The SoCal Byte

Attacks against cynicism are on the rise. Surprisingly, even household names like Stephen Colbert, Conan O’Brien, and Barack Obama have voiced their distain for cynics.

While it’s true that injustice, poverty, and ignorance are the manacles of humanity, political speechifiers often do nothing to unlock their grip.

We liberals fixed marriage and weed. That didn’t seem possible a few decades ago. Now, it’s time to apply our magical liberal powers to homelessness.

The Big Dodger in the Sky is angry. For the first time in history, Los Angeles Dodgers free-of-charge broadcasting has gone dark. After over half a century of beaming into every home in LA and points beyond, Time Warner is blacking-out over-the air Dodger baseball. Last season, fans were able to tune their TV to 50 out of the 162 regular season games free of charge. This season, that number is zero.

If you have artistic talent, let it unfold. Let it flower. Share it. But above all, don’t turn your discovery of the mystery in art into a competition. The wonder of your creation will disappear in a race to the finish line.

Every year, my personal physician wants to drain blood out of me for testing. I oblige and the results, so far, have been excellent. On the other hand, my visit to the phlebotomist — the one who draws my blood — makes me ill at ease.

LACMA is now focusing its hilarity on Swiss architect Peter Zumthor’s Black Flower — a proposed major new museum building that, from the air, looks like a giant gleaming tar pit— a tar pit among tar pits.

I saw the ghost of Chuck Smith last night. The recently-deceased founder and minister of the Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa, California was hovering in my kitchen, a white evangelical vapor. In the 1960s, Chuck co-opted flower power and became a key figure in the Jesus Movement. His sermons featured a laid-back form of fire and brimstone geared for baby boomers. In Chuck’s gospel, evil took the form of heavy metal music and Jack ‘o lanterns. Now, as a cloudy apparition in my kitchen, he looked like a prop at goth Halloween gig.

“You have no idea” is always the wrong thing to say. Authority, age or wisdom offer no exception to this rule. To say, “You have no idea” is a discourteous presumptive dead end no matter who you are. Period.

I shot my first selfie wearing a straw hat and a fake mustache. I was 11 years old. It was me alone looking at myself as someone else. Since then I’ve shot mirror selfies, hubcap selfies, car bumper selfies, arm-length selfies, window selfies, happy, sad, comic, and dead serious selfies. I still haven’t seen me.