L.A.-based toy company Mattell is facing some pushback from the Iranian government, re: the "destructive cultural and social consequences" that its freakishly perfect Barbie dolls have on the little girls of Iran.

Reuters reports that the ban was unofficially passed in 1996, but that the "morality police" have only recently been cracking down on toy stores. In effect, a sort of black-market Barbie trade has blossomed...

More »

zazzle.com

Janky, non-trademarked Occupy gear of old.

Here on the Internet news circuit, the Occupy boom has more or less settled. Don't bite our heads off -- we're not saying the movement itself is over, by any means -- but it's nearing the end of its shelf life as a meme. (The young American hive mind has a severe case of ADD, and a story can only stay hot for a few months before everyone goes looking for the next trending topic to beat the life out of. Just look at Charlie Sheen.)

Unlike the national attention span, though, trademark law is still Paul Revering it through the 21st century. So these SoCal-based applications to trademark phrases like "Occupy," "Occupy LA" and "Occupy Los Angeles" (discovered by trademark lawyer Sue Basko and posted to the official OLA blog), are still pending in court:

More »

@Villaraigosa via Twitter

"At the @BevHillsPorsche opening in LA. Only the 2nd dealer in 25 years to open in the City."

Two simultaneous announcements this morning from L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa signal that city leaders might finally be in Great Recession panic mode.

The first and flashiest: Villaraigosa stood with City Council President Eric Garcetti (and Mitchell Englander, new kid on the City Council) outside the historic Porsche headquarters in Beverly Hills, and told the world that Porsche would be moving to Los Angeles.

'Twas a splendid affair...

More »

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Julius just got a little uglier.

They must really be hurting for new things to counterfeit in Indonesia these days.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers at the Los Angeles/Long Beach port just intercepted a 20-foot terminal container filled with -- get ready to time-travel back to seventh grade here -- 14,900 pairs of Paul Frank pajamas. You know, the ones with the super hideous football-mouthed monkey all over them; the ones you only liked, and made your mom buy you, because everyone else was wearing them.

We didn't even know they sold those things anymore. So out! And indeed, CBP spokesman Jaime Ruiz says the entire lot of fakes would have only fetched...

More »

mymajicdc.com

Whatever it takes.

Ever had the grave misfortune, over the last five years, of receiving a call from Forensic Case Management Services in Van Nuys?

You'd definitely remember. (Though the company may have called itself Rumson, Bolling and Associates, Commercial Recovery Solutions, or something else along those lines.) A piece on the front page of the LA Daily News today details a lawsuit being brought against the "shake-down" debt-collecting agency by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Some of the phone calls the six accused officers allegedly made to bully small businesses and individuals into paying up are almost hilariously evil --

More »

The iPhone 4S. Or maybe the iPhone 4. We can't really tell.

Update: Sure enough! In the 24 hours since it's been available for pre-order, the iPhone 4S has almost doubled all previous iPhone records in that period. Apple reports that one million phones have been sold. Stock, naturally, is up as well. Lesson: Grief sells.

Originally posted October 6 at 1 p.m.

Apple fanboys and -girls were bummin' after new CEO Tim Cook's first product launch earlier this week, at which he unveiled the iPhone 4S instead of the much-wished-upon iPhone 5.

More »

Sparkling clean truck: Los Angeles greenwashing almost worked.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's controversial "clean trucks" plan to squeeze independent truckers out of the Port of Los Angeles as a favor to the Teamsters -- a green-washing plan he sold as merely a wholesome effort to reduce emissions from old trucks, has just been zapped by a federal appeals court.

Now maybe L.A. can do what Long Beach did, and create a plan for cleaner trucks that doesn't give the Teamsters even more control on the waterfront. The Natural Resources Defense Counsel Council acted as the fig leaf for all this, backing the mayor's doomed plan. City News Service reports:

More »

Robin Arcuri

Actress Robin Arcuri signs an autograph on the boardwalk.

Nearly a year after a federal judge knocked down the city's way of regulating free speech and trinket hawking on the Venice boardwalk, L.A. city Councilman Bill Rosendahl is circulating a proposed ordinance that would try once again to bring order to the free-spirited area.

And once again Zuma Dogg, the local gadfly who successfully challenged the constitutionality of the city's original boardwalk enforcement efforts, says a legal fight is likely because he thinks the new proposal puts too many limits on speech.

Rosendahl's proposal was, strangely, discussed at a meeting in faraway Harbor City this morning, with little notice given of the public hearing (72 hours is requied under state law but we just heard about it yesterday afternoon). It states that these items "may be vended:"

More »

The Continental crew, circa 1970s.

Like a baseball team or a Hollywood studio, an airline, in America, holds incredible cultural weight. It's a corporation, sure, but only in the way that Coca-Cola is a corporation -- ads don't feel like ads. More like cozy pop art.

What little girl, at one point or another, didn't want to run away in pantyhose and a pencil skirt, for to be stuck with a golden flight pin? And no existing American airline can so legitimately rep its role in the iconic 1950s-70s "jetset" aesthetic -- so hot on the telly right now! -- as Continental Airlines. Pan Am may get its own show this fall, all adorably misogynistic with 10 leggy flight attendants to every man-captain, but Pan Am folded long ago. On the contrary, Continental narrowly avoided that fate and went on to prosper, much for the same reason 800 proud employees will be gathering at LAX this Saturday:

More »

baycitizen.org

Was Obama blinded by the wonders green jobs could do for his campaign?

Solyndra, Inc., the NorCal solar company that just blew through a $535 million loan from the federal government and is being probed by the FBI, had a lot more to lose than the money. (Hell, what's $535 million, anymore? Just this year, President Obama blew the same on a few more border agents and some spy drones. Look how far that's gotten us.)

When Solyndra went bankrupt this summer, the company did more than fail the taxpayers and let down Obama's big eloquent PR hopes (see right) that America had the clean-energy smarts to win the future.

Nope: It gets worse. Solyndra has given Republicans just the leverage they needed...

More »

"No Wal Mart in Burbank" via Facebook

Try as it might, looks like L.A. County can't keep scandalously low Wal-Mart prices out of its strip malls forever.

After almost a decade of resistance from local governments and small businesses throughout California, Wal-Mart has found a loophole in the permitting process: All it has to do is set up shop in buildings vacated by similar bix-box retailers, and it can bypass environmental impact reports and other zoning hurdles.

"It appears what they want to do is not too different from what Great Indoors did and therefore is permitted under the development agreement..."

More »

Amazon may be big, but CA pols are craftier.

Amazon.com didn't stand a chance against the power-hungry California Legislature.

In the war between state politicians and the Internet's most popular one-stop shop, the former has thrown a last-second curveball that might derail Amazon's (and no doubt many voters') wants to strike down California's brand-new Internet sales tax.

As soon as the sales tax (AB 28X) passed into law on July 1, Amazon protested the most painful way it knew how:

More »

City Hall dumps S&P.

The city of L.A. booted its bond-rating service after S&P gave us another downgrade recently. Its one of three cities that have done so in the wake of S&P giving even the old United States of America a downgrade.

The Bond Buyer broke the news today. L.A. has $7 billion worth of debt that's rated by S&P. (Added: Oops. Rick Orlov at the Daily News had this light years ago).

L.A. chief investment officer Thomas Suarez told TBB:

More »

Counterfeit Chic

Sue this, you disproportionate bitch

Well, it's settled. Barbie just got her ass kicked by the sassy, funky new girls on America's cutthroat child-consumer scene.

OK, not Barbie herself. Worse -- the suits who pull her strings.

Mattel sued Bratz maker MGA a few years back because it claimed the man who brainstormed the mean-girls franchise, Carter Bryant, had done so while he worked at Mattel. (Guess Barbie just wasn't enough for the reigning toy kings. Doe eyes not quite gargantuan enough? Or perhaps not equipped with sufficient purply eyeshadow.)

Today's court ruling --

More »

L.A.'s Little Tokyo.

What's bad for Japan is bad for L.A.

And while we can't belittle the pain and suffering of that nation, we can say that its triple disaster (earthquake, tsunami, nuclear crisis) will put a dent in our own economy. That's because Japan is the Port of Los Angeles' number-two customer next to China.

In fact ...

More »

By Beth Barrett

New details emerged in a plea deal signed by Barry Minkow showing how the ZZZZ Best con man-turned-fraud buster and pastor cleverly exploited the FBI to get proprietary information on home-builder Lennar Corp. -- then used that knowledge illegally to make huge secret trades of Lennar's stock.

Minkow duped the FBI to give him "specific, material, non-public" information -- specifically, the fact that the FBI was investigating Lennar. Yet the FBI probe, in turn, was based on a scathing, falsified 2009 report on Lennar produced by Minkow himself, via his Fraud Discovery Institute. Here's how it worked:

More »

By Tibby Rothman and Jill Stewart

Wilshire Grand Hotel rendering done at such an extreme angle it's nearly impossible to see light effects.

​Update: The City Council has approved the top-to-bottom lighted Wilshire Grand Hotel project.  The vote will read as "unanimous" officially, yet one council member voted No. Bizarre details on the jump. 

Two towering skyscrapers wrapped in "decorative" digital lights from top to bottom are rushing toward approval by the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday, and as LA Weekly reported days ago, there's a chance the developer will try to turn much of that lighting into advertising once allowed to embed the lights into the outer walls of the buildings.

Tampax Tampon Towers may be in L.A.'s future, thanks to project owner Korean Air, its subsidiary Hanjin International, developer Thomas Properties -- and a City Council that consistently does the bidding of billboard kings and outdoor advertising kings:

More »

By Michael Stabile

Indy filmmakers are scrambling for vanishing $1,000 HD tapes

When directors of the independent feature Gone wanted to send a copy of their documentary about a missing ex-pat to the Tribeca Film Festival a few days ago, they discovered that the high-end tape stock they needed to screen it there was gone too.

A Sony factory in Miyagi, Japan was the sole manufacturer of high-quality HDCAM-SR tapes used extensively in TV and film production. But it was badly damaged in the quake and tsunami, causing an industry that relies heavily on the tapes to panic. The pricey tapes that usually go for $280 now cost $1,000 or more -- and many shelves are empty.

More »

Barry Minkow

By Beth Barrett
Barry Minkow, mastermind of the ZZZZ Best carpet cleaning fraud 25 years ago who claimed redemption as a fraud buster and pastor after leaving prison, conspired with a San Diego developer to "artificially manipulate and depress" national home-builder Lennar Corp.'s stock in an attempt to get cash payments out of the company, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida said Thursday.

In an official "information" document, U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer said Minkow in 2008 was hired by "Conspirator A," who is known to be Nicolas Marsch III, to get Lennar to pay developer Marsch money he insisted he was owed. Minkow then lured the FBI, IRS and SEC into his scheme:

More »

Los Angeles Business Journal

Sorry, Tim: There won't be any DTF college chicks in the slammer

One would think that presiding over multi-million-dollar cult franchises like "Animal House" and the Chevy Chase "Vacation" series would be enough for a dude. (Even a dude skeezy enough to become CEO of National Lampoon, the sex-comedy empire that now stoops to crapping out hormonal slop like "Stoned Age" and "The Beach Party at the Threshold of Hell" every few months.)

But no. The company's CEO, 48-year-old Tim Durham, apparently needed an extra source of income to support his luxury fleet of land-, water- and airmobiles -- hence the $200 million ponzi scheme of which feds are now accusing him, along with business buddies James Cochran and Rick Snow [Los Angeles Times].

Slimy doesn't begin to describe this thing:

More »