Weekly archive
October 29 - November 4, 2006
Saturday, Nov. 4
Highlights from the super-busy past week here at LA Observed... LA Weekly opens its tent to Jill Stewart: first the scoop, then the scene, the dismay, the notice and the...
Friday, Nov. 3
Mixed in among the nine-hour parking meters on Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica, TJ Sullivan found a stretch of nine-minute signs. It pays to check the details twice. At Native...
The L.A. Times is shifting around some correspondents. All sides of the Israel issue get a new name to accuse of favoring their enemy: Richard Boudreaux, the paper's most senior...
Jasper Johns' "Flag" hangs over a fireplace in Eli Broad's Brentwood home, we learn in Bob Colacello's profile of the art collector and would-be Los Angeles media mogul in the...
Jurors in the grand theft trial of Swedish bad boy Bo Stefan Eriksson could not reach a verdict and the judge just declared a mistrial. Prosecutors said they will try...
Among all the election roundups and wrapups that will come your way before Tuesday, this one sounds different. Saturday's "Deadline L.A." on KPFK will extend to an hour and preview...
If you are queued up for a Guadalajara Dog at Pink's tonight about 8:15 and notice a faintly familiar, wonkish-looking man trying to cut the line, don't worry. It's just...
Beadle's Cafeteria in Pasadena has shut its doors for good. Don't believe the taped-up sign in the window saying it's just closed for remodeling. Not going to happen, the landlord...
Friday's Times carries the obit on the paper's long-time and respected classical music reviewer, Daniel Cariaga, who died on Wednesday at age 71. His life path was not typical of...
When the FBI and Santa Monica police served search warrants at the home of Animal Liberation Front supporters Jerry Vlasak and Pamelyn Ferdin this week, they gained entry through a...
Thursday, Nov. 2
Frenchman Lionel Bringuier, who just turned 20, has been named assistant conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic beginning in 2007. Ken Layne, formerly of LA Examiner.com and Sploid, is...
The editor's office at the LA Weekly sent over this letter from Mike Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media, taking issue with my coverage (and with ex-Weeklyite Harold Meyerson)...
This is the Jackson Pollock painting that David Geffen has reportedly sold for $140 million — should I say that again? $140 million — to Mexican financier David Martinez. It's...
When the final clearance sale began yesterday at Cooke's Family Market, "if there was a friend or neighbor or movie star you hadn't run into in a couple of weeks,...
Tom Cruise and his producing partner Paula Wagner have inked a deal to take over MGM's dormant United Artists film label, Anne Thompson reports at the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz...
Filming for Live Free or Die Hard has been postponed a couple of days, so the production won't be shutting down Imperial Highway beside LAX until the weekend. Previously: Vengeance...
Jill Stewart mailed out her own announcement today about shutting down her syndicated column to assume a key editing position at the LA Weekly. She emails: Hi all, Some news:...
The Times' Susan Spano is heading to Asia for a month and turning over Postcards from Paris to a guest blogger, new-to-Paris author Elliott Hester. Spano critic Amy Alkon, writing...
That car allegedly stolen by Joel Campos of San Pedro? It belonged to Ramona Hahn, mother of the former mayor and the current city councilwoman. That LoJack system? It worked....
Christopher Hawthorne's architectural review in the Times of the reinvented Griffith Observatory says "the new underground spaces are for the most part more serviceable than inspiring, never matching the expansive...
Times flubs its sell-out to Hollywood It's bad enough that the L.A. Times drinks the Oscar Kool-Aid for many months before anyone not employed in Hollywood is even thirsty....
Yesterday's upheaval at the LA Weekly — first detailed here — sent observers of the paper and staffers buzzing into the night about what the future holds. At the afternoon...
Wednesday, Nov. 1
Daniel Cariaga was the longtime classical music reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Calendar section. A note sent to the staff this afternoon said that he had been hospitalized with...
News editor Alan Mittelstaedt is out and controversial columnist Jill Stewart is coming in to edit local news coverage. Mittelstaedt pushed the recent story on Miguel Contreras's death and has...
The Wall Street Journal has moved a story (subscribers only) saying that since private-equity bids for the whole company came in so low, Tribune has given noticed that "it will...
This weekend — apparently for the first time ever — both L.A. pro football teams play in the Bay Area on the same day: USC at Stanford and UCLA at...
Fox News shouter Bill O'Reilly is back on his Times kick, this time alleging that the real circulation is about half of what the ABC said it was this week....
Chief William Bratton opens his latest newsletter with praise for the Glocks and Tasers that LAPD officers are starting to carry, and lists some of the more high-tech tools that...
Wilshire & Washington is designed to "highlight the enduring relationship between entertainment and politics. More than a mere curiosity, the intersection of these worlds play out daily in fund raising,...
Fifth firefighter dies Pablo Cerda had been the only one of a five-man crew to survive being overrun during the Esperanza wildfire in Riverside County. Janitor strike today Some...
Tuesday, Oct. 31
Tonight's West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval isn't all slutty Dorothys and Totos, fabulous six-foot-tall Marie Antoinettes and assless chaps. These guys brought a bit of social commentary to Santa Monica Boulevard,...
The LA Observed contributors have been building up to Halloween in their own ways. TJ Sullivan gave himself a tour of the hidden cemetery in Westwood he calls "the final...
Rob Reiner's California Children and Families Commission, also known as the First 5 Commission, is the target of a stinging state audit. The commission "failed to properly award millions of...
The Los Angeles Times will start using newsprint purchased from China in December or January, says the Financial Times. Test runs have begun at the Tribune company's Orlando Sentinel....
Paparazzi agency X-17 is making plans to go after celebrity gossip blogger Perez Hilton for profiting from the company's photos. Radar Online says the agency is talking to other creators...
Koreatown on edge Crime has people scared. Worth noting Missed it last week, but former State Sen. Joe Dunn, a Democrat and a trial attorney by profession, has switched...
A source outside the Los Angeles Newspaper Group who has been reliable before says the Daily News suffered a scarier circulation plunge than even the drop at the Times: down...
A story in today's Wall Street Journal leads with the anecdote of an American woman in Beijing who has become a fan of Warren Olney and KCRW via iTunes. [She]...
Monday, Oct. 30
Which says more about the culture of Los Angeles: that Lakers owner Jerry Buss gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, or that Paris Hilton gets a place...
Live Free or Die Hard received the permits it wanted and will be disrupting traffic in El Segundo and the south side of LAX starting Thursday. And not just a...
Publisher Tracy Rafter (as rumored) is one of the 21 positions to be eliminated, along with three department heads and four editorial employees. They're calling it part of a restructuring...
The unraveling of the Santa Barbara News-Press continues. The paper has fired 21-year veteran reporter Melinda Burns, one of the few journalists to stay on after the Wendy McCaw meltdown,...
Emilia Wright and Michael Wright, the daughter and son-in-law of Democratic Assembly member Karen Bass, died when their car went out of control on the southbound 405 freeway at La...
Sheigh Crabtree has left The Hollywood Reporter's entertainment technology beat to try her hand at other things, one of them being the new How'd They Do That column in the...
Among big-city newspapers, only the Miami Herald (8.8%) lost a bigger percentage of its daily readers than the Los Angeles Times (8%) in today's new numbers. The Times, of course,...
Writing over at Native Intelligence, New York Observer columnist (and LA Observed regular from Hancock Park) Bruce Feirstein says the Los Angeles Times is losing the war for the hearts...
California Community Foundation gets $200 million! Even Joan Palevsky's daughter had no idea the size of her mother's fortune, or where it would end up. The foundation will announce...
Sunday, Oct. 29
First, let me say that I want West magazine to flourish. I think it should be, and on some Sundays is, an important home for California-oriented journalism. Just today the...
Here are some of the most talked-about LA Observed items from the past week... LA Weekly on the death of Miguel Contreras and LA Observed's scoops on the reaction by...
Glitches at the server end have been plaguing LA Observed all weekend. They are close to being worked out, I think, and posting should resume soon. I'm not aware of...
