In Rolling Hills Estates, Million Dollar Homes Slide Down the Canyon (VIDEO)

Terrible.

At the Los Angeles Times, "In pricey Palos Verdes, the ocean view is great — until your house slides into a canyon."

One Dead After Driver Intentionally Plows Car Through Group of Teenagers at Westlake High School (VIDEO)

There's too much death. 

Day after day we're subsumed by "senseless" acts of violence. Damn. What next? Car control?

At the Los Angeles Times, "Driver intentionally hit Westlake High students, killing 1, after Walmart stabbing, authorities say."

The poor kid.

West Coast Cities Are Letting Drug Addicts Kill Themselves

At the Washington Examiner, "Liberals in the biggest cities on the West Coast have made it easier for drug addicts to die from overdoses based on the fallacy that letting drug addicts destroy their own lives is some form of compassion."

Huntington Park Police Shoot and Kill Black Double Amputee Wielding Knife (VIDEO)

The video is here.

At at the Los Angeles Times, "Video shows police fatally shooting double amputee who was holding knife," and "Video adds to questions about police shooting of a double amputee holding a knife."

Cousin of Patrice Cullors, Black Lives Matter Co-Founder, Dies from Cardiac Arrest After Being Tased by L.A.P.D. (VIDEO)

The spin from the Los Angeles Times: "LAPD’s repeated tasing of teacher who died appears excessive, experts say."

Right. Here's the full context:

LAPD released videos of their arrest of Keenan Anderson, a "cousin" of #BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors. He died hours after getting tased during an arrest on Jan. 3 while committing a felony hit & run & attempted car theft. He had cocaine in his system. https://t.co/9a1yBSj3FQ

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) January 13, 2023

Massive Sinkhole Opens Up in Chatsworth as Heavy Rains Pound the Southland (VIDEO)

The Los Angeles Times has continuing rain and flood reporting here, "Southern California faces another day of punishing rains: ‘We are definitely not out of the woods yet’."

And at CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

L.A.'s P-22 Has Been Put Down

The coolest cougar, the most obstreperous mountain lion to walk the hills of Los Angeles --- if not the only one to walk the hills of Los Angeles!

People are literally bawling over the death of this animal. 

At the Los Angeles Times, "P-22, L.A. celebrity mountain lion, euthanized due to severe injuries."

P-22 on the front page of today’s @latimes, in the photo that made him famous.

My obituary with @JamesQueallyLAT: https://t.co/Mg9ct3NeTL pic.twitter.com/Xt4i2pTppG

— Laura J. Nelson 🦅 (@laura_nelson) December 18, 2022

We are deeply saddened by the news of the passing of P-22, L.A.’s beloved mountain lion. We were just informed that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife made the difficult decision to euthanize him due to the serious injuries he suffered earlier in the week. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/2ZX7HYR0J7

— Natural History Museum of L.A. County (@NHMLA) December 17, 2022

We join our partners, friends, and community members here in Los Angeles, and around the world, in remembering mountain lion P-22: https://t.co/XOC1XCbico

Goodbye, P-22. Your scientific legacy will live on.

Photo by Steve Winter pic.twitter.com/4ZfISqgjF3

— Santa Monica Mtns (@SantaMonicaMtns) December 17, 2022

Amber Lee's Wednesday Forecast

Ms. Amber's very pregnant!

And boy, it's a scorcher today. 

At CBS 2 Los Angeles:

WATCH: Olga Ospina's Monday Forecast

San Diego's ABC News 10 has disabled YouTube embed, which is no fun. I love to see the beauties on the front page of the blog.

Here's the lovely Ms. Olga, for CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Coronavirus Subvariant Arrives in Los Angeles County

Oh gawd, here we go again. It's going to be a long winter. *Eye-roll.*

At the Los Angeles Times, "Coronavirus subvariant BA.2.75.2 appears in L.A. County. How worried should we be?"

I'm not worried. At all. 

The Origins of Erika Jayne's $800K Diamond Earrings — a Mystery

 At the Los Angeles Times, "Unraveling the mystery of Erika Jayne’s $800K diamond earrings — and Tom Girardi’s finances":

Not long after they started dating, Tom Girard presented cocktail waitress and aspiring actress Erika Chahoy with a pair of $800,000 diamond earrings.

“It was the first significant gift I had given her,” Girardi recalled years later to tax authorities.

The earrings set the tone for the private-jet-and-haute-couture lifestyle the pair would enjoy as a married couple.

Now, with the demise of the Girardis’ relationship and fortune, the jewelry has become a plot point in the quest to unravel the disgraced lawyer’s finances.

The trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of Girardi’s famed firm, Girardi Keese, has moved to seize a pair of diamond stud earrings, with plans to sell them to compensate cheated clients and other creditors. Erika Girardi at first agreed to relinquish them, but last month, her attorney announced that she was switching strategies and would battle for the baubles in court.

The earrings’ current location — a safe deposit box — is one of the only certain things about them. Neither the trustee nor Erika has described them in detail. There are no confirmed pictures of the jewelry, despite the star of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” having been a red-carpet regular who was photographed by paparazzi as she conducted her life in Los Angeles.

When Times reporters attempted to trace the gems’ provenance, they found a tangled web of contradictions that pointed to a deeper mystery.

By his own account, Tom Girardi loved showering his third, much-younger wife with expensive jewelry.

The diamond earrings he gave her around the time of their 2000 wedding, when he was 60 and she was 28, were part of a collection that grew to include rings, bracelets, watches and other jewelry with a total value he once estimated at $15 million.

The earrings and other pieces came from M.M. Jewelers, a small shop tucked in a warren of similar outfits in downtown L.A.’s jewelry district. As a lawyer for the store’s owners, the Menzilcian family, acknowledged, “The relationship goes back a long way.”

Minding the store on a recent morning, Ared “Mike” Menzilcian said his father, 85, had a decades-long relationship with the lawyer, 83. Menzilcian declined to provide specific information as to the cut or clarity of the diamonds in the earrings, but he said the two stones — one for each ear — were “near flawless,” adding, “They were extremely large.”

Erika Girardi possessed the earrings until at least 2007, when she embarked on a career, bankrolled by her husband, as pop singer “Erika Jayne,” according to court records...

Also, "Tom Girardi’s epic corruption exposes the secretive world of private judges."

George Gascón's Policies May Have Directly Led to the Murder of Two El Monte Police Officers (VIDEO)

Gascón's recall can't come soon enough.

At the Los Angles Times, "L.A. Dist. Atty. Gascón’s policy may have led to reduced prison time for man who killed El Monte officers":

The man who shot and killed two El Monte police officers Tuesday could have faced significantly more time in prison when he was last charged with a crime. But one of Dist. Atty. George Gascón’s most heavily criticized policies probably resulted in a lower sentence, according to documents reviewed by The Times.

Justin Flores, 35, who also died in Tuesday’s confrontation, was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm and methamphetamine when he was arrested by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in 2020.

Flores had been convicted of burglary in 2011. Burglaries are strike offenses, which make suspects charged with later crimes eligible for harsher sentences. Flores’ earlier conviction means he had one strike against him when he was charged in 2020.

But the prosecutor assigned to the case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Larry Holcomb, said he had to revoke the strike allegation after Gascón took office, according to a disposition report reviewed by The Times. That’s because the new D.A. had issued a “special directive” that barred prosecutors from filing strike allegations on his first day in office.

Gascón’s policy regarding strikes was later deemed illegal by a Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge, after the union representing rank-and-file prosecutors sued, seeking an injunction. In February 2021, Judge James Chalfant ruled Gascón’s policy violated California’s “three strikes” law, which requires prosecutors to file strike allegations whenever a defendant has a previous serious or violent felony conviction.

An appellate judge upheld Chalfant’s ruling earlier this year.

Flores pleaded no contest to being a felon in possession of a firearm in 2021, and prosecutors agreed to drop all other charges, records show.

Though the gun conviction alone could have sent him to prison for up to three years, by pleading no contest, Flores was instead sentenced to two years’ probation and 20 days in jail.

There is no guarantee Flores would have still been in jail Tuesday, when he shot and killed El Monte Police Cpl. Michael Paredes and Officer Joseph Santana as they responded to a reported stabbing at the Siesta Inn.

But the removal of the strike allegation certainly cost prosecutors leverage when negotiating a plea, according to criminal justice experts.

Laurie Levenson, a professor of criminal law at Loyola Law School, said the blanket policy to disregard strike allegations was always going to run into trouble.

“If you are going to implement a blanket policy, you are always in danger of having a Willie Horton moment,” she said, “where that decision applied to one case results in a horrible outcome.”

Horton was convicted of first-degree murder in Massachusetts and sentenced to life in prison without parole. He escaped while on a weekend furlough program in 1986, then brutally raped a woman and assaulted her boyfriend.

The Horton case was used in an infamous attack ad against then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was running for president in 1988 against George H.W. Bush.

Gascón has moved away from such blanket policies in recent months. Prosecutors can now request approval from a committee to either try juveniles as adults or pursue special circumstances allegations in murder cases, tactics Gascón had initially outlawed when he took office.

At least two such cases are now being reviewed by committees...

Still more.

 

'Broad Decline' in Enrollment at Nation's Public Schools

As I was saying at my previous entry, man it's amazing what change the pandemic has wrought.

More at the New York Times, "With Plunging Enrollment, a ‘Seismic Hit’ to Public Schools":

The pandemic has supercharged the decline in the nation’s public school system in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed. ORANGE COUNTY, Calif. — In New York City, the nation’s largest school district has lost some 50,000 students over the past two years. In Michigan, enrollment remains more than 50,000 below prepandemic levels from big cities to the rural Upper Peninsula.

In the suburbs of Orange County, Calif., where families have moved for generations to be part of the public school system, enrollment slid for the second consecutive year; statewide, more than a quarter-million public school students have dropped from California’s rolls since 2019.

And since school funding is tied to enrollment, cities that have lost many students — including Denver, Albuquerque and Oakland — are now considering combining classrooms, laying off teachers or shutting down entire schools.

All together, America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, according to a recently published national survey. State enrollment figures show no sign of a rebound to the previous national levels any time soon.

A broad decline was already underway in the nation’s public school system as rates of birth and immigration have fallen, particularly in cities. But the coronavirus crisis supercharged that drop in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed.

No overriding explanation has emerged yet for the widespread drop-off. But experts point to two potential causes: Some parents became so fed up with remote instruction or mask mandates that they started home-schooling their children or sending them to private or parochial schools that largely remained open during the pandemic. And other families were thrown into such turmoil by pandemic-related job losses, homelessness and school closures that their children simply dropped out.

A broad decline was already underway in the nation’s public school system as rates of birth and immigration have fallen, particularly in cities. But the coronavirus crisis supercharged that drop in ways that experts say will not easily be reversed.

No overriding explanation has emerged yet for the widespread drop-off. But experts point to two potential causes: Some parents became so fed up with remote instruction or mask mandates that they started home-schooling their children or sending them to private or parochial schools that largely remained open during the pandemic. And other families were thrown into such turmoil by pandemic-related job losses, homelessness and school closures that their children simply dropped out.

Now educators and school officials are confronting a potentially harsh future of lasting setbacks in learning, hardened inequities in education and smaller budgets accompanying smaller student populations.

“This has been a seismic hit to public education,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. “Student outcomes are low. Habits have been broken. School finances are really shaken. We shouldn’t think that this is going to be like a rubber band that bounces back to where it was before.”

There are roughly 50 million students in the United States public school system.

In large urban districts, the drop-off has been particularly acute. The Los Angeles Unified School District’s noncharter schools lost some 43,000 students over the past two school years. Enrollment in the Chicago schools has dropped by about 25,000 in that time frame.

But suburban and rural schools have not been immune.

In the suburbs of Kansas City, the school district of Olathe, Kan., lost more than 1,000 of its 33,000 or so students in 2020, as families relocated and shifted to private schools or home-schooling; only about half of them came back this school year.

In rural Woodbury County, Iowa, south of Sioux City, enrollment in the Westwood Community School District fell by more than 5 percent during the last two years, to 522 students from 552, in spite of a small influx from cities during the pandemic, the superintendent, Jay Lutt, said. Now, in addition to demographic trends that have long eroded the size of rural Iowa’s school populations, diminishing funding, the district is grappling with inflation as the price of fuel for school buses has soared, Mr. Lutt said.

In some states where schools eschewed remote instruction — Florida, for instance — enrollment has not only rebounded, but remains robust...

Ah, Florida. That oughta tell you something about what's going on. Public schools can work, but not so well in teachers' union-led blue states, like California.  

Still more.

Los Angeles Unified School District Bleeding Students Badly

It's amazing what a coronavirus pandemic can do to shake up nearly unchangeable public institutions. It's a big deal.

At the Los Angeles Times, "LAUSD expects enrollment to plummet by ‘alarming’ 30% in the next decade":

Enrollment in Los Angeles public schools is expected to plunge by nearly 30% over the next decade, leading to tough choices ahead about academic programs, campus closures, jobs and employee benefits — and forcing, over that time, a dramatic remake of the nation’s second-largest school system.

The predicted steep drop, which was outlined Tuesday in a presentation to the Board of Education, comes as school officials contemplate the future of Los Angeles Unified School District on several crucial fronts — including contract negotiations with the teachers union, which is seeking a 20% raise over the next two years.

District leaders also are trying to plan for the best use of historically high education funding that some experts warn is likely to be short-lived.

“There are a number of unsustainable trends,” said Supt. Alberto Carvalho, referring to declining enrollment and unstable funding. “The perfect storm is brewing.

“Los Angeles Unified is facing an alarming convergence and acceleration of enrollment decline and the expiration of one-time state and federal dollars, as well as ongoing and increasing financial liabilities.”

Carvalho warned the board that difficult conversations lie ahead and there is “not an easy path toward financial stability.”

Enrollment has been incrementally dropping in L.A. Unified since peaking at about 737,000 students 21 years ago. That long-ago overcrowding detracted from the quality and even quantity of education — as campuses operated year-round with students on staggered schedules that provided 17 fewer days of instruction per year and limited access to advanced classes.

The current enrollment is about 430,000 in kindergarten through 12th grade and is expected to fall about 3.6% a year to an estimated 309,000 nine years from now.

The pace of the decline has accelerated since the pandemic, a phenomenon officials struggle to explain. At the start of the pandemic, many families kept preschoolers and kindergarteners out of remote learning — preferring not to plant their children in front of computers for schooling. Yet the pace of decline has persisted even with the resumption of in-person classes.

Declines also are expected over the next nine years in L.A. County (19%) and the state (9%), according to data presented at Tuesday’s meeting.

Experts have offered no conclusive explanation, but factors include families moving to more affordable areas, the decline in birth rates, a drop in immigration and, until recently, the rapid growth of charter schools.

Problems related to the enrollment drop have already surfaced. A handful of campuses — despite their importance as community anchors — have closed or are projected to close. Or, the campuses have been offered to charter schools — which are not operated by the district and compete for students. Many charters are also facing enrollment challenges and some have shut down.

Having fewer students creates financial strains because state and federal funding is based primarily on enrollment. It’s difficult to reduce fixed costs related to buildings and operations as the funding base shrinks. Moreover, decreased funding makes it more challenging to manage pension costs shared by all school systems as well as separate lifetime retiree health benefits that L.A. Unified has provided to long-term employees.

In the coming years, under the current structure, there could be more L.A. Unified retirees and dependents receiving healthcare benefits than active employees, said Chief Financial Officer David Hart.

“That was never contemplated,” Hart said.

At the same time, the district has struggled this year with a shortage of qualified employees in teaching, nursing, counseling and other areas. To attract and retain such workers, it would help for the district to pay higher salaries — and to continue funding strong health benefits.

Having sufficient money to spend, it would seem, ought to be the least of the district’s challenges, given Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s announcement last week of the largest budget surplus in state history. The surplus is expected to balloon to $97.5-billion by next summer, an estimate that vastly exceeds previous projections and which is folded into a $300.6-billion budget. About 40% of the budget goes by law to grade schools and community colleges.

When including both state and federal sources, California would spend $22,850 per student in the upcoming academic year, an amount that seemed beyond any expectations not long ago...

Official's are "struggling" to explain what's happened. They know. They just can't say so publicly, as obviously more and more parents will see the light and hightail it out of there. 

Keep reading. 

Thirtieth Anniversary of the Los Angeles Riots (VIDEO)

I haven't been watching the news this week, but the Los Angeles Times published a front-page story yesterday, and it was weird. I was at Fresno State in May 1992, working at the Chevron station, pumping gas, not far from my dad's house. I'd be entering graduate school at U.C. Santa Barbara in the fall.

I remember being very distressed by what little news I was able to get at the time (mainly because of so much work and school, I had no time for it). I remember lots of people coming in and out of the gas station (located at one of the busiest intersections in Central Fresno) and nearly every night each and every person haunting the streets was shouting their commitments out loud, with white folks screaming the *n-word* at the black folks who were also out and about. 

It was scary being out there, even two hours away from L.A. 

Our social and political polarization is bad nowadays, but it ain't new, not by a long shot --- L.A. was a riot torn city decades before the officers' acquittal in the Rodney King trial (the Watts Riots come to mind). 

Now almost two years out from the murder of George Floyd --- and 2020's summer of riots --- it was a strange feeling being reminded of Los Angeles like that, seeing the newspaper at the AM/PM while out for gas, while my mind quickly raced with images of both Los Angeles and Minneapolis simultaneously. 

Sixty-four people were killed 1992, with at least $1 billion in property damage over a six-day period. 

Here's an hour-long NBC News video with graphic images, starting out with some random dude getting pulled out of his Ford Bronco, only to narrowly escape being stoned to death by rioters armed with slabs of bricks, broken curbstone, huge rocks, who knows what else. 

Here's another focusing on the "Rooftop Koreans," many of whom defended their businesses with handguns and rifles. 

More at ABC News 7 Los Angeles below.

And at the Los Angeles Times, "L.A. riots are remembered 30 years later with hope and pessimism."

Also, "Thirty years after it burned, Koreatown has transformed. But scars remain";

When the city started to burn, James An’s mother was driving her new BMW in South L.A.

An was 12 years old, but he knew the luxury car — and her Korean face — could make her a target. He called her car phone and urged her to “get the hell out.”

On the radio, he heard business owners pleading for police protection as their livelihoods vanished in front of their eyes.

On television, he saw much of Koreatown on fire, including an electronics store he loved, half a mile from his family’s Korean-Chinese restaurant.

His father soon left their Glendale house, gun in hand, to defend the restaurant. “Protect your family,” he told the boy.

“I remember thinking, what the hell am I going to do? I’m 12 years old,” An recalled. “How am I going to [respond], if people come to my house with guns?”

The restaurant was spared. But many of An’s favorite Koreatown haunts were in ruins: a CD warehouse, a Kinney shoe store, an ethnic grocery store with signs in English, Spanish, Korean and Japanese.

For 30 years, An has tried to understand what happened after the police officers who beat Rodney King were acquitted on April 29, 1992, setting off days of looting and destruction.

As president of the Korean American Federation of Los Angeles, he is in regular touch with politicians and community leaders of many backgrounds.

The days of armed Koreans on rooftops defending their businesses from rioters, with the LAPD nowhere in sight, sometimes seem a distant memory.

Black-Korean relations, once symbolized by the fatal shooting of Latasha Harlins by a Korean liquor store owner, have improved one interaction at a time, from the shopkeeper who smiles and offers warm greetings to leaders like An working to build cross-racial ties.

Latinos, who are 51% of Koreatown’s population, have successfully lobbied for a sign marking the “El Salvador Corridor.” They have teamed with Koreans on workers’ rights campaigns and school issues.

But An, 42, wonders what fissures still exist underneath.

“I haven’t been able to figure that out,” he said.

After the riots, called Saigu — 4/29 — in Korean, some business owners returned to South Korea, their immigrant dreams shattered. Others were unable to get government relief or insurance reimbursements. Some were too traumatized to keep working.

Yet, as the years passed, many Korean Americans rebuilt their businesses or started new ones. Wealthy South Koreans poured money into the neighborhood. Korean pop culture exploded globally.

At Hannam Supermarket on Olympic Boulevard, where Koreans with guns crouched behind cars in 1992, K-pop stars filmed a music video several years ago.

On the rooftop of California Market, where armed Koreans once patrolled, hipsters snack on spicy rice cakes and Korean corn dogs.

Korean Americans gradually built enough political clout to place all of Koreatown in a single city council district. A community that once felt abandoned by the police recently rallied to make sure that the LAPD’s Olympic station stayed open.

But 30 years later, everyone who experienced Saigu is scarred in some way, whether it is the unending grief of Jung Hui Lee, whose son was the only Korean American killed in the riots, or the questions still asked by a man who as a teenager saw the stores of fellow church members burned down.

“What did we do, or what did those church members do so wrong that caused this much retaliation?” said Joshua Song, 47, vice president of a company that helps businesses bridge the divide between Asia and North America. “If I try to rethink those events, there is still no resolution. Maybe that’s why it’s so traumatic.”

In some spots, the rebuilding began quickly. At 6th Street and Vermont Avenue, a strip mall that had gone up in flames was soon rising again.

Laura Park told the owner that she was interested in moving her Korean dress shop there...

Well, what did they do? For one thing, "A Korean-born merchant at the shop accused Latasha of stealing a bottle of orange juice. Latasha was shot in the back of the head, killing her instantly."

More, "Videotape Shows Teen Being Shot After Fight : Killing: Trial opens for Korean grocer who is accused in the slaying of a 15-year-old black girl at a South-Central store," and "25 years later, a vigil will honor a black teen killed over a bottle of orange juice."

There was a powder-keg waiting to explode, no doubt.  

Oh Brother, Here We Go: Los Angeles Coronavirus Cases Up 40 Percent in One Week

L.A. County kept its mask mandate in place longer than just about everywhere else in the state, and in fact, when the O.C. dropped its mandate, L.A. reimposed theirs (which was ridiculous; they wouldn't even sell me a book at the Burbank Barnes and Noble last summer, unless I masked up; so stupid).

And the City of Long Beach is also muthaf***ing strict, so my college keeps the indoor mask mandate right now. Oh brother. I can see yet another fall semester coming with all the students in face coverings. If you cannot see each others faces, it's much harder to learn. Everyone knows this. It's gotta be about power at this point, and that's shameful.

At LAT, "L.A. coronavirus cases up 40% in one week; hospitalizations rising, too":

Coronavirus cases in Los Angeles County rose by 40% over the past week and hospitalizations have started to creep up as well, underscoring how important it is for people to be up-to-date on their vaccines and boosters, as well as wear masks in indoor public settings, officials said.

Although neither the number of infections nor the patient census are setting off alarm bells just yet, the trendlines illustrate that the county is contending with reinvigorated coronavirus transmission. And for county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, who called the increase in cases “pretty significant,” they reinforce the importance of taking individual actions to thwart the spread.

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve all had to make choices about how to best protect ourselves and others from COVID-19,” she told reporters Thursday. “With cases on the rise, the potential for more contagious variants and lots of opportunities to be exposed, this is a great time to make a choice to get vaccinated or boosted and to wear a mask or respirator when you’re indoors and around others.”

Over the last week, L.A. County has reported an average of about 1,764 new coronavirus cases per day — up from 1,261 a week ago.

The latest number is double the 879 cases a day L.A. County was reporting in early April.

On a per capita basis, the county’s case rate has risen to 122 cases a week for every 100,000 residents. L.A. County’s case rate exceeded 100 over the weekend, meaning the nation’s most populous county is again experiencing a high rate of transmission for the first time since early March.

Perhaps more concerningly, the number of coronavirus-positive patients hospitalized countywide has also risen this week following months of steady decline.

On Wednesday, 249 such individuals were hospitalized countywide. Five days earlier, on Friday, the count was 209: the lowest single-day total for the county since the pandemic began, state data show.

Since the emergence of the highly infectious Omicron variant of the coronavirus in December, officials have noted that many infections have tended to result in relatively mild illness — forging an environment where case counts were sky high, but the share of people being hospitalized with COVID-19 was lower than in the pandemic’s previous waves.

For instance, during the peak of the winter Omicron wave, 1.2% of coronavirus cases in L.A. County were hospitalized; by contrast, during last summer’s Delta wave, 5.6% of cases were hospitalized.

Nevertheless, the sheer infectivity of Omicron stretched some hospitals throughout the state to their limit. And in the months since the last surge subsided, new even-more-contagious subvariants of Omicron have emerged — including BA.2 and, more recently, BA.2.12.1.

BA.2 is the primary culprit behind the uptick in cases in L.A. County, accounting for at least 88% of cases here, officials say.

BA.2.12.1 has spawned similar increases elsewhere in the U.S., and accounts for a majority of coronavirus cases in New York and New Jersey. California officials have projected that BA.2.12.1 will also account for a majority of coronavirus cases in California within a few days, according to Ferrer.

BA.2.12.1 is estimated to be 25% more contagious than BA.2. “With that growth advantage, it could quickly become the dominant strain across the United States,” Ferrer said...

Barbara Ferrar, pfft. She's like a Soviet psychiatrist locking everyone up for "mental defects," i.e., wrong think. 

I guess the upside is that even in California people are over it and even lefty voters will be bringing the hammer when they hit the polls. I really can't wait until November.

Still more.

Black Flag Defined Punk of the 1980s

A book review, at the Los Angeles Times, "Review: The L.A. man behind the music that defined the 1980s."

I saw them play many times, though I didn't care much for Henry Rollins. 

Black Flag's co-founder and original lead vocalist, Keith Morris (of later Circle Jerks fame), was irreplaceable.

The band played Baces Hall in Los Angeles, October 24, 1980 (set list), and I was there with Gerry Hurtado (a.k.a., Skatemaster Tate), my best friend friend at the time. We got there late. The band was just starting to shred when I heard commotion and saw fans fleeing out the side doors of the club. Thank goodness there were side doors. I sorta didn't realize what was happening. But I saw a row of cops, with billy clubs and riot shields, pushing the crowd toward the front of the hall. 

It was proverbial pandemonium. I look over at Gerry and he was scared shitless. I'd never seen that look on him before, which was complete terror. I said, "Come on!" And we ran out the side, and luckily my car was just across the street. We get in and another car backs up into mine, bashing the front bumper, but we didn't care (I had a 1970 Volkswagen Bug, and their bumpers where pretty hard and durable.) After the little "fender bender" we scrammed. I have a very good recollection of it --- and this was 40 years ago. 

In any case, the books under review are, Glenn Friedman, What I See: The Black Flag Photographs of Glen E. Friedman, and Jim Ruland, Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise and Fall of SST Records.

From the review:

The June 29, 1980, edition of this paper spoiled Angelenos’ Sunday morning by dropping a dire warning on their doorsteps: The punks had arrived, and they were murderous.

Audiences at punk shows “mug each other,” Patrick Goldstein reported. “Accounts of reckless violence, vandalism and even mutilation at some area rock clubs read like reports from a war zone.”

At the center of this alleged chaos was the band Black Flag, whose shows had become a magnet for police crackdowns since its formation in Hermosa Beach in 1979. They brought some of that scrutiny onto themselves: Founder and guitarist Greg Ginn finagled a slot at a family-friendly festival at Manhattan Beach by saying they were a Fleetwood Mac cover band, then delivered a typically loud, profane set. But the media’s pearl-clutching was disproportionate to the danger. Ginn wasn’t trying to sow anarchy, just locate the spaces that wouldn’t reject punk outright.

In “What I See,” his lively, lavishly assembled collection of Black Flag photos, Glen E. Friedman recalls the violence as wholly on the police side of the ledger. Promoters called in the LAPD, scared by “overwhelming crowds that were showing up that often looked threatening to them.” The band goaded the cops with songs such as “Police Story,” and its fury is palpable throughout the book — even rehearsals look like barnburners. But the response — SWAT teams, billy clubs, helicopters — was absurdly disproportionate. “Corporate Rock Sucks,” Jim Ruland’s well researched history of Ginn and the label he founded, SST Records, puts some context around the absurdity. And it’s a thrilling story in the early going, the tale of a culture being stubbornly constructed from the ground up. In its 1980s heyday, SST released at least a dozen canonical rock albums that were notable for their rejection of convention. Black Flag’s piercing hardcore and Sabbathy sludge shared little with the Minutemen’s springy, spiky punk-jazz fusion, the Meat Puppets’ Dead-like excursions or Hüsker Dü’s blend of pop savvy and stun guitar. But together, they made SST the decade’s preeminent indie label. As Ruland writes: “Ginn was interested in punk rock as a concept — a creative call to arms — not as a specific style of music.”

In that regard, it’s a little disappointing that Ruland — a fiction writer who’s also co-authored two earlier books on Southern California punk — generally sticks to label history and doesn’t make a stronger argument on his subject’s behalf. SST’s accomplishment wasn’t just signing a host of enduring bands; it became the wellspring and prime mover for much of Gen X culture and the indie rock that followed. Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins exemplified a generation’s sour, antiestablishment, heavily ironic posture. The second side of its 1984 album, “My War,” was a grunge touchstone. Hüsker Dü and Sonic Youth gave the ‘90s alt-rock explosion its melodic textbook. Negativland set a template for anticorporate pranking and culture jamming. The touring paths that indie bands across the country took — and still take — were largely developed at SST’s Torrance offices. Its ads and review copies fueled a generation of zines and their writers.

So much of this sprang from Ginn — or more precisely, from his resentment of authority and institutions. Beyond the police bullying and hyperbolic media attention, Black Flag’s recording career was stalled by an extended legal squabble with MCA Records after an exec dubbed 1981’s “Damaged” an “antiparent record.” (The band made that into a literal badge of honor, slapping stickers with the quote on copies of the LP.) Ruland’s chapter titles are framed as confrontations led by the label — “SST vs. the Media,” “SST vs. Hardcore” — but the battles were often Ginn’s.

Still, Ginn wasn’t anybody’s idea of the leader of a cultural movement. He grew up obsessed with ham radio and other engineering-geek phenomena. (SST was originally a small electronics outfit, short for “solid-state transmitters.”) He spoke little as a musician or label chief — and not at all to Ruland, who was told, “I retired from interviews a long time ago.” In “What I See,” Ginn is usually dressed as if he’d just come off a shift assistant managing a Kroger’s.

What made Ginn, Black Flag and SST so distressing to outsiders was partly a matter of aesthetics. Cover art and show flyers designed by Ginn’s brother, Raymond Pettibon, featured feverish, provocative imagery obsessed with sex and death. It was also a matter of timing. The soporific Reagan era made the music and lyrics SST trafficked in seem an active threat. The infamous 1982 punk-rock episode of “Quincy, M.E.,” plainly inspired by news coverage of Black Flag from The Times and elsewhere, was so determined to depict the scene as violent and nihilistic that Jack Klugman’s no-nonsense Quincy took the remarkable step of defending the ‘60s counterculture to make punk seem all the worse.

SST’s contempt for law-and-order conservatism didn’t exactly make them what we’d consider progressive today. Women and people of color were scarce; Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler curtailed her recovery from a hand injury for fear of being booted from the band, leading to permanent damage. Songs like Black Flag’s “Slip It In” were overtly misogynistic. Cover art and SST letterhead flirted with Nazi rhetoric. Bad Brains frontman H.R. was known for homophobic outbursts. The label came grotesquely close to releasing a Charles Manson album...

I still have a few of the Raymond Pettibon concert flyers, packed away somewhere.

A great moment in rock and roll history. An iconic band for the ages.

Arizona State's Power Play for California's College Students

A very interesting piece, at the Los Angeles Times, "UC and CSU deliver thousands of rejection letters. Arizona State wants to fill the void":

Kiana Tovar was all set to attend Sacramento State. Kara Smith had firm plans: enroll at Santa Monica College, then apply to transfer to UCLA. Israel Cortave had been accepted to UC Merced and UC Riverside, which both offer the computer science and engineering majors he wants to explore.

All three students are now attending college in California, mixing state-of-the-art online classes with small in-person gatherings. They’ve been able to forge friendships, stay on track with “success coaches” and learn about career opportunities from industry professionals. But the name inscribed at the entrance of the university they decided to attend is not a California public institution.

It’s ASU — Arizona State University. And its newest campus is in Los Angeles.

After years of steadily targeting California, the No. 1 source of ASU’s out-of-state students, the university has planted its first flag in the heart of downtown with a high-profile, multimillion-dollar takeover of the landmark Herald Examiner Building. The upstart program is too tiny to measure now. But California public university leaders have taken note — and are watching whether ASU President Michael Crow’s alternative vision for higher education will be a trendsetting incubator launched in Los Angeles or a failed incursion into a neighboring state.

Crow sees California gold in the tens of thousands of students each year who are delivered rejection letters from the University of California’s and California State University’s most popular campuses — the annual heartbreak happening now. He gives both systems due respect, but says they’re stuck in old models of enrollment tied to availability of physical space and are failing to embrace technology to deliver education. And UC campuses have responded to surging demand mostly by becoming more selective, rather than more inclusive.

“They’ve bought into the logic of exclusion as a part of the measure of success,” Crow said of UC. “I don’t think a public university can do that. Our mission as a public university is to serve the public wherever they are and whatever they need.”

At UCLA — the most sought-after university in the nation — the average GPA of admitted first-year students last year rose to 4.5 and its admission rate dropped to 10%. In 1990, UCLA’s admission rate was 43%.

Crow lays out a different vision at ASU: broad access over selectivity, with an 88.2% admission rate for first-year students entering in fall 2021 and guaranteed acceptance to those with a minimum 3.0 GPA and completion of required college prep courses. ASU has vastly expanded its capacity to become one of the nation’s largest universities today — doubling its total enrollment in the last dozen years to 136,000 in fall 2021. The biggest growth has come in online enrollment, which now accounts for 43% of ASU students, with a growing share at several satellite sites outside the main Tempe campus in Phoenix, Mesa, Lake Havasu and elsewhere.

Californians made up 14% of ASU’s total enrollment of 129,000 in fall 2020 — two-thirds of them enrolled in online programs. They represented more than 10% of the 14,350 first-year, on-campus students in Arizona in fall 2021 — a record — and nearly one-third of those from out-of-state. Overall, that first-year class grew 12% over fall 2020, as ASU bucked national trends of declining enrollment at community colleges and some Cal State campuses.

UC officials say they don’t see ASU’s latest entry into the state as a competitive threat as much as an opportunity to learn. UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ says she regards Crow as “one of the most interesting thinkers in higher education today” and last year invited him to address her top advisors to spark ideas about how to expand capacity, which she views as one of the university’s most pressing needs.

In a recent interview, Christ lamented a 2013 study by two UC researchers that found that California enrolled a lower proportion of its college students at four-year campuses than any other state.

ASU has used online instruction, technology tools and satellite campuses to increase enrollment, all measures Christ is considering for Berkeley. The UC system is vowing to add at least 20,000 more students by 2030.

Christ describes Crow as “not being so much of a gatekeeper in selective admissions, but really trying to find ways of serving more students. The time has come for some very creative rethinking” at UC.

Cal State leaders, however, are acutely aware of Crow’s moves and wonder what they will mean for their own enrollment — which declined systemwide by 13,000 students last year — since the two universities draw applicants from similar academic profiles versus the more selective UC.

Cal State isn’t so concerned that ASU will siphon off students who want a full college experience — one leader called the ASU Los Angeles center a “stripped down version of a college education” without sports, clubs and other popular on-campus attractions. San Diego State, for instance, drew a record 77,000 first-year applicants for about 5,500 seats for fall 2022 — and those students want an on-campus, residential experience, said Stefan Hyman, associate vice president for enrollment management.

UC Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley recently told fellow board members that UC needed to up its game in expanding online learning and access to nontraditional students because “we have our friends at Arizona State University chomping at the bit to take California students.” Oakley later told The Times that he doesn’t “begrudge” ASU for targeting Californians.

“But I also think it’s a lost opportunity for our own institutions because these are California students that are ready and willing to get into higher education and we’re just not providing them enough access,” said Oakley, chancellor of the 116-campus California Community Colleges system...

Still more.

Record-Breaking Heat in Southern California (VIDEO)

It was 100 in Irvine today. 

I stayed in, lol.

At the Los Angeles Times, "100-degree temps on tap as heat wave comes to SoCal":

The punishing heat wave in Southern California will deliver triple-digit temperatures, elevate fire danger and increase the chance of heat-related illnesses Thursday and Friday, officials said.

A heat advisory in the Los Angeles area is in effect until 6 p.m. Friday for the coastal plains and valleys, the Santa Clarita Valley and the Santa Monica Mountains. Temperatures could soar at least 15 to 20 degrees above normal, reaching 100 degrees or higher in some areas.

Burbank, for example, is expected to climb to 100 degrees Thursday and Friday, according to Kristen Stewart, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. A normal high temperature for the area this week would be about 72 degrees.

Stewart said several temperature records may be broken Thursday and Friday in areas such as Long Beach, Burbank, downtown Los Angeles and LAX.

Anaheim on Wednesday broke its temperature record for the day at 96 degrees — 5 degrees higher than the previous April 6 record set in 2005, the weather service said.

A heat advisory is also in effect until 6 p.m. Friday across large swaths of San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange and San Diego counties, where similar conditions are expected.

Officials said heat-related illnesses are possible among the elderly, infants, outdoor workers and the homeless population, as well as those participating in outdoor activities. Residents should take extra precautions, seek shade and air conditioning and stay hydrated. Children and pets should never be left in cars...

Still more.

 

New Tony Hawk Documentary on HBO: 'Until the Wheels Fall Off' (VIDEO)

I watched this last night, "Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off (Official Trailer)."

Awesome documentary. 

Brought back so many memories. I was there at most (if not all) the skateparks and contests in the first third of the film. I skated with Tony Hawk many times. Not like friends. Just all the guys skating the same contest, same pool, practicing at the same time. He was just a kid, literally 10-years-old.

I'm a professor now, and I tell people, for a time I used the be the top amateur contest skater in SoCal (and then briefly pro) in the early 1980s. I say to folks, 'Oh, I used to skate with Tony Hawk," etc. I don't think folks realize the significance of that. They might've heard of him or played the old PlayStation Tony Hawk video games, but to know the real guy, and back then, to have no idea he'd go on to be the world's most important skateboarding icon of all time. Sheesh, who'da thunk it?!!

At the screenshot, the standings from early 1981. 

You can see at top "Tony Hawk --- 12 and Under." My name is further down below. I was a first in the rankings in "Unsponsored Open." (17 and over; zoom in.)  About 17-years-old at the time, I used to go by my middle name Kent.  

Source: Thrasher Magazine, 1981, Volume 1:3:

That's me at the Upland Pipeline Skate ASPO Contest, about 1982, taking first place in the pool event. The move is a "layback." I'd never done one it that pool. It was twelve feet deep with straight vertical walls. Completely intimidating. Totally scary. But I wanted to win, and just went for it. What a memory. I was just a kid myself.