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Syndicated columnist Amy Alkon wrote a remarkable piece for the Los Angeles Times a few years ago (I think in the magazine) about tracking down the creep who stole her car -- a powder pink 1960 Nash Rambler. A car like that is not easy to hide, and she kept getting leads and chasing them. She found "Fred" and the Rambler, but when the LAPD wouldn't close the deal she got Fred on the phone and harangued until he broke: "Where would you like your car?"
It was there in an hour, in horrible condition. Moldings were missing. Every lock was broken. A door handle had been severed. The formerly pristine rose-beige velvet upholstery was splattered with grease spots and wax drippings. Worse, there were white latex paint droplets all over my hood and chrome. I called Fred back and screamed at him.
OK, upshot -- Alkon posts on her blog today that the guy is back in jail, and the L.A. city attorney called to ask if he's been making the $75 a month restitution payments. Now he may be looking at 180 days for not paying. She tells more.
Joe appears to have some difficulty comprehending difficult terms, such as the words "syndicated columnist" at the beginning of this blog item. And Joe, since you seem a little peeved at not appearing in pictures at parties you don't attend, as an act of charity, I'd like to offer you the opportunity to have your head pasted on my body in one of the photos from the next one. Do lemme know if that's a go!
Posted by: Amy Alkon at September 17, 2003 08:43 PMFor more about the top-secret career of Amy Alkon:
http://www.advicegoddess.com/allabout.html
Posted by: Amy Alkon at September 17, 2003 08:44 PMI seem peeved at not appearing in pictures from
parties I don't attend? No, not really. My
comment was pointed at the clique of people in
the press club that always manage to get their faces in there despite the presence of some real
journalists. And, yes, you can paste my picture
- where the frog is on your website... :)
The presence of some "real journalists"? Wow! Neat-o! Stop the presses!
Do you wear a fedora with a little card that says "press," or does the sad self-importance seem to suffice?
Maybe you can get all the "real journalists" together to change the name of LA Press Club to LA Real Journalists' Club, and then you can make the whole website a big picture of your face! Yay!
Posted by: Amy Alkon at September 21, 2003 01:20 PMN fedora, but I wear my heart on my sleeve; I walked into an IRA bomb; I won First Place for Best Internet News Story from the Press Club (and it resulted in seven arrests in breaking up a multimillion dollar fraud); I even got my press pass jerked because I wrote about Rocky Delgadillo showing my article about the Mercedes-Benz recall case to the jury he was foreman of, leading to a motion for a mistrial that went otherwise unreported. You can give advice, Amy, and it may even be rational at times, but when you start calling yourself a journalist and mock those who are, you ask for it. Go out and take a risk one of these days; it could do your soul good.
Posted by: Joe Shea at September 21, 2003 10:34 PMUm, Joe, hate to break it to you, but I've written journalism, and won awards for it. And, these days, I generally refer to myself as a godless harlot or with some other self-deprecation -- perhaps because I don't have raging insecurities necessitating chest-thumping.
Posted by: Amy Alkon at September 23, 2003 07:11 AM
of LA Observed
It's hard to keep Amy in the news, isn't it? :)
Posted by: Joe Shea at September 17, 2003 12:04 PMThank God for the Greater LA Press Club 8 Ball newsletter, which has several pics of her every month. But what does she do, exactly? Isn't she the driving force behind Matt Welch's LA Examiner?