♦ Ed Boks (rhymes with coax) may be the city's new animal czar, but the key player looks to be spine surgeon and billionaire inventor Gary Karlin Michelson. He has, reports the LA Weekly's Robert Greene, "thought through L.A.’s animal problem and has established a foundation that is prepared to pay to have every pet in the city fixed and tracked." Meanwhile, Guerdon Stuckey appealed his firing as animal chief.

♦ Times food writer Charles Perry writes about the comforting familiarity of ten venerable L.A.area restaurants, from Musso's and Du Par's to the Smoke House (in Burbank) and Rae's (Santa Monica.)

♦ That smoke rising over Van Nuys yesterday was the L.A. Fire Department purposely burning down a storage building to defuse fifty pounds of unstable dynamite. Tricky job: They closed the 405, shut down MetroLink and called to the scene twenty-eight firefighter companies, eight ambulances, an arson unit, a helicopter, three Battalion Captains, three Battalion Chief Officer Command Teams, one Division Chief Officer Command Team, four Brush Patrols, one Foam Tender and a Deputy Chief. And it worked.

♦ Bill Bradley in the LA Weekly remembers the night that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger shifted right to become a partisan Republican, instead of what he told voters he would be.

♦ Another day of LAUSD control politics.

♦ The LAFD News and Information blog offers the fire department's gift suggestions for last-minute shoppers. Begins with smoke alarms and ends with LAFD t-shirts.

♦ With all the ex-Giants coming to L.A., it's fitting that former Dodger hero-for-a-moment (and now ex-Angel) Steve Finley is headed to San Francisco.

♦  Author Eric Stone did nine days of jury duty and figures the trial cost more than a hundred grand and wasted everybody's time.

♦ I added Slate's daily Today's Papers feature to the morning front pages box.

♦ Today in L.A.: Would you believe Reggie Bush for president? The Studio City Hand Carwash kicks off the campaign with a rally and bumper stickers at noon today.