LOS ANGELES — Records show Rudolf Montiel received nearly $1.2 million when he was dismissed as head of the Los Angeles Housing Authority last spring. City Controller Wendy Greuel, who has been auditing the agency’s travel expenses, released documents Friday outlining public funds used for limousine rides and meals at pricey downtown restaurants. Montiel was unavailable for comment. His lawyer, Michael Posner, defended the settlement, saying Montiel’s contract entitled him to 18 months’ pay if dismissed. Mitchell Kamin, the new president of the housing authority’s board, tells the Times the deal was in the agency’s best interest and would be paid for largely by insurance. Read the original post: Disgraced City Official Got $1.2 Million Severance After Dismissal
Posts Tagged ‘ update ’
Occupy LA Eviction Deadline Update
Police have called a citywide tactical alert, but so far there have been no problems with Occupy LA protestors. Photo Credit: Robert Henry See the original post here: Occupy LA Eviction Deadline Update
PHOTOS: 25 Culinary Curiosities That We Love
In Los Angeles, weâve noticed a few odd moves from our favorite restaurants -â and we kind of like it! Call âem trends, call âem tributes; this is an ode to the dining curiosities courtesy of our city. Read more here: PHOTOS: 25 Culinary Curiosities That We Love
Dozens of Beagles Rescued from Lab
NYC Plane Makes LAX Emergency Landing
Vinyl Revival: Record Stores In Los Angeles (Yes, They Exist!)
Story comes courtesy of MarPop By Mar Yvette Lookin’ for a rekka sto’?? Ease up, old school. Downloading and streaming aren’t the only game in town. Vinyl is making a serious comeback. In fact, within the last few years LA has seen more than a few independently owned record stores set up shop. And it’s this sort of indie spirit that’s driving the recent surge of vinyl record sales across the country. Now, just in time for the holidays: Record Store Day — a collective of some 900 independently owned record stores in the US, Canada and Europe — is holding their own Black Friday on November 25 with special-edition vinyl releases and sales. So before you join the herds and head off to the mall at 4am, consider checking out some of these LA record stores for a little vinyl revival. AMOEBA RECORDS – www.amoeba.com Think record store and you think Amoeba. Probably because itâs the largest independent record store in the world. (Some would say too large, bordering on big-box bully large, but thatâs another story.) This ginormous Hollywood outpost literally has tons of albums, discs, posters and other music-related mishmash as well as constant in-store shows. As for vinyl, youâll find plenty including limited edition, rare, out-of-print and original pressings. AS THE RECORD TURNS – www.astherecordturns.com Cringe-worthy name aside, As the Record Turns is considered by many to be LA’s best resource for vinyl. Once you find the actual store (it’s hidden in a narrow alleyway off Hollywood Blvd) get ready to find just about any piece of vinyl you can imagine. And if it’s not stockpiled in the exhaustive stacks of vinyl, then owner Kevin can probably find it for you one way or another. Just ask Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Marilyn Manson, Steven Speilberg and about a million other famous clients for whom he’s sourced music. You might pay more for what you get, but Kevin is known to give a free record to everybody who enters his store. (They’re from the clearance section, but are you really gonna complain?) Amoeba from above: Photo by Kelly Wardle ATOMIC RECORDS – www.atomicrecordsla.com Picked in 2011 by LA Weekly as âBest Record Store for Actual Records,â this Burbank record shop has been open since 1996 and specializes in classic jazz, 60s rock/punk/new wave, soul, blues, strange/exotica and soundtracks. They also do a lot of buying and even make house calls. Don’t forget the 50-cent bin where you just might strike vinyl gold. FREAKBEAT RECORDS – www.freakbeatrecords.com Forget the 99-cent store. This old-school shop in Sherman Oaks has a 99-cent room with thousands of LPs and CDs that are restocked every day. Half the store is filled with new and used vinyl, with the rock section being the largest, and there’s plenty to browse in the jazz and soul bins. There’s also an 80s department with lots of flashback vinyl. ORIGAMI VINYL – www.origamiorigami.com One of the newer shops on the block (it opened in 2009), Origami Vinyl in Echo Park is the ultimate mom and pop record store for cool kids. The shop is only 400 square feet, but it packs a punch with an eclectic selection of new and used records, much of which is from local artists. (Origami is also an indie record label.) As for in-stores, everyone from Florence and the Machine to Sonic Youth and Ben Harper have taken to the stage. Good things come in small packages. Records LA: Noize n the ‘Hood RECORDS LA – www.myspace.com/recordsla Records LA isn’t the oldest rekka sto’ in LA. In fact, it opened in 2010. But it is the oldest school of the old school with an unpretentious DIY charm that’s hard to come by these days. Located on West Adams, the vinyl-only shop is about the size of your one-bedroom apartment’s closet, but owner Scott has just the stuff you’re looking for when it comes to soul, jazz, R&B, disco, hip hop, reggae and other back-in-the-day rarities. Just remember: this shop is only open Thursday-Saturday. RECORD SURPLUS – www.recordsurplus.com One of the largest sellers of used vinyl records and CDs on the West Coast, Record Surplus has a huge selection of music and collectible records that are restocked daily. The store just moved to a new location on the corner of Santa Monica and Centinela with a nice paint job, too. (Not that I judge a record store by its cover, but I do like a pretty space.) You can also find turntables and CD listening stations. ROCKAWAY RECORDS – www.rockaway.com This Silver Lake staple is fairly small (it’s moved a few times since first opening in 1979), but it’s huge on the collectibles inventory. Vinyl, CDs and the usual suspects are here as well as lots of memorabilia ranging from $50 autographed photos to a 1965 Beatles lunch box that can be yours for just $1,250. Werk It: Wombleton Records VACATION VINYL – www.vacationvinyl.com The name might suggest lounging around a sunny beach with a drink in your hand (or maybe that’s just me), but this Silver Lake shop is far from checked-out and actually leans a little toward the dark side. Which is to say, you can find a lot of black metal/hardcore/space rock/prog drone/whatever-you-call-it noisy stuff neatly arranged among the shelves. Plenty of in-store shows, too. WOMBLETON RECORDS – www.wombletonrecords.com Part of the new York strip of Highland Park emerging with little shops, galleries and bars, Wombleton Records is just the kinda thing you didn’t know you need: Bountiful bins of rare pop vinyl you can peruse whilst basking in an Edwardian salon that could double as a swinging London boutique. Opened in late 2010, Wombleton specializes in original pressings of rare, imported used vinyl LPs and 45s with “an uncommonly high concentration of desirable titles from the country of origin.” Stop by on Thursday nights for the vinyl DJ listening parties. Ascot and smoking jacket optional. MORE VINYL RECORD STORES IN LA: Angel City Books & Records – Best-kept record store secret in Santa Monica Backside Records – Mostly clothing, new & used vinyl in Burbank and Echo Park Bombass Muzik – Vinyl, CDs, cassettes & accessories in East LA Headline Records – punk, thrash, straight-edge, rockabilly, psychobilly on Melrose Ooga Booga – super-indie shop for vinyl, art, books, misc in Downtown LA Poo-Bah Record Shop – underground hip-hop, experimental & more in Pasadena Record Collector – rare and collectible classical & jazz in Hollywood Turntable Lab – vinyl for DJs who actually scratch; Fairfax Village More info: www.recordstoreday.com See the rest here: Vinyl Revival: Record Stores In Los Angeles (Yes, They Exist!)
Alexandra Marvar: Miranda July on Her New Book, Her Dilatory Cooking Habit
Miranda July’s new book It Chooses You was published this week by McSweeney’s. Part narrative, part self-conscious ethnography, it tracks July’s exploration through the PennySaver “for sale” classifieds, which she used as a vehicle to meet people in their homes throughout Los Angeles and interview them about their lives. And the book itself, in fact, it began as a vehicle to flee the screenplay for her new feature film, The Future , in her most wicked throes of writer’s block. In fact, it was one of a slew of ways July used to procrastinate finishing The Future . The first bane of her productivity was a common one — the Internet. Desultory blog-trolling, compulsive information accumulation, self-Googling… And when she managed to wrench herself free of frivolous web surfing, she transferred that energy to the PennySaver, which she’d already had lying around to keep an eye out for estate sales. Gradually, July developed this tangential obsession. She spoke to the audience before reading from It Chooses You at Brooklyn’s BookCourt Tuesday night about the genesis of the project; “I would read through every single ad — through automotive, and just keep going… I think what struck me was that it was all real. Each one of these were real people they were really out there selling these things, and not only that, but [with innocent amazement] here were their phone numbers.” So began the interview process. “I started calling them. They expected my call, because they put the ad in — the initial conversation wasn’t hard. But the leap from “Yes the item is still for sale” to “Can I, when I come over to look at it, interview you about your hopes and dreams?” … That was a stumbling block. A lot of people said no, making the people who said yes feel very special, and that’s part of what “It Chooses You” means.” July met people under the auspices of an interest in their retro hairdryers and four-dollar Carebears, and got to know them. But it was more than just the charm of the objects or the quirkiness of the subjects that kept her involved. “This is just me — my grandiose sense of how I go about life — but I started thinking of this as kind of a vision quest or something, that I had to do this; in fact, it was important to not work on the script, and not to just fight it through and find the answer to my particular fictional problem, but to go out in the world and find the answer. Not just to that problem, but other problems I was having in my actual life. Questions about mortality, and time. So that was the scale I was operating on when I met with these people.” If It Chooses You was a means of creative resistance to completing The Future, it shook out to be a perfectly fruitful one, the film and the book now both conceptually entangled, complete, and completely awkward-lovely in classic July style. But July also practiced some less dedicated, less resilient forms of escape while trying to ignore her screenplay. Below are a quick four questions with her about another one of them — cooking. At the beginning of the book you speak about being so close to reaching the end of “The Future” you could see it, but you just couldn’t get there — and one of the means of further deterring you was throwing yourself into a domestic role. Which included cooking a lot. Did that wear off, or did it last through much of the process? Oh, it wore off. But, I think I actually became a better cook! But when you’re writing a book like this, you pull details out that are true but without the other details, they kind of become fiction. You know, my husband was shooting his movie before I shot mine, and so part of why I was cooking was to support him when he came home, which he then did for me when I was shooting. But, I was cooking before that too, out of thinking, “Well, if nothing else, I will have made a meal today.” Favorite thing to cook? I’m best at desserts. Probably just because I like to eat dessert a lot. But I head towards the healthy vein, like, I’m always doing lots of substitutions — cooking The Joy of Cooking but trying to use agave in their recipes, which, you know, doesn’t always work out. Ideal celebration meal? There was this berry thing that I made for literally every celebration. I’m not vegan but it was vegan — that was it’s main point. This vegan, berry, cake thing. Any time anyone had a birthday or anything, I’d make the berry thing, until people started saying “Oh! It’s the berry thing….” at which point I realized, oh, this has gotten sort of played out. Choice dish for a time of mournfulness? When I’m sad, I want to eat like a child. So, a bowl of cereal. A meal from childhood that was prepared for you often, or that you fondly recall? There was this thing called Yorkshire Pudding that my mom would make, that’s just sort of a buttery dough thing. We have some Welsh heritage, which I think she vaguely connected it to, but she’s from Denver… I’m sure it has more to do with Denver than Wales. After the reading, July enjoyed her third dessert of the day, which was pumpkin pie-like. Learn more about It Chooses You on the McSweeney’s website. The author appears again tonight at the grand opening of her custom-designed resale shop (selling items from the New York classifieds) at Partners & Spade , 40 Great Jones Street, New York City. Visit link: Alexandra Marvar: Miranda July on Her New Book, Her Dilatory Cooking Habit
Jury In Conrad Murray Trial Ends First Day Of Deliberations Without Reaching Verdict
LOS ANGELES — Jurors considering the case against Michael Jackson’s doctor ended their first day of deliberations Friday without reaching a verdict or asking any questions indicating how far along they have gotten in their discussions. The seven-man, five-woman panel was given highlighters and blank forms to request evidence after starting deliberations around 8:30 a.m. They recessed around 4 p.m. and were set to resume discussions Monday. The jury must reach a unanimous verdict to either convict or acquit Dr. Conrad Murray of involuntary manslaughter in Jackson’s June 2009 death. Jackson died from a fatal dose of the anesthetic propofol; Murray has acknowledged giving Jackson propofol to help him sleep. The jury is not sequestered and will deliberate during the court’s regular hours. A verdict will be read the same day it is reached. During closing arguments of the six-week trial, attorneys for the Houston-based cardiologist attacked prosecutors and their witnesses, saying they had over time developed stories and theories that placed the blame for Jackson’s death squarely on Murray. Prosecutors countered that Murray was an opportunistic and inept doctor who left Jackson’s three children without a father. They said that Murray giving Jackson propofol as a sleep aid violated standards of care and amounted to a secret experiment in which the doctor kept no records. Media were stationed Friday outside the courthouse and in the courtroom where the jury’s decision will eventually be read. Attorneys handling the case will receive a two-hour notice when a verdict is reached. Murray waived the need for his presence if the panel asks any questions, but he must be present when a verdict is announced. Jurors heard from 49 witnesses and have more than 300 pieces of evidence to consider. They were given lengthy instructions by the judge about how to deliberate. If Murray is convicted, he faces a sentence ranging from probation to four years behind bars, and he would lose his medical license. The sentence will be decided by Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor after receiving input from attorneys for both sides and probation officials, if necessary. A recent change in California law means that Murray, 58, might serve any possible incarceration in a county jail rather than a state prison. A prison term could be shortened by overcrowding. If acquitted, Murray could still be pursued by medical licensing authorities in the states of California, Nevada and Texas. ___ AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch contributed to this report. ___ McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP See the original post: Jury In Conrad Murray Trial Ends First Day Of Deliberations Without Reaching Verdict
Robert Ross: Friend of Health Reform, Friend of the Court
On Friday, October 28, in an action unanimously supported by our Board of Directors, The California Endowment filed an amicus curiae brief with the United States Supreme Court in support of the federal government’s request that the Court accept an appeal of a lower court decision invalidating a portion of the Affordable Care Act. While the new health reform law continues to endure all manner of political and legal attacks across the nation, it is our view that this new law offers the best pragmatic set of remedies to solve the crisis of our dysfunctional, too-expensive, and unfair health care system. Why is our foundation doing this? It is our view that the minimum coverage requirement — also referred to as the individual mandate — is central to making the Affordable Care Act work. It is clearly linked to commerce because uninsured Californians using expensive emergency rooms and hospitals for needed care drive up health care costs, and negatively impact our state’s business climate. Moreover, let us count the ways of why this new law is critical to our nation’s health and economic viability: It will provide an opportunity for most of America’s nearly 50 million uninsured citizens to access quality, affordable health care. It eliminates the decades-long discrimination and denial of coverage by health insurance companies against Americans who are sick or have a pre-existing health condition. It provides subsidies for hard-working Americans who cannot afford health care in today’s health insurance market. It provides small businesses with tax credits to support the purchase of health coverage for their employees. It begins the long-needed transformation of health care financing to be driven by quality, value, and results — and not by services rendered. It provides free preventive health services in a systematic approach — which many private health insurers have already begun to do in an effort to reduce the costs associated with expensive, avoidable care later on. It supports the entrepreneurial spirit of America, by strengthening the likelihood that self-employed Americans will be able to purchase affordable health coverage in an open insurance market. This new health law is worth fighting for, and we hope you agree. If you wish to read the foundation’s amicus brief, authored by preeminent attorney Kathleen M. Sullivan, click here . Originally posted here: Robert Ross: Friend of Health Reform, Friend of the Court