Thanksgiving Thanks from the Los Angeles Times
- I'm thankful to live in a city where celebrities standing trial are habitually acquitted with alibis so preposterous Ripley wouldn't entertain them.
- I'm thankful that at its current rate of inflation in 30 years my home should be worth 2.9 billion.
- I'm thankful for mansionization so I can experience what it's like to live next to a dwelling with the size and asthetics of Russia's Hotel Moskva right in Valley Glen (1).
- I'm thankful screenwriters are fighting for residuals when their dialogue is used on ring tones, because $1 million up front with $600,000 on the back end for penning "Scooby-Doo IV" simply isn't adequate compensation.
- I'm thankful to live in a place where the City Council recognizes gay mariages, provided one gay spouse doesn't give the other a lap dance.
- I'm thankful I live in a community that allowed me to dabble in Kabbalah, Scientology, Taoism and Buddhism, and that was just the last week in February.
- I'm thankful Will Rogers never met Michael Eisner. (2)
- I'm thankful I got one of the last 310 area codes before the 424 overlay goes into effect, so I can deceive people who receive my business card into thinking I am important. (3)
- I'm thankful that the constant ringing in my ears turned out to not be tinnitus but rather the wail of car alarms.
- I'm thankful I was able to give up bungee jumping and extreme kayaking - I now secure my adrenaline rush passing through intersections on the Orange Line. (4)
- I'm thankful to live in a city where it's possible to meet the mayor be setting up a TV camera and waiting two minutes. (5)
- I'm thankful I was able to witness Mr. Antonio Villaraigosa's finest hour and it was a pleasure being part of George Lopez's studio audience. (6)
- I'm thankful I can now host Thanksgiving brunch for 300 invited guests essentially in David Geffen's Malibu bacyard. (7)
- I'm thankful the Tutankhamun exhibit is leaving L.A., so once again when you hear the term "Boy King" you will think of Brad Grey.
- I'm thankful for our priorities as witnessed by the 18 scheduled public hearings allowing L.A. denizens to voice our sentiments on the gentrification of the L.A. River, and the fact that my neighborhood may hold one meeting to prepare fo a possible avian flu pandemic. (8)
- I'm thankful for the 200,000 new jobs created in the region this year, even if the lions share of those jobs are for 'gator wranglers. (9)
- I'm thankful for household mold, Lyme disease, supermodel bounty hunters and the Chupacabras, so the Channel 9 news team has something to babble about on the oh-so-rare occasion they're not covering a police pursuit.
- I'm thankful for my health above all, because the King/Drew center is my medical provider (10).
- Every doctor, lawyer, TV producer and advertising exec. in Los Angeles (that's about 1/3 of the population) knows that the proper floor plan for a new house is the exact size of the lot it's built on, and that anything less than three stories is just a bungalow.
- Michael Eisner runs Disney. Will Rogers is the guy who said he'd never met a man he didn't like.
- 310 was once the area code for the entirety of Los Angeles, but has shrunk to a much smaller downtown area of mostly corporate and government digs.
- The Orange Line is a bus route that emulates a light rail line (Red, Blue, Gold, etc. line). Opening week was a key ingredient in the Paramedic Excercise and Fitness Program.
- Los Angeles' new mayor, Antionio Villaraigosa, is not camera shy, to say the least.
- Mayor Villaraigosa played himself on a comedy show.
- Media mogul David Geffen's Malibu Mansion adjoined an area of public beach which he kept people off of with armed guards. It has been returned to public access by force of law (armed police).
- The Los Angeles River is largely contained by concrete (though the bottom is bare in some areas the sides are concrete everywhere). The plan is to return it to a more natural state and treat some of it as a park but some object to the plan. This is much more urgent than a few million sick birds infecting people who may then die - that doesn't impact anyone's back yard.
- One community lake is infested with a large reptile (13 feet or so) which has been able to elude gator experts from Australia, New Orleans and elsewhere (though one NO gator wrestler did not elude the Los Angeles police on outstanding warrants).
- King/Drew hospital has been badly mismanaged in many ways which is suspected to have resulted in many unneccessary deaths. Despite this it has been kept open because without it a lower income area would have no access to a hospital.
