Pioneering and wildly popular Los Angeles-based blog Boing Boing will take down all content temporarily on Wednesday, Jan. 18 to protest the proposed Protect IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act pending in Congress.

The opener of the AMC show's fifth season will run two hours, it was announced Saturday.

Playboy Enterprises, founded in Chicago by Hugh Hefner in 1953, has been slowly moving west.

A roundup of news briefs, observations and email items.

Lots of tweeting and checking-in online tonight from the final night at Angeli Caffe on Melrose Avenue. And a call for food trucks to come feed the staff.

Just to close the circle in a story we reported earlier.

It seems the web people at the L.A. Times forgot that certain tags pop up when a mouse rolls over a photo on the paper's site.

This year's showdown in the Valley between Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman does more than just echo the 1980 fight in Sacramento when Berman tried to unseat fellow Democrat Leo McCarthy as Speaker of the Assembly.

It's in hardcover nonfiction where some change is occurring.

High speed rail, impounding the cars of unlicensed drivers, a Wendy Greuel audit, growth at the Natural History Museum and more.

Tony Ortega at the Village Voice reports that the top man in the Church of Scientology used Michael Doven, then Tom Cruise's personal assistant, to get reports from inside the actor's household. The former #2 backs up the account.

No, the Los Angeles Times acknowledges in a For the Record item, the late oil legend and Los Angeles power player Armand Hammer was not also a "baking soda tycoon."

Chris Burden's installation now at LACMA came together with the help of an interesting crew that reflects Southern California.

Manny Ramirez sat down for an attempt at image rehab with ESPN and vowed that if someone will just let him play baseball this season, he'll be a good role model.

George Clooney and Viola Davis grabbed the best actor wins, Octavia Spencer and Christopher Plummer the supporting actor wins.

Sports talk has been putting Josh Macciello on the air to plead his case, so Ramona Shelburne of ESPN LA went over to talk to him at his rented house in Studio City.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will be in Washington from Tuesday to Friday next week in his role as head of the US Conference of Mayors.

President Obama's reelection team has furnished donors with a list of more than 190 well-known Americans who the campaign hopes will stand in for the president during the year.

Jerry Lewis, the dean of the California Republicans in Congress, confirmed today what's been around for a few days now

There were Manning's Coffee Shops.

Student murdered in the Valley, City Hall park plans, making fun of TV critics, Olivia Munn gets naked, interviewing with Arianna Huffington, the KKK's membership roster in OC and more.

At 7 p.m. on KCRW's "Which Way, L.A.?," City Council candidates Warren Furutani and Joe Buscaino talk about the 15th district race that culminates this coming Tuesday.

Capt. Mike Parker of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is in Las Vegas talking up the electronic features of a black-and-white developed for the county by Raytheon.

The Service Employees International Union in California will announce today its backing of Rep. Howard L. Berman in the San Fernando Valley showdown with fellow Democrat Rep. Brad Sherman.

Doesn't look good. The woman has a history of mental issues and assaults on police, says Sheriff Lee Baca, but she wasn't arrested in this incident.

Judge OK's Dodgers deals, LAUSD may propose parcel tax, City Hall faces life without the CRA, a new editor for Huffington Post and more.

The Dodgers won't try to sell the team's television rights now, and Fox agrees not to object to the settlement between baseball and Frank McCourt.

After taking another look at the 1981 drowning of actress Natalie Wood, sheriff's detectives see no reason to alter the original finding: accidental death.

For the first time that I remember, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa talks about hiding under the bed with his sister while his mother was beaten by a drunken father. “It’s probably the only time in my life that I’ve ever felt helpless," he tells Channel 2.

The 13-1 preliminary vote today would remove to need to spend $4 million to $5 million on a ballot measure — by adopting the measure's provisions.

John Miller, the TV reporter who came into the LAPD with William Bratton and left to work in counter-terrorism in Washington, is now at CBS News. He does a story on bomb-sniffing dogs at LAX.

The Wrap just announced it has created the position of Executive Editor and filled it with Lisa Fung, most recently the online editor for arts and entertainment at the Los Angeles Times website.

The 23-year veteran of Heal the Bay and the group's president for many years is stepping down to become associate director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. He will stay on the group's board.

The event was held in the Compstat room at the new Police Administration Building, was hosted by Chief Charlie Beck, and included red and white wine for an audience of Civic Center types, reporters and cops.

Politics, media and more.

Best thoughts for Veronique from everyone connected with LA Observed, and our thanks for sharing Jake with Los Angeles all these years. He was one happy Malibu dog.

A new history book, UCLA: The First Century, has hundreds of photographs of the campus through the years, but this might be my favorite.

The reigning Mister Los Angeles will be the subject of the last bobblehead giveaway of the coming season at Dodger Stadium.

A Venice landscape designer has a Facebook album of almost two dozen dog noses poking out as she walks by.

Stodder, you may recall, reported to federal prison authorities last February to serve a term for his part in the Fleishman-Hillard episode that roiled City Hall a few years ago.

In my weekly commentary segment tonight with Lisa Napoli, we talk about media-shy Colorado mogul Phil Anschutz and his local right-hand, Tim Leiweke.

Shervin Lalezary, the Beverly Hills real estate attorney and reserve deputy sheriff who made the bust of arson suspect Harry Burkhart, was on Ellen DeGeneres' show.

The former Assembly Speaker and unsuccessful candidate for mayor says he can win and she can't.

Those wacky Burkharts, Chargers to stay in San Diego, LA's potholes in the NYT, arguing Proposition 13 and more.

Connie Bruck's profile of Philip Anschutz, Tim Leiweke and their empire in downtown Los Angeles — Staples Center, L.A. Live, the Los Angeles Kings, the proposed Farmers Field football stadium and more — is behind the magazine's pay wall. Here's a brief pre-look.

Read Nikki Finke's note to Variety executives, including this line: "When is Variety going to stop stealing Deadline's scoops without any credit?"

They paddled out Sunday by the hundreds in Huntington Beach to chill for a few moments of silence in memory of pioneering wave forecaster Sean Collins — followed by a ritual splashing of water and cheering that could be heard from shore.

Being attacked these days isn’t the result of saying something badly, "it’s the result of saying anything at all," Los Angeles Times op-ed columnist Meghan Daum writes in a long essay on the instant commentary (and abuse) culture so prevalent online, including and perhaps especially at LATImes.com.

'Nuff said. Look at the photo.

Tony Blankley, the former Reagan speechwriter and press secretary to Newt Gingrich in Congress who was the conservative presence on KCRW's Left, Right and Center, died Saturday after battling stomach cancer.