• The good people behind My California: Journeys by Great Writers — Angel City Press and California Authors.com — gave the first $10,000 check from the book's proceeds to the California Arts Council last night. The money will go toward writing programs for children statewide.

   • In CityBeat, Chip Jacobs connects recent sexual assaults at Union Station to vulnerability to terrorist attack, and Editor Steve Appleford writes a requiem for the Ramones.

   • I hear that the premiere issue of Privilege, the new upscale L.A. magazine with John Palmer behind it, is due to be mailed soon. Barbara Davis is on the cover; Janice Mall, formerly of the L.A. Times, edits.

   • Today at 2 p.m. on KPCC's "Talk of the City," Kitty Felde visits the set of The Ten Commandments.

   • Barbara Osborn speaks with progressive messaging guru George Lakoff — called by Howard Dean "one of the most influential political thinkers of the progressive movement" — Sunday at 1 p.m. on "Deadline L.A." on KPFK.

   • Jewish Journal editor-in-chief Rob Eshman defends Madonna's trip to Israel and involvement with the Kabbalah Learning Centre. His column also notes that the Journal back in 2000 tested the special "spiritual water" the center sells to its believers and found it was—just water.