Note: 10:41 a.m. update regarding the Martin Mars amphibious craft capable of dropping thermogel.

With a wall of fire hundreds of feet long in places, wind-driven smoke billowing over the Hollywood Hills and blanketing most of the San Fernando Valley, and the busy 210 Freeway closed and snarling traffic for miles, fire officials warned that the city could face a "siege" if winds don't let up.

An unknown number of Sylmar residents, said to be in the thousands, have been evacuated, with forced evacuations beginning in the black of night Monday morning after large hot spots tended by 19 engine companies from Los Angeles County Fire and Los Angeles City Fire departments got whipped into a massive blaze that burned buildings and trucks at the Lopez Canyon landfill and may have destroyed much of a nearby mobile home.

"Even if we'd had an army, it wouldn't have made a difference," said one city fire official, as county and city fire officials called in water drops by Super Scoopers and helicopters to put down fast-moving flames that the ground crews, streaming in from all over Southern California, could not contain.

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Max Taves

“The furniture had been tunneled through.” So says Gary James, whose business model for his company Atticbusters is really simple: When the piles of dead rodents following extermination by poisoning are so bad nobody wants to clean them up, he steps in.

For the last seven years, James has visited thousands of Southern California homes and offices, and seen a lot of disgusting stuff. “I’ve been to a lot of homes,” James tells LA Weekly. “I’ve had to drag dead raccoons from basements that were being eaten alive by maggots.”

But of all of his adventures, his trip last November to the Pacific Palisades home of Margaret and Marjorie Barthel ranks as his most memorable—and by that he means unambiguously repulsive.

Here’s why:

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For an hour or longer, hundreds of thousand of residents of the Los Angeles Basin lost their cell phone service, following a very moderate earthquake that left little damage in most of the areas that felt it. Swaying chandeliers in the City Council Chambers downtown, vitamin bottles leaping off the shelves at a drug store in the San Fernando Valley, and some light structural damage in Orange County.

Big deal. The real problem was the sudden cutoff of cell phone and other phone service that left so many people unable to communicate, as if Los Angeles had undergone a major disaster. Brian Humphrey of the Los Angeles Fire Department says their "safety assessment" this afternoon found no serious damage and no deaths or significant injuries in the city of Los Angeles.

But clearly, with so many cell phones and other phones crapping out for more than an hour, the city's and region's infrastructure is not ready for a serious, big-time earthquake.

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Citing the 60-year-old landmark case Perez v. Sharp, which struck down California's ban on interracial marriage, the California Supreme Court ruled today that denying same-sex couples the right to marry is unconstitutional. The Court's decision nullified Proposition 22, the statewide referendum outlawing gay marriage passed by California voters in 2000.

From the court's ruling:

Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.

The ruling was the culmination of a lawsuit, Tyler v. Los Angeles County, that began in Los Angeles in 2004, when two couples, Robin Tyler and her partner Diane Olson and Troy Perry and his partner Phillip De Bliek, sued L.A. County for the right to marry.

The couples and their struggle were featured in the Weekly last February.

"My grandfather would be proud of me today," says Olson, of her grandfather Culbert Levy Olsen, California's first Democratic governor. "He would have approved of my being able to marry the person I have lived with and loved for over 14 years."

The decision not only paves the way for same-sex couples to marry in California, it will allow the state to legally recognize same-sex marriages from other states and countries.

"We thank God that our marriage in Canada has been recognized," says Perry, who was married to De Bliek in Toronto in 2003. "This is a battle our church, the Metropolitan Community Churches, which I founded, has fought since 1969."

But, as GLBT activist Lorri Jean, Executive Director of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, noted today at a Hollywood press conference, the right for gays to marry is still not guaranteed in California. Despite the magnitude of today's ruling, the Supreme Court's decision could be overturned if a proposed ballot initiative that would amend the California Constitution to prohibit gay marriage is ratified by voters in November.

"Tonight we celebrate, but tomorrow the battle begins," she said.

Mayor Villaraigosa, also speaking at the press conference, vowed to "do everything in my power to keep the court's decision the law of the land."

"And," he added, "I intend to marry as many gay and lesbian couples as I possibly can."

Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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.

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

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

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The amazing Page One Los Angeles Times article today, correcting a probably libelous Times Calendar story published on St. Patrick's Day and written by investigative reporter Chuck Philips, is known in the journalism biz as a “skinback.” I don't know exactly where the term “skinback” originated, but you could feel the skin getting peeled off Philips piece by piece in the retraction by Jim Rainey. It describes how Philips got duped by con artist James Sabatino into running a false story that implicated Sabatino himself, as well as associates of Sean “Diddy” Combs, in the non-fatal but brutal 1994 shooting of the late rapper Tupac Shakur.

Apparently, five-time loser Sabatino was so desperate to entangle himself in the lives of famous rappers that he created the fake FBI document on an old typewriter, implicating himself and talent manager James Rosemond. Chuck Philips bought it, writing that Rosemond and Sabatino "set up the rapper Tupac Shakur to get shot at Quad Studios," and then connected them to Combs' Bad Boy Records.

But the document was filled with dead-giveaways that it was a fake, which any independent documents expert could have told the Times. Credit goes to The Smoking Gun for ripping the lid off this putrid mess. There were problems with the Philips story even before The Gun went off.

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Margaret B. Plagiarizin'?

A little over two years ago, in the midst of the Oprah/James Frey fiasco, I wrote an expose called Navahoax that outed award-winning "Navajo" memoirist Nasdijj as being Tim Barrus -- a middle-class white guy from Lansing, Michigan, who was also a failed writer of gay pornography. Barrus not only manufactured his native identity, but he rose to prominence by lifting elements of Native American writer Sherman Alexie's biography and prose style, as well as those of several other native writers. "Nasdijj" won himself a PEN Award and a myriad of other literary accolades in the process.

Needless to say, Sherman Alexie was not pleased.

After Navahoax broke, and forests worth of trees were devoted to shaming Barrus for his fraudulence, Alexie and I both privately hoped our efforts would finally dissuade other struggling white writers from hijacking native identity to jumpstart their careers -- a curious and surprisingly common phenomenon that has existed for over a century, dating all the way back to Grey Owl, and possibly even before.

Ours was obviously wishful thinking.

And so this week it was with great interest, and shock, that I saw the news of another Indian fraud perpetrated in the publishing industry -- that of Margaret B. Jones/Margaret Seltzer and her book Love and Consequences.

Media coverage of Seltzer's fraud has been extensive, yet surprisingly the native identity theft angle has been largely downplayed. Though I hadn't read the book, looking into the story this week I knew there had to be a juicy Indian minstrel show in there somewhere. As it turns out, my intuition appears to be correct -- and I didn't even have to read the book to find it. Seltzer seems to have not just borrowed her native identity, she pulled a Nasdijj and took it directly from Sherman Alexie himself.

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Two more firefighters rake in fortunes – this time for reverse
discrimination

Two fire captains who were suspended after black firefighter Tennie Pierce was fed dog food (See L.A. Weekly story here) during a station house prank were awarded a total of $1.6 million in damages today by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury.

Captains Chris Burton and John Tohill alleged that because they were white they received harsher punishment from Los Angeles Fire Department brass than the Latino firefighter who actually pulled the prank. Jorge Arevalo slipped dog food into Pierce’s spaghetti in October of 2004, and received a six-day suspension. Burton and Tohill were suspended for 30 and 24 days respectively. They were not involved in the prank, they alleged, but as the supervisors on duty failed to inform higher-ups.

The two captains filed their reverse racial discrimination lawsuit in 2006. Their attorney says they had hoped to settle for $250,000 each, but private attorneys hired by City Administrative Officer Karen Sisson turned it down ­and now the city must pay far more.*

Read on...

Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Trees stripped down in Venice Mar 3, 2008
Villaraigosa Density Hawks Vs. Angry Valleyites Feb 28, 2008
Pedro Guzman Suing Government for Wrongful Deportation Feb 28, 2008
UTLA: This election wasn't about change Feb 22, 2008
Animal radicals banned from UCLA profs' homes Feb 22, 2008
UCLA hits back at animal rights terrorists Feb 21, 2008
SWAT Officer Simmons' Final Farewell Feb 15, 2008
Thousands Predicted To Attend Fallen SWAT Officers Funeral Feb 14, 2008
Unwanted Neighbors for Hollywood Sign? Feb 13, 2008
My Conversation with Charles "Cookie" Thornton Feb 8, 2008
San Fernando Valley Bloodbath Feb 7, 2008
Fabian, maybe it's the friends you keep Feb 6, 2008
Hillary Clinton projected winner in California Feb 5, 2008
Maywood Hires a Convicted Ethics Professor as Interim Police Chief Feb 2, 2008
Democratic Debate Love Fest - So Far Jan 31, 2008
Obama (and Clinton) Rally in Hollywood Jan 31, 2008
Yagman to Feds: No Surrender Jan 30, 2008
Flooding in Hancock Park and Larchmont Jan 25, 2008
LACMA Raided! Updated with Search Warrants Jan 24, 2008
Juicy Bits from the LACMA Search Warrant Jan 24, 2008
Guantanamo Detainee Mysteriously Contracts AIDS Jan 23, 2008
Anti-gang Founder Marroquin Gets Prison Jan 17, 2008
Bukowski's Bungalow Saved Nov 29, 2007
Strikers March Through Hollywood Nov 20, 2007
Fox's Tail - Assistants March Nov 20, 2007
Product Placement - The Striker Gourmets Nov 12, 2007
Signing On: Massive WGA Strike at Fox Plaza Nov 9, 2007
ELLEN'S GAY Nov 8, 2007