Site of the Flying Saucer on Miracle Mile

Site of the Flying Saucer on Miracle Mile
Originally uploaded by Snap Man

I was in the old neighborhood on Sunday, and stopped to take a photo of the old Flying Saucer site, on the northeast corner of Wilshire and Cochran.

From the 50s into at least the 80s, the Flying Saucer restaurant was an institution on the Miracle Mile, at the northeast corner of Wilshire and Cochran - serving barbecue spare ribs, chicken, and burgers at reasonable prices. The spare ribs, with cole slaw and fries, were the preferred local takeout for my family when I was growing up, two blocks away - and as Andrea Graham (a fellow devotee) has noted, the place never changed, never remodeled. That cole slaw - tangy, no mayo - was the best I've ever had.

It was torn down in the 1990s, replaced by a Staples office supply store, which paid homage to the original site by maintaining the Flying Saucer motif (pictured here).

Photo August 5, 2007 (by klk).

My 60th Birthday party

My 60th Birthday party
Originally uploaded by Snap Man

I knew only that David and Kenlyn were coming over - but then the food and drinks started rolling out, and came a knock on the door: Darryl, Angela, and Kaitlin, with Liz, Gary, and Jeanne, saying "Surprise!" Now I knew what Darryl meant the other day when he said he and Angela had "plans" for the weekend! Robin proceeded to lay out a spread of chips, veggies, dips, clams, mussels, sardines, and fruit. Then grilled portobello mushrooms and salmon off the grill. Finally, cake, ice cream, and watermelon. Thank you sweetheart! I had a GREAT time!

The President's Oath

Andrew Sullivan has it right:

It needs to be stated again and again that the fundamental job of the president is not to protect the people of America, but to protect their constitution. This president has gotten things exactly the wrong way round. In a terror war, we have to acclimatize ourselves to the fact that many Americans may have to die as a consequence of a collective decision not to become a police state or a presidential protectorate. A free country that remains free in the face of terror will necessarily have many casualties. A police state would have fewer casualties. Given a choice between a loss of life and retaining constitutional liberties, what would you pick? And what would the first Americans have picked?

We've slid a long way, haven't we?

L. A. Times to put ads on the front page

More evidence of the sad decline of a once-excellent paper.

More bad news about our food supply

In The Dark Side of Soy, Mary Vance offers words of caution:

Soy is indigenous to Eastern Asia, where it was once considered toxic and used only as a cover crop. It was eventually fermented for better digestibility; it had long been known that soy caused extreme digestive distress if consumed raw or undercooked. Fermenting soy deactivates these harmful constituents and creates health-promoting probiotics, the good bacteria our bodies need to maintain digestive and overall wellness.

...Asian populations may have had success with soy because they are consuming primarily the fermented forms.

Soy is everywhere in our food supply, as the star in cereals and health-promoting foods or hidden discreetly in processed foods...

Agri-giant Monsanto obtained FDA approval to market GM soy in 1996, and by 2004, a staggering 85 percent of the US crop was genetically modified...

Soy's naturally occurring phytates block absorption of essential minerals such as zinc. This is most worrisome for vegans and vegetarians consuming soy as their main source of protein, and for women in menopause who may be further upping their soy intake through supplements. The highest risk population is infants...

Idyllwild

It seems like it hasn't changed since the last time I was here, in 1990 - still quaint, arty, and quiet - no chain stores or restaurants allowed. We stayed two nights in a one-bedroom "rustic cabin" that had a stone fireplace, kitchen, and wireless internet connection(!).

Picnic dinner at Barnsdale Park

We packed a picnic and set out for one of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery Screenings -but the cemetery was so jammed that we had our picnic at Barnsdale Park instead, and then went to see "Sicko" at the Arclight. Robin, James, and Cynthia, June 30, 2007

April in the West Indies

A Caribbean cruise, and a few days in San Juan, Puerto Rico, celebrating Robin's and my 15th anniversary. I took a few pictures, of course.

Looking for someone to love

Peter Rashkin writes

I'm getting excited about politics, and that's rare for me. The thing is, my congresswoman died, and there's a special election June 26 to replace her in this totally safe Democratic district. Some liberal SoCal Dem is going to congress, where she'll probably stay for the next 20 years. So for the first and perhaps only time, I get to have some input into who will represent me in Congress.

Right now there are two leading Democratic candidates, and I just met one and talked to her briefly. I told her I wanted to be involved and I was preparing some questions to help me decide who to support. She took my card and said she would get in touch with me. I will try to contact other leading candidates as well.

I've started a blog about this at 37th Congressional District - 2007 Election. I've posted my list of questions there, but I'm still working on them and would appreciate any input on them at this time.

You'll notice that there's nothing about Iraq, abortion, gay rights, healthcare or labor rights. These are all moderately liberal democrats or they couldn't be viable candidates here. I assume they will all basically agree on these core issues. (Maybe I should include a few questions on these issues to be sure I'm right.) I could try to tease out nuances, but I'm looking for issues I care about where there may be some differences. For example, if I could send someone to congress who could lead in getting us out of the drug war quagmire, that would be the greatest thing.

If you do or don't think these are good questions, I would be very glad to hear about it now, and to hear your suggestions. I basically agree with Susan Sontag, that if you study history you can't take politics seriously, but if I ever can, this is it!

I agree with Peter: this is an interesting opportunity.

Celebrating Darryl’s birthday

Unbelievably, Darryl is 38! A good caliber year.

James & I joined Darryl, Angela, Kaitlin, and Cynthia at D & A’s place in Sherman Oaks – and walked from there to the Clay Oven, an Indian restaurant on Ventura Blvd., for dinner. Good food, good conversation, and good behavior on Kaitlin’s part (considering that she’s just eighteen months old).

Kaitlin’s such a cutie! She's on the verge of talking: babbling, nodding, and gesturing, as if she knew what we were talking about.

Meanwhile, Robin's recovering from a back spasm that has her taking it easy until Monday...

David Kanouse on NPR's "News & Notes"

My brother David was interviewed on NPR's "News & Notes" this week about a study just published in the Journal of Sex Research.

Baseball been bery bery good to me

After the long dark winter of our discontent, and background noise about games with oversized and misshapen balls, the new season has finally arrived. Sports Illustrated picks the Angels to beat the Dodgers in the first Freeway World Series, and even such sabermatic stalwarts as ESPN's Rob Neyer pick the Angels to win their division. Sports Illustrated aside, few are picking the Dodgers, and that's great with me. After two games, the Angels are 2 - 0, the Dodgers 0 - 2. Just the way I like it.

For the Angels, this is a turnover year. Darin Erstad, Tim Salmon, and Adam Kennedy, stars of the 2002 World Championship, are gone, but a highly touted crop of young prospects has finally matured: Howie Kendrick (second base) and Casey Kotchman (first base) look to be stars in their own right; their young catchers, Mike Napoli and Jeff Mathis, are coming into their own, and they still have Brandon Wood and Dallas McPherson waiting in the triple-A wings. Garret Anderson, the remaining veteran, is apparantly healthier than he's been in several years. Their starting pitching is as solid as it gets: Bartolo Colon, Jered Weaver, John Lackey, Ervin Santana, and Kelvim Escobar. Their bullpen is lights-out: Justin Speier, Scot Shields, and K-Rod (Frankie Rodriguez).

The dark cloud on the horizon: Colon and Weaver are both recovering from injuries. For the first half of April, Joe Saunders and Dustin Moseley will be starting in their place. Are Colon and Weaver really going to come all the way back? Will Joe Saunders, Dustin Moseley, and Hector Carrosco be able to cover them if they don't? But even in the worse case, I don't see Texas, Seattle, or arch-rival Oakland winning more games.

Ahh, the joys - the sunny perspective - of Spring...

Recommended reading

I just finished Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I commented on it at Darryl’s website a while back, and will add here that it’s one of those books, like Erich Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, that’s bound to get you thinking more about what goes into the food you eat.

From the introduction:

Folly in the getting of our food is nothing new. And yet the new follies we are perpetrating in our industrial food chain today—by replacing solar energy with fossil fuel, by raising millions of food animals in close confinement, by feeding those animals foods they never evolved to eat, and by feeding ourselves foods far more novel than we even realize—we are today taking unprecedented risks with our health and the health of the natural world.

…how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world—and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life afford quite as much satisfaction. By comparison, the pleasures of eating industrially, which is to say eating in ignorance, are fleeting. Many people today seem perfectly content eating at the end of an industrial food chain, without a thought in the world: this book is probably not for them; there are things in it that will ruin their appetite. But in the end this is a book about the pleasures of eating, the kind of pleasures that are only deepened by knowing.

My brother David, with Grandmother - Kate (Dollie) Kanouse.

December 1944

Battlestar Galactica

Season three concluded Sunday night, and what a finale it was! I don't watch much television - some news, the Daily Show and Colbert Report on occasion, Bill Maher on Friday nights, Angel games during the baseball season - but three long-running shows have hooked me in recent years: The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Battlestar Galactica. Battlestar is a remake of a mediocre series of the same name from the 1970s, with vastly more interesting characters and complex, nuanced takes on current issues.

It's also downright fun. This is a future (or past?) of warp-speed space travel and dazzling high-tech war rooms, but not cordless phones; radios and pop-up toasters are right out of the 1950s, and people still smoke cigarettes in the workplace. And now we have "All Along the Watchtower" (what's with that?!?). Unfortunately, we have to wait until January 2008 to find out what happens next.

Marijuana

Andrew Sullivan has a link to an interesting report on drugs and toxicity - and once again, marijuana ranks as the least addictive, most benign substance.

My sentiments exactly

Photo by Nick Calyx. Thanks to Harry Myhre for both title and link.

For Slatkin / Zlotkin friends and fans...

Review from the New York Sun:

Fashioning a Lyrical, Fluid Line Classical Music
BY FRED KIRSHNIT
March 14, 2007

Cellist Frederick Zlotkin had the honor of introducing the most beautiful melody ever written by Robert Schumann, the main theme of the Andante cantabile from his Piano Quartet, aboard the chamber music barge Sunday afternoon at Brooklyn's Fulton Ferry Landing. Mr. Zlotkin is most likely tired of being described as Leonard Slatkin's brother, so let's introduce him instead as the son of the fine cellist Eleanor Aller. This day, he teamed with another local celebrity, concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Glenn Dicterow, along with violist Karen Dreyfus and pianist Gerald Robbins.

Mr. Zlotkin made the most of his opportunity, fashioning a lyrical line notable for its fluidity and grace. He did not employ a great deal of vibrato, but did include a delicious portamento slide toward the conclusion of this infectious melody that brought to this reviewer a flood of memories and at least a trickle of tears. The other two string players each had their turn at this type of gorgeous music making and each acquitted themselves admirably.
...
Although it was the third movement of Brahms's Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor that grew out of the aforementioned Schumann Andante cantabile, it was the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor that the quartet performed this day. The piece has a special place in the history of the California ex-pat community so dear to Mr. Zlotkin's parents, as it was this mighty work of chamber music that Otto Klemperer convinced Arnold Schoenberg to orchestrate so that he could conduct it with his Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

My son with his daughter

Darryl with Kaitlin at a family picnic in Griffith Park.

Joining the world of hybrid cars

We bought a brand spanking new car today, a Honda Civic Hybrid. It has an EPA rating of 49 city / 51 highway, and a cool cockpit with GPS navigation and XM radio. What fun! What a huge car payment! (photo by Robin)

Old friends

The Jerveys - my B.U. roommate Bill, his wife Pam, and daughter Allie - are in town visiting their son Chris, who lives in Santa Monica. Bill and I have always said that no matter how long it's been since we've last seen each other, or even written, it always seems like just yesterday - and today was no exception.

We met at the Getty Center, where we walked through some of the galleries, but mainly enjoyed the setting, and the view, having snacks and beer on a terrace overlooking West L.A. From there, we drove to Yamashiro restaurant, overlooking Hollywood, joining Chris (now in his thirties!) for two hours of appetizers, drinks, and great conversation.

Photo: Robin, Allie, Pam, and Bill

Thoughts on Oscar Night

Best Picture: The Departed was certainly good, but not as good as Letters From Iwo Jima. But Clint’s won plenty of awards, and Scorcese was due, so it was no surprise. I didn’t see The Queen or Babel, and thought Little Miss Sunshine was vastly overrated.

Best Director: What goes for picture goes for director.

Best Actor: I can’t quibble with Forest Whitaker taking the award for The Last King of Scotland, which Robin and I saw just earlier today – but I had hoped Peter O’Toole would get it (talk about being due!) for Venus. But then again, I haven’t actually seen Venus; the old-man / sweet-young-thing subject matter is shopworn and unappealing, and a lot of voters may have felt the same. I thought Leonardo DiCaprio was good in The Departed, and excellent in Blood Diamond; he’s finally matured enough to inhabit his characters, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him win an Oscar in the years to come.

Best Actress: I hadn’t seen any of these performances! Robin and I usually make a point of seeing most, if not all, of the top nominees, but this year we blew it. By all accounts, Helen Mirren deserved the Oscar for The Queen.

Best Supporting Actor: I’ve always enjoyed Alan Arkin, and he was certainly the highlight of Little Miss Sunshine, so I’m happy to see him get the award. But I would have flipped a coin and voted for either Mark Wahlberg (The Departed) or Djimon Hounsou (Blood Diamond). I haven't seen Little Children or Dreamgirls.

Best Supporting Actress: The only performance I saw in this category was that of Abigail Breslin, the kid in Little Miss Sunshine. She was fine, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me to nominate her for an Oscar.

Other awards: Why do they keep torturing the viewing audience with the 5 “Best Song” performances? Why does the Best Song category even rate inclusion in the live telecast? This award, along with Best Makeup, should be relegated to the banquet where they award Best New Camera Lens. It’s been years since there was a halfway memorable song in this category, and to give the songs more air time than any five other categories is ridiculous. The medley of three boring, overwrought songs from Dreamgirls was enough to send everyone I know to the kitchen for snacks, and as much as I liked An Inconvenient Truth, and Melissa Etheridge, her song didn’t make the least impression on me during the movie.

The ceremony in general: Ellen DeGeneris was okay, moving things along, doing her job – far better than the disastrous turns by David Letterman and Chris Rock – maybe even better suited to the task than last year’s John Stewart (who I prefer in every other way). But the master emcees of Oscar history remain Bob Hope (as much as I hated his politics), Johnny Carson, and Billy Crystal.

R.I.P. Our Red Elantra, 1997 - 2007

Robin's Elantra gave up the ghost in Pasadena tonight, almost ten years to the day from when we bought her new in Bloomington, Illinois. 'Twas a great car - she just ran and ran, getting 35-40 mpg. Then, last year, some transmission problems - and now it's the engine. I'm sure our neighbors will miss her colorful presence; some may even heave a sigh of relief.

Out and about: from the desert to the sea

On our way to the desert, we stopped for Sunday-morning breakfast in Claremont, which remains much as I remember it back in the 1950s - a classic college town with great old houses and magnificent shade trees on campus and off. The town itself is pedestrian-oriented, with streets of independent book stores, shops and cafes. We ate at the 42nd Street Bagel. I'm sure Claremont has its newer areas with chain restaurants and shopping malls, but it was still nice to see how well they've kept up the community core.

Back on the road, Robin took pics (adding to her "drive-by shootings" series) as we cruised to the Coachella Valley, through the forest of eerie, futuristic windmills near Palm Springs, on past the palm groves of Indio, and the barren Salton Sea (beachfront homes, cheap!). Turning west on 78, we drove through the Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area, which was a new experience for both of us. The place was swarming with bikers, roaring across the flats, into gullies, up ridges and dunes on both sides of the highway, kicking up a huge dustcloud visible for miles. Some of the kids looked to be no older than five or six. It was an amazing sight.


We arrived at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in mid-afternoon, and after a walk around the visitor center, we decided to spend the night at the nearby Palm Canyon Resort, in Borrego Springs. It was a western-themed motel and campground, with a general store, restaurant, and saloon, medium-priced and relaxed, just what we were looking for.

Our second-floor room had a balcony, where we sat back enjoying pale ales and a beautiful sunset before walking to dinner. After dinner, we took a romantic stroll out to gaze at the spectacular night sky before going to bed.

It rained during the night, and when we stepped out on our balcony in the morning, a rainbow arched over the mountains just to the west. A nice way to start off the day! Driving into town, looking for an interesting place to eat breakfast, we hit the jackpot: a tall "Eat" sign drew us to the Red Ocotillo, a World War II era Quonset hut with retro decor, a surprisingly varied menu, and excellent food.

Now fed and watered, we checked out the exhibits at the park visitor center, then set out on a three-hour hike, up the Borrego Palm Canyon Nature Trail.

The trail, up along a canyon stream, was not particularly steep, but it was rocky (with a few ledges to climb) and not always clearly defined - certainly the biggest hike we'd taken in quite a while. The canyon is known for big horn sheep that often come down to the trail, but the only sheep we saw were speck-sized, high up on a ridge. Just short of the oasis at the end of the trail, we encountered sprinkles, and with dark clouds gathering, we turned back. It was an excellent trek, just the kind of thing we always say we should do more often.

We'd planned to drive over the mountains to the Wild Animal Park near Escondido, but after winding up S22 (a hairpin turner with spectacular views) on the desert side of the mountains, we ran into heavy rain that didn't let up until we reached the coast. It was slow going, but we weren't in any rush, and the rain didn't stop Robin from snapping pics from the car as we meandered along through hilly country of farms, vineyards, and occasional cattle. Reaching Oceanside, we parked at the wharf for seafood and drinks at Joe's Crab Shack, where we watched the sun set in the ocean. A nice close to the weekend.

On a side note: Oceanside may be a nice town, but the military presence is palpable, and ominous. You can see it in the haircuts, flags, bumper-stickers, and marine corps decals - and on our way out of town, trying to get on the I-5 going north, we, with our bumper stickers of a different kind, twice found ourselves stuck in lanes bound for Camp Pendleton Only.

Jim Lynch, 1974 - 2007

Jim was dealt a rough hand. Born into a fringe religious cult, he was brought up in a communal home, abused and neglected, his parents eventually abandoning him to the foster care system. He had both physical and learning disabilities, and (not surprisingly) was considered a troublemaker from early on.

The communal home was two houses down from my mom, and she, being who she was, took it upon herself to befriend him, petulant as he was – inviting him in for dessert and conversation. He never forgot her kindness, and kept in touch over the years. When she died, he, twenty-five, gruff and hardscrabble, was among the first to come pay tribute.

We as a family, and my brother David in particular, have been keeping up with Jim in the years since. Severely injured while working on a fishing boat in the Pacific Northwest, he settled in Seattle, disabled, with ongoing health problems. But then came some good news: he'd met a nurse named Ellie, who became the love of his life.

Having craved for family all his life, he finally had one, and David – who talked to him just days ago – says that Jim seemed more upbeat, positive, and mature than ever before, with plans to enter college for the first time.

Sadly, Jim committed suicide on the night of February 12, 2007.

What is it, exactly, that I do?

An aquaintance recently asked me that question, and for the umpteenth time, I realized that I didn't have an easy answer.

In the old days, I was called a programmer - then a programmer / analyst - then programmer / systems analyst. Now, programmers are "engineers."

So now I'm a "Senior Software Engineer": development team lead and manager for the EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) portion of Sun Microsystem's Java Composite Application Platform Suite (Java CAPS). Got that?

Here's the kind of stuff I look at while at work...

My son and his daughter

Could anyone be more proud than I am? No. Impossible.

Robin, James, and I took Darryl, Angela, and Kaitlin to brunch at the Cheesecake Factory in Sherman Oaks, belatedly celebrating Angela's birthday. We walked there from D & A's house, and had a fine meal in the outdoor patio - dampened only by the fact that little Kaitlin was not feeling at all well.

Happy Birthday to...

My sister-in-law Kenlyn Kanouse...the fresh new face you may have seen on TV (The West Wing) and in theatres of late. That's Kate Winslet (center) standing next to her in shots from The Holiday. To be up-and-coming in a new career on one's Big Six-O is quite an achievement. Three cheers for Kenlyn!!!

Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

Molly Ivins died today. As John Nichols of The Nation says, she was "the warmest-hearted populist ever to pick up a pen with the purpose of calling the rabble to the battlements."

She was a joy to read, not only because I agreed with just about everything she said, but because she said it with such a delicious mixture of passion and humor. She was renowned for her shoot-from-the-hip Texas-style zingers, and I've long marveled how the same notoriously right-wing state that gave us George W. Bush and Tom Delay (for starters) also produced a stellar lineup of progressives like Molly, Bill Moyers, John Henry Faulk, Jim Hightower, and Barbara Jordan.

From her column of January 7:

"This war is being prosecuted in our names, with our money, with our blood, against our will. Polls consistently show that less than 30 percent of the people want to maintain current troop levels. It is obscene and wrong for the president to go against the people in this fashion. And it's doubly wrong for him to increase U.S. troop levels in this hellhole by up to 20,000, as he reportedly will soon announce.

"What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny?

"Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?"

From her last column, of January 11:

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war"...

"We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'"

During her losing battle with cancer, she was quoted as saying,

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."

I'm sure going to miss her.

For more quotes, go here .

(Painting by Robert Shatterly ) .

Fifty Years ago in Pacoima

Planes Collide over Pacoima Junior High, January 31, 1957
I was just nine, but I remember it being a huge story: two planes colliding and falling from the sky onto a schoolyard where children were playing - a parent's worse nightmare, and many a kid's first awareness of random mortality. One student - Ricardo Valenzuela, was out of school, attending his uncle's funeral, that day - but legend has it that he (known to the world as Ritchie Valens), developed a fear of flying as a result - only to die, along with Buddy Holly, in the famous "Day the Music Died" small plane crash of February, 1959, at the age of 17.

Movie weekend

Robin got an unexpected Saturday off, so we've been catching up on movies, seeing Pan's Labyrinth and Letters from Iwo Jima in theatres, and a couple of others at home: Cabaret (1972), and Saraband (2003). My quick ratings:

**** Letters From Iwo Jima (2006) . Great film - my pick (so far) for Best Picture of 2006. See it in a theatre, not on a home screen.

*** Pan's Labyrinth (2006) . Good, but not as good as I'd expected from reviews.

**** Saraband (2003). Ingmar Bergman says it's his last movie. Sigh. When you see this movie, you know you've been run through the ringer, and seen something extraordinary.

**** Cabaret (1972).It captures the decadence of 1920-30s Berlin, the Kurt Weil-like music of the time, and great performances by Liza Minelli, Joel Gray, and Michael York. What's not to like? Nothing, from Robin and my point of view. Son James was more subdued in his praise.

Fifty Years Ago

At nine and a half, my reading consisted of Mad Magazine, Classics Illustrated, the Hardy Boys, and Tom Swift. Amazingly, Mad is still around. Back in the 1950s, it was cutting edge, and subversive - but in later years it seemed to go mainstream, losing its bite at the very time (the late 60s) when subversive was all the rage. I have no idea what Mad is like these days. My impression is that The Onion fills the role that Mad used to occupy.

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. By Chris Hedges

The jacket blurb says that Hedges, "who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, was a foreign correspondant for nearly two decades for The New York Times and other publications. He was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times that won the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of global terrorism. Heges is the author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America."

This book is a probing look at the various organizations that comprise the Christian Right, and a warning to the rest of us that these people are a serious threat to our democracy, and need to be confronted and opposed in ways that liberals in Germany failed to do in the 1920s. They are highly organized, with millions of members, and have specific ideas about how to take over when the next great terrorist attack - or depression - or environmental catastrophe - occurs.

These folks, with leaders like James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Pat Robertson, Jerry Fallwell, Rod Parsley, and many others, are looking forward to the gruesome deaths of all who disagree with them. They also look forward to "total war" in the Middle East. They may look kindly in their pronouncements on TV, but Hedges provide plenty of documented evidence to the contrary.

At the end of the book, Hedges makes an elequent summary:

"I do not deny the right of the Christian radicals to be, to believe and worship as they choose. But I will not engage in a dialogue with those who deny my right to be, who delegitimize my faith and denounce my struggle before God as worthless. All dialogue must include respect and tolerance for the beliefs, worth, and dignity of others, including those outside the nation and the faith. When this respect is denied, this clash of ideologies ceases to be merely difference of opinion and becomes a fight for survival. This movement seeks, in the name of Christianity and American democracy, to destroy that which it claims to defend. I do not believe that America will inevitably become a fascist state or that the Christian Right is the Nazi Party. But I do believe that the radical Christian Right is a sworn and potent enemy of the open society. Its ideology bears within it the tenets of a Christian fascism. In the event of a crisis, in the event of another catastrophic terrorist attack, an economic meltdown or huge environmental disaster, the movement stands poised to manipulate fear and chaos ruthlessly and reshape America in ways that have not been seen since the nation's founding. All Americans - not only those of faith - who care about our open society must learn to speak about this movement with a new vocabulary, to give up passivity, to challenge aggressively this movement's deluded appropriation of Christianity and to do everything possible to defend tolerance. The attacks by this movement on the rights and beliefs of Muslims, Jews, immigrants, gays, lesbians, women, scholars, scientists, those they dismiss as "nominal Christians," and those they brand with the curse of "secular humanism" are an attack on all of us, on our values, our freedoms and ultimately our democracy. Tolerance is a virtue, but tolerance coupled with passivity is a
vice. "

It's a great call to action: call these people out! don't be afraid to confront them. These Christo-Fascists are not interested in dialog, they're interested in taking over.

DEA goons raid medical marijuana outlets

Last Wednesday, federal government thugs descended on West Hollywood and shut down the area's medical marijuana dispensaries. Never mind that Californians voted to allow marijuana as medicine, and that the conservatives now in power at the Federal level have long argued for "states rights" when it comes to causes of their own (such as blocking civil rights laws).

The War on Drugs is like the War on Iraq: a bad idea, justified with truckloads of phony propaganda - but hard for politicians to oppose. Now, when most politicians have found their voice on Iraq, few are yet willing to state the obvious: that the War on Drugs is a total disaster. Our city streets are teeming with gangs that thrive on drug prohibition, our prisons are overflowing with people who wouldn't be there if drug use was treated as a health issue, and other countries - from Colombia to Afghanistan - have had their entire societies ripped apart because of our hunger for commodities that are only available through a black market.

Enough. We need to decriminalize drug use. For starters, marijuana, a plant with nowhere near the potential for harm that tobacco and alcohol pose, should be legalized, albeit controlled and regulated in much the same way as tobacco and alcohol. Then we should look at how to deal with the use of the "harder" drugs - oxycontin, cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, etc. It's simply not fair that conservative talk show hosts get off with "treatment" options for using their drugs of choice, while inner-city minorities get nailed to doing hard time for doing the same thing with different drugs.

I'm not saying that one should be able to buy cocaine without a prescription, any more than one can buy oxycontin without a prescription. I am saying that the debate over those kind of drugs should be centered on public health policy - education, addiction prevention, treatment, recovery - not on sending people to prison.

Hillary announces White House run

Yucch! This was long anticipated - the big money, big establishment candidate, pimping and pandering to grab the nomination. I'll take Edwards, or Obama, or Kucinich, or Robertson, or Gore - or even Biden! - over Hillary.

If she's running in November, I'll have to hold my nose and vote for her over anyone the Republicans are likely to offer - but my favorites at this early stage are Barak Obama and John Edwards.

Sam Brownback starts White House run

This guy is truly scary. The darling of the Christian right, he's a perfect example of the religious crackpots described in Chris Hedges' "American Fascists" (a book I highly recommend). These people, ranting against abortion, the "homosexual agenda," and "secular humanism", want to establish a fascist Christian government. You think I'm kidding? Read Hedges' book.

Good spy movie!

Watched an excellent World War II spy movie last night: The Counterfeit Traitor (1962), with William Holden and Lilli Palmer. I remember liking it as a teenager, and it holds up quite well. Holden, a studiously neutral businessman from studiously neutral Sweden, is strong-armed into working for British/American intelligence, gathering information for the allies on his oil-related trips to Germany. To further gain the trust of his German connections, he's forced to act like an outspoken Nazi sympather, publicly rejecting his Jewish best friend, without letting even his wife know that it's all an act. As he gets more involved, he witnesses an atrocity that shatters his cynical world view - and becomes wholly committed to helping the allies, deeply and personally involved with key players in the German underground resistance. Meanwhile, suspicious Gestapo agents are watching his every move, waiting for a slip-up.

This is great spy vs. spy stuff! It's talky by today's standards, but that's not a bad thing. It's incredibly tense, with an unusually nuanced portrayal of the various participants - "ordinary" Germans, neutral Swedes, ruthless allied intelligence, and the Danish resistance (the Copenhagen bicycle scene is a classic). According to reviews on the web, it's a true story, but I haven't been able to verify that. Shot at the actual locations of the events that took place in Germany and Scandinavia. With Hugh Griffith and Klaus Kinski.

David Brodsley

While the rest of the nation rightly remembers Martin Luther King, I will always associate January 15th with my friend David Brodsley, born on this day in 1944.

We lived next door to each other in the Wilshire / Miracle Mile district as kids, and David, older by three years, was the one to first introduce me to Mad Comics (later Mad Magazine).

We drifted apart after elementary school, but became reacquainted in our college years, in Boston: he as an aspiring architect, I as a freshman at Boston University. He was married by then, and he and his wife Ronna's apartment in Back Bay became my home away from the dorms on many a weekend. Back in California, in 1970, we renewed our friendship, and remained close for decades to come.

David passed away on September 29, 2003.

Fifty Years Ago

Humphrey Bogart (1899 - 1957)

I saw the headlines of his death on a news rack in Huntington Park. At nine, I thought he was really cool - I'd seen "Angels With Dirty Faces", "Maltese Falcon", and "Treasure of the Sierra Madre," among others on TV. Wasn't he a little young to be dying?

New arrivals...

Steve and Veronica Winston's baby girl Zoe arrived at 12:30 AM, Saturday, January 6th. Mazeltov!

(photo sent by Steve)

The sun goes down on...

The sun goes down on...
Originally uploaded by gunga din.

Returning from a drive to Pismo Beach, we pulled off the 101 at the Gaviota State Beach exit, hoping to get some pictures of a nice sunset. But before we could even find a parking place, a state park official stepped up to say we needed to pay $8 for the privilege of entering the public facility - even if we didn't plan to park or get out of our car. He was "kind" enough to let us leave without charge, and we took an adjacent side road to a bluff that gave us a view of the ocean. But, as you can see, that side road was not a very friendly place.

Eight dollars to enter a public park? Barbed wire blocking coastal views on a public road? This is an ugly tend.

Check out this equipment...

My Dad, Ed Kanouse, at work
Originally uploaded by gunga din.

I came across this great photo of my dad at work at the L. A. Department of Water and Power in the late 1940s. He was an electrical engineer, specializing in transmission line design - but I have no idea what this machinery is. It looks like one of the old computers depicted in 1950s cartoons.

A good old fashioned double feature

Robin and I went to see "Children of Men" in Monrovia last night, then got back in line and saw "The Good Shepherd". Two good films in one night!

"Children" was an excellent sci-fi film, convincing and scary, with extraordinary camera work. Its vision of a nightmarish future paired neatly with "The Good Shepherd" - a revelation of the ugly doings of our government in the recent past. The illegal and murderous manipulations of the OSS/CIA, supposedly in the name of anti-communism, are laid bare - and there are plenty of scary reminders that these creepy Skull-and-Bones boys are more powerful than ever, now operating under the guise of the so-called "war on terrorism."

Ford's pardon of Nixon...

A friend writes...

I remember being quite upset [about the pardon] at the time, but was surprised that my parents (who hated Nixon) didn't seem to object. But to this day, I'm still a bit upset about it. Sure, without the pardon, the Nixon case would have occupied the newspapers and congress for a while, but surely it would still have been mostly in the background, just as most investigations only come to the forefront when there is something new. In any case, I don't think Nixon should have been pardoned until it had been determined exactly what laws he had broken.

I think he's right to still be upset about it. If Nixon had been forced to stand trial for his crimes, future presidents like Bush might not be so confident that theirs would also go unpunished. I also think there was a deal - perhaps unspoken, perhaps not. One NPR interview with a former insider from the time said that Ford, soon before Nixon's resignation, was asking "theoretical" questions about the scope of presidential pardon powers - and that Nixon's awareness of Ford's probable pardon was one of the factors that clinched his decision to resign.

Whether the deal was explicit or not, the pardon was a terrible move, and I fail to see why the media are falling all over themselves to glorify a lackluster caretaker president whose most important major decision was a bad one. I guess it's because the current president is such a disaster that there's some nostalgia for ANY former president.