Los Angeles News Blog

Anti-billboard activists are breathing a sigh of relief. Yesterday, Clear Channel decided to withdraw its application to install a hyper-bright electronic billboard on Ventura Boulevard in Encino.

Clear Channel's attorney sent a letter to city planners withdrawing its application for a 14 foot by 48 foot Clear Channel digital billboard at 15826 W. Ventura Blvd. No reason was given in the letter.

Last year, Clear Channel applied for a permit to change the static billboard into a digital display. Planning Director Gail Goldberg approved the digital conversion. However, the planning department required that the digital images change no faster than once an hour.

A downtown Los Angeles jury found 22-year-old Carla Mendez guilty of second-degree murder yesterday. Mendez was accused of killing a local snow-cone vendor who allegedly put an evil spell on her female lover Maria Gomez. Gomez was found guilty of first-degree murder in August of 2007.

Los Angeles Police Department Northeast Detectives found 43-year-old Norberto Castro’s battered body next to a Jetta on Allesandro Street in Silver Lake on July 13, 2005. Castro, a happy go lucky snow-cone vendor who pushed a cart around his Melrose Avenue neighborhood, was rushed to the hospital but died of his injuries soon afterwards.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama undoubtedly thrilled, and probably somewhat shocked, gays and lesbians last night when he spoke this line during his nomination speech in Denver:

“I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination,” he told a nationally televised audience.

The line shouldn't have been surprising.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in Denver, Colorado.
(photo courtesy of the DNC)

A semen-stained comforter, a tampon and a camera. These were some of the items listed on a Beverly Hills P.D. search warrant when officers raided fashion designer Anand Jon's pad in March, 2007. Later that year Jon was charged with a list of offenses more often associated with spring break at Lake Havasu than evenings on staid North Palm Drive: forcible rape, lewd acts upon a child, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, sexual battery by restraint and attempted forcible oral copulation.

Former “private eye to the stars” Anthony Pellicano and high-powered entertainment/corporate lawyer Terry Christensen were found guilty by a jury this morning of all four counts of the conspiracy and wiretapping that the men faced. For Pellicano this must seem now routine, having been convicted last May of 76 counts of racketeering and wiretapping involving a range of victims and cases. For first-time felon Christensen, though, it means the loss of his right to practice law in California, regardless of how much of his sentence’s potential 10 years in prison he actually serves.

According to the Daily News, LA Unified Superintendent David Brewer gave one of his rousing speeches at the Los Angeles Convention Center yesterday, as he welcomed administrators back to school. The event didn't get too much press coverage, unfortunately, and maybe that's why the former Navy admiral gets away with saying certain stuff.

By now you've seen Obama's speech and heard it sliced and diced ad nauseum. Or, maybe not. The news cycle seems to have shrunk from an already truncated 24-hours to about twelve as the morning talk shows focus on McCain's bizarre choice of Sarah Palin for running mate. Good judgment, John. It does raise an interesting question, though -- how the hell is Joe Biden supposed to fight such a lesser foe without looking like a bully?

Anyway, back to Obama's big night. I was privileged to be there. And I don't say privileged because I drank the cool aid of the cult of Obama. I say privileged because it was a truly significant moment and one I almost lost perspective on as the week wore on and all the chatter and over-analysis and phony instigation and extreme point missing (how do some of these people stay working) by the pundits combined with the political gamesmanship between the parties and within the Dems themselves threatened to smash the big picture into a million little pieces.

So, by the end of the week, exhausted from running through the streets for days and being fried in the high altitude, and done in by the ability of all of us to sometimes -- to paraphrase Obama -- make big things small, I was ready to raise the white flag. Not to mention I hate big crowds and football stadiums (especially if football is being played) and giant rock-show spectacles.

And much has has been made of the supposed rock-star trapping of the setting at outdoor Invesco Stadium and the supposed revivalist fervor/meets rock star aesthetic of Obama's campaign (I don't think Shepard Fairey's Maoist Obama iconography is helping) and I admit I almost fell for the cynical trap. Movements unsettle me. I'm not a joiner. Naked displays of hope and faith repel me. I'm a bleeding heart in a cynic's shell.

But all that went away when Obama took the stage before those 80,000 hopeful folks and I was immediately glad to be there. Sure, the crowd went crazy, and I had that sinking feeling I was going be put through an hour-long love in. But Obama himself was having none of it. After accepting a thunderous greeting, he immediately set about making it all right to be there.

He made it all right because beyond the politics and presentation of his speech, which he mastered deftly despite the huge scale to which they'd been raised, and beyond the symbolism of the moment, which was as historically momentous as can be, the thing Obama did best was bring it all back down to a human level. No one was overcome with the spirit. No one started speaking in tongues. Nobody rushed the stage to touch the messiah. Bill may "love it" and can even whip up a little hysteria, but Obama wasn't having it. As he said in so many words last night, shit's too serious for that nonsense.

Despite how huge the setting and how fevered the pitch, the first thing Obama did right last night was not walk on water. He didn't even try. Instead, he showed himself to be like you and me, a man. Just a man. A solid, smart, charismatic, compassionate man from modest origins who -- like I and I'd imagine you, too -- has had enough of this crap.

Neither godhead or even a figurehead, Obama was more like a guy you'd value as a friend or a colleague or teammate, who might inspire you to do better on all counts. Not to mention in a week that seemed to grow evermore infantile in its analytical babble and hype as it wore on, he also showed himself on that stage to be one of the few adults around. Worthy of trust. Even hope. And certainly leadership.

As far as the history of the moment, what's truly amazing about it (and boy did Chris Matthews miss this in his post-speech interview) and what makes it even more historic, is that the fact that Obama is African American seems beside the point. I mean it's fantastic and wonderful and overdue and everything else, but yet that's not the change that this election is about. It's weirdly becoming a footnote, a glorious one, but a footnote nonetheless. There are way bigger fish to fry -- and I suppose that in itself is a strange barometer of some kind of progress -- and the guy to fry them just happens to be black (And, really, really white, too. Did you see those shots of his maternal family? Yikes.)

Obama's great gift, and it may be the one that brings this thing home for him, is that while everything around him gets bigger and bigger, he stays himself.

There was never any doubt that Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton and City Council Member Bernard Parks were not the best of buds. Parks was ousted as Police Chief and Bratton was brought in, after all. However, who knew that the feuding between the two chiefs was more than a few digs during press conferences?

The Weekly recently snagged a couple of prime examples of their political divide. In a series of letters sent by Parks to the police commission in 2007, the city councilman asked the commission for help dealing with Bratton’s seeming refusal to keep Parks up to date on “critical public safety incidents” in his district.

Whenever the accepted norms of society are changed, something unexpected always seems to pop up. With gay marriage in California, this truism of sorts is already starting to play out. According to a report in the Sacramento-based Capitol Weekly, the California Department of Corrections has now given the green light for gay prisoners to wed their same sex partners. The new policy is undoubtedly the kind of thing that few gays and lesbians foresaw when they were celebrating the legalization of same sex marriage back in May.

As Bill Clinton took the stage at the Pepsi Center in Denver to douse the final flames of conflict between the Clinton and Obama camps, another tense showdown was reaching a climax in a fenced off area at the intersection of Speer Boulevard and Market Street, just beyond the scope of the eyes and TV cameras focused on the political theater inside the Democratic National Convention. There, in a bottlenecked and barricaded stretch of street, 50 members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, dressed in full uniform, many displaying an impressive array of service medals, stared down an overwhelming deployment of police on foot, horseback and perched atop the raised platforms of massive SWAT vehicles. With guns, truncheons and tear gas pointed at them, one of the veterans took a microphone and told the police, "We don't want to hurt you and you don't want to hurt us."

Whether that would hold true seemed very much in doubt as the police reinforcements filled in and the veterans, backed by a huge crowd of demonstrators, refused to give ground or cave in to their demands that one of their leaders be allowed to read a letter addressed to Barack Obama and the convention from the podium. The letter demanded an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, full benefits to veterans regardless of the terms of their discharge, and war reparations to the people of Iraq.

As the tension mounted, a young man named Joseph Wise, who was not part of the demonstration and who appeared more likely to be swilling beer at frat party than participating in civil disobedience, was overcome by the spectacle of hundreds of riot-clad police lining up against peacefully demonstrating war vets.

"This is despicable. This is absolutely ridiculous, over the top, storm troopers here," said Wise, who revealed that he is in fact an accountant and not an anarchist.

Anti-clutter, anti-billboard activists are gearing up for a fight tomorrow when a hearing will be held on a proposed, hyper-bright electronic billboard on Ventura Boulevard in Encino.

The Coalition to Ban Billboard Blight has been fighting to stop the bright billboard on Ventura Boulevard since last year. Digital billboards have been quietly approved all over the city since City Hall settled its disastrous lawsuit with Clear Channel Outdoor, CBS Outdoor and Regency Outdoor. Although the city supposedly won its legal arguments, for unknown reasons they buckled to the billboard giants.

The government’s case against former private eye Anthony Pellicano and high-powered attorney Terry Christensen finally landed in the jury’s lap this morning. For a while it seemed doubtful the trial would ever get beyond closing arguments, which dragged on long enough to draw uncomfortable resemblances to Sartre’s claustrophobic play, No Exit.

With six sheriff’s deputies standing guard, a jury late this afternoon recommended that former Atwater Village gang leader Timothy McGhee be sentenced to death for the murders of three people. McGhee, 35, had been convicted of the murders last November, but the original jury deadlocked on whether he should be put to death or receive life in prison without parole. The ex-Toonerville street gang chief is a charismatic, goateed figure who could pass for a motivational speaker. Last month, as he stood trial for leading a 2005 prison riot in the cell block he commanded, McGhee attended trial attired in a variety of well-pressed suits, his shaved head revealing a scalp tattoo of the eagle and snake found on the Mexican flag. Today, in a nearly empty courtroom, he wore a dark chalk-striped suit as he listened to the 12 jurors individually confirm their decisions to send him to death row. All court officers stood up as the 12-member panel left Department 104 – only McGhee remained seated. Judge Robert J. Perry will sentence McGhee later in the fall.

News just came in that toxicologist Bruce Kelman, targeted by people who have an almost religious, misguided fear of common household mold, has prevailed in a key case against Mold Queen Sharon Kramer.

Kelman emails the Weekly: "Kramer was found guilty of libeling me."

Their bitter battle was detailed in Weekly freelancer Daniel Heimpel's recent cover story, "The Mold Rush: A California mom helped fuel a national obsession with "toxic" mold that engulfed Ed McMahon and destroyed lives. Moms aren't always right."

Dozens of mold-obsessed commenters attacked Heimpel on the Weekly's site, airing their beliefs with fundamentalist fervor. Like Kelman, Heimpel merely reported the truth, that scientists have repeatedly shown that household mold is not toxic to healthy people and does not make them sick.

I made my way to Civic Center Park, near the state capitol building in Denver, around midday on Tuesday, hoping to find signs of dissident life to add a bit of hot blood to what had been so far a rather anemic Democratic National Convention. It was the morning after a confrontation between police and demonstrators marching on the U.S. Mint on Colfax Avenue. That night ended with arrests and some pepper spraying of marchers. When my brother, Sean, and I arrived at the park on a burnished and sweltering day, however, we were met with few signs of protest, let alone civil disobedience.

Civic Center Park is a small city park surrounded by vistas of rising skyscrapers a beautiful public library, art center, the capitol building and the state court house. It's a wonderful little spot in the heart of the city. It would seem to be the perfect place to generate some buzz for whatever cause you might have. And Recreate '68 had promised an eventful convention, but to this point there wasn't much to remind folks of that hot summer in Chicago.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing, as I'm not entirely sure it would be helpful, but the historical parallels to that time and now are obvious - like then, we're confronted with an unpopular and immoral war and a Democrat led government spineless in its promises to do something about it. So far, though, the protests had done little to live up to the hype. The previous night was in danger of being a tempest in a teapot.

Soon after arriving I did come upon a young man talking on his cell. He had all the earmarks of the dreaded anarchists burned into the pop culture consciousness ever since the Battle In Seattle during the World Trade Organization protests of '99: young, white bandana around neck, nondescript black dickies and white t-shirt that looked quasi paramilitary and vaguely statement-making, Che Guevara-like facial hair.

"That was some serious bullshit last night," he said into the phone. "My ribs still hurt."

He took off in a hurry for some reason, but I chased him down and asked what happened last night. He told me flatly that some cops were doing their jobs and some weren't.

"They were doing their jobs with me, though," he smiled, perking up. "I got arrested."

I asked why he got arrested and he said he pulled a cop off some other protester and wasn't overly polite in how he went about it.

"I'm not going to stand for police brutality," he said, and then took off again for wherever he was going.

Well, that's that, I thought.

Then, a large procession began filtering in from the west side of the park. The first thing to catch my eye was a woman holding a sign announcing that "Nancy Pelosi is Judas Iscariot." On the back, the sign said, "What Part of Get Out of Iraq Don't You Understand." That's more like it. Following her were bands of demonstrators, a couple hundred strong, urging that we uncover the 9-11 coverup, get out of Iraq, impeach Bush, and everything in between. The march was called Procession For The Future.

A the demonstrators filed into the amphitheater, I was taken by the anomalous sight of a group of marchers carrying cardboard replicas of a bullet train. This was interesting -- amidst all the no-less-true for being tired calls to stem the apocalypse here was a group advocating speedy rail transport. A capital idea, I thought. And it doesn't use fossil fuel.

I approached a woman named Carly Knudson who seemed to be one of the leaders of the light-rail brigade. Turns out she actually didn't know all that much about this particular issue, but was out here volunteering with various causes and organizations all week.

"This is such a phenomenal week to be involved and participating in democracy in action and reminding the nation and the world what democracy is really about," said the smiling 23-year-old, whose shining teeth could possibly generate electricity themselves.

"My biggest concern," she said, "is that what's at the center of the brain is partisan politics and not the issues. Most important is bipartisan discussion."

At least that's what I think she said. I might have been distracted by the fact that it was becoming increasingly apparent that she was quite beautiful and also wearing a sticker on her sleeveless t-shirt that said "Make Out, Not War."

Carly told me she was raised in a household of political activism, studied political science at Metropolitan State University in Denver and was going to grad school at New York University to study policy. I wondered, aloud, how a bright, engaged young person felt about the state of the world in the Bush era. I remember being very angry at her age back when Reagan made the White House his lair. I kept that part to myself... about who was president when I was her age, that is.

"I'm really excited," she said, and I believed her. "I think we have a generation of really energized people. There's a lot of young passion. I'm really excited about what the future can bring. I have a lot of faith in my peers to work together. It's not just about taking to the street, we need people who are interested in making a change from within. I hope I can be one of those people."

I was going to tell her she had my vote at Make Out Not War, but decided against it.

"It's possible to create the world we envision for ourselves," she added.

I was feeling a little better about the future of America when a shrill platitudinous older woman started railing on the usual suspects. When I caught something about Obama representing the same old racist politics in different clothes, it was time to leave. And I would have if I wasn't confronted with the stunning sight of Tucker Carlson. Or rather, his hair, which was attached to Tucker Clarson. The know-it-all conservative pundit, I have to say, was resplendent in a crisp shirt, tie, blue blazer and tan khakis.

Superhumanly immune to the sweltering heat, Carlson, who was with his daughter, appeared ready to go on air at a moments notice. He seemed to be in a grand mood.

"I love this stuff," said Carlson, smiling broadly. "I love street theater. But it's so small. I mean, they have one angry chick on stage. I can find five angry chicks on my block."

We chatted for awhile about his old friend and my new best friend, the famed rural advocate Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, who like Carlson hails from Virginia, but who, unlike Carlson, helped usher Mark Warner into the state's governorship and Jim Webb into the US Senate by teaching them hillbilly. (Stay tuned for more Mudcat).

Despite the smart-ass wunderkind he plays on TV, Carlson so was so cool - asking polite questions about where my brother and I lived, what we thought about all this, etc. - that my faith was shaken. Not in the rightness of my liberal-leaning politics, but, rather in whose hair would win a caged wrestling match: his or Keith Olberman's? Heretofore, I couldn't conceive of Olberman's hair being defeated.

After taking leave of Mr. Carlson, we made our way to the Food Not Bombs group, which had a prime slice of Civic Center Park real estate beneath two shade trees. Food Not Bombs in a national organization that takes grocery store and restaurant and turns them into free gourmet-adjacent meals. These guys were pulling double duty all week feeding the denizens of the park and hungry dissidents of Recreate '68, (who were apparently managing to work up an appetite if not a ruckus). Though a friendly guy with startling eyes named Josh told me they don't discriminate against squares.

"We fed delegates," he said gleefully. "We had a delegate from Florida here yesterday."

A source of mild controversy, and mild seems to be the flavor of the week, has been the relegation of permitted protesters -- or demonstrators or whatever you want to call people who have something on their minds and wish other people would listen -- to a grassy river-front patch called Cuernavaca Park which serves as a green zone between two gigantic examples of the triumphs and failures of New Urbanism in Denver's Lo-Do district.

To arrive at Tent City, as it's being called in the vernacular, one walks along the banks of the South Platte River, just past a skate park, under a bridge, and then is greeted by a forlorn collection of a dozen or so displays promoting everything from union brotherhood to hemp.

I dropped in on Amnesty International's replica of a Guantanamo Bay holding cell, a tiny, claustraphobic container in which detainees, many of whom have never been officially charged, are held in even more sweltering conditions than the 90 some degree heat of this day. A nice young woman named Ivy gave me the tour, such as it was. I asked her how it was being received. "Some people, when you tell them a prisoner spends 22 or 23 hours a day here, you can see their brains working," she said.

We stopped by a memorial consisting of three hundred pairs of boots placed on a knoll that represented the soldiers of Colorado killed in Iraq. The names of the soldiers were written on the boots. A matronly woman named Sarah Gill, of an organization called Eyes Wide Open said that despite the apparent lack of traffic through the park, she was happy with how things were going.

"A soldier yesterday walked on and found his friend," she said. "It was really moving."

The biggest attraction by far in Tent City was the sign up for a raffle to give away tickets the Rage Against The Machine concert scheduled for Denver Coliseum on Wednesday night. I left the park wondering where, indeed, was the rage.

On Tuesday night, as I sat through former Democratic governor of Virginia Mark Warner's keynote speech, which sounded more like a campaign speech for his Senate run than a keynote speech, I wondered when the transcendent moment of this convention would be. It wasn't Michelle Obama's opening address on Monday. As warm and fuzzy as it was seeing her and her kids onstage and seeing the love in the Obama family, I thought her speech was kind of leaden and damp. Warner's was just as damp, and weirdly unaware of where he was and what he should be doing with the moment. In general, the Dems didn't seem to realize they were in a fight and have seemed more interested in appearing palatable to the voters on the margin than in saying who they are and what they stand for. You'd be hard pressed to even know, from the tone and tenor of the convention so far, that we've been through the most disastrous presidency in at least my lifetime. Warm, fuzzy and limp. Scant recognition that this is a moment to seize and a call to arms.

Despite the stakes being so high the Democratic National Convention, as I've said in this blog before, has seemed more like a real estate convention than a fight for our future. Until tonight.

Hillary had a lot at stake, obviously. If she didn't rise above the rancor, whether exaggerated or not, between her camp and Obama's, she and her husband could be viewed as scapegoats. She had to not just be as big as the moment, but bigger. She had to be transcendent, and for my money, she was. She finally elevated this convention to what it should be, a crucible. With grace, dignity, humor and the passion that's been lacking so far, she basically told her supporters and the country that this isn't about her anymore and it isn't about the psychology of what she represents, it's about our future. And where our future is concerned, there can be no equivocation: Barack Obama is the only choice.

Basically, she said she wanted no part of not supporting Obama out of regret or spite or some sense that her moment had been stolen. She made it clear that this is still her moment and she's going honor it by supporting Obama and she expects us all to do the same. And, well, she said, get over it, people. That you'd be doing her and her ideals a disservice by anything less than supporting Obama. As my friend, Arty Nelson put it, Hillary isn't going to play therapist for the wounded psyche's of her supporters anymore, she's going to get busy trying to secure a better future and she expects us all to do the same.

I thought it was a remarkable, generous, transcendent speech by someone who knows who she is and is secure with it. I sat watching it with my sister and we both choked up a couple times. It wasn't just about her message of unity and support, but also about her journey through this process and how a person can rise above the demons of ego and be bigger than self interest and resentment and need. It was an example of selflessness and service to a greater cause that was truly inspiring. By rising to a moment that was bigger than her, she became even bigger herself.

Well done, Hillary. Now, Mr. Obama, it's up to you.

A Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective testified yesterday in the witchcraft murder trial of 22-year-old Carla Mendez who is accused of killing a local snow-cone vendor who allegedly put an evil spell on her female lover.

Detective Luis Rivera, who looked dapper in a beige suit, blue shirt and yellow tie, told jurors that he spoke to Mendez in an interview room at LAPD’s northeast station seven months after officers found the badly beaten body of 43-year-old Norberto Castro, a happy go lucky snow-cone vendor who pushed a cart around his Melrose Avenue neighborhood.

During the taped 2006 police interview, Mendez seemed relaxed and chatty. She snacked on a sandwich and chips, and joked regularly during the 40-minute interview with Rivera.

“She laughed and joked a lot,” said Rivera, from the witness stand. “You try to build a rapport so they don’t feel intimidated by you.”

Maria Gomez (left) and her lover Carla Mendez

Tyrone Freeman seems to be only the tip of the proverbial iceberg at the Service Employees International Union these days.

Freeman, if you remember, was the target of an LA Times investigation early this month that found the SEIU Local 6434 president had used hundreds of thousands of dollars in union member dues to pay for questionable services that made his relatives a little richer. He also spent funds on fancy meals and an exclusive, Beverly Hills cigar club.

Freeman, in other words, was living the high life while his members were, and still are, getting paid $9 to $10 per hour working as home care workers. The controversy is especially galling when you read the union leader's last blog entry on the local's web site. Freeman argues that soon he and his members will be eating "Ramen Noodles" because times are so hard.

So, I was walking down the 16th Street Mall in Denver after (think Fourth Street Mall in Santa Monica, only a little bigger and a little less cheesy), taking in all the civic life, or such as it is in the USA, which consisted of lots of people dining out and taking in street performers and enjoying a balmy summer evening. I had just left the Pepsi Center after a day of Conventioning, thinking a better seat for Michelle Obama's speech would be the couch in my sister's den, and was remarking to myself about how calm the city core appeared and how dissociated folks seemed to be from the history that was in process just a few blocks away.

I'd been hoping for a little something to break up the monotony. I mean, this history was feeling slightly anti-climactic so far. More like a real-estate convention than a movement.

I also couldn't help but notice the incredible show of police force all about. Every block seemed to have a phalanx of cops either on bicycles, motorcycles, horses, huddled around SWAT type vehicles. It seemed much ado about nothing. The police here, anyway, were prepared for something more than the good cheer and sunny smiles that Denver had been greeting this moment with. I asked one of the bicycle cops if they were expecting anything to go down.

"I don't know," he said. "We're just stationed here. There might be something further up north." He was referring to Colfax Avenue where the state capitol building is located and where protests were supposedly permitted. Then, they started to move out. They didn't seem urgent, so I walked further up the mall. I came upon another group of cops and heard one of them on a walkie talkie shout, "Okay, we're moving out."

All of a sudden police from everywhere were urgently moving further up the mall.

My sister was parked on a street corner, waiting to pick me up when it became apparent there was a full-scale mobilization in process.

"I have to follow this," I said and ran after the cops.

I chased the commotion up the street until I reached the point where whatever was going down was going down, at 16th Street and Court, in front of a Sheraton Hotel, if memory serves. There was Starbucks just a little further down the road. I moved towards the action.

Two lines of police in full riot gear, backed by a line of cops on horses were pushing back a crowd of mostly young men and women who were... well, taking pictures and video of them with cell phones and didn't seem to have much more on their agenda than gawking. A strange confrontation if it could be called that.

"Move back, move back," the cops said in unison from under their helmets, which muffled their voices in a kind of Darth Vader way. I kept moving towards the cops for some reason, until it became clear that they meant what they were saying.

They pushed us back to the intersection on the pedestrian mall where things just kind of came to a standstill.

I found an old, hippie-ish looking guy with a hat on that pronounced him to be a National Lawyers Guild Legal Observer. He said his name was Ron Booth and that this wasn't his first convention. It didn't seem like it. I asked what had gone down.

"Oh, some demonstrators, protesters -- activists I prefer to call them, the other words have such negative connotations -- came out of Civic Center Park. Apparently, they were unpermmited."

Booth told me the cops quickly surrounded the "activists" on all sides, leaving whatever passersby, including him, stuck in the middle with them. He was impressed with their speed and efficiency.

I asked if anything confrontational went down. "Oh, there were shouts and suggestions of this being a police state, but as far as anything physical, no."

Booth said, "There was some indiscriminate pepper spraying by the police."

He was detained, which to him meant being prepped for arrest. But Booth, savvy legal observer that he is, knew how to handle the situation. He explained to an officer that he was there legally, had numerous times asked to be allowed to leave and that if they want to get a lawsuit for tear-gassing a law-abiding citizen, he'd be happy to oblige.

"A guy who seemed to be a supervisor came over and asked me if I wanted to go," said Booth.

I asked what the protest was about. "As far as I could tell," said Booth, "it was a group of activists focused on a number of different causes -- global warming, the war, things like that."

I hung around for awhile to see if anything developed, but the police had the whole area cordoned off and weren't much for talking. Before long, TV news arrived and seemed a bit confused and possibly let down by the innocuousness of it all. We couldn't find any police spokesperson to break it down, so I phoned in my ride and made it back to my sister's couch for Michelle Obama's speech. A ticker tape along the bottom of the screen announced that police had pepper sprayed some demonstrators.

Is this the calm before the storm?

The Los Angeles County Coroner reported today that the son of hip hop record producer and rapper Dr. Dre has died. Andre Young Jr. was found dead at his home in Woodland Hills on Saturday morning.

Young was out the previous night and returned home around 5:30 A.M., according to Assistant Chief Ed Winter. His mother went to check on him in his bedroom around 10 A.M., found him unresponsive, and called 911. He was 20 years of age.

The cause of death is pending completion of a toxicology report.

Andre Young Sr., better known as Dr. Dre, shot to fame with the influential gangsta rap group N.W.A. He later became an artist and co-owner of Death Row Records. In 1993, he won a Grammy Award for the single "Let Me Ride." As a producer, Dre was credited with popularizing West Coast G-funk.

Dr. Dre is currently the founder and CEO of Aftermath Entertainment.

The Pepsi Center, where much of the Democratic National Convention is going down, is situated in an area of Denver called Lo-Do (lower downtown). It's one of those loft-conversion, yuppie makeovers that Los Angeles is hoping like hell will happen in downtown LA, especially around Staples Center. It looks like it's working here. They have the South Platte River, not much more than a creek, rimming the outskirts of the area, Riverfront Park running alongside the river, the train tracks coming out of Union Station to give it all a little flavor, and lots of happy looking young(ish) folks walking the streets and popping into the plethora of sports-themed bars and restaurants. My initial research has shown that Denver is a hard place to get a bad cheeseburger and an easy place to watch sports on multiple TVs while eating a good cheeseburger.

Anyway, the route to the Pepsi Center goes through Lo-Do, but the Center itself functions almost like an optical illusion: it gives the impression of being across the next street, or bridge or block, but it stays further away than you thought. Not to mention, none of the locals seem all that interested in it, giving friendly but vague waves in a certain direction when asked how to get there. After awhile, you wonder if the matrix can, in fact, really be penetrated.

Eventually, though we made it to perimeter, which is fenced off and heavily secured. Aside from local police, and officers brought in from nearby cities like Colorado Springs, there were a lot of Secret Service police lining the approach to the Pepsi Center. On the path that seemed to be leading right up to the front door, I was immediately accosted by a lively young lady handing out condoms on behalf of the Trojan brand. She handed me a (lubricated) condom in blue packaging and said, "Have a nice convention."

"If I need this, things are going better than expected," I replied, slightly flummoxed.

"Well," she smiled, "see if you can get us on the agenda." I think that was a double entendre, but in my confusion, I actually wondered if she might be asking me to lobby for birth control on the platform.

I was pondering how Trojan condoms had made it so deep inside, so to speak, when after making it just a few yards more towards the Center another happy, young woman eagerly approached me with another condom (intense ribbed).

"Do you have any extra large?" I deadpanned. She didn't even bat an eyelash and went digging around the Trojan Condom display case.

"I'm just kidding," I said, "I'll be fine with this one."

"Okay," she smiled, earnestly performing her job, and I'm guessing she hasn't been doing this very long, "have a good convention."

"Thanks." I was starting to wonder if this was a convention to nominate the democratic candidate, or a love in. Or...is there really a difference?

We wound our way through the security maze and placed our items -- phones, computers, keys, etc. -- into the crates to be scanned. I was waved to the threshold where humans get scanned.

"Empty your pocket, please," said the security guard.

I didn't think twice. Maps, notebook, parking pass...condoms. Ooops.

The security guard honed in on the condoms, trying to keep a straight face as he passed the scanner over them. I turned red.

"Someone gave me those outside," I pleaded.

"Uh, huh," he said, almost keeping a smile from cracking. "You're good, go inside."

I was inside the matrix, and protected.

The Las Vegas – Denver leg of my flight wasn’t so eventful. The guy across the aisle sneezed and coughed on me for an hour and a half . . . oh, and two ladies sat in my row. One was a Denver native who told me most businesses have told workers not to bother coming to work on Thursday, the day of Obama’s acceptance speech, and the other a lady who looked a lot like the previously mentioned dude (see Visions of Obamaland), only she had bigger hands and bigger boobs. Weird. She told me she was studying to be a forensic psychologist, had a crazy weekend in Vegas, and promptly fell asleep.

I arrived at baggage claim in an eerily calm Denver International Airport (were folks avoiding Denver just like many Republican senators are avoiding Minneapolis?), grabbed my bag, and noticed a familiar looking little guy in a black suit, white shirt, no tie, who I couldn’t quite place at first lurking by a baggage carousel near mine. For some reason, this guy had two K-9 officers and their large German Shepard large dogs with him. Who? I know I know this guy? Hmmm. Despite obviously being Latino, he has the salon-tanned veneer of a TV star. Maybe he’s on one of those Telenovelas.

Then it struck me -– it’s our mayor, the honorable Antonio Villaraigosa. I went over and stood around until one of the guards interrupted the flow of conversation among the three and nodded at me.

I stepped up and extended my hand to the mayor.

“Joe Donnelly from the LA Weekly,” I said, and started to go into how we met when he came into the Weekly while running for mayor, but I didn’t get very far before he interrupted.

“Oh, yes, yes. Joe Donnelly,” Villaraigosa said taking my hand, while grabbing my shoulder with his other hand. His greeting technique was masterful – friendly, strong and controlling. “Yes, I read your stuff all the time.” His face lit up and light glistened off his man tan.

I asked him if he’d just arrived, or was picking up someone. I don’t know why I asked that, but it seemed that the only explanation for him waiting around baggage claim at a public airport would be that he was waiting for someone. I mean, this the fucking mayor of the most powerful city in the most powerful state in the most powerful country… etc. Does he really have to wait for his bags? Apparently.

I noticed him at the Gate 3A at Burbank Airport where I was somewhat anxiously waiting to board Southwest Airlines flight 207 to Denver with a brief (and unadvertised) stop in Las Vegas before continuing on. He was tall, taller than me, and I’m tall. He had the body of Michael Phelps, only topped with a matinee-idol face and Robert Redford-like hair, from back when Redford’s hair needed its own tax ID number. Despite arriving at the gate rather late, he seemed unfazed by the general confusion and anxiety that seemed to have turned everyone else subjected to Southwest Airline’s Byzantine boarding system into nervous hens. My first reaction, purely out of inchoate envy (did I mention he was younger, too, but not young enough to dismiss) was to, well, not like him.

Seriously, it was just a moment and I soon forgot about it as I boarded and took my seat on the aisle. The plane’s crew announced that the flight would be full, so we shouldn’t try to deter anybody from taking the seat next to us by strategically placing belongings in it. It’s fun to gauge how these scenarios will play out when you’re on a plane –- such a laboratory for studying human behavior.

Before long, a quite attractive black woman managing two kids, a boy barely out of toddler-hood and the other a near-infant girl, took the two empty seats next to an Asian man in the window seat in the row in front of me. After politely allowing the woman and her kids to find seats in his row, he fled to the window seat in my row. Soon after, blonde Adonis boarded, still seemingly as nonplussed as he was in the gate area. He came to the row in front of me, and without any trace of trepidation, asked the woman if the aisle seat in her row was taken. She said it wasn’t. There were other seats available, but this dude –- and if anyone deserves the moniker, it’s him -– chose to sit next to the black woman and her two kids.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, what’s the big fucking deal, right? Man, sits next to woman and her kids on a packed flight. But . . . it was hard not to look at this as some small sociological case study, however cooked up by the fact that I was headed to the Dem Convention where the first black American was about to be nominated for president. It also didn’t help/hurt that the guy now sitting in my row had fled the scene.

Over the weekend, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa flew into Denver for several days and nights of glad-handing and back-slapping at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. It'll be a good time for Villaraigosa to make new friends, assure old ones, and work on his status as a rising star in national politics.

But if the mayor wants to do some research for the city of Los Angeles, he should visit Eli Broad, one of the most civic-minded billionaires in the country who also happens to live in LA, at the 2008 Philanthropy Roundtable in Denver on Monday afternoon. It may be the kind of thing that'll inspire Villaraigosa to reach out to the rich and powerful for more than big campaign contributions.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, the Roman Catholic leader of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, has been keeping somewhat of a low-profile in the battle over same sex marriage in California, but he can't keep his name out of the headlines any longer. One of the most powerful and influential Catholic priests in the United States wants to ban legal gay weddings in the Golden State.

Mahony's firm position came in the form of an August 1 statement released by the California Catholic Conference, which supports the passage of Proposition 8--the November ballot measure that, if passed, would end same sex marriage in the Golden State. According to an LA archdiocese spokesman, Mahony completely backs the statement.

Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles supports the effort to ban same sex marriage in California.

Opening arguments began yesterday in the strange witchcraft murder trial of Carla Mendez accused of the Silver Lake murder of a local snow-cone vendor who she believed had put an evil spell on Mendez' female lover.

Deputy District Attorney Hyunah Suh described the slight 22-year-old Mendez, who was sporting a buzz cut, as “territorial” and fiercely protective of her Mexican immigrant lover Maria Gomez who was convicted in August of 2007 of the first-degree murder of 43-year-old Norberto Castro, a happy go lucky snow-cone vendor who pushed a cart around his Melrose Avenue neighborhood.

In opening statements, Suh told the jury that Mendez laughingly told a Los Angeles Police Department detective, “the next time [Mendez killed someone] she would use gloves so she wouldn’t get caught.”

Maria Gomez (left) and her lover Carla Mendez

The mayoral primary election is six months away, and other candidates like developer Rick Caruso may still jump into the race, but a coalition of downtown business owners has decided not to hold out any longer. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Central City Association has concluded, is its man.

Opening arguments will begin today in the weird witchcraft murder trial of Carla Mendez, accused of the Silver Lake murder of a local snow-cone vendor who she believed had put an evil spell on Mendez' female lover.

Los Angeles Police Department Northeast Detectives found snow-cone man Norberto Castro’s battered body next to a Jetta on Allesandro Street in Silver Lake on July 13, 2005. The LAPD’s fugitive task force picked up Mendez, 22, on February 23, 2006, visiting a friend in South L.A. Cops had apprehended her lover, Maria Gomez, five months earlier after fingerprint evidence placed her at the scene.

The entire tragedy, according to court papers, was driven by Gomez's belief in love spells and witchcraft, practiced underground in many poor Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles.

Las Vegas land baron and former MGM owner Kirk Kerkorian put in a long-anticipated appearance this morning at the trial of former private investigator Anthony Pellicano and Kerkorian’s Century City attorney, Terry Christensen. The 91-year-old Kerkorian entered the courtroom in Los Angeles’ Roybal Federal Building dressed in a blue blazer, gray slacks and black loafers, and seemed to be holding his left hand, which he placed in a pocket during testimony.

Kirk Kerkorian, right, leaving courtroom.
Photo: Steven Mikulan

Terry Christensen’s Big Expert Witness Speaks

Tuesday marked Day Two of the defense counterattack waged by former private eye Anthony Pellicano and super-lawyer Terry Christensen, who are accused in federal court of wiretapping and conspiracy. Actually, so far it’s been all Christensen’s defense, with Pellicano passively watching the oratorical fireworks explode over his head.