Weekly archive
August 14 - August 20, 2005
Saturday, Aug. 20
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...
Friday, Aug. 19
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...
Thursday, Aug. 18
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...
Wednesday, Aug. 17
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...
Tuesday, Aug. 16
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...
Monday, Aug. 15
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....
Sunday, Aug. 14
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...
