UFO Info Week-End

Their leader Richard Ashcroft would say only that circumstances had made it impossible to stay

Their leader Richard Ashcroft would say only that “circumstances” had made it impossible to stay together. History records that the band spent their last two years arguing about musical direction and management and generally failing to communicate. But Beatles obsessives insist that things really fell apart when Yoko Ono helped herself to one of George Harrison’s digestives, precipitating a row between Harrison and John Lennon.
Similarly trivial “last straws” occur in the deathbed scenes of many famous bands. While it’s happening, of course, squabbling artistes like to keep things vague The Verve, for instance, finally fell apart in April. He wouldn’t do it.Name just one company, persisted the show’s host, Warren Olney Mr Herbst stuttered, and fell silent.

Every environmentalist tuning in across town gave out a little yelp of glee.. They were the biggest phenomenon in the history of entertainment, but in the end The Beatles fell apart over a biscuit. And in that, as in other things, they set the tone for those who followed. But when David Herbst of Playa Vista appeared on a prominent local radio show last week, he was challenged to name a few of the companies he had been hearing from. The developers, meanwhile, are trying to claim that the loss of DreamWorks is no more than a minor blip in their plans to build a mini- city of 70,000 residents just north of the LA airport.Leaders of the so-called Playa Vista project insist that their phones have been ringing off the hook with companies offering to build the soundstages that DreamWorks no longer wants and provide the project’s economic backbone. And will it work?So far, around 9,000 families have applied for the first 900-odd houses, which means that something about it must sound faintly attractive.uNOW THAT Steven Spielberg and his friends at DreamWorks have dropped out of building a new studio on the last piece of open land left in western Los Angeles, frantic efforts are being made to save the rest of the environmentally sensitive 1,000-acre development that DreamWorks was supposed to have spearheaded.Activists who picketed DreamWorks for years sincerely hope the area can now be restored as the delicate coastal wetland it was before the bulldozers arrived. The 8,000-home Ladera Ranch, rising near the town of Mission Viejo, will encourage walking rather than driving by devising a series of shortcuts accessible only on foot.

Garages will be tucked away at the backs of houses, leaving space for a front porch where residents can sit and actually see who their neighbours are as they walk or drive by.The development is also installing a special Intranet computer network with high-speed cable lines, so kids can message each other on the community e-mail and parents can reserve spots on the golf course, check church service times or order out for pizza from the local restaurant plaza.This is quite a revolution for a part of the world best known for its attachment to guns and conservative prayer-breakfast groups, here “family values” rarely, if ever, actually involve mingling with other families. This is a part of California so denuded of its original rolling farmlands that it’s hard not to want to rename the county Agent Orange: instead of fruit trees, all you see is mile upon mile of identikit upscale housing developments with about as much good neighbourly spirit as a Middle Eastern peace conference.Now, the largest new development to hit the county in a decade is going to try to change all that. South Pasadena, meanwhile, split off from Pasadena proper because it wanted to keep alcohol off its streets. They’ve been slugging away at each other ever since.And you thought the Balkans situation was confusing.uAN ATTEMPT to foster rather more productive community relations is being made, meanwhile, right in the smug suburban heart of Orange County, south of LA. “This is not a childish payback, or a pissing match,” he claims Right.Then again, maybe he is right. In a part of Los Angeles county that has been riven by in-fighting for 100 years, this isn’t childish at all, but deadly serious. Back at the turn of the century, Alhambra seceded from Los Angeles because it didn’t get along with city hall.