Shots Fired

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Keep that out of town shit, out of town.

Artwork by Evan Solano

Your Shitty Loud-Ass Car

I would never begrudge anyone for having a cool car. But let’s be honest: yours sucks! I know, I know, it’s really loud. And that’s impressive given the history of human progress. People 2,000 years ago would have literally thought you were a god if you were capable of creating a sound that loud. None of them even knew what gasoline was. But even they, I imagine, would have the same reaction any normal person has to a loud car, which is: it’s, like, kind of cool to see and hear it once. You would have to be a wildly dull and unpleasant person to make it your whole personality. Which it can’t help but become if you drive a Mustang GT or a Dodge Charger or one of those cars that comes with a pair of wraparound sunglasses and a reflexive need to swerve into the carpool lane to pass every last car on the freeway at 90 MPH. Is there a block in this city you haven’t gleefully terrorized with your belching exhaust noises, sending children to bolt upright in bed at 1 AM., and causing near-fatal eye rolls of boredom? If you’re revving your engine constantly and not going anywhere, maybe you should check to see if there’s something wrong with your transmission! Some might say it’s cool to race and to be so loud and disruptive, but I respectfully say: suck shit, shitheads!

Alex Villanueva

One might think that having the entire county turn out last summer to protest what a shitty job your agency is doing would prompt at least a bit of self-reflection. Bro, you had people up in Santa Clarita protesting your ass! Instead, you decided to spend 2021 putting the “villain” in Villanueva, showing up in whatever far-right culture war pose you could, seemingly just to rub it in your constituents’ faces that you got away with running for office as a Democrat. Who cares about meaningless concepts like “public safety” when you can get airtime on Fox News complaining about the COVID vaccine, right? Do you think you’re acting tough by talking shit about homelessness on the Venice boardwalk? It’s literally the most famous outdoor gym in the world, dude; you don’t look swole, you look stupid. For most people, presiding over a department full of murderous gangs would be enough of a scandal that they’d lose their job, but let’s just accept for a moment that you are a gangster. But as the Bard once said, real Gs move in silence like lasagna. So why don’t you shove a heaping portion of “fuck you” down your throat!

Geoffrey “G.H.” Palmer

First of all, who spells their name Geoff, asshole? No matter how much money you throw at your boy Donny Trump, you know he’s definitely making fun of you for that behind your back. Imagine paying for the approval of someone who eats their steaks well done with ketchup. Then again, you don’t see anything distasteful about suing the city because they won’t let you evict people in a pandemic. Won’t someone please think of the poor landlords, who might have to cut back on the water bills for their Beverly Hills houses if this keeps up? Frankly, you should feel lucky the city lets you charge rent at all for the blighted shitholes you call luxury housing. Throughout history, people have sought inspiration from the beauty of Italy, but you may be the only one who looked at all the Medici riches and thought the name’s branding would be improved with a balcony view of an 18-wheeler drag racing a Kia Sorento. We’re all hoping for the kind of downtown revitalization only you can give us: some poorly welded railing on your building breaking off and crushing your skull.

Guys Who Put That Terrible Gray Flooring in All Their Flipped Houses

It’s bad enough that none of us are ever going to be able to buy a home in L.A. because it costs a million dollars — actually, probably $1.2 million by the end of this sentence — thanks to your brilliant “investing.” We understand that this city was built on real estate speculation, by assholes just like you who thought they were the first people to discover they could charge money for a horizontal fence. But just because you’re hellbent on wrecking the housing market in the name of seed funding your cryptocurrency portfolio doesn’t mean you also have to wreck every Mission Revival bungalow you get your hands on with that hideous gray faux wood flooring. 

We know you have a cutting-edge education about supply and demand from a guy on YouTube who lives in an Airbnb in West Covina, and we would hate to question your credentials, but there is not actually a lively market for kitchens that look like the backdrop to a video titled “An Apology to Our Fans.” You might be the only motherfuckers on earth boring enough to look at a Keurig ad and think it looks like an “exciting, contemporary” lifestyle. This stuff is custom-made to end up in a dumpster. For the sake of those of us recreationally browsing Compass listings, try to notice one infintessimal charming detail about the historic houses you’re flipping before you turn them into your dream Amazon Receptacle Pod.

Elon Musk

Have you left yet, or what? Either way, we wish you the best death by 32-hour Tesla battery fire that money can buy. 

Bill Melugin

Imagine an even more sexless Ken Doll with Richard Spencer’s stylist praying nightly to a voodoo shrine to Tucker Carlson, and you’d start to come close to understanding the sensibilities of Fox News’ new #1 boy, the worst transplant from Orange County since Brian Calle destroyed LA Weekly (you only get half a bar, Brian).

Do they allow you to major in how to do structural racism at Chapman or something? This shameless jug of mayonnaise is stuck so far up Sheriff Villanueva’s ass that he’s probably an honorary member of the Banditos. (Of course, he’d probably insist on renaming the gang to something a little more reflective of the “classic Western European intellectual tradition.”) Another cynical grifter who used the pandemic as a career opportunity, Melugin has spent most of this year championing anti-vaxxers in the name of “freedom” and camping out on the Mexican border stoking right-wing terror on Twitter that “gender fluid illegals may be entering the country ‘twice.’’ Billy Boy, you look like a sentient version of redlining, the guy who asks to see the manager at Banana Republic, the type of person who looks around twice before speaking in case there are any Black or Brown people nearby. We hope you lose your voice in a freak volleyball accident on Hermosa Beach.

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