Last Night, View From Odyssey Parking Lot

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Archive: Master of Pirates

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Mike Spasoff is a tireless servant to this community -- at least for a few months out of the year -- and that's good enough for me. It's also more than good enough for the 600 trick-or-treaters he delights and terrifies with the elaborate, Disney-rivaling, pirate-themed yard display at his house on San Fernando Mission Boulevard (near Shoshone). When I was a kid, I used to always wish someone in the neighborhood would do something beyond carving a pumpkin. Fortunately, kids in Mike's neighborhood will never have to cope with that same unfulfilled sense of longing that I always had. What makes you want to invest the time, money, and resources into such an elaborate production? I can remember the magic of walking the streets of our neighborhood each Halloween and the excitement of finding a house that did something more than just a jack-o-lantern or a cardboard skeleton. My parents and I always made a special effort to do something extra but it wasn't until we moved to
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Thoughts on Joe's Cafe and cancel culture

On June 1, 2020, the date when people planned to gather in Granada Hills to protest George Floyd's killing, fearful rumors began flying early. The protest was certain to be violent. The claims that it was planned as a "peaceful" protest was certain to be cover for looters. Some started spreading the rumor that "the organizers have cancelled the event," presumably with the hope of making that come true.  I spent that afternoon trying to debunk the myths that seemed designed to suppress the event from happening. Myth debunking has, at times during 2020, seemed like a full-time job for me, starting with my pointless and overmatched efforts to argue with "the pandemic is a liberal hoax" theorists. I still find it difficult to believe that my pleas for evidence-based reasoning would so often be dismissed as radical.  Yet I stubbornly cling to my insistence that without evidence to support them, beliefs are worthless.  On social media, I pled with fear-sprea
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Another Skirmish In The Food Truck War

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A group of black-shirted staffers of Numero Uno Pizzeria stand in a cluster in front of their store, surveying the Friday night scene on Chatsworth Street. Over the course of the last several months, they've watched the number of food trucks — or as they call them, "roach coaches" — burgeon on the stretch between Yarmouth and Zelzah, growing from one or two, parked only in front of Menchie's, to tonight's herd of fifteen trucks, spread up and down the street. And they're not happy. "Obviously it's a nuisance. You see nothing but wrappers, and cans, just trash. Why would Granada Hills want catering trucks to damage the place and destroy it? Not one of these trucks is from Granada Hills, not one. Why not pump up businesses that have been here, that support the Little Leagues, the Devonshire Police Station pasta night, instead of this little fad with catering trucks?" Numero Uno's staff says they're not alone in their frustration
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