Speaker 1: You're listen Saints KFI AM six forty the Bill Handles
Speaker 1: show on demand on the iHeartRadio app KFI AM six
Speaker 1: forty Bill Handle here on a Thursday morning, December nineteenth.
Speaker 2: Amy, you just came in and was just announced about Bonnie.
Speaker 1: Willis, Fannie Willis, Fanny Willis funny, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: The Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis has been disqualified
Speaker 2: from prosecuting President elect Trump, which makes all the sense
Speaker 2: in the world.
Speaker 1: She hires a special prosecutor who's never had experience as
Speaker 1: a prosecutor.
Speaker 2: She's stooping him.
Speaker 1: And you know that isn't not by the way, that
Speaker 1: is not a per se conflict. That is not on
Speaker 1: its face of conflict. A DA can hire a special
Speaker 1: prosecutor who he or she is stooping. Now not in
Speaker 1: open court, that's not allowed. But the optics are so horrible,
Speaker 1: and it was she should have.
Speaker 2: Gone a long long time ago.
Speaker 1: Now moving over to LA Unified School District, And as
Speaker 1: you know, I went through LA Unified School District, started
Speaker 1: in kindergarten, graduated high school. So I spent every moment
Speaker 1: before I went to college at LA Unified and so
Speaker 1: I always use LA Unified as sort of the poster
Speaker 1: child of any conversation I have about school districts. Also,
Speaker 1: LA Unified is one of the school districts that is.
Speaker 2: Not good. Now everybody attacks them.
Speaker 1: However, to be fair, they teach LA Unified teaches and
Speaker 1: I don't know, forty languages, an enormous number of migrants
Speaker 1: that can come in, illegal migrants that come in because
Speaker 1: they can't ask those kids English as the second language
Speaker 1: is primarily that's probably the largest single English's second language
Speaker 1: program in the country.
Speaker 2: That's easy to say. So here's what's happening.
Speaker 1: Principals who work their asses off, and they really do.
Speaker 1: They've said their workload is just too heavy and the
Speaker 1: pressure to raise student achievement is just too much. Because
Speaker 1: that's what's going on. So you know what they've done.
Speaker 1: They've unionized. They've unionized, which I've never heard of. They're
Speaker 1: now part of the Teamsters, which the thought of senior management.
Speaker 1: Actually they're considered middle management in terms of administration and
Speaker 1: school district. You know, it doesn't make any sense, Neil,
Speaker 1: you were part of management when you were here.
Speaker 3: Yes, and interesting so that people like Chris Little and
Speaker 3: me were dual because we were mad.
Speaker 2: We're also members of after. Yeah. But the point is, but.
Speaker 3: I didn't go to the meetings. I didn't go to
Speaker 3: meetings and I didn't talk to people about Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the point I'm making is the thought of management
Speaker 1: being part of a union, and yeah, it's range.
Speaker 2: It is strange. It just doesn't happen. It really doesn't.
Speaker 1: I remember our last contract negotiations and Amy Kno, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this, and if you don't know,
Speaker 1: this is I was asked to sit on the committee
Speaker 1: on behalf of AFTER here at the at the building.
Speaker 1: Because every radio group or even station, some are unions,
Speaker 1: some are not union. And I was asked to because
Speaker 1: I'm a lawyer. They didn't know how bad I was,
Speaker 1: but I'm a lawyer, and they said, would you sit
Speaker 1: on the committee? I said, you know, I got to
Speaker 1: tell you I'm a business person too. Maybe you don't
Speaker 1: want me to be on the committee. No, you're a
Speaker 1: member of AFTRA and we want you to sit on
Speaker 1: it and you can represent. And I said, here's the
Speaker 1: problem you're going to have, right, you're at owe with management,
Speaker 1: here's the union, and you're asking for more benefits, more
Speaker 1: money management during the course of those discussions, say no,
Speaker 1: it's like when I negotiate a contract three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty four days a year, I'm the most wonderful thing
Speaker 1: at the station. I'm the best thing since sliced bread.
Speaker 1: The day I negotiate my contract. Eh, you're not so good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're pretty much replaceable. It's a horrible situation. So I
Speaker 1: told and you know, the guy who was doing I
Speaker 1: don't want to mention his name, who was the union
Speaker 1: guy here? I said, here's the problem you're going to
Speaker 1: have is that I'm going to sit down on our side,
Speaker 1: your side of the table, and every time management comes
Speaker 1: up with some statement, I'm going to look at you
Speaker 1: and go, they're absolutely right, and I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: on saying that over and over again.
Speaker 2: Needless to say, I was not invited to sit on
Speaker 2: great idea, sir. Yeah, once again, the fantastic guy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so something very unique.
Speaker 1: LA Unified School principles are now unionized, and they're saying
Speaker 1: there's too much work, too much pressure, and they're right,
Speaker 1: and the pressure to bring up scores, especially at LA Unified.
Speaker 2: I mean it is difficult.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a what a fifty, there's a sixty
Speaker 1: percent dropout rate because well, you've got people that are
Speaker 1: coming over the border. Our tax system is such that
Speaker 1: number one, you can't ask if someone is illegal or not.
Speaker 1: By law, those kids have to go to school. They're
Speaker 1: more difficult to teach by the very nature of who
Speaker 1: they are. And Vietnamese kids who don't speak a word
Speaker 1: of English and Chinese kids, and there's no other school
Speaker 1: district in the country that has this kind of problem
Speaker 1: and they're set to the same standards.
Speaker 2: I going to tell you, if I were a school principal, no, no,
Speaker 2: if I was a teacher, I'd quit because it's that difficult.
Speaker 1: And in La Unified, it's more more difficult than anybody
Speaker 1: else or any other school district. So on, behalf of
Speaker 1: those of you here at the station who are members
Speaker 1: of AFTRA, and that's most people on the air. Management
Speaker 1: is absolutely right at every.
Speaker 2: Point and handsome.
Speaker 1: And you're right, yeah, all right. Now a story I
Speaker 1: want to share with you. Oh this is I love
Speaker 1: stories like this. Hollywood Forever Cemetery. It's really a unique
Speaker 1: cemetery in Hollywood and was created in eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: It's been around for a while and the people who
Speaker 1: are buried there, Rudolph Valentino, Judy Garland, Alfred Hitchcock, Cecil
Speaker 1: b De Mill, Johnny Ramone. I mean it goes on
Speaker 1: and on, Quincy Jones. I mean it is a very
Speaker 1: famous cemetery and also was the first one to make
Speaker 1: itself a park where people walk through and they have
Speaker 1: film festivals and it's just they were the first ones
Speaker 1: as cemetery to do an annual Dia de las mortes
Speaker 1: where they exhume some Mexican people that are buried there
Speaker 1: and celebrate diad les mortes and put them back in
Speaker 1: the ground.
Speaker 2: It is a very unique cemetery.
Speaker 1: Well, if you go there, there is a hundred foot tall,
Speaker 1: five story mausoleum that is now on the west edge.
Speaker 1: It's the Gower Court Mausoleum. It's opening up in January
Speaker 1: and it's going to house thirteen thousand dead people in crypts,
Speaker 1: niches for urns, family condos. Now, the guy who owns
Speaker 1: it says, we're not going to build any more cemeteries
Speaker 1: in la That's true, You're not gonna get any more.
Speaker 2: There's just simply not going to be there. So what
Speaker 2: do they do?
Speaker 1: And this is the wave of the future. If you
Speaker 1: can't go out, you go up. Didn't Michelle Obama say that? Okay,
Speaker 1: probably not. And so the cemetery still has land to
Speaker 1: provide in ground burials, but it doesn't matter. The future
Speaker 1: is clear. It is going up. When you think about
Speaker 1: burial being buried in a cemetery, I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: lot of space for you know, well, how much value
Speaker 1: it is I don't know. I mean I have a plot.
Speaker 1: Oh God, the amount of money that it costs is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And matter of fact, I think I'm going to sell it.
Speaker 1: And there's a whole story there. But the point is
Speaker 1: is that when you talk about going into a building
Speaker 1: like this where your loved one is buried or cremated
Speaker 1: and there's it just is I guess bigger connection is
Speaker 1: what they're saying. I don't see it because you look
Speaker 1: at a placard on the wall and there is your
Speaker 1: loved one, or you look at a tombstone or a
Speaker 1: placard on the ground there is your loved one.
Speaker 2: So I don't see it.
Speaker 1: But I'm told that there is a connection. Now, no
Speaker 1: one in my family has scrips. Everybody that I am
Speaker 1: related to who is dead, which is basically everybody. My parents,
Speaker 1: my grandmother are all buried in one cemetery, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, because my parents and my family are so cheap,
Speaker 1: there are you know, it's location, location locations the cemeteries
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, big time, and they were in the
Speaker 1: cheap section. That's what they do. And this is really strange.
Speaker 1: I love this. So the officials initially wanted this is
Speaker 1: the city wanted to classify is housing house dead people?
Speaker 1: So the cemetery says no, it is storage. And what
Speaker 1: is the difference, Well, because if it is housing, you
Speaker 1: have to provide toilets and kitchens, and dead people tend
Speaker 1: not to use those facilities. Although it's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: because right next to the crematorium part of it there's
Speaker 1: a barbecue joint and I find that very very interesting
Speaker 1: that they did that. I don't know who made that
Speaker 1: a point, made that decision, and so you have that issue,
Speaker 1: and so storage is what they got. Engineering construction, it
Speaker 1: was impossible because the entire building is a vertical mass,
Speaker 1: a cantilever that the parts of it stick out twenty
Speaker 1: feet straight out at seismic stability, internal openness because you
Speaker 1: walk through it and it is a park. It feels
Speaker 1: like a park with crips of dead people all around you.
Speaker 1: And it is landscaped, and it was designed by a
Speaker 1: major landscaper. And the plantings will grow more luxuriant or
Speaker 1: luxuriant over time, so you're gonna have over spilling over
Speaker 1: overgrown foliage. You ever seen gardens of Babylon? You ever
Speaker 1: seen photos of that Nebuconezer And the Gardens of Babylon
Speaker 1: was this entire city that had overflowing plants. And that
Speaker 1: reminds me of that. The quartz stone was quarried in Brazil,
Speaker 1: corded in Brazil. I mean, this is real expensive stuff.
Speaker 1: Thirteen thousand people are going to be parked there. Just yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. You know how many
Speaker 1: times have I done death topics?
Speaker 2: Kono and quite a few? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you ever see me more excited about topics than
Speaker 1: death topics? No?
Speaker 2: You do have a weird fascination with it, I really do.
Speaker 1: I know, for some reason, I just really like death
Speaker 1: and dead people and stories about dead people and worms.
Speaker 1: December twenty five up next week not only Christmas Day,
Speaker 1: but also the first day of Hanukkah, which happens relatively
Speaker 1: rarely because the calendars are way different now here. We
Speaker 1: exchange gifts. We've been doing that. Amy came in and yeah,
Speaker 1: made some cookies, made homemade cookies. And I usually I'm
Speaker 1: not interested in going out and getting gifts or baking anything,
Speaker 1: so I give gift cards. I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: right now, spending five bucks for a two dollars gift
Speaker 1: card is a waste of.
Speaker 2: Time, your captain generosity. Yeah, it's way too expensive to
Speaker 2: do that. So Neil, I brought you.
Speaker 1: I don't normally every now and again, I'll bring you
Speaker 1: a gift. Yeah, and this year, I'm gonna open it
Speaker 1: right here on the air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, please do. Yeah, I'm gonna open it here on
Speaker 2: the air, handmade by the way. Of course it is,
Speaker 2: because that's what you do. I got you. This thing
Speaker 2: is really and open this up for me. I'm too
Speaker 2: lazy to do that, probably best. I made it stupid
Speaker 2: proof so ann I'll be able to get through.
Speaker 1: It's like wrapped in so she has to take a
Speaker 1: pair of scissors and uh do all of that so.
Speaker 2: We can't even open his own gifts here. She started
Speaker 2: it first.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, of course she did. Okay, and I have
Speaker 1: fingernails too. Go figure that one out. Okay, here it goes,
Speaker 1: and maybe ladies and gentlemen behind here he is. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm opening up and Oscar win here.
Speaker 2: If you don't say the winner is anymore.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's an ornament for your tree.
Speaker 2: Oh, we have to take on Instagram.
Speaker 3: What it's a It's a limit oversized lamictal pill ornament.
Speaker 1: That you put up. We have to take a picture
Speaker 1: of yours. This is very this is very funny. Neil
Speaker 1: does just great stuff. And it's in the shape of
Speaker 1: a mintyal pill.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a two hundred and that's und and
Speaker 3: it's name brand is I don't know it's it is
Speaker 3: a name brand because it's do you take the good stuff?
Speaker 1: I used to, but Kaiser stopped that because you know,
Speaker 1: I used to say that I needed the good stuff
Speaker 1: and my doctor said okay, And then it went to
Speaker 1: the formulary where a doctor now cannot prescribe the real stuff.
Speaker 2: So it's all generic and I take a lot of it.
Speaker 1: You know that I have to go every six months
Speaker 1: to a psychiatrist at Kaiser to get my limitdo the
Speaker 1: anti anxiety drugs It used to be my internist. Who
Speaker 1: we give it now it's a psychiatrist.
Speaker 2: Isn't it for like bipolar? And it's sent for a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: It was originally it was a pill that was designed
Speaker 1: for an anti seizure drug, and then it turns out
Speaker 1: that it's also an anti anxiety drug. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the two hundred milligrams, which is a hell of a dose.
Speaker 2: I take two.
Speaker 1: Twenty five in the morning and I take two twenty
Speaker 1: five at night. And this would make a rabid dog
Speaker 1: docile and the sweetest, the sweetest dog you've ever met.
Speaker 2: It takes you down to a nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so every six months, I have to go to
Speaker 1: a shrink. I have to go to my shrink to
Speaker 1: get my LIMITDL.
Speaker 2: Does he need it?
Speaker 1: No, it's been the same for years and years, and
Speaker 1: so it's always it's fifteen minutes with a shrink, literally,
Speaker 1: and okay it takes that long. No, not even I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just is everything, okay, everything's fine. Any changes in
Speaker 1: your attitude, any changes in you know, your anxiety? No,
Speaker 1: no changes have you been particularly anxious at all? And
Speaker 1: I said, no, anything different about what you're doing? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, I have this desire to run over kittens,
Speaker 1: and the shrink looked at me and.
Speaker 2: Goes, really, and it's starting to type, oh boy, we
Speaker 2: got a live one. Yeah, and then at some point
Speaker 2: I said that not really. So here I am.
Speaker 1: Three of the four of us in my family are
Speaker 1: on this kind of stuff, the anti anxiety drugs, sorry, Bud,
Speaker 1: And it ain't Marjorie and my two daughters and I are.
Speaker 3: On stuff like this and that's probably what twenty times
Speaker 3: larger than an actual pill.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, by the way, the generic isn't the blue pill.
Speaker 1: I used to and I used to, let me tell you,
Speaker 1: I used to mix up the pills so I would
Speaker 1: have no anxiety in the biggest direction you've ever seen
Speaker 1: these pills.
Speaker 2: The ships are different, similar, different. It's the little blue pill.
Speaker 2: He's all my anxieties. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, thank you. It's great stuff. And Neil has
Speaker 1: done cards for me that are extraordinary.
Speaker 2: I came across thank you, that's very nice.
Speaker 3: I came across one from the old days where I
Speaker 3: actually drew an illustration of you on the front. It
Speaker 3: says happy Hanukah. What do you get the guy that
Speaker 3: has everything? And you open up and it says not
Speaker 3: a damn there?
Speaker 2: You know what?
Speaker 1: I you also made the card of that I used
Speaker 1: for years and years and still yeah with your screaming face,
Speaker 1: my screaming face. So let's do this, and let's take
Speaker 1: a picture of my ornament, if you would, next to
Speaker 1: the Christmas tree.
Speaker 2: And do we still going to put it on the
Speaker 2: Aldick Home Christmas? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And which there are no ornaments now I'm going to
Speaker 1: just do it for the pictures, for the purpose of
Speaker 1: the photo. And then do we still have that card
Speaker 1: with a scream at all? I have a few left?
Speaker 1: Probably not, because that's great. It's a drawing to get
Speaker 1: you more screaming at the top of my lungs.
Speaker 2: All right. Oh, and thank you for the cookies so far,
Speaker 2: so good? And what else? Amy makes lovely cookies? Do
Speaker 2: you mean what else? Know?
Speaker 1: What? What are their gifts? Have I gotten this morning?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I want some? You want some more gifts?
Speaker 1: Do you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, I like getting. There's plenty of empty.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for the gifts. And where's mine?
Speaker 2: Amy just brought one? She got me the cookies.
Speaker 1: I brought you cookies, yeah, which is fine, and they're
Speaker 1: good cookies.
Speaker 2: All right, and you have t oh these are these?
Speaker 1: Are you? What are these confetti cookies with all the
Speaker 1: different colors of M and ms in there?
Speaker 2: Is that? What they are? Confetti cookies? No? What do
Speaker 2: they called it? With what they call their Christmas M
Speaker 2: and M cookies? Okay, they're just red and green eminem's.
Speaker 2: Oh speak, I picked all the other colors out just
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 1: Well the green eminem's. Let's go back to the little
Speaker 1: blue pill? Does that actually work?
Speaker 2: Yes? Or no? Okay, we're done with the topic that
Speaker 2: we didn't do. So I learned a lot. You know,
Speaker 2: it's the holiday season. I get it. It is the holidays.
Speaker 2: I'm ready to go.
Speaker 3: Tomorrow's last day, then some time off. I'll do Saturday's
Speaker 3: show and then some time off. I'm looking forward to
Speaker 3: being with my wife and my boy.
Speaker 1: And Monday is my last show and we're good, No
Speaker 1: you wish. It's my last show until the beginning of January.
Speaker 1: So it's good times had by all. All right, Now,
Speaker 1: politics are horrific. I mean, we have reached the point
Speaker 1: where the polarization is so horrible. That doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you're a Republican. The Democrats are satan and if you're
Speaker 1: a Democrat, the Republicans are satan.
Speaker 2: They're all beeselbub.
Speaker 1: Well, let me tell you about what happened in this
Speaker 1: little town go near Sacramento. About twenty six thousand people
Speaker 1: lived there, and two Republican candidates were running for office
Speaker 1: or city council, and they tied and eighty two votes
Speaker 1: to three thousand, eight hundred and eighty two votes. Now,
Speaker 1: this has happened before, but it's a very different way
Speaker 1: of thinking. First of all, they knew each other and
Speaker 1: they were friends. And three people running for two slots.
Speaker 1: One of them just cleaned up and got fifty eight
Speaker 1: hundred votes, so he's in. Now you have Matthew Pratton
Speaker 1: and Bonnie Rodriguez tied for the other seat. Now has
Speaker 1: it happened before. It has not major elections, but minor elections,
Speaker 1: and they've been settled by coin flips, drawing names out
Speaker 1: of a bowl, a quick game of poker to.
Speaker 2: See who wins.
Speaker 1: And these two are longtime residents, well respected, and took
Speaker 1: a while to know that the tie happened because California
Speaker 1: counts votes very slowly. Now what do you do well
Speaker 1: to both of them? They weren't going to do a recount.
Speaker 1: Even though both had an argument they were going to win,
Speaker 1: they simply weren't going to spend the money. So what
Speaker 1: is going to happen? And people in town came up
Speaker 1: with ideas to settle.
Speaker 2: The matter matter.
Speaker 1: Now, Galt is a rural area, so Pratton said, how
Speaker 1: about a milking contest and whoever wins it becomes in
Speaker 1: city council.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Rodriguez's son said, how about the two of them chase
Speaker 1: chickens and whoever gets the chicken first?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Someone also in town suggested a wrestling match in jello.
Speaker 2: Sure, why not?
Speaker 1: You know? They ended up doing ended up drawing straws,
Speaker 1: But how do you wo draws first? And so they
Speaker 1: had to flip a coin to see who drew first,
Speaker 1: So it was a little convoluted. The assistant city clerk
Speaker 1: goes out and buys a three dollars pack of brightly
Speaker 1: colored straws, breaks up the straws. The local police chief
Speaker 1: is the official straw holder, and they figured this was
Speaker 1: going to happen out in the hallway and just have
Speaker 1: it done. Oh no, no, the whole town came out.
Speaker 1: News cameras came out from adjoining villages. Well they are villages,
Speaker 1: little tiny towns, and so here we go.
Speaker 2: What happened? What happened?
Speaker 1: Well, Pratton won the seat and said, here's what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do. I'm gonna to take that straw and I'm
Speaker 1: going to frame it and put it in the city
Speaker 1: council office. Now you've got Rodriguez, who has been has
Speaker 1: lost the race for city council, who's not very happy.
Speaker 2: But you know, they're friends.
Speaker 1: They weren't going to say anything about each other. Matter
Speaker 1: of fact, they're good friends. So what ended up happening
Speaker 1: is sort of a final twist to the story. Another
Speaker 1: member of the city council had just resigned, so one
Speaker 1: of Pratton's first act as a member of the city council,
Speaker 1: and this became unanimous. They had to fill that seat
Speaker 1: and brought in Rodriguez, so they both won. The reason
Speaker 1: I bring that up and why it just became a
Speaker 1: national story because in light of the crazy negative stories
Speaker 1: that are out there about politics today, you know, isn't
Speaker 1: a joy and I have loved to see Harris and
Speaker 1: Trump draw straws.
Speaker 2: How much money you think would save?
Speaker 1: You know, east Side spend over a billion dollars in
Speaker 1: those ads attacking each other like crazy. Right heard Sunday's
Speaker 1: twelve to two pm here on KFI. This is KF
Speaker 1: I am six forty.
Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1: Catch my show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
Speaker 1: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app