This Week: Long Beach’s race problem, Chernobyl CityPlace and Your Ad Here A$K How!

Tues | APR 15 It begins.

Wed | APR 16 Idiocracy comes alive as President Bush salutes the second-ever papal visit to the White House—the first being to deliver John Kennedy strict instructions for his first term—by sliding over to the mic and saying, “Thank you, your Holiness. Awesome speech.” A kegstand reception for church officials follows. In unrelated news, Cham E. Dallas, director for the Institute for Health Management and Mass Destruction Defense at the University of Georgia—which I can only hope is hiring—tells the Washington Post that it’s “inevitable” that D.C. gets nuked within the next 20 years, give or take a McCain presidency. “People are going to be on their own,” Dallas cautions, even as Homeland Security officials detail an emergency text-messaging/MySpace comment/click-here-to-win-a-free-iPod-nano-if-you-have-not-been-nuked! alert system, adding that “there’s no white horse to ride to the rescue.” In fact, if survivors can even find a white horse to eat while waiting for FEMA chopper pilots to roll out of bed, they will have to consider themselves fortunate. “So weak,” said Bush.

Thurs | APR 17 Villa Riviera abruptly pulls down its illegally colossal banner—the one advertising Patrón Tequila all the way out to ships just breaking the western horizon—when the city demands the proper permits for such a crime against taste. At press time, no information was available regarding whether monies received from Patrón—a sweaty wad of hundreds last seen tucked deeply into the Villa’s heaving cleavage—would be returned or if they were perhaps somehow lost en route to the Villa’s special Norma Talmadge Grand Prix Wet T-Shirt Jubilee. In unrelated news, the Long Beach Museum of Art declines to receive any money from the proposed Blight-Lights-Big-City digital billboards, possibly because that’s an extraordinarily crass way to make money even if it would fund something beautiful. In further unrelated news YOUR AD HERE A$$$K ME HOW!!!

Fri | APR 18 Team Lowenthal proposes a one-year moratorium on check-cashing businesses in downtown Long Beach, where nothing is actually better than something (but not as good as a mixed-use artist’s live/work loft). This presents Pine Avenue’s ghost-town commercial strip—so hostile to human life that it’s the sister shopping-district to Chernobyl CityPlace—in a much more positive light, something Suja Lowenthal hinted at last month when she told an East Village Joint Meeting that empty retail space should be viewed as an opportunity, which is probably why Long Beach is building a lot more of it.

Sat | APR 19 Long Beach grapples with its race problem as Pennywise fans and/or irritable drunks attracted to loud noise—the core Pennywise audience—stage a quiet riot at Long Beach Boulevard and Ocean while Control Z enjoys some buttery crepes at La Muse, which is how we used to riot in May ’68. LBPD tase one bro and arrest four for crimes against taste. Spirits will be restored tomorrow as Will Power defeats Pussy Galore and Clutch Cargo to win the Long Beach Grand Prix, and tens of thousands of others enjoy some nice marijuana. In other news: crowds enjoy a race-day demo of three driverless robot cars, let loose to negotiate a parkingless downtown on their way to a joyless afternoon along shopless Pine Avenue. The cars’ inventors were satisfied with the performance but hope to reach even purer levels of pointlessness before entering mass production, and then asked if there was anywhere they could go cash a check.

Sun | APR 20 The soylent keeps looking greener as the New York Sun reports on rice shortages at California big-box stores, quoting one “high-tech professional” who said, “I am not speculating on rice to make profit. I am just hoarding some for my own consumption.” (He then fired a shotgun out his Prius sunroof to spook circling vultures.) And a just-released study by the Migration Policy Institute—titled America: Fun While it Lasted—finds almost half of Los Angeles’ entire workforce are immigrants (“many of whom are unskilled and speak little English,” adds a particularly understanding UPI report) who will be unable to replace the jobs about to go vacant as the baby-boom generation retires into one final orgasm of resource depletion. Officials were troubled to learn that a 21st Century city is so reliant on imported unskilled labor, but reassured residents that the pyramids would still be completed on schedule.

Mon | APR 21 The sale of Acres of Books is approved today, paving the way for a project that will pave over the entire Acres block for ample empty retail opportunities. “LOL that sux,” Bush texts America.

Tags: acres of books, grand prix, Long Beach, pennywise, race problem, resource depletion