Burbank, California

 
You’ve got to be frigging kidding. We’ve been seeing this being used everywhere now all of a sudden in news stories.

It’s such gratuitous, condescending bullshit. And we’re actually descended from Californios around here, believe it or not.
 
 

 
LOL.

It’s so incredibly stupid looking, isn’t it. And confusing. Where is this place, in Cuba or somewhere?

Besides the obvious attempt at cultural virtue signaling, this official new accent mark over the “Jose” is also completely unneeded because the English pronunciation of the name is exactly the same as the Spanish. So to add it on as some kind of ethnically reverent performance act (which it obviously is) is just another example of dumb ideological grandstanding.

Does this now mean btw that Los An-ha-leese isn’t far behind? To make sure that we’re no longer aligned with those creepy white colonialists that conquered our lands and enslaved our spirits?

We’ve already got the official “Los Fa-lease” Blvd in LA … which makes no sense at all in Spanish for the simple reason that this specific street name was deliberately intended at the time to be an Anglicized Las Fee-Less.

It wasn’t a mistake, and Los Feliz by itself makes no sense in the original Spanish. In English it’s a cool sounding name and that’s why they picked it. (It would only make sense in Spanish if it were Los Felices. The Happy Ones. Not “the happy.”)

Btw … all those California cities doing their pious little land acknowledgements to the indigenous now at their public meetings, such as the Burbank School Board…

When are you going to give us back our land?

Talk is cheap. It’s only a start. WE MUST NOW RECEIVE ADEQUATE FINANCIAL REPARATIONS FOR THE PAIN AND STRUGGLES OF OUR ANCESTORS !!

Put your money where your mouth is, you devout, caring white people!

 
Pentangle ???

Or The Pentangle is more accurate.
 
 

 
Maybe it’s cultural appropriation instead, which we’ve never thought was a bad thing like it’s supposed to be. At least you know AI didn’t come up with it.

Or did it? Can AI emulate hip now and throw out cool-sounding ideas? Like generating prompts for humans maybe? **

The Burbank tie-in here is that The Pentangle signed with Warner Reprise after a couple of British successes during that weird/neat period when Reprise signed a number of genius commercial novelty acts and it almost immediately ended their recording career for decades.

Are they good? Yeah, they are, if you like 60s progressive folk with pseudo-Celtic overtones in traditional balladry that don’t get more obnoxious with repeated listenings. But then we’re white.

It’s an acquired taste that seems to be coming back in small circles. Those original albums are worth money — we remember seeing them back in the 90s for 1.99 mint and practically unplayed. Same with Fairport Convention, Incredible String Band, all that stuff.
 
** Even just a software randomizer of smart and hip ideas to pick and choose from would be cool to see now. We’d use it!
 
 
 

 
“Thank you for your concerns.” Lol, guess who it is that runs this town?

We’ll give you a hint: It’s the same ones who are giving out citations to homeless people for being homeless.
 

 
Btw, this woman is lying. Burbank has few if any real “services” for the “unhoused,” their official feel-good euphemism for the local homeless. That’s why they have to sleep outside the library.

At the meeting, Mayor Tamala Takahashi thanked the residents who spoke for showing up and expressing their concern, noting they should also bring issues to the council’s attention if they think something is wrong.

“As the council has mentioned, we have a lot of services for the unhoused,” she said. “We have a lot of support and at the same time, there are times it may not be what’s needed and we can look for areas of improvement, and how we can do this better.”

 
We’ve been documenting this town for years. This was no “oversight.” It was policy by design — as was the missing information deliberately messed around with on the paperwork in order to fuck these people up in court when they don’t appear — and to which you all on the council should have been raising public hell the very minute you heard about it. So go fuck yourself lady.

This city council needs to have a huge showdown with its once again out-of-control police department. Three officers showing up at the same time to roust the homeless late at night is DELIBERATE, not a mistake or a coincidence. Their chief of police is lying and evading as well. But these council members are not up to the task and never were.

One thing that can be said about Rizzotti now. He’s at least not trying to posture himself as something he isn’t.
 

 
Guess where not to visit this summer.
 
 

 
Their two games in L.A. might not be happening. But we’d stay away anyway.
 
 
 
 

 
On an 89-10 vote.
 
 

 
They’re only “incentivizing” local zoning code changes now, not mandating them.

The vicious, bought-and-paid-for YIMBYS will be able to easily handle that part in their wet dream desire to have everyone living in 25-story+ apartment buildings.
 
 
 
 

 
‘Cause that’s the way it was set up to be by the people in charge who wanted it that way.

And still do.
 
 

 

Good luck on that one.

The only thing the council could do here is fire the only person who has any influence over the chief of police, which is the city manager. The way it’s been set up under this charter city is that the CM is legally entitled to make all of these PD hiring and firing and ultimate policy decisions as if he’s the emperor of Burbank or something, and any pressure put upon him by the city council to make changes outside of this arrangement would be both a violation of his personal employment contract and the Burbank Municipal Code.

The sad fact is that the local voters ratified even more centralized control away from anyone else when they approved several huge changes to the city charter back in the late 2000s. Smooth move on their part. It wasn’t always this way.

Anyone else remember the spirited debates and discussions that used to go on in the council chambers about all sorts of ideas and proposals?

Those days are long gone.

The council can’t even debate these policing ideas in public because of the way staff has successfully strangled everyone with perversely limited (and conveniently expedient) interpretations of the state’s Open Meetings laws, especially if they involve personnel controls regarding the police chief or CM. Any impingement on the powers of the CM has to be discussed in closed session, and the council would also be breaking the law if they tried to force the CM to control the chief.

Things weren’t always this strict in Burbank. The council members used to be able to openly discuss these sorts of matters and affect some limited control over the CM. But not in at least 15 years.

They do get to make “recommendations.” Oh boy. And that’s only if the ideas are considered to be appropriate under the strict confines of the controlling municipal code ordinances and state law. As, defined by their city attorney, who is also not (in Burbank) subject to the voters.

What could the council do now? Well, they could have perhaps cut off the money for these spy tools when the purchase first came up and if it wasn’t hidden anywhere in their agenda packets, but that ship has sailed. And where do you think you live again?

Refuse a “request” from their police department officials, who would most assuredly frame the proposal to install spy cameras in Burbank as some kind of outside legal requirement and urgent community security need?

Lol. Yeah, uh-huh.
 
 

 
It just keeps getting worse and worse.
 

We’re so glad to have disappeared from this culture years ago. The decision was deliberate. You could see the writing on the wall — none of this is news.

There’s lots of nice alternatives. If you find great stuff when you’re young there’s no need to adapt to idiocy.
 
 
 
 

Yeah, but when Mitt Romney was caught using semicolons in text messages the media went bananas with the ridicule. So did most other people who saw the story.

So fuck what they and most everyone else has to offer on any topic. Everything’s culpable, everyone’s an asshole, and you can’t win.
 
 
 
 

 
Lol. We haven’t seen this kind of honesty since Parson Weems and the cherry tree.
 
 

 
Refreshing.
 

In her deleted TikTok addressed to Timothée, Doja said, “Your industry has a tough time. My industry has a tough time. Doesn’t mean people don’t care about it. People care. … There’s still an audience. People give a f***.”

But Doja said in a follow-up TikTok, “I am gonna come out and just say that I know nothing about opera. I know nothing about ballet.” She added, “I’ve never been to a ballet. I’ve never seen an opera.”

“What I was doing yesterday was virtue signaling, because I wanted to connect, and I knew that Timothée’s goof-up was something that I could leverage in order for people to connect with me and f*** with me,” she said.

“And it’s easy,” she continued. “It’s a modern way to garner clicks, likes, approval and all kinds of things like that from people. And so I did that yesterday, and I didn’t really think about why I was doing it. … Am I proud of it? No.”

She concluded, “It just kind of furthers the fact that sometimes I think s*** and then I’m like, ‘Never mind.’ So never mind.”

In the 70s they used to call that “Telling it like it is.” Too bad it’s not the 70s anymore. The audiences at least would be a lot larger.

Chalomet btw never bashed or put down or criticized or made fun of or said anything at all critical about “opera and ballet.” All he did is make an offhand remark about how those two arts didn’t have the audiences they used to have and so he didn’t want theatrical movies to turn out the same way.

If anything, he was criticizing the modern public for being schmos and morons. But the ever-righteous mob descended upon him immediately, possibly in part because they knew deep down inside that he might have been talking about them too… **
 

 
Here’s someone else who’s honest.
 

That’s both honest and funny. And true.
 
** Probably also for the same reason that so many people have a big need now to call someone else a “pedophile” who is clearly not. Like what weird creepy shit is going on there with them deep inside?

 
Congratulations, Burbank. You’re up there with Hansen Dam and Downey as one of these special “fan zone” destinations.

Potential Mob Zone is more like it. It’s gonna be fun to sit back and watch what happens.
 

 
Burbank’s just getting tackier and tackier in appeal. And the worse it gets the more everyone cheers in delight. This is their level. Subliteracy galore.

Almost everyone is actually more accurate. There are a few residents left who know to ask for a lot more out of life, with not so many coming in now as replacements and which was never always the case.

So where is there to move to now? Rochester NY? Portland Oregon? It’s gotta be somewhere more civilized.
 
 
 
 

 
Guess who better win.

Or else.
 
 

 
It’s gonna be statement-making time.
 
 

Like we said. Or else.
 
 
 
 
 

 
Yeah uh-huh. The creative new Burbank.
 

 
The old one made more sense.
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
Health claims for sausage sandwiches.
 
 

Yeah, and about 10,000 grams of saturated fat.

It’s all so insultingly corrupt and dishonest. Where do you turn to now for meaning and truth?
 
 

 
And about 90 percent of this obnoxious new Burbank booster community will cheer. The only ones who won’t will be the ones who lose their jobs.
 
 

 
If you think the Ellisons aren’t going to piecemeal Warner Brothers in order to satisfy their debts and call it progress, you’re wrong.

That in time will get cheered too. Hey, it was “inevitable.”
 
 
 
 

 
Of course it doesn’t.
 

 
Why put any kind of discussion about this wacky proposal on a real agenda? To not do so is part of the whole years-long process of trying to ram through a notably smaller and inferior “replacement” facility without bothering to gather any public input on whether or not it is even wanted or necessary to begin with.

No matter who’s in charge, Burbank always loves their done deals. More here about what a stupid and destructively shortsighted plan this is:
 

Burbank doesn’t need a “new library,” and no one has ever “identified” this need but city people

Burbank thinks that this library is a waste of good land

You already have a Central Library in the civic center neighborhood

What “new Central Library…”?

They’re really pushing for that stupid new library, aren’t they?

Dump the new library idea, Burbank

Only a place like the Burbank of today would think how great it is to be able to replace a Central Library on a showcase street corner with an apartment building. And then situate its smaller replacement inside a parking structure/apartment house combo down a side street.

Or whatever their latest “Civic Center!” dream is. It keeps changing.

Update:

Btw, no one’s saying don’t make a nice new library. No one’s against improving and expanding the Central branch. It’s just that this present scheme is moronic.

The best thing to do practically and aesthetically would be to restore the current facility. It can also be easily expanded as well because the structure was originally designed and built to have a third story added on to it in the future. It’s already in the perfect location for public use and it is indeed right now part of “civic center” Burbank.

Which of course staff lied about to Mike Nolan a few years ago during a council meeting discussion back when he also confronted them on this harebrained “replacement” and informed them of the third-story planning and desirable location. They denied this was the case but they were wrong.
 
 
 
 
 

 
After about the age of 25 or so for sanity’s sake you really need to start getting into the more peaceful and genteel pursuits of life. Believe it or not there still are some.
 
 

Etc. We’re not just singling them out. There are about two dozen or more similar recreational outfits in town, with quite a few that include the kind of real action toys that kill.

We don’t get it. It’s not an age thing because we never have. Most if not all of these popular recreations involve the real or fantasy shooting at people and objects to kill or destroy; blowing things up; being run off the road by hooligans; devious mind games of treachery and deceit over another; or getting chased by someone or something that you know has nothing good in store for you in the end.

Or it’s some other kind of mayhem and chaos or evil trickery. How in the world is any of that dismalness considered to be fun, and why is there so much of this shallow-as-shit crap in Burbank now? Burbank’s become like the Southern California headquarters for middle-class consumer idiocy.

It’s just too weird to see. Some retail storefront gets robbed of a bunch of Pokémon cards and the whole town’s in an uproar. Did you hear the news!? Can you imagine what the civic tone would be in Burbank if weed and tattoo shops ever sprang up here?

The dream would be complete we guess. This would all be fine and not worth worrying about spiritually if there were something else around too but there’s nothing else around.
 
 
 

 
For some reason Variety this week has reprised this old popular #MeToo piece which was actually a heavily edited-down reduction from a larger set of personal memoirs.

It really is one unrelenting hate fest. No doubt some of those Pixar guys at Disney were goonie, but this woman’s admittedly ongoing personal problems and what she brought into that work environment in terms of projection went way beyond any of theirs.
 

 
How anyone could not detect this from reading the whole unedited piece is baffling. She was obviously on the lookout for similar culpabilities when she arrived at Pixar and of course she found them.

When you go in further on the research and check into her various social media and art websites, it’s weird to see how for someone who deeply resents people focusing on her physical looks and all of the baggage that that entails she sure spends a helluva lot of time focusing on and promoting direct attention to her physical looks and appearance. And it’s like unrelenting attention to her attractiveness post after post.

Coming across entries like this one below makes you almost feel sorry for what John and the others down there at Pixar — the female co-workers included, those who were able to “navigate” (in her words) the same toxic work environment — had to put up with when it came to her already heightened feelings.
 

 
Imagine having her in your labor pool.

Wonder who the guys were. She sounds like loads of fun, doesn’t she, with all that long-winded narcissism and self-seriousness. Imagine just going on a simple country drive with her with nothing else in mind. We’d be terrified of even getting anywhere near the woman, for any reason, let alone into a car with her. We’d make sure we drove.

It’s like JFC, we were just spending some time together before the void. We weren’t planning the invasion of Iran in front of you. Sorry you didn’t like our opinions!

You know, we’re allowed to have opinions too, right, without having to suffer a later withering Inquisition about spirituality and harm and patriarchy? We’re really sorry we said anything!

As a co-worker you wouldn’t dare joke around with someone like this, about anything – at best you’d get a condemning psychological analysis thrown back at you, at worst a court summons. You’d never know whether an intended joke or a laugh was ok or not. You’d be walking on eggshells all the time not knowing if something you said or did was considered culpable or creepy or worse. Everything would be potentially blameworthy and subject to a withering sociological critique.

And has she really had this many emotional spoilsports in her life? Or is everyone a potential spoilsport to her?

My latest creation is live on The Complex Cassandra feed 😂 💃🧘‍♀️🧚‍♀️✨
I must admit, I had to work through a lot of psychological blocks and self-critical voices (that truly never belonged to me) in order to click “publish” on this clip.

From a young age, I’ve been programmed—like most women in this world—to judge and hide my natural femininity and my raw creative capacities, as my culture of origin and the world at large has felt like an unsafe place for me to let the beauty, my god-given talents and especially my sensuality shine through.

For most of my adult life, I’ve worked hard to divorce and separate my feminine vulnerabilities and my body’s innate sensuality from the image I project outwardly to the world, only allowing it to shine through in certain contexts that are deemed “appropriate,” rather than owning it as an essential and powerful part of my natural being.

Today I take the leap and put a part of myself forward that still remains uncomfortable to reveal, because as a passionate and devoted yogi I know that when we commit to “stretching” ourselves in ways that are at first uncomfortable we plant the seed for greater strength, flexibility, fluidity and growth. 💋
Namaste

 
Me Me Me Me Me.

Naturally, she also has thousands of supportive fans and admirers besides Variety — many of whom we’ve noticed are also really big on heightening the acknowledgements of others regarding their looks and attractiveness. And then getting resentful and even extended-theoretical about the source of their anger when they generate that kind of attention.

Really. Just mellow out people and stop taking both yourselves and the world around you so seriously. You’re all stiffs and bores and because of that, poor and deficient artists. That’s the most ultimately damaging thing going on here.

None of this is about art, but then, are these types really artists?

 
Such fun and witty times. Exciting and inspiring.
 

 
Those are your great-grandparents there kids.

Yeah, fuck you too.
 
 
 
 

 
Lol. Why can’t it ever be Rocco Siffredi Burbank?
 
 

 

You know if you insist on looking like this all buffed up and preening then you better make sure that you’ve also got a really, really big dick because otherwise the out-of-whack proportions are totally ridiculous.

Imagine something like that coming at you too in a darkened room. This is why we sympathize with women in general when it comes to men and could never in a million years be queer either because just look at what you have to deal with. Yuck.

 
How would anyone know the difference?
 
 

 
Of course the symptoms were real. If they happened they were real. The question is, what caused them?

Man, what a great excuse this would have been back at John Muir. “Hey Mr. Nelson, we couldn’t help it!”
 
 

 
She did grow up in North Hollywood. But they were both way too stuck up to have lived in Burbank.
 
 
 
 

 
Check out the TOCs of some of these 2020’s literary cultural studies journals for some real live hallucinations…
 
 

 
It’s all gender and identity topics in them now, with the “texts” being used as ammunition to spin off every historical grievance and finger-pointing issue imaginable.

Talk about taking the fun out of art and reading. But then of course isn’t the pursuit of “fun” a patriarchal construct that was designed to mask over the exploitation and oppression of the elites?

Something like that. We haven’t been to school for a while and so all of our acquired knowledge of these things is obsolete if not worse.
 
 
 
 

 
The latest plan for that boondoggle of a high-speed rail project. According to the new map and key it’s cut and cover.

But how do you cut and cover through a mountain range? That’s for going along or under a roadway.
 
 

 
According to this map the whole thing’s going to be buried from Burbank. Think of all the great mountain views and scenery that won’t get featured when you’re stuck in a hole.

So boringly utilitarian. So dumb.
 
 
 
 

 
A slick one.
 

 
The hits just keep on coming this week. How profane.
 
 
 
 

 
Hilarious reassurance.
 
 

 
And their hired hands will make sure of it.
 
 
 
 

 
Not much coverage now is there that the president’s son-in-law is a big part of the Saudi financial arrangements behind this deal?

Remember when the GOP went absolutely batshit at the news that Hunter Biden was trying to sell a few of his paintings here and there as a “Biden”?

This group of clowns and cutthroats has made everything as insane and corrupt as hell. Drop out while you can.
 
 
 
 

 
Coming to a local theater near you.
 
 

 
 
 
 
 

 
Nobody who counts anymore obviously.
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
That’s obviously their chair.
 
 
 
 

 
It really should be called Videomation instead. The old art form is now commercially extinct.
 
 


 
 
What it all comes down to is that animation may come and go in its various forms but live action is forever.
 
 

 
 

 
Or Carter-Sexton if you were really desperate on weekends.

The best thing to do is to probably make animation a handicraft again. Like fine printing or bookbinding.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
He’s just so good lookin’.
 
 

 

What was that again?

“It’s important to note that the majority of our synergy target comes from non-labor sources among the efficiencies we have identified,” said David Ellison on call with Wall Street media analysts to discuss the landmark merger announced Friday between Paramount and WBD. He said cuts would not touch production capacity.

And?

He sees savings from “consolidating our spending technology stacks and cloud providers, including Paramount+ and HBO Max; realizing global efficiencies in procurement and business services; optimizing the combined real estate footprint and the broader corporate overhead; driving efficiencies in marketing; optimizing spending on agencies; and also migrating the combined company to a single enterprise resource planning, otherwise known as ERP system, and combining other IT systems across the company. Again, these are just a few examples of where we believe we will find meaningful efficiencies as we unite these storied companies.”

Hey Burbank. You’re a synergy target !

 
They’ve decided to try to market themselves like Leica does.

ARRI for the masses.
 
 

 
So many questions. Is ARRI actually going to be developing the technology in-house or are they just doing a badge-engineering thing by putting their name on it?

The software too?

David Bermbach, managing director at ARRI, said: “Today, consumer smartphones have already become a serious tool in professional filmmaking, being used on blockbusters across the globe.

“That’s why we believe it is time to bring these worlds even closer together. For the first time ever, core elements of ARRI Image Science are being integrated directly into a consumer device.”

The first results of this collaboration will debut in the upcoming HONOR ROBOT PHONE later this year.

“Smartphones operate under fundamentally different constraints: smaller sensors, highly integrated SoCs, different optical stacks, and different bandwidth limits. The challenge is not to replicate cinema hardware, but to translate the underlying principles into compact, real-time mobile architectures,” Dr. Benedikt von Lindeiner, vice president at ARRI and responsible for the technical collaboration with HONOR, concluded.

This of course means getting AI in there to modify (or monkey around with) the images to make them look like something they were originally not. Like the subject in the viewfinder. The word images might not even apply any more. Images of what?
 

“Our goal is to bring a true cinematic aesthetic to smartphone imaging — natural colour, gentle highlight roll-off, and a sense of depth that feels authentic to how stories are meant to be seen.

“Creators should be able to move seamlessly from mobile capture into professional post-production workflows.”

 
 
But that’s not “consumer level.” And is this just a software solution or hardware one too? Will there be an ARRI-branded sensor on our phones someday?

And whose phones? How too does that definition of “cinematic” have much to do with cinema?

These promotional articles are always so glib and confusing. It’s as if they aren’t written by humans or even edited by them.

 
Get ready, Burbank City Council. And you were worried about Netflix.

Back to the real world:

Great line.

“Merging with Paramount Skydance is like a shotgun wedding with your dumb cousin: I fear for the health of the kids,” Gregory Orr, a film and TV producer, told a Hollywood trade publication. Mr. Orr, who is the stepgrandson of Jack Warner, a co-founder of Warner Bros. in 1923, added that Netflix had its drawbacks yet offered the studio “the strongest opportunity to thrive.”

It’s going to be a bloodbath for both the employees and the City of Burbank. Paramount doesn’t need two studios and its creditors are very quickly going to demand their due.

Look what Disney did to FOX with that “merger.” And those were cast members.
 
 
 

 
Because no one else should.
 

 
Say what?

Nuke ‘em anyway!
 

 

Find that cave. Quick.
 
 
 
 

 
God, why is everyone an asshole and a fool now? And how do we get away from these maniacs?
 

 
What went wrong somewhere?
 
 

 
 
It’s, everywhere. The perverse have inherited the earth.

 
Told you so.
 

Like you couldn’t see this one coming down Olive Ave.

And Paramount reiterated its estimate that it can yield $6 billion in “synergies,” which it says will be “driven by a combination of: technology integration (such as migrating the combined company to a single enterprise resource planning system and consolidating streaming technology stacks), corporate-wide efficiencies, including procurement savings, optimizing the combined real estate footprint, and otherwise streamlining operational efficiencies.”

Of course, Hollywood is bracing for substantial layoffs following the deal close, though the announcement also suggests that other notable assets (do both Warners and Paramount need their own studio lots in L.A.?) may be sold.

Told you so! Told you so ! Told you so!

The Warner Brothers lot is history. And 90 percent of these cynical and expedient New Burbankers will cheer when it’s gone. Look at all that land we can develop!

Yes. Let’s make Burbank a YIMBY Paradise!!!

 
You want to know something really wacky and funny? Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.

Twice.

The voters brought him back. So have fun, America.
 
 
 
 

 
That ability to so easily connote the one phrase from the other verbally is only more proof that these people are total and complete morons.
 
 

 
We remember the days when “fury” was not considered to be a good thing. It was the exact opposite of rationality. And that brains and defense was better than war. What quaint times we grew up in.

Hey, good work America!
 

 
Yeah, let’s encourage more of them in our neighborhoods.

Maybe build some wildlife bridges across Glenoaks and the freeway to make it easier for them to get to the other side of town.
 

 
Hey! They’re beautiful creatures and they were here first.
 
 

Americans have the country they deserve.
 

Update: by 10 a.m. EST all the news networks have been packing their broadcasts with warmongers and cheerleaders. Even BBC.

All apologists.

 
Which these political housing advancement plans often include or encourage, and which historically always ends up eliminating single-family homes wherever such upzoning occurs.

No?

Check out south Burbank and Glendale between Glenoaks and Kenneth for proof. Or most of Brentwood in LA. After the 50s and 60s upzoning, where are all the houses now?
 
 

 
A good start, but unless there are super-strong controls on developers they’ll just go after the R4 neighborhoods instead. And they’ll use shill bidders to get a hold of the newly upzoned R1 blocks to create teardowns for new multi-units at big $$$$.

Or make current homeowners a deal too good to pass by. That’s the worst part of upzoning — the always inevitable greed and destruction of neighborhoods. Everyone sells out.

In the end, in popular high-demand areas there will be little to no individual home ownership anywhere in a few decades. Everyone will be forced to rent in desirable neighborhoods like Burbank. Or buy a cheesy condo if you’re lucky. Unless of course you’re rich.

Your future upcoming YIMBY paradise!
 
 
 
 

 
Over 166,000 people now work in Burbank?

Yeah, with 300 added at a time. Here or there…
 
 

 
Think anyone will ever ask exactly how they get these lofty numbers, and get it described in detail as to who, when, and where?

Think they’ll get an actual answer?
 
 
 
 

 
What the money people are saying. Netflix has made suckers out of the Ellisons.
 
 

 
But in the meantime those two creeps and their cronies will do great damage to Warners. And to Burbank.
 
 

 
Check this out.

We (obviously) never pay attention to any of this self-promotion marketing stuff except that we accidentally clicked the wrong button on the WordPress dashboard a couple of days ago and look what popped up:
 
 

 
Not bad numbers for a dumb special-interest community blog, eh, that’s mostly about things no one cares about any more if they ever even did. Almost 3 million hits. And look at all those posts. Who knew Burbank could be so fruitful and suggestive of a wider world.

We’re kind of surprised about all of this attention still, especially considering that no one reads blogs anymore. We were even more surprised by it the very first month we started doing this thing, to be honest, which was like what, 50 years ago?

Those positive write-ups we heard about later on in places like AdWeek and Mediate and the Columbia Journalism Review didn’t hurt either. Like we said, we don’t ever self-promote in the world around us and wouldn’t do so even if we knew how to, but today’s kind of a special one for us and so we will. Certainly nobody else is helping out.

So take that, you doubters and phonies and lightweights and liars and shills and misguided historical revisionists and local careerists-on-the-make and slanderers and defamers out there. Let’s see your numbers why don’t we!

Like most everything else, you either get it or you don’t.

 
Don’t be surprised when the Ellisons sell the lot. It’s all gonna go but for the historic front part on Olive.

Remember, they have to service that debt somehow, and Paramount on Melrose has big preservation rules that get in the way.
 
 

 
This behemoth monopoly won’t need two studios, and Warners would make an excellent site for mass redevelopment.

Isn’t that right, you YIMBYs? We can hear your squeals of delight even now. Lots of condos there, in big buildings.

It’s inevitable. You heard it here first. The lot’s history if these Ellison clowns get WB.

Three years, max.
 
 
 
 
 

 
For those who don’t know Norman Lebrecht, this would be like HBO firing George Carlin for rudeness and incivility.
 
 

 
You know, this is the kind of stupidity and overwrought moral preening that would drive someone into misogyny. Love her cloying, cutesy typography there too.

Really, fuck BBC 3. They’ve become a lightweight piece-of-shit channel anyway.

Listen to the student programmers at WKCR radio at Columbia in NYC instead. They play much better classical stuff than BBC now, and most of it’s on vinyl.
 

 
 
This culture’s just so fucked up, isn’t it. So phony and insincere.

And like the classical music field is bereft of tough criticism. What a shock! In truth it’s one of the nastiest and most back-biting of all.

Lol. We can imagine that this is the kind of insanity that could create a lot more “misogyny” in the world:
 

Imagine being a younger person now and having to deal with this kind of modern name-calling bigotry and hatred. And it’s everywhere.

Kids, stay away from everyone now. So many people these days have been driven totally and completely nuts by whatever. They’re all toxic and unpleasant and fascist as hell.

You’re better off working and being alone.

 
Isn’t that right, you YIMBY libertarians? That’s how pricing works!

It’s so easy!
 
 

 
Lol. Yeah, we’re convinced by you business journals. Pity the poor landlords — they’re doing us all a big public service because it’s amazing that they can even exist.
 
 
 
 

 
Get over it people. And this was cut from the iPlayer version. It was an obvious oversight. And big deal anyway.

Plus, the guy has Tourette’s and so this self-righteousness is coming off like a bullying of the disabled.
 

 
These labels have become really popular lately, haven’t they? They’re so much fun and easy to use now because really, who needs evidence? That just gets in the way of the heart-warming pleasure of feeling morally superior all the time.

Here’s the original story:
 
 

 
So much for the tolerant and progressive left, eh?

We’re not all that way, fortunately. At least a few of us progressives are still sane. Very few now though, and this crowd likes to call us names too.

Uh-oh.
 

How dare you make so much sense lady. How DARE you!

(Hey, maybe she’s a racist too?)

 
Lol, this is what happens when mob hatred and self-righteousness tries to pass itself off as a substitute for brains and knowledge.

So whatever, Rizzotti is seen defending himself here from this dumb excuse for a recall. (And btw, we’ve never liked the guy at all really but we’ve also never seen any evidence that he’s a racist. Sorry about that.)
 
 

 

Yeah yeah, they’re making fun of him. How cool. Here’s a sample of the comments:
 

 
For the record, Rizzotti’s mother was a teacher’s aide, not a Cusumano. His father ran something like a little family grocery or liquor store somewhere down near Gardena or thereabouts. Rizzotti himself was actually shot and wounded during a robbery there one day when he went down to help out.

But this is our favorite. Remember, we’re talking about Burbank here, not 17th-century Hispaniola:
 

 
Don’t you love that loaded junior-college-level academic language there about something that this writer probably doesn’t know very much about let alone how it applies to Burbank? It’s absurdly overwrought but obviously quite morally satisfying to employ. Yeah, those hugely marginalized neighborhoods in Burbank.

And imagine applying it to Rizzotti. It’s like bringing a water cannon to a ping-pong match. He’s obviously become Burbank’s MAGA punching bag to this very moral, moral crowd.
 
 

 
The free-marketeers at work.

 
Just the kind of housing Glendale needs.

The project, planned for the 351-room Hilton located at 100 W. Glenoaks Boulevard, would become a “luxury high-rise residential condo,” per the filing, which does not detail the total number of units planned. The 19-story building was completed in 1990, according to property records.

Lol, if you let developers develop without limits such as rezoning everything in their favor then this is the kind of development they’re going to come up with. There’s no money in the poor or the gotta-rent folks.

 
Another puff piece for LaTerra from another business journal.
 
 

 
Naturally there’s no pushback on any of the boosterish claims in this article. Those kind of land-use critics don’t exist any more in Burbank.

For instance, we’ve never believed these statistics and think they’re way too exaggerated:

LaTerra Development is attempting to lower Burbank’s job-to-housing ratio several hundred multifamily units at a time.

As it stands, for every 3.9 jobs in the city of Burbank, there is only one unit of housing, according to Burbank’s Economic Development Division.

“Burbank is in a severe housing crisis,” said Chris Tourtellotte, managing director at LaTerra, which is based in Marina del Rey. “There’s a significant amount of jobs and not a lot of housing units. We at LaTerra are trying to solve that.”

 
 
Four jobs for every housing unit in Burbank would mean that there are almost 200,000 people working in Burbank every day. When stated in terms of a housing necessity, this grandiose figure automatically presumes (as an imperative) that everyone who works in Burbank also has to live here too, neglecting the obvious fact that not all of these employees either want to or need to.

But just in numbers alone, where the hell are these people? Exactly where are they all working?

We’ve also questioned the claimed population density figures of Burbank when compared to those of North Hollywood, and which are also being used as an imperative for mass redevelopment. We don’t believe that Burbank is more than 1/3 less dense these days than its surroundings, and wonder again where these dramatic numbers are coming from and what land area is being used to compute them. The uninhabitable Verdugos within the city limits?

We’ve mentioned this many times. Unfortunately, no one has any incentive to correct or even look into these figures because, as this article proves, they’re too useful a tool for the development business.

 
We mean the women, too. At least the ones we knew did. An enviable amount, for some. You know, the bohemian spirit and all that.

That used to be part of the deal. It also helped with the creativity.
 
 

 
 
Lol. What a cramped and crippled culture we’re stuck in.