Southern California isn’t doing so hot right now, except in the temperature sense, which has made us all go a little bit nuts and yell at each other and roll stop signs and shit like that. (Just kidding, we already rolled stop signs, it’s kind of our Thing.)
You southerners and easterners have been Going Through It all along with your humidity and your mosquitoes and I am not sure I ever truly appreciated that until now. Sorry, everybody! This sucks!
But some problems, much like the South’s and the Eastern seaboard’s, are bigger than just humid heat. The city of Malibu has declared a local emergency due to a massive freaking sinkhole that opened up under actor Nicholas Cage’s driveway, of all places. Now 31 homes are under evacuation orders, but there are probably going to be more, because it keeps expanding.
The actor has obviously been cursed by a group of angry sea witches who are SO MAD they are cursing all his neighbors too. That’s the only logical explanation! I don’t know what they would be mad about though. Mandy was great!
If it wasn’t sea witches, which it obviously was, we would all have to go with the alternate explanation, which is that recent record humidity and extraordinarily high surf, both brought on by Tropical Storm Marie, have been pounding the absolute shit out of Southern California’s coast, which would then bring on very uncomfortable discussions about global warming, Super-Duper El Niños, and all that we’re in for this year and for the rest of our lives, probably!
According to the Los Angeles Times, the Malibu sinkhole was 25 feet deep and 30 to 60 feet wide by late Tuesday, but it’s not over yet. These things have a tendency to get terrifyingly big, very fast. Seven homes have already been red-tagged, and if you’ve spent any time around rich neighborhoods in Southern California, which favor hillsides and ocean views, which lead directly to landslide dangers, you’ll know that a red-tagged home is extremely not good. In fact, it means you shouldn’t go into the house at all because it’s about to sink into a hole or off a cliff!
But Malibu isn’t the only coastal community that is suffering here in Southern California. Elsewhere in Los Angeles County, Long Beach might have to change its name to Somewhat Shorter Beach because the waves are washing away not just fancy homes but entire beaches! All of Seaside Walk has been evacuated while officials assess the damage from the heavy surf and figure out whether they have to red-tag those homes, too.
Here in San Diego County, where I live, Tamarack Beach just up and disappeared the other day. We don’t have any sand left there! It’s just rocks!
And Dana Point, a ritzy and very beautiful coastal community about a hundred miles south of Malibu down in Orange County, is also seeing some coastal chaos, with eight houses (so far) red-tagged and at least one “completely demolished,” according to Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley.
“Those homes built on the sand in the 1950s — those homes are just trashed,” Foley told reporters.
Speaking of Katrina (sorry — I’m sorry!) 2005 had similar weather anomalies around here too, with some real bugshit events going on. I remember I was out in Laguna Niguel reporting on one super-fancy home sliding down a hillside and then I heard something and looked up just in time to watch a house on the slope across the canyon crumble right off. Luckily it had already been deemed uninhabitable, so everyone had gotten the hell out already. That’s why you don’t go into red-tagged homes.
On a side note, naturally I’ve gone in one or two in my day just to see what all the fuss was about, usually right before I got kicked off the site by county officials, and the noises those poor homes make when they’re right about to go is really unnerving and remind you in a very visceral way that you’re not supposed to be in there. Just trust me on that one, I have spent my life being a dumbass so you don’t have to be!
The weather, at least, will catch a break around here soon, according to the still-fairly-reliable National Weather Service’s San Diego office. “Gradual cooling of high temperatures will begin to spread inland,” they said in Wednesday morning’s forecast discussion. “A tropical air mass will remain in place into Friday, then much drier for inland areas for this weekend through Tuesday with a return of the marine layer for coastal areas.” OH THANK GOD.
Anyway, good thing climate change isn’t real or I would be really worried right about now that 20 solid years after the anomalies of 2005-2006 we hadn’t done a thing to mitigate it, hahaha! Just a little gallows humor for you all this fine, humid afternoon.
The only thing I can reasonably conclude here is that Nicholas Cage needs to go talk to those sea witches and find out what he did wrong. Nic, you’re our only hope now. The entire Southern California coastline may depend on it.
Off topic, but on this first anniversary of the shooting death of Charlie Kirk, I think it’s appropriate to take a moment to reflect on these powerful words of his:
"I think it’s worth it. It's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights. That's a prudent deal. It is rational,"
O/T, today from The New York Times:
"James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas and the subject of regular attacks by President Trump in last night’s speech, spent the morning touring a traveling art exhibit — The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room — featuring reams of printed Epstein files and art made by one of the convicted sex offender’s victims."