Billboards

One feature of life in Southern California that's become hard to avoid is the relentless advertising for a weight-loss procedure known as lap-band surgery. You've probably seen the billboards: They feature a willowy blond in a red tank top and the phone number 1-800-GET-THIN in huge red letters. "LOSE WEIGHT WITH THE LAP-BAND!" they say. These billboards blanket Southland freeways like a giant adipose layer. I've counted 17 on one four-mile stretch of Interstate 5 east of downtown Los Angeles.

With a simple statement on Tuesday, State Farm Insurance became the latest company to withdraw its support from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think-tank which claims a “realist” position questioning that humans are responsible for climate change. “State Farm is ending its association with the Heartland Institute. This is because of a recent billboard campaign launched by the Institute,” said the entirety of the statement, which ran on the State Farm Facebook page.

During a recent trip to Los Angeles International Airport along Century Boulevard I heard a radio news item regarding Mayor Tom Bradley's anti-graffiti program. Despite its admirable intentions, how hypocritical it is considering the outrageous number of huge billboards covering the thoroughfare. These billboards create much more blight and disrespect for our community than all the gang-related graffiti. As a suggestion to the gangs, they should allocate a portion of their drug profits to City Council campaigns, thus achieving official sanction for their form of communication.

By the end of April, the new iPad will be in 21 more countries, according to Apple. And billboards across America have finally shifted from touting iPad 2 to the new iPad just in time for the roll out -- everywhere else. Starting Friday, consumers in 12 countries including South Korea will be able to purchase the third-generation tablet. The other 11 are Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St. Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela.  A week later, that Retina display goes to Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand.

All of L.A. is a "gallery" for "How Many Billboards? Art in Stead," a citywide exhibition of 21 specially commissioned billboards by artists including Kenneth Anger, Michael Asher, Kori Newkirk, Allen Ruppersberg and Susan Silton. A companion exhibition and "orientation station" will open at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House on Feb. 23, and curator-led bus tours will be available. Opens Fri. See www.howmanybillboards.org for details.

A grid of blue diagonals, the profiles of two men confronting each other, a series of colorful vertical stripes with an embedded phrase -- these will be some of the enigmatic images flashing through our peripheral vision while driving in L.A. over the next six weeks. They are three of the 21 visual artists' billboards that have been going up in some of the most trafficked corridors of Los Angeles, part of a long percolating idea of Kimberli Meyer, director of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House.

Newly elected Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich has sent a blistering letter to city planners who approved a billboard plan over his objections last week, stating that by "acting in haste, for no apparent reason," they "undermined and jeopardized" the work of his office.

A prominent Silicon Valley executive with ties to the Obama administration has admitted to an extramarital affair after his former mistress plastered romantic pictures of the two of them on giant billboards in three major cities. "I had an 8½-year serious relationship with YaVaughnie Wilkins," said Charles E. Phillips, co-president of Oracle Corp. and a member of President Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. "The relationship with Ms. Wilkins has since ended, and we both wish each other well."

At last! Someone of significance has attempted to publicly explain the Angelyne enigma ("Angelyne and Me," by Ajay Sahgal, April 23). The author did a great job of investigating, only to find out what most sensible, thinking L.A. residents suspected all along: that Angelyne is simply a self-made, typically-L.A. character seeking desperately to be a celebrity. To consider her billboards as significant as the Hollywood sign, Mann's Chinese Theatre, palm trees and the city skyline is to raise the question of whether this is how our growing metropolis wants to be viewed by the American public as a whole.

In Allan Parachini's "Panel Does a Double Take, Decides Kruger Work Is Art" (May 2), regarding the mural proposed for the Temporary Contemporary Museum, he describes Councilman Joel Wachs as "an activist on the City Council in favor of ordinances to try to control the proliferation of advertising signs in Los Angeles." My personal experience with the councilman and his voting record show just the opposite. In response to my plea to control billboards, the major culprit of urban visual pollution, he said he was against it and he voted consistently for the sign industry: In 1986 he voted against a proposal to prohibit huge billboard supports from overhanging buildings; in 1988 he voted against prohibiting more billboards in Los Angeles (the proposal failed by only one vote)

Advertisements for Lap-Band weight-loss surgery with that catchy telephone number, 1-800-GET-THIN, have quietly been pulled off roadside billboards across Southern California. Billboard companies Clear Channel Outdoor Inc. and Lamar Advertising Co. confirmed that marketing firm 1-800-GET-THIN has let its contracts with them expire. If the ads do not return, it would mark the end to one of Southern California's most aggressive medical advertising campaigns — one marked by controversy.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals did a few things right when it opened its new West Coast headquarters in Echo Park last month. First, PETA spent $7.4 million buying and renovating its 82-year-old building, equipping it with such eco-industrial flourishes as a restored Art Deco facade, exposed ducts, vintage glass casement windows and cork flooring. Next, the animal rights group brought in 60 jobs - mostly transfers from its main office in Norfolk, Va. - but some local hires as well.

A Peyton Manning photo the size of a drive-in movie screen still graces the front of Lucas Oil Stadium - site of this week's NFL scouting combine - but for how long? The quarterback's future with the Colts should be known within the coming weeks. Meanwhile, Dolphins fans have started a grass-roots campaign to lure the four-time MVP to Miami. As the Washington Post's Cindy Boren reports, fans in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., have bought a billboard to advertise ManningtoMiami.com, complete with a doctored shot of Manning in Dolphins turquoise and orange.

It's a howling shame. An Ohio woman who had hoped to get her dog on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" has been ordered to remove a Cahuenga Pass billboard that pictures her pooch in a blond wig with the message, "Ellen, Denali the Dog Wants to Meet You. " Madalyn Ruggiero, a freelance photographer who dresses her golden retriever in funny costumes and sells the images as greeting cards, had rented the billboard for six weeks. But instead of getting a phone call to appear on DeGeneres' show, Ruggiero got word from the billboard company that her ad had to come down after only five days.

The Smoking Deaths billboard isn't famous. It's not the Hollywood sign or Rodeo Drive. Tourists don't come to town clamoring to see Disneyland, Grauman's Chinese Theatre and a billboard that counts up annual smoking deaths. But if you live in West L.A. anywhere near the 405, you know the sign. You've seen it looming over Santa Monica Boulevard, quietly toting up the number of Americans who've kicked the bucket after years of sucking on cancer sticks. The Smoking Deaths billboard is black, with big white letters that say "Smoking Deaths This Year.

The first eyebrow-raising salvo in the fight between the cops and this city was the billboards. "Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California: Stop laying off cops!" read one at the city's entrance. Other billboards posted by the Stockton Police Officers' Assn. depicted splattered blood, gave a running tally of the city's record number of homicides -- and the city manager's phone number. Since then, the fight moved closer to home: The police union bought the house next to City Manager Bob Deis.

The 1-800-GET-THIN marketing company, under scrutiny by federal and local authorities, has pledged to change the way it advertises Lap-Band weight-loss surgery to more prominently disclose risks to patients. In a letter to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, the company said it added new warnings to its website and was reworking its billboard, radio and television ads. Supervisors have scheduled a Tuesday hearing to discuss the ads, which were labeled misleading last week by the Food and Drug Administration.

Robert Levine, 41, a former executive editor of Billboard, sounds the alarm on Internet piracy and technology companies' economic war on the music, movies, television, book publishing and newspaper industries in "Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back" (Doubleday). What made you decide this book needed to be written? The decision was gradual. When Napster came out I thought it was the greatest thing ever, like a lot of people did. I thought the Internet would give artists a way to reach fans directly and do business with them, and labels would have to compete and offer better deals.