LA Observed archive
for June 2004

If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.

Revenge of the Chief *

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That's the cover line on CityBeat's lead story on the reinvention of Bernard Parks from police chief-turned-councilman into mayoral candidate. Dean Kuipers went out on the campaign trail with Parks...

L.A. authors, selling books

From this week's Publishers Lunch roundup of book sales: • Film rights to Bernard Cooper's THE BILL FROM MY FATHER, a memoir about his difficult relationship with his father, and how...

LAT magazine senior editor

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As predicted here a couple of weeks back, Kelly Scott has officially been named a senior editor at the Los Angeles Times Magazine. On the masthead now under executive editor...

Sean, Viggo and Sofia get the call

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This year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is publicizing the names of actors, directors, writers and others who have been invited to join up and become Oscars...

Fans of 'Jack Dunphy'

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Dunphy is the pseudonym of an LAPD cop who writes columns about life in the department, with a dose of conservative political viewpoint thrown in, for National Review Online. In...

14 props on November ballot

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California will vote on measures covering stem cell research to mandatory DNA testing of felons, and yet again two more on Indian gambling. The propositions are numbered 59 through 72....

Brentwood for Bush

In tomorrow's Times Calendar section, Anne-Marie O'Connor has a feature on President Bush's man in Brentwood, Bradford Freeman. He tells the story that his brother Russell got to be ambassador...

Loeb award to Hiltzik

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L.A. Times columnist Michael Hiltzik won a Gerald R. Loeb Award for commentary today in New York. The judges said his "Golden State" columns in the Business section "are smart,...

Gothamist going bicoastal

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The local knockoff of the New York website will be called LAist when it launches next week. Tom Berman will do the writing. Franklin Avenue got the word from publisher...

Rick & Vanessa, no more *

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If the National Enquirer is right, you can forget all that stuff about Rick Fox retiring from the Lakers to spend more time with his wife Vanessa Williams. He may...

About that citizen's panel...

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Mayor Hahn's attempt to defuse community tensions over the arrest and apparent LAPD-inflicted flashlight beating of Stanley Miller hit a couple of snags Monday. African American activist Najee Ali of...

Hertzberg ramps up

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Candidate for mayor Bob Hertzberg relaunched his web presence Monday with a new site at ChangeLA.com. He posted a multimedia ad and, hoping to take a page from Howard Dean,...

Weeklies awards *

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At the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies awards this weekend in San Antonio, two local writers won first place in the Arts Feature category. Kristine McKenna won in the over-50,000 circulation...

On assignment Monday

No postings until later in the day, if then....

Busting Henry

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For years, writes Jason Kandel in today's Daily News, "when police intercepted cocaine and methamphetamine coming into locations as far-flung as Hawaii and Florida, they would hear the same thing...

In praise of the writer

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Reyner Banham in Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies coined the label "Plains of Id" for the vast basin of mostly suburbs that surrounds and defines the city. In...

LAT calls the war a failed disaster

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Michael Kinsley devotes the entire editorial rail in Sunday's L.A. Times Opinion section to declaring the Bush foray in Iraq a "disaster" — a "monument to folly" — and the...

A bad idea to you, Mrs. Robinson

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Nikki Finke sounds rightfully horrified at the prospect of an "un-sequel" to The Graduate that begins filming next month. It is, she writes in the current LA Weekly, "certain to...

Welcome, NYT style

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Jonathan Landman, the new cultural desk honcho at the New York Times, seems quite happy that he was able to hire Manohla Dargis away from the L.A. Times Calendar section....

Clintonmania

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Bill Clinton brings his book tour to L.A. today and tomorrow, and Gayle Pollard-Terry in the Times Calendar section has a feature on the preparations. Brentano's in the Century City...

'A test of the new LAPD'

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That's what Chief Bratton, Mayor Hahn and many community spokespeople are saying about the response over the coming weeks and months to the videotaped arrest of car theft suspect Stanley...

They didn't send flowers

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Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond sang "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" together for the first time in 24 years, helping John Kerry raise $5 million at last night's concert at...

NYT: Arnold 'ready for prime time'

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Top left on the front page of Thursday's New York Times (at least in California), Charlie LeDuff and John Broder of the L.A. bureau proclaim Gov. Schwarzenegger a political master...

Mag editors on move

Laurie Pike at LA.Comfidential has the lowdown on editor news at Distinction (they have yet to fill the job she left last year), Hollywood Life and Angeleno. The new editor-in-chief...

NYT raid on LA Times writers

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Morale at the L.A. Times dropped a few more notches this afternoon on reports that the New York Times has grabbed three valuable names off the writing staff. Newsroom sources...

The Valley observed

The LA Weekly's cover story is on photographer Larry Sultan's upcoming book of still images from porn shoots inside tract houses and back yards around the San Fernando Valley, while...

O'Reilly needles John Carroll

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In the Talking Points segment of his Fox News Channel show last night, Bill O'Reilly complained there is not enough media outrage over the beheadings in Iraq — then brings...

Leave the pancakes alone

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Another L.A. institution has been sold. Du-par's coffee shops, which began in 1938 at the Farmers Market, were purchased by the family that used to run the Tiny Naylor's restaurants....

Uh-oh *

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LAPD brass is looking into an arrest this morning during which a TV news camera took video of an officer reportedly using a flashlight to club a suspect after he...

Count to 10...deep breath...

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There's a couple of wish-I-had-that-back emails in the media news today. On his way out of the door at "Access Hollywood" (to host "The Insider"), anchor Pat O'Brien tried hard...

He named the Daily News

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Rip Rense recollects suggesting to the last publisher of the old Valley News (known to generations of Valleyites as "The Green Sheet") that he change the paper's name to the...

Rutten on My Life

The L.A. Times' Tim Rutten steps away from his media column for the day to review the Bill Clinton memoir and finds it a bit thin for a 957-page effort....

More trouble at E! *

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Fashion dishers Joan Rivers and her daughter Melissa are poised to defect from E! for an $8 million deal at the TV Guide Channel, the New York Post says. A&E...

Koreatown reacts

The Los Angeles edition of Korea Times published a special edition Tuesday following the killing by Iraqi terrorists of South Korean Kim Sun-il. About 200 people gathered in Koreatown Tuesday...

January won't be the same

The Los Angeles Auto Show, an after-New Year's fixture at the Convention Center, is moving to mid-November. The new date begins in 2006....

Kinsley's first column *

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Michael Kinsley may have trouble getting his editorials into print, but his first of what will be a weekly column ran today on the L.A. Times op-ed page. Headlined "The...

Is it Pat Riley? *

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Long Beach Press-Telegram columnist Doug Krikorian said on his radio show on KSPN this afternoon that Lakers owner Jerry Buss met face-to-face with Miami Heat president (and ex-Lakers coach) Pat...

Ouroussoff to NYT? *

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New York magazine's Intelligencer reports that L.A. Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff is close to replacing Herbert Muschamp as the lead architecture writer for the New York Times. It's based...

Friday traffic alert *

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How insane will it be in Century City when Bill Clinton drops in at rush hour for a 5 p.m. Friday appearance at Brentano's? Here's a clue. Blogger Jeff Jarvis...

American way of death

Dozens of sympathy cards and programs from the Reagan funerals are up for sale on eBay, including two pages worth from the Reagan Library event in Simi Valley. Some backstory...

Blogger ink

Caryn Coleman of art.blogging.la and the sixspace gallery is profiled in this week's Downtown News, with photo by Gary Leonard. It's part of a series on young movers in the...

Final LAT toll: 192 jobs *

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A Times story in today's paper reports that, in addition to the 62 editorial jobs lost through buyout and layoff, about 100 people have left on the business side. Another...

Hollywood, South Africa

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How's this for runaway production. Robert Towne is shooting Ask the Dust, based on John Fante's classic Los Angeles novel of the 1930s, in Cape Town, South Africa. He explains...

Cooked circulation numbers?

The Tribune Company is conducting an internal probe of circulation figures claimed by all of its newspapers, including the L.A. Times, after Newsday acknowledged that it inflated some numbers, the...

Coming from Zócalo

There's a new summer and fall schedule for the free Public Square lecture series presented by Zócalo and co-sponsored by L.A. Observed. Next up, on July 6 at the Central...

New dean of UCLA Law

It's Michael H. Schill, professor of law at New York University and director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at NYU. From the UCLA release: Schill,...

LAT lays off 20, closes papers **

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The threatened layoffs began today down on Spring Street. Reports vary on numbers, but I'm hearing that somewhere around 20-25 editorial staffers are being dismissed. Times spokeswoman Martha Goldstein didn't...

Shoemaker Road

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A little help for an L.A. freelance writer... Rodger Jacobs is looking for information on an effort in the 1960s to build an escape route (in the event of nuclear...

Bloggers and politics *

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KCRW is turning over tomorrow's "Politics of Culture" program to Slate blogger Mickey Kaus, who will talk about "politics, the Internet and blogs" with Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds, Wonkette's Ana Marie...

Remember Lance Orozco?

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The Times has a story out of Ventura County today on Lance Orozco, the news director (and only reporter) at KCLU-FM (88.3) who was named one of the L.A. Press...

Villaraigosa leaning in

The Los Angeles Business Journal's Howard Fine reports (pay only) this week that councilman Antonio Villaraigosa "appeared to be leaning strongly" toward entering the race for mayor. In an interview,...

Michiko and Bill *

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Michiko Kakutani gave a bad review to Bill Clinton's book, but Publishers Lunch says the only surprise there is that the New York Times let her do the review. Given...

New from D.J. Waldie

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CaliforniaAuthors.com on Sunday notes the release of a new collection of essays from D.J. Waldie, Where We Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles, published by Angel City Press. Patt Morrison...

Yankees in town

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Even though the Dodgers lost 6-2, there was a lot of buzz in the stadium today with the Yankees in the house for the first weekend ever (excepting World Series...

Kobe, Shaq & Phil: history

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Phil Jackson told Jerry Buss today that he won't be back as Lakers coach. Kobe opted to become a free agent. And Shaquille O'Neal asked to be traded, sounding as...

Lamb, Goldman, Baker leaving LAT

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David Lamb, the dean of Los Angeles Times correspondents (now a Washington-based national correspondent), leads the list of veterans who have chosen to go in the current buyout wave. A...

Reading Calendar with arched eye

Richard Rushfield of LA Innuendo peruses the Times' Calendar section very closely and reports the findings on his new blog, now renamed "The Magazine Reader." Today, he goes through the...

Another FOC

Friend of Cathy Seipp, that is. The subject of her media column in this week's CityBeat is Rob Long, her pal and fellow National Review contributor who recently took over...

Oh that liberal media *

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The L.A. Times — the left wing rag with Michael Ramirez as its editorial cartoonist and Max Boot as an op-ed columnist — on Monday begins picking up the conservative...

Hertzberg connects

I didn't see last night's TV coverage (if any), but the defection of four Jim Hahn commissioners got Bob Hertzberg's campaign for mayor the trifecta of local print coverage: stories...

Supporting stem cell work

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The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, the largest business group in town, today endorsed the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative that will be on the November ballot....

Kinsley's first LAT editorial spiked

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In his first writing venture as Editorial and Opinion Editor at the Los Angeles Times, Michael Kinsley came up against a tough editor: himself. He confirms to L.A. Observed via...

D-Day at LAT **

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Yesterday at 5 p.m. was the deadline for reporters, editors and other L.A. Times editorial staffers who had applied for the buyout to rescind their requests if they changed their...

Crying time **

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National Public Radio will send out a feed from the Ray Charles funeral tomorrow at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church on South Harvard Boulevard. KCRW will air the service...

Parks makes it official *

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Councilman and ex-police chief Bernard Parks' entry certainly makes the coming mayor's race in Los Angeles more interesting. He doesn't have any money yet (while Jim Hahn has a lot,...

How things work, cont. **

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Every so often, the mail brings something that lets L.A. Observed give a glimpse behind the scenes of how things really get done. This installment is an email from Joe...

Miscikowski rising

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A year ago, Mayor Hahn's $9 billion plan to modernize LAX was on the fast track and city councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski was persona non grata with the mayor's friends and...

Blogging.la goes national

That is, the founders of blogging.la, Sean Bonner and Jason DeFillippo, have launched a network of similar group websites under the label of Metroblogging. Today L.A., New York, San Francisco...

Library Tower was a target

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Downtown L.A.'s tallest skyscraper was on the first list of targets for the Sept. 11 hijackers but was rejected by Osama bin Laden, the commission investigating the 2001 attacks reiterated...

C-word dropped on Finke

The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke got a rude response when she phoned up New York Times Washington correspondent (and former L.A. bureau chief) Todd Purdum to ask about his Monday...

Still mad about Clinton

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Not on the right (of course they still loathe him), but on the left. From Marc Cooper's blog, chiding liberals who feel good about Bill Clinton, on the eve of...

Scaling La Montaña

A five-stories high, five-acre pile of broken concrete slabs has been spreading dust over a Huntington Park neighborhood since shortly after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The debris, called La Montaña...

Now, the rest of the Carter story

With a few more weeks to work on it, a triple byline of L.A. Times writers follows up today with a fuller but no more scandalous profile of Vanity Fair...

Getting soaked *

The Animal Defense League's favorite tactic to press for more humane treatment of pets at city shelters is to picket with amplified sound in front of the homes of city...

Total collapse

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Detroit 100, Lakers 87. And it wasn't as close as that. The Pistons win the NBA championship, and the Lakers go home to await being dismantled....

How Finke got Reagan scoop, part 2

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Nikki Finke, Matt Drudge and L.A. Observed together again in the Online Journalism Review, where Mark Glaser contrasts the role of blogs and web sites in spreading the Reagan is...

That parade Wednesday... *

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It's the Olympic torch. The procession begins at Venice Beach at 9 a.m. with Mayor Hahn passing to either Sylvester Stallone or Jay Leno [it was Sly] and ends at...

Newton back at LAT

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Janet Clayton, who used to be the Times' Editor of the Editorial Pages, has taken up her new job as Assistant Managing Editor (State and Local). She's now the editor...

And in bigger NPR news...

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Romenesko has NPR's press release (dated tomorrow) on plans to hire 45 new reporters, editors and producers in three years, a 15% increase. There will be more foreign bureaus, more...

News site blackout

CNET reports on why popular news websites were down on Tuesday morning....

New Exec Producer at 'Day to Day'

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Having a National Public Radio studio in Los Angeles (well, Culver City) and "Day to Day" produced here has raised California's profile on NPR immensely. L.A. writers, commentators and stories...

Busting GQ

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Richard Rushfield (scroll down) smacks a $50 fine on GQ for gratuitous L.A. bashing in the latest issue's interview with Jake Gyllenhaal and shopping guide to Los Angeles. The fine...

Downtown hotel snafu

The Downtown News is all over a story about low-income tenants being evicted from the Bristol Hotel at Eight and Olive streets to make way for renovation into another boutique...

Email hiccup

My email program ate my inbox last night, so if anyone sent me mail in the last few days and is waiting for a reply, please send again....

Rosemary Breslin, HerEx and TV writer was 47

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The daughter of Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin began her reporting career at the L.A. Herald Examiner, later wrote for the New York Times and NY Daily News, and penned scripts...

Dotcom deja vu *

Back before Internet Economy became the punch line to a bad joke, when web-savvy 20-somethings were going to reinvent Hollywood — you know, four years ago — the New Media...

OC writer on 'Day to Day'

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Gustavo Arellano of OC Weekly delivered a commentary on today's NPR show "Day to Day," saying that despite the scandals that have hurt the Roman Catholic Church in recent years,...

LA Press Club awards **

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Winners were announced Saturday night at a banquet in Century City. "Journalists of the Year" were John Daniszewski, Alan Abrahamson and Brian Vander Brug (spelled wrong on the Press Club...

Writer ♥'s Google hits

"Six Feet Under" writer and supervising producer Jill Soloway emails Tiffany Stone, thanking her for some blog praise and revealing how Soloway came to be quoted in an L.A. Times...

Hold on a sec, Elvis

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The New York Post reported last week that Elvis Mitchell is pitching an "unusual" book on Richard Pryor. In today's Page Six, Pryor says he's got his own book in...

Another interesting Hahn compadre

The L.A. Times team investigating city corruption hasn't been turning up big stories, but it does come up with interesting revelations Monday on Hahn Administration parks commissioner Christopher Hammond. It...

Inside the LAT cuts

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Jacques Steinberg in Monday's New York Times advances the backstory behind the pending budget cuts and possible layoffs in the L.A. Times newsroom. He reports on a hasty June 4...

LABJ calls for new web-only L.A. paper

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In its 25th anniversary edition, the Los Angeles Business Journal proposes an agenda of 25 reforms and steps to improve the city. One of those ideas is an online newspaper...

Put his face on the $10 bill

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It's the fitting way to honor Ray Charles, says Rip Rense....

Saturday in L.A. Bloggerville

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• BoifromTroy was out at a California League of Conservation Voters meeting and swears he heard L.A. councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, the John Kerry campaign co-chair, say: "After all, let's face it....

Let SAG be SAG

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Blogger Greg Dewar writes that the Screen Actors Guild has been besieged with complaints that Ronald Reagan's portrait is not displayed with other past presidents of the guild. Except that...

Craig distilled

Sunday's L.A. Times Magazine has a cover piece on Craig Newmark, the former IBM programmer and computer security geek who started and still runs Craigslist. Craig Newmark was the kid...

Reagan's political heir: Arnold?

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Joel Kotkin, the Valley-based author and political analyst, proposes in The New Republic that Reagan conservatism's ideological heir for Californians is not Bush or anyone in the red states, it...

Selling Richard Pryor

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Elvis Mitchell, host of "The Treatment" on KCRW, is using his time (now that's he's stopped reviewing films for the New York Times) to write a book on Richard Pryor....

Left and right

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The Times goes front page today with a Michael Finnegan story on the merging of Hollywood and presidential politics in the marketing of Fahrenheit 9/11. In the piece, Michael Moore...

Times polls on Kerry, war *

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After Bush's pollster complained, Mickey Kaus went right to Los Angeles Times Poll director Susan Pinkus for an explanation of this morning's story that has Kerry ahead by 7 points...

Good Taste Award

Lonewacko screen grabs Drudge and suggests he give the flashing banner ads a rest for one day:...

Nice day for LA Mag

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My friends at Los Angeles magazine gathered up nine awards — more than any other publication — at the City and Regional Magazine Association competition announced earlier this week in...

Better than a book jacket blurb

Two Marines who fought in Iraq help tout Evan Wright's new book on the war in a Sharon Waxman story out of Oceanside in today's New York Times. They are...

The face of Phil Hendrie

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Paul Cullum in the LA Weekly is the latest writer to seek to explain Phil Hendrie, the KFI talk host who relies more than most AM talkers on his callers...

Weather's changing

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As TV news insider Ron Fineman predicted, the local CBS operation is announcing that Miami weathercaster Jackie Johnson will be coming to town. The memo says she will take over...

New 'Life'

Time is bringing back Life magazine in its saddest incarnation yet — as a weekly insert in newspapers such as the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune and San Jose Mercury News....

LAT's Miller gets Livingston *

The Livingston Awards are for excellence in reporting by journalists under the age of 35. This year's $10,000 award for international reporting went to T. Christian Miller, 34, of the...

Buzz for Indie 103.1

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Franklin Avenue notes that Rolling Stone has a story this issue on Santa Monica-based FM station Indie 103.1 and calls it "America's coolest commercial station." "It's a little band of...

Botox for the Gray Lady

Bruce Feirstein, writing in the New York Observer, imagines making over the front page of the New York Times. EDITOR’S NOTE: After a long and painstaking review of the editorial...

Weetzie turns 40

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Bestselling local Young Adult author Francesca Lia Block has sold her first adult novel Necklace of Kisses to Harper. In the book, her long-running character Weetzie Bat turns 40, faces...

No worse than John Wayne

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An elected supervisor in Orange County wants to change the name of the airport there to The O.C., after the Fox TV show. Chris Norby says the new name would...

L.A. as burger capital

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Charles Perry is not just a food writer (and the author of a history of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury scene), he is an historian of food. In today's Times, he argues...

Memo to Kerry staff *

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Next time your guy announces that he is halting campaign events to honor a deceased prez, make sure no pro-Bush bloggers are around. A Moxie scoop (provided her sources are...

A fish story

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While Jack Nicholson and friends cheered on the Lakers win tonight in the NBA finals at Staples Center, Jim Hahn and his staff (and a half-dozen or so reporters) watched...

Michel Thomas on Fox

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Michel Thomas is the World War II veteran and language teacher to the stars whose supporters are in a running dispute with the L.A. Times over a feature story in...

LAT cuts: 'Fair, humane, swift'

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Times editor John Carroll confirmed to the staff late today that buyouts and possibly layoffs are coming. His email echoes, and expands only somewhat, on the earlier message from publisher...

Kerry concert back on

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The Democratic candidate's Disney Hall fundraiser — called off last night after the death of Ronald Reagan — is now set for June 24. Just following through on this post......

L.A.'s blawgs

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The cover story in June's California Lawyer visits with lawyers who blog about the law. Among the locals included are, in order of appearance, Denise Howell of Bag and Baggage,...

'American Taliban' *

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The controversy over the ACLU pressuring Los Angeles County to remove a small cross from the official county seal (which was designed by the father of Mayor Jim Hahn) is...

LAT publisher: buyouts first

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A memo to the staff today by L.A. Times Publisher John Puerner — who, incidentally, plays bass in an in-house rock band on the side — explains the paper's soft...

Hahn drops small PR deals

Back in April, Mayor Jim Hahn responded to controversy over city spending on expensive but politically sensitive public relations contracts by promising to get rid of them. It was a...

Tribune target is 200 jobs

That's a reduction of 200 staffers across all the Tribune Co. papers, not just at the L.A. Times, a Chicago Tribune story says today. Each paper will decide how to...

Email, private or public?

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The Westmar Sun is "a Web-based journal of news and opinion about Mar Vista and the Westdales," small L.A. neighborhoods on the border of Santa Monica. Journalist George Garrigues runs...

Carroll marches on

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L.A. Times editor John Carroll's provocative calling out of Fox News (retorted by Roger Ailes last week) is still getting around. A shortened version of Carroll's speech ran in today's...

Unclear on the concept

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In this media crazy world, some people consume too much news — and some people evidently too little. A woman who lives in Santa Monica thinks the Ronald Reagan funeral...

LAT books

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Aside from the threat of editorial staff reductions at the L.A. Times, there has already been a cutback on the business side that has a personal effect. After more than...

Hammer hangs over LAT staff **

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Five Pulitzers or no, Tribune Publishing president Jack Fuller just threw a pall over the newsroom at the L.A. Times. While rumors swirl about 60 impending editorial department layoffs (and...

My California debuts

Angel City Press and CaliforniaAuthors.com took their new anthology of travel and adventure essays to last week's Book Expo America in Chicago. And it was a hit with the West...

Don't call him Blogzberg

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Candidate for mayor Bob Hertzberg got a bit of attention in April for starting a campaign blog and discussing on it his nickname of Bob Hugsberg. But I guess the...

How Finke got the Reagan news

I Want Media, the busy website by Patrick Phillips, has started a new feature of short items that are not pegged to the day's news. In the first "Media Offline"...

Doing business

La Opinión, in press release speak "the largest Spanish language daily newspaper in the country," today launched a daily business section, "Negocios." The paper also created a new lifestyle and...

Who's the voice of the South Bay?

| 4 Comments
Garrison asks the question at The Aesthetic, and runs through the contenders. And while I'm surfing websites: Bob Patterson at Just Above Sunset has the last online word on that...

Elvis won't be in the building*

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Peter Rainer, the New York magazine (and ex-L.A. Times) film critic — and regular on KPCC's "Film Week" — will be the guest host for Elvis Mitchell on "The Treatment"...

Gehry wins one

| 6 Comments
Frank Gehry's team may have missed out on the big Grand Avenue design project in downtown Los Angeles, but they still like him at Harvard. Gehry has been tapped to...

Kerry postpones Disney Hall funder

Guests who were planning to attend Monday's John Kerry campaign fundraiser at the Walt Disney Hall have been emailed and called alerting them the event is off. Kerry is suspending...

J. Lo weds Ma—(yawn)

| 3 Comments
Zzzzzzz....

Simpson family chronicles

On June 12 it will be ten years since the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman that made Bundy Drive, Rockingham Avenue and Johnnie Cochran world famous. In...

Ronald W. Reagan, 1911-2004

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Edited throughout the day ABC News came on first with the bulletin that the president who had called Los Angeles home since the 1930s died at 1 p.m. this afternoon....

Reagan takes turn **

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Hollywood sources told LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke late Friday that the medical condition of former President Ronald Reagan has worsened. Doctors have gone to the Reagans' Bel-Air home. "He...

Cruise to blog: desist!

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A Fly on the Wall has made a quick name for his/herself since catching the blogging bug last month. The site posted the news of Julia Roberts' pregnancy a day...

Spring Street angst

| 7 Comments
The buzzword around the L.A. Times newsroom today is layoffs. The masthead rushed into meetings, an editors retreat was cancelled and terms like "draconian" and "crisis situation" are on the...

Memo to CityBeat

| 18 Comments
I shouldn't be one to poke fun at typos and brain freezes, since they happen to me so often, but just for the record: Jose Padilla is the accused terrorist,...

Reacting to UCLA rape verdicts

Joz at blogging.la posts on the case of the UCLA student who says she was raped by three Carson High School students who got into the dorm. Last week, a...

Coupla new blogs on the L.A. scene

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Richard Rushfield is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, the co-creator of L.A. Innuendo and the author of On Spec: A Novel of Young Hollywood. His JournalSpace site launched yesterday;...

OC's new chief in Sacramento

| 1 Comment
The Orange County Register has picked a new bureau chief for Sacramento: Kimberly Kindy. In the following memo from Register "team leader" Mark Katches, the Frank mentioned is outgoing state...

'Standardizing' the mayor

| 1 Comment
Former L.A. Times Magazine staff writer David DeVoss, who freelances for Smithsonian and elsewhere, dishes on Mayor Hahn and L.A. city government in the latest Weekly Standard: Tall, slim, and...

Loyd Sigmon, L.A. traffic icon was 95 *

| 2 Comments
Get ready to hear yet again, over the next 24-48 hours, the story of how radio SigAlerts came to be part of the Los Angeles lexicon. Loyd Sigmon, who created...

Finally a blog poll to believe

| 3 Comments
L.A. Observed ranked sixth (well, tied for sixth with Gawker et al) among favorite blogs of women in the media who responded to an email-in survey by Daniel Drezner of...

Positioning for mayor

| 3 Comments
Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa's people were successful last week at getting the media to bite on a labor-sponsored poll showing that he would begin the mayor's race (if he gets in)...

In the weeklies

| 4 Comments
From some of the local weekly papers: • The Downtown News covers a suspected break-in at the office of the El Pueblo Historical Monument by former employees who may have shredded...

Subtract another one *

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Prints the Chaff was a blog for copy editors written by Tom Mangan of the San Jose Mercury News. Archives that he felt deserved saving are now at his personal...

A roundup of books...

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When the National Magazine Awards were handed out last month, I blew it. There was a winner from Los Angeles. Evan Wright, who writes from here for Rolling Stone, got...

They finally got the memo

For more than a week, "California Connected" on KCET has been promoting this Thursday's show featuring segments on Suspect Entertainment (the gang talent agency we mentioned last month), what happens...

Psst, Arnold was in Idaho

Dan Weintraub reports on his California Insider blog that Gov. Schwarzenegger has returned from a short getaway to an undisclosed location. The reason the locale was kept secret, he says,...

He needs the money

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Sports writers keep saying that the Dodgers lack the cash to bring in better players, because new owner Frank McCourt is so heavily leveraged. Meanwhile, Sports by Brooks picks up...

Caitlin Flanagan, observed

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The Los Angeles-based staff writer for The New Yorker (and former Harvard Westlake English teacher) riled up people with her March piece in the Atlantic, "How Serfdom Saved the Women's...

Ailes wants apology from Carroll

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Back on May 6, L.A. Times Editor John Carroll used a speech at the University of Orgeon to lambaste Fox News as a polluted journalism source, and its chairman and...

Last gasp for Perino's

The silver, chandeliers, furnishings, a 1905 Steinway grand piano and everything else left from the old Perino's will be auctioned this Saturday at 7 p.m. After that, it's curtains for...

Kobe, Scott and the law

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The woman who accused Kobe Bryant of rape won't be referred to in jury instructions as the "victim" -- only as a "person" or by her name. Jeff at the...

Larry David gets the save ***

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Jeffrey Toobin has a great local item this week in The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" department. After police arrested Juan Catalan for the murder last May 12 of...

Anita Busch sues *

The former Hollywood Reporter editor and (sometimes) L.A. Times Calendar writer filed suit late last week against jailed private eye Anthony Pellicano, LAPD detective Mark Arneson and others over that...

Rediscovering a journo legend

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Frank McCulloch was, briefly and long ago, the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times when Otis Chandler was the fresh-faced young publisher intent on making the partisan Republican paper...

Losing anonymity

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Last week it was Patterico shedding the relative comfort of anonymous blogging to reveal he is a local deputy district attorney. Now the former Armed Liberal has let it be...

Karmazin gets out

Mel Karmarzin resigned today as the number two executve to Sumner Redstone at Viacom, to be replaced by Tom Freston, the CEO of MTV Networks, and Leslie Moonves, CEO of...

Register to check NYT stories

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A note to readers in Sunday's Orange County Register from Gene Harbrecht, the paper's nation and world editor, announced that stories picked up from the New York Times will now...

Pierce O'Donnell, launderer? *

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The prominent attorney is under investigation for allegedly violating campaign limit laws by getting his law firm's employees to contribute $20,000 to Mayor Jim Hahn, then reimbursing them. The Times'...

Truck stop wi-fi

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Today's Washington Post runs two unrelated dispatches from the California deserts. The first reports from the Flying J Travel Plaza in Barstow: Inside is a trucker's paradise: $10 for the...

Books and author events

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L.A. Observed is the newest co-sponsor of the "Public Square" Lecture Series presented by Zócalo and the Los Angeles Public Library. Zócalo seeks to create a non-partisan and multiethnic forum...
Clinton fundraises in LA
kermit-la-brea-closer.jpg Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
porter-ranch-sign.jpgThe natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Wet coyote
wet-coyote-vdt.jpgSpotted between the storms at Here in Malibu.
Performing arts with cheer
guys-dolls-kevin-parry.jpgDonna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
Junkyard down
upick-firetruck-560.jpgAfter 53 years, Sun Valley's Aadlen Brothers and U-Pick Parts cleans out. Photos