April, 29, 2006 archives

wow, i’m dumb. here we are practically on the eve of the next large protests about immigrant rights, and i just noticed that i left this write-up of the last one as a draft.

i made it out to today’s “mass student march against racist legislation” while my fiancée celia stayed home to work. going through my pictures afterward, it was another instance where a theme emerged that i hadn’t been all that conscious of while i was shooting: signs at the hr4437 student protest. not quite very shot is of a sign — i had to take the obligatory shot of a child on someone’s shoulders, holding a flag.

the most telling moment of the day for me was when this older latino gentleman and his wife turned around and started walking out, and he said to me as he passed by, “this is bullshit, this isn’t why i came.” what was on stage at the time was a couple of kids, one sporting a che guevara shirt, who were dealing with the music that were trying to rap to cutting out, and dropping a few “motherfuckers” into their overly broad take on current events.

it’s those sorts of central-casting leftists and strategic tone-deafness that makes my support of these protests wane, along with the presence of groups like fnla (a political party from el salvador with a less-than-savory past), the mexica movement, and the perpetual organizing presence of answer.

dave bullock was there and took his usual assortment of crowd shots. celia’s roommate lucas also snuck up on me, so you may see one of his pictures pop up in a newspaper somewhere.

as laist covered and i said i’d mention earlier, there is a benefit concert this sunday at mr. t’s bowl in highland park, featuring the reunion of emm’t swank and performances by other great bands.

and tonight (and tomorrow), you can see the lyric opera of los angeles perform manon lescaut at the los angeles theatre on broadway. you can get free tickets through brady westwater.

i guess they realized that their usual may day march was going to get buried under the two big immigration marches on monday, so the communists were out doing their thing today. there were maybe 100 people in the march.

don’t try this at home: culinary catastrophes from the world’s greatest chefs by kimberly witherspoon and andrew friedman (editors) is a collection of essays and stories from a number of chefs, as you might have guessed from the sub-title. they are pretty consistently great, and most of them are also very funny.

one story is from the execute chef/founders at downtown’s ciudad, mary sue milliken and susan feniger, and is about a disaster they had on their way to cater part of a charity event at the biltmore hotel. like many of the stories in the book, it will make you happy you weren’t on the tasting end of that particular meal.

the people’s choice by jeff greenfield is a novel about a presidential election where the president-elect dies in an accident shortly after the election — before he is sworn in. the vice president is a quayle-like dunderhead, and the constitutional quirk that is the electoral college comes into play. it’s a fun book, even if the ending isn’t totally satisfying.

american dreamz is a politics and pop culture satire mash-up, where a dimwitted president goes into a funk after being re-elected, starts reading the newspaper, and is put on happy pills so his cheney-esque chief of staff can whisper into his ear when appears as a guest judge on an american idol-like show. with a premise like that, it turns out to be a lot funnier than it should be. a lot of the reviews i’ve seen seem to have liked the iraqi contestant the most, but i think his american cousin steals every scene he’s in.