First thing Monday, 12.5.05

♦ The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is Phil Anschutz's latest attempt to clean up our minds and make a little more money.

♦ The L.A. City Council never learns. Good Times piece Saturday by Steve Hymon on the council tossing around a football and making bets on the USC-UCLA game while residents facing eviction from the Lincoln Place apartments in Venice stewed. Three hours later, they got to speak—as if anyone was listening. This week, by the way, the council is in recess for a League of Cities convention.

♦ Christian Science Monitor: Let Tookie live.

♦ Elephant abuse at the Studio City holiday parade, via Tabloid Baby. For more on Bobby Berosini, check out my piece from a Las Vegas courtroom that went ape.

♦ Politicians typically celebrate ribbon cuttings, bill signings and ground breakings. At 1 pm, Mayor Villaraigosa does a new duty: he applies the ceremonial last brush of paint on the newly spiffed up Hollywoodland sign. Photo is from Only on Film, a site devoted to movie locations that no longer exist.

♦ Layoffs at the Times-owned Glendale News-Press, blogged by ex-staffer Darleene Powells (now at CBS2.)

♦ The residential part of the Herald Examiner adaptive reuse has been scrapped in favor of offices and retail, the Downtown News says.

♦ November full-run ad volume in the Times was down nine percent from last year. But web traffic at LATimes.com was up 23% in October to 3.9 million unique visitors, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. LAT.com chief Rob Barrett told the LABJ that traffic has soared since "we’ve started diverging from the print story lineup, with more emphasis on breaking news and Southern California stories.”

♦ Just the other night some of us wondered if Manny Mota still worked for the Dodgers. Guess so, because he closed the Rafael Furcal deal.

♦ Adrienne Crew, who blogs at LABrainterrain and LAist, has a new book out with Peter Kuhns called Blogosphere: Best of Blogs. Naturally, there is a blog.

♦ Santa Monica writer Ben Kallen is out with The Year in Weird.