Courtesy Tom Ferda

Scores of people, police and, of course, Occupy L.A. hit downtown yesterday for the annual May Day marches and rallies. The streets were clogged with an estimated 10,000-plus people who were there to speak their minds on immigration reform, and -- wait! -- did that sign just say what we think it said?

Of course, it would just be an example of someone exercising their First Amendment rights. The phrase is not unknown to us, right? It has been used in various protests across the world at least since the N.W.A song made the phrase popular in 1988.

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Courtesy of Blue Eyed Entertainment

Commissioned Officer Diana Zschaschel, Paul Garcia, and their baby

Commissioned U.S. Army Reserve Officer Diana Elizabeth Zschaschel and her family are facing a cold winter eviction set for today in Los Angeles, after they say the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., or Freddie Mac, wrongfully evicted them -- while she was on duty in San Diego.

On May 14, 2011, Zschaschel, an active-duty officer, was part of "Operation Ready Warrior," in San Diego, which helped military personnel with dental needs, a field in which she specializes. While deployed out of town, her husband was trying work out a repayment plan with Bank of America because they were behind on their mortgage in Los Angeles. Instead, she and the family's attorney allege, B of A illegally foreclosed:

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Los Angeles County Federation of Labor

Airport workers at a May 2011 protest.

"Thousands Of LAX Workers Set For Walkout On Thanksgiving Eve," the CBS Los Angeles headline blared.

The words conjured images of empty check-in counters littered with orphan luggage tags, malfunctioning automatic ticket machines flashing "Please See Attendant," luggage conveyor belts grinding to a halt... at one of the most stressful airports in the country... on one of the busiest travel days of the year.

Please let this be some sick joke, we begged in silence.

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"Bring back the 14 El Monte Lifeguards" via Facebook

El Monte style.

El Monte city officials got more bad press this past weekend for firing 14 fun-lovin' lifeguards from their posts at the local Aquatic Center than for any other scandal in the city's history -- including, debatably, that time ex-City Manager James Mussenden got caught trolling for hookers along Holt Avenue. (Heh.)

The lifeguards' crime was a bit more softcore. Using the city pool as a backdrop, they shot a lip-synced music video for "Gangnam Style"...

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The Hollywood Reporter

A new survey was released today by the same whorish online-dating empire that recently let us know which U.S. city has the most sugar daddies (not L.A., weirdly).

The new numbers again involve income/generosity. (And that's really the point behind all Brandon Wade's dating sites: accepting that dudes dig hot chicks and hot chicks dig giant bank accounts. More on Wade, a $10 million never-been-kissed MIT nerd, here.) But the subject matter of the latest WhatsYourPrice.com survey is a little more sensitive. "Too soon" doesn't begin to cover it:

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jetairpollution.com

Pollution tastes worse in Santa Monica.

A rather pompous proposal to alleviate weekend and holiday traffic at the Santa Monica Airport (SMO) is going up before the city's seven councilmembers at tomorrow's meeting. They'll be taking the fates of eight surrounding airports into their own hands, deciding whether to offer flight schools $150 to take their noisy training elsewhere -- a small price to pay for the quieting of the Santa Monica/Venice gentry.

It's called the Flight Training Reduction Incentive Test Program, in which "reduction" really just means "displacement." And the affected parties aren't about to take on Santa Monica's gassy byproducts without a fight:

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celebuzz.com

Kim Kardashian in her Buckley School uniform.

Updated at the bottom: The City Council granted a similar loan to Loyola High -- the private school where the mayor sent his own kids -- in 2005.

Originally posted at 7 a.m.

Of all disintegrating LAUSD campuses that need a tax-exempt loan to build new facilities, the Buckley School in Sherman Oaks isn't even in the top 700.

This place attracts the richest of the rich. It's like Candyland meets Secret Garden meets Enchanted Forest: Buckley describes itself as "a beautiful 18-acre campus, nestled away in a wooded canyon," where "the most serious distraction a student might face on campus is watching the deer descend the hillside in the search of an afternoon snack." (And not the paper-mache kind.) Alumni reportedly include...

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eBay

The city burned down and all I got was this overpriced T-shirt.

Can't get enough of the L.A. Riots' (completely oversaturated) 20th birthday coverage?

This hot-ticket eBay T-shirt might be just thing. "I Survived the L.A. Riots," it reads across the front, with a map of the city's hardest-hit burn spots on back. Also, awesome factoids, like "Vandals set more than 523 blazes" and "6,000 National Guards, Marines and Federal Troops descend on L.A."

All this disaster nostalgia can be yours for just...

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Officially.

A bill that just passed the California State Senate would rid our medical vocabulary of the "R-word" -- on the grounds that it is "offensive and outdated."

The State Senate, which is nothing if not retarded, approved the R-word ban unanimously this morning. For once, Democrats and Republicans could agree:

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He'll always be 'Clipper' Darrell to us.

The Clippers, of course, comprise the Rodney Dangerfield of basketball. No respect. Even with Chris Paul and Blake Griffin reviving the team, putting up Ws and attracting new audiences, the squad will always be plan B in Lakerstown USA.

What we're trying to say is, the Clippers could use all the fans it can get.

But being the self-sabotaging enterprise it is ...

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Not the suspect.

A mylar Valentine's Day balloon reportedly popped over (update: or floated into) utility company Southern California Edison's substation in Fontana last night, taking a nosedive straight into the heart of the circuitry.

Oops.

If we were more superstitious, we'd say the massive Orange County blackout that ensued might be an ominous sign for whichever lovebirds let go the string...

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L.A. County Sheriff's Department

Berndt is accused of feeding his semen to schoolchildren.

It's hard to imagine child-molester charges more horrific than those pinned on ex-Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt, 63, yesterday.

The L.A. County Sheriff's Special Victims Bureau arrested the teacher, who had been at the school for over 30 years, for binding and gagging at least 23 third-graders. He allegedly let cockroaches crawl on their faces and spoon-fed them his own semen. Investigators say they confiscated over 400 photos of the in-class "sex game," which they believe recurred over a two-year period (from 2008 to 2010).

If true, this would clearly be one of the most sickening abuses of power ever to go unchecked in an American classroom. Yet the amount of time it took to put Berndt behind bars ...

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Bravo

Oh boy. If you think The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is disgusting, have we got a show for you.

Well, actually, we don't. All we know is that this proposed Real Housewives poseur will focus on the relationships between the Westside's super rich and their help.

Let's just hope they don't install cameras at Arnold Schwarzenegger's house.

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Lucy Rendler-Kaplan

Updated at the bottom with an explanation. First posted at 12:09 p.m. Wednesday.

Officer, you got some 'splaineen to do.

An LAPD cop en route to an "assist" call in South L.A. this morning accidentally shot himself in the foot, Officer Bruce Borihanh tells the Weekly.

Oopsy?

It all happened ...

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NBC / Hulu

SNL's 'The Creep.'

We thought the Halloween limits on ex-cons who had once committed sex offenses were pretty draconian: No decorations, no opening your door for trick-or-treaters, and, for some, a roundup that had them staying at parole centers during trick-or-treat hours.

The group called California Reform Sex Offender Laws goes so far as to say the limits are unconstitutional. After all, these people did their time already.

Well, this might change our mind:

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NBC / Hulu

Jennifer Lopez in the SNL spoof 'Besos y Lagrimas.'

You miss the days when L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made headlines not for his politics but for his dating policy?

Alas, look no further than the little city to the north, San Fernando, which appears to be embroiled in a full-on, true-life telenovela, complete with a cheating mayor and a wife who appeared to confront him at a public council meeting.

Good stuff, right? The San Fernando Sun newspaper has all the juicy deets.

According to the paper it started last Monday with this strange announcement by Mayor Mario Hernandez:

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These guys have a combined IQ of 420.

Los Angeles must be the smartest place in the country. Because we're certainly its medical marijuana dispensary capital.

And a new study out of the U.K. indicates that people who start out life with high IQs tend to end up experimenting with drugs, marijuana chief among them.

Yay for L.A! According this Science Daily summary of research published in the December issue of Epidemiology and Community Health, the smart ones put up nice drug numbers:

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FEMA should bring these back instead.

Someone needs to tell the Federal Emergency Management Agency that everyone will be at work at 11 a.m. tomorrow, when it will conduct a nationwide test of its Emergency Alert System via ... television and radio!

Yeah, news flash, our overpaid federal geniuses: No one watches TV or listens to the radio during that time, and if a real national emergency -- say a nuclear power plant melt-down -- were to happen, we might be in the dark if you depend on old-school broadcasting to spread the word.

We know the economy is bad, and many unemployed folks are in fact at home watching daytime TV. But this is ridiculous.

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Updated at the bottom: Following Mountain High's early opening Saturday, Bear Mountain Resort will open Wednesday, and Snow Summit Mountain Resort will kick in on Thursday. First posted at 12:45 p.m. Friday.

Wait, you ask, summer's over? Yeah, look at the calendar. It passed more than 30 days ago.

Bummer, we know. And now this: There's going to be snow in L.A. tonight. And not the Charlie Sheen kind, either. Merry Christmas.

For real. The National Weather Service reports this afternoon that there will be ...

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Rizzo gets the 'Art in the Streets' treatment in Little Tokyo.

Robert Rizzo, the human hedgehog at the center of the Bell salary scandal that allegedly cost taxpayers there $5.5 million, is suing the city for his cut.

Really.

And he might be right.

Though the former city manager is accused of bilking the people and is widely alleged to have been a mastermind behind a strategy to get the mostest out of City Hall for folks like City Council members and an assistant city manager ...

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