|
|
|
Overdone L.A. news feature #12 *
Paramount is home to the Zamboni machine!
Sorry, pet peeve. At least some editor or reporter didn't discover...the Tree People!
* Pro and con: Deanne Stillman emails:
The Zamboni story is the LA equivalent of NY's "houseboat life in Manhattan," which appears every six months in one or more of the local papers, and sometimes NY Magazine, along with "what to eat on jury duty" (courts are near Chinatown). "Houseboat life in Manhattan" is such an old hack story that John O'Hara even made a comment about it in "Butterfield 8," in which a character turns down the sorry assignment. I read "Butterfield 8" in high school, and a few years later, while living in Manhattan, an editor called me with that pathetic idea. Because of O'Hara, I turned it down!
But a Times reporter emails to defend his colleague, pointing out:
I've lived in Southern California for 7 years after a decade in Detroit...and I never knew the Zamboni came from out here. Might seem an overdone topic to you locals but it was news to me, which raises an interesting question about the shelf-lives of features. Given the population growth here, how much time needs to lapse before old is new again?
Valid point. Some stories deserve to be done over. I definitely agree that maybe I've lived here too long — but there's more of us than many realize. Meanwhile, Bob Timmerman ferrets out that the last full-blown Zamboni feature in the Times ran in 1999. Since then, he counts "numerous" mentions in the "Only in L.A." column by Steve Harvey, who himself wrote a Zamboni feature in 1988.
Last edited 12:15 p.m.
© 2003-2008 • About LA Observed • Contact the editor
| A little-known analyst turned hedge fund manager named Steve Eisman figured out what would happen to the mortgage business.
| You have to go back almost four years to find local gas prices this low. It's mostly good news, of course, but there are some wrinkles.
| Hennessey + Ingalls Art and Architecture bookstore opens a branch in Hollywood this week.
| Bush sought to "make the pie higher," but President-elect Barack Obama says it's time "to make sure we're growing the pie …"
| Legendary 19th-century photographer Carleton Watkins, who is the subject of an exhibition at the Getty, traveled hard miles around California with a simple motto: stand "where the view looks best."
| For every dollar I put into my first car, I got back a lifelong education in auto repair, and this disease.
| Erin Kaplan responds
Here’s a way city hall can strong arm the Dodgers into paying at least part of the cost of providing public transportation to the stadium during baseball season.
Sponsors
Premium Blogads
Books, Blogs & Events
Get RSS Feeds
of LA Observed
of LA Observed
LA Observed publishes several Real Simple Syndication feeds for easy scanning of headlines. If you wish to subscribe to a feed, most popular RSS readers will do it for you. You can also enter the web address from the XML button below or click on a specific feed. For more help with RSS, try here or here.
