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In the morning news rodeo, op-ed newcomer Erin Aubry Kaplan dumps on Herb Wesson, what the Golden Globes could do to slow immigration, why you won't see many A380's at LAX but will see more ugly cell phone towers, and lots more—including the Lakers newest signing, Hollywood says ta-ta to Schwab's (again) and a review of Billy Crystal.
Plus: did you know that California's executions are news in England? Turn the page to wade in.
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♦ Times op-ed columnist Erin Aubry Kaplan drops a bomb on Herb Wesson, calling the new 10th district councilman "a product of an electoral machine that has operated with frightening efficiency in the black political set for a decade....Wesson is not malicious or unethical. It's just that he's Not Enough, and Not Enough has evolved into a transgression all by itself, a corruption of heart and will." (Might be stronger if she didn't misstate in her first graf about Wesson that he was termed out of the state Senate.)
♦ Chris Ayres of the Times of London tries to join the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and finds the shadowy group of 92 voting members "has one of the trickiest application procedures yet devised by Man. It’s probably easier to join the Saudi Arabian Royal Family....America could solve its immigration problem overnight if it took a few lessons from the HFPA."
♦ San Francisco International is way ahead of LAX in preparing for the giant Airbus A380.
♦ La Canada Flintridge (and by extension Los Angeles and everywhere else) cannot ban cell phone towers just because they are ugly, a federal appeals court ruled.
♦ Dan Glaister of the Guardian filed a bylined story on the San Quentin execution of Clarence Ray Allen for U.K. readers.
♦ The City Council devoted an hour to tributes to Alex Padilla, who stepped down as president and moved thirty feet to one of the regular seats around the horseshoe.
♦ Mayor Villaraigosa appears on Univision's Ch. 34 with Fabiola Kramsky at 5:45 pm, then on KCAL's Ask the Mayor segment at 9:15 pm. In between he speaks to the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association.
♦ Google makes a radio play in its crusade for world advertising domination.
♦ The Lakers signed Ronny Turiaf to a three-year contract, just months after the draft pick had open heart surgery.
♦ A reader at Curbed LA observes that the faux Schwab's coffee shop in the Sunset + Vine mixed-use center has closed.
♦ Here in Van Nuys compares a fishing village in Brazil to the local mini-mall and asks, "What pleasures are there in the hideous monstrosity at the corner of Kester and Victory?"
♦ The Hollywood Reporter's Jay Reiner reviews 700 Sundays and says Billy Crystal's gig at the Wilshire Theatre "might be the funniest one-man-show ever overwritten."