Soon, will be the end of Hollywood billboards in Hollywood. The "city" known for making some of the best and worst cinema in history is once again entering the boxing ring to punch itself in the face. On Monday, a man named Kayvan Setareh was jailed on $1-million bail for illegally erecting a "supergraphic" on Hollywood Boulevard. Setareh is accused of two misdemeanor city code violations for the huge billboard he put on his building.

The impressive bail was the idea of LA City attorney Carmen Trutanich, who later said (like Ronald Reagan appealing to Mikhail Gorbachev in Berlin, or Nikita Khrushchev removing his shoe before the UN general assembly), "The days of lax and inconsistent enforcement of billboard and outdoor advertising laws in this city are over!"

And the masses respond: Huzzah!

This is all in an effort to clean up, to beautify Los Angeles. Problem is, it’s Los Angeles. Billboards are not the issue; the issue is that most of the City seems to have been built so quickly and carelessly that it should crumble at the touch of one of these billboards. Billboards are certainly not the issue at Hollywood and Highland – the location of the monstrosity above. Hollywood and Highland is like a remedial version of Times Square; if anything is appropriate, it’s a huge picture of a redheaded kid riding a cartoon dragon.

Given, the intention of the anti-supergraphics law, and of the insanely high bail for Mr. Setareh (who has, since Monday, agreed to remove the signage) is to "restore" Hollywood to Old Hollywood and to prevent the rest of Los Angeles sky from being littered with neon splotches. But restoring Hollywood to Old Hollywood, goes against what Hollywood and Old Hollywood stand and stood for, respectively. That is to say: You can’t condemn a clown for spraying water from a flower.

And you can't condemn a segue for doing its job by leading you from one billboard on Hollywood Boulevard, to another on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Have you ever been in the middle of a cross-country move and thought: These guys packing up my grandmother’s china are pretty good, but they would be a lot better if they were a little gayer?

We all have.

Pink Moving was started, as they say on their website, "with one goal in mind. To provide the best moving service for the LGBT community." The website is standard, succinct, informative, and, save the pink, champagne bubble background, not super gay. The photos on the site depict what one might consider a typical home mover and a typical client.

Things get hot when you get off of the Pink Moving website and into the real world. It’s then that you learn with Pink Moving you get pink trucks, pink bows on all of your cardboard boxes, a rainbow on moving day, and the shirt off the back of the guy moving you. And you get to tell him to "flex." (I really wish I had a cleaner shot of this.)

The owner, Michael Fansh’e, provides the necessary contact information and prices. I recommend his Golden Package; if you can find 6 men and 2 trucks for less than $240 an hour, rent a hot tub, get some tequila and you know my number.

I was watching "Grey's Anatomy" last night. I’d missed the last five months of TV America thanks to a stint in Paris where my entire life fell apart. I promptly returned home to California, divorced, with two kids, and plenty of television to catch up with.

"Grey’s" had been with me in New York, while I waited out the 2008 hype elections, my impending move to Paris and for "Mad Men" to return. Even though every line out of the characters’ mouths is a cliché taken from a "Chicken Soup for the Soul" book, it had always appealed on an empty Thursday night.

This particular episode focused on the eternal debate of what mattered most; the love of surgery as your life or your love? And which would go if you had to choose? Obviously, the surgeons in the show had to come to the conclusion that their real passion for saving lives surpassed any other form of love, and hence, their personal sacrifice was justified. Peppered into the storyline were moments where the characters had real "love" issues, testing these limits. In spite of his wife's protests (post-it's they call them), McDreamy still finds a way to betray Meredith’s pillow talk by outing the chief, hence getting what he wants, etc., etc... All of which in my current state of mind had me saying, "You selfish prick. Meredith drew the line at what she told you as a wife not a colleague and you fuck her over anyway."

My now ex husband chose his job, too. Well, he got a new ambitious little girlfriend thrown in like a combo menu, but essentially his job took priority. Saving lives wasn't his thing, but writing about the lives of others was. The thrill of the adventure of war, death and destruction, human failings and joy were his bread and his butter.

Before we'd left Paris in 2003 (to move to New York), he'd visited 26 countries in 3 years. We, his family, were the 11 o'clock news bumpers of reality, brief moments, interspersed with numerous trips away. The hero would return, safe and sound, play Don Draper daddy for a moment while Betty was quietly losing her marbles trying to hold up the fort.

I'll always remember the moment in last season's "Mad Men" when Don accepts an award, and Betty looks on proudly but at the same time aware that the guy on the spot wasn't getting an award at home. That was a TV moment that struck me as I streamed the show alone in a Paris apartment wondering what the hell was about to happen to me.

Four months after moving to Paris, now safely back, this time in California, the fluff of "Grey’s" bothered me because it was exactly the Don Draper version of things. "I am important to the world and everything else is just piddle." It is the image of what should be right but an image that isn’t telling the whole story.

Everyone knows that life's a bitch and then you die. But when you get old, the job stops, the curtain falls, and you're supposed to fall into line and look back and hopefully laugh at the bad times, watch kids bicker, grandkids grow, yada, yada.

For many people, this dream is going to happen. We collectively make choices for our families, and at times that means biting hard on our lip when we meet someone or something we'd like to pursue but have already taken another path.

Then there are those who don't bite and kiss instead – opening up a variety of outcomes. Some are more discreet, some stop, and then some say, I like the way it feels and I'm going to chuck out the old and go for the new after 15 years of marriage.

This isn’t true only for affairs. It’s also true for the job, kissing the job and taking it over the 15 years. Well, it depends on the job.

Joe Schmoe the contractor doesn't have to face the choice of Betty's wrath because he went to install a new type of toilet and it'll fuck up the morning school run. However when the husband’s choice involves wars, natural disasters by choice, you can bet your ass that nine out of ten wives would at the very least roll their eyes, and at the very most, lose their temper.

Yes, it's a job...yes, you are paid to do it, yes, you are good at it, but how many times have you been there to put the kids to sleep in the past two months? How many dinner invitations did we have to turn down because of a last minute call out? How many nights alone? When was the last time you attended a teacher-parent meeting for your kids?

What are your priorities?

In the end, my ex chose the job. A new life in Paris with a big shiny promotion. We were excess baggage; our cost to his established career was too much.

Hence in this life episode, we see behind the scenes of the characters of "Grey's Anatomy," and we get "Mad Men." We explore the uncomfortable underbelly of what it's like to be standing next to McDreamy but feeling like McNothing and the knowledge that McNothing is going to happen unless you get the fuck out of there. Betty waiting for the moment of truth, divorce agreement and plane tickets. "The Sopranos" touched on it with Carmella. I'm convinced, like others, that Meadow, Tony's daughter, shall return to the small screen as a modern day La Femme Nikita to head the family after the fall, perhaps giving us perspective into what those kids were doing the whole time Tony was smoking peyote in the desert with a whore.

My episode kept on rolling, past the Journey song, past the Betty Eureka moment, and past McDreamy and McSteamy's vacant looks of shock when their own games gets flack. We rolled out of a taxi, into a hotel next to Charles de Gaulle and quietly but violently flew back to the United States, leaving the "priority" to his "priorities." Here, we will start our own series. Emmy-winning, of course.

Dear Senator Bayh:

After watching a republican sit in the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat, after watching four Senate compatriots –Sens. Chris Dodd (Conn.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Ted Kaufman (Del.) and Roland Burris (Ill.) – formulate their leave from public service, after working alongside the first Democratic administration since your first two years in the US Senate you have decided to not run for re-election as a Senator from Indiana. Your decision causes me dissonance, confusion and bemusement.

I don’t get you, Evan Bayh.

Just so you know what I mean, here’s a list of other things I don’t understand: "Twilight," "American Idol," Scientology, people who like Sarah Palin without a hint of irony, cottage cheese, Tyler Perry.

Today you stood at a press conference in Indianapolis and gave reasons for your decision. "After all these years, my passion for service to my fellow citizens is undiminished, but my desire to do so by serving in Congress has waned," you stated.

You went on to say:

All of this sounded fine coming from beneath your well-parted hair. However, upon further reflection, none of it makes any sense. You are going to start or consult a business that will create maybe 200 jobs instead of work with the Senate to create millions? You are going to lower the debt giving up on legislation that would do so? You are going to fight partisanism by stepping out of the fight?

I get politics on a local level. I get working for a University to improve higher education in America (although our higher education system is already the best in the world.) But I don’t get trying to win a basketball game by quitting at half-time, finding another arena and forming your own league.

Your first two terms in the US Senate were red velvet cake. I get that. I get that it was easy to vote on going to war in Iraq or on the Patriot Act. I get that it was nice when the privatization of social security conveniently disappeared into the night. But now there is an administration in place that actually governs, rather than one that issues executive orders. The actual fight is now. And you’re running away like a fat kid from a veggie plate.

I don’t get it and I don’t like it.

Regards,

Jordan Watland

P.S. Why does your son have a Justin Bieber haircut? And what’s with the adolescent comb-over fad?

jw

A week ago, Ukraine hit the polls in the final round of their Presidential election which pitted Orange party member and Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko against former Ukrainian president and close friend to Moscow, Victor Yanukovych. Today, the Central Election Commission dismissed Tymoshenko's claims of fraud and misconduct during the February 7 poll and declared Yanukovych the winner, with 48.95 percent of the vote. Tymoshenko had 45.47 percent.

Yesterday, Tymoshenko headed this news off at the political pass. "I want to clearly state: Yanukovych is not our president. Whatever happens in future, he will never become the legitimately elected president of Ukraine," she said in a televised broadcast.

What she’d like is clear: another Orange Revolution, which, in the end of 2004, nullified a Yanukovych presidential victory, and gave the nominal power in Ukraine (nominal because there was later a shift to a powerful parliament) to Ukraine’s current president, Victor Yushchenko – a man with an unnecessary amount of consonants in his name. He received a little over five percent of the vote, by the way.

What Tymoshenko will get is nothing. There will be no taking to the streets. There will be no mass protest as there was last year in Tehran.

Ukraine’s population, young citizens in particular (those who are most likely to protest in the miserable winter), are too disillusioned with the state of their nation to put forth any sort of effort. Said one Ukrainian 25-year-old, "I won't come to protest because we know now that nothing will change."

Both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych are tighter with Moscow than is Yushchenko. They are also both controlled, as are most former Soviet states, it seems, by billionaire oligarchs who create economic pressure for the rest of the population. There is nothing anyone can do but shrug. It’s incredible that Ukraine had over 50 percent voter turnout.

Last week, a billboard was slapped up along Interstate-35 near Wyoming, Minnesota. It read:

A valid enough question. And one that went without a response until yesterday, when a group called The United States of America pasted a decidedly clear reply on the opposite side of the freeway:

In a statement, America said they would have replied sooner, but the billboard company is run by a guy named Michael "Heck of a Job Brownie" Brown who just couldn’t seem to get things together very quickly.

"Do you watch LOST? Are you excited for tomorrow?" The questions came out of my mouth without a beat of separation. The answers to both were understood in advance in our office and, as I rode the elevator from "L" to "4," I thought the questions and their affirmative answers the perfect length for the vertical journey.

"I stopped watching LOST in the middle of last season." Shit. Curve. "They started breaking their own rules and it just didn’t make any sense anymore," the extremely tall intern let me know.

The sentiment was repeated in an email amongst friends this morning that started when one friend exclaimed his anticipation of the LOST Final Season premiere tonight at 9/8c only on ABC. It continued when another threatened, "They better not end the series like ‘The Sopranos’ ended – I need some solid answers to all my questions."

And it concluded when a third friend bitterly wrote, "They time travel! What questions could you possibly have after that! There is no logic."

However, the logic may be that there is no logic. The reason may be that there is no reason. This is not just some amorphous, new age jabber. And here’s what the hell I mean by it.

In 2004, JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof outlined a show that was deeply based in mythology. In fact, JJ Abrams refused Lloyd Braun’s entreaties to fix the show another producer had created until Braun agreed that the Island could have a science fiction aspect.

Along with Lindelof, a man named Carlton Cuse runs LOST. Early in his career, Cuse went in to pitch ideas for a show called ‘The Equalizer.’

We now know that Osama bin Laden is hiding in a cave, watching "An Inconvenient Truth," reading Noam Chomsky, sketching conspiracy theories and ordering out for fried wontons. That should narrow down the search to the designated delivery area of the Lahore-Amritsar Panda Express.

In a tape released to and reported on by Al Jazeera’s English-based website, bin Laden admonished the US (George W. Bush, actually) and developing countries for destroying Mother Earth by rejecting the Kyoto protocol, and he suggested that the world should abandon the dollar as its currency reserve.

In the recording, bin Landen says, "This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions - whether intentionally or unintentionally - and about the action we must take."

There’s not a great deal to add to this – it’s just a great idea that came off in a decent rap.

The idea was: Spike TV producer John Papola was obsessed with macro economics and with and with a podcast called EconTalk. At the same time, Papola was indignant that the media was giving no attention to the underlying theories of economic – the reasons the economy is as shitty as the economy is. So, he called, Russell Roberts, the host of EconTalk and said, Let’s do something about this.

They did. They staged a rap battle between opposing economists John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek. The result was a music video that is a clever, subtle and, while fucking hilarious, doesn’t stoop to be so.

Enjoy.

An Act of God is a legal term defined by Black's Law Dictionary as, "events outside of human control, such as sudden floods or other natural disasters, for which no one can be held responsible."

I have not decided exactly by which Act of God I’d like Pat Robertson to perish.  But I know an act of God, it should be.  There is a great poetry to a heat-seeking missile missing its intended mark and turning back on the ship that launched it, to a hoarder dying in a fire because he cannot get out of his apartment, to a gingerbread man being eaten by a fox while crossing the river.  There will be great poetry, too, when the same Acts of God – hail or wind, rain or lightening – that Pat Robertson calls God’s retribution upon those who make deals with the devil for their homosexuality or heathen ways strike down upon Robertson with quick fury.

God’s latest vengeance came, of course, in Haiti.  Pat Robertson called the disaster that left over 300,000 people homeless a "blessing in disguise."  The people of Haiti, continued Robertson, "They got together and swore a pact to the devil.  They said we will serve you if you will get us free from the French.  True story… Out of this tragedy, something good may come."

Only thing that would have made that statement better is if, after "true story," Robertson had added, "I was there." 

Post-disaster, enter God.  Not only are Haitians turning to God more and more to thank him following the complete devastation of their capital city, but aid is coming to the country mainly from Catholic groups.

Soledad O’Brien was in Port-au-Prince for CNN last week and spoke of Catholic groups trying to bring supplies to orphanages that were subsequently robbed for those supplies – supplies that had often not arrived yet, making the robbery in vain.  O’Brien also told a story of a child handing her a bible and asking her to read from it.  The page she flipped to contained a verse asking God, "Why have you forsaken me?"

As the Los Angeles County freeways rise and wind into Orange County in California, the racing landscape bumps seamlessly from mountains above Malibu and Santa Clarita, over the grunge of Venice Boulevard and under the blast of Los Angeles International, around the hills and lookouts in PV, past the docks of Long Beach, the malls above Anaheim, Disneyland, itself. The traffic pulses, a slow heart, obstructed by wrecks, construction and billboards for a good time. The streets are grid-like, measured; but the houses are hasty, one-story matchstick huts, pasted with plaster and stapled with aluminum siding. Deflated Santas adorn the front yards the week after Christmas, soon to be replaced with barbeques and flags.

The houses give way, at a point, to industrial complexes: low, flat, sprawling, right-angle buildings, laid out on purposefully curvier streets to give the illusion of creativity. Just before the small numbered blocks of Newport Beach, this is a part of Costa Mesa. Off of the freeway, the streets are all unique, now, while they continue to look identical. The industrial zone is wedged in between a small airport, at which you have to walk outside before boarding your flight, and a golf course. In the middle of this zone, past JG Plastics and HD Nutrition, across from Rip Curl, sits a church called Rock Harbor.

The front of the building is designed to be welcoming. Two large garage doors are lifted to reveal large wooden (in every sense of the word; they are even aged) beams that frame the door and are frequently placed throughout the wide entry hall. Pamphlets greet those that enter. In the adjacent room, chairs are set up facing flat-screens to accommodate overflow from the main sanctuary, which is around the corner, down a narrower hallway, also encased in wooden beams.

A band plays as we enter the sanctuary. The drummer is protected by an octagon of Plexi glass. A young, light-brown haired man is sing, and the lyrics he sings are projected brightly on either side of the band. Immediately to the left of the singer is a large crucifix, made from the same wood that is ostensibly supporting the entry. There is only standing room left in the rear of the sanctuary, and when we leave, we’ll notice that even more came after.

The light-brown haired singer is, in time, replaced by a solid bald man, who you’d expect to see working a stockroom in Indiana. But here, he’s not out of place. The sanctuary supports a history of stories, rather than a history of time; not a lot has happened within these walls (if they could talk, they’d shrug), but a lot has, independently, happened to these people. The stories lend kinetic breath to the room. The bald man isn’t alone.

His lesson for the day is, at least in its underlying theme, about acceptance. Along with the parishioners, and the projections that have replaced song lyrics with bible lyrics, he reads from the New International Version (NIV) of the bible – as if he could choose any other.

Much of the lesson builds up to a comparison between two passages in the NIV: Isaiah 61 and Luke 4. The bald man starts with Isaiah. The passage hits the bright, big screens:

This was one of the scrolls that was read in synagogues, even two thousand years ago, says the bald man. He jumps to Luke, reading the first part: "He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written…"

The projection follows to Luke along with the bald man:

[18] "The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
[19] to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

The bald man continues to read from Luke: "Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’"

The bald man mentions the temerity Jesus had to claim that the scripture was fulfilled because he read it. But, again, his underlying point is what Jesus changed in his reading of the scroll. The bald man takes to his telestrator (yes) and underlines brokenhearted, he underlines blind, he circles oppressed, and he points excitedly at the final line that Jesus neglected: "and the day of vengeance of our God..."

People were appalled that Jesus would change the scripture, the bald man shouts. With his reading, no longer was there going to be vengeance on the Gentiles. No longer would the sick and weak and poor and crippled be overlooked on the streets. People, says the bald man, were appalled with the folks that Jesus hung out with.

And who would those people be today, he asks. And he answers: alcoholics, homosexuals, abortion supporters, illegal immigrants.

What he doesn’t ask is, who is Jesus today? He wants us each to be Jesus. Although, we don’t each have it in us. And so, it’s not until the drive home, back to Los Angeles County, through the breezy smog, that I realize, not only must the bald man have voted for Barack Obama, but he must, in turn, believe that Obama is the Second Coming.

He must understand that Obama hung out with the folks who appalled us – Reverend Wright, Louis Farrakhan, William Ayers – and engages with folks who appall us – Iran, North Korea – and is respectful of folks in a manner that disgusts us – bowing to the Saudi king and the Japanese Emperor. He must think that Obama doesn’t hang out with these folks because he agrees with these folks, but because he wants to understand them, to help them.

The derelict dealerships and fast food franchises on La Cienega give way to the Hills of Hollywood.  I am home.