Friday November 24, 5:37 pm: I’m following a long line of red tail lights up Laurel Canyon from Hollywood. The night is alive with ions and twinkles and plans for the weekend, but it’s still way too soon for me to get used to the early dark. On the CD player, the long somnambulant intro to “Cortez the Killer,” from Neil Young’s Zuma. Starting at the Canyon Store it wraps me in a blanket of uncommon patience for the slow wind through the potholes and roadside construction that has gone on forever. Maybe I even remember it from hitchhiking in the opposite direction forty years ago, to walk the Strip in all seasons, just to be there for the birth pangs of my generation. And now Neil begins to sing: “He came dancing across the water, with his galleons and guns, looking for a new world and a palace in the sun ...” The election is almost a month behind us and maybe, just maybe, a glimpse of a new world is on the horizon. Probably not. Already the residue of the electoral orgasm is fading fast. But you know what they say: If you drive from LA to NY in the dark, you can only see what’s in your headlights. But if you keep following the road, you’ll get there. We can only be where we are, keeping in mind where we want to be. This is helpful advice for writers, too, lost in their prose, trying to keep the overview in mind but only able to see what's swirling in our heads, squeezing out of our fingertips, sometimes like blood from a stone. Life's that way, too, I guess. Keep the faith and you get there, even if faith is a joke ... Man, some crazy shit happens when you drive alone ... And now, almost on cue, the quiet apocalypse of “Cortez” ends, and on the final cut Young is joined by Nash, Stills and Crosby for the ethereal and hopeful “Through My Sails. As I crest Mulholland, I open all the windows and the sunroof, feel the wind on my face and at my back, race for the bottom, and head for home.

The Staples Center on Friday night was brimming with babes. A veritable vortex of female energy and the vibe was good. Everybody was upbeat and excited as Pete Yorn played his opening set. Everyone, that is, except Georgia my eight-year-old who turned to me scowling and said, "I didn't come here to see some baloney band, Mommy! I want the Dixie Chicks!"

A few minutes later Yorn obliged her by wrapping it up and leaving the stage. The overhead screens treated us to a trailer for "Shut Up and Sing," Barbara Koppel's documentary about the vilification after Natalie Maines said she was ashamed W. was from Texas. It sent a thrill of pride through our anticipatory ranks. Okay country fans, you don't want the Dixie Chicks? We'll take 'em! The lights changed and the brassy strains of "Hail to the Chief" swelled as the first ladies of righteousness strutted on stage in their high-heeled ankle boots, their instruments strapped on, fully ready to rock. The lefty L.A. audience let out a high-pitched roar. Without further ado The Chicks let loose on the raucous "Ready to Run."

When the train rolls by I'm gonna be ready this time
When the boy gets that look in his eye
I'm gonna be ready this time
When my momma says I look good in white
I'm gonna be ready this time
Ready, ready, ready, ready to run.

Everyone was up on their feet, shimmying and pumping their fists. Of course, being girls, we all knew all the lyrics to all the songs, and we all sang along. At times it was hard to make out Maine's voice over the many thousands of voices singing with her. Franny, my eleven year-old who picks up lyrics seemingly by osmosis, lip-synched with the best of them. Me and Georgia brought up the rear. Doug, not a sing-alonger, admired the Bad Cat amps and the red hot licks washing over us, and basked in the female energy all around him. Behind us a group of 'tweens, (perhaps even more excited than us) bopped and chirped the words between whoops of joy.

This was our girls' first concert (well, there was a godforsaken Hilary Duff thing that I refuse to count) and the first concert Doug and I had attended together in years. Doug and I watched our newly-hatched concert fans with amazement and deep satisfaction. I never imagined this day, back in 1989 when I met my man. He was the cute guitar player I ogled on the old Raji's stage. Our early courtship played out in the local clubs of L.A.: The Gaslight, The Music Machine, Bogart's. Those places are all gone now and a new scene has cropped up as we stayed home to raise our young. So much has changed. Now people hold up their glowing cell phones instead of lighters, and the concert t-shirts cost as much as the tickets themselves used to.

We came to the D.C. party late, having been won over in June by their latest album "The Long Way Around." Of course we'd heard their anthem "Not Ready to Make Nice" on the radio, and I had at first dismissed it as over-produced agenda art. But then the album fell into our hands and after one good listen, we were hooked, cooked and booked. We threw down a wheelbarrow full of money to see this show. We not only have their albums, but the girls are rabid for the tune "I Keep My Fingernails Long So They Click When I Play the Piano," penned and sung by by Texas troubadour Joe Ely, with whom Natalie's dad, steel guitarist Lloyd Maines, has performed for many years. At any given point one of the last three Chicks albums can be found spinning in our car's CD player.

My husband, our enabler, was a proud member of the minority: Men who weren't just squiring their girlfriends, wives, daughters and sisters, but understood that being a Dixie Chicks fan in no way compromises their masculinity. Not with the kind of aggressive licks Emily thwangs out on her banjo and the way Martie masterfully saws at her fiddle and with David Grissom bringing all his heavy blues rock cred to the party as band leader. This is not about hair or outfits (though all that was SUPER cute!), but its about music -- music formed deep in the soul and borne out by hard chops and authentic drive. It's also about independence, shrugging off that which holds you back from your journey, or flies in the face of what you know to be right. These are good role models for our young ladies. Yes girls, I whispered to myself, be that way. The ex-hippie dad chaperoning the 'tween team behind us let out a long, ragged shriek as they started up "The Long Way Around" singeing my husband's ear. He leaned forward and apologized, "No problem man," said Doug, "It'll grow back."

Mid-set me and Fran made our way to the ladies room where a fast-moving line snaked out the door. Everywhere were gals in their going-out best: sparkly tops, cowgirl hats, perfumed cleavage, skinny jeans and sleek LA-meets-Nashville hair. A guy swept past us on his way to the men's room and seeing the bounty of turned-out feminine beauty and goodwill exclaimed, "Wow! Girl power!" Yes siree.

The Chicks put on a great show, but you could tell they were at the end of a long, bumpy tour and were pretty tired. At one point Natalie Maines informed us that between the three of them they have seven children, "Not that we get to see them very much." We all sympathized and loved them even more for it. I put an arm around one of my own babies as they launched into their sweetest song, "Lullaby"

They didn't have you where I come from Never knew the best was yet to come Life began when I saw your face And I hear your laugh like a serenade

How long do you want to be loved
Is forever enough, is forever enough?
How long do you want to be loved
Is forever enough?
Cause I'm never, never giving you up

There wasn't a dry maternal eye in the house.

Finally, it had to end. We applauded and whistled and as we did I explained the strange custom of encores to Georgia, who didn't understand the point, but yelled for more with the rest of us. Being at this gig with our big girls felt somehow like coming full-circle. We were back where we started, but with so much more to show for ourselves now. We, like the Dixie Chicks, had all taken the long way around and it just felt incredibly good.

Sunday afternoon I headed to LAX to see what was happening on the Engineers and Architects Association picket line. On one of the busiest travel days of the year there wasn't much traffic to report, and the only police-related incidents were a few jaywalking tickets. Those caught can't say they weren't warned:

On a separate note: Thanks for all the great feedback after my introductory post and my Metro with the mayor experience. Lots of awesome story ideas, please keep them coming.

Like to walk off the turkey dinner on a Malibu beach? Tired of Zuma, Surfrider, and the rest of the 7 miles of beaches that have parking lots and are easy to find? Want to see the other 20 miles of the stunning Malibu coast--the beaches that are lined with private development?

Herewith Part 2 of the Malibu Beaches Owner's Manual, for public owners who want to enjoy their extensive public lands on beaches that aren't always easy to find or use. Part 1 covered the three westernmost beaches with accessways--Lechuza, Broad, and Escondido. This second installment continues east to the Latigo Shore, Malibu Rd., and Malibu Colony beaches.

This is a great time of year to go. The sea turns to painterly grays and dark blues, and crowds are nonexistent. And the winter months bring spectacular super-low tides, generally around the full moon. Check the tide tables in the L.A. Times (look for negative ##s, esp. lower than -1), or on one of the tide prediction websites.

And do check the tables, because these beaches are very narrow--as are all the beaches east of Broad--and along many stretches, the tide often comes up to the houses. The obvious downside is that you often can't use them at high tide. The good news, though, is that while all these beaches are public to the "mean high tide line" (working definition: the wet sand), there often isn't a lot of private dry sand to worry about.

All these beaches offer plenty of public easements on whatever dry sand there is, too. Unfortunately, while the Coastal Commission has drawn up wonderfully user-friendly easement maps for Broad Beach, they haven't done so yet for the rest. The more technical maps are hard to read--but not impossible (go to p. 23 of the PDF) , if you want to find out where you can play volleyball or plant your umbrella. Or just call the Coastal Commission to find the easements on any particular stretch of beach--805-585-1800.

Use the same # to report any access troubles. Most visits are trouble-free, but problems are not unknown....

From west to east:

LATIGO SHORE -- The beach below Latigo Shore Dr. should get a lot easier to operate very soon. According to the Coastal Commission, this road is public. Well, right now it's plastered with "private st." and "no parking" signs, but the state is in the legal process of opening it up. Caltrans gave up ownership of this piece of the old PCH several years ago, and the homeowners snapped it up--but the public actually had the right to do so first, and the state treats the transfer as illegal and therefore invalid.

Access For All--the tireless nonprofit that works for access all along the Malibu coast--is working to bring the signs down, too, and is planning to open more accessways along the road.

How to operate: The current single accessway is a half-minute walk down the road from the PCH. You can park on the road, since it is public, but you might get a ticket from the city. For now, I'd park on the PCH, and just wave at the "no parking" signs that we hope are not long for this world. Also wave at the ones on the PCH just west of the road: they're among many unofficial "no parking" signs that have mysteriously been appearing near public accessways along the Malibu coast, and that the Coastal Commission has asked Caltrans to remove.

On the beach, the condos just west of the gate all have dry-sand easements (courtesy of the state and Access For All). As do several properties west of there, so the sign that says the "beach west of this sign is private" to the tide line is inaccurate. As are the signs that claim the tide line lies a certain # of feet "seaward from this sign"--which you can figure out yourself, since the signs themselves are so often in the sea.

At low tide, you can run all the way west to Point Dume. But run fast.

Advanced features: The county owns the pretty bluff just west of the first set of homes. While I wouldn't park just yet on this public road lined with "private st." signs, walking on it doesn't bring the risk of a ticket. If anyone objects, you can explain that the Coastal Commission assures you that the road is public and that you're off to enjoy a visit to your very nice bluff.

How to operate: This beach teems with dry-sand easements (check the maps or call the Coastal Commission--see above). So the signs that say the entire beach is private above the tide line are inaccurate. Just ignore the illegal signs, too, that say the private beach extends 50 or 70 or 80 ft. seaward--unless you've brought your scuba gear. And the signs that say your right to pass is "by permission and subject to control of owner." And the sign that tells you not to lie on the sand.

And my favorite--"No stopping." Ignore that sign too.

Worth stopping for: the 7 (yes, 7!) various signs on the house in the 24600 block of Malibu Rd.

Troubleshooting: The access paths tend to be next to storm drains, so you may want to walk a few houses down before wading into the water.

Advanced features: There's a 7th entrance near the road's eastern end, through a 200-ft. roadside parcel that the CA Coastal Conservancy has owned since 2002. A lock mysteriously appeared on the gate, and the Conservancy staff removed it. A bigger lock appeared, and then a bigger one--and so on, until last spring, when the state halted the arms race and tore down the entire fence. A trail leads through the property to a viewpoint, and you can scramble down boulders to the beach.

Malibu Rd. can be entered only at the east end (from Webb Wy. off the PCH). The viewpoint is next to 24016 Malibu Rd. The 6 entrances--all very easy to miss, so watch for them--are next to 24314, 24436, 24604 (slightly wider beach here), 24712, 25120, and 25446 Malibu Rd. Park on the road.

How to operate: An amazingly simple beach to use. It's easy to walk or duck under the fence at the entrance, and the signs inside are few. The "private beach to the mean high tide line" sign at the entrance is inaccurate, since some properties have dry-sand easements. But more germane, it's hard to say whether this narrow beach has any private sand--since the high tide washes daily against the wooden seawalls.

Bonus feature: Malibu Lagoon is one of the richest shorebird and waterbird areas in the county.

Access from the Malibu Lagoon State Beach parking lot (off Cross Ck. Rd.): take the trail to the right, and stay to the right through the lagoon. $10 to park in the lot--or park free on the PCH.

You're supposed to watch the video, so I feel like I shouldn’t really say all that much. I’d love to hear from you with news tips, story ideas and feedback. One day I may chase a story I read about in Kevin’s Morning Buzz, another day maybe it’s a ride on the Metro Orange Line bike path (if I can figure out how to shoot it). Think of this as a Choose Your Own Adventure vlog – LA Observed style.

Thanks to my friend Kate Mulling behind the camera and Dutton's Brentwood Bookstore for the location.

As I read Mariel Garza's column last week (11/12/2006) in the Daily News of Los Angeles it echoed some of my own experiences in trying to connect my journalism students with the Los Angeles Police Department. Like Garza, I teach a journalism course at California State University Northridge, and wanted the students in my class to view a daily crime log as one of their 10 out-of-class reporting assignments for the semester.

Before sending my students out the door, I called the LAPD to inquire where I should advise my students to go, and what I should advise them to request. I expect that LAPD Chief William J. Bratton would appreciate this, especially after reading Bratton's response (11/15/2006) to Garza's opinion piece. I also expect Chief Bratton would be surprised to hear that, like Garza's students, I too was met with resistance, told that the records to which I sought access were not public, and given misinformation about LAPD procedure.

In his reply to Garza, Bratton blames, in part, the students' lack of preparedness and confusion about the difference between the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the California Public Records Act (CPRA). I couldn't agree with Bratton more about the need for journalists to pay attention to details like this. Just as details are important to those who investigate crime, they are important to those who report news. Any one of the students in my class will tell you that they've had this point drilled into them. Some have even received failing grades on assignments and quizzes for failing to pay attention to details, including some so seemingly minor as direction to "circle" a correct answer (underlined answers in such a case are marked as incorrect). These are lessons best learned in the classroom, not on the job.

As I am not a student, I'll presume I get a pass on the CPRA. I am not an expert, but I've filed enough written requests under the act to have a working knowledge of it. In addition, having been a reporter for more than 15 years, I can tell you that many public employees across this great nation are poorly schooled in the details of open records. Again, I speak not specifically of the LAPD, but of government employees in general, which is why I wanted to be sure to use the correct terminology when I sent my students on a quest for daily crime reports.

I began by calling the LAPD's Devonshire Division, but didn't end up there. At first I was bounced from person to person until I began to feel as though I was speaking a language no one else understood. I puzzled over how something I considered so routine could be so complicated. This experience is more than a month old as I write, therefore I cannot recall how many transfers it took before I was told that the reports were not public record because they contained information that would violate privacy. I also remember being advised that if the students wanted to review something specific they'd have to make a written request under the CPRA. At one point I became so frustrated that I responded by observing that LAPD would not appreciate being legally bound to reply to 19 public records requests. This was not so complicated as to require that.

I conceded that I might not have been using LAPD terminology. I suggested that perhaps LAPD might know these reports as a "blotter," or "crime log," or some sort of watch-commander's crime summary — anything that provided sufficient detail about the prior day's reported crimes as to allow a reasonable person to determine if any incidents were worth a closer look. I explained that newspaper reporters from coast to coast review such documentation in police headquarters everyday. It is how they determine what happened during the prior 24 hours, and what, if any of it, is news. Although the LAPD Crime Maps are a great online resource, the information is not thorough enough to make a fair judgement regarding newsworthiness.

I asked one of the people with whom I spoke how anyone at the LAPD could not at least be a little familiar with what is a routine practice practically everywhere else. The response I received was that what may be normal in other places is not the norm in LA.

When I asked a media spokesman at the LAPD how Los Angeles' many news outlets learn about crime in a timely manner absent such reports, I was told that they listen to the scanner. Now, having spent the bulk of my professional life in newsrooms, I know that scanners are not monitored 24-hours a day, so I stated as much. The reply was that City News Service does just that. I was told that City News Service was relied upon by the other news outlets in LA because of this. I was told that the demands of running a department the size of the LAPD don't allow for the kind of interaction experienced in smaller cities. Around and around I went until I wore out and stopped asking. I did not get the impression that I was being lied to. On the contrary, what I came away with was the sense that we were both speaking different languages, each of us perhaps assuming that we understood each other.

What concerns me now is that Bratton seems to blame well-meaning students, not to mention that he says something different from what I recall being told. Bratton's blog entry says:

If it is crime blotter information they want, that information is routinely provided to local newspapers by the area police stations through their Crime Analysis Units. The LAPD's Records and Identification Division routinely provides a crime blotter service to news agencies.

Failing in my quest for a review of the reports, I tried to find some other option and asked the LAPD media spokesman if there were any public meetings run by LAPD to which I could send my students. I wanted no special treatment, simply an access point at which my students could join the public in making contact with law enforcement. I was told of several options, including the Board of Police Commissioners, which holds meetings each Tuesday morning. However, I was warned not to send all my students to the commission meeting as there are only about 20 seats in the room in which the meeting is held and that they fill up quickly. (Why such a well-attended meeting isn't moved to a location with greater capacity is perhaps a question for another time.)

Ultimately, each of my students attended different meetings in a variety of jurisdictions, an adventure in and of itself as they endeavored to determine correct meeting times and locations. Some students went to public safety committee hearings in suburban communities. Some went to neighborhood policing meetings in LA. One enterprising student managed to review police reports with the CSUN police.

My conclusion was similar to something expressed by Bratton in his reply:

One surely cannot expect a police division in the Valley that on average responds to over 700 calls for service in a week, handles over 300 crime and arrest reports in a week to drop everything when a student walks in and wants crime information and wants it now.
That's why the LAPD goes to great lengths to make that information available through its Public Information Office, Media Relations Section and LAPDOnline.org. In March, the Department re-launched its website with more information than ever before including weekly updates of citywide crime statistics and a new state of the art tool called LAPD Crime Maps. It allows users, including college journalism students, the ability to find out exactly what crimes are happening, when and where in the city. Reporters should be encouraged to utilize the resources already available to them.

But what I learned isn't nearly as important as what the students learned after attending at least three government meetings each in LA and other municipalities (the list includes public safety committees, city councils, county boards of supervisors, school boards, etc...).

For most of the students, these were the first government meetings they've ever attended. And yet, the lesson some learned was not about the difficult and important tasks performed by elected officials and law enforcement. Rather, some of my students say the lesson they've learned relates to the frustration community members sometimes feel when trying to obtain information, or to do something as simple as determine the location and time of a meeting. It likely surprises no one to hear of a student being interrogated before being allowed to sit in a public meeting, the kind of meeting rarely attended by anyone from the public, especially a person with a notebook and pen. Likewise, would anyone doubt that a student journalist was disrespected for their pursuit of journalism? Though the comments may have come with a smile and a wink, they hardly impart a lesson of mutual respect. Instead, they risk putting students on the defensive for choosing a profession that is an integral part of democracy.

Nonetheless, I expect these students will become responsible professionals. Those among them who choose to pursue careers in journalism will hopefully be able to see beyond the negative experiences and come to understand the sacrifices made by public servants. I hope they will see not just a police officer with a weapon, for example, but a human being in a very dangerous situation striving to keep order, keep everyone alive, and make it home in time to kiss their kids goodnight. Hopefully these future journalists won't rush to judgement, but rather ask pertinent questions, seek the truth and write fair stories that allow readers to find their own way to a conclusion.

Of course, to do that, these student journalists are eventually going to have to learn how to get information, even if sometimes it means playing word games.

Despite the Big Big Troubles and the Big Big Worries over its future, the L.A. Times continues to publish wonderful enterprise pieces. A new addition I have fallen in love with features the work of a Times Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial writing, Bob Sipchen.

Sipchen these days writes a weekly column in the California section called “School Me,” dedicated exclusively to public education in Los Angeles. He is insightful, confrontational and fair-minded, determined to hold the educational bureaucracy accountable. It’s an example of what newspapers can do that is outside the scope of other media. There's a power of focusing a column this narrowly that gives it much more punch than the typical general-interest column.

Consider the top of this Oct. 2 column:

WHEN PRINCIPAL’S A GRIZZLY, CAMPUS LIFE CAN BE A BEAR

Nivi Lifshitz tells the story of her unfortunate introduction to the Los Angeles Unified School District like this: She answered her cellphone on her daughter's first day of school and was greeted by a scream -- "This is the worst-behaved child I've ever encountered in my life!"

Only later did the caller identify herself as Woodland Hills Elementary School Principal Anna Feig, Lifshitz says. The kindergartner, Feig told her, had crawled under a table and refused to come out. It seems her teacher, new to the job, had called the principal for help and Feig hauled the child into the office. The little girl spent three of the next four days outside the principal's office -- once, Lifshitz swears, for refusing to use the correct crayon color.

In later meetings, the mother says, Feig shouted that their child was not welcome at her school unless she started taking Ritalin -- an allegation the principal denies.

The parents kept their daughter home and looked for another school, even though the software developer and her musician husband, Joerg, had just doubled their rent by moving to the neighborhood -- largely because of the school's high test scores.

When I finally meet the girl, she's standing with her father outside another Woodland Hills school. She transferred there after what the parents portray as nasty battles with Feig and a week of nonresponse from the district. The girl, wearing a plaid shirt and white pants, chatters cheerfully as she tosses her vinyl Bratz backpack into her father's Prius, then pulls herself into her child seat.

This pleasant and precocious demeanor has been rattled, her parents say. She has drawn pictures of the principal as a monster, she has imaginary phone conversations in which she asks the principal not to yell, she has nightmares about Feig.

Given this portrait I drop in on the principal with caution, fearing she'll turn me into a toad with one blistering stare. I find, instead, a small, almost fragile-looking woman dressed in leopard print, with leopard-print jewelry. She's seated in a cluttered office, the focal point of which is a purple leopard-spot chair.

Before I've finished introducing myself Feig accuses me of misrepresenting the nature of my visit. Then, sensing my befuddlement, she softens.

"I know my reputation," she says. "I also know the good things I do."

After a short visit, Feig says she has a meeting, and I move outside the school's gates. Nestled in an upper-middle-class neighborhood and shaded with lots of mature trees, the beautifully maintained campus is the nicest I've visited in L.A. Unified. The parents -- many of whom say their children attend on permits available to students who live outside the school's immediate neighborhood -- rave about the academics, the attentiveness of the teachers and the high level of parental involvement. They brag that it's run like a private school -- that Feig, as several say using the same phrase, "runs a tight ship."

I've been chatting with child-herding, stroller-pushing moms (and a few dads) for perhaps an hour when Feig approaches. Apropos of nothing, she says: "I feel as if I've been kicked in the face."

Pressed, she says that as principal, she's always the scapegoat for parents who can't bear to hear honest assessments of their children.

Here’s a brief Q-and-A with Sipchen:

Whose idea was the column?
The column was my idea, years ago when I was an editor. I wanted to have someone else write it as part of a series to be called Laptop LA. The idea: Columns written by reporters on laptops as they explored various realms: Schools, Crime and Punishment, Health Care, etc. I almost got [former education reporter] Sandy Banks to do the one I thought was most important-education-when I was editing Current [The Times' Sunday opinion section], but she slipped away. So I'm giving it a shot myself.

What were your marching orders?
I talked to [Times California editor] Janet Clayton about this a while back when she was boss of the editorial pages. We were in total synch. We both agreed that the Times was among the institutions that shared blame for the sorry state of education in Los Angeles. When [former Times editor-in-chief] Dean [Baquet] invited me into the California section, Janet helped me to refine the mission.

What was your biggest concern going in?
The biggest is that people, despite what they say, may not really care enough about education to read a weekly column on the subject.

What were you most confident about?
There are great stories to tell and problems to expose.

What's been the payoff so far?
Lots of readers are telling me they've become followers of the column and plenty are calling and e-mailing with stories from the schools that they think deserve telling. This includes teachers, parents, taxpaying citizens and the occasional student. Also, I'm told that the column and the blog I do with a fantastic June USC grad, Janine Kahn, has become required reading in certain education and political decision-making circles.

What do you feel you still need to improve?
I'll always be able to learn more about education. Plus I'm still getting the hang of a weekly column — the tone, the ratio of reportage to reflection, the length, etc.

How have you balanced journalistic fairness and objectivity with the more subjective but enticing structure of a column?
I can't imagine a form of journalism that doesn't put fairness right alongside accuracy and pursuit of the truth as the highest, values. So I struggle mightily to be fair. But ultimately I can take sides. Being a columnist is a huge advantage when dealing with bureaucracies. If someone's obfuscating, dawdling or intentionally stonewalling about something, a reporter often is left twiddling her thumbs-the story's just not there. I can make a solid column out of that dawdling--and readers (as well as teachers, parents etc.) have responded with a level of gratitude that's very rewarding. Because in a sense, the obstructionism gets to the heart of what's wrong with education.

Anything else you think would help education writers and editors, who in my experience chafe under a belief that the audience considers education boring?
It's very easy to get sucked into the cult, to find yourself believing that all those acronyms and excessively polysyllabic theorems have a special meaning accessible only to a very special class of initiates. I sometimes have to slap myself in the face and chant loudly: "You're writing about people with human needs and goals, petty and profound." People are passionate about schools and we can't let the soul-deadened careerists who too-often control the agenda triumph in their self-interested desire to keep the public from paying attention to education. Clarity in this stuff is like caffeine-it wakes people up and may even addict them.

The full text of three Sipchen columns is available on my website, Newsthinking.com

They didn't come with signs, or stars in their eyes, either.

This time there was no Paris Hilton to see bend and grin for the cameras. There was no rock star legend like Dave Navarro to impress with an air-guitar solo.

This time the masses came caffeine-stimulated and loaded for bear, with blankets and soda and pizza and money — lots of money. If they came with joy in their hearts, there was no outward sign of it by dawn of the third and final day. These people were drained of whatever happiness might have driven them to stand in line for three days and nights in the hopes of spending more than $500 on a PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system. Supply was so limited it was expected to sell out quickly.

The weary gamers were in no mood to speak come sunrise Friday, particularly since more than half the others who had camped out with them were permitted to purchase their PS3s at midnight. Those who remained had been told to wait another eight hours because, well, someone important probably decided more suffering would be good for them.

No PS3 for you!

Some campers grumbled as they awoke, wondering if they had been played, that all the hype about a limited supply of the games might just be a publicity stunt. I expect they'll be watching the stores, ready to cry foul if more consoles show up before Christmas.

The LAPD appeared ready for the situation to turn unpleasant. Although there wasn't an officer in sight at dawn, a mobile substation sat just outside the doors of the Best Buy. The vehicle itself was an imposing presence. After reading about some of the nonsense that occurred elsewhere, perhaps it was a wise step.

But there was no violence here, only frowns and yawns. The campers were not turned away, however, a couple dozen people who lined up behind the campers beginning at 6:30 a.m. were sent packing a half hour later by a store employee. All the PS3s were spoken for. Like the saying goes: You snooze anywhere but on the pavement for three days and you lose. Game over.

We were six troops (Beverlywood and Beverly Hills) totaling one-hundred girls and moms together. We were participating in a big Girl Scout Encampment up at Malibu Creek State Park a week ago. Our troop (Beverlywood) had gotten to the campsite late, and found the Beverly Hills troops had erected their tents in perfect feng shui formation, on all the flat spots and had taken most of the picnic tables. We got busy setting up camp, organizing dinner and helping girls with the mass production of Swaps, the cute, little handmade pins they would trade with the other troops by the campfire later.

I took a small group of girls for a late afternoon hike along the Backbone Trail. We only went a mile out, but to these city girls it seemed like a grand adventure. We heard a woodpecker, saw some badly burnt trees that had black trunks and bright green crowns and a couple of horseback riders. Adding a touch of drama to the trek was the identifying and avoiding of poison oak, which grew everywhere in the area. When one of the girls had to pee I would leave her and guide the rest of the group around the bend so she could pee on the trail in private.

When we got back to camp everyone was talking about the deer. A herd had had come across the field adjacent to our campsite while we were gone. Someone else had spotted deer up on the hillside earlier. I was amazed at the deer's boldness. Girl Scouts were everywhere; hula-hooping, playing noisy chase games and practicing skits. Yet these normally shy creatures were all around us. It was as though we had ordered up nature and she had delivered in spades.

Night came swiftly, as it does one week after the end of daylight savings. Our troop was disorganized and behind schedule. The Beverly Hills moms had brought trays of pre-skewered meats for grilling which they served their troops with a nice, green salad. Meanwhile we were struggling with the Girl Scout Stew.

Darkness also brought waves of crushing homesickness for some of our girls. Shanyce, a poised, fifth-grader said she wasn't feeling well, but we knew she was just too proud to admit she was missing her mom. Joelle, a petite third-grader with a gentle smile stood over a trash can crying for her mother and horking up her Girl Scout Stew. My friend Jacki comforted Joelle, finally settling her down to sleep in her tent.

We got the Scouts off to the campfire and a few of us moms stayed behind to clean up dinner. Once we had gotten the dishes soaking, one of the moms from my troop handed me a cold beer she had sneaked in in a private cooler. I tucked it under my sweatshirt and left the area on the pretext of checking in on Joelle. She was sleeping soundly, a soft kafuffle-snort snore coming from her throat. I crept out of the tent and walked a few paces away, toward the edge of camp. I listened to the girls singing "White Coral Bells" off in the distance and felt deep contentment as I popped my beer, knocking back a long draught of hard-earned suds.

Suddenly, in the darkness, I heard footsteps. Girl-sized footsteps. Could this be an errant Brownie wandering alone on the edge of the woods?

"Who's there?" I called into the darkness, and I heard more soft, yet heavy steps, snapping twigs and rustling leaves. The tread was too measured and weighted to be a raccoon or a skunk. It must be a person. "Who's there?!" I again called out, sweeping the area with my flashlight, which caught on two little bright green LED lights. Thinking it was a Brownie with some kind of newfangled flashlight, I moved to retrieve her when suddenly I realized, 'No, those are eyes.' I froze in my tracks as I saw a large cat slink toward me in the half-light. It saw me and froze and we stared at each other for a long time. It was maybe twenty feet away, shadowed by the trees. The nearly full moon was rising though, and a thin sheen of light slid along its spine and down its long tail. The cat surely wasn't big enough to be a cougar, but what other cats would be up here?.

It stood but one giant leap away from me and Joelle's tent. Sweet, homesick Joelle would be little more than a tasty pig-in-a-blanket to beast like this. I dropped my beer and threw my arms in the air, and tried to shoo the beast away without waking Georgia or Joelle. I wanted to throw something at it, but all I had was my flashlight and beer, and I was loathe to part with them. I barked and whooped and jumped up and down but the thing just stood there, utterly unperturbed, staring at me as though I were a super-animated slab of beef jerky. That's when I decided to stop antagonizing the wild animal and back away. I walked backward several paces until I fell into a Beverly Hills tent, waking an irate mom. Then I bolted back to the camp fire.

I found Jacki, who came back with me in time to hear the animal retreating heavily into the woods. "Holy crap, what was that?" she asked, eyes wide.

"A large cat of some kind," I whispered.

"Maybe it was a coyote?"

"No, it wasn't a dog, it was a cat." Dogs feint and scratch, whimper and growl. This animal was pure feline, all stealth and intent. That much I was sure of.

"We have to tell Tashanda," Jacki asserted, and we went to find our troop leader.

Tashanda, normally a cool bean, completely freaked out. She told the Beverly Hills troop leader who went to find the park ranger, who told her it was most likely a bobcat, as there were several in the area. He rejected the notion of it being a mountain lion, as there are only two accounted for in all of the Santa Monica Mountains. What were the odds that I had seen one? We all clung to the bobcat theory, but I was haunted by the long tail. I kept my doubts to myself as we began the backbreaking work of packing up every scrap of food and hauling it back down to our cars for the night. We lugged trash bags to a nearby dumpster in pairs.

We spread the word to the other troop moms, trying to keep the lid on tight. Should news of the cat get out to the girls, mass panic would have ensued. When the campfire ended our girls returned for their S'Mores. Sticky and amped up on sugar, they bounced around the campsite, cat-proofing it with their noisy antics, and of course, further irritating the Beverly Hills moms, who had tucked in their Scouts and were ready to call it a night. But until every last girl was accounted for and tucked in, we were nervous and jumpy. We finally got our girls settled down, and hauling my daughter into my tent with me, I collapsed into a long night of restless cat dreams.

In the morning we awakened to find the Beverly Hills moms had served their girls a lovely pancake breakfast and had broken down half their camp. We also discovered they had taken all their leftover kabobs and dumped them in the lidless campsite trash cans leaving them out overnight. We were dismayed that so much cat bait was left out, but also smug that the perfect moms had so perfectly screwed up.

When I got home the first thing I did was Google bobcats. I looked at pictures, trying to reconcile their stubby tails with the silhouette I had seen in the darkness. While the size seemed right, the shape was all wrong. Then I Googled cougars and read that in fact, though they are powerful creatures, they are not that large, the biggest male weighing in at around 300 lbs. Reading on I learned that their primary prey is mule deer. I thought about all the deer that had migrated through our campsite that day and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had indeed seen a mountain lion.

According to the Moorpark Acorn, I almost certainly hadn't seen P1, long the dominant male cougar in our local range, as he would have been big. Nor would I have seen P8, his son, as he had recently been killed by another, unidentified male in the area. But perhaps I had seen his daughter, P7, a juvenile living near Hidden Valley. She would probably weigh in at a girlish 60-90 lbs. Whether it was deer, chicken kabobs or Girl Scout Stew that drew her to our camp, she was hungry enough to come in close and stay awhile.

I thought with a chill about the hike we had taken that day, and how I had left my small charges alone and squatting with their pants down along the trail. Nature isn't something you can order up, though with our zoos and Animal Planets and exotic pets, it sometimes seems like we can. As I made the short trip home down PCH the next day, the city came rapidly into view, and before long engulfed me in its familiar dangers. I felt comforted by traffic, and calmed by the noise of civilization. The city seemed to me a big cement cap over a seething, untamed land. It was nice knowing the only cougars I would encounter here are the ones with cheek implants who prey on men half their age in the wilds of Beverly Hills. But of course, we're all predator, belonging as we do to a species that yearly devours more acreage from the mountain lion's habitat, and pollutes his food chain with rat poison. In the grand, multi-species balance, what's a little Girl Scout Stew?

[Also see: LA Observed contributor Veronique de Turenne's piece on the Santa Monica Mountains cougars from the L.A. Times Magazine last year.]

Perpetual Christmas has come to Los Angeles, leap-frogging right over that silly feast-based holiday, what's it called? You know, the one with the turkey and stuffing and pies made from big vegetables. Thanksgiving? OK, if you say so.

But how much profit can you squeeze from a single meal? No presents, so songs, not much in the way of decor. Maybe an uptick in wine sales or floral arrangements or those turkey-shaped soup tureens. On the whole though, Thanksgiving's a marketing bust.
So it's barely November and yet it's Christmas. (Check out the elf to the left, setting up the holiday toy display at our local Ralph's.) Not the religious Christmas, the one with Jesus and frankincense and myrrh, and not the pagan one that celebrates the winter solstice, and not even the secular Santa one, centered on food and drink and parties and presents.

It's corporate Christmas, the one with no soul. Retailers shove their hands so deep in your pockets, they give The Nutcracker new meaning. The lovely, evocative symbols of the season become Pavlovian commands. Green and red and gold: buy! Happy children: buy! Peace on earth: buy! It's not your season any more. You don't get to decide when you're ready for Christmas, you just get to find out when you're good and sick of it. This year, judging by the store windows around town, that moment will come long before your second slice of Thanksgiving pie.

Reading Janet Fitch’s exquisite new novel took me hurtling back to the glory days of L.A.’s punk scene and gritty places like the Starwood, the Hong Kong Café, Madame Wong’s, Al’s Bar, the ON Club, the Cathay de Grande, Dancing Waters, the Anti-Club, the Atomic Café and other places I frequented in the early 1980s.

“Paint It Black” gave me that giddy rush of meeting an old friend I hadn’t seen in years but had remained quite fond of. As many people before me have noted, there was a raw energy to that era, as bands like X, the Blasters, the Cramps, the Germs, Black Flag, the Suburban Lawns, The Plugz and so many others came of age on the beer and spittle-drenched stages of LA’s most scrappy clubs. And it wasn’t just music -- punk was an aesthetic that embraced photography, clothes, cinema, graphics, painting, comics, poetry and alternative journalism (the early days of the LA Weekly and the Reader) when everyone seemed to bleed talent.

Fitch was at Skylight Books in Los Feliz last week, her last stop on a national tour, and a large and enthusiastic crowd showed up to welcome her home. (I’ve lived nearby long enough to remember Skylight in its earlier incarnation as Chatterton's Bookshop.)

Fitch told the crowd she hadn’t been a punk herself, but was friends with people who had. Likewise, I never chopped off my hair or sang in a band, but I knew people who did and I went to heaps of shows. (Authors are almost never joiners, we prefer to lurk and observe from the sidelines).

I’ve often thought that LA’s punk scene would make a fantastic setting for a novel, and Janet Fitch’s book has a definite punk sensibility, though her publisher has downplayed that angle. Maybe they were worried it wouldn’t play in Peoria and wanted to cast the widest possible marketing net for the Oprah-pick author who penned the mega-seller “White Oleander.”

But “Paint It Black” actually straddles two worlds and the novel is richer for it. Waifish art model Josie Tyrell is caught between the punk life and the gilded, beveled world of her dead boyfriend’s mother, world-class concert pianist and narcissist, Meredith Loewy. These two women from very opposite worlds (Bakersfield vs. Vienna) are thrust together by the boy’s suicide, joined in grief, mutual suspicion and loathing, and therein lies the tale.

I’m not giving anything away here – the boyfriend commits suicide as the book opens. Fitch lets that play out against a real suicide – that of punk maverick Darby Crash, who had the bad timing to off himself as John Lennon was gunned down in New York. That both marginalized any attention Crash had hoped to gain and enshrined him in the Great Hall of Irony. Crash’s suicide is another bit of LA punk history that Fitch captures so well. I remember rueing Darby, just like Josie, while my college roommates mourned John Lennon. But I’d seen Darby, in his leathers and Mohawk, five feet away on the Starwood stage, his sweat tangling my eyelashes. Lennon was some kind of barely corporeal creature, impersonal and mythic as a deity).

If Josie’s world revolves around her punk friends, Meredith’s world takes us into another nostalgic subculture of LA – the European émigrés who arrived in the 30s and 40s, fleeing Hitler. Meredith is the daughter of a Viennese composer, friend of Arnold Schoenberg, Billy Wilder, Aldous Huxley and Greta Garbo, and the images of this lost time are also lovingly portrayed.

The inevitable clash of old world and new and Josie’s struggle to understand the truth about her dead lover and come to peace with his suicide is told in Fitch’s usual sumptuous and yet precise language. Her ability to write about LA’s natural world is unrivaled, and the book builds to an almost hallucinatory climax, gorgeously written, that ends in a welcome catharsis.

But I also especially liked a scene earlier on, where Josie’s punk friend Pen (a correspondent for Puke magazine) trashes a room in Loewy’s Los Feliz mansion, kicking over a table with her Doc Martens, as she tries to convince Josie to leave with her. The symbolism of this scene, the new world kicking over the traces of the old, felt just right. The great irony, of course, is that the LA punks of the late 70s/early 80s and the European avant-garde had more in common than either Josie or Meredith realize – both sought to kick in society’s door, set the world on fire and rebuild it in their own image.

But then, L.A. has always been a city of refugees, of misfits, of malcontents. It’s what lies beneath the flawless glassine surface. It’s what makes us interesting and keeps us on the edge, and not just of a continent. Fitch knows that. And in whisking us inside these two disparate worlds, separated by only 40 years, she’s told a story that resonates, the world over.

On the first night of the 1992 Los Angeles riots I left the L.A. Times building to do some street reporting – and exited through a smashed plate glass window, broken by angry demonstrators who had hurled a newspaper box through the ground floor window.

As I leaped through the makeshift opening to the glass-littered sidewalk, I could see the burnt remnants of charred carpets in what had been an apparent attempt to torch the Times.

What a mess. What upheaval.

Well, the corporate mess at the present-day Los Angeles Times is by no means analogous to a civic unrest that took dozens of lives and caused billions of dollars in damages. But it isn’t lost on me that, when the Tribune Company figuratively tossed editor Dean Baquet from the building this week following the forced departure of publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson, those corporate moves left nothing but upheaval at the place where I once worked.

I make no claims of having close ties to the newspaper. I left the paper as one of the early buyout babies more than a decade ago and an ever-dwindling number of staffers remember my byline and my newsroom pod.

But I remain a faithful reader and an occasional supplicant seeking freelance assignments to tide me over until the writer’s harvest comes in. And I do that, yes, for the money but also because I admire the work of many people at the paper and value placing my journalism among them.

I have watched the recent turmoil from afar and refrained from joining the rush of media critics, media mavens and Wall Street analysts who have dissected the comings – mostly goings – of people at the paper and who have speculated about prospective billionaire buyers named Broad and Burkle. Even the Times itself is reporting on Eli Broad and Ron Burkle as if they were entries in a horse race with the paper waiting at the finish line as the derby prize.

I have been silent until now. Then I picked up the New York Times on my flight from Detroit and spied the business section story that wove the tale of how another deep pockets mogul, David Geffen, was eyeing the news company on First and Spring.

The second paragraph of the story jumped out at me. It noted that last September Leo Wolinsky, a managing editor at the L.A. Times, had been a guest at Geffen’s opulent home when the “delicate question” of a possible sale was broached, as that other Times so delicately put it, and the sale of some pricey artworks would help finance the deal.

Ironically, that same month I also had a brief meeting with Wolinsky on the USC campus after he had addressed incoming graduate students at the journalism school and reassured them about the future of the news business. As part of his talk he had brought along a video of a Florida newspaper’s podcasts, Web Site and Internet operations as one model for such a future.

Leo was kind enough to lend me the videotape. Now I find out that my old friend at the Times was meeting with David Geffen, which is a little like learning that Kissinger was engaged in secret diplomacy with China.

After reading the New York Times story, however, I am dreaming of bigger things: Wolinsky. Geffen. Merina. Maybe even a comeback at my old paper.

Unfortunately, I have yet to return the videotape that I borrowed so long ago. And the closest I ever came to what the New York Times described as Geffen’s “sprawling estate in the heart of Beverly Hills where De Koonings and Pollocks hang on the wall” was listening to a Geffen Records CD while driving through the fringes of Beverly Hills in a car painted by a guy in Lawndale.

If you see Leo Wolinsky please tell him the videotape will be on its way back to him very soon, wrapped in an updated resume.

If you see David Geffen, tell him that my calendar is open, my walls are yearning for artwork, and mi casa es su casa.

After all, one should never lose hope. Even if your circulation has plunged from a million readers to fewer than 800,000. Even if your editor has followed your publisher out the door. Even if the stranger sent from Chicago to clean up this Wild West mess comes not on a pale horse but on a sleek racing bike.

I just read on LA Observed that Bruce David Colen died Nov. 7.

Until several months ago Bruce was my neighbor. But, more important than that, he was also my friend.

Our first meeting was in our building's elevator not long after he moved in next door. Bruce asked what I did, a question I dread more than any other. I gave him the short version, the one where I just use the verb.

"I write," I said.

He didn't tell me who he was, but asked for what publication I wrote. I explained that I was writing a book, and said something about freelancing for the LA Times. His reply included something like the word "crap."

It still makes me laugh.

Bruce loved The New York Times, and no newspaper in LA ever threatened that relationship.

We were the only two occupants of our building who subscribed to newspapers. Together that meant two copies of The New York Times and one Los Angeles Times. It proved a complicated order for our paper-delivery person, who often left either one copy of each paper, or two copies of the same paper on the stoop of the building's main entrance. It took some time for Bruce and I to figure this out as we unwittingy went about robbing each other of the news on alternating days of the week.

I began to see Bruce more often in the mornings after that. Usually, he was dressed smartly in a white, terry-cloth robe. We'd pass in the halls as he was doing his laundry, taking out his garbage, or reading his newspaper on the banister overlooking the courtyard (provided the carrier brought him a paper to read).

Eventually I took it upon myself to become Bruce's unofficial paperboy.

My wife and I were usually up by 6 most mornings and, so, I'd grab Bruce's paper from the steps downstairs, bring it up and hang it on his doorknob before he awoke. (He began subscribing to the LA Times at one point, making the two of us the only four regular newspaper readers in the building.) We'd sometimes go weeks without seeing each other, but still, I took my volunteerism seriously. I delivered his paper every day I was home, without fail. I even programmed his phone number into my cell phone and would call to let him know when I'd be out of town. I didn't ever want him to think I'd forgotten to get his paper, or, God forbid, that I took the only copy for myself.

At some point a fellow tenant in the building told me that Bruce had been a food writer. A writer in LA? Imagine. I didn't pay it much mind. I liked Bruce because he was a kind man, and, well, if he was a writer, then that only affirmed my conclusion that he was good people. It didn't matter to me what he'd done, or what he was doing. I didn't even know his last name until after we'd known each other for months.

Bruce didn't talk about his writing at first. He was hard of hearing and, in all honesty, I think it embarrassed him that people had to speak so loudly. To avoid the situation I took to writing him notes, mostly when the carrier screwed us out of a paper. "Time to give them hell," I'd write on a post-it and paste it to his doorknob. Other times I'd call and leave a voice mail. "They did it to us again," I'd say. On the days we had only one LA Times, Bruce would ask that I pass on the Sports section when I was done. That's all he wated to see — Sports.

Sometimes other tenants in my building whined about how loudly Bruce's phone rang. His window faced the courtyard and, in the summer months when the window was open, you could hear the ringing on all three floors. I'd wave such nonsense away like flies. There were louder neighbors in the building. Bruce didn't get that many phone calls, and never at night. These people needed to get a life.

Eventually, Bruce and I became friends. We were separated by generations, but we were both writers.

I remember him telling me that his doctor had advised that he gain weight. I'd spy him with a bag of burgers from time to time, and he'd tell me again of the doctor's orders, probably because he worried I'd forgotten. He'd grumble about how bad the burgers tasted, but I was never fully convinced. I only knew that he indeed looked frail and certainly needed to gain some weight.

Eventually Bruce's telephone answering machine went on the blink, so he sought my help to hook up a new one. Of course, the problem was not his fault. It was the moron patrol that works at the local big boximacallit store. They kept selling Bruce phones without a message-taking function despite his specific request for one. By the third return I volunteered to take control of the situation and gave him an old, but completely functional digital answering machine I had on the shelf in my office. It did the trick, and he was so happy to be through with the techno dorks that he thanked me for weeks afterward.

Bruce sought me out as tech support after that. I was in the middle of writing my second novel, so I was home, just one wall away. He was writing too, a murder mystery, his first one, though I'm not sure if he finished it.

As tech support went, I'm afraid I was about as much help as the owner of our building was at fixing his apartment's plumbing. Bruce was a PC and I've been a Mac since the 1980s. But, again, I was happy to tinker, as were the plumbers. Bruce had the kindest way of rolling his eyes when expressing his frustrations. The man had style and spirit.

Not long before he moved away, I finally learned more details about Bruce's accomplishments as a writer, and a few things about his late wife, a famous designer. He loaned me his copy of Meet Me in the Doghouse, and told me more about the mystery on which he was working, among other projects. We were both seeking literary agents. I'm not sure if he found one.

The last time I saw Bruce was when I returned his only copy of Meet Me in the Doghouse the day before he moved away. That was at least six months ago, maybe more. Still, I fully intended to call him up for lunch this month. I wanted to share my new manuscript with him. I just finished it last week. His number is still at the top of my cell phone list. I looked at it this morning before I heard the news.

But now I read that Bruce died Tuesday and I sincerely wish I would have called him sooner.

He will be missed.

In a town called Okemos, Michigan, some parents spoke out this week against the presence of a Gay-Straight Alliance at the local high school while also decrying the appointment of a minister to the school district’s sex education advisory committee.

The disgruntled parents protested the appointment of Rev. Beth Grimshaw, a Church of Christ minister, because she backs same-sex marriages.

“This is not West Hollywood,” one parent told the school board. “This is Okemos, Michigan. What in the world is going on here?”

What in the world indeed?

Just for the record, Okemos is a community of 23,000 near the state capital of Lansing and is named after an Ojibwa chief.

In contrast, West Hollywood lists the Gabrielino Indians as its first residents and was once known as the town of Sherman before it incorporated and was officially renamed for a sense of direction attached to a more recognizable name. Oh, yes, the 2000 Census put the city’s population at more than 35,000, which does include a few gays.

But Hollywood – the industry state of mind and not that other city – has its own link to Okemos High School. It seems that actor and former model Tom Welling is a 1995 graduate of Okemos High. Perhaps appropriately enough, he played Clark Kent in the television series Smallville.

McKeown sent me an e-mail on Monday morning to say he'd worked with city staff to correct the situation. So, I headed over to the scene of the nine after lunch and, sure enough, the odd time limit had been extended, as evidenced by a couple shiny, new signs (see inset).

McKeown explained it this way in a follow-up e-mail:

We recently changed a number of meters on that strip from 10 hours to 9 hours. There were, mixed in, some shorter term meters measured in minutes. Apparently some of the new "9" stickers got pasted onto the "minutes" meters by mistake.

You show me a government that fixes tickets that fast, and I'm there.

My dear friend Betty Bumpers, wife of former Senator Dale and a wonderful rowdy activist in her own right, once said of another Senator who shall go unnamed that he talked so much, his motto must be, "Let no thought go unuttered." I think of Betty now every time I look at the front page of the Los Angeles Time and find myself paraphrasing her words because I can only assume the paper’s new mantra is "Let no font go unused."

What are they thinking? There is no place to rest your eyes. In the movies, you can always tell when they are using phony money. Well, the Times front page now looks like a phony newspaper, mocked up for amusement, not even trying to pass as the real thing. You have to fight the blinking that occurs trying to focus to see what is being covered. Is that the point? Is it a diversion so we won’t notice that there are front page articles on motor cycle racing in Malaysia instead of something that actually might be making a difference in our life in the southland? Their election coverage has seemed predominantly reactive – taking their cues from charges that have been floating around to see if they stick - such as the front page story that those supporting Proposition 87 might actually financially benefit from alternative energy if it passes. Isn’t that shocking! Imagine someone benefiting from alternative energy. No mention of course of the massive profits of the oil companies that are backing the opposition. For that you have to turn to a back section article and even you have to turn to D6 to see that oil companies are the ones leading the financial contributions to the opposition. Perish the thought that instead of all those column inches devoted to motorcycles, we might get a thoughtful analysis of the history of the initiative process and how it has been increasingly bastardized, bought out and generally abused over the past few decades.

I have vague childhood memories of newspapers actually putting something like “Election Day” on the front page above the fold on those Tuesdays supposedly so crucial to a functioning democracy. The Times hasn’t done so for years. When I asked John Carroll about it, he said "It’s a thought" and when I emailed Dean Baquet about it, I didn’t even receive a response. I wouldn’t presume to suggest a more active word such as "Vote" be used, but putting "Election Day" above the fold — in any font — would also underscore a pact between the newspaper and its readers that they shared a sense of community, a reminder the paper could certainly use.

I already have done my patriotic duty. Contributed to the civic order. Done my part to ensure political order.

I have cast my ballot, and it’s not yet Election Day.

Or more precisely, I repeatedly touched the electronic voting monitor last week with my digital fingerprint and zipped through 18 on-screen pages even before many of you sat down for the weekend to review your voter pamphlet and decipher what those television commercials have been about all these weeks.

For the first time I am among the “early returns” and I find myself in that category because I won’t be in Los Angeles on Tuesday. I am here in Michigan where I am covering an anti-affirmative action ballot measure that is reminiscent of the Proposition 209 campaign that passed a decade ago in California and is spearheaded by the same man who championed that effort, former UC Regent Ward Connerly.

It’s clear I am not in California anymore. There is a lingering malaise over the World Series that Detroit reached and lost – but that this year’s Dodgers never made at all. There also is a gubernatorial race in Michigan that is very un-Arnold-like with a Democratic, female incumbent who has widened the lead over her Republican challenger, according to the latest polls.

Meanwhile, in addition to the anti-affirmative action measure, there is a Michigan ballot proposition that would establish a hunting season for mourning doves, which I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to vote upon in initiative-happy California. But for those looking for a nostalgic connection between here and there, I can tell you that Kirk Gibson, a Michigan native and former hero in Dodger Blue, can be heard on radio ads pushing the dove-hunting measure and warning against “radical extremists” who want to, uh, kill the proposal.

Of course, there was nothing that trigger-happy on my California ballot as I went through my electronic ballot at the Redondo Beach Public Library, one of the 17 county sites for early voting.

A poll worker who greeted me said more than 200 people a day were showing up, and I assume that many of those voters were like me, a touch-screen virgin. Some may have been more skeptical about the integrity of computer voting or may have been nostalgic for the paper ballots we used to punch, prick or write upon. All I know is that technology allows me to be 2,000 miles away on Tuesday without pangs of civic guilt.

At the Redondo library, I sat in a plastic chair waiting for my number to be called paying a close attention to the instructional video playing a continual loop on the portable television set. The video displayed a mock presidential ballot in English and Spanish with the choices I could make. The candidates were Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Fingers then punched in a write-in vote for John Adams. None of those candidates or their political relatives was on my real ballot.

Neither were examples for other offices such as the Commission for American Literature, the Poet Laureate and the Ambassadors of Musical Theater. If those political contests had been on my real ballot, I wouldn’t be throwing away all that campaign mail or ignoring those political debates.

If fact, if my real ballot had mirrored the instructional video, I may have lingered in my electronic voting booth. Instead, I was tucked away in my not-so-private booth leaving fingerprints on my touch screen or bypassing some races or punching the keyboard with the names of write-ins who never thought they were running for political office.

In the end, my choices covered the screen in a maze of colorful boxes and differing fonts that were displayed for me to review. On screen they looked like a potpourri of theater ads and billboard and when asked to print them out so a paper ballot could be preserved, the ballot spun out under plastic looking like a cash register receipt I could never actually touch.

In this electronic age and era of too much political regret, I was given two chances to reject my choices and start all over. But I didn’t. It wasn’t that I was so confident of my selections. I had a plane to catch and someone else’s election to cover.

It was nearly three months ago that Paris Hilton stepped into the big box located adjacent the 405 to launch her singing career with a CD signing. This time the big draw will be Dave Navarro, of the band Jane's Addiction, not to mention the television reality franchise Rock Star.

Indie 103.1 FM has been promoting the event on air all weekend, announcing that Navarro will be at the Best Buy on Monday night in anticipation of the midnight release of Guitar Hero II for PlayStation 2, a video game that makes the air guitar look as ridiculous as it ever was. Instead of hacking away at an imaginary Gibson, players of Guitar Hero use a controller shaped like a guitar to actually shredd riffs and play the part of a rocker like, well, Navarro.

It's obvious why the makers of Guitar Hero II would want to promote the release of the game with Navarro, who decided to pursue a career in rock after hearing a Jimi Hendrix song at a skate park (skate park = cool). But it raises the question of whether we might one day celebrate the career of a rocker who sets his life on a musical path after meeting Dave Navarro at a West Side Best Buy.

Atmosphere used to count for something.

Names as big as Navarro used to seek out places pre-qualified as cool, which often meant Tower on Sunset Blvd. And although Tower is now history, must it be replaced by a big box store that, in addition to CDs and video games, sells $1,100 washing machines and $500 vacuum cleaners?

Perhaps the location was chosen because it's uncool.

Maybe courtesy is the new cool. After all, the building is out of the earshot of homes. And Navarro, a fellow Gen-Xer, is about to turn 40 next year. Enough said.

Regardless, welcome home to the West Side, Dave. Rock on!

Next time, if there's enough room in the Mini Van, would you mind bringing Rock Star co-host Brooke Burke with you?

Fume as we may about parking officers who swoop and cite our vehicles within the minute the meter expires, most of us have always understood the bit about the details.

As burned as we may feel by the sting of a citation, few would suggest that they were duped by some sort of intentional visual trickery. The mere notion that a parking department would engage in skulduggery seems lunatic. Read the sign. Follow the rules. It's simple.

That's why I'm sure there's a good explanation for why a string of "9 hour parking" meters in the 1100 block of Colorado Ave in Santa Monica is blended with a couple "9 minute parking" meters (see photo inset). Surely "9 minute parking" meters exist other places, not just next to "9 hour parking" meters. Don't they?

The 9-minute duration is odd. Why not 10, or 15 minutes? How about 8 minutes? And, while we're at it, why does the "9 minute parking" meter allow the purchase of far more time than permitted by the nine-minute limit?

In the spirit of search-engine dominated Santa Monica (both Yahoo and Google have offices there), I tried to find some answers online.

I conducted a simple Google search of "15 minute parking" and it yielded more than 28,000 hits. There were 7,900 at Yahoo. The phrase "10 minute parking" returned about 850 on Google and nearly 13,000 on Yahoo. But, "9 minute parking" failed to return a single document from either Google, or Yahoo. Nothing.

Of course, such statistics are meaningless because the sign still says what it says. But I just can't figure any other way to make the point without sounding like, well, a yahoo.