Author Archives: JimArnoldLA

Hector Tobar: Second thoughts on street art: I’d host a wine and cheese reception

Hector Tobar: Second thoughts on street art

Photo by Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times

What to do, in a neighborhood dominated by earth tones when artists bring out the colors?

Call the police. Call the Fire Department. Call the President…

I enjoyed this column by Hector Tobar where he weaves a little story about a valley neighborhood where some mural art appeared, and then what happened between the neighbors, all artists themselves.

I tend to like this kind of mural. However, I suppose that if it showed up on a wall near where I live, it would look out of place. Tobar is right, you expect to see this on factory walls downtown or in edgier places like Hollywood, Echo Park, etc.

I decided to post this after thinking about the Shepard Fairey-style art that used to show up all over Los Angeles – and which was political in nature. I’m thinking late ’80s, early ’90s – sometimes tied in with movements like Act Up, but not always. Multiple images of Reagan, Thatcher, George H.W. Bush, all resplendently ugly in their evil status quo.

I’m missing that we don’t seem to have that agitating kind of street art right now – when stakes are probably as high in the political realm as ever. Maybe next year, with national elections. Or maybe it’s there already and I just haven’t seen it, living in the sandblasted desert.

Out Of Service: Milwaukee Budget Cuts Hit Bus Lines: keep the residents from working, please!

Link to: Out Of Service: Milwaukee Budget Cuts Hit Bus Lines — And Keep Residents From Jobs.

Milwaukee bus heading west on Wisconsin Avenue

Interesting piece on cutbacks/fail of public transit in Milwaukee. This, on top of the failure of the new governor to see the future and accept federal money for a high speed rail link through the great state of Wisconsin.

When you cut back public transport – and assuming you’d still like the population to be working, to be paying those taxes you don’t have to if you’re a corporation or a rich person – what you’re really saying is that you’d like to require everyone to own a car.

That, or to live within walking or crawling distance of their employment, or to only work at companies fortunate enough to be on the bus lines that remain. And this is from the party of individual rights and freedoms? It seems contradictory to me. Taking away transit options actually makes people less free. So you’re against requiring folks to buy health insurance, but you’re all for making them own cars?

This, to me, is just another tactic from the right, following their usual playbook of “you’re on your own, buddy, get yourself a bike, take a cab, but don’t you ever rely on your nanny county government to provide a bus for you” (which, by the way, you help pay for with your taxes and your fares).

I never needed to own a car in Milwaukee when I lived there. The bus went everywhere. Not anymore.

(By the way, I used to work at that large building in the background when I was in college, when it was still First Wisconsin National Bank [long gone].)

Gadgets You Should Get Rid Of (or Not)

link to: Gadgets You Should Get Rid Of (or Not) – Yahoo! Finance.

This was an interesting post. While I suspect that some things will go the way of the DoDo Bird, others I wouldn’t bet on disappearing so fast.

For instance, I worked for a short time at Videoactive in Silver Lake (in L.A.) where, um, one of the two main draws is classic, foreign and obscure films on VHS. I still have a player, attached to my TV. I still play them, although less often, and I’m glad to have the capability. The other draw was gay DVD porn, of course.

Back to the article. I tend to agree with most of Sam’s recommendations with a couple of exceptions.

Exception #1: Do not get rid of your camera in favor of smartphone built-in cams. Those camera phones are OK for shooting the occasional subway flasher but for anything grander (for instance, see the banner photo on top of this page, which I took with a Canon PowerShot SD 450 over the weekend) you need a real camera with lenses of different lengths. Just don’t buy disposable cameras, there’s enough crap in landfills already.

Exception #2: Oddly, I think I would be in favor of chucking the alarm clock for the smart phone version. Sam’s example is the one day out of the year where there was a glitch in Iphone time calculation due to daylight savings; how often would an electrical outage or something similar deep-six a traditional alarm clock? I, for one, like the endless adaptability of alarm rings and welcoming screens, like the weather as he suggested. Then you know whether it’s worth getting out of bed or not.

I especially liked the recommendation to not get rid of books! Truly, the e-book versions are becoming more and more popular, though it’s hard to cuddle up to cold plastic and metal, or to throw your Kindle across the room before turning lights out.

A bit of the old Ashokan Farewell

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51p17wIpebw&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

I wanted to see how the built-in camera records a little movie and and how it sounds. Passable? I suppose so. I set the laptop up on a counter and then just played a bit.

Sorry for the hesitations, I was trying to not make mistakes. Obviously, I need more practice! Still, I’ll try to do some pieces in the upcoming weeks to alternate with the otherwise feverish rants from the depths of my increasing paranoia.

The piece, by the way, is the Ashokan Farewell by Jay Ungar, used in Ken Burns’ PBS Series “The Civil War.” Best to not fund any of that dreck from taxpayer money, right? It’s all so… worthless… unlike, what are we on now, war #3?

Whitewater Canyon Preserve Hike

Had a great time yesterday up at Whitewater Canyon with the Desert Cities group of CMG (California Men’s Gathering). I’d never been up to the end of the canyon road before and had no idea the Bighorn Sheep were there and I saw them, for the first time! (see pix)

2 Sheep in this photo, can you see them?

King of the Hill

The literature says there’s also bears there though we didn’t see any (at least of the kind that make their home there). The hills are covered in green, so unlike the desert for most of the year – so I was very much in Von Trapp family mode, daydreaming that we were being led by Julie Andrews over the alps to the safety of Switzerland, away from the evil Nazis (though if Rolf wants to join us, we’d let him…).

Anyway, I digress. I love the landscape shots, especially the ones with Mount San Jacinto (snowy peak) in the background. I’m going to try and resize some of these to use as the banner image on the blog. A great morning with the guys and thanks again to Alan for setting it all up!

The Group - I'm 4th in from the right, in the white hoodie

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's ...

where to cross, where to cross?

Daddy daddy we're stuck on the rocks!

Waded across. Snowmelt water was freeeezing...

Shade-y characters

San Jacinto snowy peak in the BG

Spring Green

What MediCal Budget Cuts Mean To One Man

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF1_3HfIBks[/youtube]

*****UPDATE OCTOBER 7, 2011: I’m sorry to report that Jim died on October 1, 2011 of respiratory failure. Please see this link for a complete obit and memorial service information. *****

This is what state budget cuts can mean on a personal level. This video, made by actor/writer/producer Jim Troesh, tells what will happen to him and other people with similar disabilities should funding be cut from the California state budget for home health caregivers.

I know Jim from an L.A. industry networking group I belong to. When someone takes the time to make something like this, it immediately translates the generic, the mundane, the numbers – into something deeply human and immediate.

I dare you to watch this and remain unaffected. If so moved, you can contact politicians at the links below to express your wishes.

The below links are for the best way to contact Brown, Feinstein and Boxer via e-mail.
http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=ContactUs.EmailMe
http://boxer.senate.gov/en/contact/policycomments.cfm
For Brown – http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php
Fill out and mark that you need help and that you want a reply, that way the office will get back to you. When they do respond, send them the link to the video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF1_3HfIBks

Nothing Much Happened.

Dear Documentary Filmmakers: Road Trips | what (not) to doc.

From a road trip, in Texas

It’s one of those days where I’m too pooped out to think of much of anything, much less anything original and weighty. Maybe it was the buffet breakfast at the Casino this morning. Maybe it was the time change last weekend just catching up with me. Perhaps it’s just a flaw of my adult-onset ADD.

But I love this post from Basil Tsiokos. Good advice for documentary filmmakers, just ’cause you’re on a road trip and going places where perhaps you’ve never been, doesn’t mean we want or need to go with you. Also, I would add to Basil’s sage advice – if you’re young, please note that you’re not inventing life although it seems that way to you – so best to have something original to say about whatever it is you’re seeing with that camera.

So, read the link to Basil’s important and funny comment. Regarding the picture here, it’s from a road trip. It was not a movie. I was driving from Wisconsin to California in November, and this abandoned truckstop/gas station/campground/Quonset paradise in Texas intrigued me, so I took a picture. But I didn’t make it into a movie. I knew you wouldn’t want that! Have a great weekend, everybody. I hear Spring returns on Sunday.

11 of 14 men take plea bargains in Warm Sands sex sting

Link to: 11 of 14 men take plea bargains in Warm Sands sex sting

the offensive parking lot.

Well, finally, this is mostly over (the Warm Sands Sex Sting) for those men “allegedly” entrapped and busted over in Warm Sands for exposing themselves.

I took this photo of the offending parking lot this morning on the way back from yoga. At least this morning, no one was hiding behind one of the bushes or the palm trees waiting for a homo to walk by.

I think it’s so disingenuous for anyone to think that gays weren’t specifically targeted for this sting by the Palm Springs Police Department. A judge disagrees with me. Well, big surprise there!

Give me a f**king break. We live in a town where straight prostitutes hang out on bus benches and take their johns to side streets for in-car blowjobs. Where is the crackdown on that, PSPD?

We live in a town where there’s a water park with frequent and ongoing reports of public, straight groping and sex! Shocking! Where is the crackdown on those lusty teenagers, PSPD?

Thought so. You don’t care. You only cared about a few gay men at a well-established gay cruising spot doing nothing that offended anyone (there were never any complaints – NO ONE ever goes there other than gay men) EXCEPT the officers of the PSPD. Well, we know what happened: after hearing about the Sting, the community became outraged and eventually, the police chief had to resign.

Dominquez did the right thing. I can only hope that eventually the PSPD hires enough gay-friendly officers to put the bad feelings behind, though I suspect the mistrust will now continue for years. Not that the gay community is any stranger to police discord…

Recession and workers: One person’s lessons from an economic downturn

link to: Recession and workers: One person’s lessons from an economic downturn

derelict business, location, Texas panhandle

Postcards from the Recession: I really loved this opinion piece from Ann Brenoff, which appeared in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. She talks about how her life has changed since a layoff, what it’s meant money-wise to her and her family, and also about how priorities have changed.

She also alludes to the two worlds which I’ve also detected now co-exist – between those who haven’t lost their jobs, who have never really felt the more serious effects of the Great Recession, and those of us at the opposite end, who did lose jobs and have not been able to find new ones, resulting in a radical redefinition of both who we are and how we go about living every day.

I’ll have more on that in future post – something like the “Two Facebooks” I’ve detected – but for now urge you to take a couple of minutes to read Ann’s piece – so that even if you are lucky enough to have a job and it does go away sometime, know there is a life – and a very satisfying one – after.

Financially Motivated Murder in Palm Springs: B-movie plot come to life

Link to: Sentencing delayed for two convicted of financially motivated murder

Jay Calderon / The Desert Sun

This story is almost too delicious to be happening in the dimension we all share – except for the fact that it involves a real-life murder, with a real dead man whose body has never been found.

Like with the O.J. story – it’s awfully hard as a fiction writer to even imagine that you could come up with something so …. insanely good. The older, rich and lonely gay man who craves attention from younger, slick guys who initially appear to be the answer to all his dreams…. their “vulture” confederates, a conman (who claimed to be Nepalese royalty) and the older man with the legal background to mastermind the crime …. the cynical authorities… the neighbors who saw nothing, then remembered something… finally the jailhouse “rat” and as witness, the vast expanse of desert wildness holding the secret under its scorched covering.

As much as I truly admire the absolute grandiosity of such a scheme – purely for the story elements and their effect – I’m always amazed in real life that people who plan such “perfect murders” ever hope to get away with them. Didn’t they see enough movies to know that the more people you have involved in such a plot, the more likely – the absolute certainty – is that someone is going to feel they get shafted and then rat out the rest of the vermin?