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JANUARY 15: Uggie the Dog from ‘The Artist’ poses in the press room at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 15, 2012 in Beverly Hills, California. See more here: Uggie, ‘The Artist’ dog, nominated for two Golden Collar Awards
Jenny Schwartz’s recent play “God’s Ear” arrives in LA with impeccable New York credentials and impressive notices. So forgive us if we couldn’t help feeling like we were watching an extended improv class exercise. more › See the rest here: ‘God’s Ear’ Deaf to Family Tragedy in New Play at the Zephyr
Jenny Schwartz’s recent play “God’s Ear” arrives in LA with impeccable New York credentials and impressive notices. So forgive us if we couldn’t help feeling like we were watching an extended improv class exercise. more › See the rest here: ‘God’s Ear’ Deaf to Family Tragedy in New Play at the Zephyr
Beverly Hills Patch accepts and publishes emails to the editor regarding any relevant local issue. The views expressed in the following commentary do not reflect the opinion of the publication, its editor and/or its writers. Emails may be edited for length and clarity. Have an opinion? Write to the site editor at mariec@patch.com. C ommentary submitted by Beverly Hills resident Jennifer Brugger. I am currently a Beverly Hills resident and have proudly been so for the past two years. I moved to the area from Thousand Oaks to be closer to my job and to give my son a great education in the Beverly Hills Unified School District, which I must say I am overjoyed at the progress he has made since moving to this community. However, being a single parent and the sole provider for my son, it has been an uphill battle to be able to afford the rent in such a pricey neighborhood. We did it though, on time and in full every month. But one and a half years into our residential bliss in Beverly Hills, I found out the sad reality of the lack of protection for renters in Beverly Hills. I was very happy to be living month to month in what I thought was a beautiful, two-bedroom apartment on South Elm Drive for only $1,800 a month. Then I came home from work one day and saw a notice on my door. The notice said we had 60 days to vacate the property and that they would be demolishing our building, plus four others in a row, to build a ginormous condo building. I had no extra money for this; we lived paycheck to paycheck as it was. My fear of shaking up my child’s life, moving schools and jobs right after what felt like a very recent move to the area was all too much to handle. I could barely sleep that night. The next day I spoke with a friend whose parents buy properties and rent them out in Glendale, and he had some very reassuring words for me: relocation fees. I asked what this meant. He said, “Relocation fees are monies paid to renters to assist them in moving within the allocated time frame. Los Angeles County requires landlords to pay these fees to tenants asked to vacate for condo conversions.” I got all excited. I thought, “OK, if they have to pay me even just a little to move, it will help with moving our things and paying a new deposit, and all of the expenses that go along with a move.” Not long after the good news hit my ears I heard the dreaded word “but.” He said, “But…you need to check with the city of Beverly Hills and make sure the same ordinances apply to BH residents as do to Los Angeles County residents because Beverly Hills sometimes has their own set of rules.” I figured Beverly Hills must have something in place similar to Los Angeles County to protect the little guys like me. So I placed a call to the city. I left a voicemail for Terence May, senior code enforcement officer of Beverly Hills. It was not an hour later when I received a return phone call from Mr. May with some very bad news. He said Beverly Hills does not have an ordinance in place requiring landlords to pay tenants’ relocation fees and that they were abiding the law in Beverly Hills by giving us 60 days to vacate. Soon after I was hunting Craigslist and buying a membership to Westside Rentals in desperate search for a home within walking distance from my son’s school. Very little within our price range was available and what was available was too far away or just outside the city limits, which meant I would have to change my son’s school. I ended up moving to a place nearby for $400 more a month. I had to sell my car for a lesser one and liquidate some of the items we owned to be able to afford it. But getting rid of my things wasn’t the saddest part of the experience. There were four other single parents living in my two-building complex and an elderly couple who had lived there 25 years. And the saddest yet… I was awoken one night by screaming and crying from what sounded like the front of the building at 3:30 a.m. I got scared that someone was being hurt and called the police. I stood on my balcony and watched the police arrive. I pointed to where I thought the noise was coming from. They banged on the door of the apartment and it was one of my son’s friends that lived there. I heard the police ask a crying young women to come out and talk to them. “My father left us and took our business. It’s just me and my mom, my younger sister and my younger brother living here, and I am in college with a part-time job taking care of my whole family,” the woman said through sobs. “They are kicking us out and we will have no place to live and it’s very stressful. I’m sorry we were fighting so loudly so late.” This is a one-bedroom apartment mind you. My heart sank. My position was awful but my neighbor’s position was much worse. I couldn’t believe such a wonderful city with such a sense of community and family would have no protection for us—the little renters—who also pay our taxes and spend our paychecks within city limits supporting small business, chains and overall being upstanding, hardworking citizens. Please protect us with a relocation fee ordinance. It promotes slow growth and protects us from overseas tycoons who come in, buy a block and kick the tenants to the curb. Also, say goodbye to the nostalgic 300 block of South Elm Drive with its early 1950s charm-filled buildings early this year. I know I will as the wrecking ball wakes me up at 7 a.m. daily to tear our old home down. Jennifer Brugger Beverly Hills Resident Be sure to follow Beverly Hills Patch on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook . Read the original post: Commentary: Beverly Hills Needs a Relocation Ordinance to Protect Tenants
A portion of Sunset Boulevard and Church Lane will be closed nightly for a month starting Wednesday due to utility work on the Sunset Bridge, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Details for street closures are as follows: Start Date: Wednesday, Jan. 4 Work/Full Closure Hours: 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. nightly Work Days: Monday through Friday Duration: Four weeks Streets that will be closed overnight are as follows: Sunset Boulevard between Barrington Avenue and Veteran Avenue Church Lane north of Sunset Boulevard to the southbound 405 Freeway ramps Church Lane south of Sunset Boulevard to Kiel Street Northbound 405 ramps at Sunset Boulevard Southbound 405 ramp at eastbound Sunset Boulevard Metro officials said the Sunset Bridge will remain open during the day but that it may close as early as 7 p.m. Detours due to the overnight utility work will be as follows: Westbound Sunset Boulevard Traffic: Detoured to southbound Veteran Avenue to westbound Wilshire Boulevard, to northbound Barrington Avenue and back to Sunset Boulevard. Eastbound Sunset Boulevard Traffic: Detoured to southbound Barrington Avenue, to eastbound Wilshire Boulevard, to northbound Veteran Avenue and back to Sunset Boulevard. Church Lane Traffic: Detoured to Sepulveda Boulevard. Local access for residents will be maintained and emergency responders will have access to the area. In addition, pedestrians will be rerouted to a safe area. According to Metro, crews will also be doing utility relocation work on Sepulveda Boulevard between Montana Avenue and Moraga Drive beginning Wednesday. Officials say the work will be from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily for 20 days. Metro did not indicate that there would be any closures due to the utility work on Sepulveda Boulevard. However, a press release warned of unusual drilling noise in the area. Closures and construction are subject to weather conditions. For the latest information, visit the Metro website . Be sure to follow Beverly Hills Patch on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook . View original post here: Sunset Bridge Utility Work to Cause More Street Closures
The bandit responsible for a series of fast food restaurant robberies in Los Angeles is still at large as police investigate the recent heists. Between December 9, 2011 and January 7, 2012, a rash of armed fast food thefts occurred in the areas of Highland Park, Lincoln Heights and Cypress Park involving a lone gunman threatening employees with a handgun. more › Continue reading here: Manhunt Continues For Real-Life Hamburglar
SAN FRANCISCO — The sponsors of California’s gay marriage ban renewed their effort Thursday to disqualify a federal judge because of his same-sex relationship, but they met a skeptical audience in an appeals court panel. It’s the first time an American jurist’s sexual orientation has been cited as grounds for overturning a court decision. Lawyers for a coalition of religious conservative groups told a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker should have revealed he had a long-term male partner before he presided over a trial on the measure’s constitutionality. He also should have stated whether he had any interest in getting married, the lawyers said. Because he did not, Walker’s impartiality stands in doubt and the decision he ultimately made to strike down Proposition 8 as a violation of Californians’ civil rights must be reversed, said Charles Cooper, an attorney for the ban’s backers. “In May 2009, when Judge Walker read the allegations of the complaint, he knew something the litigants and the public did not know: He knew that he, too, like the plaintiffs, was a gay resident of California who was involved in a long-term, serious relationship with an individual of the same sex,” Cooper said. “The litigants did not have any knowledge of these facts, and it appears that Judge Walker made the deliberate decision not to disclose these facts.” Judge R. Randy Smith, who represents Idaho on the 9th Circuit, interrupted to forcefully ask why a gay judge would be any more obligated to divulge his relationship status and views on matrimony than would a married straight judge who opposes same-sex marriage. “So a married judge could never hear a divorce?” Smith asked. “Your honor, I don’t see the difficulty with a married judge hearing a divorce action,” Cooper answered. Smith replied: “Would he have to disclose, `Oh, I’ve been married, and we’ve been married for 24 years and we have a relationship that’s kind of difficult’? That’s what you are arguing here?” Cooper said the hypothetical situation Smith described was different because if Walker, who is now retired, had “desired to marry his partner, he would have stood in exactly the same shoes as the plaintiffs in this case.” David Boies, a lawyer representing the two same-sex couples who successfully sued to strike down Proposition 8 in Walker’s court, attacked Cooper’s reasoning, arguing that judicial ethics rules never have required judges to bow out of civil rights cases because they are members of the minority group whose constitutional rights are at issue. Cooper’s “perverse logic is that only judges, gay or straight, who have no interest in marrying and the institution of marriage would be the only ones who could hear this case,” Boies said. Judge Stephen Reinhardt, of California, asked if the presumption that Walker could be unbiased in a same-sex marriage case would be valid even if the judge had disclosed at the start of the trial that he planned to get married once the case were over and he legally could. “Mr. Cooper’s point is the absence of that information raises an obligation on the part of the judge to disclose whether he wants to get married or not,” Reinhardt said. “He says it’s relevant because it allows the public to determine whether there is a reason for recusal, and that applies not only to `Yes, I do intend to get married,’ but, `No, I do not intend to get married.” Boies answered that Walker had no obligation to reveal his personal thoughts on marriage either way, but that expecting him to have spoken up to disavow any interest in marrying his partner was “an intolerable double standard” for gay and lesbian judges. “A heterosexual judge may feel passionately about preserving the institution of marriage. Does that judge have an obligation to volunteer, to come forward, to tell the parties what his views of marriage are and his views of the institution of marriage?” Boies asked. The appeals court did not immediately rule on the matter. In June, Walker’s successor, Chief Judge James Ware, rejected the same arguments from the ban’s backers that Walker’s ruling should be overturned because he might personally benefit from declaring Proposition 8 unconstitutional. The hearing Thursday was over an appeal of Ware’s decision. The 9th Circuit panel also heard arguments on whether it should unseal video recordings Walker made of the January 2010 trial. After the U.S. Supreme Court barred the trial’s video broadcast beyond Walker’s courtroom, the judge had his staff record the proceedings but said they would only be viewed by him in his chambers to refresh his memory while he was preparing his opinion. Lawyers for the two couples and a coalition of media organizations that includes The Associated Press are asking the appeals court to make the recordings public. The 9th Circuit has said it needed to hear arguments on both the significance of Walker’s relationship and the public release of the trial videos before it can address the more substantive issue of whether Walker correctly struck down Proposition 8 on federal constitutional grounds. The appeals court panel heard arguments about that in January but does not face a deadline for making a decision. Continued here: Yet Another Day In Court For Prop 8
West Hollywood Sheriff’s reserve Deputy Shervin Lalezary thanked citizen responders at a Tuesday afternoon news conference for their help in leading authorities to the man suspected of starting more than 50 fires in the area. “Once the fires started occurring, the city of West Hollywood called with every suspicious person they thought they saw,” said Lalezary, a full-time attorney whose office is located at 9454 Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. “And that came a long way with the investigation.” The volunteer deputy’s traffic stop at Sunset Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue early Monday morning led to the arrest of Harry Burkhart , a 24-year-old Hollywood resident and German national . Burkhart is being held without bail in downtown Los Angeles on suspicion of arson of an inhabited dwelling and is tentatively scheduled to make a court appearance in Van Nuys on Wednesday. “The information that I had—basically what was out in the media—was a male, white adult, short ponytail, receding hairline,” Lalezary said. “There was a call of a vehicle fire right when I was about to initiate the traffic stop. Our radio communication was pretty tied up.” The Associated Press reported that Lalezary, who has a law degree from the University of Southern California, became a reserve deputy in 2007. His certification as a Level 3 reserve with the sheriff’s station allows him to perform traffic duties. “I saw that there was an LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department] unit that saw me turn on my lights,” Lalezary said. “They rolled up right behind me … to basically cover me while I searched the vehicle.” West Hollywood Mayor Pro Tem Jeff Prang, who worked as a senior adviser to L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca for nine years, told reporters that he could not have been more pleased. “We are very proud that it was one of our deputies who tracked the case,” Prang told Patch after the conference. “This is obviously a case that transcended municipal counties … God knows how many potential lives and damaged properties were saved.” As a volunteer reserve deputy, Lalezary puts in a minimum of 1,064 hours for $1 each year, said Capt. Phil Hansen, who is in charge of the Reserve Forces Bureau. “Reserves work on patrol, investigative capacities, work on community problems,” Hansen said at the conference. “They have spent quite a great deal in West Hollywood this past year.” Be sure to follow Beverly Hills Patch on Twitter and “Like” us on Facebook . See the original post here: Reserve Deputy Who Apprehended Arson Suspect Thanks Community
“This is America, where everyone has the right to life, love and the pursuit of fame.” — Ryan Seacrest, American Idol, 2010 In the new millennium, people face messages highlighting the significance of fame everywhere they look. Not only in reality television shows such as “Keeping up with the Kardashians” and “American Idol”, but also in popular fictional TV shows, even those targeted to children. After watching some of these shows with my then 9-year-old daughter, I grumbled about the drastic change in “values.” Worried that I was becoming one of those predictable adults who lament that things were much better in the past, I decided to test my hypothesis. This study, co-authored with Dr. Patricia Greenfield at the UCLA campus of the Children’s Digital Media Center@LA, was published in Cyberpsychology last summer. We found that in 2007, fame was the number one value communicated to preteens on popular TV . In every other year, fame ranked towards the bottom of a list of 16 values, coming in at number 15 or 16. Interestingly enough, community feeling (to be part of a group) ranked number 11 in 2007, while in every other year it came in at number one or number two. In research just published in Developmental Psychology , we next examined whether tweens were picking up on these messages. We wondered if the synergy between the fame-oriented content of popular TV shows and the opportunity to post online videos and status updates for “friends” and strangers created the perfect storm for a desire for fame. In our discussions, we asked preteens what they wanted in their future. Their number one choice? Fame. “My friends and I are making a YouTube Channel… Our goal is to try and get a million subscribers.” The above quote came from an 11-year-old boy who wasn’t interested in showcasing a talent — his only interest seemed to be in getting a huge number of YouTube subscribers. Given that these digital media invite you to broadcast yourself, share your life, and then hope for attention that is counted by number of views, likes, or comments, can you blame him? These days, it’s easy to see the phenomenal success of teenagers who achieved fame, such as Justin Bieber, or infamy, such as Rebecca Black. Kids, already focused on popularity and status, crave the virtual audience that they see bring so much attention to others. And the inexperience to think that fame comes easily, without a connection to talent or hard work. “First, I’m gonna take it seriously, play, um, travel basketball, and, um, I’m going (to) college for one year, see if I’m really good, and, I wanna be on a really bad team, so, I can be like the star.” Anyone else see a flaw in this sixth grade boy’s logic? Of course, these kids will get older and realize fame is not that simple to achieve. But what will they have given up in the meantime? This same boy later told us he didn’t care about school. Psychological research has shown that a focus on extrinsic rewards, outside of oneself, can reduce achievement motivation. Fame may be the ultimate extrinsic reward. In the 21st century, TV content socializes children more than at any other point in its history. Even though children today have a myriad of media choices, they still watch television an average of 4 1/2 hours a day. If the messages kids see on TV are about young people achieving great success and renown, it’s only natural for kids to start wanting this for themselves. Moreover with the rapid growth of digital media, children can now showcase themselves to an audience beyond their immediate community, using the tools at their fingertips to enact fame. Nevertheless, the pursuit of fame is embedded in the fabric of our society, in America — every person, no matter where they come from, is supposed to have the opportunity to become successful and achieve to their fullest extent. This is one of the strengths of our society, as long as it is connected to hard work, talent and persistence. So, rather than throw up one’s hands and say “kids today,” parents can actively work towards helping children comprehend and navigate the messages embedded in television and social media. First, model for your children hard work, effort and persistence. Teach them through your actions that success only comes from those who try, try and try again. Second, watch shows with kids and narrate your values; you can even watch reality TV that demonstrate the incredibly difficult work and talent contestants must perform in order to impress the judges (e.g. Project Runway comes to mind). And third, engage your children in some kind of community service or group activities. Even though many of our kids spend more time with media than they do with us (the latest estimates are nearly 8 hours a day), always remember that parents are still the most important influence in their lives. PHOTOS: A history of the top-rated shows for tweens. Go here to see the original: Yalda T. Uhls: So You Want To Be A Star?
