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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. Now Nikki Finke reports that the print version of its chief hype vehicle, The Envelope, didn't show up at thousands of homes yesterday as advertisers were promised. "There was some huge mechanical problem," a studio mogul tells her. She adds that the New York Times is about to relaunch its online Oscar hype machine too.
Same old Clippers
They open the season with a 112-104 loss to the Suns.
Who said it?
"Listen, this is a campaign. That’s what you do. Sometimes you exaggerate, sometimes you embellish, or whatever." Answer after the jump.'
AFTER THE JUMP: Politics, media notes, a night of ghostly debauchery. In other words, the usual. Nicely hidden away. Click to visit the inner sanctum.
Politics
Firefighter schism
Voting starts today for the leadership of the powerful city firefighters union, and a rival slate to the reigning McOsker brothers has a website up to push their cause.
Who said it?
Former mayor Richard Riordan, in David Zahniser's Z Files in the LA Weekly, told Councilwoman Wendy Greuel not to worry that the yes-on-R campaign she supports mangles the facts: "This is a campaign," she said. "I was talking to Dick Riordan on Saturday, and we chatted about it," the councilwoman added. "And he said, ‘Listen, this is a campaign. That’s what you do. Sometimes you exaggerate, sometimes you embellish, or whatever.'"
Media
Billionaires mum
Now that the Tribune might be open to bids on the Los Angeles Times (and KTLA), Broad, Burkle and Geffen aren't talking. Wall Street Journal fronts its story.
Frank del Olmo Elementary School
Campus named for the late Times columnist occupies the spot where the first Godzilla movie was filmed.
Personal takes
You're weren't invited
After a night of chaste hand-holding with the ghost of Abbot Kinney at the Los Angeles Lunar Society, Theresa Duncan woke the morning after Halloween "in a long abandoned California condor's nest on a craggy peak over the Pacific wearing wearing nothing but a hot pink satin bandit's mask, last night's mascara and the carnation from Kinney's lapel behind one ear." If nothing else, she has more fun with her blog writing than most.Noted
The rabbi and the Teriton Apartments
This week's Jewish Journal follows blogger Rip Rense into the tale of Hertzel Illulian and the apartment complex where Ocean Avenue and San Vicente meet above Santa Monica Canyon.
On one side are the residents and supporters of the Teriton, a 28-unit, three-story garden apartment building designed by architect Sanford Kent in 1949, which sits on almost an acre at 130-142 San Vicente Blvd....On the other side is Or Khaim Hashalom, a nonprofit religious organization, whose name means Living Light of Peace, and which was incorporated last January. It allegedly purchased the building.
The members want to evict the existing tenants, tear down the building and replace it with 40 units, plus a synagogue and possibly a day care facility for refugees from the Middle East, according to real estate and land-use attorney Rosario Perry, the group's spokesperson and lawyer. Illulian identifies as the organization's spiritual leader.
Topanga boy photographs a condor
It's cute that he's five years old, but I wish the LAT story had raised and dismissed the chance that it was a turkey vulture, the big black ugly guys commonly mistaken for condors.