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When the March issue of Los Angeles hits in a few days, media columnist RJ Smith will offer his suggestions for saving the Times after talking with publisher David Hiller and a bunch of folks in the newsroom. Plus, writer-at-large Edward Humes profiles Biola University, senior writer Jesse Katz tours Griffith Observatory with Christina Ricci and Patric Kuh compares the Studio City version of Katsuya with its hipper Brentwood counterpart. Style director Laurie Pike also visits with the last vestiges of L.A. high society and goes shopping for lingerie — thankfully, in separate stories.
In addition to the Michael Wolff piece on Judith Regan and Hollywood features up the wazoo, including a killer slide show, the new Vanity Fair has LA Observed contributor Bruce Feirstein contrast Old Hollywood and New Old Hollywood. Sample: OH was Beverly Hills, NOH is Pacific Palisades. OH shopped on Rodeo Drive, drove Rolls Royces and turned to Sidney Korshak when a fixer was necessary, while NOH prefers Montana Avenue, the BMW 760i and Bert Fields. If Lew Wasserman was the inscrutable overlord of the old guard and Reagan their "whoda thunk it" politician alum, David Geffen and Schwarzenegger fill those roles for the new old. Final pair: Terrifying industry gossips — Hedda Hopper and Nikki Finke.
Forbes' Evan Hessel looks in on the "benign dictatorship" of Vernon, reporting that "there’s not much to see, but smells are plentiful, courtesy of a rendering factory that boils the dead pets of southern California into grease and high-protein animal feed....There are no parks, schools, libraries, health clinics or grocery stores. The only four restaurants close by 4 p.m. By sundown the 44,000 workers who commute here have all fled the stench....In a saner world Vernon would be just another neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles. But with no democratic process in place to check its leaders, Vernon will continue to create spoils for a few and a toxic stench for everyone else."
* So much for Forbes' fact-checking: Vernon does have an LAUSD school (opened in 1896, but rebuilt) and First Lady Laura Bush has actually been there.