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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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Even XXX Stars Need TLC

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"I've never watched a pornographic movie in my life," says Bobi, genial lab tech at the modest, quiet office of AIM Health Care on shady White Oak Avenue. When I press her, incredulous that someone who works in a health care office that caters to the needs of adult film actors has never been exposed to that industry's primary product, she sticks by her story. "They did have one on at my bachelorette party, but I didn't really look at it, and now you couldn't pay me to watch one. I know everyone in the industry, and it would almost be like watching a video of my kids having sex. I wouldn't want to do that." When she puts it that way, it makes sense. Bobi tells me that some clients of the clinic even refer to her as "Mom," and when I overhear her soothing a nervous patient on the phone ("Don't worry honey; chlamydia is a bacterial infection and it can be cured with medicines") I understand why. It's actually rathe
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