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Profiling Fat Stefan, Anita Busch takes a consulting gig and a new number two at Christensen, Miller, Fink are just a few of the items awaiting below. Plus it's sixty-cent cheeseburger day at Tommy's if you find yourself near Beverly and Rampart. Click on the Buzz to get your week started.
♦ Well somebody had to: The LAT sent Jeffrey Fleishman to Sweden to round out a man-in-the-news piece on Bo Stefan Eriksson, driver (but not the owner, as it turned out) of that Ferrari Enzo that disintegrated at 160 miles an hour on Pacific Coast Highway, and his partner Carl Freer.
Before he shattered a red Ferrari in Malibu and became grist for Internet legend, Bo Stefan Eriksson ran a criminal gang in Sweden, raced cars in Europe, skippered a yacht called Snow White and helped run a video game company with dreams of taking on Sony and Nintendo, according to police and bankruptcy investigators. Eriksson had a rap sheet and the fading charisma of an athlete past his prime, but one who was skilled at creating the aura of money and sinister chic....Peel back the years to the late 1970s, when Eriksson was a beefy kid moving through the streets of Uppsala, a college town northwest of Stockholm. They called him Fat Stefan. The nickname stuck, even though Eriksson later joined a gym, pumped weights and began moving more like a linebacker than a bullied boy on the playground. In a nation not accustomed to violence or interconnected networks of criminal gangs, Eriksson both fascinated and frustrated the local police.
♦ Pellicano twist: Threatened then-L.A. Times reporter Anita Busch and Vanity Fair freelancer John Connolly are consultants to "Power," the TV crime series that Dick Wolf is developing "about young hotshot prosecutors going after corrupt Hollywood honchos," Page Six says.
♦ Pellicano fallout?: Litigator Louis R. "Skip" Miller's previously reported move to Boston-based Goodwin Procter has stalled in part over the publicity surrounding his old firm's link to the Pellicano case, the Daily Journal reports.
Earlier this month, Miller announced his departure from Christensen, Miller, Fink, Jacobs, Glaser, Weil & Shapiro, the Century City firm he co-founded in 1988 and where he once served as co-head of litigation. The firm is known in the Los Angeles legal community for its sometimes rough-and-tumble tactics, which were on display as Miller and his soon-to-be-ex-partners traded terse press releases and harsh public comments. Following a published report that Miller was departing the firm due to the federal indictment of firm managing partner Terry N. Christensen, the firm responded with the statement, "It is unfortunate that someone has attempted to mask the facts by attributing Mr. Miller's departure to a completely unrelated and later-occurring circumstance."
The Los Angeles Business Journal says the firm's new name to be unveiled today will be Christensen Glaser Fink Jacobs Weil & Shapiro LLP, with Patricia Glaser elevated to the number two spot.
♦ Happy 60th anniversary: Cheeseburger and soda for 60 cents at the original Tommy's location at Beverly and Rampart, 12 Noon to 12 Midnight.
♦ Sound of success: The New York Times says of the year-old Huffington Post, which got two million unique visitors in February and now has 700 mostly non-celebrity bloggers:
The site now has deals with Yahoo and AOL, is close to a deal with a video company, and has been approached by Barry Diller to help build a separate satiric news and entertainment site. After investing about $2 million, a fraction of the $50 million it would take to create a magazine, The Huffington Post has become a well-known, oft-cited news media brand in the blink of an eye. It seems that Ms. Huffington, who has taken to social climbing with the finesse of a ballerina and the ferocity of a fullback, has found finally found her métier.
♦ In the dark: Times' City Hall reporter Steve Hymon doesn't like getting home in the dark in summer, so he researched a chart comparing Los Angeles' daylight hours to other western cities (on June 21.) He then demanded of some city officials how they felt about going to double daylight savings time. (Not much, apparently.) Excerpt from bottom of column:
City -- June 21 Sunrise (a.m.) -- Sunset (p.m.)
Seattle 5:11 9:11
Portland 5:22 9:03
Salt Lake City 5:56 9:02
San Francisco 5:48 8:35
Denver 5:32 8:31
Albuquerque 5:52 8:24
Los Angeles 5:42 8:08
Seattle 5:11 9:11
Portland 5:22 9:03
Salt Lake City 5:56 9:02
San Francisco 5:48 8:35
Denver 5:32 8:31
Albuquerque 5:52 8:24
Los Angeles 5:42 8:08
♦ Counterfeit capital: More than $6 million in bogus bills was passed in the Los Angeles area in 2005, and another $2 million was confiscated before going into circulation.
♦ Downtown fortress: Renters have begun occupying apartments in the former Federal Reserve Bank at Olympic Boulevard and Olive Street. Also: the William Pereira-designed former Transamerica Center will get a new skin and be enclosed at the top under planned renovations. The fate of Windows is unclear.
♦ Can they quantify multi-tasking?: Emerging Media Lab, located in an L.A. high-rise, is trying to find out on behalf of Sony, Microsoft and other clients, Sharon Waxman reports in the NYT.
♦ All in the family: Former Downtown News reporter and editor Kathryn Maese reports in there on how her new catering business is going. With art (left).♦ Inside job: Cute of "The West Wing" producers to slip Aaron Sorkin into a cameo in the series finale Sunday night.
♦ Knows his way around: During a book signing for adoring, mostly female fans Sunday at Library A Coffee House in Belmont Heights, Rent star Anthony Rapp said he was told it was the Bohemian section of Long Beach: "The gay ghetto."
♦ Over on The Valley Observed: Rabbits loose in Tarzana, and the scourge that could have been the Laurel Canyon Freeway.
♦ This day in 1923: Socialist author and future candidate for governor Upton Sinclair was arrested while reading from the Bill of Rights on Liberty Hill in San Pedro. In the aftermath, the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California was formed. The progressive Liberty Hill Foundation in Santa Monica takes its name from the incident.
♦ I knew that!: In response to my Friday quip about La Parrilla being the Canter's of the Eastside, Joe Cislowski sagely points out that Canter's used to be the Canter's of the Eastside.