Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
Every week the Southern California Booksellers Association canvasses its member stores to find out what readers are buying. Here are the top fives from today's best-seller lists. HardcoverFictionHardcoverNon-fiction The Historian,...
LA Observed archive
for August 2005
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
Colleen Wainwright reports at Blogging.la that an L.A. Times circulation clerk offered her a lower price to take the paper for more days, if only she would not switch to...
Louise Roug, who has been on the L.A. Times' Getty Museum beat, is moving on to cover an institution with less wealth, simpler politics and not as good an art...
I just caught up with the new blog of screenwriter Josh Friedman (War of the Worlds, Black Dahlia), and now I can't get any work done. He calls it I...
Ripped from the headlines at Dateline Hollywood, TV evangelist Pat Robertson has called for another well-known figure who annoys him to be assassinated. That would be Jared the Subway Guy:...
Dodger Thoughts blogger Jon Weisman got up this morning and realized that the Milton Bradley incident nicely summarizes why he quit being a sportswriter at the Daily News and went...
If you've been watching the video from New Orleans and wondering why the city wasn't better prepared, consider this intro to a five-part "special report" in the local newspaper three...
Here's how it works: You send your resume, writing samples, family info and agent status to an anonymous email address. Then you submit to a background check and sign an...
A little morning briefing... • Brian Cullen, the suspected killer of model Iryna Singerman, was found dead in a Tijuana motel room. Authorities say he killed himself with a bullet to...
Dodger Milton Bradley spoke to the press Tuesday, in a fashion. The team's crisis PR adviser Sitrick an—oops, I mean Bradley—issued a statement through the Dodgers PR office calling the...
The Los Angeles Fire Department has put water-rescue specialists, inflatable boats and vehicles on military transports to New Orleans, Brian Humphrey says at the LAFD blog. Things there are, in...
Village Voice Media, which owns the LA Weekly among other papers, and New Times are in serious talks about merging to create a new 18-paper chain, the San Francisco Bay...
It's Charles McNulty. He's a senior editor at the Village Voice and teaches at Brooklyn College. He used to work at Variety. The previous theater critic, Michael Phillips, left for...
Police in Redondo Beach have answered three domestic violence calls at Milton Bradley's home this summer, the Daily Breeze reports today. In a July 11 incident, the Dodgers outfielder allegedly...
• The L.A. Conservancy threw in the towel on the fight to save the Ambassador Hotel from demolition. The school board votes today on a plan to donate $4.9-million toward conserving...
I'm told that the Writers Guild of America, West board tonight rescinded its decision to give the group's prestigious Valentine Davies Award to defrocked ex-prez Victoria Riskin. She resigned...
Good lede by Matt Meyerhoff on this week's L.A. Business Journal front-pager about TV huckster Ron Popeil, who is now 70 years old, cashing out of his famous Ronco Corp,...
The reporter noted for her Michael Jackson coverage emailed a fan club that she was dropped by Court TV last week. Here's an excerpt of the message, which is posted...
Nice image from New Orleans on the front of the LAT (at least in the early edition.) It's by Mark Wilson of Getty Images. Houston bureau chief Scott Gold...
• KCAL and KTTV each won nine local Emmy Awards on Saturday night. Among the top honors, KCBS won for best daytime newscast ("CBS2 News" at 6 a.m.) and best daily...
These were some of the best-read or most emailed-about LAO items from the past week. I might do this every week. Anybody find it useful? L.A.'s most popular car Daily...
* Late adds pinned to the end... This one is a week old, but I don't care. Enjoy the L.A. River as you've probably not appreciated it before, through a...
The National Weather Service has issued a "hazardous weather outlook" advisory, and the Daily News publishes a chart of safety tips in today's paper. The NWS web page predicting 109...
Grady Miller writes in the LAT's Weekend Calendar about a challenging rite of L.A. life, the left turn: In the asphalt labyrinth called Los Angeles, the left turn is one...
The Florida gator-nabbers who were summoned to save Machado Lake from the terror of Reggie have called it quits for now—just like the Colorado wranglers before them. The Floridians didn't...
Record producer Christian Julian Irwin wasn't being chased by killers with dogs or by Nigerian Internet scammers, L.A. sheriff's deputies say. After going missing for five days, he was found...
Tim Rutten's Saturday column in the LAT, nominally about the declining audience for Republican radio, posits that "While the political talk-show hosts and right-wing bloggers claim to have a quarrel...
Downtown's shuttered Herald Examiner building at 11th Street and Broadway is going to become offices and condos, with a surrounding residential complex featuring a pair of high-rise towers designed by...
Wilson's play "Radio Golf" is enjoying a well-received, laugh-filled run at the Mark Taper Forum. Today comes word out of Seattle, however, that the 60-year-old playwright has liver cancer and...
Pretty bad. Does anyone remember that the Dodgers ended last season on their highest high in many years? Forget the nonsense about being in second place with a shot at...
• Jill Murphy, the Getty's 33-year-old chief of staff with no art background, is leaving and apparently won't be missed. Her mentor since college at Cal State Sacramento, Barry Munitz, concedes...
The Times editorial page broke into conventional programming today with its second installment of Our So Cal Life. Instead of the usual third unsigned editorial at the bottom of the...
Rolling blackouts are occuring across Southern California today, supposedly due to the heat and loss of a power transmission line. About 500,000 people have been affected already. Record your work...
News on the local sports talk scene. Lee "Hacksaw" Hamilton, who moved to XTRA Sports (570 AM) when it subsumed what used to be the Tijuana-based "Mighty 690," has lost...
The Times is getting credit from Defamer and elsewhere for today's story on Scarlett Johansson’s 911 call, placed after she had a fender-bender near Disneyland perhaps trying to elude paparazzi....
David L. Ulin's choice as Book Editor of the L.A. Times is starting to get good blog reviews. Mark Sarvas at The Elegant Variation wishes him the best, writing: "We...
The first hotel in Century City, opened in 1966, fetched $293 million from Global Hyatt Corp., the L.A. Business Journal says. At $403,000 per room, it's likely to be the...
The New York Daily News reports today that Mayor Villaraigosa will host a fundraiser here on Monday for Fernando Ferrer, the Democrat who is trying to unseat Michael Bloomberg as...
This is the month that Variety's glossy VLife hits newsstands and begins to find out if there's any (v)life separate from the trade's subscriber list. Halle Berry decorates the cover...
• That's Daily News sports columnist Tom Hoffarth in the photo, taking a parachute jump with an instructor at Lake Perris. It's front and center on the DN website this morning....
Did the LA Weekly try to muscle in as the sole media purveyor at this weekend's Sunset Junction street festival? A "media muckups" piece in the latest L.A. Alternative Press...
It's been a busy day for personnel moves down at the Times, in Dean Baquet's second week on the job. First the paper gets a new book editor and juggles...
That elusive alligator is still loose in Machado Lake, but two men suspected of releasing the gator in Harbor Regional Park two months ago were arrested today. Turns out that...
The New York Times' most gonzo Los Angeles correspondent hasn't had a byline in the paper since April 14, prompting colleagues, rivals and competitors to wonder: where he at? Turns...
David Kipen, the Malibu-dwelling book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, is the new Director of Literature at the National Endowment for the Arts. Here's how the release explains it:...
When Dean Baquet became LAT editor, speculation swirled around the future of Deputy Managing Editor Joe Hutchinson. He came from the Baltimore Sun with the previous editor, John Carroll, to...
The Times has named David L. Ulin to run the Book Review. Ulin authored most recently The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction and the Fault Line Between Reason and...
The Michael Kinsley-to-Atlantic Monthly rumors are raised then dismissed in today's New York Observer. He had breakfast in Seattle with the magazine's owner, David Bradley, who is busily recruiting an...
The former ABC News reporter who worked closely with Chief William Bratton in New York and followed him to the LAPD is leaving for Washington. Miller, who has been the...
• Channel 2 won't renew the contract of political editor Linda Breakstone after eleven years, RonFineman.com reports. No additional details, except that political reporter Dave Bryan remains with the station. Before...
Councilwoman Janice Hahn is getting all territorial about the reclusive reptile that is putting Machado Lake and Harbor City on the pop culture map. A Florida theme park has come...
Janet Arvizo, the mother whose teenage son was at the center of the molestation charges for which Michael Jackson stood trial, herself was charged today with five felony counts of...
Mayor Villaraigosa's new police commission today chose John Mack to be president of the panel that oversees Chief Bratton and the LAPD. He was president of the Los Angeles Urban...
Melissa Lalum was named today as the new managing editor of the Daily News. A nice round of applause greeted her introduction in the newsroom, I'm told. Lalum has been...
Yesterday was a slow day around here—preoccupied with other summer pursuits, you know. We'll see how today shapes up, but here are some morning links... • Cars stolen in L.A. last...
The 1947Project, the creative blog trip through a year in L.A. crime culture by Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak, has thrown in with Rodger Jacobs' 8763 Wonderland to jointly bring...
• Rocky Delgadillo is mini-profiled in Monday's LAT by Michael Finnegan, who says the city attorney's political advisers are calling themselves Team 1600 — "as in Pennsylvania Avenue." Do I hear...
Quick, test your grasp of Los Angeles vehicle culture: which model of car or truck sells the most here? A) Toyota Prius - everybody's talking about the hybrid B) BMW...
I walked Wilshire the other day from Alvarado (Langer's Deli, at Seventh and Alvarado) to Western with a group that is looking at sending tourists to sights on the boulevard....
To go with the smelly red tides and prolific jellyfish, the beach vibe has been hurt by flat surfing waves. "This is as bad a summer as I can remember...
Brian Flemming is back in the news—at least in the L.A. Times—with a "Beliefs" page feature on his new hour-long documentary questioning the existence of Jesus Christ. The God Who...
First up on the LATimes.com podcast lineup are travel tips from Jane Engle and some past Column One stories. The page includes podcasting tips to get people started. Told you...
I confess I haven't been monitoring all of the media buzz, so the first name I've seen given to the Menace of Machado Lake comes from Dan Glaister, L.A. correspondent...
Noelia Rodriguez, the former Deputy Mayor for communication in the Riordan years who did a stint as press secretary for First Lady Laura Bush, didn't stay long as president of...
Hard as it is to visualize, the urban sprawl that spills seaward from Compton to Long Beach and Redondo Beach used to be a giant, grassy Spanish rancho that is...
Some links and things to know for getaway day... • The Daily News proclaims its own staff artist, Gregg Miller, the "best-dressed guy in the San Fernando Valley." That's him to...
Gawker has the memo: Elizabeth Leonard, the deputy bureau chief in the Wilshire Boulevard offices of People magazine, has been quickly promoted to West Coast Bureau Chief. The only mention...
I could almost do a standing daily feature on the interesting story du jour about Los Angeles in the New York Times. (And maybe I will.) Today it's a garden...
Links, things to know and observations to start the day. • Writer, humorist, KCRW impresario and blogger Harry Shearer has sold his first novel. Not Enough Indians is "about a down-and-out...
Pretty soon the wily alligator or caiman—take your pick—that is vacationing at Machado Lake is going to get a cute name and media immortality. He or she eluded the hunters...
Shanghai-born Esther Wong began booking punk and new wave bands into her Polynesian-themed Chinatown club in 1978, hoping to increase the meager crowds. It worked. Between there and Madame Wong's...
Tonight's Which Way, L.A.? with Warren Olney looks at the issues of race and class in the fight over King-Drew Medical Center. Elected county Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Yvonne Brathwaite...
The Times website has been carrying audio reports out of the Gaza Strip from Jerusalem correspondent Ken Ellingwood. Today he's in Neve Dekalim and talks about the emotionally wrenching evacuations...
Amy Argetsinger, who has been out here on temporary assignment in the Washington Post L.A. bureau, was named today as one of the paper's two Reliable Source writers. She tells...
Tribune bosses Dennis Fitzsimons and Scott Smith didn't bring good news to the Times building today. Full-run advertising in the Times fell 11% in July, compared to July 2004—the worst...
Wayne Tanda, the general manager of the city Department of Transportation, up and resigned today after just three years. That means Mayor Villaraigosa will get to put his own person...
Mack Reed has gotten his blog back online. LAVoice.org....
Boston Globe editor Marty Baron shoots down talk that he would leave his #1 perch to become #2 at the L.A. Times. Baron's name had come up in the managing...
The community blog run by Mack Reed is still offline this morning grappling with a hacker attack. It looks like Mack has finally been table to take down the page...
On Day Six, they couldn't agree whether it's a caiman or an alligator. Nor could the barefoot gator wranglers from Colorado trap the tortilla-gobbling, raw chicken-eschewing monster in a big...
LAPD Wife posts word of a new club for the wives of officers. From the group's website: The LAPD Wives Club is for women dating, engaged or married to LAPD...
I keep hearing tons of amazed buzz about the Tim Hawkinson exhibit at LACMA—more than I hear about King Tut. On yesterday's All Things Considered on National Public Radio, KCRW...
The Times' Column One story today is all about Fred Brito, aka Federiqkoe DiBritto III, the Eastside con man who talked his way into a $100,000 job as a fundraiser...
Trying a slightly new look to these shorts... • Former mayor Richard Riordan has joined the local office of Bingham McCutchen, the Boston law firm that merged with Riordan & McKinzie...
Blogger Steve Smith posts his astonishment that longtime baseball figure Bobby Bragan just became, at age 87, the oldest pro baseball manager—and the oldest to be tossed from a game....
Some anonymous jerks keep hacking Mack Reed's blog LAVoice.org. He's offline now (except for RSS feeds, which are getting through), and may be for awhile. He's asking for help from...
I've posted before about Laura, who blogs about her tribulations with oropharyngeal cancer at Kevin's Dead Cat. The intro banner there now reads: "After surgery sliced off an entire tumor...
Mayor Villaraigosa filled open slots on a slew of commissions today. The appointees include the wife of county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, the former husband of Controller Laura Chick, and Kelly...
On Day 5 of the Great Caiman Hunt in Harbor City, experts fly in (from Colorado, not South America) and a woman tells the Breeze that she reported a sighting...
LA.com is jumping into the traffic biz with a monthly newsletter of commuter tips called Car Keys. The first edition carries links to traffic-related stories in the Daily News (where...
Time magazine's cover this week unveils its take on the "25 Most Influential Hispanics in America." Locals meriting mini-bios include Antonio Villaraigosa, of course (looking uncharacteristically sullen in the photograph),...
Roger Ebert's Chicago Sun-Times review gives zero stars to Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo and also recounts last February's little spat between Rob Schneider, the film's "star" (if that's the right...
Timothy M. Gray is the new Editor of Variety and Daily Variety. In a shuffle of positions at the trades last year, he became executive editor. In the moves just...
Go figure: Two-plus years of L.A. Observed with no references to People magazine West Coast Bureau Chief Todd Gold, then two mentions in less than twenty-four hours. Here's the first,...
The Times quietly dropped "Dear Abby" from the feature pages a week ago, then waited to see if anyone noticed. Almost no one did. At least, there's been barely a...
Monday was Dean Baquet's first day on the masthead as Editor of the L.A. Times. Besides holding a half-dozen conferences on stories with reporters and editors, and fending off questions...
Friends and family of the late Times media and food critic David Shaw celebrated his life Sunday at Stephen S. Wise Temple. Times film critic Kenneth Turan led the event,...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's appointments to the Department of Water and Power commission are as previously rumored and reported: Mary Nichols, Nick Patsaouras, David Nahai, Bill Burke and Edith Ramirez. Bios...
Kids down in Harbor City aren't fazed by the six- to eight-foot caiman that has moved into Machado Lake—they threw tortillas at the pseudo-croc. Well why not? Authorities haven't been...
Longtime local conservative blogger Xrlq posts that he has been summarily banned from posting comments at Hit and Run, the blog of (loosely) Los Angeles-based Reason magazine. Spotted at Patterico's...
Rick Orlov's Tipoff column in today's Daily News quotes the best line that the late city councilman from "the great Ninth District" (as Lindsay used to say) ever mangled. During...
I can sorta see why they break in for Amber Alerts, but in these days of narrowcasting and hyper-targeted cable niches why would Comcast interrupt all programming in West L.A....
Monday's New York Times reports that the Getty Museum is "in final negotiations" to hire Michael Brand, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as the new director in...
Sounds like there are a ton of insider references in Hollywood Hussein, the new novel by Ken Baker, West Coast editor for Us Weekly. Monday's Page Six says that the...
Mayor Villaraigosa will be the guest editor for the next collection of student writing from 826LA, the Dave Eggers-inspired group based in Venice. The students are from his alma mater,...
What do North Hollywood, Tarzana, Glendale, Rancho Park and the heart of Hollywood have in common? They each have entire zip codes where the median home price now tops a...
* Newest at the bottom • Will Campbell blogs revealingly about the anticipation of meeting his estranged 15-year-daughter for the first time in five years. She happened to pick a Chili's...
Hollywood's sound stages and location crews are swamped these days. At her blog Totally Unauthorized, Peggy Archer regularly posts about what it's like from the working stiff vantage point. In...
The L.A. Times has a story saying that American Media, the tabloid publisher that backed off Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was running for governor and signed him to a rich...
• City Council President Alex Padilla was "near tears" during an intense closed-session fight over hiring a new legislative analyst for the council, the Times' Steve Hymon reports. There are two...
Plans to demolish The Derby on Los Feliz Boulevard and build condos have got some Los Felizians in an uproar. The fledgling Save the Derby Coalition doesn't have a...
Denise Fairchild has been thinking of running against former Speaker Herb Wesson for the open 10th district seat on the City Council. She hired Villaraigosa adviser Parke Skelton to get...
Big story on the front page of today's Washington Post tries to make sense of the Census Bureau stat that the urban sprawl around Los Angeles is the most densely...
CityBeat runs a piece on the frustrations of small newspapers like, well, CityBeat, over the city's coming newsrack ordinance. Every newspaper dispenser on the street in Los Angeles will eventually...
• The last radio station to be located in Hollywood leaves Friday at 11:05 p.m., Bob Pool says in the LAT. • All the high-profile ankling from The Firm, the once-hot Hollywood...
September's Vanity Fair has six images from photographer Tim Street-Porter's new entry on the list of books that are titled simply Los Angeles. I don't know about the book, but...
The Beverly Hills home where George and Ira Gershwin wrote some of their famous songs has been quietly demolished despite efforts to save it, the L.A. Conservancy announced Wednesday. A...
Author Frances Dinkelspiel heard new LAT Magazine Editor Rick Wartzman pitch the magazine this week at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She blogs the news that Wartzman plans to...
Mack Reed's website LAVoice.org already stood apart among local blogs as a place that welcomes disparate voices to have their say about whatever is on their minds. He writes more...
The L.A. Times website has a hit on its hands. Last Friday's story about revealing tapes Marilyn Monroe supposedly made for her psychiatrist in the weeks before she died in...
An email from an editor on the LAT features side says the Times has dropped "Dear Abby" after umpteen years. Something about a $20,000 renewal fee. The old-fashioned advice column...
• Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys throws up a new hurdle for NFL football coming back to Los Angeles. Times • Big raises for DWP employees has Julie Butcher and SEIU...
The Jewish Journal has posted a story saying that charter schools entrepreneur Steve Barr will unveil on Thursday a proposal to take over racially troubled Jefferson High in South L.A....
Rikki Klieman, the Court TV legal analyst and wife of LAPD chief William Bratton, is guest hosting for the vacationing Bill Handel on KFI this week. Her marquee guest on...
Alan Pavlik at the blog As Seen from Just Above Sunset photographed the brush fire that burned about 25 acres this evening in the Hollywood Hills. Over at Blogging.la, they...
Interesting graphic on page B2 in today's Times (and on the website in PDF format.) The paper's data analysis unit headed by Doug Smith mapped the location of every murder...
Erwin Baker used to be the Times' City Council reporter and by virtue of longevity was crowned the "dean of City Hall reporters" before that dubious label fell to either...
We have another new Editor in town. Ron Kaye, longtime Managing Editor at the Daily News, got the top job this afternoon. Every Daily News reporter I've ever spoken to...
Mayor Villaraigosa's pro-environment appointments are analyzed by Copley's David Zahniser in today's Breeze. He includes Mary Nichols and David Nahai, who he reports are expected to be named to the...
Novelist Walter Mosley's latest Easy Rawlins mystery, Little Scarlet, is set right after the 1965 Watts riot. He writes on today's LAT op-ed page that Watts "was a mass political...
Still catching up to the backlog... • CityBeat's current "Real. Best. LA" theme issue is the largest yet at 108 pages. Fun tidbits include the revelation that some King Tut treasures...
It has been thirteen years since a true skyscraper opened in Los Angeles—the last one completed was the 52-story California Plaza II tower on Bunker Hill. But once again, it...
Mayor Villaraigosa has appointed Robert M. Saltzman to the City Ethics Commission. Saltzman is Associate Dean of the University Of Southern California School Of Law. Yes, he's the same Robert...
Terree Bowers left his job as chief deputy to City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo recently to specialize in white-collar criminal defense as a partner at the downtown law firm Howrey LLP....
Both LA.com and Defamer got some credit in Sunday's New York Times Travel section for shining light on the excessive celebrity-and-hipster sucking-up going on at the Hollywood Roosevelt. It's a...
Can't let it go unmentioned that Army Archerd will write his last regular column for Variety on Sept. 1. He will still file occasional reports. Archerd has been at it...
If I post at all in the next few days, it will be of the quick variety. Meanwhile, perusing the July logs has been fun. L.A. Observed set new single-month...
No, Danny Bakewell is not stepping down from his duties at the helm of the Los Angeles Sentinel. But he is retiring at the end of the year from the...
KFI's Eric Leonard reported Wednesday afternoon that the LAPD's John Miller has been offered an FBI job. Miller was on vacation and unavailable to comment, but a department spokesman later...
While I was traveling today, my in-box was filling up with the stunner that Dean Singleton acquired The Detroit News, converted it to a morning paper and brought in his...
Not just a semi-vacation week, but a travel day too. • The New York Times catches up on David Shaw, General Motors and the Getty probe. • Author and former LAT Book...
Whatever may or may not be going on between Dodgers pitcher Derek Lowe and Fox Sports West Dodgers reporter-anchor Carolyn Hughes is breaking out as a media story. It began...
General Motors has cancelled its punitive boycott of the L.A. Times and resumed advertising. Many dealers had never pulled their ads from the paper, but the corporate side had yanked...
Told you it was going to be a light week... • The state AG has requested eight years worth of records on Barry Munitz's compensation and spending at the Getty Trust,...
David Shaw won the Pulitzer prize for his media reporting in the L.A. Times. He died tonight of complications from a brain tumor that was first discovered in May. His...
The Dodgers didn't make any deals at the baseball trading deadline, but Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa added some key players today. Cecile Ablack is the new Deputy Mayor for Communications. She...
This is going to be a light mid-summer week for me. But here's something to get you started. • The hoary old Olympic Auditorium—excuse me, the Grand Olympic—has been sold to...
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.
