street-hassle: The Clown is in--or wasting time--and other civic snips

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

The Clown is in--or wasting time--and other civic snips

He still hasn't officially declared his candidacy, but Carmen Trutanich is appearing this evening before the LA Association of Deputy District Attorneys as a candidate for DA, according to the anti-Trutanich site LA Dragnet.

Jim Newton scribbles a rather banal exploration of what it might mean that Herb Wesson is now Council president. Short answers: alienated blacks, more mayoral accord. He didn't even ask him what Wesson thinks the top problem facing the city is. He also calls the City Council a "notoriously difficult to manage body" (?!) Newton doesn't like to talk to elected officials about actual issues--that much is clear.

I never knew that Tim Rutten ever got off a line this good: he said that Bill Boyarsky, when he was hoping to raise hell while on the City's Ethics Commission, was merely "treated like the drunken uncle at a Seder.” It's not only the commission's reluctance to face reform that makes that line funny.

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Lenten garlands

The degree to which social media have altered the way we lead our lives was best documented to me this past Ash Wednesday, when three of my Facebook friends solemnly announced that they aspired to give up or cut back on their use of social media for Lent.

This struck me as something even more than a complete capitulation to the addictive quality of social media. In fact, it suggested to me that social media were now so compelling to users that users would even employ social media itself to announce their rejection of it.
After all--you never hear of anyone walking into a candy shop to announce they're cutting out sweets for Lent. Nor do you find many topers walking into a bar to plead their plans for Lenten abstinence.

Recognizing this, in the past few months I too have steadily migrated to Facebook and Twitter, and like to use this place more and more to express what I see around our city. What I do here has become more of a visual record than a textual one.

I still write longer peaces at places where readers like to read. Last week, I started originating a column at Ken Draper's CityWatchLA. Formerly, they had repopulated some content from this blog over there. Now, I am glad to write things for them directly.

And on Facebook and Twitter, I also write civic discourse as well as make some cultural observations.

I'm also pleased to note that the online release of my 2005 book The Plasma of Terror has found a good place with readers. Almost every day, someone writes me to tell me that they're enjoying the book, and for me, those are the most enjoyable dialogs to have of all. The longer the work, the longer the view, and I'm very grateful to have readers in so many different communities and so many different environments who muse and fret on LA life and how it relates to a larger cosmos.

Myself, I won't be giving up social media for Lent. Lent typically spreads across a season in which I typically prefer to add, rather than subtract. In fact, there's one thing I'm doing more of lately, like so many others around LA these days. I'm riding my bicycle--a Jurassic-era department store derailleur that isn't likely worth much more than the lock I use to secure it. It gets me to Sunset, anyway. So I'll see you here and there!

Peace and boat drinks,

Joseph Mailander