I have the privilege of working with public elementary schools throughout Los Angeles County, from Pacoima to Venice to San Pedro to La Puente. I call it a privilege because unlike many people I encounter, I have a pretty clear picture of what this city really looks like. Because LA is so sprawling, people tend to stick to the familiarity of their bubbles. Apparently the Governator, former LA resident and current leader of this fine state, is guilty of the same.  If he thinks that the education system can suffer through his proposed funding slash, he doesn’t have a clue what these schools are already up against.

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And we’ll see a speeding force slam into an immovable object. But it all hinges on Clinton’s Ohio and Texas returns.

If Clinton is the nominee she’ll have no choice but to have Obama as Vice-President. She’s simply alienated too many people who are politically married to him.

Clinton’s painted herself into a corner: This coalition of young people, African-Americans, independents and ordinary citizens fed up with Washington reticence cannot be counted on for an Obama-less Clinton ticket. These are mostly first-time voters who view politics as a route to a meaningful life, and Obama has brought them out in record-breaking numbers.

So what’s Obama to do if Clinton tops the ticket?

If he finds Denver a farce and blames the party’s elite, he could storm out of the convention, with his supporters behind him, and we’d see the next chapter in Partisan Implosions (see Republicans in 1912 and 1964 or Democrats in 1920 and 1968).

We’d likely see another four years of a Republican executive.

But if Obama accepts, there’s a good chance there could be a Democrat in the White House for 16 years. Liberal backlash will have never tasted so sweet.

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Here’s a formula familiar to any news consumer in the West: suicide bomber plus dead and injured people plus the Middle East equals crazy religious fanaticism. So familiar is this formula that we don’t even think about it as something formulated but as merely observed reality. It appears with. numbing. regularity. Look at any batch of wire stories any week of the year and there it is.

Most of us can manage barely more than a disapproving sigh. Any new-information burn or shock that once came from reading about such things faded long ago. A man or woman or child can walk into a crowded public space, blow themselves up, take sixty souls with them to paradise and hardly register a blip anymore. Such is life amid a drawn out worldwide conflict, sometimes far away, sometimes nearby, the new white noise of our lives.

It’s way past time to turn the old newsroom adage “if it bleeds, it leads” on its head: “if it bleeds, it misleads.” We have to shakeup the mainstream stereotype of the suicide bomber and free ourselves of its knee-jerk association with fanatical religious faith. Safe to say that once the image of the Muslim suicide bomber saturated American cinema as the preferred bad guy motif that it was beyond caricature and therefore absolutely no use as news information. As the Dude Lebowski would put it: “Our thinking has been uptight, man… I mean, new shit has come to light.”

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I am a registered Democrat in the state of California thanks to my vote for the ketchup dude four years ago. All of the candidate stumping, debating, posturing this year and I was nevertheless (still) an undecided Democrat as of yesterday, Super Tuesday. Since last fall, my brain has been saying Hillary and my heart has been saying Obama. Just like in the country generally, in my head all of what were supposed to be decisive turns in this horse race failed to provide a clear winner.

This is a record of how my day unfolded, as I struggled with the decision, tried to make sense of these over-hyped California ballot propositions, hounded my friends for their opinions, took pictures, voted, shot time-lapse video from my rooftop, and wandered around my neighborhood. Super Tuesday, indeed.

7:45 am:
My alarm goes off. First thought in my head: I hate my goddamn alarm. Second thought: It’s Super Tuesday and I still don’t know who the hell I’m voting for. Snooze.

7:50 am:
Still hate my alarm. Still don’t know who I’m voting for. Snooze.

7:55 am:
I have to find an alarm with a 10 minute snooze. I also have to get up and move my car from a meter spot. Is anyone campaigning against the L.A. County Parking Mafia?

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The Clintons wield power and positioning just as fervently and ruthlessly as their Republican White House predecessors. Where they differ, Bush and Co. used power to change the country, whereas the Clintons, more benevolently yet more narcissistically, use power to win elections. 

Democrats in South Carolina mandated a significant, cross-racial and loud rebuke of Clintonism. 

Hillary’s emotional moment in New Hampshire seems ludicrous when compared to how nasty the Democratic contest has grown. While Hillary fundraised in Florida and California, Bill was left to stump for Hillary in South Carolina. 

The Clinton camp returned to form by rising above and between race and gender issues. It’s called “triangulation” and recently it’s been easier to count than explain. 

The Clintons saw an opening to pander to the MoveOn.org-wing of the party and they took it. (1) Obama has been taken to task for his praise of Ronald Reagan. (Most historians and independent experts will tell you that Obama was right). And even Bill praised Reagan’s ideas– most famously in his 1996 State of the Union address when he announced, “the era of big government is over.”

(2) The Clintons have cherry-picked Obama’s quotes to cast doubt on his now-famous judgment of the Iraq war. Bill wrote it off as a “fairy tale.” Other negative ads were pulled when Senator Ed Kennedy and former Clinton aide and Illinois Congressman Rahm Emmanuel intervened to prevent a Democratic implosion.

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If the Republican party can mobilize its epic organizational powers behind the “Straight-Talk” express, McCain may be unstoppable, despite the swamp of the Bush legacy and the historical moment of the candidacies of the Democratic front-runners.

The key lies in how he is successfully tempting moderate Republicans, undecided centrists, and even confused Democrat fence-sitters who are consistently maddened by the choice between fresh-faced idealism tempered by a lack of experience (Obama) and an extensive knowledge of the system balanced by being the system at times (Hillary).

Consider the following breakdown of the New Hampshire primary based on the results of an Associated Press exit poll:

“Romney edged out McCain among the half of Republican primary voters who called themselves conservative, but McCain won more handily among moderates and the roughly 10 percent who were self-described liberals, according to preliminary results of surveys conducted for The Associated Press and television networks…

“Registered independents, who could choose between the two parties’ primaries, had been seen as a key to victory in both races in New Hampshire but they were more of a factor on the Republican side…A third of Republican primary voters called themselves independent, and McCain easily outpaced Romney among them. “

McCain’s immigration bill, which almost doomed his campaign in the early running because fellow conservatives were repulsed by the dreaded blanket amnesty it supposedly offered every illegal/undocumented, actually contained a great deal of appeal to the middle-of-the-road pack. He is the only one of all the Republican candidates who has expressed any sort of progressive opinions on the climate-change crisis and the need for a cap-and-trade system to offset carbon emissions as well as stimulate the economy. Check out Grist.com’s fact-sheet on McCain for proof of his party-ruffling positions on the environment. His opposition to the US’s treatment of prisoners and his call for a ban on torture, as well as his insistence on campaign finance reform are also documented in recent New York Times Op-Ed piece.

But don’t be fooled. Rarely does one hear McCain mention his pro-life stance, especially since primary season has been in full-swing. Even more perplexing is McCain’s appeal to voters who oppose the war in Iraq, which the same Associated Press exit polls from above revealed. Consider this snippet from McCain’s own website concerning his position on Iraq:

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*Photography by Chris Nelson

For those of you who braved the the absurd prices and uncharacteristically cold weather (by L.A. standards anyways) to venture out for a New Year’s Eve celebration, bravo. Just finding a satisfactory venue to ring in a new year is hard enough. But to actually have some quantifiable fun that softens the exorbitant dollar-to-drink ratio… therein lies the real challenge.

If you like $300 custom Nike tennis-shoes, have an abhorrence for shaving and a penchant for faux-hawks, or if you prefer that your jeans keep your blood flow to strictly above the knees, the Hard NYE party in downtown Los Angeles may have been your soiree of choice to ring in 2008 with style.

Or you may fall into none of those horrible hipster stereotypes and simply like two scraggly Frenchmen dropping dirty electro basslines for an hour and a half, starting at the stroke of midnight.

With Hard NYE 2007, Los Angeles saw some outdoor competition to the GIANT New Year’s Eve parties that have gone off for the past four years or so in the heart of downtown. Yes, they are trance dominated, but that seems to be what sells $100-plus tickets in L.A. I’ve made it to the Giant Village summer parties before and, whatever your taste in lineups, there is no arguing that they are well organized and nestled into prime downtown real estate.

Neither could be said for Hard NYE’s first outing. The location was just east of Skid Row in a decidedly run down few blocks of the industrial district that surrounds the Biscuit Company and Toy Factory loft complexes. The organization and security were both subpar. I felt especially bad for the people who ponied up $150 for a VIP ticket only to see their valet line stalled for over an hour as two cars were left unattended at the front of the line and the valets were nowhere to be found. Many a pre-partied socialite shouted nondescript vulgarities into the crsip night air as Mercedes horns honked chaotically.

(Ok, I didn’t really feel sorry for them.)

After a tour of the grounds around 11PM revealed a lackluster Peaches performance in progress on the main stage and a game crowd getting down to the well-mixed but somewhat tired tunes of A-Trak on the secondary stage, I and my small crew of friends were a bit concerned that our night was in jeopardy. The $35 price tag for three Coronas, a bottle of water, and a vodka tonic didn’t help matters.

Rounding out the “oh fuck” quotient was the journey in and out of a pitch-black port-o-potty that had me wishing the brief sliver of light which penetrated the abyss as I entered hadn’t revealed one of the messier shit caves I had ever seen.

But sometimes all you need to right the wayward course of such a misguided partyboat is one memorable performance to take you on a blissful musical journey. Just one stretch of time where you forget about how cold you are, how much money this is costing you, and whether or not this is a harbinger of the kind of luck you can expect in 2008.

As soon as Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Auge took the stage just after 2008 had begun, it was clear that they were going to deliver on that elusive New Year’s Eve promise. It was also quickly apparent that their DJ set that night would live up to the astronomical hype that has been following their live performances all over the world since last April’s phenomenal Coachella performance.

There’s not much that can be done to describe in words the sound and the fury of 90 minutes of well-mixed, sound-of-the-moment French electro house (as well as other house classics - they went waaayy back for a few).

The crowd was going bonkers for it. Everyone who was there was treated to stellar first hour and a half of 2008. One that saw the two Frenchmen overcome a malfunction that brought the music to a dead stop, as well as another screeching halt to remove some overzealous stage-goers.

All in all, for those not wanting to endure the cold until 3 AM for another incredible performance by SoCal’s own breaks-guru Uberzone, Justice was the perfectly-timed highlight of the night.

Check out some more performance and crowd shots after the jump to see for yourself.

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With the release of the Chocolate and enV series of phones recently, LG has managed to deliver cell-phones with the right balance of features, form factor, and sex appeal to strike a chord with American consumers. The Chocolate has been a fashionable hit among those looking for style with a decent amount of substance to boot while the enV has proven a worthwhile alternative to Blackberries, iPhones, and other devices that generally require at least an extra $40/month in data plan fees on top of the bare minimum $40/month you already pay just to have a working cell-phone these days, whereas the enV does not.

(Disclaimer: I just bought the enV and think it’s pretty slick).

But, when discussing iPhone alternatives in terms of features that are glaring omissions in Apple’s uberphone yet present (and even refined) in many of its competitors, it always comes back to the ogle factor, and nothing has touched the iPhone in that department in the 8 months the marketplace has had time to concoct a worthy adversary. The Chocolate and enV are nice, but the iPhone is still in another league in terms of the marriage of design and functionality, despite its primitive flaws (no cut and paste??).

I believe all of that changes, however, when LG releases this bad boy, the KU990, just recently reported on Engadget:

Those are soft-key numbers on a screen…the only dedicated buttons are the end, home, and send (not shown above). An excerpt from the Engadget report:

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Do the math, do the homework, baby. (I smell a new catch-phrase…)

From the Associated Press last week:

A man who had his head wrapped in duct tape to conceal his identity walked into [Shamrock Liquors in Ashland, KY] last Friday, police said.

Store manager Bill Steele had some duct tape of his own, but his was wrapped around a wooden club that sent the robber fleeing, according to a report by WSAZ-TV in Huntington, W.Va.

Store employee Craig Miller said he chased the man to the parking lot, tackled him and held him in a choke position until police arrived, the station reported. An unidentified customer also helped, police said.

Kasey G. Kazee, 24, was charged with first-degree robbery. Kazee, in an interview with the TV station, denied he was bandit who robbed the store of two rolls of change.