Alaska in the News in LA

The film Dear Lemon Lima (pronounced like the bean, not the city) premiers tonight at 7:15pm in Westwood at the Los Angeles International Film Festival. My plane leaves tonight at 8:50 pm so I'm going to have to miss it. I reviewed a ten minute or so short version [scroll down to the end of the post] of this film at the Anchorage International Film Festival in 2007. The story is set in Fairbanks and I chided the the filmmakers a bit for not filming it in Fairbanks. From the DearLemonLima website story page:

Vanessa believes that a victory in the Snowstorm Survivor championship is the only way into Philip’s heart. She quickly forms a quirky team with her fan base in the weight room. TEAM FUBAR prepares for the event, driven by Vanessa’s plight for her true love. Unlike the Native Olympics that brings together people of all sizes and shapes to celebrate Native Alaskan culture, Nichols’ Snowstorm Survivor simply perverts the traditional Eskimo games in order to foster an antiquated class system.

After the tragic loss of a beloved teammate, Vanessa discovers the true meaning of love and must embrace her Native heritage to reclaim the spirit of the World Eskimo Indian Olympics. After TEAM FUBARs sensational victory in the final dance competition, the Nichols community attempts to embrace a new wave of thinking.

I recall the snippet we saw being filmed in gloriously rich color and in just a short time I wanted to know more about the quirky young characters. The Fairbanks connection was not apparent in what we got to see in Anchorage. The screenwriter actually emailed me after posted and asked for suggestions on how to connect with people in Fairbanks and I posted an appeal to Alaskan bloggers to help her out. I never heard whether they actually did film any of it in Fairbanks, I can't find anything on their website to indicate they did.


Another news item was in the LA Times the other day and again in an editorial today:

In Santa Ana, the city has agreed to place locks on outdoor recycling bins for a dozen neighbors in the Wilshire Square district. The devices, as Times staff writer Tony Barboza reported, were designed to keep bears out of trash cans in Alaska, but there aren't any bears in Santa Ana. Nor are the locks intended to thwart native critters such as raccoons, opossums, ravens or coyotes.

Somewhere along the line, the city and the neighbors lost sight of the fact that the scavengers targeted by their locking-bin pilot program aren't animals at all but a much more vulnerable species -- homeless human beings, for whom discarded plastic and glass are a last-resort source of sustenance.