Four For Friday - “The Compound” - an Intercerebellar blind item

If you peruse the rooms-for-rent listings for the San Fernando Valley area on Craigslist, you might come across one of three properties. In each case they will promise a unique lifestyle in an environment filled with young artists, writers, musicians, and the like. The prices seem rather steep for what you get - even by California standards.

If you apply, and your application is accepted, you will be interviewed by the mother of a B+ list actress with a recognizable last name, one who gained fame over a decade ago for portraying a famous historical figure and has been typecast in similar roles ever since. This actress has largely distanced herself from her mother, for reasons that will become immediately clear.

To say that the mother’s elevator doesn’t go to the top floor would be an understatement. She is as crazy as she is cunning. Just for starters, she is a self-proclaimed anarchist who believes in reptilians, the flat earth, and denies the Holocaust. She has a long arrest record for disorderly conduct that includes disrupting meetings between world leaders.

Of course, most of her tenants don’t know about any of this. They are generally too busy getting high and/or drunk. Not that I blame them given the living conditions.

The main property, which serves as the center of operations, is a ramshackle compound off a major intersection in the San Fernando Valley surrounded by shacks and portable buildings. The place is infested with fleas, ticks, bed bugs, and roaches. Mentioning these infestations aloud will get you evicted. This property is host to a workaway program which houses its transients, many of whom are under 21, in unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Neighbors have long complained about the underage drinking and pot smoking that takes place.

All these matters are a surface distraction, however, from the more serious crime that’s gone on here. You see, the mother, being the anarchist she is, for years played host to the digital equivalent of the Manson Family. This inner circle engaged in vigilantism and hacking crimes against those they disliked, many of them successful people in the film and music industries, ruining lives and personal fortunes in the process. Our anarchist has also threatened to kill a successful film producer/entrepreneur after her daughter’s relationship with him ended.

Oh, and the money our anarchist is amassing from her overcharged tenants? They are at work building a semi-secret compound in a remote part of Mexico.