Unhappy Hipster

The L.A. Times‘ wonderful architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne profiles the hilarious site Unhappy Hipsters in today’s Critic’s Notebook column. The site’s hook is stealing photos from design mags of people looking absolutely miserable in their soulless modernist homes.

Hawthorne tried to get the site’s anonymous founders to reveal their identities, but pulled this quote instead: “Unhappy Hipsters is a place to finally say what we’ve all been thinking: ‘Oh, miserable modernist — you picked the concrete floors and the gravel yard; at least pretend you like it.’ ”

Hear, hear.

Modernism is the architectural equivalent of reality television — screaming “LOOK AT ME” when there’s really nothing to see. I throw my full support behind anyone fighting the modernist lie. Just because your apartment is surrounded in glass  does not put you closer to some kind of harmonious state with the natural world. It means you’re an exhibitionist with bad taste. Hiroshima was bathed in natural light after the bomb too.

Earlier this week I reiterated the great Gustavo Arellano’s claim that Orange County was the Mexican-hating capital of the world. Turns out, the O.C. has some competition from up north.

The most obvious political firestorm of the new decade is brewing in Santa Clarita after local politician Bob Keller proclaimed himself a “proud racist” at a January 16, anti-immigration rally.

See the rhetorical brilliance below.

Perhaps the only thing more offensive than Keller’s comments are his George Costanza-like sweatpants. As Jerry Seinfeld once told George, “You know the message you’re sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You’re telling the world, ‘I give up. I can’t compete in normal society. I’m miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.’”

If the Seinfeld reunion every really happens, Jerry can throw “I hate Mexicans” onto the end of that list.

Image via Wikipedia

First we send our factories, then we send our dirty power plants, now we’re thinking about sending our prisoners.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger floated a different approach to trimming down California’s bloated prison budget on Monday: pay Mexico to build new prisons and ship off California’s incarcerated illegal immigrants south of the border.

The Republican governor has pushed to house California inmates out-of-state before — but never in a different country.

“We can do so much better in the prison system alone if we can go and take inmates, for instance the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here, and get them to Mexico,” Schwarzenegger said during a question-and answer session at the Sacramento Press Club. “Think about it.”

It’s cheaper to build prisons in Mexico, Schwarzenegger reasoned, and it’s cheaper to staff them there to boot.

Don’t you just love how the only time politicians get creative is when it involves finding new ways to keep people incarcerated? Hey Arnold, you know what will save the state a lot of money? Releasing all non-violent drug offenders. But that’s not going to happen, is it?

Anyway, the idea has a nice redneck political ring to it — shipping Mexicans back across the border and keeping them locked up so they can’t come back. Only one problem: with the state’s prison system overflowing with good old-fashioned Americans, how long before we start shipping U.S. citizens down south for lockup? You know, away from silly little things like judicial oversight?

Of course the idea is a political nonstarter. Folks in Orange County — otherwise know as the Mexican hating capital of the free world — may be soiling their underwear with joy,  but the prison guard union in California is far too powerful to allow any of their jobs to be shipped south.

Then again, if any state can pull this off it’s California. We have a pretty good track record when it comes to union-busting, amoral, airheaded actor/politicians.

Image via Wikipedia

For the flaneur, the blacktop parking lot is an aesthetic nightmare — a dead, lifeless, psychogeographically poisonous space that serves as a physical reminder of everything that is wrong with our lazy, vacuous culture.  For the less pretentious of you out there, parking lots — specifically the substance used to coat and protect them from the elements — may just give you and everyone you love cancer. So says a terrifying investigative story on MSNBC’s website.

The substance is coal tar sealant, a waste product of steel manufacturing that is used to protect pavement and asphalt against cracking and water damage, and to impart a nice dark sheen. It is applied most heavily east of the Rockies but is used in all 50 states.

But scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey say the sealant — one of two types commonly used in the U.S. — doesn’t stay put. It slowly wears off and is tracked into homes on the shoes of residents.

The USGS study, which found high levels of chemicals used in the sealant in house dust, marks the first time researchers have raised alarms about potential health effects for humans — especially young children — from the parking-lot coatings.

So what’s the verdict doc? What do avid tailgaters have to look forward to?

Coal tar is known to cause cancer in humans. That finding dates to the 1770s, when chimney sweeps in London were found to have high levels of scrotal cancer. Late the next century, it was associated with skin cancers among creosote workers. PAHs themselves are listed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a probable human carcinogen, based on laboratory studies in which they caused cancer in animals.

You had me at scrotal cancer. I’ll continue walking as much as humanly possible, thank you very much.

Image by jeffwilcox via Flickr

Jeffrey Michael Drach, 20, and Justin Wesley Case, 21 learned an important lesson today in court: don’t fuck with the FBI’s beer. The pair were sentenced to two years in jail yesterday in Orange County after breaking into an FBI agent’s house last November on a beer run. The agent was home at the time and fired on the two as they fled in a car.

The men entered the Yorba Linda home Nov. 18 through a partially opened garage door, the Orange County District Attorney’s office said. The FBI agent — identified only as James M. – entered the garage and identified himself as a law enforcement officer and ordered them to stop.

The agent briefly struggled with one of the men before both fled in a car. James M. shot at the car as it drove away but neither man was injured.

Drach’s attorney said the men entered the garage only to steal beer. The men fled before taking anything, said Deputy District Atty. Keith Bogardus.

Seriously, what does a 40 of King Cobra cost these days? Two bucks? Two years in jail seems like an awful lot for trying to boost some beer — unsuccessfully — but if you’re too cheap to pay for a Bud Light or two you deserve what you get.

This guy, on the other hand, should be released from prison to a hero’s welcome.