Griffith Park Blog

LA County Animal Shelters, and Why They Should Be Put to Sleep.

Donna Barstow — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 10:52:40 +0000

I learned about the LA County Animal Shelters through Facebook 2 years ago, but the first push to write this was either a chicken or her egg. Or her good friend, the duck. *

hen and duck lost at baldwin park shelter - photo by Elaine Seamans on Facebook

They were found together, wandering near the road (of course – the chicken wanted to cross it), and picked up by Baldwin Park Animal Shelter. Not too far, just east of Pasadena near the 605. The volunteer who took these pix and posted them on Facebook, Elaine Seamans, said they appeared to be bonded. They do look very friendly, as you can see in the video. The chicken has just laid a brown egg (the expensive kind), and is cackling, probably partly in distress, because she knows an egg rolling around on the cement floor of the shelter is bad news. :(

Elaine Seamans discovered the birds, and took the pictures. Thank you so much, Elaine! Here’s the youtube showing the chicken, the duck, and her egg. Jenny Burman, in Chicken Corner at LA Observed has the video up, too!

Please find it in your heart to adopt them, because if they are not claimed by the end of the day on Monday, they will be killed on Tuesday. And they have become so important to me. You can adopt each separately, of course…

And as if you need more incentive, I’ll send whoever adopts them a signed copy of one of my books: What Do Women REALLY Like? Chocolate! or Love Me or Go to Hell: True Love Cartoons.

Baldwin Park Shelter
4275 N. Elton Ave.
Baldwin Park, CA 91706
(626) 962-3577 code 3, 4
(626) 430 2378

Here are the ID#s: Duck: #4319821 and Chicken: #4319817. UPDATE: The duck and the chicken are now SAFE, ADOPTED!!! More at bottom of post.

Now, on with the show.

worst pic ever from a shelter - found this one a year ago. (all pix here were found fonfacebook pages, but are taken at LA County Shelters) If this doesn't make you cry, nothing will.

A good third of my Facebook friends are volunteers and rescue groups all around the country, and I’ve noticed for some time that the worst horror stories (and the worst photos) were from the LA County Shelters. They are always labeled High Kill shelters, and there are terrible stories of dogs supposedly adopted, but PTS (put to sleep), dogs freezing to death in the kennels, 75 killed in one day (last Monday), animals killed before the due date, etc.

chihuahua 1 year - I think he's still here. The rope is almost obscene.

But these are just hearsay, and here is what I have investigated and discovered:

Even though this is a government agency, there are no public statistics on the LA County Shelters website of how many animals they actually take in, how many are adopted out, how many killed, how many die of natural causes, how many owners prosecuted for animal cruelty.
The shelter website is so outdated and damaged that it cannot be revived – it needs a complete overhaul. The platform hasn’t been updated in at least 6 years, and it looks even earlier. The photos are so terrible that I started a collection of Worst Shelter Pix, some of which are in this post.
What other government city, county or state agency is dependent on volunteers to operate? Only this one.
Poor communication with the public, and the remedies for the exploding pet population are after the fact; they don’t do anything on the prevention front.

skinny maltese 10 yr old, with haunted eyes- shelter put to sleep last month for being too aggressive - makes me angry all over again

Statistics for LA County Animal Shelters

There are none. According to Jennifer Ieyza, the Records person for all 6 shelters, they don’t publish or release their records of animals. In fact, she said, they need a court order or a letter from a lawyer to release any numbers. LA City Animal Services is far from no-kill or perfect, but they are accountable. Shouldn’t every government agency, staffed with almost 350 people, getting good health benefits and pensions and vacations on our dime, have to do some work for it? And be accountable for their life and death activity?

Marcia Mayeda has been the Director since 2001. What up, Ms. Mayeda? In a broader sense, how can any business, not just the gov’t, be a business, without records?

It would help if they gave the animal's age. His age is listed as 0. This poor fellow looks like he can't even stand up. Everyone is quite upset about him on Facebook. Can you help?

Animal shelters are always a matter of life and death. And to the hundreds of thousands of small animals killed in county shelters each year, their lives were very important, at least to them. No animal is put down without a heartbreaking struggle to stay alive. There should be a record of these lives. And every reputable shelter strives to improve, adopting more and killing less every year. How can you improve when you don’t have goals or a past to examine and improve?

chihuahua sh 8 mos -The artist part of me thinks this is a great abstract. But it's a terrible picture of the dog if you want to see him...still there

Since Ms. Mayeda or the County wants to hide the actual activities of these shelters, I think we have to take the word of the volunteers who actually go into the shelters day after day. They see and hear the facts. The county shelters are High-Kill, and “enlightened” California isn’t very enlightened here.

A good example of disrespect for the animals - this is labeled turtle. Okay, I guess so.

Antiquated and useless website

This is the cheapest and easiest and fastest fix to reach out to the public and potential adopters, and should be implemented immediately.

Their current LA County Animal Shelter website is useless. County workers had to walk me through it twice – this is because the coding and navigation is terrible. For some reason, animals are put in 2 separate categories, Lost and Found and Adoptions. Once in Adoptions, you go down to Adoptable Animals. This means that anyone browsing has to look through 2 different sections, without know the other one exists.

sh for shorthair. Still there.

And the search box doesn’t work. So even if someone has an animal ID, or wants to look for a breed, or lost their Brown Dog, there’s no way to find them.

The photographs are so bad that I started making copies of them, and put them in my collection of Worst Shelter Pictures Ever. Some look like experimental art, and others like the animal is being tortured. I’ve asked several shelters if they need new cameras. No, they have several. Each animal is photographed on intake (or should be) by the intake officer who picked them up, so the blame (or praise?) is on them. Shouldn’t the worst photographers be disciplined or trained or put on another job?

But let’s be honest here – EVERYONE has a camera with them at all times, in their cell phone if nothing else. No one needs itraining on how take photographs anymore. And no one would take pictures this bad of their friends or family. It’s unfathomable. So what is their excuse for photos this terrible? This is the point at which we should seriously examine their motives: are these bad pictures a way to keep animals from being adopted…job security for the shelter workers, in other words?

In addition, the dog breeds are frequently wrong, as my examples here show. Not only that, it’s county policy not to have the word “Mix” in the label, and they always pick the most aggressive breed (pit bulls, rottweiler) if there is a doubt as to the breed. In other words, they pick the breeds that get adopted least, and for breed-specific rescues, it leaves out another breed that might lead to that animal being rescued.

german shepherd 1 yr A4317813 Good example of how terrible their listings are. Everyone knows this is NOT a German Shep. Some suggest cattle dog. Very handsome, still there.

Also, very important: there should be a category on the site called Unlisted, as a way for concerned citizens, volunteers, and anxious owners who have lost their dog to find out what happened to the animal after their 4 days or 7 days is up. Was it adopted? Put to sleep? No one knows, and this causes a lot of confusion and wasted energy and tears when there is no resolution about the animal. Again, this is a lack of professionalism and respect towards both the animals and the community. Having the power of life and death is one thing, but hiding the outcome is despicable.

Last, at least one category is completely missing on the site: Birds. Yes, the chicken and the duck are nowhere to be found as adoptable animals, and neither are the other birds the shelters have. The county worker I talked to Saturday (after being on hold for 45 minutes) said there is a category called Fowl. NO, there’s not. Perhaps it’s internal only. And this means that as long as they’ve had a site up, they’ve never placed a bird from any of their shelters online. SoCal has more bird owners and breeders than any other section of the country, so this carelessness toward an entire genus is inexcusable towards the public they are supposed to serve.

pit 5 mos One of the good photos on the shelter site.

And if birds are missing from the online list, who knows how many dogs, cats, or other animals are also gone missing, with no opportunity to ever be adopted?

Dependent on Volunteers for the Animal Shelters to Function

This isn’t necessarily bad; from what the volunteers report, and these are people who actually go in the shelters regularly, the shelters are grateful for their help, and they have mutual respect for each other. (Still many reports surface from these insider volunteers, and this is how wrongdoing in the shelters is exposed.)

It’s not obvious from the outside how truly impressive this underground rescue system is. It includes:

the awesome volunteers on the ground at the shelter who do their best to take better, sometimes very good photos of as many animals as they can. Then they have to upload them onto their site, or Facebook page, along with the ID number (which, again, is not searchable on the LA County website, so they also have to link to the EXACT entry) and add any notes they took on how sociable the animal is.
Crossposters send these pix and links to 501 c3 rescues and potential adopters.
Pullers go to the shelter, pay the fees, and make sure the animal is safely out
Often fosters are needed to hold the animals before rescues can get them.
Rescues have their own system of evaluating the animal and getting any medical or training done to make the animal adoptable.
Often it’s transport by truckers or planes, vet work (and sometimes chip-ins, a way to contribute through Paypal), and more!

cold water. That's what this is labeled. I'm going to guess there is a fish in here somewhere...

This is an amazing underground system. And it’s apparent that with the help of volunteers almost any animal is adoptable in time, with this support system. In addition, all of these volunteers have the courage to continue their work when they have failed, and an animal that touched them, even if it was just a few moments of grace as they passed them in the cage or talked to them, is killed.

The essential work by volunteers does a great deal to point out where the shelters themselves fail, and desperately need to improve.

The Shelters Need to Step Up and Work on Prevention – a Spay-Neuter Program!

The shelters are not actually hurting for money; Lt. Rodriguez at Lancaster told me last week that they have some brand new buildings, kennels, and more coming. This is good, because all 6 shelters have the challenge of covering a very large area.

kim morse way on Facebook took this compelling photo at Lancaster - this is what a volunteer does - one picture says it all

And certainly not all of their procedures are a fail. They vaccinate all animals immediately on intake. (Supposedly this is when the photos are taken, too, but about 10% of the animals have no photos at all. Half of the horses have no photo.) And at least some animals do find new homes.

A vet looks at each animal for any symptoms of contagious disease, and they treat any animal that is suffering, unless it needs surgery, in which case they don’t.

They also microchip every animal before it’s adopted. And they will even microchip anyone’s pet, free of charge, due to a donation from the Found Animal Foundation.

They also spay or neuter any adopted animal. But this brings up the biggest failing of the County Animal Shelters: a Spay-Neuter program is the best defense against unwanted animals, but they don’t have any program like this in place! Spaying or neutering once the animal is adopted is great, but it is also closing the barn door after the horse ran away. It does nothing to stop the next wave of abandoned or abused animals.

They are short-staffed, and much of the time the phones are busy or don’t have a response at all. This, along with a useless website, makes communication with the public very difficult.

There is also a statement on the website that should cause some concern: Only shelter veterinarians and certified personnel have the authority to euthanize an animal. Certified personnel? How many county workers does this cover? This is another example which points to job security being more important at these shelters than the safety and adoption of the animals.

The LA County Shelters must get a new website immediately, with a failsafe system to get every animal on it. They need one qualified and dedicated photographer who will stand or fall on his or her accurate photos. Breeds of dogs should be listed by a vet or a QUALIFIED breeder or experienced person. And last, but not least , statistics should be available for the public.

The goal for every shelter should be to be a No-Kill – this would be the most satisfying to the Shelters, the Shelter employees, the County, and the public. Until that happens, urge the Board of Supervisors to get rid of the old ways at the shelters, adopt an animal, don’t buy from breeders, and please please please give a home to the chicken and the duck.

Downey Shelter 11258 S. Garfield Ave. Downey, CA 90242
(562) 940-6898

Carson Shelter 216 W. Victoria Ave. Carson, CA 90248They
(310) 523-9566

Baldwin Park Shelter
4275 N. Elton Ave.
Baldwin Park, CA 91706
(626) 962-3577 code 3, 4
(626) 430 2378

Lancaster Shelter 5210 W. Ave I, Lancaster CA 93536
(661) 940-4191

Castaic Shelter 31044 N. Charlie Cyn Rd., Castaic, CA 91384
(661) 257-3191 or (818) 367-8065

Agoura Shelter 29525 Agoura Rd., Agoura, CA 91301
(818) 991-0071

Last photo by Kim Morse Way on Facebook.

*Elaine Seamans informed me today that the duck and chicken HAVE BEEN RESCUED, and are in foster care right this minute!!! See how this is supposed to work?

The foster is Sharon Tydell on Facebook who gave them to the happy adopter in Glendale. More news to come!

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My most popular post is on horses, of courses.

Donna Barstow — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 07:59:50 +0000

A lot of people worry about what I worry about, it turns out: Why do people kill a horse with a broken leg? This is my most popular post on this blog by far, and it was researched and written from the heart.

Just today I found the greatest video of a miniature horse who got an artificial leg. He was born with a malformed leg, so he was probably never able to walk at all, but maybe he hobbled on 3 legs.

From the AP:

Ranch Hand Rescue feared Midnite (or Midnight, depending on how literate they are) would have to be euthanized after the North Texas horse rescue group received the 4-year-old horse from law enforcement officers who had seized him from a neglectful owner.

Image via Wikipedia - full-size horse and a Mini! So cute!

Was the owner prosecuted? WHY is the owner not mentioned by name? On the video it said that he was in terrible shape. If they hated him so much because his leg was missing, why did they even let him live? If you know who the owner is, PM me, and I will be quite happy to post it.

In any case, the new owners, Ranch Hand Rescue, decided to try, and got a company to make an artificial leg for him. Obviously, full-size horses are different. But still…I’m very hopeful that a company will be able to do the same for regular horses, too, in the near future, and end all these horrible, needless, and endless killings on the racetrack and off.

Such a wonderful ending – well worth the $14,000 it cost to build the prosthetic. Watch the video and see him walk for the first time ever, and you’ll cry, too.

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The LA Times has been Wiki-Leaked!

Donna Barstow — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 03:26:33 +0000

Restaurant critic for the LA Times has been outed! Her feelings about food are no longer secret!

S. Irene Virbila, the L.A. Times’ restaurant critic for the last 16 years, was visiting Red Medicine restaurant in Beverly Hills when the manager took her photo, and ordered her and her 3 companions to leave the restaurant. In Beverly Hills! An LA Times Reporter!

restaurant critic cartoon from daily special

Ellis [from Red Medicine] said he was intentionally trying to take away Virbila’s anonymity because he does not like her reviews: “Our purpose for posting this is so that all restaurants can have a picture of her and make a decision as to whether or not they would like to serve her. We find that some her reviews can be unnecessarily cruel and irrational…”

Kevin Roderick, of LA Observed, responds:

Geez, dude. Just shut up, man up and make your restaurant better. If you’re afraid to have your place independently reviewed, that tells me all I need to know.

I disagree! He has every right to decide who goes to his restaurant and to toss out people who he feels might harm it in any way; restaurant writers are kind of sneaky, aren’t they? On the other hand: he should never have taken her photo. That’s an invasion of privacy, even as Virbila came in under an assumed name: Fred Snow! So this is a nice piece of drama.

: Image of the ideal Beverly Hills via Wikipedia

I met Irene when I did the restaurant cartoon for the LA Times, called Daily Special ( now running in many other papers). We agreed to meet for lunch at a restaurant on Sunset – I think it was called Dome. I was so anxious and excited about meeting her that I spent too much time getting ready for my big opportunity, and was 15 minutes late. I was ready to kill myself! Fortunately, she was even later, and so the event continued.

She ordered at least 2 choices for each part of the meal, and I still got to eat what I wanted. We had plates full of food left before we had gotten to dessert, and I whispered to her, “What will they think of us?” I never forgot her reply: “They’ll think we’re ladies who lunch!”

I had a great meal, and got to take home all the leftovers, because she said she hated to see food go to waste. As I recall, her review was pretty good for the restaurant. The whole experience was thumbs up for me. :)

She’s not my favorite food critic, however: that’s reserved for Ruth Reichl, former LA Times reviewer, and then editor of Gourmet til it folded. I miss her Reluctant Gourmet (her husband!) I don’t see how Irene can continue doing reviews at the Times, however…and that’s wrong, to ruin her career like that.

More on the story at examiner.com. And over here, some cartoons talking about privacy issues for all of us.

Beverly Hills restaurateur outs LAT’s Irene Virbila (laobserved.com)
LA Times: Online journalism ‘contaminated’ by web format, says Flipboard chief (blogs.journalism.co.uk)

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Dew drops on my window.

Donna Barstow — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:03:06 +0000

: Image by RodneyRamsey via Flickr

Have you noticed any “moisture flow” in Los Angeles today?

That’s what Fox News is calling this rainstorm that has already lasted 2 days!

Of course, this has all the weather people on the edge of their seat, but it’s not so much. As the LA Times (reluctantly) admits:

No major flooding or mudslides have occurred with the rainstorms hitting Southern California…
In February, a slow-moving rainstorm triggered severe flooding in La Cañada-Flintridge…

Oh, okay, we had to go back 11 months for drama. Yawn.

As a long-time resident here, I thought the weather men and women were exaggerating…so I downplayed the rain here.

Meteorologists helpfully bring up La Nina when LA gets any moisture. And as always, predictions for La Nina and/or El Nino are that we will get a lot more rain, or a lot less rain.

All I’m wondering is, is it okay for me to be a sarcastic weather girl in my news reports? And if I’m wrong about weather predictions, should I apologize, or ignore my mistake, like meteorologists do?!

It’s raining in Los Angeles, CA (examiner.com) There’s a good cartoon of El Nino by Steve Greenberg at the link.

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Earthquake feels like seasickness. (Updated)

Alligators in the sewers of the LA Times.

Donna Barstow — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 16:29:13 +0000

Roger McCulloch sucks, too, and the LA Times has hit the bottom of the barrel.

I picked up pen to paper today, dear readers, to share an article in last Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, the first section. (I’m a week later reading it, cause of a seriously good party LA Observed threw that weekend.)

Roger McCulloch skipped a grizzly bear hunt in Alaska to drive 18 hours to Florida with one mission: shoot an alligator with bow and arrow. McCulloch’s trophy room is full…

“I love gator hunting,” said McCulloch, who owns a Logan, Ohio construction business. “It’s just the rush of it. I’ve hunted everything — caribou, bear, elk. Gators are tough critters.”

Special rules govern the bagging of gators. Hunters are not allowed to use guns. Instead, they may use a pole, spear, bow and arrow, or rod and reel to catch the animal, then use a bang stick — a pole with an explosive charge on the end — to dispatch it point-blank before bringing it into a boat.

This year, the state is offering 6,260 permits at $270 each, entitling a holder to kill two gators. Last year, hunters harvested 7,844. Gators as small as 18 inches can be taken, but most hunters want a trophy.

Stafford produced a bang stick with a .44 Magnum charge, but before he could press the trigger, the gator’s jaws closed around it. Somehow the guide extracted the bang stick and dispatched the animal in the head.

When the gator went limp, the three men hauled it aboard and taped its jaws shut, and then Stafford severed its spinal cord.

“You feel better now you hit one?” Stafford asked.

McCulloch nodded. “I was starting to get upset.”

The American alligator once was endangered but has rebounded, said Steve Stiegler, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

“Overall, the statewide alligator population is very healthy,” he said. “It’s a natural resource we can make use of that’s renewable.”

I include the grisly details here (more there) so you can appreciate how INAPPROPRIATE this is for someone’s Sunday read. And how very…regional this is. Just perfect for Southern rednecks!

roger mcculloch tortures bloody alligator - see full size in the Times

It’s written by Susan Cocking, of the Miami Herald. Maybe this is considered important journalism in Miami, detailing the extended torture of an animal killed for a guy’s trophy room, but it’s really hate journalism, and it’s sad that the Times couldn’t find anything more important to include in the Sunday paper. And is the Times really that out of step with Los Angeles, most who are NOT hunters, and the Green movement all over the country? They even name the article Happy Hunting!! It’s astonishing.

Hunting is such a mystery to me. McCulloch is a wimp, not picking a man his own size, but animals, for which he needs a guide, a variety of weapons, none of which the animal has, and most importantly, a bigger brain. Or maybe just a small wienie and a big ego.

Also, notice the words harvested, and taken, which I bolded in the quote. Hunter don’t use the word kill – they pretend they are doing something positive, something like work, something close to nature, instead of the opposite of life – death. Fish and Wildlife are the biggest killers in every state, of course – their purpose is always to kill, eradicate, and help hunters of all stripes. They are the most repulsive group in government.

Los Angeles Times, we don’t have alligators here, though we may have bang sticks. And when you need to go to the bayou or coal mine territory to get your news, you’re not international, you’re funny. But not in a good way.

———-

This is the first post I’ve written about the Times in quite a while. No wonder, when I was pitching my editorial cartoons to them each week! But once I realized that they only use one or two cartoons per week, and always the same guys… hope was gone.

They do have a collection of 3 cartoons each Sunday. However, as I have complained many times in my Op-Ed Cartoon Blog, it’s edited by a cartoonist who lives in…Lexington, Kentucky. That’s right. An international paper like the Times, with the 4th biggest circulation in the country, decides to step down and use Joel Pett, who has never lived here, to choose cartoons for the LA Times. When I told this to an editor at the Orange County Register, she was shocked! It’s simply bad journalism.

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Do golfers lie?

Donna Barstow — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 05:53:23 +0000

I don’t know, are golfers older and white, except for Tiger Woods?

irvine golf course fire set by golfer

Just came across this news on a fire that burned 25 acres in Irvine, that the golfer claims was started by a golf ball hitting a rock. From the LA Times:

A golfer accidentally chipped a rock, setting off a 12-acre blaze next to the Shady Canyon Golf Course in Irvine, officials said.

McKeown said no charges have been filed against the golfer, whose name has been withheld. Apparently, the golfer was in the rough and was trying to hit his ball out of it when he accidentally swiped at a rock, which sparked the blaze at 12:07 p.m. Saturday, officials said.

McKeown said brush fires are not uncommon when temperatures reach into the high 70s and lower 80s and conditions are right.

Yahoo Sports seems to think this is really funny.

Over the weekend, a golfer’s routine swing in the rough at the Shady Canyon Golf Course in Irvine, Calif., struck a rock. Not so different from the way you play, right? Only this time, the impact caused a spark, and the spark set off a blaze that eventually covered 25 acres, according to the Steven Buck, General Manager of Shady Canyon Golf Course, and required the efforts of 150 Orange County firefighters, writes the Associated Press.

Wow. And I felt bad the time I shanked a ball through the window of a house too close to the fairway.

As it was, the blaze required both helicopters and on-the-ground crews.

And now, your turn. This is going to inspire a raft of bad Sportscenter-esque “When we say he set the course on fire, he really set the course on fire!” jokes.

Yeah, if you’re a total jackass. There are over 2700 comments, so I guess a lot of golfers think they’re funny. Maybe they’ll trot over and dance on the graves of all the animals and trees that died. Hopefully, they’ll also win some tournaments, and pay back the thousands of dollars spent on 150 firefighters and the helicopters putting it out.

Did you read the temperatures? It was a very cool weekend – almost like fall. I don’t believe it was a ball hitting a stone. Has anyone actually ever seen this happen? Wouldn’t it have to be a particular stone, like granite? I don’t know the science of fires.

No, this anonymous bad golfer was a smoker, or maybe even deliberately set it, who knows. Did you know that even after the Griffith Park horrendous fire that burned 800 acres, Councilman Tom LaBonge STILL wanted to allow smoking on the golf course?! They’re special folks there!

My fervent wish is for this anonymous golfer to have a relaxing dinner and drinks at the Shady Canyon Golf Course Clubhouse, if they have one, and then spill his guts to the other golfers hanging around there.

Then I shall get his name and report it here.

Photo credit: Thanks to Zach Bates

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Strange sort of suicide for The Walking Man.

Donna Barstow — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:56:20 +0000

I only bothered to read about the Walking Man because he was called The Silver Lake Walking Man.

Then I saw a small memorial for him on the Silver Lake reservoir path when I ran last night. I hate memorials – they don’t have them back east. It’s like there’s no real land here, or people don’t understand what a cemetery is. The flowers die in a day in the blazing sun, so you have dead flowers in worthless vases, or a dirty teddy bear. Ugly, smelly, and no, it’s not the thought that counts when it’s such a thoughtless thing to do.

Anyway, turns out he walked all over town locally, said his obit.

Abrams traversed 20 to 30 miles of pavement each day and wore out four pairs of shoes each year. He walked swiftly — often hunched over a newspaper — slowing only to shout hellos to friends or give medical advice to those who asked for it.

walking man mural

I can’t believe Tom LaBonge had to get his quote in someone’s obituary.

“He had the greatest tan of anyone in town,” said City Councilman Tom LaBonge, who lives a few blocks from the quiet hillside home Abrams shared with his wife. Whenever LaBonge spotted Abrams striding down the sidewalk he would stop to shout, “What up, Doc?”

(Btw, Tom LaBonge called me last week! No, not to ask me out, as one of my exes guessed. He got my blog confused with the OTHER Griffith Park blog, and was calling to correct the facts about something published there!)

I saw someone on Facebook link to the article in the Eastsider, and one of the commenters there, instead of expressing regrets about the WM, who I would have called Reading Man, said it was a suicide, and wondered why the news was covering it up. Turns out he was right.

Today the LA Times reported:

Marc Abrams, the doctor known as the “walking man” for his shirtless walks around Silver Lake, died by drowning himself in his hot tub, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County coroner’s office said Monday.“He was found in the Jacuzzi with the Jacuzzi lid pulled over the Jacuzzi itself,” said Ed Winter, assistant chief of the Department of Coroner Investigations. “There was no suicide note found.”…

At the time of his death, Abrams was under investigation for prescribing drugs to a 25-year-old patient who died of an overdose, according to law enforcement authorities and a lawyer for the patient’s family.

What a strange way to commit suicide – drowning in the dark? Can one not lift the lid off a hot tub? There’s no air? And he was a fitness buff, too. He was probably proud of his tan, since he walked SHIRTLESS everywhere.

Poor guy.

PS. I think he may have been murdered.

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Bad restaurants and bad foodies.

Donna Barstow — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:02:05 +0000

Zocalo recently posted a chat in the weekly updates and announcements they send out, called What is the Cruelest Food You’ve Ever Eaten?

I haven’t been to Zocalo in a couple of years, but they do have some good events and free food, (which isn’t cruel at all). Their lectures are free, and they tackle a lot of serious and interesting topics.

But WTF? Is cruelty a viable subject for humor now? – desperate and fame-whorish, Zocalo. You had an opportunity to explore this disgusting practice, or at least look at both sides, but instead you treat cruelty to animals as a game, or entertainment. Why not ask who eats dogs? Or hobbles horses? Shame on you, Zocalo.

Of course, there’s always cruelty when you eat animals alive, which seems to be a big part of sushi now. Raw is unhealthy, and alive is repulsive to civilized people. But read the quotes below and decide for yourself .

From Roy Choi at Kogi:

I’ve killed a goat with my own two hands. I chased him around a dirt field in the desert, wrestled him to the ground, got him in a head lock, looked him in the eye, and slit his throat. We hung him, skinned him, drained his blood, gutted him, butchered him into primals, then sub-primals. We packed him up and took him across the border to Mexicali where we made birria, the most delicious birria.

This was not a cruel moment for me. It was seven in the morning and I learned about the spirituality of cooking and what my responsibility is as a chef. I did not kill this goat out of haste or carelessness. This was a tradition that my dishwasher Salvador’s family has been doing for many generations and he trusted me enough to show me.

First of all, he’s lying. No one could capture a terrified goat without help. He’s pretending it’s some sort of macho thing, but notice the “we”. And a dishwasher thinks that how to knife a creature is a “tradition”? I hope I never meet him in a dark alley. Barbaric.

You should probably read Dr. Suess to get this one. Here's a Chinese restaurant that doesn't torture anyone.

From Charlie Grosso:

It was not until I was much older that I realized that Shark Fin is not a euphemism for anything. Shark fin actually is the fin of a shark. Then at some cousin’s wedding banquet one day, I discovered that the sharks are often caught, their fins cut off, and then released back into the water to meet their untimely ends.

Would I eat it again? I think I would. Not because I have no compassion for the shark but because not consuming my bowl of soup in a banquette of a hundred would not have stirred the consciences of the restaurant or the other guests. The only conscience that would be disturbed by my meager objection would be my own — at the fact that I wasted good, clean, edible food.

Yeah, that’s how I make my moral decisions: How many other people around me agree with me? What a jackass.

Javier Cabrol is the Teenage Glutster.

Which brings me to what I think is the most inhumane thing I’ve ever eaten in my entire eating career: live lobster sashimi. This dish made full use of those murky lobster tanks that are synonymous with seafood Chinese restaurants. The chosen lobsters were brought to our table for our approval, taken to the back of the house for five minutes at most, then brought back to the table, severed in half and facing each other. Not to mention still pinching with all their translucent flesh scooped out and served on their dislocated tails, all ready for our top-of-the-food-chain chow down. Their beady eyes followed our chopstick ends and they attempted to defend themselves one last time as we nonchalantly reached over for their ultra-fresh sinewy flesh.

My heart pounded and I got tears in my eyes when I read this. This is almost exactly how Hannibal ends. I see no difference between torturing cats, burning insects, killing people, and eating animals while they are still alive.

From Kat Odell at Eater LA.

Since I eat out so frequently for work, I eat a lot of foie gras and I do have to say I love it. There are more humane ways to produce foie that have been mostly explored in France, and it’s a shame that people in the U.S. don’t consider this alternative method (save for Dan Barber at Blue Hill).

Most people know that foie gras comes from geese that have force-fed. You know that pain when you eat too much? Think of your whole life in pain, with food clogging your throat all day long, not allowed to move -total torture. According to Wiki, only 5 countries left in Europe still allow this animal cruelty. Oh, and the gluttonous US, of course.

From Maite Gomez-Rejon at ARtbites.

The cruelest food I’ve ever eaten is live lobster at Sanuki No Sato, housed in an obscure strip mall in Gardena….Always game for trying new foods — especially those that will give me a good story to tell — I was anxious for our lobster’s arrival. When it came to the table it was enormously regal, its eyes staring straight at us, antennas moving as if pleading for help, its now useless armor cut open revealing perfectly sliced flesh.

Um, Maite, that was a terrible story, so, sorry, you will continue to be a bore wherever you go.

See a trend here? Sushi restaurants have been promoting this myth for years: torturing the creature makes it taste better. FDA and USDA, why can’t you crack down on this instead of your asinine regulations on the tiny stuff?

And who’s behind Zocalo?

Gregory Rodriguez, Founder

Thomas Tseng, President of the Board

Swati Pandey, Editor

They are responsible for glorifying this reprehensible topic – and making animal cruelty – their own word – an acceptable, even attractive trait for people who like to eat. They have a Code of Civility posted on their site:

At its lecture series events (“Events”) Zócalo seeks to create an open and civil environment of mutual respect, where all participants can feel welcome.

There is no respect towards other species, when you pick a topic targeting living creatures. I hope the agencies that fund this org will take a closer look at these practices and reconsider whether this non-profit (if it is one) meets anyone’s decency standards. Zocalo FAIL.

Or were you looking for one of these?

Griffith Park Blog

LA County Animal Shelters, and Why They Should Be Put to Sleep.

Statistics for LA County Animal Shelters

Antiquated and useless website

Dependent on Volunteers for the Animal Shelters to Function

The Shelters Need to Step Up and Work on Prevention – a Spay-Neuter Program!

My most popular post is on horses, of courses.

The LA Times has been Wiki-Leaked!

Related:

Dew drops on my window.

Alligators in the sewers of the LA Times.

Do golfers lie?

Strange sort of suicide for The Walking Man.

Bad restaurants and bad foodies.

Gregory Rodriguez, Founder

Thomas Tseng, President of the Board

Swati Pandey, Editor