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• 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.
• Now that it's about over, Marc Haefele, writing in the L.A. Alternative Press, says the LAT's "bizarre appointment" of Michael Kinsley to run the editorial page "ranks down there" with Jerry Brown appointing Rose Bird to the state Supreme Court.
• Mayor Villaraigosa plans to ride the Gold Line into work again today. He'll board at the Southwest Museum station and report to a Union Station presser at 9 a.m.
• Looks like a reprieve for the 310 area code.
• Hugh Hewitt had Gov. Schwarzenegger on his radio show Wednesday and pressed him to commit to replacing Janice Rogers Brown with a conservative on the state Supreme Court. Arnold wouldn't bite. Very nice plug for L.A. Observed on Hewitt's redesigned blog, an especially stand-up gesture since we've had our differences before.
• Independent Sources has a smart blog take on the LAT's Technorati ranking and what it says about online influence. He joins Hewitt in today's beams of happiness for L.A. Observed from the right hemisphere.
• It's hard to tell if Milton Bradley still has a future with the Dodgers. But this season is finished.
• Jonathan Gold revisits Pann's, the classic coffee shop on the La Tijera approach to LAX.
• In today's NYT, William Hamilton appreciates the modern design biennial at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.
• Sid Ganis is your new president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
• Former LAT correspondent William J. Eaton died at age 74.
Finally, who knew?...
The One Wilshire building at the downtown terminus of Wilshire Boulevard has been turned into art at the tiny AUDAC Gallery on the Miracle Mile. One Wilshire, which opened as swanky digs for law firms in the mid-1960s, is now the West Coast's leading "carrier hotel," full of cable and telecom switches. Greg Goldin has a favorable review of the art installation in today's LA Weekly. (See the photo big at You-are- here.com) [* Also: A helpful reader emails that the Center for Land Use Interpretation also interpreted One Wilshire. 2:10 p.m.]