Count Sauguslavsky gossips about Snoozemakers, Runner, Gas & Tacos!

IT’S A GAS, GAS, GAS — If you were alive and driving in the ‘60s — the NINETEEN-sixties — you remember buying gas for about 21 cents a gallon here in the SCV. Tain’t so anymore. Plain, low-test regular gas topped the $4 a gallon mark at most service stations. Of course, that beats many of those ice cube/socialist countries that like Obama so much. Here’s some comparisons world-wide, from Gas Buddy:

— Over $8 a gallon in the Netherlands, Norway and Denmark

— $9.25 in Turkey (most expensive on the planet).

— About 20 cents a gallon in Valenzuela, making it the cheapest price on Earth. Unfortunately, you have to live under the thumb of that nutburger dictator, Hugo Chavez.

Wyoming, where CPA Gary Condie goes to fill up, is the lowest price in the U.S. at about $3.00 a gallon. 

WHY WOULD ANYONE, IN THEIR RIGHT MIND — get gasoline at the 76 station at Newhall and Lyons? It boggles our minds that there is a single customer to visit this gas boutique. It is historically 30-50 cents higher per gallon than any station in the valley. When gas was at around $4. around town, this 76 was selling it at around $4.40. It’s not the station. It’s the people dumb enough to shop there. 

CHEAPEST TACOS IN AMERICA — are in Palmdale. They’re made of monkey and llama meat and cost just 2 cents at the Antelope Valley Grange, Feed Store and Taco Emporium at like, the Mall. 

SPEAKING OF TACOS & GEORGE RUNNER — Ever wonder where your elected officials eat? We were having a sumptuous lunch at Taco Bell recently with Vice President of COC, Eric van Harnish when in walks State Board of Equalization mucky muck George Runner. He had 46 enchiritos and a small soda pop. By the power vested in us as the valley’s official gossip column, we now dub our beloved representative with the unasked-for nickname of “Taco” George Runner. 

OR? — George “Make A Runner For The Border” Runner. 

WASTED SPACE — Always made us wonder. Down at the end of Newhall Ave., east of the Highway14 underpass, there’s that impromptu parking lot for hikers and mountain bikers who use Whitney and Elsemere Canyons. It’s also used for commuters. A few feet away is the trailhead to Whitney Canyon and a BIG, HUGE, ALWAYS EMPTY parking lot run by the state and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. NOBODY ever uses it because it costs $10 to park. So, it ALWAYS is empty. An empty parking lot run by the government. We’re guessing they do make money by issuing parking tickets to the hapless or willful. Not that we’d have the temerity to offer common sense, but wouldn’t it make more sense just to help folks by opening the darn place up for people to park? Or put a big flower pot in there instead? 

CAREFUL WHEN YOU’RE HIKING — With all the rains recently, the back canyons and trails are aplenty with poison oak. No. Not aplenty. Riotous. Careful where you walk, especially along creeks and shady trails. 

WASTED SPACE, PART II — If there are any good scouts, cityfolk or SCV volunteers, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have some trash crews run through there once a month and pick-up trash. It’s an eyesore. 

KUDOS TO ONE OF THE BEST GUYS NOT IN THE VALLEY, BUT ON THE PLANET — Jim Ventress, high holy poobah and director of the local Boys und Girls Clubs was honored last month. Seems like yesterday, but it ain’t. Jim celebrated his 25th anniversary working with the B&GC and was feted with a tribute at SCV’s B&GC World Corporate HQ on Newhall Avenue. Try getting THAT on a business card. Jim’s a peach and a true treasure for our valley. We like him so much that we won’t wish him another 25 years doing the same stuff. 

THE DAMNING LICENSE PLATES — A gal was allegedly speeding down The Old Road when she not only HIT a telephone pole, she ran THROUGH a telephone pole. Not making that up. Somehow, the gal knocked a section of the pole about a foot off the ground and five feet up. The huge pole was dangling by the wires and you could walk in between the spaces. She also took out a row of rural mailboxes and the trash cans. Odd thing. She wasn’t seriously injured. The crash took out electricity to part of Castaic for about 18 hours. Don’t know if this will go to court, but her personalized license plate was 1 FAST K9. 

MAKING A CAMEO AT SNOOZEMAKERS — Last month, The Formerly Mighty Signal and the SCV Press Club (originally founded by yours truly) held their abbreviated Newsmakers of the Year banquet. John Boston and Will Fleet (CEO/Publisher of The Fresno Bee) were two of the three original founding members (along with Tim Whyte of Whyte House Media — 297-9498 for all your media needs). Fleet had called his old pal Boston that afternoon to say he was motoring down from Fresno and how about getting a beer together. Boston says “Sure. Where?” “The Hyatt?” suggests Fleet. As they were sipping brew in the bar, the pair of rapscallions noted there were a lot of local mucky mucks in suits. Turns out that Friday was the eve of Snoozemakers. Nope. Neither Boston nor Fleet stuck their heads in the banquet door…. 

GO BUY RORY’S BOOK — The oft brilliant local media critic Rory Aronsky just published his first book: What if they lived. “While stars like Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland and John Belushi have been gone for decades, their images live on in beloved movies,” said Rory. “But so do questions about what they might have done if they were still alive.” In “What If They Lived?”, authors Phil Hall and Rory Leighton Aronsky consider what might have been, using industry trends at the time of the stars’ deaths, movies that they were working on or that were possible projects, and insight from experts.” 

 

GO BUY CHRIS’  BOOK — Our own Chris Sharp has come out with: Dangerous Learning: The New Schooling in California!” It’s a political expose on about how, in a relatively short period, a learning breakdown in the state’s schools has contributed to modern records in local unemployment and budget-breaking prison institutionalization. In Dangerous Learning, Sharp details how new professional agendas have come between teachers and students and pushed learning in California to increasingly lower achievement. 

SIGN AT THE BURBANK AIRPORT WE’D LIKE TO SEE — “Can’t see London, can’t see France, unless I see your underpants…”