LA Weekly

Today defense attorneys in the racketeering trial of Anthony Pellicano and four co-defendants began their closing arguments, with lead-off hitter Chad Hummel attacking prosecutor Daniel Saunders’ Tuesday closer on two fronts. Hummel reliably tried to exploit the government’s court pratfall of last week, when Hummel impeached a defense witness called to impeach his own client, former LAPD sergeant Mark Arneson. Hummel, employing a classic quote-the-enemy strategy, also used former FBI agent Stanley Ornellas’ testimony to suggest that the Feds didn’t connect Arneson to Pellicano’s alleged wiretapping operation, nor that they considered Arneson’s handing of confidential crime and DMV data to Pellicano an activity that imperiled the safety of Arneson’s fellow officers involved in undercover work.

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Molasky Pacific, a real estate development firm based in Las Vegas, will no longer take part in the effort to build a 40-story skyscraper on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Instead, the company asked its New York City-based partner, Apollo Real Estate Advisors, to buy them out for an undisclosed sum of money. "It was a timing thing," says Mark Cassidy, president of Molasky Pacific. Dean Pentikis, a partner at Apollo, says the developer will move ahead with the humongous project, which will dramatically alter the Los Angeles skyline and obscure views of the Hollywood sign and Hollywood Hills.

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“Sitting up there in the second row is a dirty cop. A dishonest cop. A corrupt cop. A man who sold his badge for $2,500 a month.” Say what you will about prosecutor Daniel Saunders, he gets to the point. He uttered these words about former LAPD sergeant Mark Arneson Tuesday morning, early on in the government’s closing argument in the RICO trial of private eye Anthony Pellicano and four co-defendants (including Arneson), who are facing nearly 80 counts involving wire fraud, conspiracy, identity theft and bribery. There may also have been one or two library book fines thrown in there, but after a while I stopped counting.

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The Jumex Collection art museum is located at a industrial plant in the rough-edged northern outskirts of metropolitan Mexico City, in the municipality of Ecatepec, in the state of Mexico. Initial access from a busy boulevard is gained through a guarded gate and then down a long asphalt drive. Then, through another guard post, then down a concrete walkway. No indication of any kind that Art is just around the corner. The walk would feel like it was pulled from some abandoned plant in Mike Davis’s Fontana when I visited on Saturday were it not for the huge party tent, soft colored lights, and the army of waiters buzzing about distributing brownies and tequila cocktails to partygoers.

It was the opening for “Brave New Worlds,” the ambitious exhibit originally organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, now on view at the Jumex plant. As people tend to do at such events, visitors walked through the show and gazed and considered. But this being Mexico City, this being an art scene well accustomed to extravagant partying, and this in particular being the Jumex Collection, you could sorta feel a lot of people were thinking, "Egh. Where's the booze?"

That's how openings are celebrated when hosted by Eugenio Lopez Alonso, Jumex owner and Latin America’s most prominent collector of contemporary art. Whether in vans provided by the Jumex crew or in private cars (often with private drivers), scores of art-hungry (and just hungry-hungry) guests arrived, whiling away the afternoon and evening on velvety couches that were organized in maze patterns under the tents and propped up by used wooden crate lifts that were left, cheekily, undisguised.

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Dysfunctional business as usual at Pellicano trial

When we last left the trial of Anthony Pellicano and four co-defendants, the proceedings had been thrown into chaos after attorney Chad Hummel’s cross examination of a “businesswoman” whom the government had called to the witness stand to testify about a bankruptcy petition allegedly filed in 1998 by defendant Mark Arneson. In a coup de jure, Hummel, Arneson's counsel, exposed witness Phyllis Miller as a possible participant in a criminal scheme to defraud Arneson. Court let out early last Friday as lawyers and reporters alike scrambled to make sense of what had just happened and what it could mean for the fate of the trial. At the very least it seemed probable that Arneson would either be removed from the proceedings, either through a mistrial or severance. But could Arneson’s leaving have a domino effect on his erstwhile co-defendants or would his exit merely have oblique consequences?

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Witness shocker throws trial in turmoil

For days Chad Hummel had been uncharacteristically quiet as the trial of famed private eye Anthony Pellicano and four codefendants wound down this week. Normally Hummel’s baritoned objections could be heard ricocheting off the walls on behalf of his client, former LAPD Sergeant Mark Arneson, who stands accused of providing Pellicano with confidential information on private citizens gleaned from law enforcement databases. No more so than last week, when the government pounded Arneson, who testified on his own behalf, with questions about a bankruptcy filing he denied preparing and which he claimed was entered with a forged signature.

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In need of a good weekend read? Check out this excerpt from Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi's new book The Great Derangement, in which he goes undercover at the weekend retreat of Christian Zionist, and McCain pal, John Hagee's Cornerstone Church in Texas Hill Country.

My disguise was modeled on other men I'd seen in church — pane glasses and the very gayest blue-and-white-striped Gap polo shirt I'd been able to find that afternoon. Buried on a clearance rack next to the underwear section in a nearby mall, the Gap shirt was one of those irritating throwbacks to the Meatballs/Seventies-summer-camp-geek look, but stripped of its sartorial irony, it really just screamed Friendless Loser! — so I bought it without hesitation and tried to match it with that sheepish, ashamed-to-have-a-penis look I had seen so many other young men wearing in church. With the glasses and a slouch I hoped I was at least in the ballpark of what I thought I needed to look like, which was a slow-moving hulk of confused, shipwrecked masculinity, flailing for an Answer.

Taibbi's weekend with Jesus concludes in bizarre fashion when the pastor leading the getaway encourages his parishioners to vomit in paper bags as he casts out the demons of "handwriting analysis" and "anal fissures."

If you need more reading material, also check out the Weekly's interview with Taibbi from last December -- where he compared America to (a then living) Ike Turner.

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And so begins LA Weekly's last day in Hollywood. Sunny, 72 degrees... 12 minute commute. As of Monday LA Weekly will be run out of offices nestled into the on-ramp of the 405 on the outskirts of Culver City with convenient access to the only store left in America that still sells Murphy Beds.

Here are a few things that I for one will miss about being in Hollywood. (The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the management of Village Voice Media.)

In no particular order....

Well, superheroes for one thing. And Christopher Dennis in particular. When I first started working in Hollywood 15 years ago (at Bong Load Records), I remember seeing shock and horror form on the faces of Australian and Japanese tourists as they got off he bus in front of the Chinese Theater. They traveled thousands of miles for this? Filth, abandoned buildings, dilapidated theaters and some downright aggressive homeless people - and that was before the sun went down.

Now, for better or worse, Hollywood is a lot closer to what they imagine they're going to see, and there's no better ambassador than Superman. Star of last year's excellent documentary, Confessions of a Superhero, Christopher Dennis is the de facto spokesman for the costumed actors who hang out on Hollywood Blvd. He's a kind, sweet guy, who always will make time to talk to you. While I took this picture at least half a dozen kids gathered around him, stunned, waiting to shake Superman's hand. Also coming up close as a favorite is the guy who plays Jack Sparrow, who really does look disturbingly like Johnny Depp. Craig Gaines wrote about him last year.

Photos by Mark Mauer. More after the jump.

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“I was the coder, the implementer. The client was the designer.” So says coder-implementer Kevin Kachikian, private eye Anthony Pellicano’s computer expert who is alleged to have outfitted client Pellicano with an integrated – and illegal – wiretapping software program called TeleSleuth. Years from now Kachikian’s statement may resound like a cyber-age version of “I was only following orders.” Kachikian testified on his own behalf all day Wednesday, stressing that he developed the program under the direction of Pellicano from 1995 to 2002.

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Tuesday was Ray Turner’s day in court, although he elected not to take the witness stand on his own behalf. Turner, the “phone guy” co-defendant in the Anthony Pellicano racketeering trial, easily wears the casual coolness of a BET executive, and sat impassively through most of today’s testimony. His witnesses, orchestrated by attorney Mona Soo Hoo, were intended to show that any number of the retired Turner’s former telephone company colleagues could have placed the wiretaps on L.A. Times journo Anita Busch – taps that eventually led the FBI to Pellicano’s Sunset Boulevard office. Sometimes, when a friend showed up to testify, a smile would spread across Turner’s face.

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By Marc Cooper

Zero hour in Pennsylvania.

Or is it? We've had to somehow fill the gap of the six weeks since the last primary, so we've sort of convinced ourselves that something momentous is about to happen Tuesday in Pennsylvania. Fact is, it's highly unlikely that the results of the voting will have some game-changing impact on the underlying fundamentals i.e. that Hillary Clinton is running close behind but definitively in second place to Barack Obama and, further, that is precisely the way the nomination process will end.

You can spin this stuff anyway you please but we're going to wind up always at the same point of departure --or if you prefer-- terminus: in America we have a simple tradition of declaring as winner whomever it is who gets the most votes, in some cases directly. In other cases, by count of delegate or elector. Period.

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Sleek and elegant, but still tinged with that trademark vibe of rascally weirdness, the fall/winter line by Marvin & Quetzal helped finish Fashion Week Mexico with a dazzling bang. The young duo, among the most promising working in Mexico today, used a bright palette of colors yet managed to keep their looks lean and mature.

They presented new hats and gloves and also deliciously narcissistic earrings, one big plastic "M" and one big plastic "Q." A parade of severe, metallic boots created a jarring effect when combined with the colors and fabrics on top, and depending on your tastes the combination is either daring or grating. I liked it. Generally, the designers in Mexico this season, from Cherry Project to Julia & Renata, did shoes very well.

More photos after the jump ...

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All day long at 3700 Wilshire Blvd., between Oxford and Serrano Aves. there will be live music on a solar-powered stage, as well as a bike raffle.

Michael Franti of Spearhead plays at 4 p.m., a yoga session at 3:30, Chris Pierce at 2:30, Latin music from Cava at 1:30 and lots more, including Balinese Monkey Chants. Click here for the full list.

Besides the music, there are tons of kids events scheduled: green magicians,Super Dogs, puppet shows, and even more Balinese Monkey Chants. Kids' schedule here.

And not for kids, is learning about "green" sex toys and "natural" lubes from the folks at Babeland. And there's something about a sex-positive bike tour and craft night there too.

If you can wait for the weekend, C.I.C.L.E. hosts an Urban Forest Bicycle Ride for Pasadena's Greening the Earth Festival. More info at Envirolink.

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Tall, striking, and as piercingly eloquent as ever when addressing throngs of dedicated supporters, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is back at the top of a massive street-level social movement in Mexico. And this time it's not over votes. It's over Mexico's oil.

The leftist-populist former mayor of Mexico City -- who in 2006 was narrowly, narrowly defeated in the contested presidential election against conservative Felipe Calderon -- is leading a movement to prevent the "privatization" of the state oil company Pemex. Calderon is seeking to open Pemex to private or foreign investors who he says would be able to help Mexico drill for potential new reserves in the country's drying oil fields. The struggling Pemex is a working symbol of post-Revolution nationalism in Mexico, and the anti-privatization movement argues that any space for foreign capital or influence in Pemex's infrastructure would constitute an assault on the Constitution and on Mexican sovereignty.

Mexico's oil "belongs to all Mexicans," they chant, and it's future should not be determined by a tiny class of Mexican politicians and businessmen whose wealth and influence seems to swell more and more while millions upon millions of other Mexicans live out their lives in dire poverty.

AMLO and his well-organized, women-led "brigades" have taken over -- again -- some streets in the Centro Historico, this time targeting the Senate, where Calderon's reform package is being considered. "They're afraid of us, because we are not afraid," they sing, while promising widespread civil disobedience.

But, to put it bluntly, the whole controversy is confusing as hell.

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Pellicano Defense Finishes Its First Week

It’s a crime to lie to the FBI, so I won’t: The courtroom was bored to tears with Friday's appearance by its former special agent, Stanley Ornellas. A big man with a brutal face and soft voice, Ornellas was the bureau’s lead investigator into the case that began with the fish-and-rose combo placed on the Audi of L.A. Times reporter Anita Busch in June, 2002 – and whose investigation eventually led Ornellas to Anthony Pellicano. Ornellas, assigned to the FBI’s organized-crime unit in L.A., had earlier been tracking a well-oiled bookmaking operation on the Westside, during which he met LAPD vice sergeant Mark Arneson. The vice cop would later be accused of being a paid confederate of Pellicano’s, one who ran thousands of computer inquiries through law enforcement and DMV databases on Pellicano’s behalf.

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Televisa on-air personality Kristoff has finally broke his silence and addressed publicly the wave of anti-emo violence that was at least partly inspired by his "Fucking bullshit!" rant, based what some emos themselves have said, and on how widely it was distributed before the first emo attack in Queretaro. Kristoff spoke to MTV News, reportedly after some haggling. (He did not reply to my repeated and detailed interview requests.)

It's fascinating to watch Kristoff brush off the emo controversy and defend himself. He even refers to the UNAM professor who told La Jornada that emos categorically do not constitute one of the urban tribes of Mexico. "It is simply an opinion," Kristoff says, quoting Voltaire.

MTV did an extensive report on the anti-emo violence in Mexico, starting with this clip. For more background see my coverage at Intersections. This post in particular refers to some radio interviews I've done on the topic. And here is a fresh piece on the emo bashings by NPR journalist Michael O'Boyle, in which I'm also interviewed.

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It's Fashion Week Mexico right now, a week-long fair of new moda showcasing the fall and winter collections from many of Mexico's established designers and some exciting up-and-comers. Five years ago such a sentence might have sounded like an oxymoron. A fashion "scene," in Mexico City? Yet the evidence continues to grow that there is a vibrant, energetic community of fashion designers, fashion journalists, fashion models, and legions of fashionistas that are firmly committed to making the D.F. a "hot" spot in the global fashion universe. The question is, who's going to actually buy the clothes?

** After the jump, more shots from the runways. Above, a doll-face model posing during the presentation of Paola Hernandez's new collection. Her inspiration? "El Porfiriato."

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Pellicano Briefs

Team Pellicano is now taking its turn at bat, but the past few days of the defense’s case have seemed like prosecution by other means. Last Friday co-defendant Mark Arneson took the witness stand on his own behalf and the affable, three-hour colloquy between Arneson and his attorney, Chad Hummel, showcased the former LAPD sergeant as a confident professional who was never at a loss for answers. The 54-year-old’s oddly young-sounding voice lent his testimony the ring of youthful clarity.

All that changed when Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Saunders took over and focused on Arneson’s eagerness to provide a civilian (private investigator Anthony Pellicano) with privileged cop and DMV data about his clients’ enemies – some of whom were “enemies” simply because they were plaintiffs in lawsuits. Suddenly Arneson’s easy chair demeanor vanished – and much of his memory with it. That youthful voice of his now only made Arneson sound like Eddie Haskell trying to weasel out of admitting responsibility for playing a prank.

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Nine days ago, PolitickerCA.com wondered aloud if former Daily News editor Ron Kaye, who had just left the Valley newspaper, would be running for city council in Greig Smith's district--Smith plans to vacate the seat after his term is over. Kaye would undoubtedly make for an interesting candidate, especially since he often rails against City Hall's standard practice of running council districts as if they were fiefdoms, with no politician messing with the other politician's territory.

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Sparky remembers to forget

On Thursday the prosecution’s guns in the racketeering trial of Anthony Pellicano and four co-defendants fell silent as the government rested its case-in-chief that afternoon. Friday morning came and spectators filled Courtroom 890 in the Roybal Federal Building to watch the defense return fire. If visitors were expecting Pellicano to open up with heavy artillery they were quickly disappointed. Pellicano called on a single witness, FBI computer expert Donald Schmidt Jr., a short, goateed figure who, with other federal geek squad members, had worked long hours to unpack the contents of hard drives seized in a November, 2002 raid on Pellicano’s Sunset Blvd. office. Those hard drives allegedly contained esoterically encrypted audio files containing hours of wiretapped telephone conversations – files that had at first baffled Schmidt and other cyber sleuths who were unable to unlock their secrets.

As he did with many of the prosecution’s own computer experts over the past five weeks, Pellicano, acting as his own attorney, seemed to be trying to out-dweeb his witness by showing off his technical know-how and splitting hairs over terminology. Still, I was told by someone well acquainted with this aspect of the case that Pellicano is pinning his hopes on catching a moment in the FBI’s timeline in which the bureau worked on copies of his files and his proprietary snooping program, TeleSleuth, before it had the legal authority to do so.

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Companies that put up huge “supergraphics” on buildings and the building owners who allow the gigantic illegal signs could be fined $2,500 a day under a new plan announced today by Los Angeles City Council Member Jack Weiss.

“These monster signs turn buildings into billboards,” said Weiss at a press conference today that was held in front of the huge Gap “supergraphic” plastered along the side of a bank building on the corner of Pico Boulevard and Overland. “It is illegal. I want to streamline and punish them...At the end of the day the hammer isn't big enough.”

A 2002 city law bans all new billboards in Los Angeles. The “supergraphic” popped up last year according to billboard activist Dennis Hathaway.

“It is still there getting revenue,” said Hathaway.

Weiss, who will introduce a motion Friday asking the City Attorney's Office to draft an ordinance to impose the fine, said he was aware of at least three dozen illegal “supergraphics” in Los Angeles. Hathaway said he has lodged complaints with building inspectors against at least 12. Only one has been removed.

Weiss' announcement came three days after Los Angeles City Council members tentatively voted on a proposal that would place two 76-foot-tall billboards next to the 10 Freeway. Weiss was the only council member who voted against the freeway plan.

Photos by Christine Pelisek

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"What does it taste like to you?" ask the promo advertisements for the new soft drink Pepsi Retro on bus stations and billboards in Mexico City. Clearly, they're asking for it. We've dealt with this question before, suggesting that maybe Pepsi is hoping its new product can dig into the market so dominated by the delicious flavor of Mexican Coca-Cola. Now let's make the taste-test happen.

A four-pack of small Pepsi Retro bottles to go a lunch of pita bread, goat cheese, hot mustard and fresh blueberries. Nice bottle design. The soft drink is fizzy and light, as expected, with a hint of cinnamon simmering in there somewhere. Mmmmm. Interesting. Another bottle, and, yes, here comes the sugar headache. The pita and blueberries run out. My stomach is displeased. I press on. Bottle No. 3. The flavor remains uniform, but I can't have another. In fact, I can't help wishing I had a shiny glass bottle of Mexican Coke nearby. Verdict: a worthwhile one-time novelty, but it's hard to beat the "original."

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Correction below: Alleged murderer Espinoza was released from jail by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, not the LAPD.

Update: The LA City Council has approved the giant electronic billboard on the 10 Freeway by a vote of 13-1 with only Jack Weiss opposing. It will go before the council again next week for a final vote.

Woo-whee, the testimony was riveting this morning before the Los Angeles City Council when a group of black residents pleaded with the 15 elected council members to rescind Special Order 40, the longtime local rule protecting illegal immigrants from arrest by the LAPD.

The black residents are seeking a decision by the council to enact the so-called Jamiel's Law, named after Jamiel Shaw, a promising and law-abiding 17-year-old high school student allegedly shot by an illegal immigrant, 18th Street Gang member Pedro Espinoza. The noxious Espinoza, who has a massively long rap sheet, was arrested by cops in Culver City, and then released by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department jailers, shortly before he allegedly murdered Jamiel.

Jamiel's family members cried openly in the ornate Council Chambers, asking the council to allow cops to check on the illegal status of people like Espinoza so they can be deported rather than released.

Council President Eric Garcetti couldn't change the subject fast enough -- to a plan to force even more obnoxious billboards on Angelenos.

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Sure we've seen gas for four-and-change in Cambria and other places up the coast. But this Chevron, with the spankin' new slightly-altered logo signage, was caught in Chinatown on Sunday.

The Times noted that "the average price of a gallon of self-serve regular climbed 7.7 cents to $3.685 -- the biggest increase and the highest average in the country."

by the way, there's lots of fun graphs and charts to be had at the Department of Energy's Prices and Trends page, like This Week In Petroleum, and Gasoline and Diesel Prices. Or look back at "Historical Energy Data," where you can revisit those magical days of under a buck gas in 1998.

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This year marked the first time since 2006 that LA Weekly didn't win a Pulitzer, effectively ending our current streak (at one).

UCLA professor of history Saul Friedlander won the Pulitzer for general nonfiction. He was interviewed by LA Weekly in November. Click here to read the article, "It Can't Happen Here (Again)" by Mark Ehrman.

The Washington Post took home the largest number of awards at six. Stories on the power of Vice-President Dick Cheney, the exposé on conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center, and reporting on private security contractors' role in the Iraq war were singled out for prizes.

The full list can be found here.

And in case you want to relive the fun of Jonathan Gold winning the Pulitzer for criticism last year, click here.

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I didn't know Charlton Heston, but I knew Bingo. And I'm sorry to say that Jenny Burman has posted that Bingo was hit by a car and killed last Sunday.

Bingo was a dachshund belonging to Sarah Dale, who runs Pull My Daisy on Sunset near Hyperion.

Bingo owned that stretch of sidewalk, and in fact I saw him holding court, resting on the sidewalk, just last Sunday. So at least I got a last chance to tell him hello, not long before his end.

There will be a memorial:

There will be a memorial in his honor on Sunday, April 6, at noon near the mural at the surplus store on Hyperion and Sunset, near the Casbah [cafe]. Please join us to celebrate his life, bring some flowers or some pictures or bacon....

Seven McDonald wrote about Bingo in LA Weekly a few years ago. Pictures, excerpt and link after the jump.

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The press release, whether deliberate or not, was sent out late in the news cycle on a Friday evening--6:43 p.m. to be exact. 17 months after officially taking the helm at the Los Angeles Unified School District, Superintendent David L. Brewer III finally hired a senior deputy superintendent to oversee curriculum and instruction at the second largest public schools system in the nation. His name is Ramon C. Cortines, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's now former deputy mayor for education.

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For once Chris Rock played the straight man. From the moment he stepped into court Friday to testify at Anthony Pellicano’s racketeering trial, Rock appeared somber and apprehensive. With hands clasped behind his back, he looked like a condemned man walking to the electric chair. Rock, wearing a dark suit and indigo shirt opened at the collar, took the witness stand at 8:04 a.m. When asked to state his name, he quietly said, “Uh, Chris Rock . . .”

“Mr. Rock – project!” ordered Judge Dale Fischer, but her light-hearted admonition drew no smiles from the comedian.

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Hundreds of firefighters and other emergency workers gathered to remember Los Angeles city firefighter Brent A. Lovrien, who died in a freak accident on March 26 when a saw he was using to break into a locked, smoke-filled electrical storage room near Sepulveda and La Tijera caused a spark that set off a mass explosion of undetected gases inside the room.

The series of events leading to the bizarre tragedy, fire inspectors have determined, began when a fire caused by a ground fault broke out in an underground electrical vault, building up highly pressurized gases so intense that a manhole cover, 250 feet away from the fire near a Staples store, was sent flying 20 feet into the air.

When Lovrien and fire engineer Anthony J. Guzman arrived with other firefighters arrived after the manhole explosion, they found smoke pouring from a nearby locked electrical room at 8800 Sepulveda. Tragically, fire officials say, Lovrien was killed and Guzman badly hurt when "products of combustion reached [an] explosive limit" and were then "ignited by a spark from the forcible entry attempts."

Text by Jill Stewart
Photos by Ted Soqui

More photos after the jump.

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Time magazine has just published their list of finalists for "The 2008 Time 100." What's that you ask? It's the magazine's list of the world's most influential leaders, artists, entrepreneurs and thinkers.

And never-sleeping entertainment industry reporters.

Ensconced among fellow nominees Mike Huckabee, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the Dalai Lama is our own Nikki Finke.

So though the LA Weekly makes no specific endorsements in such elections, this year we think "Vote Finke."

Click here to visit her spot of Time's website, and cast your ballot.

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Once again, the name of Ray Cortines is buzzing around the halls of Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters, according to today's LA Times. The former interim superintendent of LA Unified is apparently being considered by David Brewer, the current superintendent and retired Navy admiral, to fill the long vacant slot of chief academic officer. It is a crucial senior staff hire public education experts and district insiders have been demanding for nearly a year. (Read "The Admiral's Sinking Ship" for an in-depth look at Brewer's first year as the public schools honcho: http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/how-superintendent-david-brewer-ran-aground/17943/

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Three months ago, County Supervisor Gloria Molina, through an emergency measure passed by the County Board of Supervisors, gave Friends of the Los Angeles River an ultimatum -- remove the mural at the Arroyo Seco in 90 days, or pay through the teeth.

Ninety days have passed and there is still no resolution to the mural fiasco.

The mural, fully permitted by the county and the product of the wildly popular international graffiti event Meeting of Styles, remains, and neither the county, FoLAR nor Meeting of Styles organizer Man One have made any attempts to remove it.

(Above, one of the images that offends Molina. Photo by Mark Mauer. More here.)

Part of that, says Molina spokesperson Roxane Marquez, is that the county needed to give an additional 30 days of public notice before any action can be taken on the mural. Marquez says that notice was given last month, and that the county, through the Department of Public Works, can't touch the mural until April 12th.

Though the whitewash of the Arroyo Seco mural appears eminent, it remains to be seen who is actually going to complete the buffing, and who's going to foot the bill. Molina's emergency measure declares FoLAR liable for the removal of the art. Yet the county permit holder for the event was Man One and not the river organization.

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Recently, reporter Christine Pelisek asked the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety for a list of all legal and illegal billboards in L.A. - an embarrassing document that will show the public all 11,000 "points of blight" allowed on local streets by City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the Los Angeles City Council - in an era when other cities are removing and banning billboards.

Maybe we shouldn't have been so shocked, given Villaraigosa's view of what constitutes quality of life, when Building and Safety officials, instead of giving Pelisek this public information, instead alerted Clear Channel and its lawyers that the Weekly had asked City Hall for its billboards list.

That's right, Villaraigosa's bureaucrats in Building and Safety actually informed on us to a very big, very aggressive, very rich billboard company. Tattled. Squealed.

This morning, Clear Channel and another huge billboard profiteer, CBS, took the city to Superior Court to stop the cowed bureaucrats over at Building and Safety from even thinking about giving the Weekly the list of existing illegal and legal billboards in L.A.

Clear Channel lost in court today.

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Members of the Los Angeles friends of Tibet held a "die-in" outside the Chinese Consulate on Monday afternoon to protest the recent Chinese crackdown on Tibet in advance of the Beijing Olympics. 40 people laid still in the street, corresponding with the number of Tibetans killed in the recent uprising whose names are known. Many others have died anonymously. In total, there have been 140 confirmed Tibetans killed in the past month, but event organizer Tseten Phanucharas suspects "there may be many more we don't know about." Phanucharas said she hopes the protest will put pressure on President Bush to boycott the Olympics if conditions in Tibet don't improve.

-M.F.

Several hundred people showed up in support of the Tibetan cause, among them more than a dozen Vietnamese anti-communists, waving the flag of "free South Vietnam" as they called it. The group held signs decrying Chinese occupation of the Paracel and Spratly Islands, but protester Cao Tue Ahn, 25, said they were mainly there "in solidarity with the Tibetan people. We know what it means to be occupied."

Phanucharas was happy for their support: "There are only 14,000 Tibetans in North America. We need everyone's help if Tibet is to be freed."

Monks say a prayer for the people killed in the protests, symbolized Monday at the "die-in."

Protesting in front of the door of the Chinese consulate on Shatto Pl.

Photos by Mark Mauer

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