Dialogues on LA Noir: Ashes to Ashes featuring The Fabulous Dadbots

Attribution: Pacific Southwest Forest Service, USDA from USA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Featuring the Fabulous Dadbots: Mark M., Dave S., Mark O., Dennis C., and Geoff Carter

What do the ‘bots think about Hotel California blazing away? Let’s be honest. Human casualty has been minimal. I reckon, in terms of the ratio of $$$$ to number dead it is out of category. Where are the guerilla journalists—modern day Hunters?, Jack Ks.?…—to jump on this and say some really stupid, but Bernie-AOC galvanizing pro commie bullshit? Surprised I haven’t seen any iconoclastic blasts. So Obvious (as Mickey Rourke once said in Barfly).

I spent a lot of time in LA the last 5 years. Thought I’d hate it, found out I adored it. But mostly before 10 am—when “all hell breaks loose—i.e. traffic…people everywhere. LA is blue collar, SF is…well can’t say white collar…and now…shit we need a new term for these new moguls….what Musk and the other tech boys wear…flyer jacket collar?…luau shirt collar?…lulu lemon collar?….shirts that breathe? SF is much more monied—save for the Tenderloin—than LA. Both Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein, RIP, are mega millionaires.

Seriously: How many signs will it take before the crisis of climate change sinks in? Wall Street should be worrying and acting more about that than NVIDIA.. Safe to say most bots would agree that winters just ain’t like they used to be. And many moved north for an honest winter—Hayward, Ironwood, Minocqua. Well… the last two years have proven ‘the north’ is no refuge. I never thought I’d see no snow to ski on in Iron County—Lake effect snow in the UP, as in Buffalo is a given—but here we stand. This is the 2^nd year in a row a number of xc ski races have been cancelled. I know that’s a shoulder shrug compared to Hurricanes and Fires, but to the climate change scientist it is yet another significant data point.

–D

My wife, Jean, visited our niece in LA in June 2023. She was prepared to hate LA but also really liked it. Jean liked the neighborhood, and was favorably impressed by the traffic situation. She liked being in the shadow of the mountains. So I guess she’s with you, Dave. Niece Emily and BF lived in Altadena, which has become famous for the devastation visited upon it by the Eaton fire. Late last year they moved a mile away, to North Pasadena. It’s a virtual certainty that their old rental house is in ashes. Even their current neighborhood is in an evacuation zone.

It would appear that the mayor of LA will be unemployed after the next election. Jetting off to Ghana when there are Santa Ana winds forecast is managerial malpractice, even though the practical effect was probably nil. It’s not as if she personally mans the fire hoses, for chrissakes. But being there is a big part of the mayor’s job. Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee from the late aughts to 2021, was really a paternal figure. Milwaukee’s dad, in effect. It was a good part of his appeal. He’d show up at fire scenes and crime scenes just to show he cared.

The level of disinformation being spewed is mind boggling. The inimitable Alex Jones put out a video asserting that the fires are part of a “globalist plot” to destroy the US. Our co-president Elon Musk retweeted that with the comment “True!” (Latest report is that that retweet has been deleted.) Mel Gibson is questioning whether people were “commissioned” to start the fires. (Hey, he’s just “asking questions”!)

Here’s Laura Ingraham: “There’s already talk—and we played a couple of sound bites—of reimagining the way rebuilding occurs, and obviously there’s a great need for high-density housing in California and across the country, that’s a big push by the climate folks, and you’re already hearing rumblings of that in this case. Like, goodbye single-family homes, hello high-density housing.”

LAFD supplies? Unavailable. They were sent to Ukraine. (Yes, but it was surplus stuff sitting in storage.

Of course, the worst offender–because he has the biggest megaphone–is Donald Trump. According to him, Gavin Newson refused to sign the “water restoration declaration” (no such document exists). Efforts to preserve the “worthless” delta smelt kept LA from getting water. Totally untrue. LA doesn’t get water from Northern California. And there was, thanks to Joe Biden, no money for FEMA. Except, of course, the $27 billion that was appropriate on a bipartisan basis after Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Of course, there have always been conspiracies and disinformation. Wasn’t it Ben Franklin who said that a lie travels around the world in the time that it takes for the truth to put on its pants? (Correction. That is disinformation. AI tells me that it was Mark Twain and shoes.) But in today’s fractured media environment, there’s no trusted source that can bat down the lies, especially when the President-elect delivers them. I’ve seen the rightwing trolls on the Oak Creek Facebook thread repeating his stuff verbatim. He is definitely having an impact.

I’m not sure how the powers of truth and justice can combat the online propagation of total bullshit. The online platforms have completely given up moderating content (Musk is the worst offender on all of X, and Mark Zuckerberg just ran up the white flag at Meta.) The large media institutions are pretty much running on fumes, with the exception of the NY Times.

OK, enough hand wringing on the state of the media. I have one more observation. Actually, I am just asking a question. How are we going to clear out the hazardous waste from LA neighborhoods, and rebuild thousands of homes up to earthquake code–without undocumented construction laborers?

-Mark M.

Well…that was good. Very good. Thanks for debunking some of the high proof BS from our felon in chief.

I caught a bit of Mel Gibson’s adolescent musings. What a dick, but he’s proven that prior. Still…isn’t there a “…hey, I’m an adult” alarm that goes off before you make a complete fool of yourself?

Tidbit: My daughter Gina lived in Altadena for a year…we hiked the Eaton Canyon where the kindling started. Times had a tech assisted (Universities and Oak Ridge), satellite map of the houses crisped…and yup, the place she lived in is gone. Odd though, a number of homes north of her digs were spared. Her home, part of a mini ‘compound’ owned by an ex-NHLer, (the Kings) entrepreneur, was not so lucky.

My wife reads The Guardian. It enjoyed a “Trump bump” in terms of funding.

Ending on a high note,

-d.

My first experience with L.A. was a road trip during undergrad days. Stayed around Santa Monica with a couple buddies. I hated it. Flat, sterile, with commercial development in every direction seemingly extending to infinity. Got a hyper-materialistic and superficial vibe from it. I was into Frank Zappa at the time and I thought, “this is the L.A. hellscape he was writing about, I get it”.

I later spent a vacation in Orange County with my young family but I’ll concede the point that O.C. is not L.A. and move on.

Second and last visit was a business trip to the Pasadena/Monrovia area, near Altadena. Seemed like an idyllic suburban area, other than being 105º in the shade the whole time. Shame all the damage to the area but not too surprising.

I have no idea what will get rebuilt out there and how. I suspect much won’t get rebuilt because of an inability to insure it against the next disaster. I’m sure many who can afford to will abandon CA for parts east (NV, AZ, UT, MT). Some Mel Gibson types may even relocate to, gasp, Texas!

Just finished an exhaustive history of L.A. by Mike Davis, “City of Quartz”. A product of deep, deep research, it is very interesting if not a light read. His prose can be pretty dense and pretentious but not enough to keep me from ploughing through to the end.

MarkO

I might check out City of Quartz. Thanks. It was eye opening to see Compton and the convergence—by ad hoc planning or the nefarious industrial-military complex—of the intermodal hubs (Long Beach tankers feeding semi’s and trains. Oil terminals and flat roof buildings named XYZ Logistics flood the google satellite view. Compton sits at the northern tip and said convergence results in concentration of all sorts of bad engine exhaust/low air quality. Which is why environmental justice is valid campaign fodder..

The funny thing about CA in general is that us wide eyed Midwesterners look out the car window: it’s sunny, pleasant, palm trees everywhere and conclude even Compton looks gorgeous.

OC. Yeah, neat as a pin, John Wayne Airport, manicured corporate center lawns (still sprinklered! ), lawns, plenty of high end retail. Sterile. Just like the ‘burbs north of “9 mile” in DTW (Rochester Hills), the WOW counties around Milwaukee (Mequon)…you name it US big city.

-d.

How does one start an email stating “you may not be interested in this?”

Well…like that. LA in the 1930s, remastered, colorized. Am I the only one that envisions history in b & w? That’s one thing I liked. Also, just how silo’d the street traffic was—so disciplined. The buses are mammoth, their bells incessant, tribal, (real bells methinks…was there a “conductor” pulling a rope?). And electric—behold the pantograph! We stepped backward from that with filthy diesel buses for nearly a century….just now going back to electric—via battery, not the pantograph and all its overhead infra. Calling the street lamps ornate is an understatement. The hustle and bustle was same then as it is now—surprised me. That’s it.

Here it is…6 minutes, skim…(or don’t even click on), as you wish.

Remarkable footage of bustling downtown Los Angeles in the 1930s – Boing Boing

–D

Hey,

I think I saw Jack Nicholson with a bandage on his nose!

–MM

Love that! Love the remastered street scene video too. I’ve watched a similar video of NYC street scenes circa 1910 which is also very cool. There are still horse drawn wagons and carriages in that one which results in a totally different soundscape. I know the audio is simulated but a fellow can still enjoy a suspension of disbelief, can’t he?

A Glimpse of New York 1910 in color [60fps, Remastered] w/sound design added

1930’s LA must have been quite the thing, spawning a whole popular art form, noir. Noir films and books have been cranked out ever since. Maybe our resident film critic can give his review of the latest one on my list to see, Nightmare Alley with Bradley Cooper. Worth two hours of our time? The California dream had already taken a beating by the 1930’s, with disillusion with the corruption and poverty creating an eternal landscape for cynical musings of all those hard scrabble P.I.s, cops, dames….

MarkO

Watched all of the NY (loved it), takes:

Had to wonder if the sightseeing outfit “Seeing NY” funded it. Prevalent often in the first bit.
Hats! OMG hats. 95, make that 99% had ‘em. I know we all lose 90% of our heat through our heads…but these were not winter scenes. A lot of those low topped “boater” straw hats…yet so many styles represented…you could see the class structures.
And sport coats.
Who knew city carnivals were in in ’10?…the bouncing bridge!
Pretty sure the pitch of the train/trolley car bells was, same as, the ones in LA 20 years later.

-d.

Hello bots,

Yeah, where do we begin? I’ve never been to LA but have spent some time in San Francisco, so other than my vicarious literary excursions via Raymond Chandler (whose decadent 40s version of the city really resonates—even for somebody who hasn’t been there) and Harper, a Paul Newman private eye movie, I have no personal experience of the place. The hats in the video kill me, too. Look at pictures of the stands at MLB games in the fifties. Every guy in the stands is wearing a suit and tie—and a hat. Now people go to Broadway shows in their fucking pajamas. Hey—get those damned kids off my lawn!!

I was browsing an interesting piece in The New Yorker (I think) that was expounding on the idea that business will be the engine that reforms climate change. According to the New York Times article, Business and Green Energy , oil companies had begun to embrace renewable energies because they were losing so much during the pandemic. I guess things are changing back now, but insurance companies are going to go under unless they get a handle on these natural disasters. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them taking a stronger initiative, which kind of reminds me of the controversial Cheerios ad which featured a mixed family. It was controversial then; now you see mixed couples, same-sex couples, blended families everywhere. This was a reform driven by the ad industry (I’m not sure why, but I’ll take it.)

After the inauguration today—which I couldn’t make myself watch—and reflecting on the Democrats’ complete inability to connect with college kids, African Americans, Latinos, and women, I’m really wondering if we do need a revolution in our politics. If it’s not too late. A major third party? An actual party of and for the people—maybe with one-term limits and mandatory retirement at sixty-five and restrictions on stock-trading and compromising business dealings. Ach, well. Call me a dreamer.

Lotsa good shit in there Geoff.

Film noir. I’ve pasted the formal definition below…can’t say I thought of it as pessimism, fatalism nor menace. For me it just meant “out there” non-traditional, innovative, challenging the viewer, etc… David Lynch’s passing (and your Raymond Chandler reference) bring it to mind. Lynch, (Tarantino, Ritchie, Rodriguez…) all merely elevated the art of slo motion voyeurism while making psychopath movies. I watch them all…but they get placed on too high a perch…making the world worse, not better, imo.
Not going to call you a dreamer…lest you get deported.
Independent 3^rd party? Not a bad thought, thoug flawed. Hope you’re sitting down for this. I’m doubting even ‘bot intelligentsia has a handle on current events. “What the hell’s going on out there?” (Vince). Populism all over the globe, border control elevated by ao… dunno… he won’t become a Hitler, (as many warn), but his toxic paranoia may last longer. Minorities, (ebbing toward majority in time), now on board the lifeboat–with little empathy for those flailing in the water–aren’t going to suddenly develop a conscience and vote for AOC. I recall reading the WWI Treaty of Versailles was too hard on Germany—made life miserable for the average German–(they had lost a brutal world war, lots of dead/amputated family members…economy in tatters…etc. …), per that historian. The “we got screwed” mentality is one of the things Hitler tapped into. I probably put too much credo on that—but one can’t control what one remembers, ay. Assume it holds water for now. Mind boggling how ao was able to create a similar chip…I mean things are not all that horrific here…quite the contrary, IMSHO (in most sane human’s opinions).
Depressing to read all the “keep your chin up” notes in XMAS cards from friends…don’t give up…do what you can…find peace even in the storm…(who knew Van Gogh said that?). I sense their sigh… their dour tone…overwhelms their measly upbeat words. No one wants to be accused of sitting around and moping. Right? Wait…I have my rights. 😎
The only hope for the dems in 2028 is that:
a. Things get awful the next (4) years and/or

b. The election is pure showmanship and the left puts up a better lead. Will we see a female potus in our tenure? Other countries have done it…just have to find the right golden globe winner. At this point I’d have to guess some clown from tech will be #48.