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Bit of a new look to the Morning Buzz. Should be more useful, but comments pro and con are appreciated. Just click on the Buzz to see what's on tap for Tuesday.
Michael Dornheim: The missing West Coast editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology was found dead in his car deep in a ravine off Piuma Road, two miles from Saddle Peak Lodge. He had dinner there with friends June 3 and told them he would take back roads home to Hollywood. Authorities are mystified why his Honda Civic went over the edge on a straightaway, but it will be left where it landed in Carbon Canyon. (Times, Daily News)
Pellicano master: The judge in the Anthony Pellicano case ruled that a Special Master would be named to listen to audio files pulled from the PI's computer and decide which are relevant. Defense lawyers are happy; prosecutors not so much. The two sides have to come up with a mutually acceptable name. The New York Times story leads with prosecutors saying in court that so far they only know of one recording "in which two people were unknowingly wiretapped." (Daily Journal, Times)
More Getty excess: The Times reports that Barry Munitz offered to pay retired Getty board chairman David Gardner nearly $300,000 to write a coffee-table book, "just months after he intervened on Munitz's behalf to help the chief executive secure a five-year contract rather than the one-year extension some board members favored." Guess that whole thing didn't work out for Munitz.
Football is served: Rick Orlov gets the news that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will host a gala dinner Wednesday at Getty House for several NFL owners, Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and an elite—but apparently secret—list of local rich guys. (Daily News)
Shutout in Gelsenkirchen: The U.S. World Cup team lost 3-0 to the Czech Republic.
More bad news for Adelman: Andrew Adelman, powerful head of the Building and Safety department at City Hall, has been ordered to stand trial for contempt of court in connection with a Rustic Canyon McMansion his agency OK'd. In fact, Building and Safety seems to be bending over backward to help developer Mehr Beglari build on his lot. Too bad for Adelman the neighbors include two Superior Court judges. (LAT)
Standards?: Chief Bratton is fine with hiring police officers who have mild drug use in their past, but Council members Parks, Zine and Smith want to force the LAPD to go to a "zero-tolerance" policy. Councilman Jack Weiss, a former federal prosecutor, pshaws their concerns: LAPD hiring standards, he says, "exceed those of federal law enforcement." Times, Daily News, Daily Breeze
Slate mailers analyzed: The defeat of Judge Dzintra Janavs (since reappointed by the governor) is the peg for the Times' story.
Orange Line juice: The Valley Busway is a surprise hit with riders—though in no danger of reaching capacity, says the MTA. Even so, the Daily News editorial page shows its Westside envy.
Strike vote: SEIU local 1000, which represents 87,000 state workers, authorized a strike against the Schwarzenegger Administration.
New look at TMZ: The Hollywood and celebrity gossip site moved to a blog format (with managing editor Harvey Levin writing) and the New York Times' Virginia Heffernan gives them props. More or less.
Face time: Times columnist Tim Rutten appeared on "Larry King Live" last night to talk about Ann Coulter and her latest publicity gimmick of calling war widows who don't toe the Bush Administration line "witches and harpies." Rutten's Saturday column likened the Coultergeist to pornographers:
At a gaunt 45 years of age, you might think the ingénue with fangs shtick would be wearing rather thin. Still, it's always been true that a certain segment of pornography consumers derive an erotic charge from the trappings of hate....
What that doesn't explain is why reputable media organizations such as Random House, which published Coulter's book, and NBC, which helped her publicize it, think it's OK to make a buck peddling porn.
Family ties: Thomas Steinbeck, surviving son of John Steinbeck, and the author's granddaughter won the publishing rights to Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and eight other works. Penguin Books lost the case in New York federal court.
Beverly Hills PI: The Times devotes Column One to John Nazarian, who claims to get $10,000 to $20,000 retainers and $400 an hour. But he still has to go through people's trash.
He's racked up a number of celebrity clients, including singer Peggy Lee (whom he assiduously protected from the paparazzi to preserve the public's memory of her as a blond bombshell), Dean Martin, kooky billionaire Doris Duke and her butler, Bernard Lafferty. He's caught stalkers for CBS Chairman Les Moonves and former "NYPD Blue" star Andrea Thompson.
And then there are the 20 or so unnamed Hollywood wives with philandering husbands for whom Nazarian and his crew of 22 ex-cops and sundry specialists seem to be working in perpetuity....
Nazarian unabashedly loves the limelight and has just wrapped his first film role, essentially playing a version of himself opposite Anthony Hopkins in "Fracture," directed by Gregory Hoblit. (Nazarian once found someone who had been stalking Hoblit's wife, actress Debrah Farentino). He's worked for the tabloid show "Extra," which last week sent him to Mexico, with a camera in tow, to hunt for Olivia Newton-John's longtime boyfriend, Patrick McDermott, who disappeared a year ago."
The bloggers at Tabloid Baby are obsessed with the McDermott story.
Morbid curiosity: Men-about-town Bernardo Puccio and Orin Kennedy celebrated thirty years together, and the premiere of their personal documentary Two Hearts Two Souls, with a Sunday night party at their pre-need monument inside Hollywood Forever cemetery. The Times' Robin Abcarian dishes:
Former local news anchor and novelist Kelly Lange wasn't sure whether the occasion called for irony. She had met Puccio and Kennedy through her friend Marilyn Lewis of Hamburger Hamlet and Kate Mantilini fame, so she asked Lewis for advice: "Should I show up in a big black hat and a veil with a rose?"
Leonard Sands, a Beverly Hills litigator, hadn't even realized that Hollywood Forever is a cemetery. He showed up in white pants, a white shirt and a very chic lavender corduroy sports coat. "You're dressed inappropriately," another guest chided. "Well, so is the corpse," said Sands, referring to Kennedy, who wore a brilliant turquoise jacket with a multi-colored striped shirt and white pants.
Convention center hotel: AEG will officially unveil plans for a Ritz-Carlton and Millenium Marriot at its L.A. Live project beside Staples Center, as the Los Angeles Business Journal (and LA Observed) told you ten days ago.
On Airtalk: Larry Mantle airs live from Sacramento on KPCC, 10 am to noon. He talks with guests about the state budget negotiations and the November election.
Al Martinez: The Society of Professional Journalists hosts drinks with Times columnist and author Al Martinez at the Golden Gopher downtown. 6:30 pm.
Producer credit: Marshall Herskovitz was elected president of the Producers Guild.
Mike Quarry: The retired Los Angeles boxer died in an assisted living center of pugilistic dementia, just as his more accomplished brother Jerry did at age 53. Mike made it to 55.
