This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI Am six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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Part of the show, catch up with our podcast on the iHeartRadio app. Just follow us at Gary and Shannon, and we are asking you to use that iHeartRadio app today using the talkback feature. Just tap that microphone there and let us know what chores turn you on.
Okay, that sounded odd.
The story is about Americans, and more than half of us say that we are turned on when our partner does chores. That that is a thing that makes you love them even more because well, they're doing something. They're doing something to make your life easier too. So let
us know what chore it is for you. If this is the case, if it's not the case, if you wish your partner would do more all of those things, we will be happy to listen to your calls and we'll get to them coming up in the eleven o'clock hour again using that talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app.
The article out today also in the Wall Street Journal, about Americans being obsessed with wellness and I was reading an article about this, and in conjunction with the White Lotus, I watched the latest episode last night.
Great show.
It kind of just makes fun of the uber rich and the way they vacation and it's hilarious and it's it's so rich because not only is it making fun of the rich and how they vacation, the rich and the vacationing rich have kind of taken ownership of this to the tune of Banana Republic having a White Lotus vacation clothing line that they are featuring fashions on this show, which is making fun of the people that buy their clothes and selling them to the point of being sold out.
So the people the show is making fun of are embracing it. They're embracing being made fun of. They're embracing the show. It's kind of fun that way. So we'll get into America's wellness obsession coming up in the next hour.
Well, the fire fallout continues, doesn't it.
The fires that happened in the Palisades, the fight that ensued between Mayor Karen Bass and outgoing La Fire Department chief Kristin Crowley. Where we left you last Kristin Crowley, of course, had been shown the door a couple weeks ago, a couple fridays ago.
It was overdue.
In my opinion, I thought that this was going to be a relationship that was going to break up, so to speak. As soon as Kristin Crowley called out the fire chief, excuse me, the mayor and the City of La for failing the La Fire Department. I'm not one to ask somebody to fall on the sword publicly. I do enjoy it when they do. It shows great character, it shows great accountability. That was not what Kristin Crowley did in that moment. She blamed city Hall and she
blamed Mayor Bass. Now was there enough blame to go around? I would argue, yes, there was blame for all of them. There were cuts to the fire department where there should not be cuts.
This is a.
Fire department that is the most tax We're talking about the nine to one to one system in La being the most tax This fire department, you could argue, is one of the most taxed when you talk about La City, La County cowfire. This is a state where fire season does not end. We all know this, and the people in La City Hall know this. Also, how many friends do you really make cutting fire? You might make some
friends cutting police, but you make no friends cutting fire. Oh, they just showed a close up of the crack in the egg Amy on the live cam. This. I know it's big. It's big. It's not just a crack, you guys. It's a crack where like a little hand has come out and made it bigger. What did they call the hands on the on the eglitz wings? Maybe a wing, but maybe a claw.
Talent the talent.
It looks like a talent has gotten in there. Oh, and there's Jackie in shadow and she's like checking up on that crack.
There's enough set of talent in the crack, right.
Oh, she just kind of covered it up because she saw we went in for the close up and now she's being a pretective mom of eagle.
And I'm not sure. I'm looking at the feet. I haven't seen the any comments, but I think there's another pip. I think another other crack. It looks like at another egg.
Has we got two cracks and percent sure on that one two cracks in the next Yeah, and that one egg I felt like I saw because the crack has become more of a bit of a hole, not just a crack, but a hole. And I think I saw a little talent, little baby talent in there. I don't know anyway was I talking about right?
Fire? So some more interesting? They really are, They really are.
There's so much more lovable than anything going on at city Hall. But there was enough blame. There was a lot of pointed fingers and what have you. And while I was on the mountain of yeah, Karen Bass handled this the wrong way. We knew there was a bad weather event coming. Gary and I sat here on that Monday before the fires, and we said, this seems like the real deal. We're gonna have some real fire danger. We talked to Henry, Henry to car from Katla, who said,
this is not a boy who cried wolf situation. The way the winds are coming down from the top of the cold mountains, and the way that they're going to run right into the homes and the urban wildlife interface.
We are screwed.
We all know, We knew we were screwed, and Karen still kept her trip to Africa.
Well.
I always thought that there was blame to be had by Kristin Crowley as well.
The optics not great with her.
She didn't seem like this is unfair, maybe, but it didn't seem like she had the gravitas to lead the LA Fire Department. And what I said last week still rings true in my opinion. If you don't have the poll to get the funding at city Hall, you don't have the pole, period and you shouldn't be the head of a major department like the LA Fire Department. If you can't get the money that your department needs, part of that lands on your shoulders.
Unfortunately, it's just the way the world works.
And now we're getting the text messages that happened at the fire times. This is thanks to ABC investigative reporter Kevin O.
Excuse me if I'm screwing up his name.
Kevin was able to obtain text messages to and from the fire chief in the moments leading up to the Palisades fire and in the moments after we knew the fire had erupted.
Kevin went out and.
Filled out a public records request, which is a pain in the arse. If you are a reporter, you know what a big pain in the arse it is. He weeded through all of these documents, he found the text messages, and they do shed light on our hypothesis that maybe she was not the chief to be at the helm during this disaster. Just like Mayor Karen Bass dropped the ball, seems like Kristen Crawley dropped the ball as well, or at least maybe not up to the task of leading
a department in a catastrophe this large. We'll get into those text messages when we come back. Here's a tease. One of the La County fire chiefs texted her the morning of these fires and said, not good. This was at eleven eighteen broke news of that fire, which was spotted by one of our listeners, one of the first people who spoted that fire. I want to say about ten twenty seven am when it broke out. This was
a message that came in about an hour later. He Tony Morony texted Kristin Crowley, this fire County fire chief tested the La City fire chief not good. She just wrote back one word, no, you want a little bit more than that from your fire chief. Do you not
watching the Big Bear bald eagle live cam? Because Jackie and shadow of got three eggs there in their nest and they are being very protective I don't know if that's Jackie or's Shadow, but he or she has put herself squarely between the camera and her baby eggs, which goes to my problem. If I did have a problem with the Big Bear Bald Eagle live cam, I've had it from go so for years now. They never consented to this. They never signed the release that put them
on the Real Life or whatever. They never signed on for Big Brother, They never signed on for any of this. They wanted to just live their lives as eagles, making their babies, doing their thing, sitting on the eggs, waiting until they hatch, and here all we are just watching this all play out. It's kind of perverse, isn't it. Whoever was guarding the eggs has flown off and now it's either Jackie or Shadow who's laying on set eggs. So both of the eagles were in the nest because
there's a lot of activity going on. If you missed it, there was a big crack in one of the eggs, a pip in the biz is how you say it, and it looks more like a hole than a crack, And I think I saw a little bit of a baby talon there as well. Amy King said at the
eighteen degrees up there in that nest. So who knows whether that means that the baby's going to be anxious to come out already digging a hole through that crack, or maybe the hole is big enough to where the baby says hell, no, I'm waiting till summer, or at
least a couple more days, three to five days. I guess after the pip happens, is when the baby is the eaglet has hatched, the baby is born, whatever you want to say, Okay, Just briefly to tie up this text message situation that happened with the chief of the fire department in the moments leading up to the Palisades fire, in the moments after. Again, this is from ABC seven. They have an investigative reporter there, Kevin Osbeck, who was able to obtain these text messages thanks to a public
records request. He says that he has found these text messages, as I mentioned, the one before the break in incoming text in the first hour of the fire from La County Fire Chief Tony Moroney said not good to Kristin Crowley.
She responded no. Now.
One of the assertions has been that the La Mayor Karen Bass was just not here when the fires war going on, and that is true. She did not cancel her trip to Africa, but she did put a second in command, Council President Marquise Harris Dawson's office. The text messages will show you reached out to her before the fire even started. He was all hands on deck or his office was. He reached out when we were on this show talking about the weather event with Henry de
Carlo a day before the fire erupted. He had texted her, according to these records, about the fire event and said we would like to be in touch with you and so to speak. And she did not really get back to him. She had a aid reach out to his office. Who is He's acting mayor at this time by the way, because Karen Bass is out of the country so the city even so to speak, so he is the acting mayor and he doesn't even get a text back from
Kristin Crowley or a phone call or anything. As this weather event is about to start in just twenty four hours, the aid tells Kristin Crowley, I briefed him on our deployment in our prep efforts, also our needs for additional resources.
So the fire starts to break.
Out the next the next hour or so, the next day, excuse me. And as the fire is breaking out, you're seeing kind of just some vague correspondence between Kristin Crowley and other people involved with the chain of command. At one point, the LA Emergency Management Department GM Carol Parks is sending messages saying, hey, we're going to be at level three, we need people here. The text was the EOC, the Emergency Center, the brain of this operation for the for the city is in need of leadership.
They wrote to the chief, please advise.
Who from your department can respond to the eocasap. So this was already mismanaged from from go, from within an.
Hour of after this fire started.
I mean, the timeline to me shows that the acting mayor reached out to the fire chief the day before this happened and said, hey, keep us in the loop. We want to know we have this major fire event. She didn't even get back to him. She had an aid kind of get back to him with some sort of corporate speak. We've got the resources and we've got
the blah blah blah, but no real communication. And then you've got the fire breaking out, and the people that are running the emergency center saying to the chief, Hey, we need someone from your department here so they can be involved in calling the shots, to which the fire chief responds, oh, there's a chief en route. There should have been someone there from the fire department the day before the fire started, prepping the brain of this response
to get ready on how to respond. Instead, the fire forecast was put out, nobody came. The center was staffed to a level three thanks to the powers that be being Carol Parks, the GM at the brain of this operation, and in fact, the fire starts and in an hour or two or three go by and still no one from the fire department is there to call the shots. So it seems like Crowley, according to these text messages, was in over her head. And here's the best one of all of them. We talk about how politics is
so dirty. We talk about what you need to do and what friends you need to make as you rise the ranks from whatever political organization you're in. And make no doubt about it, police and fire, those are political organizations. So in the days after the Palisades fire first broke out, Kristin Crowley the chief at the time, received numerous signs of support based on her text messages thanks to ABC seven's investigative reporter Kevin Osback, who went and plowed through
all the paperwork to find these. Here's my favorite text that I read through. An unidentified individual texted on January eleventh. Let's see the fire broke out on what the seventh of January something like that. This is just days after she gets this text message, getting mixed news reports about your future employment. If you need expert testimony in the future, or simply a Jersey guy to come out there and straighten things out with the polls, you have my number. Now.
That text message tells us three things. Number One, it wasn't just us who saw her job hanging by a thread after she came out and laid the police chief out for or the mayor. Why do I keep saying that when she laid out the mayor for not being in the country, it wasn't just us that was talking about.
Eh, she probably not gonna have a job for a while.
Number Two, if you need expert testimony, Expert testimony is bought and sold for Expert testimony is people that are paid tens of thousands of dollars to come in and tell the court, a jury, a judge, what you want to hear. That's how expert testimony is. It's paid, and it's paid, and it's it's bought sold for all of it. And then you need a Jersey guy to come out there and straighten things out with the polls. Do you need me to come out there and break people's knees?
I mean not really, but you need a tough guy. So this person is not only saying, hey, I hear you're out of a job. You need me, but then kind of then kind of getting into the criminal territory of I will be your friend if you make me an expert witness in a case that may or may be related to this fire or your employment, and therefore I will get tons of thousands of dollars. And number three, I will create political violence for you so that you
can keep your position. There's a lot in that text message, anyway, she wrote back to him, Good to hear from you. I have not been fired. Thanks for looking out for me. Read the subtext there. So those text messages kind of layout make me feel a little bit better about thinking that. Kristin Crowley may have been in over her head when
this catask. A lot of people would be right. That's a tough order to get when you've got two of the biggest fires in La County history and they're happening at the same.
Time, and your department is not.
Staffed to the levels it needs to be, the city is not prepared where it needs to be, the water levels not where they prepared to be. That the staffing cut all of it. It's a tough order. It's a tall order, i should say, but she was definitely in over her head and now we have the text messages to prove that. Coming up next, we will get into the Huntington Park update. This is the story we talked about earlier. Huntington Park one of those areas kind of
like Bell. You're kind of feeling the same vibes you felt when the Bell scandal broke a lot of money in this local government, but nobody's really paying attention, and whenever that happens, you can bet you're going to find corruption.
And that is what happened.
There was this planned aquatic center that they raised a bunch of money for in the town of Huntington Park. Turns out they collected all that money, but was the aquatic center ever built?
Nope.
Pipping is a signal for other chicks to start pipping.
Eh. So, once the first.
Little baby pokes his little talent through like in Jurassic Park, the other baby's like, hey, I got to get out too. This little guy's gonna steal all the worms or whatever it is that they eat.
Do they eat worms or do they eat other things? I don't know. I just know they eat out of their parents' mouths. Yeah, regurgitation.
Let me chew this up for you and make it easier for you to swallow it. All sounded horrible, and I apologize. So we will keep an eye on Jackie in Shadow again if you miss the news. One of the three eggs is showing signs of hatching. It was a crack and now it looks like, at least in my estimation, a bit of a hole. We will see what goes on with the other eggs. Jackie and Shadow
have been hanging out at the nest right now. I think it's just Jackie or maybe Shadow, but it looks like a smaller bird and I don't know which one's bigger, but I would assume the female smaller is sitting on those eggs. We will get to our wellness segment coming
up in the next segment. Actually, because there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about the White Lotus taking on our wellness obsession, and I got to say, when I'm watching this show and I realize that they're making fun of it, and especially here in LA, it's actually not as stark as it would be if we were probably watching this in Minneapolis or something where we're not confronted with the wellness world around every corner like we are in LA. But it is obvious when you
watch it, even if you're from here. And some of the stuff sounds good, the digital detoxes, the meditation, the Buddhist stuff. We'll get into that coming up next. Huntington Park is the scene of the latest public corruption investigation. And this was really rich. The mayor had to say, the mayor whose home was searched, whose offices were searched as part of this ongoing public corruption investigation, which started,
by the way, in November twenty twenty two. So they've been getting high on the hog for quite some time. Now they're in Huntington Park. If there were whiffs of corruption back in November of twenty twenty two, and the searches are just being carried out now in early twenty twenty five. These people have been playing dirty for quite some time and thinking they were getting away with it. Operation Dirty Pond is what it was called. And we told you about this last week. This is all centered
around this planned aquatic center. It was expected to be built at Salt Lake Park. It was to include an indoor pool, twenty three acre public park. Salt Lake Park is it has several athletic fields and courts, and in twenty eighteen, the City of Huntington Park released rendition of what it would look like. Well, six years later, the site where this was supposed to be this beautiful aquatic center, it's an empty lot. Vice Mayor Arturo Flores seems to
be one of the good guys. He estimates about fourteen million has been spent by the city for what an empty lot, in his words, with dead grass and nothing to show for those millions of dollars. He is livid among other people in Huntington Park who are livid. On Fridays meeting, they slammed city officials. They went after them and saying you know what it's really the children you're
screwing over. And it's true who uses those parks. It's elderly people looking to get some fresh air, whether it's their loved ones or their caretakers or whatever, taking them for a walk or what have you around a nice area. It's kids that are playing in the fields or the pools or.
What have you.
Those are the people, the least vulnerable, the ones you want to help the most. I guess you could argue that are getting screwed over by your corruption, by you wanting to line your own pockets with money that's earmarked for the community. And again, if somebody mentioned that I mentioned last week.
This is as old as time.
What public dollars going to a corrupt elected official and then them spending it on themselves.
I mean, this is nothing new.
It's just shocking this day and age, especially after Bell and what happened, that one of these local governments would be able to think they got away with it, or that they could get away with it, and then continue to do so for years, and to the tune of fourteen million dollars in Huntington Park. You know, fourteen million can go missing in Los Angeles. Nobody bats an eye. Huntington Park fourteen million goes missing. You're pretty bold. You are pretty brazen if you think you're going to get
away with that. Karina Massias is the Huntington Park and she has addressed the investigation. It was during that special city council meeting where they all caught hell that she said that it was misinformation that has surfaced, misinformation, And she even went on to say this, and this is my favorite part. She said, this is a woman whose home has been searched, her offices have been searched.
By all means.
Karina Massius knew all of this was going on and was the beneficiary to all of this for quite some time. So, Karina Massia says this on Friday, our hard working city staff is working diligently with authorities to make sure they received any and all information related to the Salt Lake Park Aquatic Center.
So far, so good.
Then she says, this information could have been easily requested via public records requests and could have prevented all of the politically driven chaos and misinformation. All right, let's give her the benefit of the doubt. Let's give Karina the
benefit of the doubt. Maybe it's all a lie. Maybe there's no there there, But when the District Attorney's office launches a formal investigation three years ago and has enough, has crossed their t's and dotted their eyes enough to search your home three years later, there is there there. And for her to say that the DA's office should have filled out a public records request, this is not somebody from the Huntington Park Signal or whatever the local paper is there. This is not even the La Times
it wants to get into her records. This is the DA's office. When the DA's office and the police, the guys with the badges, they come to your home, they come calling, usually they don't have to fill out a public records request, Karina. That's not how the law works. And so anyway, that's where they stand. I would love to get a hold of and we are going to effort to do so. The Vice mayor. There are turo flores because, like we saw in Bell, not everybody's a monster.
Innocent people on these boards, these elected these elected city places that did not know what was going on and were kind of left out of the click the corrupt collick, shall we say, And it seems like Arturo Flores was one of those people, so we'll look to talk to him coming up later in the week, because this story is not going anywhere. You don't collect fourteen million in Huntington Park and then just urinate it away and think no one is going to raise their hand and ask
questions about a little bit. It's like taking a walk after we eat the doritos. Eh, you can have best of both worlds. The watch is on at Big Bear, the Bald Eagle nest, Jackie and Shadow.
There.
There was a sign yesterday, the first sign that they may soon have a hatchling, of course, after several years of disappointment.
We won't get into the details of that.
The initial pip was confirmed yesterday at three h nine hour time a thrilling time. This is a twenty four hour webcam that shows the eagles one hundred and forty five foot high nest and a Jeffrey Pine overlooking Big
Bear Lake. The vantage point is just gorgeous overlooking the lake and the snow on the shores, and it's a perfect angle on this beautiful, big, big, beautiful nest that they have built their Jackie in Shadow and it seems like one of them it's not just a crack or a pip, as they say in the industry, appears to be a hole at least one of those eggs. There are three of them total, and we have heard through the people in the know that when one egg starts
to pip, the other eggs kind of catch on. So we will bring you all the developments coming out of that nest. Sometimes the words we say of this show is ridiculous. I'll bring you all the news come out of that nest. We talked about the oscars, and as I mentioned, one of my friends said, oh, you missed Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan at the end, and oh my gosh, goodness, Amy King told me I missed the wicked production at the beginning. I missed the best parts.
I turned it off right before the best picture. I was just kind of bored with the whole thing. There wasn't enough people punching each other in the face or what have you. And I wanted to watch The White Lotus, which is why I turned it off for this, the latest episode of The White Lotus that dropped yesterday, Because it's fun to watch rich white people be uncomfortable and it's just such a It's why, you know, the housewives are so lucrative. It's not that we're interested in them.
We're interested in the train wreck that happens when people have too much money. It's so fun to watch, isn't it, Especially when you don't have what they have.
Is there just a schotten freud or what have you.
It's a very human reaction, and The White Lotus makes fun of these people, and it always has.
We're in season.
Three and they Wall Street Journal had an article out yesterday saying that the new season tackles our wellness obsession. I kind of feel like every season of The White
Lotus has done that. Our indulgence in travel and the way that people travel in America, how they go to countries in this season like Thailand and expect things like their feet to be washed upon arrival after they get off their yacht, complaining about the fact that they had to take a boat from their yacht to the resort where they wash their feet.
I mean, it's all that ridiculous.
Digital detox is one of the things they feature on this season of The White Lotus that kind of has appealed to me. Every episode where they bring this up. The whole premise is you get to the island or you get to the resort on Thailand, and you give them your phones so you don't have your phone for the whole week.
And how freeing that's been.
We've talked about study after study that says it really does make you feel less stressed not to have your phone in the same room as you. They take it for the week, and as you can imagine, that's a major sticking point for some of the rich people. But anyway, digital detox is what they call it. There are meditation sessions, specialized massage sessions, Buddhist philosophy. It seems like there is this greater wellness obsession that's been going on and they're
just shining a light on it. Balding treatments, they're saying, is the new botox. This was in the cut, and every so now and again there'll become a new story about balding treatments. Once every couple years they will become in vogue again, which is always odd to me because people I know that are bald kind of embrace it. Like Neil, for example, Bald embraces it. It's part of who he is. He's badass, and the bald kind of
adds to it. I never really knew anyone who was bald that didn't want to be, And I guess that's when they just completely shave it and they just live their bald life. Right. But if you're struggling with that, and I don't know anybody who is, or at least outwardly or talks about it, it sounds awful. Like this article, they profiled a guy named Daniel in his early twenties. When he noticed he was losing his hair, he freaks out. He buys rogain. This was the only thing he could afford.
He was in his twenties, and he would put it on morning and night, and he tried not to think too much about it. He avoided mirrors, he avoided looking himself in photos, like what a hard thing to go through. He would use a self checkout counter at the pharmacy so no one would see him buying the roguain. His friends, he said, started mentioning his bald spot to him. He said, it was the feeling of a knife going through me.
So he starts searching for other treatments. And he went where so many of us go, and we start searching to better ourselves.
He went to Reddit.
And he got interested in something called PR. It's a shorthand for platelet rich plasma therapy. Platements from your blood cells are reinjected into your scalp to stimulate hair growth. And he got this discount coupon code for these type of treatments at a new you guessed it, medspa in
North Hollywood, so he books an appointment. This is a medspa that one of several balding oriented startups funded and in some cases founded by venture capital firms looking for a piece of the three billion dollars that people spend here in North America to stay part of the hair community. That's twice the amount that they spend on viagra and the like. It's that big of a deal that I
didn't know about three billion dollars. And those medspas they play right into that wellness obsession that's around every corner in LA, don't they.
Those medspas.
They are smart and they are manipulative with their mailers and with their pop up ads. You could be talking to a friend, I could be talking to Keana off the air like oh yeah, I feel really bad, like I've got like hair on my face, or I could be talking about something super private, like a woman worrying about hair on her face, and they listen to you and then they'll send me a targeted ad like worried about looking like a bearded uncle. You disgusting monster. Come
to this medspa on your way home. We can get you in at one forty five. I mean, they have gotten so clever about exposing all of your insecurities that you don't even tell them about. You're they're listening to you. And there's something to be said for knowing that venture capital firms are involved in the baldness industry.
That makes me want to go bald and do nothing about it.
I mean, the fact that they are making that much money off your insecurity something you probably can't even fix. It's just the way God Majia is so gross and so wrong and they're capitalizing on that. And it's just I mean, don't get me wrong. I do love a medspa. I do play into all of that, do wax my face like I do all of those things.
Because that's just what we do.
But they don't need to be so gross and filthy about it. And the fact that this guy Daniel's friends. We're pointing out his bald spot. You need new friends, Daniel, friends should point out your bald spot.
Do I have a bald spot? You're not pointing out Keana. No, not that I can tell that. It's okay. I do.
Anyway, we do have an obsession with wellness, and it's okay to be well. I guess the takeaway is just don't let them steal all your money in the process of doing so, because that's the thing. It's like it started with Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop. It's all about feeling good self care, and then they mark up the price seventeen times to make you feel like you're doing something good for yourself.
Target has perfectly good products.
You want to feel good about yourself, you want to feel well, go to Target and spend like twenty five bucks, not three million on baldness products. Sure, that's my soapbox of the day. You're bald and you're beautiful.
You've been listening to The Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app,