Thursday shorts

Judge Dzintra Janavs bitch slapped Mayor Villaraigosa over his LAUSD compromise, David Zahniser writes in the LA Weekly.
Greg Stacy found out the hard way, after 600 weeks writing about film at OC Weekly, that the Mike Lacey regime at Village Voice Media is serious about cutting back on freelancers: "Matt Coker, my mensch of a film editor, made it clear that he liked my stuff and he�d keep using me until somebody expressly told him not to. And then, just a few days before Christmas, somebody expressly told him not to....I never really realized, until the moment I faced the prospect of finding some other way to earn a living, how much I�ve enjoyed doing this all these years."
The Best American Magazine Writing 2006 website at Columbia features an excerpt of David Foster Wallace's piece in The Atlantic on talk radio host John Ziegler and the whole KFI modus operandi. It includes the marginalia that made the piece such a fun read. Included in the anthology, but not online, is Jesse Katz's story "The Recruit" for Los Angeles magazine.
Wow: the San Francisco Giants gave Barry Zito the richest pitcher contract deal ever and will ~~be stuck with~~ have him for seven years. Rob Neyer at ESPN.com: "This looks to me like one of the dumber free-agent signings ever. Zito just isn't very good."
Veronique de Turenne thinks the LAT's house ad promoting its bloggers could be, well, a tad better.
Nice Q-and-A with LA Observed contributor Jenny Price at Gristmill, the blog of the environmental website Grist.
Ken Draper at CityWatch argues that 2006 was a good year for L.A.'s neighborhood councils. Brady Westwater disagrees, saying the city's Department of Neighborhood Empowerment "degenerated into a full time search and destroy mission against the NCs complete with secret documents, enemies lists and back-stabbing typical of the Nixon White House during Watergate."
The National Labor Relations Board brought a complaint against Wendy McCaw's Santa Barbara News-Press alleging unfair labor practices. The hearing is Feb. 26.
Gary Andrew Poole admits in USA Today that, for him, being a USC Trojans fan comes from "social identity guilt based on something called BIRGing � Basking In Reflected Glory."
Gold strike in old Pacoima?