Bob Baker runs the writing website newsthinking.com. He was a reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times for 26 years before leaving in 2004 to become a novelist and songwriter. (Current project: The heretofore-untold 1952 civil rights movement of left-handed golfers that shaped MLK’s Montgomery strategy.) Baker co-authored the autobiography of R&B radio legend Magnificent Montague ("Burn, Baby! BURN!," University of Illinois Press, 2003). He is also a longtime fan of the Los Angeles Clippers, citing Matthew 20:16: The last shall be first and the first shall be last. He lives on Mar Vista Hill. Email
Only one thing will save the L.A. Times: topless girls.
Dear Sportswriters and Athletes, Could we come to an understanding about the reigning sports cliché of the 21st Century? Could...
It was the greatest feeling: Blogging. Vrooooom! An idea struck me and with nary a thought I had posted it...
I have fallen in love with the new education column by a Times Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial writing, Bob Sipchen. A short Q-&-A.
I got the phone call at home an hour ago: The Tribune Company fired the L.A. Times’ publisher. Tribune insists on pushing into an arena it knows nothing about — greatness in journalism.
(Written in American Airlines security waiting line at LAX) Here I sit, watching X-rays of your suitcase for six twenty-five...
This is a great time to be living in California. With less than two months before the election, we’re about...
Tonight, trying to decide whether to watch the start of the ABC docudrama or the end of the Manning Brothers...
For once I can recommend a fact-based melodrama that doesn’t have to dip into cornball fiction. The film is called...
My car’s radio buttons are set to talk stations. I can’t find a music station I like, and my CD...
July 31, 2006 Laurence Apathe President Los Angeles ArtWorks Center for the Performing Arts Dear Mr. Apathe, Here, in answer...
For 39 years—from the 12th grade until the middle of 2004—I wrote in the dialect of journalese. I communicated through...
| Humor comes to our downtown stages in two shows brimming with imagination: a "Magic Flute" that breaks the antique Mozartian mold and Matthew Bourne's hip "Sleeping Beauty" powered by a testosteronic high.
| Despite a meciocre record at Washington, Steve Sarkisian has been hired as USC's head coach. It may work out, but Phil Wallace says it wasn't his first choice. Interestingly, this move could lead to Jim Mora, Jr's departure from UCLA.
| "Wherever you go, there you are," says Buckaroo Banzai. Jon Christensen reads the new book "Trees in Paradise: A California History" on the long flight from LAX to Melbourne and reflects on what we can learn from history in a cosmopolitan era in which local diversity--biological and cultural--may be increasing rapidly, while the differences between places continue to shrink.
| Martinez riffs on the aromas of Thanksgiving and is thankful that a woman might be headed for the White House. You might not have noticed, he writes, but the upraised fist of today's political revolution is wearing nail polish.
| Take My Picture Gary Leonard is a regular weekly feature at LA Observed.
I went out to Hollywood Park Sunday for one of the last horse racing days before it is torn down. If the developers’ dreams come true, the famous race track will be replaced with about 3,000 homes, more than 600,000 square feet of retail and a 300-room hotel.
Before I lived in Echo Park, there was a tiny 1920s bungalow-cottage-standalone house on N. Occidental in Silver Lake. I...
It's been a few weeks since we checked in on the chuckleheads dogs. They were racing around like maniacs the...
