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* As usual, freshest stuff (think Laura Bush and John Kerry) at the bottom...
• David Shaw lunches on a double-chili-cheeseburger at Tommy's before he samples the Dodger Stadium cuisine for a column. And Bill Plaschke finds out why his email and Marc Cooper call the new field seats the worst in the stadium.
• Caltech's commencement speaker this year is Sandra Tsing Loh.
• At The Elegant Variation, Daniel Olivas reviews (and likes) John Shannon's Dangerous Games.
• A reader in Venice emails his shock that his Times subscription was renewed at 26 weeks for $20, or 77 cents a week. "When I voiced my astonishment at this ludicrously low rate, the guy on the phone seemed to think I was complaining. 'We can do it even lower if you like,' he said. I didn't have the heart to try and beat him down any further. I'm virtually getting the paper for free already."
• David Rieff, author of the 1991 book Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World and Susan Sontag's son, is profiled in today's New York Observer.
• I'm told that First Lady Laura Bush had lunch today at La Serenata de Garibaldi — not the Westside or Santa Monica branches, but at the one and only original on East First Street in Boyle Heights.
• That John Kerry appearance for Villaraigosa will be at Valley College, the former Democratic nominee told his email list today.
• LAist posts a pic of the Tagalog version of the sample ballot in the race for Alkalde.
• The husband and wife team behind the Liberty Film Festival are now blogging as Libertas, "a forum for conservative thought on film." They are starting to provide twice-weekly commentaries on Hollywood to Newsmax.com.