SHTUPP TO NO GOOD
“Hello, handsome. Is that a ten-gallon hat or are you just enjoying the show?”
That was Madeline Kahn’s line (playing Lili Von Shtupp) in the 1974 Mel Brooks film “Blazing Saddles.”
Unfortunately, there was no ten-gallon hat on Sunday at Bluesapalooza in Mammoth.
Because an inebriated security staffer, according to Marcia Male of Bishop, Calif., at times didn’t have anything covering his you-know-what while he serially harassed and molested Bluesa attendees.
Male said the staffer worked for 24/7 Event Services, which was responsible for event security.
Clyde Mailes, owner of 24/7, was reached by phone Thursday.
According to Mailes, the staffer was fired instantly, removed from the site, and babysat at the hotel until the company’s team departed for home on Monday morning.
He said he’s never had an employee act out before to this extreme.
He also said he filed a report on the incident with the Mammoth Lakes Police Department (MLPD) this week.
Mammoth’s Interim Police Chief Dan Casabian said a complaint has since been filed with the MLPD and an investigation has been opened.
Marcia Male’s biggest complaint is that the 24/7 employee was not arrested on-site. She feels 24/7 and Event Producer Omega Events “worked around the system” in an attempt to bury what happened. Protocol, she said, should have been for police to be summoned immediately – not for 24/7 to hustle its perv out of sight.
“I don’t trust Clyde for a second,” she said. Nor does she trust Omega’s Rich Sherman, whom she said offered her a free ticket to next year’s event.
“I don’t feel safe after this,” said Male. “I’ve been losing sleep over it. I’m upset about it.”
Mr. Sherman could not be reached for comment.
While Casabian couldn’t speak to 24/7’s hiring practices, he did say MLPD will be part of the event permitting process (including approval of private security firms) in the future.
Starlight, Starbright
You’re all lucky I’m still here.
I was staring up at the sky on Monday night, and no, I was not plaintively asking, “Are you there, God? It’s me, Margaret.”
Rather, I was staring up at the sky because that is what one occasionally does in between sips.
And I see this … how the hell do I describe this?
I see a glowing, greenish rectangle sauntering slowly across the sky.
If any of you have played the video game “Slither.io,” I’d say it looked like one of those lumbering mid-sized worms.
For those not in the Slitheri-know, I’d say it looked like an alien U-Haul carting a jumble of stars from one part of the galaxy to another.
It was too big to be a plane. Far too slow to be a comet or a shooting star.
It crawls to the center of the sky, makes a turn to the right, and is suddenly enveloped by the Cosmos and disappears.
Cue the music from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”
But there was no great flash of light and I did not wake up the next day with a sunburn. Nor did I start having visions of Devil’s Tower or Mammoth Rock.
The next day, I tell my Business Manager June about what I saw – because I know June communicates with the aliens – and she bursts my bubble.
What I saw, it would appear, was a Starlink Satellite Train. Produced by that omnipresent alien Elon Musk and his company SpaceX.
A little web research informs me that the Train I saw was launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base.
That news, combined with attendance of an Inyo County Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, is enough to bring anyone crashing back to Earthbound reality.
The latest on the EMS soap opera in Inyo … proposals were received on Monday. The proposals were not shared with the public. This is because the County will negotiate with both parties before deciding on a preferred provider and presenting an agreement for Supervisors to ratify.
At that time, the initial proposals will be revealed.
I had thought the County was immediately required to divulge the contents of the proposals received. It is not.
There’s a 2006 California Supreme Court decision involving the Los Angeles Airport. That case involved competing bids for a hangar facility which LAWA [Los Angeles World Airports] didn’t wish to disclose right away. The Court found “LAWA’s ability to get the most value for the hangar facility would be impacted if the proposer … enters into lease negotiations with full knowledge of what each proposer is willing to pay. LAWA’s ability to negotiate with the proposer would be hampered because the proposer’s doubt as to what the competition is offering would be eliminated.”
So public disclosure occurs after negotiation but before Board approval.
That Inyo Board decision is expected to occur at its August 22 regular meeting.
