Heroes & Villains — Stories for Men, Hollywood Pop Culture and Next Gen Politics

The night Barack Obama broke my heart

June 16, 2010

There’s a giant glob of oil in my Kool-Aid. Like many of the young voters who helped catapult Barack Obama to the White House, I have a growing sense that the President (my President) is hopelessly out of touch, no matter how many twitters, Facebook posts and email newsletters he sends my way. Minutes after [...]

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I voted for the Tea Party & loved it

June 8, 2010

With its status as entertainment capital of the world, California has had a good run of making its elections as entertaining as say, a CW teen drama or maybe a late-night FX comedy. Most everywhere else, voting is a series of bond measures and series of unimportant offices vied for by diligent public sector employees and the occasional local businessperson. [...]

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LOST: What It All Means (And Why It Was Worth It)

May 24, 2010

I’m taking a break from my usual California-centric column to talk about an Island. But before I do, I’m going to talk about LOST. Last night’s finale was in many ways, like every episode, leaving its audience filled with questions, yet this time the questions weren’t about polar bears or smoke monsters, but with questions [...]

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Can Arizona really turn off L.A.'s lights?

May 19, 2010

If pressed, your average Californian would admit they never really liked Arizona all that much to begin with. Phoenix has all the smog of Los Angeles without any of the charm and if you want to see the Grand Canyon, Disneyland’s got a diorama of it. Yet, for the most part, the two states have [...]

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Death Valley: From America's low point, looking up

May 11, 2010

It happens to everyone now and then. Last week, I boiled over. A combination of seemingly intractable problems, both personal and professional, the relentless noise of Facebook and Twitter, combined with a steady flow of stupider-than-usual news (turns out our economy has a delete key and our best answer to an environmental crisis is to [...]

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Everything you know about the Republican resurgence is wrong

May 5, 2010

As you know, because everybody (read: the MSM) has told you so, the Republicans are back, baby! And they’re going to like, totally kick Democrat heiney come November. In journalism, this is what we call, “the narrative.” Actually, that’s what screenwriters call it, but ever since ‘the news’ became a twenty-four hour show, journalists have [...]

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One 'Ring' to rule L.A.

May 3, 2010

It’s a breezy evening Wednesday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA) new open air entrance pavilion and L.A. Opera President Carol Henry is standing in line waiting for a glass of wine. She turns to a fellow imbiber and says, “This is stupid, making us stand here like this. There should be waiters with [...]

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Is the 'Big One' about to hit California?

April 13, 2010

2010 is shaping up to be a record year for earthquakes in California. Already, over 70 earthquakes with a magnitude of 4.0 or higher have rocked the state, many caused by aftershocks from the 7.2 Mexicali quake earlier this month. With a whole lot of shaking going on, is it any wonder that a rumor [...]

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A better way to legalize marijuana in California

March 25, 2010

In yesterday’s column, I wrote about how I believe the California ballot initiative to legalize marijuana is bad policy. Because I did a lousy job of arguing my point, what got lost is that I am for legalizing marijuana. People should be free to do what they like, so long as it doesn’t infringe on [...]

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Is California high? New pot initiative is bad policy

March 24, 2010

California voters will get a chance in November to decide if they want to legalize marijuana, not just for medical purposes, but you know, for fun. A ballot initiative allowing for the possession, growth, sale and most importantly, taxation of marijuana has been submitted to the state. Pro-marijuana supporters have mustered the 433,000 or so [...]

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