Firefighters were dropping water on a fire that began beside Sepulveda Boulevard on the east rim of Sepulveda Pass when smoke was spotted rising a few miles away at Muholland Drive and Coldwater Canyon Avenue. A third blaze near Mulholland apparently got started due to a power transformer blowing.

Pam van Hylckama reported Thursday on Twitter (she blogs as Bookalicious) that a man tried to carjack her, but he was bitten by her dog and fled the scene. She reported it to police, who checked her email for any particularly virulent sounding threats. Apparently they saw one from a rejected author that seemed suspicious, went to the man's home and found bite marks on his arm.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck suffered a broken collarbone during a motocross event on Thursday and is home resting. He's expected back at work on Monday.

This week's edition of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles totals 148 pages — "the largest in our 26 year history," says editor Rob Eshman. "It is also completely redesigned, with a new masthead, new page layouts, new features."

On Sept. 11 at the Hollywood Bowl, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky narrated the Abraham Lincoln parts of it “A Lincoln Portrait,” by Aaron Copland. Watch the video.

Character actor Lance LeGault worked in Hollywood for 50 years. You know his face and his deep voice, as in the following video.

The Egyptian Christians who made anti-Islam movie, LAFD's 911 dispatchers too slow on CPR, LAT explains Stevens photo, Garcetti speech stresses jobs and break from Villaraigosa, stadium plan goes to City Council and a big media Scientology watcher resigns.

The man fell "from considerable height" on Thursday in the rotunda of the center's green building, WeHo News reports. Sheriff's detectives made a tentative determination that it was a suicide.

Nirvan Mullick's little video about an Eastside boy's cardboard arcade is now a foundation, a cardboard movement and a Global Day of Play on Oct. 6. New video from Mullick.

The differences between Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman are few, says the Daily News editorial, "but they're significant....We urge a vote for Howard Berman."

Many in Los Angeles just became acquainted with the architectural photographs of Pedro E. Guerrero this April when he appeared at an exhibition of his work at Wodbury University's gallery...

An email to Los Angeles area Obama donors says the concert evening will be "a large scale event with multiple performers and speakers preceding the President’s remarks," the Hollywood Reporter says. Good news on the Obamajam front: it's a Sunday night.

In the late 1970s, performance artist Stephen Seemayer used an 8mm movie camera to film the artists who were starting to inhabit Downtown, "before skyscrapers, MOCA and loft living." His 1981 documentary, "Young Turks," has been re-cut with Pamela Wilson using found footage of Al's Bar, Pino's Tropical Paradise, the Atomic Cafe and other landmarks of the Downtown art scene that no longer exist. Watch the trailer inside.

For a long time the keepers of the weather stats believed the hottest temperature recorded on Earth to be 136 degrees at El Azizia, Libya, exactly 90 years ago today — September 13, 1922. Doubts were raised, studies were done, and now scientists say the distinction belongs to Death Valley.

This three-minute video from French television "is almost haunting in its poetic but spare portrayal of what was then seen as the city of the future." Via The Atlantic Cities.

Farmers Field at City Hall, Kirk Douglas gives millions to the homeless, The Wrap suit dismissed, USC reverses ban on Daily News reporter, dark realities at the Beverly Hills courthouse and more.

City Councilman Eric Garcetti plans to "outline some of his thoughts on the future of Los Angeles" in a Thursday evening speech at Los Angeles City College.

The Los Angeles City Council gave preliminary approval of new campaign rules that raise contribution limits to $700 in City Council races and $1,300 in citywide races. Plus more matching funds.

Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman are both liberal Democrats, more or less. But they also are fighting for their political survival in a San Fernando Valley congressional district that is about 26% Republican in registration, and by now most of the Democrats (48%) have probably long made up their minds who to vote for. So this has been claim a Republican week.

Johnny Perez came out of San Antonio as the drummer of the 1960s band Sir Douglas Quintet, which had hits with 'She's About a Mover" and "Mendocino." Perez landed in Topanga Canyon and more recently owned Topanga Skyline Studio, a famous recording venue used by Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Sting, T-Bone Burnett and others.

AP has tracked down Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a 55-year-old Coptic Christian near Los Angeles who says he was involved in the film but who denies he is the missing "Sam Bacile." AP says he pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California, was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and ordered not to use computers or the Internet without approval from his probation officer.

Philips is the former LA Times staff writer who left the paper shortly after editors fully retracted his 2008 story naming names in the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. He will break what he calls a new story Thursday via tweet.

They will host the Yankees, Red Sox and Rays at Dodger Stadium — the first visit ever to Chavez Ravine for the Tampa Bay team. And the Dodgers will make their return to Yankee Stadium, scene of so many great World Series battles. And Vin Scully should go.

Looking gaunt after losing 45 pounds, and using a walker, Rosendahl said he will decide by the first week of October whether he will run for reelection next year.

Filmmaker Sam Bacile, who talked to Associated Press Tuesday by phone "from an undisclosed location," admits provocation was the intent. "Islam is a cancer," he told the Wall Street Journal. "The movie is a political movie. It's not a religious movie."

Southern California's air quality agency has spoken: the rotten egg smell that wafted over much of the region starting Sunday has been traced to the distant desert lake.

"It is very strange and sad to leave the paper after 21 years but it is completely my choice," the ex-Calendar writer and comics blogger posts. "I'm going to gamble and bet on myself and what I've learned over these past few years with the Hero Complex success."

NPR's Ina Jaffe calls the West Los Angeles "campus" of the Department of Veterans Affairs "one of the most fought-over pieces of property in Los Angeles." Indeed.

While I wasn't looking, the Readers' Representative Journal at the Los Angeles Times has rebranded as simply Readers' Rep — which I always called it anyway — and announced a new approach

Library cards for the undocumented, convention center costs way understated, Metrolink shows off a new safety system, Feuer gets an endorsement, Lalo Alcaraz gets some national ink, and the New Yorker explains what size of nipple dot gets a cartoon banned from Facebook for, quote, nudity.

Officially, there is no admission charge to visit the Getty Museum. But parking takes in almost two million dollars more than it used to.

Following a blow-up with editors last month, high-level discussions and a Florida vacation could not keep the Calendar writer and Hero Complex blogger around. His exit has staffers and outside observers both talking about editor Davan Maharaj's choice of assistant managing editor over arts and entertainment.

Late in the day, the South Coast Air Quality Management District posted an update in which it acknowledged the possibility that dead fish at the Salton Sea are the source of the rotten-egg smell reported all day Monday. The update noted, however, that "it is highly unusual for odors to remain strong up to 150 miles from their source."

A Los Angeles jury found that Las Vegas hotel-casino mogul Steve Wynn was defamed when Joe Francis, the creator of the "Girls Gone Wild" brand, told people that Wynn had threatened to kill him and bury his body in the desert. The jury awarded Wynn, a millionaire, $20 million in damages.

Renata Simril, deputy mayor for economic development when James Hahn was in the corner office, will be the team's new senior vice president for external affairs. The new director of community relations comes from the Villaraigosa Administration.

So many residents across the inland parts of the Los Angeles Basin began complaining about a bad, sulfur-like smell this morning — even clogging 911 phone lines — that officials were forced to look into it. Read the memo from an AQMD scientist briefing his board members.

Editorial board predicts an Obama win will mean death panels and "an effort to get 'In God we Trust' removed from U.S. symbols, including our money."

América Tropical, on a second-story outside wall of the old Italian Hall on Olvera Street, is the last surviving public mural by Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros in the United States that remains in its original location.

AEG's influence with LA pols, Sheriff Baca's very bad day, Berman gets Republican endorsements, upset over Xposed billboards, confusion over TAP cards, Variety's price drops and Steve Lopez's ailing heart flutters. Plus more for Monday.

Metro explains what will happen to the 405 freeway over the weekend of Sept. 29-30, and how it's basically the same exercise as in July a year ago.

On Friday night, Zocalo held its first event outside in the new Grand Park — a co-branded dealie with KCRW. On the panel, Los Angeles Times arts reporter Jori Finkel...

The Los Angeles Police Department officer who blogs for various conservative political sites using the pseudonym Jack Dunphy has two interesting observations about that use-of-force incident where the handcuffed woman was thrown to the ground in the parking lot of a Del Taco in Tujunga.

This labyrinth of 250,000 remaindered, new and used books is installed at The Clore Ballroom in the Royal Festival Hall in London. Check out the Bookshelf Porn page.

Time is running out for the Dodgers to win their division. They went to San Francisco Friday with a chance to cut deeply into the Giants' 4½-game lead over LA in the west this weekend. Instead, the Dodgers leave town tonight trailing the Giants by 5½ games.

Downtown's King Eddy Saloon, a favorite of the new urban enthusiasts for its patina of LA history and image as "Skid Row's last great dive bar," is about to go the full hipster route. A story on the AP wire this weekend talks about the link to John Fante and Charles Bukowski, and the likely arrival of craft beer and cocktails.

Our summer of urban wildlife encounters continues. On Sunday morning, a black bear roamed down out of the Angeles National Forest to briefly disrupt traffic on the 210 freeway and put a scare into soccer players on the field at Crescenta Valley High School.

The website LAUNFD posts a gallery of images showing the old neighborhood of homes that was cleared out, starting in the mid-1960s, between LAX and Vista Del Mar, the street in Playa del Rey that runs above Dockweiler State Beach.