This Week: The Funniest Thing Ever, Pride and Voodoo Dolls

“Control Z is one of the sharpest, funniest columns in alternative journalism. Consistently funnier than anything else, ever.”
The Ghost of Robert Frost on CONTROL Z

“I’m David, the wannabe lesbian in this article, and I want to state that I am going to Long Beach Pride. I’ve always loved LB Pride and and Long Beach.”
David on QUEER, AS FOLKS

“That takes it into scumbag territory.”
Nancy on SLEUTH TO PSYCHO

“You got me! A phony hypocrite, man feels good to get that off my chest, thanks.”
LBRez on COUNCIL’S BAD JUDGEMENT…

“I’ve got a new pair of Vise-Grips and my neighbor’s knitting me a headline-writer voodoo doll.”
Sam Lowry SLEUTH TO PSYCHO

Check out how I finally wired the turntable into the computer. I got to get a pair of new needles/cartridges if anyone can point toward a deal since the thing I’m using now is a rusty hook I pried off a jawbone at the beach. These are actually records I got next to the set-up but next time I go out and farm I’ll put them up here as I actually listen to them. Oh, intimacies. (more…)

Terminal Island, Pedro and downtown as shot from the International Space Station in February via this.

Submitted by juanluisgarcia. Join our Flickr pool.

Says the AP:

The California Supreme Court has overturned a ban on gay marriage, paving the way for California to become the second state where gay and lesbian residents can marry.

The case involved a series of lawsuits seeking to overturn a voter-approved law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

With the ruling, California could become the second state after Massachusetts where gay and lesbian residents can marry.

The decision can be read in full here.

The City of Downey has purchased The Avenue, Downey’s smallest, most vacant movie house–a single-screen theater on Downey Avenue in the heart of the downtown.

That’s according to Samantha Gonzaga in this morning’s Press-Telegram–part of which was once prepared in a small office next door.

The city’s cost: $1.2 million for the 850-seat theater which is housed in a 1920s-era building, plus $25,000 in escrow and title costs. The city’s plans for its prize are uncertain as yet–but while The Avenue’s jutting marquee may stay, its days of screening films appear to be over. (In fact, the theater hasn’t shown movies for about four years, Gonzaga reports.)

Deputy City Manager Gilbert Livas told the P-T that the city might spearhead the development of a restaurant in the front of the 9,240-square-foot space, and perhaps housing in the back.

“We felt it was a very critical piece of property in the middle of our downtown,” Livas said in the P-T. He’s right about that; The Avenue was once the only thing separating the Press-Telegram’s Downey bureau one door to the north from the thrift store one door to the south. (Also, it’s about a block from the Downey Civic Center.)

I covered Downey for the P-T (and South Gate too) from 1996 to some time in 2000, and I found some amazing things in that thrift store, including a 1950s-era Heywood Wakefield nightstand; an old Capitol Records LP case with the words “Elvis Presley” and a bunch of old Elvis novelty stamps glued on the front; pretty much every Keely Smith LP ever, for some reason–and one of those old stuffed monkey toys with the rubber face and white shoes.

One night after work, I even found a two-piece 1950s-era sofa out behind the thrift store (sans cushions) and managed to jam most of it in the trunk of my dad’s 1967 Chevelle. All it needed was new upholstery.

(As for the Chevelle, someone later rear-ended and totalled it–something I was unable to do despite blowing a power slide one morning coming out of the Long Beach traffic circle, and skidding backwards into the curb outside Circle Porsche/Audi through two oncoming lanes of rush-hour traffic.)

Several years after I moved back to the P-T’s Long Beach office, they closed the bureau and it became a Mexican restaurant. I’m not sure what it is now.

In other northern news, the P-T’s John Canalis reports that Johnny Rebs’ Southern Roadhouse–the venerable Southern restaurant on Long Beach Boulevard just south of Del Amo Boulevard–has reopened following a ruinous fire last summer.

Canalis’s lede? “Reconstruction has come to Johnny Rebs’ Southern Roadhouse.” Indeed. And Jefferson Davis could not be reached for comment.

The staff, Canals reported, made light of the blaze when he visited; they wore “Johnny Rebs’ Smokes” T-shirts, “with an image of a pig dressed as a firefighter spraying water on a blaze.”

A delicious pig, we’re assuming.

Bush claims to have given up golf to show his solidarity with the troops, then goes golfing. And Keith Olbermann lets him have it.

This one is worth watching to the very end…

Thanks, Georgia!

Mike Norman, bar owner of Marietta, Georgia, has made this contribution to our national discourse:

Norman insists that he is simply pointing out a physical likeness between Obama and Curious George–the hairline! the ears!–and that it’s mere coincidence that George is a cartoon monkey: no racism here!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is covering the story, along with a poll: “What do you think of the Obama T-shirt?” Participants can choose between “It’s racist” and “It’s fine”…and until earlier today “It’s fine” was winning.

As usual, Mayor Foster has some high-profile appearances planned. Here’s a few:

“Long Beach Better Learning After School Today (BLAST) will hold a fundraising breakfast on May 15, 2008 at 7:30am at the Long Beach Yacht Club.  Mayor Bob Foster and fellow supporters of BLAST will discuss the challenges faced by at-risk youth in Long Beach and the importance of community based organizations like BLAST that help kids beat the odds.” lbblast.com.

We city dwellers are in an interesting spot right now: as food prices seem to steadily climb and certain foodstuffs like rice are in short supply around the world, virtually all we can do is watch.

Sure, now it’s almost summer again we’re transplanting the seedling tomatoes we purchased at Armstrong–and maybe even some corn–but can, or do, any of us raise all our own vegetables?

Elsewhere in the world, of course–in less urbanized societies–people still do, and the New York Times had an interesting piece recently on one such man. He’s Jesús León Santos, a Mixtec Indian farmer from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, which is about 2,000 miles south of Mexico City, the capital.

“The Mixteca highlands here in the state of Oaxaca are burdened with some of the most barren earth in Mexico,” writes the Times‘ Elisabeth Malkin, “the work of more than five centuries of erosion that began even before the arrival of the Spanish colonizers, their goats and their cattle.”

Yet Santos and a few other resolute farmers formed the Center for Integral Campesino Development of the Mixteca, or Cedicam, and they’re determinedly scratching out a living from this dry land.

How? By carving hard hillsides into terraces, by collecting water to irrigate them–replenishing a water table which has been running on empty for years–and by planting certain blends of crops which together ward off disease and pests.

“Mr. León plows with oxen by choice,” Malkin writes. “A tractor would pack down the soil too firmly.” This is one time when the old ways are best. And slowly, after 20 years on the job, he’s making a difference.

“Increased subsistence farming is not the answer to the global food crisis,” Malkin notes. “But people skeptical about the idea that free trade is the best way to reduce hunger point to small-scale projects like Cedicam’s as alternatives to industrialized farming, which is based on costly energy use, chemical fertilizers and pesticides.”