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I've lost track how many times the name Burt Prelutsky has appeared on brief quips and digs published in the various letters pages of the L.A. Times. In the past...
LA Observed archive
for February 2005
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
Pressroom buzz at tonight's mayoral debate inside CBS Television City was less about what the candidates were saying and more about the latest Los Angeles Times Poll, to be published...
Madeleine Brand did a good scene piece this morning on Day to Day about how soft the backstage press is with the Oscar winners. Transcripts of the Q-A with best...
• Bob Hertzberg called on Mayor Hahn to remove airport commissioner Miguel Contreras, DWP board vice-president Sid Stolper, and commissioners Julie Butcher, Tyrone Freeman and Sergio Rascon. Each are officials of...
Way back in October, the L.A. Times staff was told that Pulitzer-winning automobile critic Dan Neil would begin writing a Sunday Magazine column about pop culture on Dec. 12. The...
Today begins the last full week of the first heat in the race for mayor. The top news for Monday is that Channel 2 may delay airing its own debate,...
Let the Oscar speeches begin. Updated from time to time, newest at the bottom: Sharon Waxman: Jon Friedman at CBS Marketwatch participates in the Sharon Waxman book tour. Interview excerpt:...
Bob Hertzberg's suggestion to break up the L.A. Unified School District is more of an idea than a plan, since even the candidate admits there won't be any specifics unless...
Local blogs and the Times have been running with speculation that FM Indie music station 103.1 will die once its relationship with Clear Channel ends on April 1. LARadio.com got...
Today's advantage in the Susan Estrich-Michael Kinsley feud goes to Kinsley. Last week he informed the USC professor that she was no longer welcome on the Times opinion pages, and...
A new round of campaign contribution reports hits the paper today. Bottom line: you'll be seeing a lot of Hahn and Villaraigosa on TV between now and March 8, even...
Every couple of weeks, Erik Himmelsbach sends in a Valley Boy column to CityBeat. In the paper out today, he hangs out on a rainy night at Paladino's in Reseda,...
Don Barrett's pay site that follows Los Angeles radio has recovered from its system crash. The first email published Thurday is from Charlie Cook: "As long as you are unable...
Remember my post on Tuesday about blogger Steve Smith's grandmother and her broken ankle? Brian Humphrey, the blogging public information officer for the L.A. Fire Department, visited Smith's site, read...
That's not a surprise, since the paper was a major cheerleader for his candidacy four years ago. This time, though, the Weekly is not as enthusiastic. We’re disappointed and even...
On the day that World War II ended, Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt made one of the most famous pictures the magazine ever ran. The nurse being kissed by a passing...
A reader emails that the top item on the official city website for councilwoman Janice Hahn is a link to her testimony at the Billy Graham Crusade held last November....
From a City News Service story this evening: About two dozen African American political, religious and community leaders announced a dual endorsement today of two City Council members who are...
Now that the race to finish second in the mayoral primary seems to be a fight to the death between Hahn and Hertzberg, the latter's manuevers to inoculate himself against...
Jason Leopold had a checkered journalism career. He was president of the L.A. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, but he also got fired from an L.A. Times community...
Starting March 1, much of KCRW's original programming will be available as podcasts. From the release: Podcasting, a growing grassroots phenomenon that’s captured much media attention in the past month,...
Nikki Finke reports in the LA Weekly that host Chris Rock will tone it down a little for the Oscars on Sunday, but still intends to tick off Bush voters:...
And now the site is down, possibly all week, following a total hard drive crash. Don Barrett draws every day on his rich archive of Los Angeles radio facts and...
* Updated The big cat that has been loping through the suburbs of Ventura County was finally spotted this morning by Fish and Game trackers. The call was made to...
Hilary Kaplan of the website The Next American City sits down with D.J. Waldie, author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir and the new Where We Are Now: Notes from...
The New York Observer phones up David Halbfinger for a chat about his new job sharing the Hollywood beat for the New York Times with Sharon Waxman. "It’s a great...
The public radio station at Cal State Northridge is difficult to tune in outside the Valley, but it has fired up a new transmitter beaming toward the city in a...
Getting two days' jump on the print edition, the LA Weekly has posted online some of its writers' thoughts on the death of Hunter S. Thompson. The pieces are by...
Blogger Steve Smith describes what happened when his 90-year-old grandmother fell and broke her kneecap, got taken to Valley Presbyterian Hospital in Van Nuys for a cast, then was sent...
Selden Ring was a bigtime Los Angeles-area property developer who happened to believe that investigative reporting was essential to the republic. The annual award his family endowed at USC's Annenberg...
Here's how valuable a nod from Controller Laura Chick has become in local politics. Even though Chick has endorsed Bill Rosendahl in the wide-open 11th council district race, rival candidate...
TV minister Gene Scott, part of the scene in downtown Los Angeles for decades, has died of cancer. The AP story says that Scott, 75, was a "shaggy-haired, cigar-smoking televangelist...
Every decade or so when we get a huge rain season, you can tell who the newcomers are. They believe, reasonably enough, that all this rain is collected and stored...
Susan Estrich's blog about the L.A. Times has come to life. In today's installment, she COMPLAINS IN ALL CAPS about the lack of female editors at the paper and suggests...
After months of attacking Jim Hahn as a corrupt empty suit—including a new mailer depicting the mayor with a bumper sticker that reads "I brake for campaign contributors"—Bob Hertzberg called...
In the first segment of his final show on KFI, Phil Hendrie apparently had too much fun at the expense of his replacement starting today, John Ziegler. The rest of...
An exchange of increasingly hostile emails between Susan Estrich and Michael Kinsley was strangely cc'd to the Washington Examiner and shows up in the new Phil Anschutz-owned paper. In the...
The blog Patterico's Pontifications usually refers to the L.A. Times as The Dog Trainer and almost daily flags what it considers liberal bias in the coverage of conservatives. Today, the...
Bob Hertzberg sat down last week with editors and reporters at the L.A. Business Journal. The accompanying profile in this week's issue is free online, but the interview is for...
In her new campaign against the L.A. Times and Michael Kinsley, Susan Estrich last week announced she was launching a website, latimesbias.org. As of Sunday night, it still wasn't working....
The gonzo journalist shot himself tonight at home in Aspen. Thompson's wife, Anita, was not home. The link is to AP; everybody has pretty much the same news. Reaction is...
Today's Sunday Opinion section in the Times offers little info boxes (with photos) on the records and reputations of the main political advisers in the race for mayor. Excerpts: Bill...
"Jack Dunphy" is the pseudonym of a politically conservative LAPD veteran who contributes to National Review Online. His most recent piece rails about the "carnival of racial pandering" he says...
* Updated with excerpts The paper says Sunday that a spirited runoff betwen Antonio Villaraigosa and Bob Hertzberg would be good for the city, and doesn't name a favorite—only that...
Today it's the Hertzberg campaign's turn to stumble in public. Somebody over there sent out a mass email boasting that KCAL-9 commentator Kerman Maddox (who is a Parks supporter) proclaimed...
The Times has filled the New York television beat opening created when Elizabeth Jensen resigned. Moving east is Matea Gold, who has been covering politics. She was a primary reporter...
The April issue of Stuff celebrates what the magazine calls the country's thirteen Hall of Fame dive bars. Total number west of Texas: 2. Total in California: 1. Total in...
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe submits to questions about the mayor's race from CityBeat editor Steve Appleford, who noticed that she is the expert debate reporters go to when they need some...
RonFineman.com is asking his readers to vote over the next week on the best storm gear on local TV news. Leslie Miller—from Channel 7, top left in the fuzzy hat—has...
Either the New York Times "House & Home" section has a long lead time, or Christopher Hawthorne hung on to his East Coast freelance gig when he became the L.A....
No blog, especially not this one, can post on everything. There is just too much going on. So we pick and choose. One of the surest ways an item makes...
Last time I sat in the lobby of Laura Chick's suite in City Hall East, the most prominent photo showed the controller with her friend Bob Hertzberg. She selected him...
Who knew that blogger Mickey Kaus' call for the L.A. Times to run more gossip about the private lives of politicians would have such legs. First John Carroll used the...
Other projects and a stubborn cold have slowed me down the last day or so. Here's some things I missed: • Estrich vs. Kinsley: USC law professor and columnist Susan Estrich...
The despondent man who caused last month's Glendale train derailment was looking for attention from his estranged wife, not to commit suicide, a police detective told the L.A. Daily Journal's...
Joe Scott, who worked in the Bradley and Riordan campaigns for mayor and has covered races—and who is researching 1930s Los Angeles for a book—takes issue with the meme repeated...
That amount is the gap between the actual median income in Southern California and the income you would need to qualify for a mortgage to buy a house that sells...
Big John's Village Cafe in El Segundo serves a 32-ounce cheeseburger, said to have the girth of a medium pizza and adorned with half-a-head of lettuce, three tomatoes, an entire...
The Times asked Bob Hertzberg for the details of his call to break up the L.A. school district and reports today there aren't many specifics to know. The closest thing...
The New York Times' former film critic is following the occasionally-beaten path—again—and going to work for Hollywood. Back in 1992, Mitchell took a post at Paramount and lasted six months....
This is pure one-source, unsubstantiated gossip of the sort I usually don't pass along, but it's so specific maybe there is something to it. The Times, like other papers, has...
A blogger can't even take a few hours away for a nice Valentine's Day lunch (at Angelini Osteria) without something breaking. While I was gone, the inbox was filling up...
Architecture and city planning critic Sam Hall Kaplan writes in the Downtown News that a new police headquarters across from City Hall would violate pretty much all of the good...
Fresh off losing in the city council, which won't let voters decide if they want a sales tax boost for more cops, LAPD chief William Bratton warns on the Times...
They are more capsules than profiles, if the 839 words spent on Richard Alarcon in Monday's paper are typical. (Compare to the Times and LA Weekly.) The rest are coming...
Scientists who go down in submarines to study the ocean floor off Southern California don't see many big rockfish anymore. But they have found a new species of coral they...
This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Sunday's Daily News editorial says of the paper's choice: Fortunately, there are four qualified candidates with a strong...
As expected, the name of Carlos Vignali has surfaced in the mayoral race. But this time it came from Bernard Parks, who charged that Jim Hahn's TV spots about Vignali...
The Sunday Opinion feature "Outside the Tent" seems in love with bloggers as the critics of the Times that count. Today it's Patterico's turn. Writing as Patrick Frey, he argues...
The New York Times bureau had its "So long!" party for the departing Bernard Weinraub last night. Someone who was there said the cocktail soiree, held at bureau chief John...
University High School in West. L.A. has been around a long time. It was built shortly after the former city of Sawtelle agreed in 1922 to be annexed into Los...
Richard Alarcon is 51, a crack bowler, lives with his mother in the Valley when he is in town, has two grandchildren, calls Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation his favorite...
News item: The population of California is now estimated (pdf) to be 36,591,000. How do we compare? Only 32 countries in the world have more people. The next one we...
Ex-mayor Richard Riordan formally endorsed Bob Hertzberg for mayor this afternoon on the "John and Ken Show" on KFI. Not much surprise there—Riordan's wife Nancy Daly has been co-chair of...
On the jobs board at Mediabistro: Distinction, an upscale lifestyle magazine for Southern California, is seeking an experienced managing editor to run day-to-day editorial operations. We’re looking for a creative...
From the L.A. Business Journal website (which updates with local breaking news these days:) Charges were dismissed Thursday against six associates of trial attorney Pierce O’Donnell who were accused of...
PreserveLA reports on ride updates, programs and changes to the park for Disneyland's 50th anniversary this year. Included in the work is some embellishing of Sleeping Beauty's Castle, pictured under...
Controller Laura Chick gave reporters the memo she shared privately with Mayor Hahn's challengers only after the LA Weekly filed a Public Records Act request, the Weekly's Jeffrey Anderson writes...
Sharp-eyed readers of the Times might have noticed recently that Times Riverside reporter Hugo Martin's byline has changed subtly—to Hugo Martín. He explains today, in a Calendar Weekend story (sub...
The Times critic-from-the-right takes credit for a correction the paper published today about its editorial last weekend on SpongeBob and the Focus on the the Family activist who is in...
If you can't beat them, join them? The L.A. Times and the Register have been rivals for years, but now are jointly offering a new advertising supplement for Orange County...
Daily News columnist Dennis McCarthy has found another good story. Two half-sisters separated in Massachusetts 45 years ago recently located each other and discovered they had lived two blocks apart...
The candidate who was making $1 million a year as a lawyer—then tried to move his kids out of private school and cut their child support when he gave up...
The founder and editor of Salon.com will announce Thursday that he is leaving after 10 years to write a book about Robert F. Kennedy, the New York Times says. Joan...
OK, I know that last hockey post was promised to be it, but I can't pass this up. Later this month, the Israeli national junior ice hockey team will fly...
Tonight on Channel 5's News at Ten, co-anchor Leila Feinstein narrated a story about her mother, a child psychologist, going to Thailand to work with tsunami victims. Feinstein opened the...
Tensions ran high in the City Council chambers. The police chief and fire chief strode about in uniform, councilmembers railed and the mayor's sister berated council President Alex Padilla. But...
Daily News City Hall reporter James Nash is jumping to the L.A. Business Journal, where I'm told he will cover the local media. Matt Myerhoff is moving off the media...
E! Entertainment Television is planning a daily reenactment of the Michael Jackson trial when testimony begins up in Santa Maria. Today E! announced that the part of Jackson will be...
The chief-turned-councilman insists in his Times profile by Tina Daunt that he's not running for mayor just to avenge the humiliation of having his 37-year LAPD career ended by Jim...
Franklin Avenue links to a Variety story on L.A. Times Opinion columnist Joel Stein scoring a second TV pilot with ABC. He'll be co-executive producer, which causes the blog (written...
The most creative showman in local AM talk is moving to the new all-sports XTRA at AM 570—where his 7-10 p.m. spoof-within-a-talk-show will be delayed several hours on Lakers game...
Three days after the Times' Tim Rutten castigated movie reviewers, Patrick Goldstein writes in his Calendar column that conservative commentators attacking the treatment of euthanasia in Million Dollar Baby are...
In November we told you about Carol Stogsdill, the former Senior Editor and Vice President/News at the Times and later VP at Fleishman-Hillard, taking a senior job at crisis PR...
Blogger Cheat Seeking Missiles didn't like a recent Times editorial about James Dobson and SpongeBob SquarePants, so he called to cancel his 25-year subscription. In the pitch to get him...
Mayor Hahn's shift of $100,000 to each neighborhood council for street repairs that we told you about yesterday earned stories in this morning's papers. (Times, Daily News, Breeze) Hahn's move...
Today's profile in the Times touches on the major turns in the life of Antonio Villaraigosa, but it's clear that, at least in the primary, these set pieces won't be...
Wayne Gretzky is back on Los Angeles ice (technically, El Segundo ice) this week for a fantasy camp at HealthSouth Training Center. People pay $9,999 to spend five days with...
Robert Parry posted frequent comments at L.A. Observed back when those were part of the mix here. A former reporter and editor, he was an account manager for The Pollack...
• Former Fleishman-Hillard executive John Stodder pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Monday on 11 felony wire fraud charges. His trial in the case of inflated Fleishman billings to the Department...
Antonio Villaraigosa didn't get the endorsement of the animal activists at Citizens for a Humane Los Angeles (Walter Moore did), but he's not giving up on their votes. After the...
You have to admire the chutzpah of the strategic brains behind Mayor Hahn's reelection campaign. Just hours before tonight's first televised debate in front of the Citywide Alliance of Neighborhood...
Business Week's L.A. bureau chief Ron Grover posted his latest Power Lunch column on the success of Ray and what it says about the Hollywood play of Phil Anschutz. His...
The Times, following its long-established pattern, has writers working on personal profiles of each of the main contenders in the mayor's race. On Monday Hahn gets his 2600 words. Noam...
Hilary Swank picked up another trophy last night at the SAG Awards for her performance as Maggie Fitzgerald in Million Dollar Baby. Earlier in the day, Tim Rutten's Regarding Media...
Updated through the weekend Lesbian chic: Screenwriter and "L Word" creator Ilene Chaiken is profiled in Sunday's NYT Arts section. "In 1999, after writing a magazine article about same-sex couples...
Jim Hahn holds the record for citywide elections won, and just as many voters think Los Angeles has improved while he's been mayor as deteriorated. But in the first independent...
"Looming financial uncertainty on the advertising side" is cited in the memo announcing that Campus Times, a tabloid weekly run out of the Times Community News operation in Orange County,...
City Controller Laura Chick has decided—after all—to divulge what she told the challengers to Mayor Hahn in their private meetings last week. Chick's office informed the City Hall press corps...
Tony Blankley, who we revealed on Jan. 25 is the new Mr. Right on KCRW's "Left, Right & Center" talk show, explains in today's Times why he took the challenge...
The saga of the Vincent Thomas Bridge lights continues. Donna Littlejohn reports in the Breeze that the cool blue glow on the soaring span over the port is now illuminating...
The Times and Daily News build spot stories around Valley attorney Fred Gaines, a prominent Hertzberg supporter, who says that he observed DWP commission president Dominick Rubalcava introduce Mayor Hahn...
Friday's New York Times has a real estate feature on aspiring Hollywood types who can't afford to buy an escape in Malibu but pretend they belong by renting an apartment...
The New York Times Hollywood correspondent fills in the blanks for The Forward. Some snippets: Waxman was born into an Orthodox family in the Cleveland suburb of University Heights, Ohio,...
Scratch one serval from the menagerie of wild and feral creatures that roam loose in Los Angeles. Animal Services caught up with the African cat—wearing a black collar and gold...
Prosecutors announced today that they will not file charges against LAPD officer John Hatfield, who was videotaped last June using a flashlight to hit prone car-theft suspect Stanley Miller. DA...
That Los Angeles magazine story generally praising Michael Kinsley that I mentioned awhile back is now online. Also up on the Los Angeles website from the February issue are the...
City Controller Laura Chick is responsible for objectively auditing the performance and fiscal integrity of city government, including aspects of the mayor's office. So some eyebrows were raised when the...
Rob Schneider bought a full-page ad in today's Variety (pg. 39) to reply to Times columnist Patrick Goldstein's Jan. 26 dig at the studios for making sequels like the upcoming...
Tanya Gold of The Guardian looks at this month's Vanity Fair cover—another triptych of young actresses—and sees "a desperate sight to make all feminists tremble. This is Disempowerment as she...
You knew this was coming. The LA Weekly's Nikki Finke turns her Deadline Hollywood column this week to an examination of last Sunday's farewell piece by New York Times Hollywood...
In his new TV spot, a gargantuan Bob Hertzberg strides like a giant through city streets, crouching to point out problems like traffic and poor schools. His promise to make...
John Beard: The Wall Street Journal devotes most of a TV column to the Fox 11 anchor's cameo appearances on series such as "24" and "Arrested Development." Tim Iacofano, a...
New Yorker editor Dana Goodyear's "Annals of L.A." story on the Ambassador Hotel is in this week's magazine (but, alas, not online.) She frames the Wilshire Boulevard hotel's fate as...
That must have been some hearing in Superior Court yesterday over the DA's money-laundering case against trial attorney Pierce O'Donnell. The Daily Journal (sub req'd) wrote that "the hearing was...
Rudy Tomjanovich makes his resignation from the Lakers official. For now, Frank Hamblen takes the reins....
Bumble Ward is getting out of the Hollywood publicity wars to write novels because, basically, life is too short to hold the hands of celebrity clients. Kim Masters writes in...
Where else but here can you get two-week-old news? An emailer just pointed out to me that Spinsanity announced on Jan. 19 that the political truth squad site would stop...
Those solar-powered blue LED lights that are supposed to beautify the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro didn't come on Monday night, the night after the big civic celebration hailing...
Times columnist Steve Lopez tries to keep up after meeting Bob Hertzberg for breakfast at 7 a.m. We learn that the candidate hangs out at the Donut Factory as well...
The LA Weekly's Jeffrey Anderson posted a great scoop [the Weekly has fixed the link] on the paper's website this afternoon: City Controller Laura Chick had each of the four...
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger raised more than $23 million in contributions, mostly from the usual suspects—critics typically call them "special interests"—in his first full year as a partisan politician. He spent...
The Daily Journal reported yesterday (not online) that plea negotiations in trial attorney Pierce O'Donnell's money-laundering case broke down over his "inability—or unwillingness—to provide incriminating evidence about Mayor James Hahn's...
Mickey Kaus gets hold of a staff note that LAT Editor John Carroll circulated after the Times ran Kaus' "Outside the Tent" piece urging the paper add more gossip. In...
ESPN.com is reporting that Lakers coach Rudy Tomjanovich has already had enough and will pack it in before tonight's game. He missed Sunday's game and yesterday's practice, citing a stomach...
City Council president Alex Padilla apparently didn't care much for the tactics used yesterday by fellow councilmember Janice Hahn (the mayor's sister) to lobby for a sales tax hike for...
I wonder if Dodgers owner Frank McCourt has ever ridden an earthquake—or watched when the third game of the 1989 World Series was halted for several weeks by a quake...
Clinton fundraises in LA
Jim Henson Studios on La Brea became a presidential campaign stop on Thursday.
Brown declares disaster area
The natural gas leak above Porter Ranch now qualifies for various government actions. Story
Performing arts with cheer
Donna Perlmutter closes out 2015 with productions downtown and on the Westside.
