Comic-Con International is 22 days away so some of you are thinking about how you're going to get there. If you're driving down via the 5 Freeway or the 405 (which links up with the 5), there are two things that might conceivably cause you some problem.
On July 16 and 17, the 405 is going to be closed down around the Sepulveda Pass so that a bridge can be demolished. This is going to be an utter mess that will snarl traffic and inconvenience many, many people. I'm not saying it doesn't need to be done; just that L.A. transit is going to be impossible for a while there. Now granted, this is the weekend before the con we're talking about but a lot of folks are fretting that the situation won't be back to normal for a while after. In any case, if you're driving anywhere near the 405 during the work period or soon after, you need to know what they're doing and where (this site will tell you) and stay up to date on what's closed and when.
If you're driving down the 5 on Wednesday, July 20, which is the date of Preview Night for the con, know this: It's the opening day of racing at Del Mar Race Track, which is located along the 5 about 20 miles North of San Diego. Opening day always draws a huge crowd as does the first weekend, which is that Saturday. I have gotten stuck in opening day traffic there. It ain't a lot of fun and there aren't really any good alternate routes as far as I can tell.
Anyway, the gates at Del Mar open at 11:30 AM, First Post is at 2 PM and at 3:00 on opening day, they're having a parade of hats with a big cash prize for the most interesting one.
Our pal Neil Gaiman is at this moment flying from Seattle to Los Angeles — no thanks to Delta Airlines, which cancelled his original flight — to tape tonight's Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. He goes from there to the Saban Theater just outside Beverly Hills for a lecture/reading. I was going to hike over to at least one of these (I'm close enough to walk to either) to annoy him but I'm trapped in Deadline Hell and will be fortunate if I can find time to belch before dawn. But like you, I can at least watch (more likely, TiVo) his appearance with CraigyFerg. The other guest is Paris Hilton and I'd be fascinated to know what, if anything, she and Neil say to one another backstage. Perhaps an exchange of grooming tips?
Number fifty-eight in a series. I've decided, by the way, this is going to be a series of one hundred and then I'll switch to Fatty Arbuckle or someone else...
As William Saletan notes, public opinion has largely turned around the last few years on Gay Marriage. In many states, a majority is now in favor of its legalization and in others, it's just a matter of time. But in many of those states, it's going to take a while (and a lot of ballot initiatives and such) to bring the law in line with what the people want.
Bruce Bartlett discusses the many Americans who pay no Federal Income Taxes whatsoever. As we all know, a lot of poor folks don't, though they pay a disproportionate portion of their income in sales taxes, payroll taxes and other ways. There's just something wrong though when someone whose income is over a million dollars a year can get away without paying anything in income taxes.
This was an issue that greatly bothered my father who spent most of his adult years working for the Internal Revenue Service and hating every minute of it. There was zero doubt in his mind that during the Nixon Administration, the I.R.S. went real, real easy on rich people (especially rich people who'd donated to Nixon) who paid little or no taxes, sometimes via legal loopholes — of which there were many — but sometimes just by lying and cheating. This was offset by wringing more dollars out of the poor and middle class. Many lower-class people paid more so one rich guy didn't have to pay at all. Looks like not a lot has changed.
Here's an interesting article about cookie design, especially that of the noble Oreo. I don't eat that kind of thing anymore but I find the history and artistry rather fascinating. I was especially amused by their comparison of the Oreo design to that of the lowly Hydrox cookie, and I was unaware that they apparently don't make Hydrox cookies anymore.
Vaguely relevant anecdote: Twenty some-odd years ago, there was a great little place over on Santa Monica Boulevard near Sepulveda that sold ice cream they made on the premises. Most of the flavors were their own creations and about half — and they had them nicely segregated and labelled — contained liqueurs or other spirits. I avoided that side and usually had something they called Cashew Crunch, which contained bits of cashew and smashed Oreo cookies in a vanilla ice cream with a fudge swirl. In fact, a lot of their flavors involved crushed Oreos at a time when that wasn't too common in the ice cream business.
My friends and I loved this store to the point where when we went out for dinner, we'd sometimes go to a somewhat mediocre restaurant in the same block just so we could go to the great ice cream place for dessert. One evening, I took my friend Tracy there for ice cream...and you need to know this about Tracy: Don't ever lie to her because she'll nail you on it. She usually knows and if she isn't sure, she'll interrogate you within an inch of your life. Five minutes with Tracy and O.J. would have confessed to the double-killing and probably other crimes we don't know about.
So she wants some flavor involving crushed Oreos but she demands of the guy behind the counter, "How do I know these have Oreo crumbs and not Hydrox crumbs?" He says she can take her word for it. She says that's not good enough and he makes the guy go into the back of the store and bring out this huge crate of Oreos. This proved at the very least that the business received huge crates of Oreos. From that, she grudgingly made the leap to the assumption that they actually did use Oreos, not Hydroxes, in their ice cream. (That was one of the drawbacks of the Hydrox. It was tough to speak of them in the plural...and who would ever eat only one?)
Know, by the way, that Tracy didn't necessarily prefer Oreo to Hydrox. She just felt that if it said Oreos — and it did — then it had damned better be Oreos.
A week or so later, I'm in there with someone else and the guy behind the counter recognizes me. He says, "You're the one with the friend who demanded proof that we don't use Hydrox." I 'fessed up that I was. He lowered his voice so no one else in the store could hear and said, "The owner gets a deal on Hydrox and we sometimes use them and tell people they're Oreos. We just happened to be out of Hydrox the week your friend was in and so we went out and got a crate of Oreos and were using them." He pointed to the ice creams currently in the display that said "Crushed Oreos" in their ingredients lists. "All of these have Hydrox crumbs in them," he said.
Two weeks later, the store was out of business. I think we all know why.
Just for you: Five minutes of one of my favorite standup comedians...the late Jackie Vernon. This is a shortened version of a great routine he used to do showing "slides" from his vacation.
Not long before he passed away, which was in 1987, I saw him live for the first and only time. It was at the old Marina Hotel in Las Vegas — the one they tore down to build the current MGM Grand. Mr. Vernon was the lead comic in a burlesque revue called "Babes Ahoy!" because it had a bit of a navy theme, as did the hotel-casino. Mostly, he did old Minsky's-type routines with women whose shirts mysteriously disappeared...but at one point, he came out and did about fifteen minutes of pure standup with no topless ladies on the stage with him. It was his "vacation slides" routine with all new (to me) lines and I probably laughed as hard at that fifteen minutes as I ever have at anything in my life.
I wish I could show you more of Jackie Vernon but you'll have to settle for these five minutes...
June 27, 2011
On July 16 and 17, the 405 is going to be closed down around the Sepulveda Pass so that a bridge can be demolished. This is going to be an utter mess that will snarl traffic and inconvenience many, many people. I'm not saying it doesn't need to be done; just that L.A. transit is going to be impossible for a while there. Now granted, this is the weekend before the con we're talking about but a lot of folks are fretting that the situation won't be back to normal for a while after. In any case, if you're driving anywhere near the 405 during the work period or soon after, you need to know what they're doing and where (
