Wednesday, 5.10.06

♦ Jewel of the city: Media tours are starting to crank up at the restored and expanded Griffith Observatory, slated to reopen in the fall.

♦ Tonight: Mayor Villaraigosa delivers remarks at the Liberty Hill Foundation's 30th Anniversary Upton Sinclair Dinner at the Beverly Hilton.

♦ Baja Sharkeez, R.I.P. Fire "fueled by stored furniture and alcohol" consumed the popular bar and nightspot on Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach.

♦ Josh and Donna: The Times' Mimi Avins explores the coupling of the most obvious delayed romantic pairing on "The West Wing," with the show wrapping for good on Sunday. If you were expecting the promised retrospective, don't hold your breath.

♦ Murder on Skid Row: A homeless woman beaten on the street by a parolee died late Monday, prompting Chief Bratton and Councilmember Jan Perry to talk yesterday about thinning out the population of parolees released downtown. It was the fourth recent killing blamed on state prison releases.

♦ Halbfinger & Weiner: The NYT Pellicano team plays catch up on the alleged threat against Alexander Proctor.

♦ City Hall standoff: Chief Bratton is willing to go along with the mayor's call to hire more civilians for desk jobs, but he doesn't want to stop 810 officers and supervisors from taking home city cars.

♦ Next sucker: Dr. Bruce A. Chernof, a 43-year-old internist who has been interim director of the Los Angeles County health department, got the job for real. Good luck, Doc.

♦ E3: The LAT revisits the crackdown on "booth babes" who made the trade show "like a teenage boy's naughty dream." Variety also greets the geeks.

♦ Webby's: MySpace (breakout of the year), the Huffington Post (political blog) and Snopes.com (weird websites) won Webby awards.

♦ Pushy patient: Neil Kramer's wife ( I think) Sophia cajoled Cedars-Sinai into renting the special equipment necessary to do an MRI-Guided Vacuum Assisted Breast Biopsy on her after something turned up. He blogs it all—including the good news.

♦ Make it: Volume six of Mark Frauenfelder's do it yourself magazine Make is shipping.

♦ Ferrari Enzo angle du jour: Blogging the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority raid, and setting the whole bizarre incident to song.

♦ Book sales: Robert Ellis has sold City of Fire, "the first in a new series featuring an L.A. detective and blending the mystery/thriller elements of Michael Connelly and T. Jefferson Parker with the suspense of Silence of the Lambs," to Minotaur. Publishers Marketplace calls it a three-books deal. Also, Dennis Hopper sold Out Takes,, "about his career, his life as a Hollywood provocateur and about all the amazing people he has encountered -- and the women he's loved along the way," to Little, Brown for publication in early 2008.

♦ Book written: KCSN Program Director Martin Perlich's novel The Wild Times

♦ Next day obit: The Times catches up with the death of Mike Qualls.

♦ Noted: The turnout at Jim Hill's star ceremony on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and the retirement of former Los Angeles sportswriter Ron Rapoport, of late a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times.

♦ Further noted: L. C. “Chris” Strudwick-Turner moves to the Los Angeles Urban League as VP of Marketing & Communications. She comes from the Los Angeles Times, where she had been Director of the National Edition, public affairs Special Project Manager and Director of the Student Journalism Program. Before that she was an editor at the Daily Journal.

♦ Hard to believe, but...: Longtime Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon is on the label of a new line of Russian vodka. Ray Richmond has the, uh, proof.