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Archive by Month
September 30, 2004
Kirk Douglas, leaning on a cane, spoke the first words to be heard on the stage at the new Kirk Douglas Theatre tonight in Culver...
Last week it was Stacey Grenrock Woods, Daily Show wractress and Esquire sex columnist. Today the other guilty party behind L.A. Innuendo, Richard Rushfield, quips...
Even bloggers do those annual lists now. Blogging.la's favorites for 2004, posted today, tend to the Silver Lake-Los Feliz-Melrose side of things, but not rigorously....
That Moorish-themed building on Beverly Drive just off Wilshire that used to house Fiorucci—and most recently bore an Israeli Discount Bank sign—was the first movie...
Today's LA Weekly runs a follow-up story from Doug Ireland to his piece last week alleging that congressman David Dreier is (gasp) gay, conservative and...
September 29, 2004
It appears that Shaquille O'Neal had a pretty good reason to curl his lip at Kobe Bryant last season. Thursday's L.A. Times reported that when...
Janet Maslin gives the thumbs up in Friday's New York Times to Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became a National Obsession, the new book...
Ana Marie Cox, the Washington, D.C. writer who blogs about politics with a splash of sex as Wonkette, has signed on to be the keynote...
In this week's New Yorker, Tad Friend's Letter from California gets up close and personal with San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. The headline reads "Going...
In a story today on the Los Angeles Community Colleges, the Daily News quotes elected trustee Michael Waxman praising the job done for the colleges...
So the Dodgers win another with five in the bottom of the ninth inning (again, amazingly), and should be steeling for the playoffs. Instead, the...
September 28, 2004
Mayoral candidate Bob Hertzberg was first out of the gate with a website, ChangeLA.com, and a blog. The content has not been scintillating, but since...
John Montorio continues to tinker with his chess pieces on the features floor at the L.A. Times. Today's it's Bret Israel, the editor of Sunday...
A feature in today's Times on Dodgers co-owner Jamie McCourt opens with her astonishment that L.A. fans head out early for the parking lots even...
Brooks Boliek covers Washington for The Hollywood Reporter and writes today that he's ashamed (sort of) to admit he is a journalist. One doesn't go...
One of the story lines about Jim Hahn's mayoralty is how the Valley provided his margin of victory — with most Valley leaders endorsing him...
Somehow I missed this: the L.A. city council wants its attorney to draft an ordinance requiring window flaps on dog houses. The Times's Jessica Garrison,...
September 27, 2004
Not much of a surprise that Phil Spector was indicted today in the shooting death of Lana Clarkson....
PR Week runs a q-and-a today with Richard Kline, the California president of Fleishman-Hillard. They are a mite touchy these days at F-H, so the...
At the end of last week, the editors at LAist posted that the site would be migrating to a new server over the weekend. Always...
Michael Kinsley, The Times' editorial page and opinion über-editor, told Editor and Publisher that if it's up to him, the paper will probably break with...
Architect Thom Mayne had this to say in today's Times Calendar about some of the adverse reaction to his design for the new Caltrans headquarters...
The Daily News began popping out an eight-day series on gang violence in Sunday's paper, representing four months of work. It's in the other L.A....
Dennis Ross, the Middle East peace negotiator whose new book is The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace guests...
Third time a charm? Tribune's Distinction magazine has brought on its third editor since launching last summer. It's Holly Palance, until recently the editor of...
September 24, 2004
Mack Reed at LAVoice.org breaks the news that LA.com, the city guide and shopping site put together by the parent of the Daily News and...
• 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...
WriterAction.com is where about 400 members of the Writers Guild go for their daily fix of of dish, dirt and grousing, behind a firewall open...
He wasn't, clearly. Miller, the ex-ABC reporter who chief William Bratton found a $157,000-a-year job at the LAPD — as anti-terrorism boss and head of...
September 23, 2004
Manhattan Beach joined the cities making it illegal to smoke on the sand. Along Santa Monica Bay, only Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach and Torrance still...
September 22, 2004
Nothing good about tonight for the Dodgers. Savior-to-be Brad Penny wasn't to be, throwing half his pitches for balls, walking five and leaving abruptly in...
Former channel 4 weathercaster Christopher Nance alleges that the station, which fired him in 2002, discriminated on the basis of race (he's African American) and...
Times reporter Scott Martelle, currently assigned to the Barbara Boxer-Bill Jones Senate race, will move over to the Style desk after the election to cover...
Hollywood A-listers and assorted other liberals turned out at David Geffen's Beverly Hills manse last night to celebrate New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's visit...
The New America Foundation, based in Washington and headed by Ted Halstead (co-author with Michael Lind of The Radical Center: The Future of American Politics),...
According to the website The RawStory, this week's LA Weekly will out local Republican congressman David Dreier as gay and report that he lived with...
At 3:30 in West L.A., the bamboo is wilting, the cat is pawing the walls, my wife's sinuses are cooked and the sounds of the...
The picture with today's Times story about city councilman Greig Smith injuring a skateboarder with his car is not Smith, but one of his campaign...
Conservative critiques of Robert Scheer are about as newsworthy as a Scheer blast at George Bush or Rush Limbaugh. But Kevin Drum, the SoCal-based house...
It's not a certainty that the Dodgers will blow their playoff chance, but they've played like a third place team for more than a month...
Elderly and living in a Santa Monica nursing home, the former editor and poet Joyce Fante — mother of writer Dan Fante — wants a...
The Hollywood Reporter is taking over the Hollywood Creative Directory line of guides and Lone Eagle Publishing. "We are thrilled to add such strong brands...
Today's Page Six chuckles over the latest issue of Architectural Digest and the editor's note from Paige Rense about her conversation with an upset "Mr....
The Times is out with a 2,800-word Style profile of Doug Dowie, the newsman-turned-PR exec who is the central figure in the ethics questions about...
The city council only meets three times a week, always scheduled to start at 10 a.m. Tuesday's meeting didn't begin until around 11 when a...
Daniel Petrie Jr. remains president of WGA West in a landslide vote. He got 71.3% of the 2,110 votes cast by guild members, swamping dissident...
September 21, 2004
Remember Steve Webster, the TV publicity exec who imploded his career by eavesdropping on high-level conference calls at FX long after he was fired? He...
This look at Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990-2003 is by Cathy Seipp in today's Wall Street Journal (online here for subscribers): Kevin...
For eight years, James Fuhrman has been a pesty watchdog eyeing West Hollywood 's city hall. His newsletter and half-hour spot on public access cable,...
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...
Oddball downtown televangelist Gene Scott — the papers invariably call him flamboyant — had said he wanted to "give God the first shot" at stopping...
Local bloggers Roger L. Simon, Patterico, Hugh Hewitt and Little Green Footballs have been all over the CBS debacle and receiving varying levels of credit...
Tensions are flaring between the owner and residents of new lofts in the Higgins Building, one of downtown's most storied conversions. The Higgins opened at...
September 20, 2004
Seymour Hersh chats about his book Chain of Command with Lawrence O'Donnell on The Politics of Culture Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. on KCRW (89.9 FM...
At noon today, the Spanish-language music station at 93.5 FM flipped over to hip-hop, proclaiming itself the successor to the late KDAY, the first stop...
Times subscribers have been opening their papers to find the glossy premiere issue of bello — small b — a new magazine of "power, culture...
Tim Rutten has taken a long (32 years) circuitous route through the L.A. Times editor and writer ranks, beginning under legendary editor Jim Bellows in...
• The contents page in Sunday's L.A. Times Magazine had a posed photograph of a faux prisoner in a faux cell, to illustrate a cover story...
What does it take for the mayoral candidates to make nice to each other? Apparently, the chance to fete kingmaker Bill Wardlaw and his wife,...
This ad ran in Sunday's LAT Book Review: Writer to collaborate on sensational, unsolved murder of prominent, wealthy L.A. businessman in early 30s. The first...
September 17, 2004
In the October issue of Los Angeles magazine, Steve Oney traces the transformation of Arianna Huffington from first foreign president of the Cambridge Union debating...
For months, mayoral sibling Janice Hahn has been pressuring for a change in top management at the Port of Los Angeles. She even let it...
The lineup for what organizers advertise as "America's first conservative film festival...and there's nothing Michael Moore can do about it" is firming up. From today's...
Questioning the facts and reasoning behind the lefty rhetoric of UC Irvine historian Mike Davis (author of City of Quartz and The Ecology of Fear...
OK, we recently noted an L.A. hot dog website. Now we've been pointed to Hamburger LA. They evalute by price, meat and patty, buns, fixings,...
Yesterday's Las Vegas Sun said the "rumor of the day" is that the Tribune Co. is talking to the owners of the Las Vegas Review-Journal...
Several locals of the Service Employees International Union — representing 350,000 workers — endorsed Jim Hahn's releection yesterday. Last time, all but one local backed...
September 16, 2004
Los Angeles Times Books apparently had one more in-house compilation in the works. Ninety collected columns by the late editor and writer Frank del Olmo...
City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's staff has not been a model of stability. In August, his office confirmed that Delgadillo's communications director, Eric Moses, was moving...
Adam Moss continues to reinvent New York magazine. His latest addition is Ken Tucker, the ex-Herald Examiner rock critic and longtime critic-at-large for Entertainment Weekly....
KCRW music meister Nic Harcourt (left) is profiled Friday on KCET's "Life & Times," which airs at 6:30 p.m. Tonight the show visits with retiring...
The new City Hall blog 4th Floor reprints a terse email from Mayor Jim Hahn reminding staffers who drive city cars to obey parking signs...
Neil Hopper used to stay close to his Hollywood apartment and drive everywhere, but no more. Now he walks all over L.A., not to get...
The soccer field and subway tunnel mouth at 2nd Street and Glendale Boulevard near downtown received city designation as a historic-cultural monument, clearing the way...
September 15, 2004
Jay Leno phoned up the LA Weekly's Nikki Finke to talk about media and politics after she wrote about him and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Weekly...
Digital media maven Jason Calacanis today pronounces L.A.-based Metro Blogging, founded by Sean Bonner and Jason DeFillippo of Blogging.la, "the largest local blog network in...
In 1984, when Hennessey & Ingalls published a study of architect Myron Hunt's best work edited by the respected critic David Gebhard, the Ambassador Hotel...
Let's see, in recent months the city Department of Water and Power has been in the news for lax management of the $20 million it...
Rick Caruso gets the voters' approval to build "The Grove East" right next to the Galleria. Good luck driving through Glendale....
The Breeze goes behind the scenes of the L.A. County seal controversy with a feature on Loren Clapp, the civil service graphic artist who designed...
Ruben Keoseyan, the daily's managing editor, today was named Executive Editor. At the same time, Deputy Managing Editor Pedro Rojas is leaving La Opinión to...
Staffers at the L.A. Times (and presumably KTLA) have watched the Tribune Co. stock price drop 24% since February, knowing that the bosses back in...
September 14, 2004
Time for a change of pace. • Kathryn Maese, formerly the news editor of the Downtown News, has joined the Los Angeles Business Journal to write...
Unfortunately, the personnel notices from the Times' second floor are trickling out rather than landing en masse. Latest to hit the transactions wire is the...
I'm about halfway through reading Slick, the funny debut novel by Daniel Price about a deviously creative Los Angeles crisis PR guy — "a shameless...
Jonathan Taylor, recently the L.A. Times' TV and radio editor, is leaving daily journalism to become senior vice president of The Lippin Group. Before joining...
The literary scene knows Tom Curwen as the one-time deputy editor of the L.A. Times Book Review and an erudite writer in his own right....
Talk radio ideologue Hugh Hewitt has a long blog piece seeking to compare the controversy over Dan Rather's probably fake documents about George W. Bush...
The L.A. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists has figured out a sure way to get their monthly cocktail mixers mentioned here: invite me...
4th Floor is named for the level in City Hall where all of the elected city council members have their offices. The floor teems with...
September 13, 2004
Phone lines are buzzing about an impending shakeup in the lineup of editors on the L.A. Times features desks, located downstairs from the main newsroom...
• Architecture: The owner of Santa Monica Place is in quiet talks with the city to raze the Frank Gehry-designed shopping center and build an open-air...
Cost-cutting has come to the Sports section at the L.A. Times. In a memo to his staff received by L.A. Observed, sports editor Bill Dwyre...
Sunday's Fall Fashion issue of the Times magazine asked stylist Eddie Schachnow to rate the candidates for mayor on their fashion sense. Some excerpts: James...
After 18 years as partners, the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles and the Jewish Federation are parting ways. The weekly's current issue announces —...
The new Thom Mayne-designed Caltrans headquarters on Main Street (between First and Second streets) opens this week. The building remains for me an acquired taste....
Giselle Fernandez left the anchor chair on the KTLA Morning News in August 2003. Her web site Casa Giselle updates her whereabouts, including a name...
September 12, 2004
Advice columnist Amy Alkon takes note on her blog of the Times' Paris-based travel writer Susan Spano's recent perplexed observation that the prostitutes on Rue...
September 10, 2004
One of the eight new Los Angeles Unified campuses to open this week is built on the site of the former Van Nuys Drive-In theatre...
The city's law covering political contributions reads that officials should not solicit donations from anyone with official business before them. The Times has a front-page...
KABC's morning talk show anchor has been doing L.A. radio for 35 years. He announced on the air yesterday that he will leave the station...
Bernard-Henri Levy — so famous in his native France he's known by his initials — was described on the front page of the L.A. Times...
September 09, 2004
The overheated race for mayor won't be the only local contest worth following once the national referendum on good vs. evil is over in November....
Jon Weisman's appreciation of the troubled and now late local phenom Willie Crawford continues to bring in comments at Dodger Thoughts. Some samples of the...
KCAL-9 news photographer Bryan Frank blogs about his work and life (with his wife) at beFrank. He gives an interesting glimpse at the unpredictable day...
At FilmStew.com, Richard Horgan's "Hollywood Spin" says today's tabloids would have gone gaga when Greta Garbo walked out of her 1927 wedding to actor John...
Publishers Marketplace, the site that issues Publishers Lunch, has added blogs to its menu of services to authors and others in the book world. Mark...
Mayor Jim Hahn came out swinging yesterday against Bernard Parks, the police chief he essentially fired in 2001 who's now running against him from a...
LAist excerpts an interview about the beauty and other qualities of Los Angeles with author and New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler, a Valley boy from...
The sky is dripping on the West Side. Not quite rain, but close. (Now it's rain...)...
Romenesko links today to a Cathy Seipp "From the Left Coast" column at National Review Online where she repurposes her blog takes on old nemesis...
September 08, 2004
The proposed new Los Angeles County seal — without the old Kenny Hahn-designed crosses, oil derricks and goddess Pomona — made its first public appearance...
The Rev. Cecil Murray departs his post as pastor at First AME Church on Sept. 18, after 27 years with the most prominent — and...
The blog kottke.org reports a tip it got on the eventual fate of reigning Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings, whose multi-month run resumed on the air...
Newsday reports today on the tough spot facing the Tribune Co., which would see its Los Angeles ownership of the Times and KTLA turn more...
In today's Times, the rivals to Jim Hahn's reelection next year signal their intention to attack his record on making Los Angeles "the safest big...
The Times has a package today on the war deaths and an online database of casualties by name, home state and details. The Daily News...
KCRW is moving Marc Porter Zasada's weekly commentary "The Urban Man" from Sunday (the old Sandra Tsing Loh slot) to Monday at 6:44 p.m., the...
Authors Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons have sold Gay L.A., "a history of the gay culture that took root on the Western frontier in the...
September 07, 2004
Bob Sipchen moved from the L.A. Times editorial page staff last year to shepherd the new Outdoors section into existence. Now he's returning to the...
The New York Times calls last Sunday's profile of Haim Saban the L.A. media mogul's "most extensive interview in years." In the piece, Andrew Ross...
Ahmad Yaseen Arain, the UCLA honors student who vanished from an MTA bus in the Fairfax area in July, turned up in Tijuana. His relatives...
The anti-Bush sign poster who calls himself the Freeway Blogger plans to put up 100 signs over L.A. freeways today "protesting the war in Iraq...
Easterner-turned-Angeleno Ruth Shalit's wedding blurb in the lead spot in last Sunday's New York Times is attracting some blogospheric notice. Vanity Fair's James Wolcott writes,...
September 03, 2004
Updated all weekend, newest at top • In the Hat: The website that tracks Mexican Mafia killings is unhappy with the media, especially the Times. • James...
Regarding that ad copy showing up as news stories on LATimes.com, Assistant Managing Editor Joseph M. Russin writes: L.A. Observed certainly knows that this advertorial...
Weird how these things happen. Couple of weeks ago in New York, me and mine thoroughly enjoyed the Broadway revival of "Wonderful Town," with Donna...
The Times' sports columnist-provocateur T.J. Simers notes today that Scott Kaplan, who co-hosts the morning sports talk on AM 1090, said of the teenager who...
A pod of six to eight blue whales — the biggest animals on Earth — has been feeding in the Catalina Channel off Point Fermin...
Sure the media (and of course, we bloggers) wrote about them a lot, but Paul Colford writes in the New York Daily News that the...
In a package tied to the new Heather Locklear-Blair Underwood series "LAX," USA Today's Chris Woodyard writes about the complexities of filming at the airport...
Syndicated columnist Jill Stewart (Daily News, Register, Pasadena Weekly) has the cover story in the September issue of Wired on her favorite Koll-i-fornia governor. Headline:...
September 02, 2004
Ad copy is blended with editorial again today at the Times website. Clicking on Print Edition, then California section, leads to this "story" placed between...
Kim Masters may be losing her Esquire contract to produce Hollywood stories, Defamer hears. If true, she's still got her deal with NPR at least....
Joseph Mailander writes that his anti-Bush blog Martini Republic is getting lots of links and traffic today for reporting that Zell Miller's speech at the...
Hollywood producer Rob Long is in New York to do up the RNC alongside Warren Olney at KCRW — the station's Republican analogue to Harry...
CityBeat columnist Erik Himmelsbach loses his day job and gets in touch with how much he loathes personal blogs. Before I went on forced employment...
September 01, 2004
A committee on historians has called on the media to stop citing author Michelle Malkin and her conclusions on the Japanese-American relocation in World War...
Prosecutors in Eagle, Colo. drop all charges after Kobe Bryant's accuser gets an apology and decides not to testify. The last straw for her apparently...
How difficult is Jann Wenner to work for? His annual inspections of the staff's desks for neatness are apparently legendary at Rolling Stone. Today, Gawker...
Jake Dobkin, publisher of LAist and Gothamist, blew through Los Angeles last month on the way to his wedding and Hawaii honeymoon. He has posted...
Michael Kinsley is still a new enough addition to the L.A. scene that his at-large punditry seems worth chronicling. At least for a little while...
On Aug. 19, an Asiana Airlines jumbo jet arriving from Korea came within about 200 feet of an Albuquerque-bound Southwest flight on the same runway,...
Reason's convention blogger Matt Welch catches up with former California AG Dan Lungren and, in a Madison Square Garden stairway, with Pat Buchanan. An excerpt...
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| Federal regulators have issued a cease-and-desist order that requires the Newport Beach-based thrift to raise capital.
| The actor has agreed to pay $660,000 to settle IRS claims that he improperly deducted personal expenses.
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| This is one time I think the candidate should step down to spend more time with her family. A cursory...
| Governor Bob Palin (R/Alaska) AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE, August 29, 2008: Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain today suprised everyone...
| USC and UCLA both start their football seasons with impressive wins over southern opponents.
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