♦ The L.A. Times' Robin Abcarian
compares Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers' talent at "sucking up" to the archetypical insincerity of Eddie Haskell, the teenage brown-noser in "Leave it to Beaver" on 1950s TV. Good a time as any to remind people that Haskell was played by Ken Osmond, who ended eighteen years at the LAPD (mostly in Traffic) after being shot three times.
♦ Saddam Hussein should go for a change of
trial venue to L.A., Bill Maher writes on the Times op-ed page: "It's always sunny, our juries are stupid, and you get to show up to court in your pajamas."
♦ Steven Spielberg, a trustee of USC,
merged his Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation with the university's College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
♦ The Times
endorses in the 14th district: "The question really is which candidate would work most effectively in the modern political culture of Los Angeles. We believe Jose Huizar is that candidate."
♦ Steve Lopez
wraps up his week focusing attention on Skid Row with a column contrasting the new downtown loft scene with the sidewalk squalor, and interviews a guy in the Midnight Mission recovery program.
♦ Shopgirl is the latest film to be set along Wilshire Boulevard. Claire Danes' Mirabelle sells ladies gloves at Saks in Beverly Hills (in the Steve Martin novella she worked at Neiman Marcus.) Danes' "performance is flawless," A.O. Scott
writes in today's NYT review. Carina Chocano calls it a
debate movie in the LAT.
♦ Correction of the day, from the New York Times: "An article on Wednesday about a luncheon at the Carnegie Deli in Manhattan for 14 sumo wrestlers, held to promote an event at Madison Square Garden, omitted the given name and job title of a man who said that because of the tight confines on double-decker tour buses he had dropped plans for wrestlers to ride around on them. He was Martin Abrams, chief executive of Abrams Gentile Entertainment, which handles licensing for the S.U.M.O. brand, under which the wrestlers perform." [Thanks for clarifying.—LAO]
♦ And today's Further correction to a previous correction of the day, also from the NYT: "A picture in The Arts on Saturday with an article about questions surrounding the purchase of antiquities by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles was published in error. It showed the Villa de Leon, not the adjacent Getty Villa, the museum's center for classical art and archaeology. And a correction in this space on Wednesday misidentified the site of the Villa de Leon. It is in Pacific Palisades, Calif. (Malibu is the site of the Getty Villa.)"
♦ Yesterday's
Breeze reported on a funny dust-up over a provocative lingerie store mannequin in Manhattan Beach. The figure reclining in the window of Mary Jo Bruno is wearing a thong, but apparently some passersby have complained it doesn't cover enough of the plastic. In an earlier
Easy Reader story, local official Geoff Dolan observes: "In my 25 years as city manager this is my first mannequin complaint." Let's hope it's the last.
And from that fashiony thingy going on in Culver City...
More backstage photos from the Fashion Week shows have made it onto the web, this time in a gallery by Damon Winter at LATimes.com. In this one (which I cropped for space) the model is being sprayed with bronze coloring. The show reports at ClothesHoarse include some dish: "Poor attendance at yesterday afternoon shows at Smashbox Studios made for a funny game of musical chairs. Standing-room-only guests at the Anthony Franco show were given their choice of seats, and we saw one tranny duo seat-hop until they were perfectly satisfied, sitting directly behind us in the third row. At Samora, show runners beckoned back row guests to fill in the front row, allowing nobodies to snag gift bags containing a Samora scarf and socks from Chinese Laundry."
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