The Jazzy Bahsoun

Life's our oyster and we're gonna suck that bitch down with a champagne chaser.

Behavioral Therapist
MA Developmental Psychology, Columbia
BS Psychobiology/ French, UCLA

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Movies to See:
Mission Impossible
Haywire
Shame
A Dangerous Method
Underworld:Awakening

TV Shows to Watch:
Portlandia
The Life & Times of Tim

Book to Read:
Game of Thrones
by George R.R. Martin

Album to Listen to:
The Black Keys
El Camino

Person to Hate:
Newt Gingrich

Group of People to Despise:
Fox & Friends

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Mary's Website

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Monday, June 26, 2006
The Perished and the Profiled
On the way back from a play at the Mark Taper Forum yesterday starring Morpheus himself (highly recommended), I noticed two shocking examples of the deterioration of American society. No, the Republican National Convention wasn't in town and I think Paris Hilton is in New York or something. The first example was something so simple and mundane that one wouldn't think it would be so harmful. It was a simple billboard on La Cienega Blvd typically reserved for movie, TV or car advertisements. However this particular billboard was an ad for, of all things, a mortuary service. All right, fine. People need mortuaries to honor and bury their loved ones. But this ad went above and beyond simply displaying their services. If only I had my digital camera to prove to you, the readers, that I was not making this up, but all I can say is that I swear on my beautiful Mustang that I am telling the whole truth with no exaggerations.

Across the top of the billboard read the title of the mortuary company: Forest Lawn Mortuaries (they sell gardening equipment on the side when people aren't dying). Underneath the title read the various services they offer, funerals, cremation etc. In the center of the billboard, however, was when my jaw began to drop. It was a picture of a senior citizen in her prime, I guess, by some sort of pier (perhaps Santa Monica).... riding a Razor scooter. Now those contraptions are dangerous enough for pre-teens, but for a little old lady wearing sunglasses on her 4th titanium hip, it's not recommended. However, the tagline by the picture was when my pupils dialated:
"I'M GOING OUT IN STYLE." I wasn't sure whether to feel offended, sorry or sad. Either she's going out in style with a nice coffin or cremation...or she's diving headfirst of that damn pier in her scooter.

Offense two. Leaving home for downtown at 7pm, I saw a long line outside the Wilshire Theater across the street and noticed that they had a "Def Comedy Jam" show at the theater. I thought that that would've been really cool to go to, but alas, it was not meant to be. I won't be coy by evading the fact that the vast majority of the people in line were African-American (or is it Black?). In any case, we drove by and headed on to downtown to enjoy the play. On the way back, on the very same boulevard which housed the previously mentioned morbid billboard, not 4 or 5 blocks down, in front of the Beverly Hills Tennis Center (where champion 80+ year-old Bridge players compete...they must love that billboard) there was a row of police cars and flares. I thought there must've been an accident of some sort, but I couldn't see any signs of one. Just rows of policemen, policecars and police motorcycles. Also, a set up of chairs and tables in front of the community center. Needless to say, I was perplexed. However, a 100 yards or so down, I saw why there was this elaborate BHPD setup. On a giant orange sign read the words (paraphrased), "Slow for Drug & Alcohol Testing Checkpoint." Aaallll right? In front of senior citizen central at 10pm, seems reasonable. But as we turned right on Wilshire, and noticed that a certain show was being let out from the Wilshire Theater, who would be taking La Cienega to get to the freeway. If this isn't racial profiling, I don't know what is. I don't remember seeing this police blockade after David Peter Osgood's Bar Mitzvah which was celebrated at the Wilshire Theater last week. But it is unavoidable, I suppose. In the eyes of Beverly Hills, the innocent audience of "Def Comedy Jam," who was just looking for some laughs and a good time, is seen as a bunch of drunken hoodlums looking to terrorize the rich white citizens Beverly Hills. I'm not sure how many of them were stopped and tested, nor do I know if they even stopped anyone at all. But the point is is that they thought it had to be there. A few months ago Billy Crystal's stand-up show ran for a couple of weeks at the Wilshire Theater and I do not recall there being a checkpoint for the audiences of that show, a comedy show of another variety.

Perhaps that ol' Civil Rights Movement didn't take. Perhaps we need a Civil Rights Movement for our geriatric citizens. They're not meant to be shuffled off into coffins on an assemblyline. This assumes that I'm expecting more from our cynical and cruel society. But I don't. And I shouldn't. This is the unfortunate reality. Death shall be celebrated on billboards. Blacks shall be demeaned by the police. Science will be challenged by religion. Liberals will be criticized by conservatives. Bruins will be accosted by Trojans. If this is the nature of our society, why should we be so shocked or appalled by it? The answer is to ask the question of why we should even be subjected to these things so much that we eventually accept them and see them as normal.
2:05 AM
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