Last of the 2004 Lists

How did I miss this last week? The Christmas week issue of LA Weekly included an entertaining, and educational, end-of-the-year list for 2004 courtesy of urban theorist and geography/history gadfly Mike Davis:

The List 2004 - Mike Davis’ 6 Remarkable Ways To Die

1. Breathe. If you are unlucky, you will inhale some spores of Coddidioides immitis. It is endemic in our soil. An ordinary case of resulting Valley Fever is not much worse than the flu, but the disseminated form is catastrophic. It causes meningitis as well as gruesome symptoms reminiscent of tertiary syphilis. A Valley Fever epidemic in the aftermath of landslides and dust clouds caused by the 1994 Northridge earthquake led to several deaths in Ventura County.

2. Write a dissertation on sodomy in the Mexican Mafia. Those ultimate "values voters" — the EME — took profound umbrage at homosexual-rape scenes in Edward James Olmos’ 1992 movie, American Me. Two of the film’s Eastside consultants were punctually murdered, and Olmos sweated out several years as the target of angry veteranos. According to Hollywood gossip, the actor-director ultimately mollified his critics with handsome contributions to the cause of traditional values.

3. Succumb to the "Mothman Curse." But the Mexican Mafia aren’t the only pissed-off moviegoers. Paranormal researchers claim that Mothman — the weird winged demon from West Virginia — is now stalking Hollywood. Since the release of The Mothman Prophecies in 2002, several film associates have perished under strange circumstances. One fell off the stage at the Burning Man festival, another died of food poisoning at a Mexican restaurant, and a third was killed in a plane crash. According to knowledgeable occultists, the film’s stars — Richard Gere, Laura Linney and Debra Messing — may be in mortal danger.

4. Drown in the desert. The late-summer monsoon dumps 2 inches of rain on the flanks of Mount San Gorgonio. Two hours later a 4-foot-high wall of water drowns an unwary camper in the "dry" bed of the Mojave River near Victorville. Alternately, a dying Mexican hurricane or El Niño–driven superstorm briefly refills the high desert’s Pleistocene lakes. In August 2003, such flash floods washed away part of I-15 near Baker and drowned three people near Twentynine Palms. True desert rats wear life preservers.

5. Challenge the LAPD to a nude wrestling contest. Over the years, the LAPD has killed several nude people. The most notorious case was the shooting of Echo Park resident Ron Burkholder in August 1977. Ramparts Division officers encountered the naked, unarmed and clearly hallucinating chemist raving on a street corner one morning. After a brief scuffle, Sergeant Kurt Barz ended Burkholder’s PCP trip with six bullets. As usual, the department ruled the shooting "justified."

6. Have unsafe sex with an alien in the Valley. As famously chronicled in The Tujunga Canyon Contacts (1980), the Valley has long been the epicenter of extraterrestrial lust. And the saucers keep coming. Here’s where the $105 million that the Bush administration is spending on "abstinence education" might make some sense. After all, you never know where that Thing has had its dirty thang.