Times calling

A half-dozen Los Angeles Times subscribers have now emailed me about their call from the LAT phone robot asking if they want to keep receiving the emaciated TV Times. The choices — as LA Observed reported Monday — are a) yes, in the Saturday paper, or b) no. Will Campbell at Blogging.la posts today about his call:

Even before the insert was stripped of most of its editorial content to little more than listings (that I had little use for as a DirecTV subscriber) I often pitched it into the recycle basket without a second glance, so I certainly wasn't going to go to the trouble of calling up and begging to keep getting something I didn't use.

But then the phone rings just now and surprise surprise on the other end is a recorded voice from a machine somewhere within the bowels of the Times Building telling me to press 1 to keep getting the "TV Times" or to press 2 if I don't want it anymore. Since they came to me instead of me having to go to them, I opted to keep the useless thing coming to me -- mainly to see if it actually does.

Add Campbell: During last Friday night's Midnight Ridazz street ride around a good chunk of the city, he lent a wrench and a hand to a rider who broke down on Riverside Drive. When passing riders kept calling out "Daryl" he finally noticed that the tall blonde whose bike he was fixing was Daryl Hannah. He posted about their chat and links to the ex-tree sitter's website and video blog of the ride.