Weekend reads: Christine Daniels and more

With a GQ piece said to be in the works, the L.A. Times was first into print with a reconstruction of Mike Penner's painful transformation into Christine Daniels and back again. Christopher Goffard's Column One has lots of details and friends speaking who I hadn't seen before, despite Penner's ex-wife and brother (both Times staffers) declining to talk. Noted: Vanity Fair spiked its planned profile after writer Evan Wright said in 2007 he feared Daniels/Penner might commit suicide. That's what happened last November.

Also on the reading list this weekend:

As deaths of children in the L.A. County system have mounted, the Board of Supervisors has wrung its hands but not much else.
Guess what: the city's red-light camera program actually costs the general fund $1.6 million a year, despite generating about $3.8 million a year.
The City Council, in its first at-bat on the DWP fare hikes issue, sent the raise back to the DWP board but takes it up again this week.
Supervisor Gloria Molina named former Villaraigosa administration official Cecilia Estolano her district's woman of the year.
Sheriff Lee Baca's program to release non-violent jail inmates early hit a snag: there aren't that many who qualify.
One obituary of former Carter Administration official Midge Costanza did not avoid indentifying her as a lesbian.
L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan breaks with a personal rule and comments on a movie starring actress Zoe Kazan, a family friend.
Los Angeles couple gets married after meeting at the baggage claim carousel in Newark.
Modernist architect Edward Fickett's papers go to USC.
KPFK's spring fund drive lasted 26 days, says the L.A. Times, which discovers the Pacifica station is rather fractious.