sweaty, soot-covered fire captain in his yellow turnout coat describing the current status of the fire lines, approximate percentages of containment and other pertinent and important facts. Reporters would ask a battery of inane questions and the longsuffering firefighter would answer as best he or she could when you just know they’d love to whack the journalist upside the head with the largest brass hose nozzle available and get back to fighting the blaze.
The past several fires, however, I’ve noticed a significant change in the way these press briefings are handled. Instead of an exhausted firefighter addressing the cameras with cut-to-the-chase statistics, we now get an extended parade of dry cleaner-fresh politicians and PR hacks each jockeying for their moment of glory in front of the phalanx of lights, cameras and microphones.
Two weeks ago, for example, during the height of the so-named “Powerhouse Fire” in Santa Clarita, I watched a press conference which had been repeatedly promoted ad nauseam as bringing us the “latest shocking developments” on the explosive growth of the fire and “what it means for residents in the Antelope Valley and neighboring communities.” Our daughter and her family live in one of those communities, so of course I watched. And watched. And watched some more.
For five minutes, then ten and on past the twenty minute mark into the press conference there was a lineup of officials from Cal Fire, the L.A. County Fire Department, the California Emergency Management Agency, California Fire Service and Rescue Emergency Mutual Aid Plan, the City of Los Angeles, the U.S. Forest Service, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, Angeles National Forest Joint Command task force, the Bureau of Land Management, National Wildfire Coordinating Group, and Cal Trans.
There were Incident Commanders, Press Liaisons, Assistant Deputies, Chief Public Information Officers, City Councilmen, Mayors, a State Assemblyman and even a Senator.
Shockingly, the only dignitary who didn’t elbow his way in front of the media mass at this particular press conference was outgoing Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, a man whom my friends in media regularly joke about, saying the quickest way to get hurt is to stand between Hizzoner and a TV camera with its red light on. (And yes, he’s been a regular fixture at past fire-related press conferences decked out in his own regal mayorific yellow turnout coat.)
For nearly half an hour the only “news and information” this parade of spokesclowns imparted was to echo each other virtually word-for-word in congratulating their respective departments for a “spirit of cooperation,” and “solid commitment to teamwork” and “task completion,” and to reassure the public that piles of county, state and federal dollars had been promised by other babbling bureaucrats and blah-de-blah, blah, blah.
As I watched the press event drag on, I couldn’t help but think that the brave and determined firefighters on the front lines would have a much easier time knocking back the flames if there wasn’t such a windstorm of hot air blowing their way. I’ll see you ‘round town.
No doubt you can you feel the electricity in the air today. You’re probably jittery with anticipation and I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve planned a blockbuster party to celebrate this momentous day in history.
Wait. What big day, you ask? Well, I’m not talking about today’s anniversary of “D-day,” although that’s an important moment in history, to be sure. Nope, today is also the 80th anniversary of the opening of very first drive-in movie theater.
Go ahead, I’ll wait while you catch your breath.
All better? Good. Okay, so way back on June 6, 1933 in Pennsauken, New Jersey, Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr. welcomed locals to the world’s first drive-in movie theater. He advertised this amazing new way to watch films with the slogan, “The whole family is welcome, regardless how noisy the children are.” Not sure that brand message would draw a big crowd today, but 80 years ago it was breakthrough stuff.
Interestingly, the first movie shown on Mr. Hollingshead’s revolutionary outdoor screen was “Wife Beware!” Um, okay. Doesn’t exactly sound like family fare, now, does it? Be that as it may, the new movie-watching concept was an instant success, and similar drive-in theaters soon sprang up from vacant lots all across the nation.
The new technology had the usual growing pains, of course – the most notable being that with speakers up front near the screen, the farther back you parked your car, the more delayed the sound became when it reached your ears. Oops.
RCA solve this problem in 1941 by developing a bulky metal box of a speaker that hung on the partially rolled down driver’s side window and had a single knob to adjust the volume level inside your car. Voila! Perfect audio. Or decent, at least.
During the heyday of drive-in theaters (the 50s and 60s), there were more than 4,000 of the venues all across America. Growing up in the Crescenta Valley in the 60s, we had a couple of great options when it came to drive-ins. The biggie, of course, was the Picwick Drive-In with an 800 car capacity on West Alameda in beautiful downtown Burbank. Slightly smaller, but a whole lot closer, was Crescenta Valley’s very own Sunland Drive-In Theater. Opened in July of 1950, the Sunland Drive-In on Foothill Blvd. could accommodate 650 cars on its 10-acre site. The theater’s 75- by 80-foot screen was later widened with extended side panels when wide-screen CinemaScope films were released.
In my mind, I can still see the towering, neon-lit mid-Century style marquee whenever I drive by the now-abandoned and shamefully decaying K-Mart facility which was built on the site after the Sunland Drive-In closed and locked its gates for good in September of 1976.
In addition to being a place where entire families could go – even with crying babies – without bothering the movie-goers next to you, drive-in theaters allowed you to watch the latest and greatest feature films (double features, I might add!) in the comfort and convenience of your own vehicle. Kids would often wear their pajamas or they could play on the swings, seesaws and teeter totters in the playground directly in front of and below the massive screen while waiting for the sun to go down and the movie to begin.
Because you were charged by the number of people in your car (although much less than a typical movie theater), it became a game with some folks to hide a kid or two under a blanket, or down on the floorboards as you drove through entry gate to pay your admission. Oh, and you could also bring your own food and drinks with you to save even more money – one more reason drive-ins were so family friendly.
For obvious reasons, drive-ins were an instant favorite date night destination for teen couples. Let’s just say, these venues didn’t earn the nickname of “passion pits” without good reason. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.
I’ll see you ‘round town.
