In decades past, when the Los Angeles Times was flush with cash, it was an extremely serious newspaper. Now that it's broke, the newspaper has started to notice that L.A. is the funniest city in America:
Beverly Hills police blew up an aspiring screenwriter's laptop and script when investigating a suspicious package Thursday morning on Rodeo Drive. The screenwriter, who was not identified, apparently left his briefcase -- with the computer and script inside -- unattended at a talent agency office.
Beverly Hills Police Lt. Tony Lee said police, not knowing what was inside the briefcase, detonated it as safety precaution.
Lee said the owner was distraught when he learned what happened to the briefcase.
The case was found near the intersection of Rodeo Drive and Little Santa Monica Boulevard. Several streets were closed and nearby businesses were being evacuated, causing traffic jams in the area.
Reminds me of the time a robot from the Maryland police bomb squad was going to throw my new business cards into the Chesapeake Bay under the assumption that they were a letter bomb to Margaret Thatcher from the IRA.
One great result of mass hispanic immigration into LA, something the LA Times advocated and cheerleaded for.
ReplyDeleteBluntly, hispanics don't read papers.Since hispanics constitute the vast bulk of the LA population, the LA Times is doomed.
- I just wish more 'liberal' institutions could self-destruct in that neat little way.
I thought this things happen only in Israel.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing Menachem Begin wasn't going to speak at that hotel. The robot would have thrown you in to the Chesapeake Bay.
ReplyDelete~Risto
"The screenwriter, who was not identified, apparently left his briefcase -- with the computer and script inside -- unattended at a talent agency office."
ReplyDeleteFor the record, this is incredibly weird. Was he high? Really drunk? What's the real story here?
Or is LA just that stupid? I live on the East Coast /hipster
Actually, I can understand how a talent agent might be a little worried about the behavior of some of his clients.
ReplyDeleteSeveral years ago in Chevy Chase, DC, a box was left on a bench next to a bus stop and in front of our Starbucks one morning. This is about the safest neighborhood in Washington, if not on the entire urban East Coast. There are some well-known people who live around here, people who might have enemies. But it has been 40 years since any of them has stood at a bus stop.
Nevertheless, an alert Starbucks barista noticed the box and called the cops. The entire two blocks around the box were closed and sidewalks roped off for four hours, and no one was allowed to leave the neighboring apartment buildings until the bomb squad had whisked the box away in a caged truck.
And Starbucks was closed for four hours, which may have been what the barista really wanted.
"And Starbucks was closed for four hours, which may have been what the barista really wanted."
ReplyDeleteNothing like making $0 an hour, yeah.
wait what
No screenplay survives contact with a producer.
ReplyDeleteMy impression is that these bomb squad detonations of random found objects never actually find and destroy bombs, just harmless stuff that's been lost. Is there any good information on this? It looks to me like a vast ritual sacrifice done for the god of security theater,
ReplyDeleteWell, now he's got a new premise for a screenplay, doesn't he?
ReplyDeleteWho says this blog isn't hateful? It only took a couple of comments to get to the Jooooooooooossss!
ReplyDeleteThe real problem with living in a police state is the inevitable requirement to CYA by rigidly responding to situations that anyone can claim are similar to a category that rises to the level of being a threat. Negate the possibility of exercising individual discretion by calling it profiling and you get the bizarre world in which we now live.
ReplyDeleteStill shocking that a corporate, non Irish type like Sailer could get treated like a mad IRA bomber in the 80s. But it is probably no coincidence that, in the present decade, I ran into a paranoid ex-cop in Ireland who was certain that there was a big problem with Irish Americans funding the IRA.
The cops are always looking for excuses to play with their new toys, instead of doing what they should be doing - good old fashioned beat patrols.
ReplyDeleteNothing like making $0 an hour, yeah.
ReplyDeleteAh, so this barista owns Starbucks.
I once tried writing a novel. I didn't get very far with it (only about 30 pages), but while writing it, I kept almost all of it in my head word for word. I had backups, but I didn't need them. If you really, really concentrate on writing as well as you can, you end up rewriting every sentence hundreds of times. You read through each sentence so many times while trying to intuit what the next one should say, that they all end up sticking in your mind afterwards. You end up remembering page after page verbatim.
ReplyDeleteI've read other people's accounts of the same phenomenon. I clearly remember V.S. Naipaul saying once in an interview that he remembered his most recent novel entirely by heart.
If a writer's attitude towards his work is so casual that he needs backups, then I'm not really burning with the desire to read him. If that script is now irrevocably lost, then it probably should be.
"Ah, so this barista owns Starbucks."
ReplyDeleteIn the real world, you don't get paid for time when you are clocked out. hth, elitist
Oh well. The movie was probably going to bomb anyway...
ReplyDelete"I tell ya kid, this script - it's dynamite."
ReplyDeleteShould have left it at Ben Gurion airport instead, much less damage.
ReplyDelete