Here's a quick look at the best of last week's LA Observed entries...

1. Nancy Bauer Gonzales means it this time, dammit: no perfume, cologne or even aromatic residue of shaving cream in the Channel 2/9 newsroom. People, please!
2. Richard Alarcon gets to return to the L.A. City Council, but he can hardly claim a mandate — or even name recognition.
3. It's official that Erin Aubry Kaplan, Max Boot and Jonathan Chait are off the Times Op-Ed page, Meghan Daum moves to Mondays and Joel Stein has until the Friday deadline to get his columns in.
4. Two top Hollywood Reporter editors flee to Variety.
5. OC Weekly loses another editor — make that two.
6. For their readers the Times taste-tests Porterhouse steaks, the Daily News fast-food hamburgers.
7. The resignation of Henry Winterstern as CEO of First Look Pictures shows what happens when way too much hedge fund money is being spent in the wrong places by the wrong people.
8. LAT comics czar kills La Cucaracha — oops, never mind.
9. Are parts of Los Angeles not very pretty? One marathon-running editor says yes, but a columnist retorts and another runner wonders what he was looking at.
10. Sure nobody from L.A. eats there, but that doesn't mean the LAX Theme Building should be falling apart.
11. Just what are those catfish doing in the Los Angeles River? What's Larry Ellison up to in Malibu? And what was Helen Thomas doing in the Valley talking to LA Observed's Jacob Soboroff?
12. If you work at the Times and you don't subscribe to the paper — and apparently you mostly don't — watch out because Mad Jack is coming for you.

Plus: We Get Email about all kinds of topics this week, and the archive of the whole week at News & Chatter.