As I mentioned down below, I'll be out of town all week. In addition to fewer posts from me it means I'm going to miss a couple of events I wish I could attend:

• Every day this week, Angel City Press authors will sign books for the holidays from noon to 1:30 pm at the bookstore in the Central Library downtown. Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Paul Conrad, KPCC's Larry Mantle and man-about-town Charles Phoenix are among the authors who will appear. In my absence, Eric Lynxwiler will do the honors solo on Tuesday for Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles.
• On Wednesday night, Los Angeles magazine — where I'm a Contributing Writer — will introduce new publisher Amy Saralegui at a holiday party at the Hollywood Roosevelt. High-level media types, elected officials and various prominent L.A. figures are on the RSVP list, and I'm told the magazine hopes to make it a yearly tradition and rekindle the power scene from the holiday soirees that Janet Clayton used to host in Hancock Park when she was editor of the editorial pages at the Times.