My Bizarre Mayor Villaraigosa Experience Explained by 'LA Weekly'?

Descending via u-haul from the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to live in this one-story ghetto some call Los Angeles was supposed to be only a three-year crisis of middle age, not eight and counting. And so here we are and we do try to make the best of things with some of the unique events only a Hollywood can offer.

As a matter of fact, just a few weeks ago my life peaked at the American Cinematheque after exchanging a few words with Pam Grier (male heterosexuals will want to click that link) before a big screen showing of “Foxy Brown.” To some, living with the knowledge that the best moment of your life has just passed and that you now have another forty years of all-downhill might be depressing … but not when you had zero expectations to begin with.

Prior to blushing and babbling before Ms. Grier, my life peaked in October of 2007 at a special screening of “Spartacus” in the Arclight Theatre’s world-famous Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. Watching director Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece on the big screen was one thing, having the film introduced by none other than its star — The Mighty Kirk Douglas — was quite another.

Okay, he’s no Pam Grier, but for someone like me, someone who hopes to live long enough to have Turner Classic Movies mainlined into his cerebral cortex; being in the same room — breathing the same air — as Kirk Douglas, Whit Sterling, the Champion, Det. McLeod, Jonathan Shields, Ulysses, Van Gogh, Doc Holliday… and, yes, Spartacus himself, was a moment never to be forgotten.

The Arclight’s idea was perfect. Have the then 90 year-old SuperMegaAwesomeImmortalLivingLegend come out and say a few words just before the lights dimmed and the timeless epic played. Now that’s showbiz! So what the hell was Mayor Villaraigosa doing there?

Here’s what I wrote at the time:

I wasn’t there as a partisan and neither was anyone else, which was evident when Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa barged in. The theatre was obviously full of lefties but when AFI Chairman Sir Howard Stringer introduced the Mayor what followed was awkward applause and a general feeling that an uninvited relative had just shown up at the wedding reception. The articulate Stringer also badly mangled the Mayor’s name and it wouldn’t surprise me if that was done intentionally. Villaraigosa’s response to the mispronunciation was to make a joke alluding to his sordid extramarital affair with a reporter charged with covering his office. What a class act.

Thanks to some excellent reporting at the LA Weekly what made no sense then is beginning to now. Obviously, Villaraigosa loves to be out and about and to attend as many sporting and cultural events as is humanly possibly. If these reports are true and the Mayor burned through $50 to 100 thousand in freebie tickets you have to wonder why he even bothers to own a home.

But the plot thickens; according to this report the Mayor claims that all these freebies were part of his official duties. In other words, sitting courtside at a Lakers game is work. And obviously if the Mayor is there in some official capacity — handing out a certificate, making a speech, or some such thing — there’s no corruption, right?

Which might help to explain the whole awkward Spartacus thing. Did delivering a five minute speech that no one wanted to hear give the Mayor enough official duty-cover to avoid corruption charges with what might have been comped tickets?

Is this part of his m.o. everywhere?

And if it is, just how willing of an enabler is Hollywood? For the answer, look at this list!

Before I go I want to send some long overdue love to the LA Weekly, an alternative newspaper that is another one of the very few blessings that comes with living in this city.

Unlike the hopelessly corrupted L.A. Times, not only is LA Weekly staffed by some of the best writers you’ll ever read, but they’re completely open about their left-of-center sympathies. More importantly, they are truth-tellers, damn good investigative journalists, and in the spirit of true liberalism, always looking out of the “little guy,” even when it means going after their own.

To be sure, we’ve had our disagreements, but my mostly misspent life has led me to hang my hat in four states now and I can tell you with no reservation that LA Weekly is far and away the best newspaper I’ve ever come across. Oddly enough, I also agree much more frequently with their film critics than my fellow right-of-center reviewers Kyle Smith and Christian Toto.