First thing Monday, 3.6.06

credit First reviews of the Oscars and Jon Stewart: not good. Also, Arnie Berghoff's diabetes roast gets some scrutiny, the Times finds waste in the local bioterrorism budget, Villaraigosa promises to crack down on city spending, the publisher of the Downtown News confesses her Otis Chandler secret, skateboards in Beverly Hills, mercury in tuna, tying mathematicians in knots and the week's most useless newspaper correction...Turn the page for more.

Quote of the day: "We built downtown Los Angeles in Cape Town, but there was a desert a few hours away that looks exactly like the Mojave�all you had to do was keep the occasional baboon out of the shot." Robert Towne, on filming Ask the Dust in South Africa.

Photo: Reuters/Gary Hershorn

Today's front pages

New York Times See/Read
Washington Post See/Read
LA Times See/Read
Daily News See/Read
Daily Breeze See/Read
Press-Telegram See/Read
Register See/Read
Star-News Read
Variety Read
Hwd Reporter Read
La Opini�n Read

Slate: Today's Papers

♦ Tom Shales on the Oscars: "It's hard to believe that professional entertainers could have put together a show less entertaining than this year's Oscars, hosted with a smug humorlessness by comic Jon Stewart, a sad and pale shadow of great hosts gone by."

♦ Defamer redesigned for the Oscars, with bolder visuals and no more blogroll. The blog's take on last night: "Worst Oscars ever." Nikki Finke on Jon Stewart: "Bomb he did." The Envelope on Stewart: B-. Personally, I thought Sarah Silverman did more with Saturday's Independent Spirit Awards. Stewart's funniest contribution to the Oscars was the Stephen Colbert-voiced fake campaign ads for Oscar nominees.

♦ The eyebrow-raising Oscar for best picture to Crash brings political consultant Matt Szabo out of blogging hiatus: "An interesting but ridiculous political cartoon....On the bright side, Brokeback�s tough loss saves the gays the indignity of being dismissed and slandered by the Bill O�Reillys and Sean Hannitys as just another example of out-of-touch Hollywood elitism."

♦ Face time on the Oscars broadcast for Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and his wife Barbara, and for Los Angeles Times managing editor Leo Wolinsky and his wife Lee.

♦ The annual Los Angeles Political Roast to raise money for diabetes research has become a big unofficial door to insider access for special interests, the Times suggests in a Jeff Rabin piece, but even top campaign watchdog Robert Stern says no harm, no foul. The March 16 event at the Century Plaza was started nine years ago by City Hall lobbyist Arnie Berghoff.

♦ An LAT investigation reports that Los Angeles County has spent $2 million in anti-bioterrorism funds "on buffing up the health department's image, responding to unrelated health scourges and buying questionable supplies and services."

♦ The Daily News plays up a Monday story saying that Mayor Villaraigosa plans to crack down on city spending, but there's little detail beyond what the mayor talked about at last week's press conference.

♦ Downtown News publisher and editor Sue Laris remembers the indirect inspiration she received from Otis Chandler: "I had a relationship with him that he knew nothing about..."

♦ Beverly Hills High is trying to reduce its association with skateboarders.

♦ An activist group says it tested the tuna at a half-dozen local sushi restaurants and found higher levels of mercury than recommended by the FDA.

♦ Math geeks will love Margaret Wertheim's op-ed piece in the LAT arguing that "knots provide mysterious links between the mathematical continents of topology, geometry and algebra, hinting that these enigmatic twists contain secrets to powerful, deep and general truths."

♦ Echo Park, including the lake and boathouse, was declared a Historic-Cultural Monument by the City Council.

♦ When the correction doesn't help, from the March 5 LAT: "In the Feb. 26 Book Review section, a calendar listing said a March 4 book signing by Mary Rourke, author of "Two Women of Galilee," at Dutton's Brentwood Books would be at 7 p.m. The signing was at 2 p.m." [emphasis added]

♦ The LAT runs its obituary of Superior Court Judge Robert J. Sandoval, who died last Tuesday.

♦ Phyllis Huffman, the casting director on Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, died Thursday in New York at age 61.