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LA Observed archive
for September 2005
If you don't find what you want here, check another month or search below.
Since I'm back for a few minutes, what's with the house ad on pg. E-20 of today's L.A. Times Calendar section? It's a full-page kiss to Harvey and Bob Weinstein...
NPR's big L.A. produced news show will be axed from the lineup on powerhouse KCRW on Monday, Oct. 17, the station just confirmed. It's a blow to the pride of...
I have a lot of distractions this Friday, so before it turns into an off day I'm declaring it a day off. No postings unless something big happens. For those...
Moraga Vineyards, the eight-acre patch of wine grapes that faces the Getty Museum across the 405 freeway, has been one of those charming little-known features of the L.A. cityscape that...
As the Dodgers prepare for tonight's mercifully final home game, things are not all bad. Plenty bad, yes. They need to win three of four this weekend to avoid having...
We never did get a satisfactory explanation for the unsavory odor that wafted over a wide swath of L.A. last week. But now they are complaining about a similar thing...
The wildfire that began yesterday in Chatsworth exploded overnight to 17,000 acres and raged into Ventura County. Evacuations were ordered after 1 a.m. in Oak Park and the Old Agoura...
The Times' new poobah of all things opinion, writes Nikki Finke in today's LA Weekly, "is the personification of a riddle wrapped in an enigma when it comes to the...
♦ Tempers flared during the ten hours the city council locked itself in to finally select Gerry Miller as the CLA to replace Ron Deaton, Rick Orlov reports in the Daily...
One day of heat and light Santa Anas, and the hills erupt. Mandatory evacuations were ordered Wednesday in Bell Canyon, Box Canyon and other picturesque bends in the craggy sandstone...
Looks like the Wilshire International Pavilion and its well-connected neighbors in the Windsor Square Association are at war again. Black mourning tarps have been draped over the entryway and sculptures...
Tribune execs may have shrugged off the company's bad tax news, but Wall Street did not. Tribune stock fell today to a new four-year low of $34.22 a share, down...
Gerry Miller is the new Chief Legislative Analyst for the City Council. He has been the acting CLA and was previously executive officer in the second-floor suite. Council President Alex...
In that blog poll about George Bush being conducted by Professor Bainbridge, "he's drinking again" has pulled way ahead. Here's yesterday's setup....
In a conference call today with Wall Street analysts, Tribune Company executives said they will cover the billion-dollar tax bill by increasing corporate debt and won't be forced to sell...
In today's New York Observer, Bruce Feirstein attempts to help Gothamites understand why on his block in upscale, literate Democratic-voting Hancock Park, only three of twenty homes get the Pulitzer-winning...
♦ The school board picked up Supt. Roy Romer's option for another year. ♦ The state medical board opened an investigation of the St. Vincent's physicians who sold a liver transplant to...
This is a day the Tribune Company hoped would never come—or one of them at least. Call it the revenge of Times Mirror's former bosses. When the Chicago-based Tribune swooped...
UCLA Law scholar and well-read local blogger Professor Bainbridge is running a reader poll titled "What's up with Bush?" George Bush has always elicited divergent views, but lately some of...
Matt Szabo has been in the campaign trenches as a communications guy with Bob Hertzberg and others. He blogs today that Arnold Schwarzenegger's standing ovation last night on Jay Leno...
This morning's Variety and Hollywood Reporter had stories on the new WGA board, at its first meeting, dumping executive director John McLean. The interim replacement is David Young, the guild's...
Some of the female voices who shaped L.A. music radio will be on hand at the Knitting Factory tonight to talk about the good old days and the scary new...
Last Friday, the City Council quietly referred to its education and neighborhoods committee a motion asking the City Attorney's office to prepare an amicus brief for federal court supporting the...
Mayor Villaraigosa ordered flags on city-owned poles lowered to half-staff today and tomorrow to honor Romero. He was killed last Friday in the City of Industry when his stopped California...
♦ St. Vincent's did a liver transplant on a Saudi national who was #52 on the waiting list, collecting $339,000 from the Saudi Arabian embassy and screwing a patient at UCLA...
Pajamas Media has scheduled Nov. 16 as launch day in New York for its right-leaning (but perhaps not entirely) blog news service and advertising combine. The leaders are high-traffic political...
Dan Glaister, the Guardian's man in L.A., fills in the home folks on the departure of Michael Kinsley from the L.A. Times and writes, "Kinsley may not be a household...
Don Adams, Agent 86 on the "Get Smart" TV show created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry in 1965, died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai. He was 82 and had been ill...
Claude Brodesser did indeed join FishbowlLA this morning, as reported last week. The former Variety reporter looks like a nice addition to the lineup. He will help out regular fisheye...
♦ Rachel Uranga reports in the Daily News on the phenomenon of L.A. immigrants skipping English to learn whatever is spoken in their neighborhood: "Peruvian immigrant Miguel Aliaga always knew that...
US Weekly's WORLDWIDE EXCLUSIVE NEWS BULLETIN on the wedding of Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher runs three paragraphs and carries eight credit lines for "exclusive reporting." People confirms the news...
The Online News Association has posted the awards finalists selected by a panel of judges (myself included) that met this weekend at USC. The annual Online Journalism Awards, administered by...
Pink's, the famous hot dog stand on La Brea near Melrose, has added the Patt Morrison Baja Veggie Dog to the menu. Gloria Pink sends word that the Times columnist,...
For the second time this week, a Hollywood guild elected a new president who is expected to take a harder line in union negotiations. Alan Rosenberg won the leadership of...
This is posted on the website at KJAZZ, the station at Long Beach State (88.1 FM): "We at KJAZZ were informed at noon on Friday, September 23, of the passing...
Light day on the blog. I'll be at USC judging the Online News Association awards for this year. ♦ I know a true con man never stops conning, but this is...
We don't get the aurora borealis or even much lightning, but satellite launches from Vandenberg are pretty cool (as mentioned earlier today.) This was a Minotaur rocket fired over the...
The Southern California Earthquake Data Center has detected eight minor quakes of magnitude 3.1 or higher so far this afternoon in the Wheeler Ridge area near the Grapevine on the...
Today's CityBeat says the Animal Liberation Front is taking credit for smoke-bombing the Bunker Hill Towers downtown as part of its campaign against Gordon Stuckey, general manager of the city's...
Joe Scott blogs today about the Warren Beatty-for-governor rumors, which are being fed by the actor's political speeches around the state. Beatty told ABC last week that he won't rule...
Susan Kitchens alerts her blog readers that Vandenberg Air Force Base will launch the last of the Titan solid fuel rockets just after sunset this evening. [* She has changed...
Andrés Martinez, the Times' Mexican-born editorial page editor, writes today on the op-ed page that his eleven-month-old son's babysitter was upbraided by a customer for speaking Spanish to the child...
Let's hope L.A. smells better today... ♦ Today's LA Weekly declares war on air pollution with a thirty-page special package that looks closely at the threat posed by ultrafine particles and...
Bearing down on the Gulf Coast of Texas, Rita may be the third most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded....
What a landing! Flight 292 is safely down. The pilot kept the plane in perfect control — so perfect that the nose stem left where the tires burned off came...
Mickey Kaus still can't get the LAT to let him de-subscribe...Anthony York at the Capitol Weekly, and The Roundup, report on Gov. Schwarzenegger excluding the Times from a series of...
Robert Parry, who is serving with the Army in Iraq, has been following the stench comments and offers to solve the mystery: Hey Kevin... I think I know what that...
New LAT books editor David L. Ulin sits for the Three Minute Interview at The Elegant Variation, the site by Mark Sarvas that regularly panned the Times Book Review under...
Elizabeth Spiers, editor in chief of mediabistro, emails that Claude Brodesser will not be starting a new blog for them. She says Brodesser will begin guest-blogging about film and entertainment...
More readers are reporting in that they too detected the bad smell wafting through the Westside. Author Deanne Stillman writes that it was all over Venice and Marina del Rey...
Happy Wednesday... ♦ DWP workers got the big raises they were demanding: up to 28% over five years. The Council voted 10-3 to go along. DN, LAT ♦ Bill Burke withdraws from...
The first email this morning I ignored, figuring the moment would pass: Here's a scoop for you: the entire city of Beverly Hills smells like garbage this morning. My house,...
Mixed-media artist Lisa Salem, who began walking Los Angeles streets in May with a digital video camera attached to a baby stroller, has found a good home for her art....
Members of the Writers Guild of America/west threw out the old and voted in the entire "Writers United" slate of new board members, plus new president Patric M. Verrone. Turnout...
Times sports columnist-wiseguy T.J. Simers cracked off some arch lines in today's piece on the Giants' Barry Bonds possibly switching to the Dodgers next season. Simers observed, for instance, that...
Southwestern Law School is training students tomorrow to provide legal emergency services to Hurricane Katrina victims who find themselves in Los Angeles. Students from Southwestern and other law schools will...
Mayor Villaraigosa is planning a trade trip to Japan, China and South Korea in January, the Korea Times says. His traveling partners will be closely observed. It was on Jim...
If you're in L.A. you already know this, but for the travelers and ex-pats out there: it's raining and thundering in Los Angeles today. Did so all night long, a...
A sampling of starters for the day... ♦ Simon Wiesenthal died in Vienna at age 96, the center on Pico Boulevard announced. Standing ovations in every temple in L.A. on Friday...
Mayor Villaraigosa today named his members of the Community Redevelopment Agency board. He kept on labor activist Madeline Janis-Aparicio and added John Perez from labor, community activist Brenda Shockley, architect...
The Business, which airs in about thirty minutes from now on KCRW (every Monday at 2:30 pm), is going national. It will be sent to affiliates of National Public Radio...
Marc Haefele's cover profile of Controller Laura Chick in the current L.A. Alternative Press ("Control Freak") explains why reporters love Chick and her audits of city departments: She hands them...
Some items from the last week of L.A. Observed... Kinsley gets the last word, via well-timed emailPlus: Andrés Martinez vows to pay more attention to L.A., and Kinsley viewed through...
You didn't really think I was going to let the mayor get up on a horse without taking photographic note of the occasion, did you? Antonio Villaraigosa rode an LAPD...
Mickey Kaus found that trying to cancel an L.A. Times subscription is harder than it sounds. He also posts the kind of anecdote that should ruin the morning oatmeal of...
♦ In today's New York Times, Dennis McDougal reports that the Writers Guild is sitting on millions of dollars owed to writers it can't find—no-names like Tom Clancy, Mira Nair and...
Just when inhabitants of the Valley were getting used to enjoying the fourteen-mile-long commuter short cut, bike route and skate path known officially as the Orange Line busway, The...
"The Los Angeles Lunar Society advocates the secession of Venice from the city of Los Angeles, and does not preclude the use of revolution to achieve this end. However, many...
Later items are added at the bottom... • The Times takes a look at the all the traffic tunnel schemes being contemplated for Southern California. Some people still don't like to...
Kudos to James Rainey, the LAT's media reporter—and a kick in the ass for me. Two weeks after I let the Tribune's spokesman blow off my inquiry, and a week...
While Michael Kinsley had fans inside the Times, he also created a legion of detractors. Reassigning half the editorial writers to new jobs, and piling work on those who remain,...
Mayor Villaraigosa today named Mark Winogrond to be the city's interim planning director. Here's an interview with him in The Planning Report last year and the transcript of a roundtable...
Question: Who did VLIfe put on its cover, following Jennifer Connelly and Halle Berry? Remember, they're trying to sell on newsstands these days. The October issue does contain an inspired...
• Mayor Villaraigosa confirms that, yes, his family will be moving to Getty House, at least part-time. A day earlier, he was still being cagey. Next week, one of the...
ESPN will build a $100-million, five-story TV and radio production center—and sports bar and restaurant—across from Staples Center in the L.A. Live development that Phil Anschutz and company are planning....
Russell J. Hammer, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, sent a "message from Rusty" today disclosing he will leave to focus on his "battle against...
Copley News city hall reporter David Zahniser reports in today's Breeze that Mayor Villaraigosa wants to move his family into Getty House after all. The official residence at 6th and...
So you have a new magazine about legal eagles and you want them to read it. What do you do first? How about a special issue proclaiming the 500 best...
Writing under the label of Here and Now, Times media columnist Tim Rutten rants in today's Calendar about traffic and the pointlessness of building our way out of this mess....
• Looks like Gov. Schwarzenegger announces Friday that he will run for reelection, the Times says. Also, La Opinión says its reporter was denied entry to the governor's recent community meeting...
That's always interesting, whether you agree with him or not. Jeff Weiss of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal sits down this issue for a Q-and-A with the new editor...
The Breeze listened to the 911 calls placed this summer from the home of the Dodgers' Milton Bradley, and it sounds like several times he made the call and asked...
Torrance City Councilman Ted Lieu won the special election to replace the late Mike Gordon in the 53rd assembly district. There would have been a runoff if the Republicans in...
Members of the Elite Search and Rescue Team drove for thirty-six hours then spent two weeks around Biloxi helping Mississippi dig out from Hurricane Katrina. They were greeted yesterday by...
Anyone who drives the upper stretch of Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu knows it's a popular route for bicycle riders, especially on weekends. It's hilly and cool, they can ride...
Andrés Martinez, the new opinion honcho at the L.A. Times, tells the paper's Jim Rainey that he intends to "ratchet up" the presence of pieces on local and state affairs...
• Michael Kinsley's departure from the LAT rates a bylined story in the New York Times, and to a cynic maybe that alone was good enough reason to give him a...
Michael Kinsley won't be staying on at the L.A. Times as a columnist or anything else. An email he sent staffers this morning disclosed that Publisher Jeffrey Johnson dis-invited Kinsley...
Well they finally caught Reggie this morning—or did they? CNN and AP posted stories this morning that the Monster of Machado Lake was wrestled into custody by the same Colorado...
• Expect an announcement today from Times publisher Jeff Johnson that Michael Kinsley has been formally replaced as Editorial and Opinion Editor. The editorial page, Op-Ed and Current will report to...
Nick Madigan, who recently left a contract gig with the New York Times L.A. bureau to become the media reporter for the Baltimore Sun, will join the KCRW afternoon lineup...
Franklin Avenue blogger Michael Schneider used the blackout to drive over to the Ambassador Hotel and pick up his purchase from Saturday's clearance auction. (On the way, he saw an...
On your City Hall press corps lineup card, delete Ryan Oliver from the L.A. Daily Journal. He's going to the criminal courts beat. Add Erin Park, who used to staff...
Much of Los Angeles has been without electricity since just after 1 p.m. (it's now 1:50). The DWP can't yet say what happened. Traffic lights are out in parts of...
Turnover seems to be fairly constant in the small L.A. Business Journal newsroom, by most accounts a challenging place to work. The latest movement involves James Nash, hired out of...
• Remember when tabloid publisher David Pecker claimed his rags didn't go easy on candidate Schwarzenegger just because they were in business together? Turns out he also "didn't" try to hush...
Been to the newsstand lately? The number of magazines trying to attract the eyeballs of Southern Californians with money to spend has swelled. In this week's L.A. Business Journal, James...
In case you missed them, here are some of of the items that achieved blogginess on LA Observed in the last seven days. Return of Calvin and Hobbes explained Dead...
"Good Morning America" today aired a possible al-Qaeda tape on which the terrorist doing the talking says, "Yesterday, London and Madrid. Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne, Allah willing. And this...
New logo, new column array, same content (and bigger links.) I thought the blog needed a little dusting off. The way things are arranged now will let me try some...
Sen. Barbara Boxer forayed into the Valley today to endorse Alex Padilla for the state Senate race in the 20th district. The city council president picked up California's other U.S....
The apartment house for aging leftists has been on Francis Avenue in Wilshire Center since 1924, housing editors of communist newspapers and surviving friends of socialist writer Upton Sinclair. The...
City Controller Laura Chick likes that job title so much that the next political office she is looking at is state Controller. She confirms for Rick Orlov in the Daily...
On his trip out to Tujunga today, Mayor Villaraigosa named three more fire commissioners: Jill Furillo, Southern California director of the California Nurses Association (and the Tujunga connection); administrative law...
Mark Treitel, one of the writers chosen to shoot an NBC pilot for the Bravo reality show Situation: Comedy, guest-blogs about it all today at Breakfast at Tiffany's. Right now...
Call it as you see it. In her LA Weekly column about the highs and lows of Katrina coverage, Nikki Finke wrote of Fox News' Bill O'Reilly: FNC's Bill O'Reilly,...
Posting will be light today... • Mayor Villaraigosa safaris out to Tujunga this morning to unveil his appointees to the Fire Commission. If you don't know where that is, well, it's...
LAT Publisher Jeffrey Johnson told the staff today that sales of the paper increased an average of 9,600 a day (or 8.8%, and I'll assume those are street sales) since...
If you were wondering why Calvin and Hobbes suddenly returned to the LAT comics pages this week, here's what's up. It's to help sell a massive new collection by the...
Last night's opening of Dead End at the Ahmanson Theatre certainly attracted a crowd. It was the debut play of Michael Ritchie's reign as Artistic Director of Center Theatre Group,...
Southern California writers dominate the books section in the current issue of The Nation. In fact, they write the whole thing. David L. Ulin, recently named Book Editor of the...
Just shoot this team. In today's Times, T. J. Simers points out that the Dodgers players have voted volatile outfielder/husband Milton Bradley as their Man of the Year. And the...
WeHoNews.com promises to be an online newspaper covering West Hollywood as an "independent, fair, balanced and effective local news vehicle." The first issue has features on gay community legends Ivy...
Good morning, everybody. Here are some observettes... • Gov. Schwarzenegger says through an aide that he will veto the gay marriage bill passed by the Legislature, citing the earlier vote of...
Channel 2 morning news anchor Kent Shocknek pokes a sharp blog stick at rival NBC for excising rapper Kanye West's remark that "George Bush doesn't care about black people." West...
Michael Kinsley dropped in at the L.A. Times offices this week (the ones in Los Angeles, not in Seattle) and sent around this email to the staff explaining his presence....
Local website Cinemocracy has redesigned and launched a cool new service: video-on-demand of selected classic (or at least old) "politically relevant" films, free of charge in MPEG2 format. The first...
There was a bit of movement today in the traffic jam facing the Democrats over the 20th Senate district in the Valley. Incumbent Richard Alarcon is vacating to run for...
Albert Carnesale says today, in a UCLA press release, that he will return to teaching, scholarship and "engagement in public policy issues." His last day as chancellor will be June...
Somehow, I'm not surprised by this news. A second "crocodilian" has been spotted near Harbor City, this time in a flood control channel that feeds into Machado Lake. That's the...
• Screenwriter Tom Benedek shoots his own unproduced scripts—literally, with a .45-caliber pistol—and mounts them as art. His exhibition "Shot by the Writer - Works on Paper: 1982-2004" opens this month...
Gail Diane Cox used to be the Los Angeles bureau chief for the National Law Journal. She also had worked for KPFK, and was living in Forest Falls in the...
Matthew Fox, or more particularly his "Lost" character Jack, is the prototype of the new L.A. Hunk, Shane Watson heavy-breathes in Sunday's Times of London. "Jack is the modern woman’s...
OK, so you're back at work and you think, what have I missed? You could scroll through the archives for September and the dog days of August, when you weren't...
If you have a spare thou lying around, you too can dine with William F. Buckley and the editors and publisher of The National Review next week. Here's the invitation...
The Times' Robin Abcarian sends Variety's Army Archerd into columnist retirement with a piece in today's Calendar. It opens during the Friday lunch scene on the patio at Spago. Robert...
In the fashion spread by photographer Stefan Studer in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times Magazine, the male model wearing a $2,870 peacoat and $690 pants on page 30 is deeply...
Tonight on the PBS program P.O.V., much of the country will discover another teacher who has the magic. Rafe Esquith teaches Shakespeare to fifth graders at Hobart Boulevard Elementary in...
In this case, the competition was to see which of the trades would be first to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. James Nash reports in the...
On Sunday, Mireya Navarro filled in New York Times readers on the horsey life in L.A. Life is good for Rocket, the urban horse. He lives in a wooded neighborhood...
Summer isn't really over, it just feels that way. • Some Katrina links: Los Angeles blacks feel New Orleans' pain...LAist found a server at Swingers who did her part... la.foodblogging on...
When circumstances conspire to allow you to run a photo of the late Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley's face on a tortilla, you take it. Also on exhibit at the Baseball...
Laura lost her battle with cancer on Saturday night. Her sister Celia blogs about her loss with love and a heavy heart at 5th and Spring. I never met Laura...
I'll be staying away from the computer much of the weekend. As a reminder, here are just a few of the places where you can can help out the victims...
The paper's number two designer, News Design Director Bill Gaspard, told his staff this evening that he has resigned. Newsroom sources emailed that he cited the recent shuffle that stripped...
Blogads is having a server problem that was affecting the way the L.A. Observed page loads. I've taken down the ads until Blogads says the problem is fixed. They will...
• More former press deputies in the Hahn administration have landed jobs. Elizabeth Kaltman is now the communications director for City Council member Wendy Greuel, and Sahar Moridani is director...
Wikitorials and other changes at the Times editorial page by Michael Kinsley and colleagues are argued from five directions in the new journal of the National Conference of Editorial Writers....
Some appetizers: • Marc Cooper of the LA Weekly and the Nation will be the guest host on KCRW's Left, Right and Center, today at 2:30 and 7 p.m. It's his...
An update on Celia's blog, 5th and Spring....
One of Mayor Villaraigosa's campaign promises has come due. On September 17, he is booked to go horseback riding through Chatsworth with the local neighborhood council. "The Mayor and...
The political blog Mayor Sam's Sister City is not anonymous any longer. Two of the ring-leaders came out of the closet in a post today, after the Times asked them...
The LAT columnist who desires very badly to work in Hollywood answers questions from A. J. Daulerio at The Black Table. Here's a sample. Q: So, do you think it's...
Newsday, based on Long Island, will offer 45 buyouts and slash its coverage of Manhattan. "The decision to reduce our city staff was wrenching. But the cold, hard truth is...
Money is what's needed: • Red Cross: 1-800-HELP-NOW or www.redcross.org • Salvation Army: 1-800-SAL-ARMY or www.salvationarmyusa.org • AmeriCares • Orgs suggested by FEMA • Blog relief drive • Instapundit links • More LAFD rescuers are headed south....
Welcome to September... • Seems like every gas station between Hollywood and Santa Monica went to $3-plus a gallon overnight. The 76 station at Olympic and Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills...
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.
