So Longo, Bongo

A long-overdue RIP to former Gabonese president-for-life El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba, who died of what may or may not have been advanced intestinal cancer in Barcelona on June 8th. In a sequence of events that should register as eerily familiar to Eazy-E fans, Papa Bongo didn't seek international (read: first-world) medical care until early May. It clearly didn't take.

Under Bongo, who rose to power in 1967, Gabon proved anomalously tranquil amid the ever-convulsing border lines of West Africa. As Gabon's neighbors in the continent's armpit slaughtered each other, Bongo built one of the world's most prolific kleptocracies, rooted in his country's substantial oil reserves (at present, Gabon still has more miles of pipeline than of paved road). While no conclusive estimate of his total wealth exist, Papa hung his hat in an $800 million palace and owned properties in Nice, Malibu and the like. At 4'11", Bongo may, indeed, have boasted one the highest dollars-to-inches ratio of any current or former head of state. He apparently spent freely: The New York Times reported that Bongo shelled out $9 million to Jack "Definitely Not in Gen Pop" Abramoff in 2003 for a promised meeting with Dubya; ten months later, Papa was sipping tea and noshing on crumpets in the Oval Office.

To the littlest Big Man there ever was, happy trails (and yes, 'death' buys you one free post that fails to note mentions only in passing a decades-long pattern of rampant corruption, ambivalence toward human trafficking, and disregard for human rights).

Opportunistic Lefties Strike Again

Nice, gay marriage proponents: Stealing the concept of nonconventional marriage support from Ben & Jerry's. How very Obama of you. You liberals are shameless. Shameless, I say. 

Puerto Rico Day 2009...

...was tight as always, albeit a little light on the underage freaking. So tight, in fact, that we're gonna let it marinate for another day or two before attempting to describe it. In the meantime, Long Island City looked nice the other day (realtors: photography skills for hire -- yes, it's true, I'm still available):

We ventured across Newtown Creek for LIC Artists' Open Studios and, in typical DCQ fashion, set aside enough time to visit the workspaces of three of the 150-plus participating artists. Converted old factories and warehouses on barren industrial blocks slicing through a neighborhood trending residential housed the studios...

...which held, along with paint-splattered daycare centers, rotting staircases and freight elevators, some nice stuff from relative unknowns:

No links for you! Jimmy Kimmel sleeps with Jones Day

A few months ago, somewhere along the daily descent from online work research to tangentially work-related online reading to Youtube animal porn, Emily Gould became a known name to us me (disclaimer: much of DCQ experienced a near-total internet blackout from 2002-2005, which partially overlaps with the time period in which subject Gould rose to infamy). She's a competent and compelling enough writer, but Jimmy Kimmel got drunk and punched his grandma and then disappeared Larry King before verbally eviscerating Gould on national TV over the dire threat her employer's Gawker Stalker app poses to celebrities like him free societies everywhere. Other bloggers ragged on Gould's performance, she meekly defended herself, others came to her aid, still others doubled up on the attack, and the celebrities themselves were able to leave their Cloaks of Invisibility at home that week when they picked up their frappuccinos.

Then, in February, a Cleveland startup that tracks high-end real estate deals and IDs the players involved found itself the target of some strikingly Kimmelesque criticism: Farcically malevolent legal giant Jones Day sued Blockshopper for daring to evoke the firm's name and link to its website in articles describing condo purchases by two Jones Day attorneys. The site's founders chose to settle with Jones Day rather than blow their wad on legal fees fighting an army of 2,000-plus smarmy Ivy League grads.

For the curious, the firm claimed the site's usage of links constituted copyright violation. If that's the case, Jones Day, you've got your work cut out for you. The real motivation for the suit was most assuredly the fact that Chesters One and Two didn't appreciate their addresses being sprayed all over the virtual world of realty. (If you're still struggling with good guy/bad guy, let this guide you: Jones Day is the firm that helped Chevron first defeat a lawsuit by relatives of dirt-poor Nigerians killed while protesting the company's environmental and human rights violations, then turn around and countersue the villagers for $500K in an attempt to discourage other third-world exploitees who might sue in the future--just as the Blockshopper suit was used as a suppression tactic aimed at other would-be freeloading hippies channelers of free traffic to the firm's site.

I Knew a Real Estate Boom, and This, Lereah, is No Real Estate Boom

Everyone knows industry shills are gonna be industry shills (and sometimes, as Jon Stewart observed the other day, industry shills are gonna pose as cable news channels), but this is excessive: A preeminent 'authority' -- the head cheese of the National Association of Realtors at the time -- actually penned a book under this name in 2005: 

Are You Missing the Real Estate Boom?: Why Home Values and Other Real Estate Investments Will Climb through the End of the Decade -- and How to Profit from Them

Aside from winning the prize for Longest Subtitle That's Really Two Sentences in One and In Hindsight Doesn't Make Any Sense, David Lereah gets our vote for Dumbest Pictorial Metaphor on a Book Cover: You see, the home is rising, which not unlike climbing, which represents an increase in the home's worth. Just like it says in the Longest Subtitle! But the family that owns the house is looking as if maybe they'd like to go inside their home now, please, because little Tina has to pee and Norman's missing the Jets game. But if it falls back to the ground, it'll smash into pieces and maybe kill Tina and/or Norman! So either Tina's gonna pee her pants and Norman's gonna miss the game or someone's getting impaled by a splintered 2x4. Then there's the possibility that Lereah meant it the other way -- that the family's missing out on this so-called "boom," likewise represented by the soaring value of the home they didn't buy. It's somewhat unclear, but I'm guessing he meant the latter.  

Either way, that shit's gonna break apart when it falls back down to the ground and the family will either be irate or relieved or impaled, and someone should sue Lereah anyway for putting that house up there and for writing such a poorly named and misleading book in the first place. 

Too 'Big' to Ignore?

Last night, President Barry proclaimed that "the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it" in reiterating his unwavering support for Detroit. Our Chosen Changer sounded every bit More of the Same in falling back on the 'too big to fail' line. It's a tactic that's sure to succeed, as is virtually anything that sounds the least bit scary or unpatriotic these days. But what, exactly, are the qualities that make a select few companies -- Big Three automakers and a couple humongous banks -- 'too big to fail'? There's a logical argument for rescuing financial institutions -- if there aren't any lenders left, how will we buy houses/pay for college/build Burger Kings? But the carmakers? Purely political. Obama and the majority of congressional Democrats don't want to be known as the cats who 'killed Detroit,' which is exactly what Republicans and Rust Belt Dems would paint them as.

But 'too big to fail'?! Please. They're already halfway there: Over the past eight years, GM and Chrysler (Ford's passing over the taxpayer pot o' gold for now) have laid off hundreds of thousands of workers and shut down dozens of plants. Assuming Congress doles out another $21 billion, GM will jettison another 47,000 workers by the end of 2009, bringing its global workforce below 200,000 -- less than half of what it was in 2000. Meanwhile, scads of outside suits stand to make a collective $1.2 billion should GM finally realize its destiny in Chapter 11. Detroit's leaders created this predicament by sitting around guffawing about all the crazy shit an F-150 can tow while Nissan and Toyota developed cars that actually make sense in a 21st-century sort of way. And now D.C. is counting on us to bail them out.

Not surprisingly, our president and federal representatives seem far less concerned about the cataclysmic state of the newspaper industry (as if papers still had the resources to investigate every back-alley horsetrade going on inside the Beltway). In the last three months, the owners of the Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Chicago Tribune have filed for bankruptcy. The New York Times has laid off newsroom folks. And today, the Hearst Corp. revealed that it is considering shutting down the SF Chronicle after the paper lost a cool $50 million last year (thanks, Craigslist).

Let's recap: Our tax dollars, intended for schools, Social Security and Medicare, are instead funding war and delaying the seemingly inevitable demise of U.S. automakers (you don't just whip up a better Prius overnight). Meanwhile, San Franciscans may soon have to wait till their Bay Guardians and SF Weeklys come out to find out who won that ballgame last Tuesday. Not even Chris Daly could be happy over the specter of this.

Enough ranting for one week -- we'll try to come up with something a tad more heartwarming for next time. Not rescued puppies/sassy underage cancer patients heartwarming, but something.