When a city has more medical marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks locations located across its urban landscape, you know the town has gone to the dogs. According to the Los Angeles Times, the city's office of finance reports 372 shops have filed for business tax paperwork; but really, how many true to the bone pot shops are expecting to pay taxes this year?
According to the city attorney, not all of them. A rough estimate places the total number of shops closer to 500. Looking at the Times' map of the 372 shops who have filed tax applications, you'd think all of LA County was a marijuana farm gone wild. Add about 100 more shops to that map, and you might be closer to the actual look of how many stores there really are.
So is our city going to the dogs? Only if dogs are starting to run marijuana dispensaries that try to legitimatize themselves by paying taxes.
According to Chris Anderson's book Free, the internet is giving way to a free culture and economy, one where content is becoming cheaper to consume to the point of no cost at all. But my question is, does this necessarily make creating the content cheap to the point of being free?
There are millions of hobby bloggers in the world, who not only post their content for free, they create it for free. However, with the examples that Anderson uses in his book, can the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal afford to post their content for free, and produce it also for free?
Anderson is right in believing that a new economy must grow out of this "free content" business. Unless websites and websites of publications find a way to make a profit over their free content, the newspaper business will one day be run over by the hobby bloggers of the world, who will be the only writers out there willing to post their content for free.
There is a certain prestige and educated background that traditional newspapers have, that cannot be sold or imitated. And with thousands of people still subscribing to paper print editions of newspapers and magazines, maybe the free digital revolution will happen later than sooner. But if the traditional newspaper industry wants to survive, they need to find a better way to make money, because they can't give away their product for free forever.
The bait-and-switch methods of Jell-O and Gillete may have worked in the early 20th century, but as media, commerce, and life moves into the digital age, industry leaders need to start thinking less 20th century and more 21st century.
By now, the story of missing Baby Lisa has hit all the major news outlets and morning shows, garnering the curiosity and sympathy of Americans.
But just last week, another story broke of a two-year-old boy who went missing from his mother's Acura by the side of the road.
To add insult to injury, yesterday the body of a one-year-old baby boy was found in the woods, just one mile from the home where his mother had put him to bed Monday evening. Are the parents to blame, or were these families hit with tragic bad luck?
Baby Lisa Irwin first went missing on October 3rd, stolen from the crib in her Kansas City home, according to CBS News. Police authorities, the parents, and lawyers have been rallying back and forth on placing blame on the parents.
No solid leads or traces of her whereabouts have been found. The mother was the only person in the house when the alleged abduction took place, but she was unaware that the baby was missing until her husband came home at 4 a.m. that morning. Police have refused to formally accuse the mother.
Baby Lisa is still missing.
Just over a week ago, two-year-old Sky Metalawala's mother left him in the car by the side of the road, according to ABC News. She tells police her car ran out of gas, and she had gone to look for help. According to the police, she did walk to a nearby gas station, but she never bought gas that day.
She spent some time walking around a nearby wealthy neighborhood, then finally called a friend to drop her off at her car, according to police. That's when she discovered her son was missing.
Police thoroughly investigated the area and the car, even taking it for a test drive. They concluded that there were no mechanical malfunctions, and that there had been more than enough gas in the tank to take Sky's mother to a gas station.
Baby Sky is still missing.
Near St. Louis, Missouri, one-year-old Tyler Dasher’s body was found just hours after he went missing from his home where he lived with his mother and grandmother, according to USA Today. A couple walking their dog found the body about a mile from his home, near a walking path next to the River Des Peres.
View Larger Map Tyler Dasher's home, near where his body was found
His mother has been brought into custody, and charged with 2nd degree murder, according to Fox 2 Now. Prosecutor Robert McCulloch said the woman struck the baby when he wouldn't stop crying.
Baby Tyler is dead.
Partly due to the infamy of the Casey Anthony trial, and the proliferation of baby abductions and deaths in the media, parents and parenting skills are under heightened scrutiny by the public. Were the parents of babies Lisa, Sky, and Tyler unfit parents? At least one will have to stand trial to determine the fact. Did bad luck strike these families? Maybe not the families, but the babies surely encountered some kind of foul play.
On a recent evening at Best Buy in West Los Angeles, a long line of fans waited outside to get a chance to meet Romeo Santos, a Bachata singer who's new album Formula Vol. 1 released that morning. This is his first solo album, after being a part of the group Aventura, according to Latinos Unidos.
Hardly anyone in the store gave the video game Modern Warfare 3, which released on the same day, a second glance as they streamed into the store to get an autograph from the Dominican artist.
Among a mix of blenders and kitchen appliances, Romeo, dressed in a white sweater and seated at a table, signed CDs and gave out hugs. One fan, Yanely, even had a chance to give him a kiss.
The star, on the right, with Usher (photo courtesy of Remolacha)
Dolores, another fan, showed off her freshly minted autograph, while others around her desperately did all they could to get a candid photograph of the Bachata star.
Best Buy employees worked hard to keep the aisles clear of the fans. Blue shirted workers shouted for people to keep moving, but fans just kept coming back for more.
Laura Chavez in her Santa Fe County Jail booking photo. (Santa Fe County Jail)
If there ever was an anti-Family Game Night campaign, last Tuesday would have been the ultimate example. In a scene straight out of a Hasbro nightmare, 60-year-old Laura Chavez (right) allegedly attacked her 48-year-old boyfriend Clyde "Butch" Smith after accusing him of cheating during a round of Monopoly, according to ABC News.
It all started when Chavez, Smith, and Chavez's 10-year-old grandson were playing a late night round of the classic board game at her home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. According to The Santa Fe New Mexican, the boy told police Chavez and Smith began fighting when she accused him of cheating. The boy was sent to bed, and that's when the blood shed began, according to The Smoking Gun.
Rosanna Arquette in front of city hall, joining Occupy LA protesters (photo courtesy of Flickr user cheeseslave)
Occupy Los Angeles has captivated the local media, and celebrities have started to chime in on the conversation. Celebrities have shown their support of Occupy LA by appearing in person or posting on Twitter to express their support of the movement.
Funk music icon George Clinton tweeted,
Actor Danny Glover showed up at City Hall on day eight of Occupy LA, speaking directly to the crowd in front of City Hall:
Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello also made a couple appearances to the Occupy LA stomping grounds. On his initial visit to the protest earlier this month, he performed a few songs and expressed his support for the Occupy LA movement, according to Rolling Stone Magazine. In the following video, Morello encourages the protesters, saying, "...take the motherf---in' power back, people."
As a show of good favor for the protesters, on his second visit Morello offered 175 free tickets to his show later that day at the Troubadour, to be "distributed democratically," according to the Occupy LA website.
Morello has also made appearances at Occupy Vancouver, San Francisco, Seattle, and Wall Street in the last two weeks, according to Rolling Stone.
Guitar Lessons in Los Angeles News has speculated that one of the main reasons celebrities have been mostly showing their support under the radar, is because they themselves are part of the 1% of the country who are wealthy, exactly the population that the Occupy movement is protesting.
Morello, though known for his iconoclastic music and activist image, probably spent hundreds of dollars flying all across the country to the various protests. He is also planning to depart for a concert tour in the U.K. according to Rolling Stone, from which he will surely earn a hefty sum for his performances. The fact of his wealth and his free use of it draws out the ironies of the following statement recorded by Rolling Stone:
It's the malfeasance of the bankers and Wall Street super-rich who torpedoed the global economy that's caused so much human suffering and environmental devastation, and we're calling them out.
What about the celebrity super-rich, Morello? How about the Hollywood entertainment industry that sells greed and materialism not just to Americans, but also to the global masses? How about the carbon emissions from the dozens of planes you flew in all across the world, which in and of itself has devastated the environment? When is it time to not just call out Wall Street, but Hollywood Boulevard and celebrities fortheir excessiveness and rapacious greed for fame and wealth?
Comedy Central's Jeff Ross roasts corporations at Occupy LA (photo capture of LosAngelesVideograph youtube video)
Just this kind of criticism may be why most celebrities are trying to stay out of the spotlight, even though they may support the protesters in private. Though celebrity support may lend a sense of legitimacy to the movement, their presence may ultimately undermine the core ideologies of the protest. Leaders of the Occupy movement would be best served avoiding high-profile wealthy persons of all occupations, if they want to keep their morale and purposes focused and strong.
Though KTLA and NBC-LA cover the same area and topics, the visual and writings styles in which they represent their material are fairly different.
Opening up KTLA's homepage, viewers are immediately bombarded with a flashy continuous news feed. Their site and their articles are graphic, flashy, and in your face. Their headlines go for a slightly snarky snazzy angle, capturing audiences with guilty pleasure news and entertaining news. The articles start with a large photo and an straightforward article, and a video is posted at the bottom.
NBC on the other hand, has a cleaner, less graphic-y homepage.There are less pictures, and their headlines are more straightforward. The articles start with a large video window, then some written reporting, and a lot more video listed clearly on the side.
When comparing the Lindsey Lohan article, KTLA's sources were TMZ and Twitter, not very serious or reliable sources. NBC's sources were officials and authorities, like the morgue official, and people who worked at the courthouse, much more reliable and believable sources.
