Chip Jacobs

In the mid-1950s, my quadriplegic uncle, Gordon Zahler, was not exactly tearing it up as an independent post-production man in Hollywood, as he tried putting the family tragedy he ignited with his accident behind him. There weren’t many “cripples” then winning big contracts or dazzling outside investors to write ‘em a fat check. The studios, [...]

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* Hard-nosed and visionary director Sam Fuller tapped my uncle, Gordon Zahler, for post-production on one of his terrific 1960-era movies, “The Shock Corridor.” Recently there was a festival honoring him. * Wheeling the Deal won some tin at the recent Hollywood Book Festival. For a story still searching to bust out, I was pretty [...]

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Hometown Pasadena may have neglected to mention Wheeling the Deal and my anthology profile of Richard Alatorre, but I’ll take the inclusion with such a hoary list of writers past and present. “From its earliest settling by Midwesterners, the Arroyo area attracted writers. One of the best known was Charles Fletcher Lummis, who in 1884 [...]

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Texas Congressman Joe Barton, along with fellow Republican Greg Walden, last year pressured the Justice Dept. to release documents on the secretive prosecution of former high-flying, emissions-broker Anne Sholtz. Barton, a global warming skeptic and longtime champion of big oil, made news again recently for his comments that the federal mandate for BP to set [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nOF7mPg_Yg Ron: if you ever do a stand up act or land a reality-TV gig, please invite me. What a sweet night it was! Go LAKERS.

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The United Spinal Association may not be as well publicized as other groups assisting the paralyzed, such as the Christopher Reeve Foundation, but it’s an impressive organization nonetheless. It claims to be the fastest growing charitable-service entity of its kind. Here’s its charter: “United Spinal Association is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization formed in [...]

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Note to readers: this review in Action, the online magazine for the United Spinal Association, is, oddly enough, for the first version of my book, Wheeler Dealer, which was released in 2006. A larger publisher, Behler Publications essentially bought out the rights to it and put out an updated version in 2008 entitled Wheeling the [...]

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Here’s my little Op-Ed on the lessons of former emissions broker Anne Sholtz, who defrauded the very smog cap-and-trade she helped concoct. We write about her spectacular and alarming escapades at length, as well as about L.A.’s air pollution market, in Smogtown: the Lung Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles. “In the toxic air [...]

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Here’s the tease to my Op-Ed on the subject. “Californians: meet your sun. Or, rather, remember it. Despite living in America’s premier green state, most of the state’s homeowners continue to rebuff solar power as a way to shrink their electricity bills, and simply plug into their local public utility much as their parents did. [...]

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for every crisis there’s opportunity, and for every group of downtrodden people there are those who use ingenuity, generosity and a some competitive fire to make life better for those in desperate need. In L.A., we’re talking about the hundreds of thousands who go hungry and a terrific charity that deserves forests (whoops) err PC-worths [...]

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