Winston, Emily, Ruby, Bryna, Beau

Emily vs. Quinn

Mom's friend, Winston?, Mom

This is a great dissenting opinion by Justice Ortega of California's Second District Appellate Court (Los Angeles).  The plaintiffs brought a consumer protection action because an employee at Sony Pictures had invented a fictional movie critic, "David Manning" of the Ridgefield Press in Ridgefield, CT, and placed his quotes prominently on posters for "A Knight's Tale" ("Heath Ledger is this year's Hottest New Star"), "The Animal" ("The producing team of Big Daddy has delivered another winner"), and "Hollow Man" ("One hell of a scary ride!  The year's best special effects").

The court overruled the defendants' anti-SLAPP motion and allowed the lawsuit to proceed, over Justice Reuben Ortega's objections:

"This is the most frivolous case with which I have ever had to deal. Imagine the great contribution this case will make to our quality of life and to justice in America. Why, it may eventually protect us all from war, pestilence, famine and death. A new day will dawn from which time no one will ever again be fooled by a promotion touting a movie as the greatest artistic accomplishment of the ages. From that day on, all persons will be able to absolutely rely on the truth and accuracy of movie ads. No longer will people be seen lurching like mindless zombies toward the movie theater, compelled by a puff piece. What a noble and overwhelming undertaking. The only losers will be those poor souls who do not go to the movies. But, such is life. Someone always gets left behind.

"While the vast majority of actions taken by lawyers contribute to the public good, counsel here are providing nothing even approaching rectification of a legitimate wrong. I cannot see breathing life into this farce. We should be occupying ourselves with resolving legitimate disputes instead of laughable cases designed not to gain anything for the plaintiffs, but rather to generate fees for the only true beneficiaries of this disgrace, the attorneys.

 . . .

"As stated above, no reasonable consumer could possibly be misled by the false attribution of the nonactionable quotations to David Manning for The Ridgefield Press. Contrary to the majority opinion's implication, moviegoers are not such morons. Plaintiff has no probability of succeeding on the merits."

Chicago:

Hearst Castle, the Neptune Pool:

The "Casa Grande":

Living room ceiling:

Dining room:

Underground pool:

Some free-ranging leftovers from Hearst's zoo:

Sea lions:

Big Sur coast:

The Bay Breeze Inn:

The Monterey Bay Aquarium:

The Hyatt Regency:

This is the view from my new window:

The NYT had an article on Chinese counterfeit "Harry Potter" books, and included some plot summaries and translated excerpts, here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/10/opinion/10potter.html

These are great!

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Harry Potter and the Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon

Last week, after trips to L.A. and then Porterville, I had to move to my new room in the Tower.  When I was done getting everything out of my old room, it was 3 am.  I went down to return the cart they'd lent me to the reception desk.  I saw there was a vacuum cleaner there and asked the guard if I could use it.  He said,

"You can use it, but you help me with alarm.  Alarm is going 'beep beep beep!' and I cannot reach.  I am not tall enough."

So I followed him to the elevator with my vacuum cleaner, and we went up to the tenth floor, which smelled terrible, like someone had lit their room on fire.  The guard left me standing by a ladder in the hallway beneath what I assumed was the alarm, while he disappeared into a room down the hall.  I began to wonder whether I was supposed to follow him when the beeping stopped and he came out and said, "It's all right.  Thank you."

I took my vacuum up to my room, plugged it in and turned it on.  It was from the seventies, and it roared like a jet engine, probably waking everyone on my floor, but it wasn't picking anything up.  Then it began to smell.  And then a huge cloud of pungent smoke seeped out of the bottom part of it.  My entire room instantly smelled like the hallway with the alarm.  I took the vacuum cleaner back down.

"It didn't work," I told the guard.
"It's smoking!"
"Yeah, when I turned it on, it began to smoke."
"I'm sorry."

The guard left and returned with two vacuum cleaners, also circa 1970.

"You can tell me which one works."

When I got back, I told him they both did.

. . . and . . .

Newly renovated Griffith Park Observatory

Griffith Park fire aftermath

Roof of The Standard

Sun sets on MacArthur Park

The working title of this movie, starring Will Smith, is "John Hancock"...filming one block away from Denise & Dan.

Off-brand cologne machine in men's bathroom in gas station on way back