los angeles craigslist
i’m a producer dammit, why won’t women have sex with me?!
Date: 2008-03-05, 4:22PM PST

for the life of me, i can’t seem to figure out what’s going on here. i did all the things that i thought i was supposed to do to put myself in position to score ungodly amounts of hollywood poon. i got an undergrad degree in business from nyu. then i move to LA and complete the Peter Stark producing program at USC. while there i take full advantage of the networking and resume building connections that such an educational stint provides. i graduate and get a job with a major studio. i have a business card with my name on it. under my name is my job title.

“producer.”

so where are the legions of young starlets aching for me to tongue-fuck their puckered brown-eyes?

i mean, look, when i was 15 i read robert evans’ autobiography, “the kid stays in the picture.” there i was, short, mildly chubby, pimple-faced, cursed with a hideous jewfro, unable to get even a nut massage from the homeliest looking humans at horace mann in possession of vaginas, but i figured that if portly, profusely perspirating gasbags like don simpson can have bitches cat-fighting over who gets to blow the next rail off of his diseased cock, certainly i can get laid modestly well if i became a producer.

now i go out to parties and clubs and tell women that i’m a producer and they look at me as if i told them that i have fucking SARS! every night ends with me cruising pornotube at 3am in search of just the right clip to sufficiently inspire me to rub one out into a goldtoe nylon sock.

WTF?!

illustration { Sygnin }

{ OJ Simpsons, Bronco Chase, LA, June 17, 1994 }

{ George Barris’ Batmobile | The sleek black vehicle, one of two original Batmobiles that have survived, started out as a 1955 Lincoln Futura. Barris also created the DeLorean Time Machine from the film Back to the Future. | LA Times }

Dear Dr. O: I am 34 years old and feeling stuck. I hate my work as a lawyer. I am thinking about getting into the music business. I have played in a band for more than two decades and know some people in the business in Los Angeles. I have shared this dream with no one but two friends. Both think I am crazy. They think I will fail in L.A. It sucks that I don’t have their support but my gut says go to L.A. I know I have a talent for music. My passion is there. And, this is what I want. But I am scared. Do I go for it? Help. - Lost in Michigan

Dear Lost: Don’t ever be afraid to try — you might be surprised at the results.

{ Real Detroit Weekly | Continue reading }

photo { Walter Sassard }

When Los Angeles cops busted through Mae Phillips’ front door last month looking for her grandson, they blew out the door jamb, ripped out casing and drywall, and left the shattered remains hanging by the hinges. But just as sometimes happens in the movies, the suspect wasn’t there - and Phillips became the unwitting victim in a real-life police raid seeking members and associates of a Venice street gang.

Enter LAPD’s little-known “Wrong Doors Unit” - also known as Mark Jenkins. “Mistakes do happen now and then,” said Jenkins, a civilian carpenter with the Los Angeles Police Department.

“We’re just there to fix the door. For the most part, people are really happy we’re repairing these things. They’re real happy to see their needs are being met.”

Amid an LAPD civilian staff of 4,500, Jenkins often can be overlooked. But he plays a crucial role in fixing things that cops may break when serving warrants at what turn out to be wrong addresses.

Last year, Jenkins fixed eight doors damaged in such incidents - up from four the year before.

{ Daily News LA | Continue reading }

COBRASNAKE NETFLIX NEW YORK: How’s the gucci thing
CORY NYC: So freaking weird
CORY NYC: I mean
CORY NYC: I’m just staring at tome cruise and katie holmes
COBRASNAKE NETFLIX NEW YORK: That’s so cool
CORY NYC: At least devons here
COBRASNAKE NETFLIX NEW YORK: So its a si ti party
CORY NYC: No
CORY NYC: Its a celeb party
CORY NYC: Everyones here
COBRASNAKE NETFLIX NEW YORK: Wow. Amazing.
COBRASNAKE NETFLIX NEW YORK: Take photos
CORY NYC: I don’t even want to
CORY NYC: There’s just too many
COBRASNAKE NETFLIX NEW YORK: That’s so cooool
COBRASNAKE NETFLIX NEW YORK: To bad I’m not thereeee
CORY NYC: I know you would ddddiiiie
CORY NYC: Like donald trumps here
CORY NYC: Its redic
COBRASNAKE NETFLIX NEW YORK: Amazing
CORY NYC: I’m so tired
COBRASNAKE NETFLIX NEW YORK: I bet. I took a disco napp

{ NY mag | Continue reading }

photo { Cory Kennedy }

A few months ago, a prospective patient called the office of Andrew Brooks, a top-ranked orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles. She was having serious knee trouble, and she was also deaf. She wanted to know if her deafness posed a problem for Brooks. He had his assistant relay a message: no, of course not; he could easily discuss her situation using knee models, anatomical charts and written notes.

The woman later called again to say she would rather have a sign-language interpreter. Fine, Brooks said, and asked his assistant to make the arrangements. As it turned out, an interpreter would cost $120 an hour, with a two-hour minimum, and the expense wasn’t covered by insurance. Brooks didn’t think it made sense for him to pay. That would mean laying out $240 to conduct an exam for which the woman’s insurance company would pay him $58 — a loss of more than $180 even before accounting for taxes and overhead.

So Brooks suggested to the patient that they make do without the interpreter. That’s when she told him that the Americans With Disabilities Act (A.D.A.) allowed a patient to choose the mode of interpretation, at the physician’s expense. Brooks, flabbergasted, researched the law and found that he was indeed obliged to do as the patient asked — unless, that is, he wanted to invite a lawsuit that he would probably lose.

If he ultimately operated on the woman’s knee, Brooks would be paid roughly $1,200. But he would also then need to see her for eight follow-up visits, presumably with the $240 interpreter each time. By the end of the patient’s treatment, Brooks would be solidly in the red.

He went ahead and examined the woman, paying the interpreter out of his pocket. As it turned out, she didn’t need surgery; her knee could be treated through physical therapy. (…) Brooks told several colleagues and doctor friends about his deaf patient. They all said, “If I ever get a call from someone like that, I’ll never see her.” (…)

So does the A.D.A. in some cases hurt the very patients it is intended to help? That’s a hard question to answer with the available medical data. But the economists Daron Acemoglu and Joshua Angrist once asked a similar question: How did the A.D.A. affect employment among the disabled?

Their conclusion was rather startling and makes Andrew Brooks’s hunch ring true. Acemoglu and Angrist found that when the A.D.A. was enacted in 1992, it led to a sharp drop in the employment of disabled workers. How could this be? Employers, concerned that they wouldn’t be able to discipline or fire disabled workers who happened to be incompetent, apparently avoided hiring them in the first place.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

In New York, many other municipalities and some federal agencies, guidelines instruct officers to shoot to “stop” — and in particular, to stop an assailant who poses a deadly threat to the officers involved or civilians.

“We do not train our agents to shoot to wound or to shoot the gun out of someone’s hand, we train them to shoot to stop the threat,” said William G. McMahon, the special agent in charge who heads the New York field division of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “In the milliseconds a law enforcement officer has to react during a life-threatening situation, aiming to wound is not an option.” (…)

In all shootings — including those against people, animals and in suicides and other situations — New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate (182 out of 540), and a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away. Nearly half the shots they fired last year were within that distance.

In Los Angeles, where there are far fewer shots discharged, the police fired 67 times in 2006 and had 27 hits, a 40 percent hit rate, which, while better than New York’s, still shows that they miss targets more often they hit them.

{ NY Times | Continue reading | Graphic: The accuracy of 540 shots fired by NYC police officers in 2006 }

related { America’s illicit gun-market is surprisingly inefficient }

artwork { Julia Ziegler-Haynes, Gun Flash, 2005 }

07/26/2006 Posted by elisehwall
I love going to the Buffalo Club! (…) AND, if you care about things like this, you might even spot a celeb!

06/02/2007 Posted by midmodgirl
Good place if you’ve had a lobotomy.

{ User Reviews for Buffalo Club, Santa Monica, CA }

Trump asked me, “What’s the biggest tip you ever got?” I said, “$500 on a $1,000 check once.” Trump nodded his head. “You’re very good at your job.” Trump and the other guy got up to leave, said thanks again and left. I went back to the table to grab the check. At first I thought he had tipped me $1,000. It was actually $10,000.

{ Derober }

update 12/9
Derober.com published a copy of a MasterCard receipt showing that Trump tipped $10,000 on an $82.27 bill after dining at the Buffalo Club, but Trump told Page Six it was a hoax. He said he wasn’t even in California. “This was done by the stupid restaurant to get publicity,” Trump said.

{ NY Post | Snopes | Thanks Adam }

If you are a fan of the indie version of the human drama, it would be tough to top the one about the plucky Midwestern girl who used a stripper pole to shimmy her way up and out of a drab office cubicle and grab her piece of the Hollywood dream.

A few years ago, Brook Busey-Hunt was typing copy at a Minneapolis advertising agency and walked by the Skyway Lounge, a skeevy strip bar where desiccated women grind out a living a dollar at a time. Good Catholic girl that she was, Busey-Hunt saw an ad for amateur night and had a naughty epiphany. And the rest is, well, a stage name, a blog, a book and a screenwriting career.

Now named Diablo Cody, she wrote a screenplay that became “Juno,” a film directed by Jason Reitman set for release in the United States and parts of Europe and Latin America throughout the winter. (…)

A talent manager from Benderspink, a Los Angeles agency, came across the blog and eventually put her in touch with a New York literary agent, who sold “Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper,” which was published in 2005. Novick suggested she give screenwriting a crack, and she bought a copy of the “Ghost World” screenplay so she could correctly format what became “Juno.” (…)

“I actually think everything is prostitution. We’re kind of constantly bartering with our dignity in life,” she wrote.

{ International Herald Tribune | Continue reading }

photo { stripper_polaroids }

It may be hard to fathom for subway riders in cities like New York, Chicago and Boston, but the transit system in Los Angeles has no turnstiles, gates or other barriers where tickets are collected or checked.

Under a proudly distinct honor system intended to buck East Coast practices and reduce operating costs, riders buy their tickets, get on the train and present them to a sheriff’s deputy or civilian inspector — if any happen to ask.

But after 14 years of trust, Los Angeles is preparing to join those cities where slipping past, under and over transit turnstiles and gates is an art form.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

related { Hell’s Kitchen stop not in 7’s future }

Los Angeles is five of the best cities in the country, and three or four of the worst.

Blaine Capatch said that Los Angeles is eight or nine different cities, and you have to pick the right ones to live in. I was spending the afternoon in the part of Los Angeles which is Sunset Boulevard, west of Crescent Heights. It’s Robertson Boulevard between Beverly and Olympic. Both of these areas could be napalmed, and the IQ and talent level of the city would double. (…)

Led around by a tightly-smiling escort, I had to visit two sad-looking hotties from a restaurant called Pink Taco. “Pink Taco” — get it? It’s a rude slang term for “pussy”! But it’s Mexican food!

“We’re opening a new place in Century City. It’s going to be off the hook. It’ll be super-crowded and, like, the place to be,” intoned one of the girls, adjusting her baby-doll halter.

Super-crowded. That’s the habitat. That’s where these people thrive. I was surrounded by women waiting for someone to cut in front of them. Their lives are spent crowded in front of The Griddle on Sunset for breakfast, fighting for a treadmill at Crunch, jostling for lunch at Chin Chin, and long, pointless nights outside of Hyde or The Spider Club. I’d just discovered a Burbank bar called Bar 21. Cool, dark interior, plush booths, and never crowded. One of my favorite places to eat is BLD, which can get crowded, but there’s plenty of windows of opportunity to eat and read and not be slapped against the rest of humanity like pigs.

{ Patton Oswalt | Continue reading }