[VIDEO] College History Professor Pulls Down 9/11 ‘Never Forget’ Posters
Posted: September 9, 2016 Filed under: History, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: 9-11, California, California Legislative Analyst's Office, Campus, Community college, Left Wing, poster, Progressive, Saddleback College, September 11 attacks, Southern California, Twin Towers 1 Comment
A history professor a Californian community college was caught on video ripping down “Never Forget” 9/11 memorial posters.

One of the World Trade Center’s twin towers collapses after it was struck by a commerical airliner in a suspected terrorist attack September 11, 2001 in New York City. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)
ALERT: Police Evacuate UPS Facility in San Bernardino After Driver Discovers Package Addressed to ‘Suspect’ Residence
Posted: December 5, 2015 Filed under: Terrorism, U.S. News | Tags: California, Devore, Interstate 215 (California), KABC-TV, Little League Baseball, Los Angeles, Police, San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, Sheriff, Southern California, Sport utility vehicle Leave a comment‘Isolating package to be safe’
A UPS facility in San Bernardino was evacuated Friday evening after a delivery driver discovered a package addressed to a “suspect” home in Redlands, authorities said.
Multiple police vehicles were seen shortly after 8:30 p.m. outside the UPS customer center in the 1400 block of East Victoria Avenue (map).
The evacuation was ordered out of an abundance of caution, according to San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan.
“Package with delivery address to suspect res (sic) in Redlands,” Burguan said on Twitter. “Isolating package to be safe.”
Althought the item was from a “reputable vendor,” UPS officials called police “just to be safe” after noticing its delivery address, the police chief tweeted.
It was unclear if the item had been sent to a particular suspect, according to Burguan.
San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department bomb technicians were responding to the scene, police said. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] Size Doesn’t Matter: Brave 20-Pound Dog Chases Bears Away from California Home
Posted: October 5, 2015 Filed under: Entertainment, History, Mediasphere | Tags: Big Bear Lake, California, Los Angeles, San Bernardino County, San Bernardino Mountains, Southern California, United States Geological Survey Leave a commentMONROVIA, Calif. — A 20-pound French bulldog scared off three bears who had wandered into the front yard of a California home.
“She blew me away, couldn’t believe that she turned into a Wolverine.”
Security cameras captured two of the three bears, about a year old each, walking around the home when the family guard dog spotted them.
Jules was apparently not scared of the cubs’ size or being outnumbered. Video shows the dog chasing the cubs off of her turf. Read the rest of this entry »
Mystery Man Found Decomposing In Car Had More Than 1,200 Guns, Cash, Underwater Car
Posted: July 23, 2015 Filed under: U.S. News | Tags: Body, Detective, Harland Braun, Lawyer, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Police Department, Pacific Palisades, Southern California, Sport utility vehicle Leave a commentLOS ANGELES (AP) – An attorney said Wednesday that the body of a mystery man was decomposing in his car in the tony Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Southern California for nearly two weeks before he was found by authorities on July 17.
Inside his home, detectives discovered more than 1,200 guns, scopes, 6.5 tons of ammunition, bows and arrows, knives, machetes and $230,000 in cash.
They also found eight of the 14 vehicles registered to the man stashed across Los Angeles, including a Toyota SUV designed to drive underwater.
Who the man was and how he came to accumulate the arsenal and vehicles are questions authorities are still trying to answer.
Veteran defense attorney Harland Braun represents the man’s fiancée Catherine Nebron and identified him as Jeffrey Alan Lash.
That’s also the name coroner’s officials are working with and they’re in touch with a relative to try to officially identify the body, said Craig Harvey, chief of investigations for the coroner’s office.
Lash and Nebron were together for 17 years and she believed him when he told her that he worked as an undercover operative for multiple unnamed government agencies, Braun said.
“The story itself sounds totally crazy but then how do you explain all this?” Braun said. “There’s no evidence he was a drug dealer or he stole these weapons, or had any criminal source of income, no stolen property, all the stuff you’d look for.” Read the rest of this entry »
One Dead After SUV Drives Into Crowd At Ice Cream Shop
Posted: April 25, 2014 Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, U.S. News | Tags: California, Ontario Provincial Police, Simcoe County, South Simcoe Police Service, Southern California, Sport utility vehicle, SUV 1 CommentNBC Southern California reports: One person was killed and at least five others injured when an SUV drove into a crowd standing outside a Southern California ice cream shop, fire officials said.
The crash happened just before 6 p.m. at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour in Buena Park, Orange County Fire Capt. Gonzalez told NBC4.
An SUV struck seven to eight people who were waiting to go inside the restaurant, Gonzalez said. Read the rest of this entry »
[VIDEO] REWIND: Classic 1970s Revlon “Charlie” Ad with Shelley Hack & Bobby Short
Posted: April 18, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment | Tags: Bobby Short, Charlie, Dean Martin, Doris Day, Madison Avenue, Revlon, Shelley Hack, Smothers Brothers, Southern California, YouTube 1 CommentCertain commercial jingles get stuck in your head for years. Some even for decades.
That’s the case for me with this Revlon “Charlie” ad. I was a kid when I first heard it, during a summer in Southern California, and I never forgot the melody or lyrics. Or the brand of perfume.
From the YouTube description:
Still as classy as when it first aired. Featuring Shelley Hack and music by Bobby Short. Every shot is composed and lit like a Hurrrell photograph… this was Madison Avenue at its finest.
The finger-popping jazzy tune is a cross between a nightclub or Vegas lounge number, and elevator music. The “Kinda hip kinda now” and “wow” hipster jive talk was funny to me, even then, I knew it was cornball, but not without charm. It recalls the Smothers Brothers, Carol Burnett, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In era. When Dean Martin and Doris Day records were in the Columbia Record Club magazine ads right next to The Lovin’ Spoonful, Donovan, Cat Stevens, The Carpenters, and Led Zepplin.
If getting into your head is the objective in advertising, then the ad worked. This Revlon commercial conveyed sophistication. The name of the perfume, “Charlie” seemed fresh, inventive.

Reality Check: Liberal Jews Not Immune from Anti-Israel Hate
Posted: February 7, 2014 Filed under: Art & Culture, Politics, War Room | Tags: Anti-Zionism, Israel, Jew, Los Angeles, South Robertson Los Angeles, Southern California, Workmen's Circle, Yiddishkeit 1 Comment
Photo credit: Jewish Journal/Julie Fax
Joel B. Pollak writes: Left-wing Jews may hope that their increased willingness to criticize Israel might spare them some of the worst of anti-Israel hatred from Palestinian advocates and antisemites. Not so, sadly. The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles reports that a beautiful mural along the outer wall of the Arbeter Ring/Workmen’s Circle Southern California facility in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood was defaced with “Free Palestine!!!!” graffiti Thursday.
6 Things to Say About the New Corvette Stingray to Impress Your Man
Posted: October 2, 2013 Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Mediasphere, Science & Technology | Tags: Chevrolet, Chevrolet Corvette, Conservative, Corvette, General Motors, Love & Sex, Porsche, Porsche 911, Southern California, Sports car Leave a comment
It’s got that V-8 engine thing inside, and it goes Vroom Vroom
While contributing Editor Dr. Strangelove (a long time ‘vette-head) is deeply involved in Hong Kong Law concerns, I’ll publicly admit what he’s jazzed me about privately for as long as I can remember: my ignorance about cars. Not only am I a complete moron when it comes to the automotive world (even though I myself own a popular sports car) I’d go further, and say that I know less about cars than Jenny. I’ll let Jenny take the wheel from here.
Women readers: is your husband or boyfriend a Vette enthusiast? From the Love & Sex department at The Stir, Conservative chick Jenny Erikson shares this handy guide to impress your due:
Let me preface this by saying I know very, very little about cars other than that I like shiny ones that go fast. But I do know how to flirt, and sometimes the best flirting is to have a little bit of knowledge about something boys find interesting. Like fast cars. See? In the Venn diagram of things boys and girls both like, fast cars exist in that middle overlapped section.
So I thought I’d learn a little more about the new 2014 Corvette Stingray, because apparently it’s the best sports car America has ever built. Read the rest of this entry »
Losing Is Good for You
Posted: September 25, 2013 Filed under: Education | Tags: American Youth Soccer Organization, Carol Dweck, Jean Twenge, Los Angeles, Po Bronson, Southern California, Stanford University, United States Leave a commentThe downside of the “everyone gets an A” generation
LOS ANGELES — AS children return to school this fall and sign up for a new year’s worth of extracurricular activities, parents should keep one question in mind. Whether your kid loves Little League or gymnastics, ask the program organizers this: “Which kids get awards?” If the answer is, “Everybody gets a trophy,” find another program.
Trophies were once rare things — sterling silver loving cups bought from jewelry stores for truly special occasions. But in the 1960s, they began to be mass-produced, marketed in catalogs to teachers and coaches, and sold in sporting-goods stores. Read the rest of this entry »
Thanks, Mr. L
Posted: August 23, 2013 Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Book, Elmore Leonard, Frank Snepp, Horse Latitudes, Joe Biden, New York Times, Paul Newman, Ritz-Carlton, Robert Ferrigno, Southern California, Writing 2 CommentsElmore Leonard’s life-changing advice.
By Robert Ferrigno
Elmore Leonard was the worst interview of my life. Not his fault. Mine. He didn’t hold it against me; in fact, he gave me an incredible gift, which tells you plenty about the man.
I was a feature writer for a Southern California daily newspaper at the time, and I leapt at the chance to talk to him when he came through on a book tour. He was my literary hero, writing this lean, graceful prose and dialogue that was absolutely true to the little criminals he wrote about — those overeager psychopaths who were just like the rest of us, but freed of the limitations of long-term thinking and responsibility.
The interview took place in his suite at the Ritz-Carlton. I was nervous, too aware of my struggles with my first novel and in awe of him for making it look easy, which is always the hardest part. I taped the interview, to my great regret. I was pathetic, so overwhelmed that my questions tacked from the sycophantic to the rude as I tried and failed to find the right balance. Mr. L remained cordial and polite throughout the ordeal, a scrawny gent calmly smoking a cigarette while I sweated and stumbled.
Near the end, I confessed to my predicament as a writer. Said I had a full-time job at the paper and a new baby at home and weekends were the only time I had to write and I was making no progress at all. I knew his history, knew he must have some kind of method, some secret. He had worked at an ad agency in Detroit while supporting five kids and writing a succession of paperbacks for ten years before he made enough to quit his day job.
Tom Wolfe’s California
Posted: November 16, 2012 Filed under: Reading Room | Tags: California, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, New York, New York City, Southern California, Tom Wolfe, United States, Wolfe Leave a commentIn the Golden State, the great writer first chronicled the social changes that would transform America
Michael Anton writes: Tom Wolfe is most identified with New York City, for good reason. He has lived and worked in Manhattan since the early 1960s, and New York dominates his writing the way London looms for Dickens. But Wolfe has never been afraid to venture from his home turf—this fall’s Back to Blood, an exploration of Miami, is a case in point—and his true literary second home is California. Over the course of his career, Wolfe has devoted more pages to the Golden State than to any setting other than Gotham. In his early years, from the mid-1960s through the early 1970s, the ratio was almost one-to-one.
More to the point, the core insights on which he built his career—the devolution of style to the masses, status as a replacement for social class, the “happiness explosion” in postwar America—all first came to him in California. Even books in which the state figures not at all are informed by Wolfe’s observations of the West. Without California, there would be no Wolfe as we know him—no Bonfire, noRight Stuff, no Radical Chic or Me Decade, none of the blockbuster titles or era-defining phrases that made him world-famous.
And without Wolfe, we would not understand California—or the California-ized modern world. At the time of his most frequent visits, the state was undergoing a profound change, one that affects it to this day and whose every aspect has been exported throughout the country and the globe. Both have become much more like California over the last 40 years, even as California has drifted away from its old self, and Wolfe has chronicled and explained it all.
It started by accident. Wolfe was working for the New York Herald Tribune, which, along with eight other local papers, shut down for 114 days during the 1962–63 newspaper strike. He had recently written about a custom car show—phoned it in, by his own admission—but he knew there was more to the story. Temporarily without an income, he pitched a story about the custom car scene to Esquire. “Really, I needed to make some money,” Wolfe tells me. “You could draw a per diem from the newspaper writers’ guild, but it was a pittance. I was in bad shape,” he chuckles. Esquire bit and sent the 32-year-old on his first visit to the West—to Southern California, epicenter of the subculture.
Wolfe saw plenty on that trip, from Santa Monica to North Hollywood to Maywood, from the gardens and suburbs of mid-’60s Southern California to its dung heaps. He saw so much that he didn’t know what to make of it all. Returning to New York in despair, he told Esquire that he couldn’t write the piece. Well, they said, we already have the art laid in, so we have to do something; type up your notes and send them over. “Can you imagine anything more humiliating than being told, ‘Type up your notes, we’ll have a real writer do the piece’?” Wolfe asks. He stayed up all night writing a 49-page memo—which Esquire printed nearly verbatim.
It’s a great tale, but, one fears, too cute to be strictly true. I ask him about it point-blank. “Oh, yes, that’s exactly what happened,” he says. “I wrote it like a letter, to an audience of literally one person”—Esquire managing editor Byron Dobell—“with all these block phrases and asides. But at some point in the middle of the night, I started to think it might actually be pretty good.”
That piece—“The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby”—represents the first time that Wolfe truly understood and was able to formulate the big idea that would transform him from an above-average feature writer into the premier cultural chronicler of our age. Those inhabiting the custom car scene were not rich, certainly not upper-class, and not prominent— indeed, they were almost invisible to society at large. Wolfe described his initial attempt to write the story as a cheap dismissal: “Don’t worry, these people are nothing.” He realized in California that he had been wrong. These people were something, and very influential within their own circles, which were far larger than anyone on the outside had hitherto noticed.