129 Comments

Growing up in LA County you are one of the only commentators who seems to understand that place. So many people have no idea what the fuck they are talking about.

Expand full comment

Thank you. So many people (especially on the right) like to have an opinion about L.A., but it's rarely if ever sound. Five+ decades in this town has given me a very intimate knowledge of the place.

Expand full comment

that makes me wonder if you read Bret Easton Ellis and your opinion of him. he’s by no means the woke type and he’s a cranky asshole, but he writes about an L.A. markedly different from yours.

James Ellroy too, for that matter. same deal--he’s an arch-conservative and loathes liberals--and I’m a longtime fan, but even though he often writes about the sleaziest aspects of L.A. and Hollywood, I still get the sense he’s romanticizing it.

Expand full comment

One caveat about my L.A. life is that I never saw the super-wealthy side of things, the Hollywood Hills/Pacific Palisades/Malibu jet-set. As a kid watching Columbo, the mansions of the murderers were as foreign to me as they would've been to a farmer in Iowa. So the 1980s rich kid cocaine set was not my scene. I grew up with blacks, crack, n' acid.

Regarding Ellroy, he was fortunate to have seen 1950s L.A., which I wish I could've witnessed as well. By the time I was old enough to start noticing things, there were stinkin' hippies EVERYWHERE. That was my first impression of the city; long-hairs camping in parks smoking what I thought was regular cigarettes.

Expand full comment

BTW, bit of L.A. trivia that just came to mind: the George C. Page dinosaur museum at LACMA (https://www.laconservancy.org/locations/george-c-page-museum-la-brea-tar-pits) was built in part to chase away the fucking hippies. In 1969, that area of the museum was a giant park filled with rolling hills, a stream, and no gates or anything. It became a 24/7 Woodstock. So the museum admins (my mom was among them) decided to use that space to put in a museum that would appeal to kids, who for some reason never took to LACMA's prominent collection of old furniture. Construction on the Page museum cleared out the hippies REAL good (hippie vs. tractor always has only one winner). By the time the museum was finished, in 1977, hippies were over anyway, but at least kids now had a reason to go to LACMA beyond seeing a 300-year-old chair.

Expand full comment

This is hilarious. That museum was pretty dated by the 2010s, I went there (on a terrible date) once and the "futuristic" murals had pictures of punch-card computers. It was like walking into a time capsule.

Expand full comment

There's a lot to be said for intellectual provincialism (or maybe it's provincial intellectualism?), especially when you have a few decades under your belt in the same place. Being a contrarian from a place that people have strong opinions about -- LA, Texas, NYC, etc. -- really does give you a nice fighting hole to snipe from, sometimes.

You wrote a while back about your fear of having a retarded kid. Maybe LA is your Down Syndrome kid, and you're the parent who "wouldn't change a thing about her"?

Expand full comment

Great comment, Anthony. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, and I never would've connected the dots on the retarded kid/L.A. thing. That's why I love my readers - you guys make me realize things about my views, and about my writing, that I otherwise would've never figured out.

Expand full comment

❝. . . in contrast to Manhattan, our wealthies live in street-level houses not highrises. There’s a vulnerability when you know that even if you’re a millionaire, you’re still just one gate and one window separated from a maniac. Manhattan’s wealthy are above it all looking down a hundred stories; ours are at ground-level - crime’s a little more “real” to them.❞

YEP . . . I had a house right across the street from the Rancho Park Driving Range, a couple blocks away from Pico Ave. . . . I built some 'improvements' like fences and retaining walls which were basically intended as fortifications to keep the critters out . . . the trained Doberman Pinscher wasn't because I wanted a dog, he kept the perimeter pest free while I was away and became another level of security on my ten-mile loop at 0430 everyday.

You're really nobody in LA until you have at least 100 million.

Expand full comment

"I’m not gonna break my ass proofing these."

My brother in Moses, Abraham, and Isaac: you've only to ask and I'll happily edit anything you need, perhaps even at friend prices—which usually means free, as long as you've kept your bloviating to a tolerable length that day.

Expand full comment

You're the best in the biz, so that's a hell of an offer. Thank you!

Expand full comment

I'm not half-bad ;) and really, it wouldn't be too much work. I rarely see mistakes on your part!

Expand full comment

Takimag has an editor but I don't like bringing him things to edit. Nice fella, but it took him a few years to learn that I sometimes purposely misspell things for a pun. We've grown to work better together over the years! But I'd be honored to one day take you up on your offer.

Expand full comment

That's one reason why I'm better than some—I understand creative license and that you're totally allowed to make up words and break rules in service of the text. No stick in the mud prescriptivist, I! Language is our tool, words are our toys.

Expand full comment

Exactly it! Some editors (even if totally inadvertently) try to take the unique personality out of an author's voice, which can absolutely flatten the work.

Expand full comment

Harlan Ellison (RIP) called us "literary vampires" for that reason. I get it! I've met some lousy editors in my day—not least of all these days, when they've mostly crowned themselves the language police, and I was given all manner of nasty looks for refusing to wear pronoun pins at the last editors conference I attended. (Who? Who will not wear zee pronoun pin?!)

Personally, I believe my refusal to bleed our language dry of intent and meaning gives me an advantage in the business world.

Expand full comment

An editor of mine once substituted token for toper. It was in a story about an alcoholic rehab, and I used the old cliche “by the same token,” but with the word toper. That editor was probably a drunk.

Expand full comment

He would at least owe you a beer. Or a crispy latke. Never turn down a latke.

Expand full comment

I know better than to ask an old Jew to pay for anything.

Expand full comment

Long time reader of yours at Takimag and was wondering what happened to your column about the Unibomber and how he once sought to transition?

Expand full comment

I kept checking Substack to see if you had written anything. Nice to have you back. More, please.

Expand full comment

For some reason Substack sends me emails with the essay embedded therein. I don't even have to open the Substack app.

Expand full comment

The Tooth Collector:

Dave Cole is a retired Hollycaust Reenactor living quietly in his Beverly Hills manse, concerned with nothing greater than satisfying his niggardly nature by defrauding merchants, when his heretofore unknown of mixed-ethnicity daughter (half Polish, half Cole-ish) arrives. Soon, AT&T henchmen appear, ostensibly to install fiber optic cable, but actually, tipped off by Dave’s perfidious tree Bean, to uncover Dave’s vast subterranean Toothopolis, where he hides all the teeth from every cremation in LA County. Dave must use all the knowledge and skills acquired in his past life to build a death camp as a final solution to exterminate his enemies, only this time the DOORS OPEN OUT

Expand full comment

By God, if I weren't so niggardly I'd MAKE that film! Brilliant!

Expand full comment

And save his daughter’s birthday party. The End

Expand full comment

Pleasure to read as usual. I think the optics of Fran Drescher as the public face of the SAG is like if there was a comic strike and the public face was Dane Cook (I would've said Carrot Top but that dude is jacked and he'd snap me in half with his pinky finger).

Expand full comment

LOL! Great analogy to Cook, though!

Expand full comment

Please keep these up!

Expand full comment

Much appreciated!

Expand full comment

I think Ron Perlman’s face was generated by AI. I can totally imagine Perlman eating pizza with his chin in the Pepperoni Hug Spot commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSewd6Iaj6I

Expand full comment

LOL!!!!

Expand full comment

Explaining the whole Pro-Putin, anti Israel thing - I know a number of these people personally, and they fall into a couple of camps. Well 3, which is more than a couple, but I ain't proofreading either.

1. "Iz da Juice! Da Juice are making the frogs gay, and only Putin can stomp 'em! Zelenskee is a Juice!" In other words, the usual low-brow anti-semitism that blames Jews for everything from hangnails to bad Yelp reviews.

2. Eastern Orthodox Rad-Trads. Putin is manly and anti-gay. He is the moral bulwark against the US / Israeli / EU Axis of Antichrist. And there are some Eastern Orthodox who have this old notion that somehow Mother Russia is bound up with saving the world, if you read Revelation in just the right candle-light. Putin also backed Assad, and Assad protected the Syrian Christians (who are also Eastern Orthodox) from the Isis nutjobs, and from other other Arabs, whereas every US intervention in the Middle East harmed Christians there.

3. The West is irredeemably corrupt, and only Many Putin can oppose it (this has some overlap with #2, but different distinctives). Israel is seen as part of the West. Obviously Biden orchestrated this war to protect Hunter, etc. Casual anti-semitism coupled with blaming the US for causing every war.

Expand full comment

Great break down. Around me I see a lot of the opposite- Israel always right and Russia invaded Ukraine on a whim. These are usually neocon remnants. I personally have a rule: prefer whomever you want, but don’t get all weird and gay for another country; be it Israel/Palestinians, China/Taiwan, Russia/Ukraine, or anywhere for that matter. Playing geopolitics looks so bad on small wannabes

Expand full comment

"Don't get all weird and gay for another country..." I love that line. I may steal it.

I heard a term lately (and forget where) that describes a sort of phenomenon of displaced patriotism, where you begin championing the (alleged) virtues and glories of another country (not your own) to wild excess as a way of projecting your desires for what you wish your country was instead. There is a mirror of this, of course, where you viscerally hate in another country (again, not your own) what you're unable to express hatred for in your own.

Examples: You extoll the deep patriotic fervor of the Ruskies in defending against the imperialism of the West, because you really wish your own country actually was more patriotic than it appears to be to you.

OR:

Isreal and its cabal of wiley bankers is funding all the evil in the world, but you're really mad your bank turned you down for a loan because your credit sucks.

Expand full comment

Great thread. I do believe I have the smartest, best subscribers on the 'net!

Expand full comment

Good to know we brought you some joy. I still read some of your old columns at Takimag from before ‘16. Not to push you or anything, but an autobiography sold by subscription might set some shekels jangling into your pocket. Not just the FOA period, but everything from childhood to your (almost certainly upcoming) B’nai Brith award.

Expand full comment

And now I've got a PEZ dispenser in the comments. Whee. Hard to decide if PEZ, MK, or Marx has been the most toxically stupid book to come out of Europe.

Expand full comment

PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocols of Zion: Protocol II – Economic Wars

❝The administrators, whom we shall choose from among the public, with strict regard to their capacities for servile obedience, will not be persons trained in the arts of government, and will therefore easily become pawns in our game in the hands of men of learning and genius who will be their advisers, specialists bred and reared from early childhood to rule the affairs of the whole world.❞

https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/protocols-of-zion-protocol-ii-economic

Expand full comment

Right after this week's Taki article about the Covid origin theories you published (science vs savages, as I like to say) a whole batch of BOMBSHELLS were released by Taibbi, Shellenberger, et al, which to be fair do show how fucking two-faced the CDC people and Fauci were during the pandemic, but again, there still lacks the actual hard evidence which is so frustrating. I'd dearly love to know -- REALLY know -- but until we get genuine evidence of the lab leak, what can we do but assume the virus appeared the same way they always do, which you correctly point out, is from their disgusting practice of shitting where they eat and then eating the shit?? I've been to China and believe me, I walked through these wet markets and saw with my owns eyes some revolting thing. Dave, I swear, I saw a fully grown peacock being sold for food. A fucking peacock. In Shanghai.

Expand full comment

Good God, that's horrific. I've never been to China; probably for the best. If I hadn't already gone so over my word limit in the column, I would've added that difficult as it is, we have to separate the inherent shiftiness and sleaziness of the Fauci crowd from the factual scientific questions. The establishment "trust the science" guys are deceitful, which makes it tempting to just automatically say "they're wrong." It's a similar dynamic with the Holocaust. The Wiesenthal Center is shifty as fuck, but they're still right about a lot of the history. They just don't know honest methods of conveying it; their dishonest and secretive methods encourage denial.

Expand full comment

Exactly. Great points. It reminds me of the conservatives who fell for the Pizzagate stuff -- sure, the establishment and Hillary's coven of wicked witches and ghouls are indeed evil, but do they fuck kids? Probably not. If we're gonna hate -- and we do -- let's hate them for good reasons, not imaginary sins. There are plenty of real sins to condemn these scumbags to hell.

Expand full comment

How the 'Grift Right' Gimps for the Left . . . Steven Crowder almost became Mel Gibson and Kanye West by accident . . .

https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/how-the-grift-right-gimps-for-the

Expand full comment

I lived in China between 2010 and 2020. In the spring of 2019 there was a weird- but unreported- illness going around. I was teaching and kids would come in with a cough and then have pneumonia when they left. We had to cancel some classes because 1/3-1/2 the students were sick. Not saying that was Covid, but I’ve thought about it a lot since

Expand full comment

The comedian Bill Bailey has a hilarious routine about trying to rescue a rare owl from being cooked. An owl. For dinner? Looks like Youtube memory-holed it though.

Expand full comment

PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION . . . Protocol X – Preparing for Power . . . (((SARS-CoV2)))

❝. . . utterly exhaust humanity with dissention, hatred, struggle, envy and even by the use of torture, by starvation, by the inoculation of diseases. by want, so that the “Goyim” see no other issue than to take refuge in our complete sovereignty in money and in all else.❞

https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/protocol-x-preparing-for-power-sars

Expand full comment

My favorite part of the 'Hollywood refusal to work' is the story I read about Universal Studios trimming back the trees along the picket route thereby denying the whingers, excuse me I meant work-shy, of shade on hot days. Classic.

Expand full comment

“ Steve Sailer’s been trying for six months now to measure her skull with his calipers, but he can’t get past security “ Now that’s funny!

Expand full comment

Random musings are always best coming from a cranky old fuck like yourself. Please keep them coming.

Expand full comment

I'm looking forward to seeing you in your gimp mask ranting about jews & pete davidson in your next video upload, that's gonna be real fun.

Expand full comment

Hilarious stuff. I watched those two trailers. Jeezus.....they look like parodies of movies lol.

Expand full comment

Hi, Dave! Regarding your Covid article, Chris Martenson from Peak Prosperity has a compelling opinion on Covid's origin. He posted a video shortly after your article on Covid. Like you, I believe he's honest, unbiased, and a reliable source of information. If you're bored, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixInD8k4D_w

It would be nice to know the truth, but we're still fucked whether it came from a lab or an animal, and nobody will ever be held accountable.

I'm still curious about the name of that porn star who stayed with you and how she and her brother are doing now. Hopefully, well, and no longer in the porn business.

And who's your favorite actor, actress, director, cinematographer, and non-zombie movie? And why? Perhaps include a few runner-ups.

I finally found something that I strongly disagree with you. I was beginning to worry. I'm no expert on foreign policy or anything for that matter. But I do have people I trust who are and make a compelling argument for Putin's actions in Ukraine and rightfully blame the United States for many of the existential threats we face as a nation and globally.

Thanks again for consistently brilliant, unbiased, and thought-provoking articles and commentary.

Expand full comment

Great questions, Dino! I'll save them for the next video.

Expand full comment

Zelensky, Biden, Satanism, War, Greed, Theft, Propaganda, Domestic Spying, International Intrigue, Treason, Sedition, FTX, Ukraine, Israel . . .

https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/zelensky-biden-satanism-war-greed

Expand full comment