Last week, the great and institutional WNYC talk show host Brian Lerher introduced Gustavo Arellano by incorrectly saying that that the LA Times columnist’s city was under curfew. Arelleno corrected Lerher, reluctantly, as the LA Times columnist explained on The Press Box this week
“I don’t like to be that person,” he said in that anecdote shared with co-hosts Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker. And this motherfucker wasn’t even lying.
Please take a moment to imagine what I might say to Brian Lerher if he said some shit like that to me, on a hot mic call? He thought I said wild shit when I was on after 9.11. Man, I’d have blown that nigga’s hair back.
No, the sickness is not toxic in every pale cousin, but it’s only ever been too much be ignored or played down. Or apologized for.
Just as with Lerher, I admire Gustavo Arelleno’s work. But to a fault this OC Mexican does not want to be that person. Gustavo Arellano journalism is factually sound, mildly snarky in tone, and only that played at questioning the status quo.
But he hated to protest, to be that guy.
Lucky for us, this Southern California institution has found his “fighting words”
“The Trump Administration cares not about Mexicans and, far from it wants to domaras,” he went on to say. “Domar in Spanish means to subjugate, really dominate, and it doesn’t matter if the Mexican is this tall brown, deep voiced Mexican that everyone in American in politics—especially in DC knows—like Alex Padilla. Nah, it was just another Mexican and he needed to made an example of.”
The OC Weekly happens to have been among the first outlets to republish Might magazine’s “Cool Like Me.” But Gustavo and I have not met, at least that I can recall. Yet I can confidently say that he never took White supremacy as seriously as he ought to have. Even before I became the father of a Mexican daughter my whole shit was:
They don’t like you, they like your food, as the great Paul Mooney used to say.
White supremacy is a durable poison that, though tamped down, demanded ongoing attention. No, the sickness is not toxic in every pale cousin, but it’s only ever been too much be ignored or played down. Or apologized for.
The Times’ OC Mexican has finally ready to be that guy. So much better late than never.
10 There may be flames by the time you read this
The Golden State could be facing a stress test in the coming days. The Central Valley is under a red flag warning for widespread conflagration. On Thursday, the National Weather Service’s Capitol office issued a fire weather watch for the Sacramento Valley, Delta and Sierra Nevada foothills. On Friday the service and upgraded it to a red flag warning.
Merced Sun-Star
By the time I publish this, Pacific Gas and Electric could have cut off electricity to customers in at least 15 California counties, including Fresno, Merced, Stanislaus, and San Joaquin,counties.
Authorities issue a red flag warning when critical fire conditions are expected within the next 24 hours. So, you may already be on fire.
Lil Hit
Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers is among the legal weed leaders who believe that cannabis reform could be coming from the White House.
Marijuana Business Daily
The Bonzi Wells smoke story
Stephen Jackson explains on the Fast Break podcast that he didn’t ordinarily fraternize with opponents. Lucky for us, he did this once, because a memorable story came out of it.
9 Where Angel Reese is an afterthought
WNBA on ABC viewership dropped big during Caitlin Clark’s five-game injury absence and rebounded dramatically enough upon the superstar’s return to resurface the notion that the league hasn’t an actual hoops fan base, but a lot of Indiana Fever stans.
What’r really interesting to me though? When the numbers for Clark’s comeback game were reported as an astronomical 20 million viewers—the numbers were unquestionably reported, lending credence to the notion of, um… unsophistication.
Yahoo / Awful Announcing
Indiana’s 102-88 win over then-10-0 New York liberty averaged 2.2 million viewers, with a 2.8 million peak. The numbers represent a 76 percent last season’s average.
Lil Hit
I have no idea which squad will take home Sunday’s Game 7 and be called NBA champs, but I can tell you that the Pacers run has been one of my favorite postseason runs in a lifetime of sports consumption.
Fieldhouse Files
8 John Miller is the PDX Pickles master
“Local sports magnate John Miller” is a funny sentence to type. Feels so small and weird.
But the Wild West League defending champion Portland Pickles are a small, weird phenomenon. Their owner has not only this strange and brilliant minor-league baseball product, but also a team outside Cleveland. The Portland Bangers soccer club is the latest small-time, promotion-driven lick.
Willamette Week
Props to Rachel Saslow for the quiestion, “In 2017, did you right away decide, ‘I’m going to own a baseball team and it’s going to be nuts,’ or was it a gradual process?” It’s a bodacious opening gambit.
Miller’s answer: “It was a spite purchase. I was coming from the marketing world, and we started doing a lot of sports, and I was getting frustrated that a team that I was working with wouldn’t take chances and wouldn’t do things that would be risky at all. So, I wanted an opportunity to show people that you could do things differently and be very successful doing it, and it was the Pickles.’
Lil Hit
Kings catching strays in Sacramento
The franchise that let loose of Tyrese Halliburton was bound to get social media crucified throughout a protest that happened to occur during the NBA Finals. My favorite post though is pure self-flagellation: “I get it, we suck.”
Reddit
Little Beach Harvest: Cannabis sovereignty at Long Island's east end
Free excerpt: 3:42 or so to about 12:48 of the original O
7 A strong artist takes the helm at SF’s Roots Division
After years of making remarkable art and serving gigs like senior director of education at the Museum of the African Diaspora, Demitri Broxton takes over as executive director of the San Francisco arts organization Roots Division.
7x7
I’m mainly sharing the news as an excuse to rerun the Glendale Public Library panel that Broxton and I were on a few years back. Chance the Rapper failed to show, and—in a too-snug t-shirt—I was enough of a ham to make up for the Chicago MC’s absence.
Broxton will take over for Director Emeritus Michelle Mansour, who was ED for 17 years.
Lil Hit
Tom Morello brought Pussy Riot and The Neighborhood Kids onstage for Monday night’s “Defend LA” concert at The Echoplex.
LA Taco
The Full Herb Caen
My single bummer moment from last weekend’s PDX protest was overhearing a White lady’s hope that “this finally gets us over the hump”…
I wondered if American conditioning that unconsciously craves micro-wave solutions is going to be a problem…
Not enough people do loose-dentures Trump. Garble one right now, for practice. It’s a fun one, I promise you…
Human costs cannot compute for DJT…
So much public land is set to be auctioned off in the Republican ginormous harm bill, which they aim to get through the Senate next week…
A couple of months ago, GOP booster Ken Griffin insisted that 20 percent of America’s had been lost due to tariffs…
How much of that has come back…
The overthrow of the Iran and replacing him with the Shah really was the mother of all US coups..
I have never seen deeper rotation play in an NBA Finals…
6 Mumia Abu Jamal never stopped watching
Kudos to the incomparable Dave Zirin for his sitdown with the incarcerated journalist. Zirin considered the eyeballs that have come off of the celebrated Death Row figure to 71-year-old cultural critic and came up with this jewel:
“Even if we’re not paying attention to him, you better believe he’s paying attention to us.”
Rolling Stone
It’s a lengthy interview. Just one excerpt for now, on the matter of outsourcing prisoners, “It’s the expansion to the rest of the world of a prison industrial complex not content to remain in our borders. We are also seeing how easy it to repurpose these private prisons as places of repression, torture and death. These prison companies selling shares on the New York Stock Exchange are the new creators of what used to be called “black sites.”
Lil Hit
This piece takes the sting from the notion. Swapping in high-CBD cannabis is my favorite version of “taking a break.”
Catherine Goldberg
5 Raphael Devers: One Giant solution, a world away from one Fenway debacle
In Seattle there’s a little disappointment with the Mariners, though fans know there’s plenty of hope for a division win. The Padres are thin, but star-studded. In Los Angeles, the biggest payroll in the history of baseball has Dodgers fans shifting uncomfortably as their oft-injured squad only ranks second among baseball experts.
Unless you follow the A’s or the Angels, you’re pretty happy with your West Coast MLB action. The slept-on story out here is that SF’s Giants are way better than anyone expected them to be, and now they have an answer to their problems at first base and DH.
Thing is, it took a whole bunch of drama to get this homegrown Red Sox talent to The City.
ESPN
Jeff Passan writes, “No signs of discord or regret surfaced until February. Boston's recent aborted attempts at contending -- team chairman Tom Werner famously said the Red Sox intended to go "full throttle" into free agency after the 2023 season, only for them to spend $50 million total and go 81-81 -- had failed, but this year was going to be different.”
The Red Sox record sits at 39-37.
Lil Hit
The new EP from La Isla Electronica runs about 10 minutes and is the punky Spanish-language dance music that you need in your life.
Portland Mercury
Caen you realize?
Amy Nicholson and Paul Scheer are as openly allegorical as a podcast can be in their discussion of 28 Days Later…
People on the left struggle to discuss Obama’s aggressive immigration policy…
Fellow members of the glee club, Isaiah Hartenstein is Black…
Apparently we are eight years out from Social Security benefits cuts…
Just a bit after I’m due to start collecting…
We cannot become numb to people in masks grabbing citizens and disappearing them…
4 Take a bubble tip from Tim Miller’s Terry Moran interview
More than a half hour into this exchange between the former Republican Bulwark host and the 65-year-old just-fired ABC correspondent—who owns both the best Trump TV interview and the top Whites House Tweet—Moran responds to POTUS’s promise to send troops to Democratic cities.
The Bulwark
“That’s the real shit. We’re there,” Moran said.
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