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Morning Buzz: Monday 5.21.07
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Fire at Garfield High
Classes are cancelled today after flames gutted the 82-year-old auditorium at the Eastside school. "You think of all the memories in there, all the kisses stolen after the lights went out," says principal Omar Del Cueto. Fox 11, LAT
Keeping the Pellicano story alive
Today's New York Times reports on the court files in the Anthony Pellicano case:
Perhaps the case has not lived up to its advance billing as the biggest Hollywood scandal in decades. More than a dozen people have been arrested, including a movie director, the head of a Century City law firm and a cast of minor characters.
Mr. Pellicano himself sits in jail, awaiting trial on charges that his vaunted detective prowess actually boiled down to an almost addict-like reliance on illegal wiretaps. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of wiretapping and conspiracy. Only one actual wiretap has been produced by prosecutors, and defense lawyers dispute its authenticity.
Still, the evidence so far — 150,000 pages of documents and hundreds of recordings Mr. Pellicano made of his own phone calls, many of which include discussions of wiretapping — is a rich sourcebook of show-business manners, mores and argot, a vicarious tour through the dysfunctional heart of Hollywood.
Gang members as union men
Many ex-gang bangers have joined the iron workers union, and the Times does a feature on them. LAT
Democratic party endorses Oropeza
State Sen. Jenny Oropeza won the party's backing in the 37th congressional district scramble. Breeze Also, Oropeza supporters are targeting rival candidate Assemblywoman Laura Richardson over a mailer she sent eleven years ago that some call anti-gay.
Unexpected MacArthur Park critic
Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute always sides with the LAPD and finds fault in department critics — it's her pundit schtick. But even she calls the May 1 breakdown of law and order by the Metro Division in MacArthur a "debacle [that] left a shameful mark on the department." Of course, she still blames "LAPD bashers" and assures us that "even without the incessant media coverage of that evening's events, there is no question that the department would have reacted as strongly to prevent a reoccurrence." Um, no question at all? LAT Opinion
Monday columns:
Orlov/Daily News: What's next now that the mayor has his school board majority?
Hymon/LAT: Mayor's climate plan and his SUV.
Hymon/LAT: Mayor's climate plan and his SUV.
Semi full of fertilizer stolen
Truck is recovered without the load, but police suspect thieves not terrorists. City News Service
Ducks win in overtime
Anaheim needs a win at home Tuesday to advance to the Stanley Cup finals.
Noted
Hertzberg interviewed
The former candidate for mayor is now chairman of G24 Innovations Limited, a Welsh company that makes solar power cells. He sat for a Q-and-A with the L.A. Business Journal.
JPL opens its gates
USC professor Clifford V. Johnson blogged about this weekend's annual open house at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Los Angeles River documentary
The 27-minute film from Plasmatic Concepts includes key players in the river's future.
Ben Fritz and Alicia Kirk
Fritz is a Variety reporter and one of the brains behind the satirical site Dateline Hollywood. Kirk is a staff writer for "Without a Trace." Their weekend nuptials were blurbed in the NYT's Weddings and Celebrations pages.
Gurza protests maybe too much
Times columnist Agustin Gurza dislikes being asked about Gustavo Arellano's Ask a Mexican column enough that he wrote a whole unsolicited Culture Mix column about it, calling Arellano "like the Paris Hilton of the Latino journalism world....Arellano's shtick is to be the lightning rod for Mexican haters and for the politically correct critics he calls Chicano Yaktivists, admittedly a funny term."
Dissing bloggers
Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel has a blogger in his family, but he still trashes the form in a Sunday Opinion piece that elevates critic to revered status: "I don't think it's impossible for bloggers to write intelligent reviews. I do think, however, that a simple "love" of reading (or movie-going or whatever) is an insufficient qualification for the job. That way often leads to cultishness (see the currently inflated reputations of Philip K. Dick or Cornell Woolrich, both easy reads for lazy, word-addicted minds)."
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