Elsewhere on the site:

• David Davis has a good interview with David Zirin, the provocative progressive writer who is author of Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports. Zirin says:

  A lot of book-length sportswriting accomplishes the impossible: they make sports boring. Many sports in sociology texts and historical looks at sports in the 1960s or 1970s can be deathly to read. The sports books that I've come to love are political autobiographies. To me, the holy trinity of these are Jim Bouton's Ball Four; Bill Russell's Up for Glory (as well as his Second Wind, which was co-written by Taylor Branch); and Dave Meggysey's Out of Their League, a searing book about what it was like to be a left-wing football player in the 1960s. Another book I love is Nike Is a Goddess [edited by Lissa Smith], about what it means to be a woman athlete in the United States. These are all books that have done a lot to help shape my understanding of sports in society.

  Zirin says that, unlike when Wayne Gretzky came to Los Angeles, on David Beckham "the gas tank might be on empty." SoCal Sports Observed

• Bill James speaks at next weekend's "induction ceremony" in Pasadena for the Baseball Reliquary. Yogi Berra sends his regrets. SoCal Sports Observed
• Jenny Price and the L.A. Urban Rangers will be showing people how to get onto the secluded beaches of Malibu next month. Native Intelligence
• Lotus Festival and Fourth of July at Echo Park lake. Chicken Corner
• More photos from the beach life at Here in Malibu
• A reader doubts the Times' front page ads will be anything but schlocky. We get Email

While Mark Lacter struggles with a painful kidney stone, posting at LA Biz Observed could be sporadic.