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Archive by Month
May 31, 2005
• Sean Bonner at blogging.la discovers a parking meter scam run by street people in the toy district downtown. • Tim McGarry, a frequent commenter on L.A....
Bob Woodward confirmed this afternoon that top FBI official W. Mark Felt was his famous secret source for several crucial stories in the Washington Post...
At the end of yesterday's column on the Senate filibuster compromise, L.A. Times political correspondent Ron Brownstein alerts readers that his new wife recently became...
Guests at Wednesday night's fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Clinton at the Hollywood Hills home of producer Roland Emmerich are being warned not to speak with...
So much for Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley having reputations as the nation's safest cities. A violent Indiana man began killing yesterday in T.O. and...
Today's Daily Journal leads with a story on attorney Paul M. Sandler, who won a big victory on Friday when a federal jury quickly acquitted...
Fans of the Los Angeles (Not Really) Angels have been watching the saga of Long Beach State pitching star Jered Weaver, who has threatened for...
Ever heard of Angelo Mozilo? He is chairman and CEO of Countrywide Financial Corp., and king of the L.A. Business Journal's list of highest-paid local...
May 30, 2005
Antonio Villaraigosa won't be the mayor for another month and a day, but his election continues to fascinate the media. Two profilish stories this weekend,...
Alan Pavlik, editor and publisher of the online magazine Just Above Sunset, posted some photographs of flags arrayed on graves at the national cemetery in...
May 27, 2005
Here are some items from the week. Posting over the weekend will be sporadic at best. • Los Angeles magazine celebrated this month's comedy issue last...
Author, urban expert and New America Foundation fellow Joel Kotkin is emerging in the media as the most determined early critic of Antonio Villaraigosa's election...
The council has apparently avoided a fractious showdown over leadership of the body. According to a good source at City Hall, a deal has been...
By this time tomorrow, every grave at Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood will be adorned with a small American flag. Plain markers exist for...
Here's the full list, from Abayari to Ziman. Thanks to everyone for the veritable deluge of files this morning. (* Late arrival: Here's the ethics...
When the gates finally opened on the access path to Carbon Beach, Jayna Mims and her eight-month-old son scampered across PCH and cut through the...
Hal Netkin, the city's shrillest anti-immigrant gadlfy, won't be charged over that driving incident at a Minuteman Project protest in Orange County. Garden Grove police...
When aspiring screenwriter Jeffrey L. Clemens sent threatening letters to a couple of federal judges in 2003 and 2004, he was (amazingly enough) given a...
The mayor-elect announced Thursday that Bob Hertzberg will chair his transition team of 81 members, among them business and labor leaders, environmentalists, developers, artists, educators,...
May 26, 2005
A rooftop wedding downtown, from the 5th and Spring blog. If a few more pics like this get out, the downtown boom is really going...
Valley dingbat Hal Netkin ran a phone bank during the mayoral election that called voters with automated anti-Villaraigosa messages. He's obsessed with immigrants and the...
Author D.J. Waldie writes on today's LAT op-ed page that Angelenos have left big decisions about the community to builders such as Eli Broad, and...
Mayor-elect Antonio Villaraigosa won't live in the Windsor Square home that was donated to the city for use as an official mayor's residence. He will...
May 25, 2005
Jeffrey Anderson in the LA Weekly checks in on the father whose family name has figured prominently in two mayoral elections, and finds more questions...
Actually, most of them are already here. The first National Critics Conference begins today at the Omni hotel downtown and runs through Saturday. More than...
Terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas have raised an estimated $20-30 million a year selling counterfeit merchandise in the U.S., much of it here...
Westside developer Mark Abrams has a date in court this afternoon to be arraigned on two felony counts and ten misdemeanors alleging he laundered $21,000...
Laura at Kevin's Dead Cat has lost a third of her tongue and undergone surgery and radiation. Last week she had a second tracheostomy (announced...
Over on Wilshire, the online staff at E! is trying to take back a gossip nugget they posted announcing the collapse of the Jessica Simpson-Nick...
A jury in Louisville sided with KFI evening talk guy John Ziegler, ruling that a former TV anchor who he dated then told tales about...
That's what the L.A. chapter of Sisters in Crime is calling its June 11 conference on writing and selling "killer mysteries." Speakers and panelists include...
The new upscale Latino bimonthly magazine backed by Emmis took over the Hollywood Roosevelt (and a lane of Hollywood Boulevard) Tuesday night. A few hundred...
Friends and supporters of Mayor Jim Hahn who want to hold on to their clout (or at least retain some access to power at City...
Jet Blue began its new service out of Bob Hope Airport on Tuesday, claiming that 80% of the seats to New York are already booked...
May 24, 2005
Two months or so after assistant managing editor Jonathan Diamond left to work for City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, the L.A. Business Journal has clarified the...
Today's Times editorializes about Bill O'Reilly editorializing about Michael Kinsley and terrorists. On the op-ed page: Former "Seinfeld" writer Peter Mehlman sends a message to...
As I reported (sketchily) back on May 15, former Riordan chief of staff Robin Kramer is taking a lead role in the Villaraigosa transition. She...
In addition to editor Katrina Dewey, whose resignation letter was posted on L.A. Observed last Friday, four other veteran staffers are about to leave the...
Sumner Redstone keeps his place on top of the annual Los Angeles Business Journal guesstimate of wealthiest Angelenos. Kirk Kerkorian held on to #2, but...
May 23, 2005
Last week the Ventura County Star got some press for shutting down the increasingly nasty comments being posted by the public on the paper's news...
First, from the swirl of politics. Newsweek puts Antonio Villaraigosa on the cover of Monday's issue, using his landslide election as the peg for a...
May 22, 2005
J. R. Moehringer is not like most reporters at the Los Angeles Times. He wrote his way to a Pulitzer for feature writing in 2000,...
For eleven years, Cindi Burkey was the local voice of NPR's All Things Considered on KCRW. Last month, she got yanked off the air and...
With the mayoral campaign now history, I felt motivated to clean out some dead links and reorganize the lineup on the left-hand side of the...
May 20, 2005
We interrupt this blog-free day to pass along the news that Katrina Dewey is leaving as editor of the Los Angeles Daily Journal. Martin Berg,...
It's jacaranda time in my neighborhood, and I'll be staring at the computer as little as possible. Back over the weekend....
May 19, 2005
NBC4's Ana Garcia did an investigative report tonight on sanitary conditions in L.A. gyms, complete with hidden cameras and an outside lab testing swabs collected...
The latest Publishers Lunch Weekly says that Ecco will publish Pulitzer-winning journalist and author Edward Humes' next book, Monkey Girl. It's "about the modern-day Scopes...
On his first day as mayor-elect, Antonio Villaraigosa met Wednesday with LAPD chief Bratton, did the Crenshaw photo op I razzed him about yesterday, met...
May 18, 2005
Santa Monica's news website The Lookout attended the election-night party for Bill Rosendahl in a Venice home equipped with a bowling alley in the bathroom,...
Villaraigosa won at all income and education levels, among men and women, and at all age levels except 65 and older. After all the talk...
Five of the Times' eleven editorial writers are moving on, most of them getting the word last Friday that change is in their immediate future....
The Times is throwing Pulitzers at the Disney company beat in the Business section, hiring two-time winner (and ex-Register reporter) Kim Christensen. Most recently he...
It's customary for major candidates in L.A. to face the media and take questions the day after an election. Jim Hahn did, showing up at...
2005 Turnout 30.61%Villaraigosa260,72158.7%Hahn183,74941.3%Final semi-official/City Clerk 2001 Turnout 37.67% Hahn304,79153.53%Villaraigosa264,61146.47% Antonio Villaraigosa swept in by a landslide to become the first Latino mayor-elect of Los Angeles...
May 17, 2005
It's kind of rough and thin on compelling content, but at least LATimes.com is trying some new stuff. Snapshots from Election Day have been posted...
Today is — finally — Election Day in Los Angeles. Relatively few will vote, municipally speaking, but at least it was fun, right? The network...
May 16, 2005
• Finally, someone besides me is upset about the lost hockey season. Holders of those pricey luxury suites at Staples Center are complaining that they have...
Starting in September, a new service called TimesSelect will charge $49.95 a year for access to op-ed and certain other columnists, the New York Times...
An anonymous, right-side political blog called Informed Sources posts that it has quickly registered the web domain names Villaraigosa2009.com and Antonio2009.com. After Villaraigosa wins the...
Sunday's New York Times reported on last weekend's marriage of Ron Brownstein, the LAT politics writer in Washington and CNN analyst, and Eileen Nicole McMenamin,...
Councilman Villaraigosa gets on a bus at 7 a.m. today in North Hollywood and, at least in theory, will keep making stops until the bus...
May 15, 2005
The "sex issue" is a tired alt-weekly mainstay. One of the hoarier cliches is the writer who hangs with a stripper (dominatrix, porn actress, pick...
The street gang known as MS-13 was born two decades ago around MacArthur Park and now has between 30,000 and 50,000 members in half a...
Between Hahn and Villaraigosa, I count thirteen campaign stops at Christian churches today, most of them in South L.A. Both are also working in an...
May 14, 2005
Legendary car customizer George Barris is putting seventy of his creations for Hollywood and other clients up for auction today at the Petersen Automotive Museum....
On this final Saturday of the mayoral marathon, the boys are heading back to the delis. After stopping in at three Shabbat services, Antonio Villaraigosa...
May 13, 2005
A feature story about the Chinese student body at San Marino High School has promoted an outcry by students and threats of violence against Pasadena...
David Geffen is buying the Malibu Beach Inn on Pacific Coast Highway and plans to turn it into a high-end boutique hotel, the L.A. Business...
The San Francisco Chronicle swoops in with two pieces on Steve Wasserman's departure (which becomes official today) from the editorship of the Los Angeles Times...
The mass for Miguel Contreras began with "Amazing Grace" and ended with a mariachi version of "De Colores." In between there was applause from the...
The four key strategists in the race for mayor are studied in today's Times by Carla Hall. They are quintessential political junkies so well-known that,...
Today is when localities learn which military bases are proposed for closure. The talk that has regional economic officials the most nervous is rumblings that...
Joel Sappell, the Times' business editor who oversees entertainment coverage, writes in the Column One slot today about his teenage years working as a Disneyland...
May 12, 2005
It has been pointed out to me that the bimonthly VenicePaper is on the web now. The May/June issue has stories on the neighborhood council...
Michele Ruiz, anchor of the "Channel 4 News" at 6 p.m., announced today she is leaving the station, according to TV Week. She came to...
• Dodgers owner Frank McCourt refinanced his debt today, borrowing $250 million and using it to pay off loans from Bank of America and News Corp....
The couple behind ambassadorcats.com have trapped and relocated more than thirty of the feral cats that roam the grounds of the relic Ambassador Hotel on...
The horses can sense the finish line in the race to be mayor, and the crowd's on its feet. With less than a week until...
Yesterday's Newsday column quoting friends of LAPD chief Bill Bratton about his New York aspirations was the talk of City Hall and the police department,...
LAPD detective Will Beall sold the film rights to his novel LA Rex to Scott Rudin, in a deal put together by by Shari Smiley...
May 11, 2005
LA Weekly political editor Harold Meyerson pens a Powerlines obit of his friend Miguel Contreras on the Weekly website. I imagine it will also run...
Whatever professional relationship existed yesterday between LA Weekly colleagues Marc Cooper and Nikki Finke pretty much flamed out for all to see online. * Afternoon...
Newsday's Ellis Henican devotes today's column to the idea that LAPD chief William Bratton — he calls the chief "Hollywood Bill" — is preparing for...
* Updated at the bottom... • Villaraigosa called for an investigation of Nick Tonsich, the president of the harbor commission whose financial dealings were the subject...
Tu Ciudad, that upscale Latino mag I've been telling you about since January, hits the mail next week (with a May 24 launch party and...
May 10, 2005
LA Weekly news features editor Marc Cooper didn't care at all for Weekly columnist Nikki Finke's launch-day blast at the Huffington Post. On his blog,...
Screenwriter Eric Heisserer set up a website called The Dionaea House last year and posted a series of correspondence between characters in his horror screenplay....
• Pierce College out in Woodland Hills is offering a course this summer that could be the answer to high gas prices. Fundamentals of Mule...
Manohla Dargis, taking off from the new Paul Haggis film Crash in her critic's notebok in the New York Times, writes that "Los Angeles is...
Everything except the archives is free, which is good, and the look feels fresher and snappier. It's impossible to please everyone, and I'm sure I'll...
Villaraigosa51% Hahn40%The front runner's lead has shrunk from 18 points a month ago to 11 points now, but the latest (and probably final) L.A....
May 09, 2005
It's official — the L.A. Times' ill-conceived experiment with charging a fee to read stories about film, music art, culture, style, and books ends at...
* Fresh items are at the bottom, as usual... • This is anniversary week (the second) for L.A. Observed, a fact that the Downtown News dug...
Times columnist Al Martinez has been around a long time. And he apparently has seen quite enough of the current campaign for mayor. His verdict:...
Rick Orlov says the worst job is the staffer assigned to shadow the other candidate's events, tape the remarks and try not to get assaulted....
The first day of the Huffington Post offers blog items from Laurie David, Michael Isikoff, David Frum, David Mamet, Ellen DeGeneres, John Cusack, Mike Nichols...
May 08, 2005
• Sandy Gallin sells his Malibu home for $30 million and only gets second billing in the Times' Hot Property column. Also: Elvira as unhappy homeowner....
On the second-to-last Sunday of the mayoral runoff, the Times doesn't reveal a new poll (maybe Monday?) but does land profiles of Hahn and...
This weekend's L.A. Times brought two distinct in-house opinions about the future of the medium in which the pieces were printed. On Saturday, media columnist...
How respected — or powerful — was the late Miguel Contreras? When the news spread Friday that the labor leader had passed away, Mayor Jim...
May 07, 2005
Organized labor's most influential Los Angeles leader apparently suffered a fatal heart attack late Friday. Contreras suffered from type 2 diabetes; most media sources put...
May 06, 2005
• Mark at The Elegant Variation lists the top ten things he would do as editor of the L.A. Times Book Review. • Newsweek's website asks if...
Eight months ago, the Jewish Journal's singles columnist wrote a piece arguing against marriage. Seth Menachem ends today's column by proposing to his girlfriend, Carrie....
May 05, 2005
The Baseball Reliquary in Monrovia plans to induct three more baseball figures into its distinctly non-traditional Shrine of the Eternals in July. The late Dodgers...
Hear that roar? Those are the after-burners kicking in on Air Villaraigosa. For the period from April 3 to April 30, the councilman raised $2,211,367...
• Friday's City Council meeting was cancelled so those who wish can attend the funeral of slain LAX police officer Tommy Scott. Why do I expect...
The television program produced by KCET and three other public TV stations in the state begins its fourth season on a new night — Fridays....
Editors of the Times' op-ed page were surprised and chagrined to learn the other day (from the Daily Breeze via L.A. Observed) that Tuesday's commentator...
Longtime L.A. scribe Jan Golab, author of the 1993 book The Dark Side of the Force: A True Story of Corruption & Murder in the...
Commercial services that clean up the detritus at death scenes are in a growth biz. In today's LA Weekly, Christine Pelisek goes around with the...
Ouch. Harold Meyerson leads today's LA Weekly column with a great Jim Hahn anecdote. Recently, he writes, four Stanford academics studied the effect on voters...
May 04, 2005
• Longtime Channel 7 weatherman Johnny Mountain joins the rival Channel 2 news on May 8. He will work the news at 5, 6 and 11...
One of the assumptions skeptics seem to have made about the Huffington Post is that the celebrity contributors will, inevitably, use their assistants, advisers and...
Fresh off his LAT Book Prize, Evan Wright has sold his next book, The Seed — about his experience at a drug recovery camp in...
The day after Villaraigosa launched a TV blitz calling his rival an ethical slug, Hahn fired back Tuesday with his own spots that slam those...
May 03, 2005
In today's Daily Breeze, David Zahniser looks at the nearly $1.5 million being spent on the mayoral runoff outside the usual $1,000-per-person contributions limit. Legally,...
Steve Wasserman is moving to New York. Today's press release is below, followed by this afternoon's memo to the Times staff saying a successor "will...
Late on this, but the L.A. Times has hired freelancer Borzou Daragahi for the Baghdad bureau. He was a Pulitzer finalist this year for Iraq...
A new website, LAPDauthors.com, compiles links and information on books by almost two dozen current and former Los Angeles Police Department officers, from Bill Parker...
The outgoing L.A. Times Book Review editor may be considering life as a book agent, says Steven Zeitchik on the Publishers Weekly website. [That's confirmed...
Wonkette carefully polled her readers, threw out the numbers and declared the winners in the Inside the Bubble Washington Journalism Awards. Her pick for nicest...
These things are estimated in the ten years between national census counts, which themselves are purposely off the mark due to political, uh, sensitivities. But...
Democratic strategist Darry Sragow, a free agent in the mayoral race, turns to the headline cliche to explain Antonio Villaraigosa's new commercial, which began airing...
The Lakers invited their TV game-caller, Paul Sunderland, not to return next season. Turns out he was not the second coming of Chick Hearn. Next!...
Today's New York Times carries two pieces on our freeway shootings, a staff news story by Nick Madigan of the bureau and a more personal...
May 02, 2005
Today on the 14 Freeway near Santa Clarita, gunshots reportedly from a dark-colored low-rider Acura or Honda smashed windows but didn't hurt anybody. Saturday night...
Ex-mayor Richard Riordan will be on KCRW's Which Way, L.A.? with Warren Olney this evening at 7 p.m. Riordan, who's backing Villaraigosa, will talk about...
Sources at the L.A. Times confirm the buzz that Steve Wasserman is out as editor of the LAT Book Review. There since 1996, he informed...
Later today the newspaper industry releases its latest bad news about circulation declines. An early peek by Banc of America Securities (yes, that's really how...
PR Week quizzed the LA Weekly's Deadline Hollywood columnist about how she landed at an alternative weekly, what she thinks of other reporters on the...
This spring Malibu is reading the original Frederick Kohner novella Gidget, inspired by the surfing subculture his daughter Kathy joined at the beach there one...
In Gregory Rodriguez's op-ed piece in today's Times, we get some fascinating personal insights about the men who are running for mayor. I learned that...
May 01, 2005
Michael Yamaki, the appointment secretary when Gray Davis was governor and former L.A. police commissioner, has been hired as senior adviser to Sheriff Lee Baca,...
By now everyone should know that more people live in the Los Angeles portion of the San Fernando Valley than in any U.S. city except...
© 2003-2008 • About LA Observed • Contact the editor
| The deal would have 750 employees moving to Prospect Mortgage, which specializes in buying midsize residential lenders.
| Er, does it mean anything that the price of crude has dropped almost nine bucks in the last two days?
| Librarians are some of my personal heroes, providing a beacon of light in a world that often seems hellbent on...
| But please don’t just think of of the victims.
| Elton Brand screws over the Clippers and becomes a Sixer.
| A near perfect game for Hiroki Kuroda has the Dodgers tied with Arizona for the NL West lead, despite having a losing record.
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