California's Katrina

"Almost ablaze, still you don’t feel the heat
It takes all you got, just to stay on the beat.
You say it’s a livin’, we all gotta eat
But you’re here alone, there’s no one to compete.
If mercy’s a business, I wish it for you
More than just ashes when your dreams come true.
Fire! Fire on the mountain!"
– The Grateful Dead

Odd, last night, to turn on the TV news, flip through the stations and find the only news coverage of the California wildfires – a disaster of Biblical proportions – was on “Hollywood Access.”

Literally.

CNN, ironically, was broadcasting some pre-recorded “Anderson Cooper Planet in Peril Crap;” Fox News had Bill O’Reilly, characteristically ranting and railing about some “Mean-Spirited, Petty, Irrelevant Crap;” and MSNBC was broadcasting some “Inside Look at Prison Voyeurism for Whitebread America Crap.”

Meantime, “Hollywood Access” breathlessly reported how the fires are disrupting the production of movies and television shows (including – gasp! – “Dancing With the Stars” – the tragedy!) … and how the “stars” are scrambling frantically to save their mansions. It’s nice to know Mel Gibson, Jennifer Aniston, Victoria Principal, Sting, Tanya Tucker, Tom Cruise, Marie Osmond, Kiefer Sutherland, John Travolta, Torie Spelling, et al, ad nauseaum, are coping.

“In between commercials I was on the Blackberry trying to get updates from friends that are watching the news and [checking] online,” Spelling sighed.

Meanwhile, backstage at “Dancing,” Jane Seymour confided in Access, that if the fires hit her house, which they have been threatening to do, she would lose so much.

“If my house goes down I will lose — I don’t want to even consider what I would lose,” she said. “I would lose all my families memorabilia, I’d lose all my oil paintings, I’d lose, oh gosh, every costume from every movie. There is so much. When I was running out of the house I didn’t know what to take.”

It’s good to know that at least Hollywood Access, Entertainment Tonight and the Hollywood Reporter are on this story, even if the major news outlets had other priorities.

"You're doing a helluva job, Brownie."

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http://rimoftheworld.net/

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/10/22/southern-ca-wildfire.html