David Cotner

Best Offshore Radio Activity

David Cotner
If news of nukes speeding across our hemisphere were to break, I’d grab a boat to Santa Catalina Island and tune in to KISL 88.7 FM Island Radio in Avalon. The concept of an island radio station hovers somewhere between romantic and foolhardy, but during the recent brushfires on the......

Best of the Wurst

David Cotner
It’s an awesome spectacle: pastrami on rye, extra pickles, coleslaw and melted Swiss cheese served by older ladies who handle the midday crush at Schreiner’s Fine Sausages with grace. The last supper — or lunch, depending on when the end comes — might well consist of a line of faithful......

Best Smell to Remember

David Cotner
Considering that long-term scent memory is nearly unassailable, when you’re blasted to atoms, conceivably some of those minuscule particles will carry olfactory experiences, soul memory traveling the world on superheated winds. The scent radiating from the La Cienega flagship shop of the 86-year-old See’s Candies comes from the factory behind......
(Universal City Studios)

Fast Times at Ridgemont High

David Cotner
One of the few instantly resonant films of the 1980s, Fast Times at Ridgemont High quickly became a fondly quoted basic-cable favorite; the shock that it’s been 25 years since it premiered is rivaled only by the fact that it’s held up so well over all this time. Starring Sean......
(Photo by Leni Sinclair)

John Sinclair's Guitar Army

David Cotner
It is not for nothing that most markets airing the “Freedom Rock” ads — the ones that shilled all those “great tunes” we used to “groove to” back “then” — elected to excise the part where the hippies said, “Remember the ’60s? War, protest... goin’ to jail?” Forgetfulness is the......
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Get Out While You Can

David Cotner
As an answer to those anti-democratic types who screech, “America: Love it or leave it!,” Mark Ehrman (who will have decamped to Berlin by the time you read this) offers this handy — and exhaustively researched — guidebook to the practical perils of expatriation, which 300,000 pursue annually. Getting Out......
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Prankfest

David Cotner
Not just for kids anymore, pranks are the focus of this weekend’s Re/Search Books “Pranksfest L.A.,” celebrating the publication of Pranks 2, the hotly anticipated sequel to 1988’s Pranks. Re/Search publisher V. Vale promises rare video clips and audiovisual presentations of actual stunts, and will be moderating a panel with......
(Illustration by Ronald Kurniawan)

Best Human Skulls and Taxidermy Animal Bones

David Cotner
Best Human Skulls and Taxidermy Animal Bones Necromancy, the ancient practice of summoning shamanic ancestral spirits so that the future may be foretold (but, sadly, not the Lotto numbers), is at best a dicey proposition, because you can’t hold it in the palm of your hand or take naughty photos......
(Illustration by Ronald Kurniawan)

Best Carpool-Tunnel Syndrome

David Cotner
Best Carpool-Tunnel Syndrome With all the subtlety of an Adam Ant video, freeway-interchange ramps in Los Angeles are second to none in all their special roller-coaster effects. The actual term “freeway” originated in the parkways of New York during the mid-1930s; the former Arroyo Seco Parkway — the current Pasadena......
(Illustration by Ronald Kurniawan)

Best Scanty Panties

David Cotner
Best?Scanty Panties Scanties, unmentionables and other girdles of loins: from the $117 Cosabella chemise to the undergarments donated to women who’d suffered through Hurricane Katrina, Jen Abercrombie’s cozy clearing-house of frilly support has weathered everything from literal panty raids to the factory-fed allure of manufacturers like Victoria’s Secret and L’Eggs......