Seeing the Sights

Spring is in the air, at least on this coast. I finally have a new camera and got to test it out this weekend.

Those are the faces of past Laker glory: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kurt Rambis and James Worthy. These buildings are at the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Figueroa Street, across the street from the Staples Center. A few years back, the images were of Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant and Derek Fisher (IIRC for the last one). Also gracing these buildings in the past were the images of the great Laker centers: Wilt Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar and O’Neal. With last year’s departure of O’Neal and this dismal non-playoff year, I figure it will be a while before any current Lakers are immortalized here.
This is the sea of moonbattery humanity at the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books located at UCLA. I’ve been going there every year for the last four years, mainly as an excuse to check out UCLA’s book store and to climb the steps of Mount Sileah the main drag without dropping dead. In 2003, however, I happened to run into a college friend whom I hadn’t seen since 1980. He was hawking his novel. (Seeing him do that was part of what spurred me to blog.)The guy holding this sign was only too happy for me to take a photo of it. Nothing like free advertising. Hopefully, the author will write a follow-up about what to do when called in to court for back child-support payments. "Don't do the crime...."This line-up sat at the Libreria Martinez Books And Arts booth. I simply took their photo because they Looked Like Authors more than anyone else I saw there.This year, I had great reason to attend the festival. One of the highlights of the weekend was saying hello to and shaking hands with the fedora-less Roger L. Simon. Go check out his series on the UN Oil-For-Food Scandal.

UPDATE: Little Miss Attila attended the LAT Festival of Books panel discussions; one including Roger, the other including Hugh Hewitt. Both gentlemen came out of the closet, so to speak.

UPDATE: Better?

Comments

[Attila Girl]

Yeah: wassup with that baseball cap? Though he was better-dressed than most of the authors, baseball cap aside.

The moonbats were out in force this year: I hadn't remembered them as being this virulent in years past. Some of 'em seemed intent on politicizing just about any panel discussion, no matter the topic.

But at least I went to one or two that were (relatively) politics-free: the husband fared much worse: nearly all of the panels he attended turned into dreary leftish polemics. Ugh.

[Strider]

Okay, first off, you pictures all look squished -- they're being compressed horizontally.

Two -- if the murals get painted over every couple of years, that's hardly being "immortalized", eh? Brings to mind the old saying: "We're all immortal until we die." ;)

Three -- So where's the picture of your old friend? Where's the novel? Inquiring minds want to know!

[baldilocks]

Strider:
1) The appearance of the photos must be due to your browser or computer; they appear normal on this end.

2) Don't you have better things to do than nit-pick the entirety of a rather frivolous post?

3) I saw the old friend in 2003. It's impossible to take his photo with a camera I received weeks ago.

As for the novel, I have other priorities right now, but in case you hadn't noticed, I do write for the public on occasion (like my friend does).

[JustRight]

I like the pictures but they're pretty hefty size wise. Even on a fast conection there was a noticeable lag. The images alone are nearly 5M, that's just crazy. This means that each time your page is loaded your sucking up 5M of bandwidth, that's going to add up quickly on a site this popular and depending on your hosting could get expensive.

You may want to consider resizing and optimizing them for the web *before* posting them. Changing the size in the HTML doesn't do anything to speed up the loading or reduce the bandwidth usage.

[baldilocks]

JustRight: The pictures are normal-sized in appearance from here, fitting easily into the white part of the blog. I'm not sure why they're appearing differently on your end.

[ricardo]

No Magic ever graced the building?? Shame.....

[pst314]

The pictures look fine to me (IE 6).

Right-Click + Properties says that the size of the first photo, Glory Days (and very striking it is, too) is 951,000 bytes, so I'm guessing that your blogging software automatically sizes photos to fit in the available space regardless of their actual size.

[Marty]

When I click on the smaller images, the larger images that are launched are A-OK.

[Am I A Pundit Now?]

Kurt Rambis?!

I think maybe that guy named Magic Johnson had a bit more to do with the Lakers' success than Rambis did.

[baldilocks]

Ah, but Magic didn't wear glasses or eye protection. (It's the main theme of the trio on the buildings; at least this time.)

[Strider]

B --

I didn't mean to offend -- just having a bit of fun. I definitely misread the bit about meeting your friend -- though it happened on this trip when you were taking pictures....

Regards,
Steve