Respect Authority

Just when you were starting to think that maybe graffiti would be a fun endeavor to try, notorious L.A.-based crew, the Metro Transit Assassins, goes and gets themselves arrested. Conveniently, the contraband confiscated in the process only proves once and for all that graffiti really is a fun endeavor to try… until you get thrown in jail. And isn’t that just the case with everything fun these days? And by everything, I mean pretty much just drugs.

The MTA is responsible for L.A.’s single largest tag, a monstrous three-story-high, half-mile long signature on the concrete banks of the Los Angeles River. You know, that festering trickle of runoff and slime, a brook at best, babbling only because of the ferocious bacterial life within, that skateboarders sometimes do really cool tricks over? Regardless, the MTA so kindly graced L.A. with a veritable landmark and how does the city repay them? By putting them in cuffs and confiscating all their guns and weed. Pretty fucking ungrateful if you ask me.

Their work is not your typical crudely drawn ejaculating penis or alien giving the finger scrawled in alleyways and along the subway tracks. One has to be pretty fucking good, and organized, to deface something as huge as the L.A. river bank. And it shows — one of the suspects arrested drives a $60,000 BMW, and another member of the crew, well-known graffiti artist Smear, has recently sold pieces to wealthy collectors. Their operation is, or was anyway, on a scale equivalent to that of their massive acts of public beautification. Indeed, the term “high rollers” works on so many levels here that I think I just popped some of the pun receptors in my brain.

Meanwhile, the cost to clean up the tag is also proportional — the city estimates it will run about $3.7 million to remove the three lumbering block letters, as extra measures must be taken to keep the 400 gallons of paint used to create the tag from running into the river. After all, one wouldn’t want to contaminate all the blood-encrusted syringes and filthy condoms that live there.

Nonetheless, these guys are in some shit now, and it’s considerably deeper than the Los Angeles River.

So your city’s going to collapse in a massive wave of unpreventable and unpredictable destruction, and no one will listen to you warn them about it. What to do… Ah yes, throw a party!

Geologists in Los Angeles will put a longstanding desire for popularity ahead of the whole “actual science” thing this Thursday, when some five million people in the city will participate in the “Great Southern California Shakeout,” a disaster drill built around a mock 7.8-magnitude earthquake that reads more like a ride at Universal Studios. (Fun Fact: The actual “Earthquake” ride at Universal was renamed “Disaster!” in 2007 to, I shit you not, incorporate new holographic technology of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, among other things).

The earthquake drill, during which people will be told to dive under their desks, cover their heads and all that other jazz reminiscent of the day when our parents prepared themselves for nuclear attack by kissing their asses goodbye, will be followed by what event organizers call a “Get Ready Rally,” because everyone knows after an earthquake there’s nothing to do but live it up in the cracked and crumbling streets.

The event will include “rumbling” designed by a special-effects studio, and participants are free to design their own homepage on the ShakeOut Web site, invite friends and for the truly sadistic — watch earthquake videos. They can also play computer games “After Shock” and “Beat the Quake,” because we all know that life’s threats aren’t real until they’re made into video games. Read More ›