First thing Thursday, 2.2.06

♦ Both the New York Times and LAT report that the County Museum of Art is close to naming Michael Govan the new director. He is director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York. Says the NYT: "He [would] take over an institution brimming with grand plans and power struggles."

♦ Councilman Tom LaBonge is the subject of the Times' Column One, by Steve Hymon: "LaBonge has emerged as [the council's] most colorful member and an antithesis to those with more lofty policy-oriented ambitions....the only member of the 15-member council who can also be regularly seen directing traffic, walking old ladies across the street, fetching errant balls for children, giving unsuspecting residents loaves of pumpkin bread from a local monastery, holding forth on L.A. history or handing out calendars featuring his snapshots of Los Angeles, including high-tension wires set against clouds." Disclosure: he laid a loaf, a calendar and a scroll on me at a recent book signing in Los Feliz.

♦ County health officials disclosed that La Golondrina on Olvera Street was the locale of a hepatitis A outbreak last fall that sickened fifteen restaurant patrons. Another nineteen took ill after eating food prepared by Silver Grill Catering in North Hollywood. Takes some of the heat off Cafe Pinot.

♦ The OC Weekly's Gustavo Arellano didn't like what he heard and saw of Mayor Villaraigosa's SOTU response en español: "Latinos wanted a vision; he offered clichés. We yearned for a spokesman; we saw an Edward James Olmos clone."

♦ Nikki Finke adds her Oscar predictions at the LA Weekly and writes, "it’s shameful that Hollywood’s homophobia may be on a par with Pat Robertson’s."

♦ The L.A. Independent reports, "Two recent USC studies have found that Los Angeles continues to be plagued with racially isolated neighborhoods -- with infinitesimally small integration in historically white communities, especially the Westside of Los Angeles."

♦ CityBeat's Annette Stark attends Porn Star Karaoke night at Sardo's in Burbank: "Municipal law mandates that no one can get naked in a Burbank bar, which a lot of folks feel is really the only fly in the soup."

♦ The CityWatch website analyzes winners and losers in last month's shuffle of City Council committee assignments.

♦ Remember the statewide special election in November? Interests trying to sway your vote spent a record $303.9 million on it.

♦ Tonight is the wake for the late, great Ambassador Hotel at the Gaylord Hotel and HMS Bounty, across Wilshire from the site. The Times mentions it in a story on 84-year-old Carlyn Frank Benjamin, who grew up at the hotel.