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Runoff for school board...more strangeness around the Ferrari Enzo crash...Rob Reiner's campaign chief steps out of the limelight...L.A.'s blogging pet czar blasts the Animal Defense League...while Cardinal Mahony seeks a stay, a rabbi quits and Tom Hayden comes in for ridicule after blogging that Crash is the real Los Angeles. Those items and a new president of Occidental College, the old president of MALDEF leaves, a Variety reporter gets a Dreamworks book deal, Amy Alkon embarrasses another man and way too much else when you turn the page.
Noted: My piece on City Council President Eric Garcetti in the March issue of Los Angeles Magazine is now online.
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♦ Mayor Villaraigosa's anointed candidate Monica Garcia could not eke past 50-percent-plus-one and will face a school board runoff with Christopher Arellano, UTLA's man who limped in with 19% after being exposed as a BSer from way back.
♦ The mystery of the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority— which figures in that spectacular crash of a Ferrari Enzo in Malibu last month—begins to turn a little less, well, mysterious. But it's still odd. Earlier piece in the Pasadena Star-News.
♦ Former City Hall hand Ben Austin stepped aside as campaign manager of Rob Reiner's preschool initiative, but not before receiving $500,000 in consulting fees from the California Children and Families Commission, New West Notes reports.
♦ Ed Boks, the blogging general manager of city animal services in Los Angeles, posts a scathing rip at the Animal Defense League, calling the group on its "lies" and questioning whether members even care about animals: "It’s as if they can only function like a cluster bomb, spewing insult, injury and collateral damage upon anybody within range without any regard to the stated goal to stop the killing."
♦ Lawyers for Cardinal Roger Mahony filed an appeal asking to temporarily delay nearly all litigation over alleged sexual abuse by priests here. Mahony sought the stay while he tries to unseal confidential certificates of mental health regarding plaintiffs. (Daily Journal)
♦ At the Huffington Post, ex-Assemblyman Tom Hayden calls the L.A. Times guilty of denial for saying Crash exaggerates racial conflicts and he takes a swipe at Joe Hicks, who may or may not have posted a reply that attacks Hayden. Marc Cooper calls Hayden's post a sophmoric rant. I'm stuck on the notion that Hayden doesn't think the movie exaggerates racial tension in Los Angeles even a little bit.
♦ Former UCLA Law School dean Susan Westerberg Prager was named president of Occidental College. She's the first woman to head the Eagle Rock school.
♦ Rabbi Aron Tendler stepped down from the pulpit of Shaarey Zedek, an Orthodox synagogue in Valley Village, under a cloud of allegations about inappropriate conduct, the Jewish Journal reports online only.
♦ Variety reporter Nicole LaPorte sold Holt a DreamWorks book "for low six figures based on what I’m told was a very well-written 70-page proposal," blogs Nikki Finke. She links the players behind the deal and wonders aloud if LaPorte has the reporting chops: "Don’t bother sending me a galley unless that call girl anecdote is in there." Finke also crows about the Drudge-inflated traffic so far at Deadline Hollywood Daily.
♦ Ann Marie Tallman resigned as President of MALDEF.
♦ The Times' readers representative, Jamie Gold, responded at the Online Journalism Review to yesterday's item on the difference in headlines between the paper and its website.
♦ Amy Alkon tracks down, calls and demands fifty bucks from a guy who signed her up for a ton of bogus email because he was mad at her anti-SUV rants.
♦ The Center for Consumer Freedom challenges the science behind this week's media talker story that Los Angeles sushi lovers are eating toxic tuna.
♦ Gary Aminoff, who blogs at Bear to the Right, was elected from the Valley to the Los Angeles County Republican Party Central Committee. (BoifromTroy)
♦ Here in Van Nuys argues to save a North Hollywood neighborhood targeted by apartment developers. Carol Burnett and Agnes Moorhead used to live there.
♦ The L.A. Press Club will give the Daniel Pearl Award for this year to Kevin Sites, war correspondent for Yahoo! News.