Some things to note from while I was gone:

   • Larry McCormick: The co-anchor of the KTLA "News at Ten Weekend Edition" began at channel 5 as a weatherman in 1971. McCormick died Friday at age 71 after being off the air with an unspecified illness for much of this year. He worked as a rock DJ at the old KFWB and jumped to TV in 1969, first with KCOP (channel 13) then KABC (channel 7). KTLA's website has up the Times obituary, a station bio and a message board where viewers and co-workers are posting tributes.

   • NYT grabs a critic: Charles Isherwood, Variety's chief theater critic, jumps to the New York Times. Gawker has the Jon Landman memo.

   • Not coming: The LAT tried to woo New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani, but she's staying in New York, Paul Colford says.

   • New editor: Robert Niles was introduced as the new editor of USC's Online Journalism Review, as expected.

   • Stay safe: Robert Parry has posted many comments at L.A. Observed (originally as BobfromPlaya). Now he's off to do 18 months in Iraq with the National Guard. There's talk of a blog from over there.

   • Eating city: Variety editor Pat Saperstein has a new blog on food and dining: Eating L.A. It is linked on the left now along with the Los Angeles message board of Chowhound.com, which is featured in a Los Angeles magazine piece this month by Jesse Katz.

   • City librarian: Fontayne Holmes, a 30-year veteran of the L.A. library system replaces Susan Kent, who is heading east to become Director and Chief Executive of Branches at the New York Public Library in September.

   • Swift vet: Bill Rood, the Chicago Tribune editor who wrote a first-person piece about serving in Vietnam on a swift boat alongside John Kerry, covered Sacramento for the L.A. Times under the byline W.B. Rood in the 1970s and '80s. He later became the paper's local government editor.

   • Angry Male radio: Last week's L.A. Radio.com cited (sub req'd) two separate incidents of KFI talk host John Kobylt resorting to anti-gay name-calling to disparage people he had off-air disputes with. One involved his wife being written up for being disruptive on an American Airlines flight. An emailer to L.A. Radio.com writes, "If my children said the things he did, they'd be grounded for weeks and would be forced to apologize...My sympathy goes out to his wife and children."

   • Blogger respect: Jon Weisman of Dodger Thoughts scored a long interview with play-by-play man Ross Porter. He also had a nice post on Willie Crawford, the ex-Dodger phenom who died Friday at age 57.

   • Brown Bunny: Manohla Dargis in the NYT calls the Vincent Gallo ego trip now at the Nuart "neither an atrocity nor a revelation...very watchable." She skirts the style question by never specifying the sex act that put the film on the media radar.

   • OK then: This correction ran Aug. 17 in the L.A. Times: An editorial Sunday on Donald Duck and other cartoon figures described the Disney icon as a single father. Although he is the guardian of Huey, Dewey and Louie, these characters are his nephews, not his children.

And in press clips: The L.A. Business Journal couldn't find anyone who objects to my policy on ads, but ran a story (sub req'd) anyway. In Al Stewart's Aug. 23 piece, USC's Bryce Nelson and Los Angeles Magazine's Kit Rachlis say there is no conflict of interest...At National Review Online, Cathy Seipp mistakenly says I "retired" from the Times. Actually, I left for a better, higher-paying magazine job. Some day I hope to be retired from somewhere, but I'm a couple of decades shy of the goal. ..A Downtown News story on bloggers got it right about L.A. Observed, and there's also a mention of the site in a book review by Bob Patterson at Just Above Sunset.