Monthly Archives: March 2012

Two men, Thomas Kelley and Jack Bouck, combined the first syllables of their last names and invented Kelbo's, a small chain of Hawaiian barbecues that were not all that Hawaiian: Burgers, barbecue meat sandwiches and some miscellaneous seafood. The concession to the islands was that every plate was garnished with a piece of pineapple and the fried shrimp was coated with coconut.

They also served very sweet (but very good) barbecued ribs and had a menu of tropical drinks, some of which came flaming or served in a skull mug. About half of each restaurant was a large, dimly-lit bar that I suppose some found atmospheric. I never saw anyone there who looked like they might have been a hooker but given the mood, it wouldn't have surprised me.

What was Hawaiian — and much of the appeal of the places — was the decor which was comprised of tiki gods, fish nets, lanterns in the shape of pineapples, and other things you could buy at any cheap patio furniture shop to suggest a real cheesy tropical motif. Some of it seemed to have come from a chain of stores that existed in L.A. in the early sixties called The Akron. A gentleman named Eli Hedley was reportedly the main designer and he also was responsible for the interior of other tropical-themed restaurants like Don the Beachcomber. I don't know when Mr. Hedley did that voodoo that he did so well but Kelbo's felt like a place that had been decorated in the thirties or forties and then no one changed anything.

I frequented two Kelbo's. One, on Fairfax across from CBS Television City, was torn down and there's an outlet of The Vitamin Shoppe at that address today. It was a popular hangout for crew members who worked across the street at CBS Television City in the fifties and sixties.

The building that housed the other was over on Pico at Exposition. It turned for a few years into a bikini bar called Fantasy Island and more recently, it's been torn down and condos have been built on that land.

At one point, they had three other locations: In the Brentwood Country Mart over at 26th and San Vicente, on Manchester Blvd. near Van Ness, and on Ventura Boulevard out in Thousand Oaks.

One other thing that interested me about Kelbo's was that much of its advertising art — like the drawing above — was done by a gent named Bob Hale who otherwise turned up on Los Angeles TV from time to time as a cartooning weatherman. (He was also active in Seattle where he owned a popular hobby shop that bore his name.) Hale's drawings of a fat Hawaiian guy in native garb could be seen on Kelbo's napkins and menus, and both of the outlets I visited had had huge Bob Hale murals on the outside, all featuring his little signature character, Sammy the Seagull.

Sammy was always being drawn into his TV weathercasts, shivering or tanning himself depending on the forecast. It was said that Mr. Hale had once had a severe drinking problem and that after he quit, he lectured and illustrated pamphlets for Alcoholics Anonymous or some such group. Which always made me wonder why he'd done so much work promoting a place where a lot of people just went to drink.

For the record, I wrote that before I saw last night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He said the same thing, as he usually does, much better.

And I accidentally deleted a line I wrote and wish I'd included. It went something like this: I'm kinda weary of folks who think Free Speech includes their right to be heard unrebutted. There's this "victimization" ploy used way too often by folks who seem to think that way. Person A makes their case for some cause or viewpoint. Person B comes along and shreds their argument with a devastating reply. Person A fires back by crying, "This is an attempt to shut me up!" Sarah Palin is especially adept at getting full coverage on TV, radio, the web and print media of her charges that someone someplace in conspiring to stop her from getting her every message out.

A reader of this site named Christopher Woerner apparently thinks my view of Rush Limbaugh's situation smacks of hypocrisy. He cited something I wrote about some time ago here. This is me now…

What I saw of the gubernatorial debate last night here in California seemed to steer clear of silly topics…like what can be done to solve the state's problems. Instead, they talked a lot about how someone in Jerry Brown's office was overheard calling his opponent, Meg Whitman, a "whore." That's rude but…I dunno. I have a hunch someone in Ms. Whitman's office at some point may have called Jerry Brown an asshole and had the good fortune not to have it get recorded. In any case, Brown apologized a couple of times and Whitman could have scored a few points with me (though not enough to get my vote) if she'd said, "Fine…apology accepted. Now, let's get on with much more important things, like how to get California back on the right track." Instead, she tried to make the whole election now turn on that, darn near suggesting Californians should vote for her because some unnamed person in Brown's presence called her that. Brown, who I generally like — I think he was a fairly good governor his last go-round, better than any since — talked way too much about Whitman's housekeeper. "Vote for me because my opponent is a bad person" doesn't go very far with me. I'd still like the candidate I vote for to have a little competence.

Mr. Woerner then makes the following points in his e-mail. This is him now and I've taken the liberty of numbering them but I've not changed anything else…

1. Obama's still running ads against Sarah Palin with that exact message, and she's not even running, so there's one inconsistency.

2. You didn't suspect that anybody around Fluke called Rush a nasty name without it being caught on tape, so there's another inconsistency.

3. Rush apologized and Fluke didn't accept, there's a third.

4. You cited Jason Alexander's argument about the size of the audience, which is like saying it's ok to steal as long as you don't steal much. Or else Duckman would have required severe censorship if they should ever have found an audience like the Simpsons. This is all inconsistent with your free speech leanings, so a fourth inconsistency is found.

5. So comedians are allowed to use terms like "slut" and "whore" because they don't have the audience of the mighty AM Radio Titan that is Rush Limbaugh. Candidates for Governor of California can use those terms because they aren't stuck on AM radio like a pathetic shock jock. And this is all in the name of fairness and equality. Nope, nothing inconsistent about that.

Okay, this is me now again. Addressing #1, the only anti-Palin ad I've seen from the Obama campaign is one that merely says she's wrong about a lot of the accusations she makes against Barack Obama. She's saying he's destroying the country this way and that way and all these ways. His ads say she's wrong and that people shouldn't believe her. If there's one out there where he calls her a slut or a whore or any personal insult, I haven't seen it. Did you think my premise was that candidates should never respond to their detractors?

Regarding #2: I suspect most people, including some of his devout listeners, call Rush nasty names at times. That's kind of the premise of being a talk radio guy. I even suspect that when Limbaugh goes on the air each day, he thinks about some of what he plans to say and giggles, "Boy, this'll make those Liberals hate me." There is something of a difference between insulting someone in public and insulting them in private…and a difference between (a) insulting a man who plunges himself eagerly into the mud each day and hurls invective and makes millions doing it and (b) insulting a powerless college student who volunteered to testify before Congress. And actually, my big problem with Limbaugh was not that he insulted her but that I think he grossly misrepresented what she said in order to do so.

In the case of #3, Limbaugh offered up a pretty feeble apology for a microscopic fraction of what he said about her. Jerry Brown apologized about eight times and for 100% of the one word in question…and it wasn't even something that he said.

You're right that if something's wrong, it's wrong. (This is #4 now.) But insulting someone in private is in no way comparable to saying it in front of millions of people. If one of your friends told another of your friends they thought you were a liar, you wouldn't and probably couldn't sue them for slander. If someone went on the radio and said it, you could and might. Same thing if someone quoted something you'd written to one or two people in private and passed it off as their own. You couldn't/wouldn't sue them for plagiarism. If they did it on TV, you could and maybe would. And in both cases, a court would consider the size of the audience in assessing damage to you.

But I really wanted to get to #5. You say, "Candidates for Governor of California can use those terms." Really? What candidate for Governor of California called someone a "slut" or a "whore?" Jerry Brown did not insult anyone. He apologized because someone else in his office had done so…in private. Not one person has ever faulted Rush Limbaugh for anything he or his staffers said in private or meant to keep private. To try and defend Rush, you're taking something an aide to Jerry Brown said once that was accidentally heard elsewhere, rewriting history to pretend Brown said it, then equating it with something Rush said deliberately (and over and over) in front of millions. Is that the best you can do?

And really, the consistent principle here, and I stand by it, is that people can say what they want and then they can suffer the consequences, if any, of what they say. A comedian can get up and call people names and be rude…and if the public decides they don't want to pay to see that guy anymore or if club owners decide they don't want to book him, fine. Comedians do lose work and popularity sometimes because they cross some subjective line. Ask Michael Richards. And if Rush or anyone in his line of work goes too far and sponsors desert him or stations drop him, okay…that's how it works. Freedom of speech does not guarantee you a job. It does not guarantee you an audience. If some guy on radio started denying the Holocaust and advertisers began fleeing him in droves, you'd nod and go, "Sure."

In its purest form, Free Speech is your right to stand on a little soapbox in a public park and yell about what's wrong with the government or private industry or French's Mustard or your brother-in-law's bowling scores or anything. If people listen and cheer you on, that's their right. And if they think you're a jerk and they walk away, that's their right, too. I also have the right to stand nearby on my little soapbox, point at you and say, "Don't listen to that man! He doesn't know what he's talking about." That's my Free Speech. As long as I don't outshout you or somehow stop your message from being heard by those who opt to listen, mine doesn't infringe on yours.

I'm kinda baffled as to what Rush's defenders think is the wrong done to him, other than that most don't think there was anything amiss with what he said. I keep reading that he's being "censored" or that people are trying to silence him…which is an odd way to refer to a man who's still being heard by millions each day and quoted all over the 'net. Rush Limbaugh's may well be the most unsuppressed voice of this or the previous century. When Ed Schultz said something similar, he was suspended for a few days. I think that's kind of a token, slap-on-the-wrist punishment but Rush's outfit didn't even do that to him. He still has every bit of power he had to get his message out, except of course that his backers have lost a little revenue. I doubt he will suffer much in the long run but even if he does wind up with fewer sponsors and fewer listeners, it's his own fault.

Dahlia Lithwick discloses an astounding situation in the state of Virginia…and it's not a stretch to presume this is happening other places, as well. People are convicted of crimes. Many years later, DNA testing proves their innocence. And no one tells them.

The practice of wrongful conviction doesn't seem to bother many people. I suspect that if a lot of folks think about it at all, their attitude is that if you're poor (and in some cases, if you're a racial minority) and you get thrown in jail, you're probably guilty of something. So it's no big deal if you're convicted of the wrong something. Never mind that every wrongful conviction means that our justice system is sloppy and that someone got away with The Perfect Crime. I mean, if you commit an act of violence and someone else goes to prison for it, they really aren't looking for you.

Anyway, I find it troubling that so many innocent people are convicted…and troubling that so few people seem to care.

John Dickerson makes the case that it's going to be Romney. I think so too but it still could take a while.

You know, I haven't decided which I'd prefer be the Republican nominee. I think Santorum would be a lot easier for Obama to beat…but I also will breathe easier when Santorum goes down to defeat and there's no chance of him becoming president.