Village Voice Cans Three in Editorial, including Nat Hentoff

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

This just in: Adding to the media meltdown, my former alma mater, the Village Voice, just laid off three more in editorial. [Full disclosure, I was laid off myself for "matters of taste" in 2007]. Among those laid off is Nat Hentoff, who’s been at the paper since 1958, writing about jazz, and later, civil liberties in his weekly long-running column. Fashion writer Lynn Yaeger, who has worked with the paper over 15 30 years, starting in classifieds, before moving into editorial, was laid off, along with staff writer Chloe Hilliard, who was hired under the current editor, Tony Ortega in 2007. We know, we keep saying this, but we continue to be amazed that there is anyone left to lay off.

Nat Hentoff’s Greatest Hits Compilation.

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Right Wing Response: Rudolph Sues, Ahmadinejad Gives Christmas Message, and More…

Monday, December 29th, 2008

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer sued Santa and won. Check out the parody column at the Globe and Mail. It’s a cautionary tale about discrimination, or rather a roast on political correctness…

Feliz ‘dinejad! says National Review Online’s Mark Steyn. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave the “alternative Christmas message” on BBC 4 this year. Here’s the story and the full text of Ahmadinejad’s message, and here’s the response from NRO’s Michael Rubin.

We’re safer since 9/11 because of the policies of the Bush Administration, writes Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in a Washington Times op-ed. John Hinderaker at Power Line agrees, but places less emphasis on airport and border security and more on Bush’s aggressiveness overseas. Hinderaker adds that he hopes the Obama Administration realizes we need to stay aggressive. But how the president-elect will lead is still a big question mark.

Huffington’s read on the economic crisis is wrong, argues David Harsanyi at RealClearPolitics. In a recent post on the same site, Arianna Huffington wrote that laissez-faire capitalism is dead, but Harsanyi rebuts, pointing out that federal regulation has actually grown during the Bush years. Harsanyi decries leftist scare tactics and argues we shouldn’t use a temporary recession to make foundational changes to the economy.

Obama shouldn’t go after the Bush Administration for war crimes, writes Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call. With “Bush haters” calling for investigations into war crimes related to the global war on terror, “Obama should make it clear right now that he opposes such action,” Kondracke writes. Such calls are a sign of “political vengeance” rather than truth-seeking, and a probe would disrupt national unity and, more importantly, morale within the intelligence community during wartime. Putting a stop to such talk now, Obama would also prevent the “unseemly” possibility that Bush blanket pardons everyone involved in the GWOT on his way out.

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Daily News Roundup: Blago, Whales, and Racial (Racist?) Songs…

Monday, December 29th, 2008

Environmental groups and the Navy reached an agreement over whales and sonar. Separate from a case in which the Supreme Court ruled the Navy could not be unduly required to protect whales, this case contends that sonar is dangerous to whales and other marine animals around the globe and brings a partial victory to both sides.

As Israeli forces step up their assaults on Hamas, Obama remains relatively quiet. The New York Times reports that the President-elect is deferring to President Bush, but notes that Obama’s public comments on the recent escalation in the on-going Israeli-Palestinian conflict represent a near-endorsement of Israel’s air strikes.

Blago’s attorney plans to use an Obama report to vindicate the scandal-ridden Illinois governor. Barack Obama released an internal report last week showing he and Governor Rod Blagojevich had not schemed to fill the President-elect’s vacant Senate seat. Now the attorney will submit it as evidence to the courts. Of course, even if it clears Obama of any suspicion, Blago’s still in hot water.

First Lady Laura Bush defends her husband’s presidency and talks about women’s rights in Afghanistan and Iraq. She appeared on Fox News Sunday this week.

Republicans quarrel over a song distributed by one of their own: “Barack the Magic Negro.” Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chair of the Republican National Committee, mailed a holiday CD including the above-named song, prompting a mixed reaction from his rivals for the position, and sparking a public discussion over media sensitivity to race as the nation prepares to inaugurate its first black president. One of the writers of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” the tune to which the song is played, responded via the Huffington Post.

The overall murder rate is dropping, but black teens are killing more, according to a report released today by a criminal justice professor at Northwestern University. The numbers diverge along racial lines for juveniles aged 14-17, with hardly an increase in the murder rate for whites but a 34 percent increase for blacks—not good news for anyone.

Wireless carriers are bracing for a storm on Inauguration Day. It will be the first presidential inauguration in which mobile phones are so ubiquitous, the Los Angeles Times reports. With people expected to call friends, send text messages, and snap and send photos by the thousands, carriers are worried so much digital traffic could jam the networks. They’re encouraging people to moderate their usage and offer a few tips for communicating that day.

Mr. Craig’s restroom has lost much of its novelty. Someone apparently offered $5,000 for the restroom stall at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport where Senator Larry E. Craig was arrested in 2007 in a sex sting. Now fewer tourists are taking interest in the place and complaints of lewd conduct there have stopped or at least dropped in number. The airport, by the way, refused to sell the bathroom fixture.

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Christmas Movies 2008: Year of Coal-Filled Lameness

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

With the limited shelf space for holiday movies, the consensus in Hollywood is that one Christmas-themed pic per year is more than enough. However, 2008 brings you an embarrassment of Christmas riches in the form of two craptacular holiday movies that are rehashed, unfunny, and not exactly filled with holiday spirit.

The biggest culprit is inexplicable box office smash Four Christmases. Vince Vaughn and John Favreau play basically the same characters they’ve been playing since Made in 2001. You get the feeling Vaughn and Favreau just made the flick so they could hang out together. After directing Elf in 2003, Favreau must have decided Christmas movies were easy money, and convinced Vaughn to take part in this holiday tradition: Vaughn—who went on to make Fred Claus, 2007’s holiday non-classic—has now starred in two godawful pics two years in a row.

The oddest aspect of Four Christmases is the casting of Reese Witherspoon—she’s supposed to be Vaughn’s long-time girlfriend, but their chemistry is nonexistent. It is difficult to believe a character with type-A personality tics, would be in love with the bullshit-talking Vaughn character.

The film has less to do with Christmas and more to do with being a rip-off of Meet the Parents. Simply substitute some casting choices, subtract a few sight gags, and rotate in a Christmas background, and they’re the same movie. As such, the movie doesn’t hold a sprig of mistletoe, even compared with Favreau’s Elf, and certainly not against any actual holiday classics.

2008’s second place holiday movie, in every respect, is Nothing Like the Holidays, which is like a Puerto Rican take on The Family Stone. If you don’t get enough family fighting, fatal diseases, and special Iraq war moments in your real life, why not watch a Christmas movie about it?

As a movie Nothing Like the Holidays is more interesting than Four Christmases because of the interesting cultural touches, and the actual family moments, like the three siblings ending up in the attic together talking shit about each other— which are genuinely moving and intimate. On the whole, though, Nothing Like the Holidays is too heavy-handed. Nothing will stop a movie from entering the classic holiday cannon like being inescapably depressing.

Don’t go see these movies. TBS will play 24 hours of A Christmas Story. Admit it: it’s the Christmas movie you really want. Pole licking, B.B. guns and angry parents: what’s not to love?

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Secret Series: A Guide to LA’s Obscure Bookshops

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

Immersion at and into Children's Book World. Photo by Deborah Stokol.

“I noticed I had developed a fantasy about myself as a writer as opposed to actually doing it, [so] I finally summoned up the bad taste to move to Los Angeles.”

—Leslie Dixon

Perhaps there really is something inherently tacky about Los Angeles.

Whether it’s the mismatched houses, the nouveau riche displays of wealth, or the combination of flip flops with ball gowns, this not-uniform sprawl is undeniably unconventional.

But despite that gaucherie, LA has a pretty long tradition (well, long for a relatively new city) of city-based writers (especially screen writers).

Besides Hollywood’s (questionable) allure, one of the things that draws out-of-towners to this coastal metropolis, or keeps locals from leaving, (besides the weather) is that very bizarre collection of brash traits and “bad taste.”

Despite its “airhead” reputation, LA boasts a diverse population of people who love to read.

It’s no surprise Los Angeles has a slew of Borders and Barnes & Nobles. And I’d be lying if I were to say I wasn’t a fan of these mammoth, warehouse-like book sources, replete with carpets and coffee and couches to lounge on.

But the city’s large, commercial bookstores have a complement in the many independent book shops you’ll find here. LA’s big enough to accommodate those hoping for the practical chain store, with its supply and consistency, as well as the cozy, one-of-a-kind shop.

The Great Gatsby’s Jordan Baker once said she liked “large parties [because] they’re so intimate. At small parties there’s never any privacy.” The same rule goes for wide cities: their size can account for many mounds, crannies, crevasses, variety, and secrets.

Here are five bookshops—small, perhaps even unknown, that grace the city’s many borders.

Children’s Book World

10580 ½ W. Pico Blvd.
LA, CA 90064
310.559.2665
Mon-Fri: 10 a.m.-5:30 a.m.
Sat: 10 a.m.- 5p.m.

It’s hard for me to be objective about this gem. Its enthusiastic employees introduced me to too many of my favorite books growing up. I spent many riveting afternoons there, curled up with an otherwise-impossible-to-find piece of fiction. But even were I not to have the fondest memories of the place, and even were I not to be aware of the fact that those working there know the ins and outs of all pages making their way through the ½ sign door, I would still say anybody with a soft spot for children, or children’s literature, or finger puppets, or story time should make his or her way to this three-room fantastical HQ.

Hennessey + Ingalls

214 Wilshire Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
310.458.9074
Mon-Sun: 10 a.m.-8 p.m.

Hennessey + Ingalls is beautiful, a real treat to explore. Just around the corner from the 3rd Street Promenade and another from the Santa Monica bluffs, this shop, like Rizzoli and Taschen, is a monument to art and architecture, and books concerning the two. It takes the specialized bookstore to an elegant and almost old-world level—you can almost see a scribe, a quill, and handwritten sets of parchment maps out of the corner of your eye—while offering intricate cards and handmade journals to purchase on your way out as you leave, inspired to create something lovely of your own.

The Mystery Bookstore

1036-C Broxton Ave.
LA, CA 90024
310.209.0415
Mon-Thurs: 10 a.m.-7 p.m.
Fri-Sat: 10 a.m.-9 p.m.
Sun: 12 p.m.-7 p.m.

An almost subterranean bookstore implausibly hidden between Westwood Village’s Eurochow and a parking lot, the Mystery Bookstores sells books only dealing with mysteries, offering the random and weird in addition to the commercial and easy-to-find. Harried passerbys and sweatershirt-clad students will be surprised at the scope of the Mystery Bookstore’s offerings. They are as likely to find new copies of Agatha Christie and Christopher Pike as they are to see dog-eared copies of Conan Doyle’s works.

Metropolis Books

440 S. Main St.
LA, CA 90013
213.612.0174
Tues-Sat: 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Sun: 12 p.m.-5 p.m.
Second Thurs of each month (Art Walk): open until 10 p.m.

Straight out of Fritz Lang’s brain and onto the city’s streets, the title of this bookstore fittingly complements its placement in the bleak, post-apocalyptic setting of LA’s Downtown. True, this little section of Downtown is eclectic and funky, attracting a twenty-something crowd to its SoHo-like blocks, but the rest of the general area is stark and almost forbidding. Nevertheless, there’s something truly poetic—almost reminiscent of a comic book aesthetic—about that desolate countenance. It makes escaping into a warm, spacious, brightly-lit, well-stocked, book-filled zone all the more appealing. And once you’ve stepped inside and inched towards the shelves, you can pull a book down, one that’s either new, or was once lovingly paged through by unknown hands, sit on a stool, and begin to read with your coffee beside you and your knees drawn to your chin.

Village Books

1049 Swarthmore Ave.
Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
310.454.4063
Mon-Fri: 10 a.m.-8 p.m.
Sat-Sun: 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

LA hipsters have long and disparagingly called the Pacific Palisades a cultural wasteland, full of people more concerned with tennis and tanning than with literary pursuits. But that characterization is unfair. Not-so-hidden at the end of one of the city-within-a-city’s main street blocks, Swarthmore, lies a small, warmly lit, and very welcoming bookshop by the name of Village Books. Veteran employees bake biscuits once a week and pass them around, the back-end children’s section looks like a full nook or one half of an internal brown gazebo, and the multitude of books makes a visitor wonder how so many volumes can fit into so petite a space. What the store doesn’t carry, its workers can order, and this haven has another marked advantage in its very near proximity to the sea.

Honorable Mentions:

Book Soup

8818 Sunset Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90069
310.659.3110
Mon-Sun: 9 a.m.-10 p.m.

Vroman’s Bookstore

695 E. Colorado Blvd.
Pasadena, CA 91101
626.449.5320
Mon-Thurs: 9 a.m.-9 p.m.
Fri-Sat: 9 a.m.-10 p.m.
Sun: 10 a.m.-9 p.m.

Skylight Books

1818 N. Vermont Ave.
LA, CA 90027
323.660.1175
Mon-Sun: 10 a.m.-10 p.m.

Portrait of a Bookstore

4360 Tujunga Ave.
Studio City, CA 91604
818.769.3853
Mon-Sat: 9:30 a.m.-10 p.m.
Sun: 10 a.m.-10 p.m.

Hi De Ho Comics & Books with Pictures

525 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
310.394.2820
Wed-Sat: 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
Sun-Tues: 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

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