Weekly archive
December 18 - December 24, 2005
Saturday, Dec. 24
In case the whole wintry Christmas thing in Los Angeles isn't faux enough for you, KCAL-9 added an hour to its new tradition of airing the WPIX-TV Yule log. New...
Friday, Dec. 23
Outside of the many disgruntled ex-colleagues (and a few fans) he left in his wake, Michael Kinsley's relatively brief tenure as chief opinionist at the Times seems mostly forgotten. He...
Somebody asked me recently at a party if I remembered riding on the Pacific Electric Red Cars that used to rattle famously across Los Angeles streets. The answer was no:...
Bruce Seaton, the interim executive director at the Port of Los Angeles, informed the city today he will retire in January after thirty-five years. He was due to be replaced...
If I promised not to post again until after Christmas, some news would surely come along to make a liar out of me. So let's just say the pace will...
Thursday, Dec. 22
Fresh off the buyout/layoffs, the Times is bringing in San Jose Mercury News tech columnist Dawn Chmielewski to be a multimedia reporter. She used to be at the Register in...
Shag, the artist also known as Josh Agle, commemorates the late (but maybe to be resurrected) Tail o' the Pup in a pair of acrylic works. This one envisions a...
Paseo Colorado in Pasadena has angered some local Jews by eliminating the shopping center's annual Hanukkah menorah display, calling it a religious symbol, while featuring a tall Christmas tree. In...
Mayor Villaraigosa has appointed architect Alejandro Ortiz to complete the board of the Community Redevelopment Agency. He replaces the commission appointment of architect Mark Rios, who withdrew in October. Release...
Remember last summer's case of former Burbank mayor Stacey Murphy, arrested by an anti-gang task force on suspicion of cocaine possession and child endangerment? She pleaded guilty today in a...
Attention hill people: the City Council took away your street parking during "red flag" fire alerts just in case a fire truck might want to come up your street some...
Wednesday, Dec. 21
Lucy’s El Adobe Cafe near Paramount Studios has been prime Democratic turf since Gov. Jerry Brown made it his L.A. headquarters in the 1970s. His long romance with Linda Ronstadt...
Allison Margolin's display ad in CityBeat features a fetching photo and this copy: LA's Dopest Attorney *Need Warrant Recalled? *Want to Smoke Pot on Probation? *All criminal defense, from drugs...
Variety's review today of the Fun with Dick and Jane remake coulda and probably shoulda said that one of the executive producers is none other than reviewer Justin Chang's boss,...
Neither the L.A. Times nor the Daily News mentioned the gang tensions at Tookie Williams' funeral yesterday, but KPCC's Frank Stoltze did. His report included audio of some arguing between...
⇒ Robert Rector, associate editor of the Pasadena Star-News, is leaving Jan. 13. He will write a twice-a-week column for the San Gabriel Valley News Group papers. He held a...
Residents of Laurel Canyon trekked downtown and waited four hours to address the City Council about a hillside development matter. When it came their turn to speak, twelve of the...
The University of California will continue to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. UC had to bid competitively for the first time in sixty years after being...
We're not talking Oahu's north shore or Mavericks, but by local standards the high surf expected today is enough to get my attention. The National Weather Service has an advisory...
Four people were found dead on one day in different places on Skid Row, none of them due to crime. The City Council got the news just before creating a...
Tuesday, Dec. 20
As many expected, LAT op-ed editor Nick Goldberg today also got responsibility for the Sunday Current section. The staffs of each will be merged and Goldberg receives a couple of...
Colleagues of longtime LAT film reviewer Kevin Thomas have been unhappy that he was nudged to take the buyout and upset that after four decades the paper did not plan...
Thirteenth district councilman (and soon-to-be Council President) Eric Garcetti today announced the hiring of David Gershwin as his chief of staff. Gershwin left the office of current Council President Alex...
Last week a delegation of progressives met with the top opinion editors at the L.A. Times to complain about the axing of Robert Scheer's column and push for more anti-war...
At the Hollywood crew blog Totally Unauthorized, "Peggy Archer" tells the story of a mean-looking power juicer who got drafted into a scene as a security guard because the guy...
Few culture war causes strike me as more dishonest and less trivial than the Fox News-promoted meme that liberals are anti-Christmas. (Excuse me while I stop laughing.) Part of the...
More than 2,000 people (LAT; AP says "hundreds") viewed the body of executed murderer Tookie Williams Monday at a mortuary on South Vermont. Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and Snoop Dog...
Monday, Dec. 19
Drove down San Vicente to confirm what I heard tonight at the Los Angeles Conservancy Modern Committee holiday party in Holmby Hills: Tail o' the Pup's giant hot dog has...
New shorts added at the bottom as they come in... ⇒ Rep. Brad Sherman today introduced a bill to name a Valley post office for retired UCLA basketball legend John...
With lots of buzz around today about Tom Cruise and Scientology, various sources emailed to remind me of some seminal local reporting in addition to the 1990 Sappell-Welkos series in...
Former LAT reporter Ken Garcia explains in his new column in the Phil Anschutz-owned San Francisco Examiner why he left the cross-town Chronicle, where he also had been a columnist:...
The L.A. Times website plans to launch tomorrow a new Flash-driven service feature called L.A. Off the Map. The first un-Timeslike installment has staffer Pete Metzger, on video wearing shorts,...
Reporters will recognize the email that L.A. Times staffer and dog owner Samantha Bonar received from an unhappy—some might say deranged—reader. He objected to her Sunday Current piece calling for...
Sunday, Dec. 18
⇒ The Daily News' Beth Barrett takes off from last week's nugget (and follow-up) about City Council time off to compare the L.A. council's pay and perks to other cities....
In 1990, L.A. Times reporters Joel Sappell and Robert Welkos ran a six-part series on Scientology that took them most of five years to report, vet, re-report, write, re-write, lawyer...
The Dodgers today added Nomar Garciaparra to their growing list of ex-Bostonians, joining the manager Grady Little, pitcher Derek Lowe and infielder Bill Mueller (plus owner Frank McCourt, of course.)...
Car racing has a long history in the Los Angeles area. Legendary driver Barney Oldfield lived and raced on Wilshire Boulevard and drove on the speedway that stood where the...
