♦ Alex Padilla on Monday endorsed Eric Garcetti as his successor in the City Council president's chair. Let the record show that on May 27, LAObserved posted: "Alex Padilla will remain as president until sometime in the next year, then support Eric Garcetti as his replacement."

♦ Starting with today's meeting, Valley residents can rant at the City Council by video conference from the Van Nuys City Hall. Now they never have to go downtown.

♦ An LAPD veteran was arrested on suspicion that he set a fire at the Police Academy then reported it.

♦ Twenty inmates have escaped from the sheriff's jails this year, and that's the good news. Twenty-three have been released by mistake.

♦ NBC-4 anchor Paul Moyer recently led into a break with a plug to keep watching the news on...Channel 5. He fessed up to the muff after the commercial. RonFineman.com has the audio.

♦ Times film columnist Patrick Goldstein declares that the "era of moviegoing as a mass audience ritual is slowly but inexorably drawing to a close."

♦ Mayor Villaraigosa is on with Kitty Felde on KPCC's Talk of the City between 2 and 3 pm today.

♦ As downtown goes increasingly condo, the residential vibe is changing, writes the LAT's Cara Mia DiMassa (a byline that everyone should say out loud, just once.) Marie Condron of the New Downtown listserv agrees with her. Says John McIlwain of the Urban Land Institute: "It's a very classic pattern we are seeing around the country."

♦ The city of West Hollywood tabled a motion to rename the snicker-inducing Dicks Street.

♦ Matt Welch keeps tabs on the LAUSD's plan to condemn an Echo Park neighborhood of 55 homes for a school.

♦ The New York Times runs an editorial critical of the IRS scrutiny of political activity at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, noting that "Several Roman Catholic bishops even suggested that a vote for John Kerry would be a mortal sin. ...If the I.R.S. is pursuing any of those churches, we certainly have not heard from them about it." Sunday's NYT, by the way, had a Travel story on Abbot Kinney Boulevard and a Nicolai Ouroussoff review of the Getty Villa in Malibu.