The Bus Bench

We can't pay you, but we can give you a beer.

CBS are some cheap bastards. They are advertising in the ValPak.

For those of you who aren’t lucky enough to live beautiful Los Angeles, California hence not allowing you to get the junkmail that the beautiful people get, let me explain.

ValPak is a junk mail packet of coupons from places such as:

We almost got a B grade pizza place.

I promise not to ash in your food Chinese restaurant.

Get lasik surgery on one eye, for low monthly payments of $49.99 from Dr. Hack.

I guess what affects your neighbor does affect you. Remember that time you paid that guy that didn’t speak English 20 dollars to load all of your crap up three flights of stairs (that was pretty fucked up right there, yeah you tipped him, but 20 dollars with all of the crap you have.)

Well now you can experience his life.

Reality shows where no one gets paid but the producer. Writers, production staff if you want to work, they’ll pay you with a beer.

Yet people pay the same for advertising, but who cares where the money goes. The talk of money is an ugly thing.

The beauty of blogs. You used to work for a newspaper and you used to get benefits. Now you freelance which gives you more freedom (oh yes it’s less money, but more freedom, freedom to try alternative treatments for your toes that’s now pussing green, that’s exciting) and you have to keep your name out there.

Let’s check out one of these online sites, they always need writers. No pay, but they’ll give you beer. Yeah remember when you could make some money writing, but that’s not an actual skill is it?

Writing is kind of like cleaning trash, teaching school and driving the bus. Things that people don’t really need, but the people who do them always bitch about the money, such ingrates.

This is all very amusing. No one needs to get paid. Nothing cost money. I told my landlord last month that while I couldn’t pay him that I could provide him with beer and a smart ass comment.

Beer for everyone!!!!

The busses, the cars, the schools, the economy can all be run on beer and smart ass comments of why people can’t pay you.

“And a credit, asshole,” person who thinks I’m mean.

Ok beer, a smart ass comment and a credit.

Browne, ShameTrain L.A.

Hollywood, California. Kids as bait. 8/31

The Kid Nation controversy.

It’s not all that controversial. Kids get exploited all of the time, but this time fewer people got a cut. Union people have been waiting for a reality (reality=non union sucky pay) show to jump on that’s not filled with weirdos, loud minorities, washed up has been stars and now they have it. Kid Nation, a show filled with clean-cut nobody kids.

What a great way to bring up the concerns of guild writers, actors, production people by acting concerned about someone else, little some elses. Who can call you a jerk for doing that?

Crocodile tears don’t really do it for me.

Variety is getting “political.”

They have all seen that child stars don’t turn out that great. They’ve seen the train wrecks of lots of small lives.  Let’s look at the results of child stardom:

Lindsay Lohan
Danny Bonaduce
The Mouseketeers: Brittany Spears and Justin Timberlake (the bad music alone, yes little kids, that’s bad music.)
Those skinny ana/mia twins.
That kid that killed herself.
That other kid that’s now doing check cashing commercials.
That other kid that killed someone else.
That kid that od’d.
That other kid that od’d.

Variety and all of the friends of WGA and SAG members didn’t have a problem with that. Do you know why? They were getting paid.

My opinion is kids shouldn’t be doing TV or movies at all. You can easily get a young looking 19 year old to play any age you want.

People get all outraged by Kid Nation, but have no problem at all with the obvious bad idea of having a little kid work 20 hours a day, even if they are union and are emancipated from their parents. Unless people in the industry and the columnist and whoever else who purports to care so much gets on the horn and say, let’s stop the madness of kids working period. Especially, in things such as slasher films, weird bordering on porn type of movies.

As a kid I really didn’t see anything wrong with films like Pretty Baby, but you know films like that are kind of sick. There’s nothing artistic about having an obvious underage girl doing a sex scene, when she doesn’t even know what sex is (hopefully she doesn’t.)

“Well you know in France….”

You know this ain’t France. People in the US would have a problem if I went to a beach topless. People who film things like that are sick fucks and I’m not talking about just the sex.  When I look at Poltergeist I wonder why is it entertaining to Americans for a little kid protagonist  to be terrorized. Why is it entertaining for kids to be terrorized at all? Sometimes people are creative sick fucks, like Roman Polansky, but the vast majority of the time they aren’t even that. We can try to say they are some open minded creative people, but there is nothing open minded or creative about a literal interpretation of sex and violence on a kid by someone who is actually a kid.

How is that creative? How is that thinking outside the box?

What was Pretty Baby suppose to represent? What was Poltergeist suppose to represent?

If Jean Benet Ramsey had been in LA she would have been in films. People in LA always like to rag on this particular kid’s parents, while their kids have agents and are gulping down drinks at bars on Sunset Blvd. I guess it’s ok to exploit your kid as long as you do it in a socially acceptable SAG kind of a way.

Why don’t people be in honest? The problem with Kid Nation is that the kids got paid $5,000 for 40 days work.  There was no need to have union writers, because it was a reality show. The problem is the unions got cut out. The problem has nothing to do with the kids or their well being or anything like that. It’s obvious to me that Hollywood doesn’t care about kids in any way other than to use them, so everyone can stop with this whole bullshit about their concern of the kids well being and safety, because Hollywood doesn’t care about the safety of anyone as long as they can get a cut.

Nothing wrong with people demanding to get paid, but don’t act as if it’s about the concern and feelings of little kids. This is LA not Wisconsin.

Bring up the real issue. Don’t pee on me and call it rain.

Browne

Time for Transit Zines!

Like taking the J through Cypress Hills or the A to the Rockaways, even ShameTrain needs to  take a break from the bellowing about the dour state of the Los Angeles MTA. And as I am a great fan of zines (and have been since the 1980s), I am gonna do a little review of one of my favourite zines: Watch The Closing Doors. (After all, I am the only one qualified to take on such a little task among these drunken bums.)
This great little rag is written and edited by Fred Argoff, a conductor (he can be found in the fifth car) on the N (which usta run past my place in Brooklyn) and two other lines. He knows what he is talking about, and what he talks about has prompted him to publish 40 editions. (He also does a zine titled Brooklyn!, which is presently at #57.)

While WTCD tends toward covering the trains in New York with respect to history, facts, photos and stories (Fred always has great anecdotes about what he observes while working), there has of late been a fair amount of photos of trains (past and present) from readers around the world. There may be books out there that cover trains in specialized fashions, but I have yet to find the fast and easy manner that is found in each anticipated issue of Watch The Closing Doors.

I implore fans of public transit as well as any New Yorkers (if you think you know the subway system there, you still don’t know the half of it unless you have a subscription) to drop Fred a dove (that’s a $20 bill for those of you not involved in slinging on the streets) for four issues each of WTCD and Brooklyn!, or at least $10 for four issues of WTCD.Tell 'im Randall sent ya!

The address is:

Fred Argoff
Penthouse L
1170 Ocean Pkwy.
Brooklyn NY 11230-4060

If someone in Los Angeles gets the bright idea to do something similar—that is, a paper zine on the trains here—please do let us here at ShameTrain know. We would love to have less whinging and more wonderment at what is presently a dismal, over-priced and only occasionally working system of four trains in the second largest city in the United States.

Downtown L.A. More entertaining way to be liberal. 8/30

Not trying to be a butt, but fuck KPFK.

I never did like that station. I guess I’m a liberal, I’m definitely not a Republican, but KPFK always reminded me of the bad side of the left. You know the Lenin if you don’t agree with me I’m going to kill you side of the left. They rant and bitch and rant and bitch about things that no one after graduating from college and experimenting with homosexuality cares about anymore.

“Power to the people,” a person who won’t let it go.
“Shut-up,” his girlfriend who is getting ready to leave him for a person with a job.

The people at KPFK remind me of that old guy. You know that old guy. That guy who is 55 years old and lives in a bachelor apartment with 50,000 books and keeps talking about “the system” and you want to leave his apartment, because it smells like death, but you feel bad because you know you’re probably the only person that listens to anymore. His wife and kids don’t care anymore, in fact they don’t even know where he lives. He keeps talking about his wife in the present tense, because since he is so anti-system, he never bothered to get a divorce (though he did get married, I guess that was before his epiphany) because he doesn’t have to, the system just wants him to give it money. The real reason he doesn’t get a divorce is because even though he’s a PhD (or so he claims ) is because he doesn’t have any money, because he can’t keep a job. Not a teaching job, not a book seller job, not even a record store job (not that there are any records stores left anymore, but Amoeba seems to care a little bit in regards to customer service.) While this guy is real concerned about starving children all of the world and the injustices that’s caused by the capitalist, racist, imperialist state that is the United States; to individuals like his neighbors in his little North Hollywood apartment complex or people walking up the street on Vermont he’s a complete asshole.

He’ll yell at little old ladies. He’ll cut in front of you at line. He’ll curse at you for not moving fast enough in the library line. He’ll smack you with his cane and he doesn’t even need a cane.

“I don’t got all day, pay attention,” crabby liberal bastard.

That’s why I don’t like KPFK, because that’s the kind of people that hang out there. The kind of people who are on the left, because they have no where to go. There their because they are such crotchety bastards, no one except someone who is idealist (or insane) would put up with their bullshit.

The idealist who are smart move on to a sort of KCRW or KPCC kind of liberalism, which includes showering and having a job, masturbating because they want to and not because they have to, possibly being married with a few kids, maybe a dog, maybe a cat, but never more than one cat.

More than one cat means you’re one step away from being a person with a stick and a rag and no dental insurance.

While we’re all a little self-righteous, but god-damn, KPFK takes it to a whole new level. I tried to have a show their once. I just couldn’t stand the people there. They told me that I was being oppressed and didn’t know it. They asked me was my “green” boyfriend oppressing me, because that’s what “green” people do.

At KPFK it’s ok to generalize and stereotype heterosexuals, white people, Asian people, Jewish people and black people who didn’t agree that white people were the devil without exception. I know there are white people at KPFK, but they are those kinds of white people that will let you call them the devil and then they will say, “I’m so sorry for oppressing (what ever ethnic group happens to be in the room) people.”

It’s just sad.

I’m not one of those who believe in the whole reverse racism thing, but you know being at KPFK can make you see how that could totally be a real phenomenon.

I can’t stand KPFK. I can’t stand listening to their rambling I hate their “everything about this country sucks” rambling. I hate their “we’re all going to die” rambling. I hate their “George Bush is evil” rambling. Yeah, you know, I fucking get it. Now shut up. I want to be somewhat entertained. No one at KPFK is entertaining; they are all just little lost souls with nothing else to do or with a career that didn’t work out or some freaky disability like fatigue syndrome or some fucked up thing that you’ve never heard of.

“I have a condition that makes it hurt for me not to be rude to you,” freak.
“Oh,” me.
“Are you making fun of me you bitch? You don’t understand. People like me are discriminated against, it’s a real disorder blah, blah, blah…” freak that’s mad.

Yeah I guess it is successful, but so is Scientolgy and so was the Heaven's Gate and Jim Jones.

I can’t stand that freaky music that they play. I can’t stand their self-righteous bullshit attitude. I can’t stand the fact that the vast majority of the people at that station were the kind of people I made fun of in high school and now they have a channel to bloviate on.

Some gentrification is good. Yeah I make fun of it, but that’s what I do. I make fun of everything, but I like that downtown L.A. is walkable. I wish they had real art there instead of nonprofit bullshit masquerading as art, but that’ll come.

Seriously fuck KPFK. There’s got to be a world between annoying bastard world of KPFK and the easy listening electronica, Prius driving world of KCRW. There’s got to be a more entertaining way to be liberal.

Browne
ShameTrain L.A.

Watts/Compton Border. Imperial and Wilmington. 8/29.

The coppers. I couldn't put a great picture up owing to the fact that the cops claimed I couldn't take their picture and they were getting a bit feisty with me.

"This is the MTA's property, so you have to get permission," frantic glorified rent-a-cop.

First off the MTA doesn't own crap. My tax dollars bought that. I can do whatever I want as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights. I can take pictures of my train. I bought it.

I didn't give them too hard of a time these weren't real Sheriff, but pretend Sheriffs. Had they been real Sheriffs, I would have completely ignored their pleas of no pictures please. The trains were swarming with Sheriffs and pretend Sheriffs. Trying to catch anyone they could without a ticket, but they weren't catching many people. Just harassing a bunch of poor people. Pretty annoying.

I'm assuming stepping up the "can I have your ticket" brigade is the answer to the budget cuts by Arnold.

The MTA are a smart crew. Why try to make money by actually providing great service on the lines you do have running when you can just harass people into not taking the train at all attempting to get more money through fining people. Great job guys.

ShameTrain L.A.

Million-dollar Public Pay Toilet in Pershing Square

Million-dollar Public Pay Toilet in Pershing Square

"Where does it all go, and where do I go to get it going?" That may as well have been my mantra, owing to all the metropolitan downtown areas in which I have lived over the last couplea decades. Being on tour with bands numerous times made the question a communal one, although rarely to my traveling mates' pleasure.

I have spent a healthy amount of time not only obliging my pipe’s desire to be evacuated, but documenting how, where and why. I even devoted an entire edition of my now-defunct magazine, Angry Thoreauan, to coprology. And I have loads of photos of toilet interiors, from Hanna Barbera, to EMI Music, to long-gone night-clubs in Hollywood, to my favourite bathroom in New York, the side-walk-facing, glass-walled Two Boots Pizza on Ave. A at E. 3rd. I also have all manner of blackmail photos of people and musicians doing their thing: some posing, some not, some groups shots and whatnot. And I have learned loads of tricks on how to get my business done in most any climate and environment

As such, I have been keeping a keen eye on the Million-dollar Public Toilet (aka "APT" to the DWP) debacle in downtown Los Angeles: the finger-pointing on why such expensive public “amenities” are so few in number as well why they are taking so long to get operating, where the new ones are to be, and how they work (when they work!).

I will leave my unfavourable opinions on them for later—and they are waiting to squeeze out! For now, let me state that the interior view of the semi-art deco window is almost fabulous.

BusTard

P.S. I have a video, and will have more posted soon:

Glendale. Trader Joes. Gmail. Ikea. Boys. 8/28

Gmail freaks me out. Usually when you have email, the ads don’t match what you want, but gmail for some reason knows exactly what you want. I’ve actually been tempted to click on the ads they have surrounding my inbox.

I’m writing a business associate of mine about Trader Joe’s and how it is the Ikea of grocery stores and I look to the sidebar after I finish sending the email and there are ads from Trader Joe’s. There are ads about doing crafts. There are ads about wine. There are ads about every freaking thing I was talking about in the email.

There are ads that I want to click on!!!!!

I’m going to say that gmail is the Trader Joe’s and Ikea of web based mail. When you go to Trader Joe’s your plan is to simply go in get some tofu and come back out, but that never happens does it? You always have to get some beer from Bulgaria, that’s on sale, oh look they have some new soap that helps the environment, well might as well get that too, got to be green and all that shit. Then while standing in line waiting to pay there are big hunks of dark chocolate. You think, “Well if I get the chocolate and I eat just a little bit everyday, it’s suppose to be good for you.  It isn’t like this is evil Nestle chocolate. This is Trader Joe’s chocolate. People at Trader Joe’s care.”

The same thing with Ikea, you go in there just to get a light bulb. You have to go to Ikea to get your light bulb and not Thrify’s (but now it’s Rite Aid, because nothing in LA stays the same, not ever)  because you bought your Swedish lamp that takes this weird light bulb that is only sold at Ikea, so of course to get a replacement bulb you have to go back to Ikea.

Going to Ikea is like having sex with your ex. There is a perfectly nice boy in the neighborhood, but no, you want to drive to the cool guy’s house, (because he’s cool) where there is no parking (cool neighborhood equals no parking, which is why in the Valley it's so easy to find parking) and lots of traffic, because you have to have the cool lamp in your house. It’s not even cool for real. It’s a replica of a cool lamp from two seasons ago, but you’re an artist and you’re not the kind of artist that can make things like lamps with electric switches, so you have to buy out of season lamps that seem cool to most people, but you know the truth because you get Elle Decor and you know what’s cool, you just can’t afford it right now.

You could have bought a perfectly basic device to light your desk at Rite Aid or Thrify’s or Sav-On’s or whatever the fuck those stores are that sell normal lamps with easily  to replace lighbulbs that you can can buy at the Albertson’s up the street from your house, but who wants that?

Who wants a Rite Aid lamp, with sensible light bulbs? That’s boring. It’s cheaper and easier, but boring. If we wanted to be boring we would have stayed in  Iowa or Idaho or one of those other "I" states where it snows and people talk funny and say things like, “We’re good people.”

And once you're inside of Ikea do you just get the light bulb, nope. You have to get some curtains, some curtain rings, a shower curtain, a fish cutter and all kind of other insanity. A ten dollar in and out trip to Ikea has just become a three hour trip that cost over $100 dollars.

I sometimes think I should just use yahoo mail.

Gmail is fun, but it knows me too well. It plays with my emotions. It makes me click things and spend money on crap I don’t need. Do I need 200 dollar jeans? I want them, but do I need them? I've got legal bills to pay.

Gmail, Trader Joes, Ikea and ex boyfriends who live where you have to circle the block five thousand times (when you're not even supposed to be driving) to find parking are ruining my life!!!!

Browne

Sarcasm in Pictures. Atwater. 8/28

A picture of a dog bed that they were selling at the Frog Town Art Walk. I can't stand people who think their pets are people. Yeah pretty much anything counts as an art walk these days. I’m going to have an art walk in my apartment. I have space. I’ve got some plastic cups, wine, crayons, typing paper and tape. I’ll have it on Thursday. Let me go send out some emails to some friends I have who do blogs.

ShameTrain L.A.

Yeah I'm totally pissed about walking down there. My belly piercing is even more infected now from falling on my dark scary journey down the LA River, owing to some fucked up directions.  I could have went to the Fuck Yeah Festival, but I was trying to be supportive of people who obviously didn't give a fuck.

I can talk about racism if I want. Los Angeles. 8/27

I sometimes read the L.A. Times homicide blog. Jill Leovy writes it. I wrote this as a response to her little piece about Earl Hutchinson and him wanting to get people to “tell” more. In regards to "stopping the violence." I thought that was all very amusing. For some reason my comment didn’t go up. I was censored, I think. I guess the only comments that are allowed to go up over there in regards to race are that black and brown people should try harder. People mention race all of the time, but they refuse to bring up racism. People are a little chicken shit, ethnic writers in particular at times seem a bit chicken shit about the racism topic. Like Lopez, why is he always the one to take Latinos and other minorities to task? Any time anyone black or Latino does anything wrong I can count on him whining about it in some pseudo clever way.  Not saying that ethnic people don't do anything wrong, but you know when it seems like your job as a writer of color is to be that go to person, hey I'd have a bit more dignity. He looks pretty old and he has a book, so what's the deal? I guess he wants to make sure the bossman doesn’t think he’s bias in favor of dark people. The writers are dropping like flys over there.  It’s like ethnic minorities only point in newsrooms is to say stupid stuff so white people who have never met minorities can say, “See even she/he/it thinks that, and they’re purple (or put whatever minority you want to disparage here).” I mean when black people were playing the token journalists over at the Times they were 10 percent of LA, but Latinos, not understanding why they are playing the token over at the LA Times. Isn't LA majority Latino?

On to my censored comment.

Black and brown people are going to continue to die, because they are viewed as "its."

People don't care if "its" die.

This is not a bash on you Jill, you're doing a great job, as a homicide reporter, but the LA Times is not painting a fair picture. It's not covering the entire community in the same way. The LA Times needs to cover more ethnic people in features. And not of the "I was poor and sad and then this white person helped me, gave me a grant" type of variety. The media determines, in a large extent, how other people view you. If the only time they read about people who are "purple" is that they are getting killed, well then that becomes their place.

"Oh another purple person died, that's ok, because that's what purple people do."

Earl is pretty amusing, more witnesses come forward. People do come forward, but if you don't look "right" the police do not care. And they never will. Asking them to care is not going to do much. Haven't the NAACP been doing that for the past 40 years. When are people going to get a clue? Police are like school safeties. Would you ask the school safety about changing policy? Heck no you ask the principal, unless you're stupid.

I live in Los Feliz. I called the police once because an eatery was robbed and I knew the owner was on vacation. When the cops got there, were they thankful? Nope, they were annoyed and they made me feel as if I was about to get arrested. That's the first time I had called the police since my first experience with my first voluntary experience with the coppers back in the late 90s. I called the police in the Rampart section of LA. My boyfriend used to live over there. When the cops got there they had my boyfriend and his friends sit out on the curb (my boyfriend and his friends where Asian and Latinos) , they were in college and we called them and WE got searched. A year or so after I graduated that Rampart scandal broke. Apparently the cops were in on the crime...shocking...lol...I'm not going to even imagine what calling the cops must be like in a neighborhood where everybody is purple.

What Earl should do if he wants people to stop dying is encourage hipster upper middle class white people to move to the neighborhood. White people are the best way to get the police to start responding and making an effort in your neighborhood.

My friend in City Terrace said back when the neighborhood was all Latino the police never showed up (unless they were there to shoot you,) now that white people have moved in the police come very quickly..

She likes to tell me how this or that white family has moved to her neighborhood. It’s kind of weird and I’ll save that for another post.

Earl is sometimes a bit deluded. Does he really think less crime would happen if more people told?

In high school would you get beat up less if you told on the bully? In high school how did that usually work for people?

Minorities are viewed as children and white people (with money) are viewed as adults. If a white person calls the cops that's like a teacher getting threatened. If a Latino calls the cops that's like a kid getting threatened. People don't care about kids.

I hope bringing up race didn't offend anyone. Just replace race with class if that makes you feel better.

Browne

La Galet’s quiet launch. . .

Did you find an odd little poetry pamphlet on the Red, Blue, Gold, Green or Purple Lines this weekend? The discreet launch of La Galet (meaning, in french, "the pebble") occurred on Thursday. Several hundred copies of the debut edition were made available for commuters as the first morning trains delivered them to work or wherever they were going at 5:30 a.m.

The artful arm of the ShameTrain PSA campaign, La Galet will be published infrequently. (On the more overtly political side are the Muertas, of which two editions have been disseminated: “Tony Fills More Holes!”—about Mayor V’s philandering—and “Michelle!”—about city D.A. Rocky’s outright theft of city property after his wife deliberately broke several laws.) Unlike La Galet, the Muertas are available on-line for everyone to enjoy, as the ones distributed on the public transportation centers tend to get snatched up quickly. We want EVERYONE to enjoy what is not being said about politicians’ duplicitous actions. (The L.A. Times even took down the recently published Web pages that had reported on the obvious pattern of lawlessness perpetuated by the city DA's wife, as I discovered wen I did a quick Google search.) We tend to state the formerly unsaid in a fashion that would fit well in vintage tabloids. They are sure to be great fun for everyone—save those whose actions prompt the PSAs where they and their friends are taken to task.

So, if you happened upon a copy of La Galet, and are visiting this site as a result, feel free to submit work for a future edition.

-BusTard

from the Google search on license, wife "rocky delgadillo"

Delgadillo's wife named in 1998 arrest warrant -  Los Angeles Times

Rocky Delgadillo's wife has an outstanding warrant for her arrest for failing to ...  with a suspended license and in an unregistered car, court records and ... www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-rocky20jun20,0,4932455.story?coll=la-home-center - Similar pages

Delgadillo admits wife drove city SUV - Los Angeles Times

Rocky Delgadillo acknowledged Monday that his wife was driving his city-owned SUV with a suspended license when it was damaged in a 2004 accident and later ...
www.latimes.com/news/local/politics/cal/la-me-rocky19jun19,1,3830167.story?coll=la-news-politics-california - Similar pages
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