It happened in the tiny parking lot behind the Famous Amos cookie store that once resided next to Hollywood High. Returning to our car after having illegally purchased liquor at the store across from the cookie vendor (it was evening and Amos had closed up shop for the night), we were accosted by three young women clad in what can only be called “Whore Couture.” And when we say young, we mean young. So young, in fact, that almost dropped our Wild Turkey, Heinekens, and Marlboro 100s when the following exchange ensued.

Girl #1: Hey.
Us: Uh…
Girl #2: You guys want to party?
Us: Uh…um…
Girl #1: Fifty for all three of us. And believe me, we’re worth it.
Us: Uh…um…gee…if you don’t mind us asking…how old are you?
Girl #3: Old enough to know how, too young to get pregnant.

And, just like Shaggy and Scooby Doo when they encounter a swamp ghost or similar evil apparition, we actually made that ridiculous “whapada-whapada-whapada” sound effect as we ran in place for a few moments, then dived into the car leaving cartoon puffs of smoke behind us as we peeled out of the parking lot, almost running over the middle-school madams. We were 18 at the time, just six or seven years older than the girls who propositioned us. It’s a gap in age that means little when one is past, say, 25, but at 18, no matter how incredibly stupid and horny we were, we knew we were staring straight into the face of diabolic temptation incarnate–and the very real possibility of incarceration and all it entails for young, ripe white boys. To this day, it is not uncommon to be jerked out of a sound sleep, dripping cold sweat, that taunting line still echoing like a dying man’s last words: “Old enough to know how, too young to get pregnant.” Jesus H. Christ.

Welcome to Hollywood, 1979. What was once one of the nation’s most popular tourist areas–on par with Times Square–had fallen onto very hard times. This was four years before Herpes made the covers of Time and Newsweek, a horrible “epidemic” that would soon seem like the minor annoyance that it is once someone got the bright idea to fuck a monkey and bring the scourge of AIDS upon us.

Yet even the threat of a lethal disease transmitted via sex and/or needles didn’t slow the city’s pleasure pigs. Discarded rigs were common sights along the sidewalks of Hollywood, and prostitution kept rolling along as if the world wasn’t coming to an end, which just goes to prove you can’t keep a good man dressed in women’s clothing down.
El Lay has never been a stranger to the world’s oldest profession, but its relationship with illicit sex commerce has certainly had its ups and downs and ins and outs. Though our Famous Amos encounter was, we believe, somewhat out of the ordinary, anyone who passed through hollywood in the 70s and early 80s should well recall the human meat markets that operated 24/7 along the sidewalks and back alleys of Sunset (ladies) and Santa Monica (boys) boulevards, businesses that truly blossomed on the weekends to the extent that traffic often came to a standstill on both thoroughfares.

But, just as Rudy Giuliani sanitized Times Square, making it safe for Nebraskan tourists by forever ridding it of its exquisitely seedy persona, L.A. eventually chased the whores, trannies, twinks, and other assorted genital renters from Hollywood (for the most part) so those same Nebraskan tourists could gawk at the Walk of Fame in peace. Well, semi-peace. Instead of having to share the same sidewalk with high-heeled, tube-topped hookers who genrally left families alone, they are now harassed constantly by the piss-poor knock-offs of Spiderman and Jack Sparrow and Marilyn Monroe who now vie for space–and spare change–along the boulevard of broken dreams. It’s not just cartoon characters and Hollywood icons who are being impersonated, however; Hollywood boulevard is also rife with what appear to be method actors who eschew blockbuster caricatures and instead choose to portray with uncanny realism the the filthy, malodorous, booze-sodden panhandlers who also once called this place home. Some have apparently gone so far as to knock out their own teeth, sleep in dumpsters, and shit their pants as they babble incoherently to no one in particular. Stanislavski would be undoubtedly be proud.

But, according the L.A. Times, prostitution is back, and in a big way. Only this time it has raised its ugly head from the spittle moist lap of…Eagle Rock?

Yes, Eagle Rock, L.A.’s crown jewel, home to…home to…to…a rock that kind of looks like an eagle, is now plagued by that most insidious form of commerce, the massage parlor. Some have abandoned the “parlor” bit and call themselves clinics, therapy centers, spas, and the like, but all offer that elusive treatment that “legit” massage professionals won’t even,uh, touch. Yes, we’re referring to the Holy Grail known as The Happy Ending.

Just dope dispensaries once flourished in Eagle Rock, so too have jerk-oof joints found a new home–and for the exact same reason: L.A. dropped the ball(s) when it failed to correctly identify the impact of a new state law. By letting it languish, they gave erotic entrepreneurs the real estate reach-around to spread like a case of crabs up and down the streets of this peaceful, God-fearing hamlet.

Hollywood, Koreatown and the San Fernando Valley also found themselves waking up one morning to a complete stranger in a bad, lice-infested wig, but Eagle Rock is the community that has taken it in the shorts the hardest.

Google “erotic massage establishments in Eagle Rock” and you’ll come up with more than 30 (including adjacent Glassel Park), with 15 alone on a two-mile stretch of Eagle Rock Boulevard. That’s almost eight happy endings per mile, though your mileage may vary.

“So,” you ask yourself as you look for your wallet and keys or your spouse’s credit card statements depending on your gender, “Why Eagle Rock? Blame it on a state law passed in 2009 that allowed message therapists to attain voluntary certification. The idea was to make it easier for “real” massage therapists to work anywhere in the state rather than be tied down to a specific region.

The law freed legit therapists with state certification from local scrutiny that could often be unduly strict. Los Angeles city code, for example, classified all parlors as “adult entertainment,” but under the new law, licensed therapists would no longer have to apply for police permits, which require fingerprinting, background checks, cavity searches, and, on some occasions, senseless beatings.

Cities like Culver City, West Hollywood and Glendale were quick on the draw when it came to seeing the forest for the bushes, and immediately implemented policies requiring massage parlor applicants to either show their state certification or touch their nose with their index finnger and then walk a straight line toe-to-toe while counting backwards from 100 while not fellating Charlie Sheen.

In the infinite “we-know-better” wisdom that characterizes Los Angeles bureaucracy, the city merely asked applicants to state that they were certified, but never demanded solid proof. But Los Angeles failed to do so, instead asking applicants only to state if they were certified, not to show proof. This is nothing new in Los Angeles. Anyone ever pulled over by a cop for a minor infraction can attest to their kind, forgiving attitude, their incredible capacity to listen to the driver and empathize with his/her problems, and ultimately let them go with a fierce baton beating rather than a citation. As one officer who works for the the Los Angeles Police Commission’s permit processing section and wished to remain anonymous out it this way: “What goes down easier for the driver? A handful of broken teeth and a pint of blood, or the spectre of higher insurance rates? We think it’s the blood and teeth…and maybe a broken jaw or fractured cranium, depending on skin color.” A few officer in the department who not only asked us to withhold his name but also deny that he exists, agreed with his co-worker. “Go ahead and ask anyone: the LAPD bends you over backwards trying to be fair and balanced. We’re like the Fox News News of police departments.

As a result, it became an easy place for erotic massage parlors to set up shop.

While some, like Amos Netanel, who heads the non-profit California Massage Therapy Council, have already urged L.A. to rewrite its own code in order to clear up the matter as soon as possible, local authorities are uncomfortable with the word “urge” as they are with expedited deadlines. “We won’t be bullied by treehuggers,” said another official who declined to come out from under his desk. He added that “true bureacracy does not turn on a dime.” It is “more like an ocean liner that takes a long time to turn around. Caution is the watchword keyword, just as it was on ther Titanic. When you think about it, they came this close to missing that iceberg,” he said, sticking up his hand from below the desk and indicating an approximater distance of three imches between his forefinger and thumb. “That’s awfully close.”

Eagle Rock resident are at the of their ropes. One resident, who did not wish to be identified but welcomed fan mail, lives across from one of the massage parlors.” If you sit on this patio for an entire day with a pair of binoculars in your lap, you will see more than three dozen men go in and out of there. None are there longer than 20 minutes, if you listen closely, you can hear the most ungodly sounds, like pigs rooting for truffles while women moan and scream repeatedly for God and Jesus and…other stuff.” Holding up the binoculars, he added, “And you would not believe what I have seen though these,” he said excitedly. “I would be more specific if I could tell the difference between a llama and an alpaca but trust me when I say it is disgusting, he lamented, adjusting the large magazine conspicuously covering his lap.

“Why don’t they just go back to where they came from so I don’t have to sit out here 24 hours a day?” he asked, almost in tears. He blew his nose and wiped his eyes with a tissue from one of the many boxes he keeps at his side, then tossed it on the porch with the scores of other used Kleenex wads.

One reason the parlors don’t “just go back to where they came from” may be the strictness of nearby cities.

According to the L.A. Times, Pasadena Police Cmdr. John Perez said it had been at least a year and a half since his city had to bust an illicit massage parlor.

Not only does Pasadena require massage therapists to show city officials their certification, it frequently does spot checks to make sure the parlors are in compliance. “We have a proactive approach to it,” Perez said.

It is also important to note that the average age in Pasadena is 73, and that the population demographic of mostly white conservatives does not lend itself to patronizing such establishments. “They prefer glory holes in public restrooms, like airport stalls,” said one former politician who refused to give us his name.

The Los Angeles Police Department says it also does spot checks. On Tuesday, a sting by vice officers on massage parlors in the Eagle Rock area netted six arrests for people who had spots on either their clothing or home decor. “It’s a sure sign they’re hookers,” said one officer who could not remember his name. Those arrested were not state licensed and were operating without city permits. They were taken immediately to Old Navy and Ikea, where they purchased non-spotted items.

In previous raids, police have discovered that some of the women working in the parlors are illegal immigrants working to pay off debts, according to Lt. Andre Dawson of the LAPD’s detective support and vice division. “One had really screwed up her Capital One account,” said Sergeant Richard Gozinya.

But some enforcement has dropped off.

“The regulation takes a lot of resources, a lot of bodies,” said an L.A. assistant district attorney who identified himself only as “Smokey the Bear.” “And I am talking a lot of naked bodies, sweating, intertwined, consumed with lust,” he added, placing a large magazine over his lap.

Solutions to the problem range from more stringent enforcment of certificate checks to changing the zoning laws to squeeze the pleasure palaces out town.

Old Hobo Joe, a homeless man who lives in an alley behind one of the sex establishments has his own idea of how to solve the dilemma.

“Just change the name to Eagle Cock and be done with it,” he said with a grin. “Damn if it didn’t work for Vegas,” he added, lowering his trousers and defecating as he waved to passing motorists.

In the wake of Japan’s nuclear tsunami, it has become vogue once more to fret about the ominous implications of nuclear energy. Indeed, had the tumbler that shifted the earth just off Honshu, Japan on March 11th been merely a mere rather than chart-topping 9.0 earthquake that washed away entire towns and changed the country’s coastline forever, the 32nd anniversary of The Three Mile Island disaster near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania would have gone as unnoticed as the 31st.  Instead, March 28th was a special  day for the press this year. From NPR to Fox, the media was positively frothy about the near-meltdown that occurred at the power plant in 1979. Though no one was killed in the accident, and the second unit of the plant still operates to this day, the mishap transpired a mere week after the opening of the blockbuster film The China Syndrome, and was thus immediately conflated with the fictional version in which Jane Fonda uncovers a massive cover-up and Jack Lemmon saves the world. To make matters worse, President Jimmy Carter decided to pay a personal visit the site, hoping to expose himself to enough radiation to enable him to beat the atomic mutant who was conspiring to seize the presidency from his grasp. His effort proved to be too little too late, and Ronald Reagan–abetted by clandestine aid from Megator, Mothra, and Baby Godzilla–ran away with the election that changed America forever, ensconced the Lunatic Right Wing Fringe, and eventually gave birth to Sean Hannity. Thus, it came as no surprise when Monday, March 28th dawned to a seemingly endless parade of scientific experts and socio-political pundits who crawled out of the woodwork on TV, radio, and the interweb, to offer their collective two cents on what they all called “The worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history.”

Unfortunately, they were all wrong.

As any savvy reader of L.A. Bizarro will tell you, the boasting rights to America’s worst nuclear disaster belong to the Top Secret enclave tucked into the rocky creases that separate the northwest corner of L.A. county from southernmost Ventura county. That’s where the Santa Susana Field Laboratory hummed and glowed from its perch overlooking the entire San Fernando Valley, spewing tons of radioactive toxins into the air, water, and earth  for more than five decades.

“What?!” you cry. “Surely the government and the fourth estate would have made us all aware of such a catastrophe!” Indeed. If that’s what ran through your mind, please email us immediately. We have some prime Florida swampland we’d like to sell you.

The reason you probably never heard about the government’s secret testing ground has to do with the fact that it was, uh, secret. The almost three-thousand-acre facility was built in the mid-forties to research nuclear reactors and rocket engines; the remote location was chosen because the work being done there was so dangerous. Unfortunately, bureaucrats at the Department of Energy forgot to plan for the expansion of that little burg just two dozen miles to the south called Los Angeles. Troops returning from World War II took advantage of the low-priced housing provided by the GI Bill, and L.A. overflowed into “America’s Suburb,” the San Fernando Valley (much of which came to be owned by Bob Hope).  Thousands of acres of citrus groves were razed to make way for the explosion of affordable tract homes. Though the site technically resides in the Simi Hills along the Ventura County border, it overlooks one of the most densely populated suburbs in the U.S., the closest being West Hills, Chatsworth, Canoga Park, Northridge and Woodland Hills to the east and south, and the cities of Simi Valley, Moorpark, and Thousand Oaks to the west and north. All have been tainted in one way or another by Santa Susana’s voluminous history of toxic waste disposal and nuclear mishaps.

L.A. is surely the World Capital of The Stars, but astro-geeks will be thrilled to know that the SSFL actually helped to take the U.S. to the stars. Wernher Von Braun’s early V-2 rockets were tested here, as were the rocket engines that took the Apollo program to the moon. Laser testing for Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense was carried out on the grounds, along with a myriad of highly classified, unclassified, and plain ol’ “never-happened-here” Black Ops that will forever remain unknown. What we do know is that the nation’s first commercial nuclear facility (the Sodium Reactor Experiment, or SRE) came online here in 1957, and for a short time, the small, uncontained reactor provided power to more than 1100 homes in nearby Moorpark. So much for the argument offered by some that Three Mile Island was a commercial facility and Santa Susana a government proving ground–as if the distinction truly matters. What matters is that  on July 13, 1959, the Santa Susana reactor suffered a partial meltdown—the first nuclear meltdown in history, another medal on its chest—releasing what one study estimates to be well over four hundred times the radiation released by the Three Mile Island mishap, which was also a partial core meltdown. Another independent advisory panel estimates that the meltdown led to somewhere around 260 cases of cancer within a sixty-square-mile radius of the reactor. Imagine getting an X-ray that lasted thirty years. Hello, San Fernando Valley and Simi Valley!

You’d think that you would have heard something the worst nuclear meltdown in our nation’s history (and by most estimations, the third worst in the entire world) and that it would have led to the closure of the site, but SSFL soldiered on, thanks in part to the cloak of secrecy surrounding the site and the meltdown. Over the years, approximately ten nuclear reactors were built on the Rocketdyne-operated site (parent company Rockwell International also had secret nuclear reactors at its facilities on Canoga Avenue and DeSoto Avenue, smack dab in the middle of commercial and residential areas) and at least half of those reactors failed and/or leaked radioactive contaminants into the atmosphere. The site also contained plutonium and uranium carbide fuel fabrication facilities, the nation’s largest “Hot Lab” for decladding and examining irradiated nuclear fuel that was shipped to SSFL from Department of Energy facilities across the nation, and, most disturbingly, open burn pits used to incinerate radioactively and chemically-contaminated whatnot. An open burn pit is exactly what it sounds like: an enormous, uncovered hole in the ground into which radioactive material was set ablaze. Okay kids, what happens when you set something on fire? That’s right, it makes smoke! And what happens when the wind blows the smoke up grandpa’s nose? And you thought he had smoked just one Tiparillo too many.

The Hot Lab also lived up to its name, suffering a number of fires involving radioactive materials, often resulting in massive contamination. The quaintly-named sodium burn pit was another open air pit for cleaning sodium-contaminated products, but it also turned out to be a cheap and easy way to dispose of highly toxic materials as well.

Angelenos are well familiar with the blustery Santa Ana winds that sweep down wide across the deserts and across the Los Angeles Basin in fall and winter, pushing dust and smoke far out into the Pacific Ocean. These yearly meteorological occurrences may very well explain the gigantic, oddly glowing halibut that devour scores of surfers, swimmers, and fishermen each year. Equally cruel winds are notorious along the craggy mountains and passes surrounding the labs. Drivers familiar with the stretch of the 118 freeway that connects L.A. and Simi Valley can attest to the strength of these buffeting zephyrs that can arise from nowhere, and the startling experience of having one’s car casually slapped into the next lane as if propelled by the  invisible hand of God(zilla). In fact, Simi Valley’s name is said to originate from the Chumash Indian word Shimiyi, which refers to the stringy clouds–borne from fierce air currents–that typify the region. (Like all American Indians, the Chumash no longer roam their native land thanks to friendly relocation efforts aided by the U.S. Calvary, ornery land barons, and cowpokes hopped-up on sarsaparilla. Today, what remains of the Chumash tribe enjoys the sweet taste of revenge by milking elderly retirees of their Social Security checks at one of their many fine gambling establishments.)

Three Mile Island was an isolated incident that released a significant amount of radiation into the atmosphere, yet a vast majority of researchers agree that it was not enough to pose a serious health risk to anyone. The only thing Three Mile Island killed (other than some expendable wildlife and shrubbery) was the building of any more nuclear power plants in the U.S.  That’s what happens when the pesky press goes poking their noses into things. SSFL did not suffer from such media exposure, nor did Fox News exist to give it a positive spin. Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, and even Wilford Brimley were oblivious to its existence. So, for somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty years, Santa Susana was free to, as Dennis Hopper might say, “Do its own thing, maaaaan.” The wind, depending on which way it blew, would invariably carry countless radioactive and chemically-contaminated particles, invisible to the naked eye, through the half-opened windows of many a tract home and into the lungs of dozing Baby Boomers and The Great Generation that spawned them.  The neighboring American Jewish University Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi still gets the worst of it (wouldn’t you know it?), as runoff from the 1959 meltdown still flows directly into their property whenever it rains. When visiting the campus it is helpful to know phrases like “Ikh hob zeks toes” (“I have six toes”) and “Dayn yarmulke iz shayn” (Your yarmulke is glowing”).

Without a doubt, burning toxic waste is cheap, easy, and most of all, fun–but it can also be deadly for those who stoke the poisonous pits. Perhaps that explains why, for a short time, the lab adopted the disposal method of packing steel barrels to capacity with highly toxic waste and then firing at them with a rifle. The barrels would then explode, dispersing their contents into the air. For some unexplained reason, this safe and sane  practice of waste removal was abruptly halted shortly after its implementation, and the open pits were set ablaze once again. To provide some idea of the risk involved in standing around a crater of smoldering nuke trash, twenty two of the twenty seven men who worked on one sodium pit crew alone died of various cancers (a 23rd worker, ironically, survived working on the sodium pit only to be swallowed whole by a giant radioactive halibut while scuba diving off the Channel Islands in 1981). In 1994, two SSFL scientists were killed when the illegal trash they were incinerating blew up. Their deaths led to a grand jury investigation and an FBI raid on SSFL, which is how most of this info came to see the light of day. But it’s only the tip of the proverbial glowing, toxic iceberg.

There’s no telling just how much poison has leached into the soil and groundwater of the cities that surround SSFL, but the state has estimated that almost two million gallons of toxic trichloroethylene were dumped on the grounds and that half a million gallons also of trichloroethylene have saturated the bedrock, soil, and ultimately the water table beneath the lab. We tend to gloss over big numbers, so slowly say this out loud to yourself: Two and a half million gallons. And that’s just the count for only two chemicals that we know about.   Buy a home remotely close to the site, and your escrow and purchase agreement will contain an waiver stating that you may very well be living on poisoned property. Having resided very close to the facility ourselves, we think that’s a small price to pay to be privy to the earth-shaking, awe-inspiring  experience of feeling a Saturn rocket prototype being tested just a few miles from your front door. One would swear the damn thing was on your driveway it was so loud, a fact made even more impressive by the fact that, while tests were conducted in open air, most of the enormous rockets were fired and run (sometimes for hours) in one of the many concrete bunkers burrowed deep beneath the surface of the labs.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, that vanguard of justice, reviewed the site in 2003 and gave it two big thumbs up, saying that there was no risk of exposure to contaminants in the area, and though three other studies failed to find any evidence of increased cancer rates in the area, Boeing (which purchased the site from Rockwell/Teledyne/Dr. Evil, still agreed to pay $30 million to settle a single lawsuit alleging that pollutants from the site caused cancer in many nearby residents. In an age when tobacco companies fight to the bitter end, lawsuits about the obvious ill effects of smoking to the bitter end, a behemoth like Boeing rolled over like an old hound, despite reports in their favor. Is there something they know that we don’t?, we ask rhetorically.

The DOE has been anxious to turn the prime-view property over to residential developers who are just, uh, dying to build there. We can only imagine some of the creative names that marketing gurus will devise for the tony gated communities that will inevitably populate the radioactive hilltop: Keloid Crossroads . . . Glowing Oaks . . . Plutonium Acres . . . Nuclear Renaissance…Uranium Villas. . . Tumors:Lifestyle Living for the Soon-to-Be Terminally Ill . . . Mutant Manors…Metastasize: Making Your Early Retirement Even Earlier and of course, Estates of the Living Dead (Sorry, Phases One and Two Already Sold Out!)

And just think of the creative marketing campaigns that will line the signs leading up to the communities:

A nuclear neighborhood for your nuclear family!

Waterfalls and Fallout. What a Beautiful Combination.

Where the glow of sunset is surpassed only by the glow of your front yard.

At last, a community that radiates the status you deserve.

Is it ironic that Santa Susana was built to develop weapons to stop the Soviet Union from bombarding Americans with radiation, and yet it was the facility itself that poisoned and killed nearby residents, never once warning them that they were in mortal danger, that their water and air were deadly, and that their children would grow up to become into flesh-eating mutant teens with loose morals and even looser pants? 

Yes, and The Gipper probably knew it (at least until he entered the “Drool Cup Days” that would follow him to his grave). But like so many canny conservative politicians of his era as well as today, Ronald Reagan built his political career by exploiting the Red Scare, seeing commies hiding in every coat closet, under every bed, and worst of all, hiding on soundstages and movie lots. Reagan was what Michael Moore refers to as “our first spokes-president.” He was ultimately an entertainer with political convictions that could shaped and shifted just as easily as the lines in any script. Dollars to donuts, when the former Death Valley Days host made his dramatic demand,  “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” he knew the partition’s demise was already a done deal; he was just reading his lines in an agitprop farce that had run its course. Just as Nancy Reagan urged Americans to “Just Say No” to drugs while Ollie North and the Iran-Contra gang were creating a bull market for cocaine in the U.S. (especially its ghettos) to fund a secret and illegal war, Mr. Reagan and those before him apparently found nothing wrong in fomenting fear over an exaggerated Soviet nuke threat (the USSR, as it turned out, was a nearly toothless bear) while knowingly exposing U.S. citizens to radiation through scores of open air bomb tests and secret facilities like Santa Susana which operated with little oversight and even less accountability. With a government like that looking after us, who really needed the commies?

America. Land of the free, home of the facade.

As we celebrate this special week that marks the 32nd anniversary of what even the most educated commentators still wrongly refer to as “the worst nuclear disaster on U.S. soil,” please feel free to pass the word that in 1959, twenty years before Three Mile Island was ushered as more myth than fact into the American lexicon , it was the humble yet mighty uncontained reactor at Santa Susana that blessed the United States its first and deadliest nuclear mishap. Though the reactor that went awry at Three Mile Island was shut down, its twin is still humming away as you read this. At Santa Susana, the gates are now chained and padlocked, the buildings  mostly abandoned or razed, and the cracked concrete yields to weeds.  The property is still owned by Boeing, as one can plainly see from the logo on a water tower just outside the main gate, and though the site seems abandoned, there are sometimes signs of human life behind the gates.

On October 15, 2007,  Boeing and California officials announced that almost 2,400 acres of land that is currently Boeing’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory will become state parkland, and permanently restrict the land for nonresidential, noncommercial use. A little more than three years later, on December 7th, 2010, state and federal agencies signed a plan to decontaminate a portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, handing the bulk of the task to Boeing. The state had previously mandated that the aircraft and aerospace manufacturer — which purchased the facility in 1996 — make the 2,850-acre test site squeaky clean by 2017 with support from from NASA and the Department of Energy. Not surprisingly, Boeing appealed. and so the site still languishes behind the chains and padlocks and barbed wire fences.

Just a few miles to the west of the Santa Susana site, along a more verdant stretch of the same Simi Hills, the presidential library and burial place of Ronald Reagan looks more like an upscale Mission-style monastery than a shrine to “The Great Communicator.” Given the history of the man whose belongings–including Air Force One–are housed there, its proximity to the site of our nation’s worst nuclear disaster is more than just poignantly ironic. It is also a testament to the naivete of a nation so in love with its own righteous mythology that it, like all empires that have come before, believes that the sun will never set on its self-perceived  of world domination, a notion fueled in part by the just cause of our greatest export, a nebulous catch-all concept called freedom. In 1979, Americans already hard-bitten by a recession, an energy crisis, the ghosts of Watergate, and the Iranian hostage crisis, were burdened with a new bogeyman of nuclear power gone mad. Yest, instead of chasing the public from the theaters, what happened in Harrisburg prompted moviegoers to stand in line for hours to see The China Syndrome, a film as cynical as its audience, which believed then as it does now that the movie is a thinly-veiled replay of Three Mile Island — even though it hit the theaters a week beforehand. That this falsehood has been so casually repeated by the media, reinforced by lazy bloggers, and swallowed whole by a public that would rather question Mr. Obama’s birth credentials proves the old adage that if you say something often enough and loudly enough, it becomes fact.

In 1959, twenty years before The China Syndrome, as the Santa Susana Field Laboratory silently sprinkled its toxic fairy dust over the San Fernando suburbs, Americans flocked to another film that stands as a symbol of it day. Appropriately enough, the 5th highest-grossing motion picture in 1959 wasn’t even a live-action eff0rt. It was a feature length cartoon presciently entitled Sleeping Beauty.

The facilities of the Boeing (née Rocketdyne) Santa Susana Field Laboratory/United States Department of Energy can be gazed upon longingly through the chain link fence  at the top of Woolsey Canyon, just off Valley Circle Boulevard in Chatsworth. Don’t forget to wear your hazmat suit!

Zsa Zsa Gabor, sole survivor of the famed triplets and perhaps the most glamorous Hungarian nonagenerian in all of Hollywood, has not been having a good year. In January, most of her right leg was amputated due to complications–including gangrene and severe hammer toe–following hip surgery. She was released from the hospital and was recuperating at home when she suffered a relapse on the first of February. According to Gabor’s suitcase pimp, part-time husband, and former Chico and The Man star Frederic Prinz von Anhalt (also know as Prince Frederic von Anhalt, Freddie Prince, Freddy Glue-Eyes, and “that naked man handcuffed to the steering wheel”), Gabor was not watching Jeopardy! as originally reported in the press, but was in fact “engrossed with Glenn Beck as he drew parallels on his chalkboard between President Obama, Eva Braun, Vince the Shamwow guy, and the original Broadway cast of Hair. That’s when [Gabor] started coughing up blood and mucus from her mouth.”

At first, van Anhalt said he thought nothing of the incident, since many people, including himself, “spit up blood or bile or other fluids while watching Glenn Beck. It’s part of his appeal.”  However, van Anhaltsaid he soon realized something was truly wrong with Gabor when the 93 year-old bombshell didn’t stop vomiting blood. “She just sat there, bolt upright in bed, her mouth agape, with blood spewing from it like a fire engine hose,” claimed Prinz. “It went on for more than five minutes. I had no idea she had that much blood in her or I would have sold it.” van Anhalt then became emotional as he continued, “It reminded me of the fountains of Trevi in Rome. My god, what a beautiful city. I love it in the fall, particularly. There is nothing quite like sitting at a cafe on the Via Veneto and sipping an espresso while inhaling the exhaust of a thousand Fiats and Vespas. Also, I once had intercourse with Rula Lenska in the Roman catacombs. It was extremely musty and uncomfortable and tourists kept taking pictures of us, so obviously I was very concerned about Zsa Zsa and the blood and stuff.”

Gabor, who will be 94 on February 6, was rushed by van Anhalt to Dan Tana’s restaurant in West Hollywood, where van Anhalt said he enjoyed “an aperitif, followed by a delicious veal chop and a small salad.” van Anhalt dined alone, he said, “because Zsa Zsa preferred to rest in the car where she could spit up more blood in private.”  According to a source who was not at Dan Tana’s that night but has eaten there before, van Anhalt finished his meal and then  joked with the waitress by exposing his penis to her and telling her to “keep the tip.” He then attempted to get everyone in the restaurant to do the chicken dance before a panicked valet rushed into the eaterie and told him that there was a “bruja” vomiting blood all over the interior of his car. “That’s when I really became concerned,” van Anhalt said, “because bruja means ‘witch’ in Spanish, and I did not recall driving a witch to the restaurant. Fortunately, the witch had left by the time the valet brought the car around, but Zsa Zsa was still there.” Van Anhalt said he then immediately drove to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center “at a leisurely pace, no more than twenty miles an hour” because he had been “drinking heavily” and was “ankle-deep in blood.”

“Plus,” van Anhalt added, “Zsa Zsa was no longer continuously spouting blood from her mouth, just coughing up a half-pint here and there. That’s when I noticed she was very pale and I became really concerned.”

Responding to allegations made by conspiracy theorists on a Glenn Beck fan page (www.ismellarat.com) that Gabor had staged the hip fracture, leg amputation and blood-spitting as a publicity stunt to revive her flagging career, van Anhalt angrily claimed that “the blood vomiting was the real thing,” and that his wife “is not Debbie Reynolds.” Van Anhalt admitted that in the past, Gabor had been known to perform what she called “The Crimson Yawn,” in which she would “upchuck gouts of blood as a party trick to entertain guests, children, and other simpletons.” Van Anhalt added that Gabor learned the technique from “an old kung-fu gypsy woman” in her native Hungary, and had “impressed many a studio mogul” with the feat when she first came to Hollywood. “That’s how she got her first break,” claimed van Anhalt, adding, “and showing her tits.”

Van Anhalt also denied that Gabor suffers from a sexual fetish in which one derives pleasure from having one’s limbs amputated, as alleged on another Beck fan site, www.sociopathsluvbeck.com. “That’s ridiculous,” van Anhalt huffed. “If we wanted that done we would have gone to Tijuana like Bob Crane and Dick Van Patten!” Van Anhalt claimed that he and Gabor were not into “the kinky stuff, other than scat,” and that Gabor agreed to have her leg amputated because “it was green and blue and oozing pus and really stinking up the place, like when a Filipino cooks fish in the microwave.”  Van Anhalt said that they decided to keep the leg in their freezer, “just in case.”

Gabor did not recognize her husband when he visited her room, though she did recognize “The Count” from Sesame Street when the Muppet dropped in to help her count to 94 in preparation for her birthday. Gabor also recognized photographs of Kiki Dee, Ron Jeremy, and the late Simon MacCorkindale, star of the short-lived 1980′s TV series Manimal. At one point, Gabor appeared to recognize her spouse, but then it became apparent she had confused him with the deceased comedian Freddie Prinze, star of Chico and the Man and father of actor Freddie Prinze, Jr., neither of whom are related in any way to the 67 year-old self-proclaimed “Rapscallion Love-Kraut.”  The pain of being forgotten by his wife, coupled with the post traumatic stress of having accidentally glued his eyes shut in December 2010, apparently took its toll on van Anhalt, according to his cousin and closest friend, The Burger King, who was not with van Anhalt when he collapsed in the hospital elevator two days after Gabor was admitted. “He’s a very sensitive man,” said The Burger King from his enormous fairytale castle in the clouds, “at least for a German.”

Van Anhalt was immediately handcuffed to a gurney and hospitalized. He and Gabor are not sharing the same room, but communicate with each other by tapping on the pipes.

Gabor, who is partially paralyzed from a 2002 car accident and reportedly had a stroke in 2005, is battling fluid in her lungs and high fever. “But she appears to be on the mend,” says a source who asked not to be identified, but who is, in fact, Dick Clark. Interestingly, Gabor fractured her hip after falling out of bed while trying to answer the phone, and sources close to embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek  say that the caller was none other than Dick Clark, who had inadvertantly dialed a wrong number while trying to personally notify a Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes contestant that they had lost. No longer able to join the PCH Prize Patrol due to his own health issues, Clark, who suffered a stroke in December 1996 and is currently battling “Old Person’s Disease,” has allegedly taken to personally calling every loser to offer his condolences, said the source. “His phone bill is almost as insane as he is,” said the source, who admitted never having met Clark or knowing anything about him. “What I do know is that something like 43 million people enter the sweepstakes every year and that is a lot of phone calls to make, especially if your hand is shakier than Don Knotts in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion after a nine day meth binge,” said the source, who had a Middle Eastern accent and claimed he could fly and walk through walls.

“Yes,” said Clark when contacted for comment, “Many will enter but few will win.”