It figures that this would come from Laurell.
While exorbitant ticket prices and the passing of a legend into rock ‘n’ roll heaven preclude many fans from ever getting to see their favorite musicians in person, this year’s summer concert lineup at the Starlight Bowl offers the next best thing by offering a slate of tribute bands.
For less than what you would pay for one ticket to see Fleetwood Mac at the Forum, you can purchase four adult tickets and parking at the Starlight Bowl and get to see a far-more-than-reasonable facsimile of some of the biggest names in music.
This misuse of the Starlight Bowl has been going on for years.
For some reason Burbank has had a perverse need to go out of its way to prove to the world that it’s a total Dipshitville of a town.
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It’s long and detailed, and we recommend it:
A side note.
We’ve been noticing a big trend lately with the application packages that are being submitted for these various boards and commissions. Apparently it’s no longer Ma and Pa Kettle (or a concerned mom and dad somewhere) who want to serve the City on these often influential advisory committees and jurisdictional bodies.
What we’re seeing now are extensive two- and three-page resumes from individuals who already have a serious professional stake in what ever the business is at hand. They’re almost all either career workers in these very same fields or bureaucratic movers and shakers such as grant writers and project coordinators.
Is this just a coincidence, or are these individuals somehow being encouraged to apply for the open seats? Maybe the better word is “groomed”…?
A Planning Board member who also happens to be a city planning or development professional? That’s no problem for Burbank, apparently. What happens though when everyone is on the same page professionally is that you basically end up with an unfortunate circle-jerk of common interests.
So is this just another LinkedIn notch for these applicants, or is there something else going on here that’s a bit more contrived, or perhaps bureaucratically self-serving and even sinister?
Instead of the Organization Man or Woman, we’d much rather have a retired grandma or grandpa who has nothing to do with the field and just wants serve their community without having some kind of built-in agenda or professional prejudice. Or, who won’t act like an automatic cheering squad for the nature of the group’s business.
In other words, how come we can’t we get regular people in these groups? Burbank used to.
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Surprise, surprise.
We’ve been saying for years that the City of Burbank should go back to an LTC membership composed of just two tenants, two landlord/property interests, and one neutral party. That’s the way it used to be until the early 2000s.
Fair is fair, right? It used to be called “balance.” Otherwise, what you end up with is a Landlord-Tenant Commission ridiculously dominated by the local landlord and real estate interests, if not entirely composed of the same. That’s because this is Burbank we’re talking about.
Tonight there are six applications in for the Landlord-Tenant Commission. Staff has obviously done a horrible job of recruitment. Here are their occupational backgrounds:
The job title for this one above is a little innocuous, but when you drill down into the actual application what you find is this:
This guy too has some interesting details beyond his mere job listing:
Yeah, another landlord interest. Just like all the rest.
The only applicant who might be an exception to this problem of exclusivity is the title officer. They’re not a blatant property interest, but they’re still part of the business.
What a frigging’ joke this all is. Tenants, you’re not just being outnumbered around here. You simply don’t exist. No one has your best interests at heart because they’re not working for you.
Who cares if one or two of these folks was a tenant 20 years ago. Now they’re your boss.
All this shows is that if Costa-Hawkins gets tossed by the voters in November like we hope it will be, any prospective tenant would have to be a total idiot to want to live in non-rent controlled Burbank when they can pick the newly liberated North Hollywood or Studio City instead.
Or Atwater, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock, and Highland Park. Just think of all those new rent-controlled units on the market. They’re all much cooler places to live, too. And, for the younger, more starting-out crowd, those locales now also pay better!
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English major, eh? That’s just too cool.
Not sure if the date’s exactly right, but. Happy Birthday.
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But they’d thought about going for years.
(click to enlarge)
Hilarious.
If this is for real, imagine living that sheltered a life. It’s like an anthropological expedition he’s describing.
We hear his next review is about trying out one of those “drive-thru’s” they keep talking about. At some place called a “fast food” restaurant…?
Is that what it’s called? They have drinks that don’t come in bottles.
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If this was Beverly Hills, the private Facebook group in question would have been forced to change their name years ago. That city has strict rules about anyone using its formal name.
We’ve already brought this problem up about a dozen times:
Burbank resident asks councilman to change name of Facebook group
A longstanding Facebook group has drawn criticism from a Burbank resident who says it needs to be more transparent.
For the past year and half, resident David Hunter said he has been frustrated and confused about a Facebook group called “City of Burbank” — a private group created by Councilman Jess Talamantes.
Hunter has tried to join the group — which as of Tuesday had 5,280 members — but has yet to have any luck. However, that is not why he is upset.
He should be. As a longtime activist, he’s being deliberately blocked.
He said he is frustrated that, although the Facebook group’s description is to promote open dialogue among residents in the city, the group’s administrators — Talamantes and his son, Scott — get to pick and choose who gets to be a part of the conversation.
We’ve also heard they censor any and all references to this blog. Whenever a reference happens to pop up over there, we’re told that somebody literally flees to their keyboard to report it.
“[The description of the group] is written as if this group is open to everybody that’s in Burbank — whether you work here, live here or have kids that go to school here, but clearly it’s not,” Hunter said.
Councilman Talamantes started the group nine years ago when he was first elected to City Council and wanted it to be a place where residents can stay informed about what was happening around Burbank, he said.
No it wasn’t. It was specifically designed to counteract the influence of this blog in particular right when the police mess was building up to a complete disaster for these people; as a well-promoted pro-Burbank booster site.
However, Talamantes said some group members became negative toward one another and the city, which was not what he wanted to happen.
“There was a lot of negative stuff, and I didn’t want that,” he said.
He’s lying. That site was private/closed from the very beginning. The Leader should have checked on this fact before letting him spout off such an evasive untruth.
Having his son be the group’s gatekeeper and weeding out negative members has worked out well so far, the councilman said.
“Somebody’s got to draw the line,” Talamantes said. “Anybody can start their own Facebook group or page. If somebody doesn’t like how this Facebook group is being run, start your own.”
That’s not the point, moron. What you’re doing is deliberately masquerading as a “City of Burbank” Facebook site. Because that’s what you think it is.
Hunter said he understands the councilman can have a private Facebook group, decide who gets to be a part of it and weed out those who are there to spread negativity.
What Hunter said he wants is for Talamantes and his son to consider changing the name of the group or even the group’s description so others aren’t misled into thinking it’s an all-inclusive group.
Dr. Karen North, director of USC Annenberg’s digital social media program and a clinical professor at the private university, concurred with Hunter, saying a similar conundrum came up when former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s social media staff members were deciding whether he should have an account called “The Mayor of Los Angeles” or an account bearing his name.
“As an elected official, [Councilman Talamantes] should not put up a page or a group that is the name of the city because it would suggest that it’s the city’s page,” she said. “But there’s probably no rule against it because it’s a private business.”
There is if the city requires a licensing of its name.
No? Let’s then open a City of Burbank weed store right across the border. Watch what happens.
First Amendment rights protect speech in a public setting but not in a private business or home, she added.
Though many social-media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are open to be viewed by the public, users still have the right and ability to block anyone they choose.
She’s completely missing the point. But Hunter has a good one here:
Hunter said Talamantes’ Facebook group reminded him of the issue surrounding President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, in which a New York judge ruled the president could not block users from reading his tweets.
“Twitter and Facebook are private businesses, and they can establish whatever rules they want,” she said. “Just because the president uses [social media] as a vehicle doesn’t make it into a public venue.
No, Talamantes is using the City of Burbank as a front for his own private Facebook page. And the city attorney is allowing him to do it.
Here’s an idea. Besides opening that pot store named for the Media City, let’s also set up an LGBTQ dating site with the same name.
It’d be great, and get a lot of web hits for sure. Find your late-night date right here at the City of Burbank “Intimate Connections” page!
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Brewed in Burbank!
NYC Music Club City Winery Must Move to Make Way for Disney
City Winery, the Manhattan music club that helped fill a gap created by the closing of the Bottom Line, CBGB and other pop and rock music venues, is looking for another location after Walt Disney Co.bought the block that includes its 155 Varick St. home….
“Trinity, and now Disney, has continued to express that City Winery is a significant cultural asset to the neighborhood, and would like us to stay in the area,” Michael Dorf, City Winery’s chief executive officer, said in the statement. “It is inevitable in a city like New York that two-story buildings will eventually yield to taller ones. It is unfortunate to see historically significant 120-year-old brick-and-beam gems get swapped for 50-story generic glass towers.”
Dorf said he hoped Disney would design its headquarters in a way that would enhance the “dynamism” of the community.
Dynamism?
Just a few months ago we were waiting alone for a car outside the place and stood next to a very pleasant elderly woman who turned out to be Patti Smith. She was doing the same thing.
Match that, you fucking Mouse.
City Winery in New York City. Photographer: Ben Hider/Getty Images
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Just as with the ’73 BHS yearbook, we’ve been seeing this a lot lately.
It’s obviously generational and phony revisionist. You know, those un-developed people back then didn’t know what they were doing…
NASA Finds Possible Proof of Life On Mars That Previous Rovers May Have Accidentally Destroyed 40 Years Ago
A NASA rover has recently discovered organic material that could confirm proof of life on Mars, but it’s a discovery that may not necessarily be new.
In a study published last month in the journal Science, NASA reported that its Curiosity rover had discovered complex organic molecules on the Red Planet that may provide proof that “the planet could have supported ancient life.”
On Tuesday, New Science noted that it is likely one or both of NASA’s twin Viking landers came across the very same evidence years ago. Unfortunately, the rovers apparently burned up the evidence and it took another 40 years before more evidence was found.
It turns out that, rather than being a fucked-up mistake as the article implies, it was just a limitation of the technology. Big difference.
In the paper, lead author Chris McKay of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley suggests the evidence may have been lost when the Viking landers tested soil samples. It was practice for the rovers to heat the samples to release vapors for further analysis. However, this technique likely ignited a flammable salt called perchlorate, which destroyed the ancient organic matter.
During this same 10-year time period back during that obviously fucked-up era we went to the moon on more than one occasion and also started exploring the stars with interstellar craft. Several of which were still working until not too long ago.
Etc. etc. And we won’t even talk about the art.
This latest group has what going for it again? No wonder they have to bash and reproach and suggest incompetency.
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Just in time for Saturday’s reunion.
With its whimsical photos and vegetable drawings and funny little deliberately amateur-styled cartoons, and confusing reverse-order alphabetized senior portraits in black and white on brown textured paper — along with a Joe Lanzisero cover to boot — this 1973 artifact of a better age is now considered to be a total and complete joke.
An institutional embarrassment never to be repeated.
It never was, either.
You can only imagine what it was like on the inside. One wife of a faculty member (named Kosteva) actually wrote an angry letter to the school board complaining that the 1973 Yearbook was an insidious communist plot designed to deliberately confuse and disrupt the student body and their parents. (She was also a well-known John Bircher in the community, as had been a number of BUSD administrators in the early 60s.)
That was the peak. Ever since then it’s been a downhill run. The last decent high school class from Burbank or Burroughs graduated in 1987 (or so we were told by a number of the members of that group, who were in fact correct). There must have been something in the water in 1969 to make some of them so great.
Kids now? They’re a bunch of fucking stiffs. But who’s to blame? The mentors or the mentees?
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From an illustration in a new training manual on sexual harassment prevention methods in business, the guy on the right is showing how to be a “bystander” intervener.
For real.
Fuck everyone, right? As a female friend just put it a little while ago, don’t dare then talk to anyone, eh?
Don’t suggest anything personally connecting, or else…
And imagine the fascist little do-gooders this will be creating. The snoops and brown-nosers will reign triumphant.
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This is an adult we’re talking about here.
If it looks too good to be true, it’s not.
But artist Keith Lapinig is flattered that some people think his work is a fake.
By day, Lapinig works for ABC News as Interactive Design Manager for ABC in Burbank, California. In his spare time, he designs and cuts out paper card stock into Disney characters or moments and brings them to Disneyland to composite them into the scenery in photographs and posts them to Instagram.
Crap upon crap upon crap.
His love of Disney started at an early age with his mother taking him to see all the newest films and buying the VHS tapes of previous ones.
“I think it blossomed into a bigger love when I started to work for the World of Disney NYC store and realized a lot of the minuscule details of the films remained in my head; I used that retention to go on to win our annual Disney Trivia tournament. The quest to soak up more Disney knowledge just continued from there.”
Lapinig eventually created a YouTube channel and began speaking on panels about Disney myth-busting.
“Did you know the Beast from ‘Beauty and the Beast’ doesn’t have a proper name? Everyone seems to think it’s Adam, but it’s not,” he told “GMA.”
What’s the fucking use. It’s everywhere.
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Considering that there’s been no bigger one historically than Burbank, this is pretty funny…
Korean students visit Burbank through Sister City program
…Burbank Mayor Emily Gabel-Luddy attended the farewell event and said the son of a host family described the Sister City exchange program best.
“It gets me out of my bubble,” she said, quoting the young man.
“I think that is very reflective of the kind of cultural and world exposure that our kids from Burbank get by their families hosting the students.”
They might want to start applying this kid’s advice to some of the council members. Insularity and ignorance have always been famously well-known calling cards in Burbank when it comes to how the place operates.
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One of the promotional drawings.
Yikes!
Is that a hijab or hoodie there in front?
A niqab?
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