Archive by Date
May 31, 2006
Prince Albert of Monaco is expected to acknowledge he is the father of a 14-year-girl born in Riverside County to a woman he had a fling with in Europe in...
Joseph Aoun, a linguist and dean of USC's College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, will be announced later this week as the new president of Northeastern University, the Boston Globe...
Two talker stories of the day: Did Michelle Rodriguez know what she was doing when she acted breezy and cavalier about spending time in the Los Angeles county jail? The...
Along with the news links after the jump, there's also this: LAFD spokesman Jim Wells stands his final shift today at the media relations desk after 31 years. He's been...
If you had a character in your novel or screenplay who is a female journalist in multi-cultural, coastal SoCal, tell me you wouldn't want to call her Gidget Fuentes. But...
May 30, 2006
♦ The Supreme Court ruled for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office—and against demoted prosecutor Richard Ceballos—in deciding that whistle-blower protections are limited for public employees. So the public...
The Los Angeles Business Journal's annual look at compensation paid to local CEOs comes up with a new leader. Bruce Karatz, chairman and chief executive of KB Home, received $166...
Martin Schall, the German photographer who runs one of the best Los Angeles architecture websites, has posted a bunch of new images at his site You-are-here.com. His latest visit produced...
Convicted editor-turned-Fleishman-Hillard executive Doug Dowie called no defense witnesses in his trial, but he sat down at the Pacific Dining Car for an exclusive interview with two of his former...
Channel 2 won't be number one at 11 much longer if they keep getting flummoxed by local geography. The picture pretty clearly shows you where Suzie Suh is reporting from:...
Daily News reporter Brent Hopkins garages his Mustang and rides the MTA for work two days a week, writes about it and gets his picture in today's paper (I assume)...
Here's a little news to get the short week going. Just click on the Morning Buzz. And from last week, here are links to some of the posts that attracted...
I like Encino. Oak-shaded streets, some nice restaurants and oozing with Valley and Hollywood history. The impetus to spruce up Ventura Boulevard is a good one. I can even live...
Summer hasn't even started but already the blogger at DadTalk has been painfully whacked on the leg by a skim board at the beach—for the second time in a year....
May 29, 2006
♦ Just how capriciously does the county apply its practice of releasing jail inmates early? Quite, according to DA Steve Cooley. ♦ The Daily News endorsed Cindy Montañez in the...
Paul Gleason became an actor after watching Splendor in the Grass with Jack Kerouac. Sixty-some films later, plus Broadway and roles on "Seinfeld," "Friends" and dozens of other TV shows,...
Holiday schedule today. I'll do a roundup later of items that are piling up. Saturday morning was the annual planting of the flags at the Los Angeles National Cemetery. Boy...
May 27, 2006
Jean-Lou Chameau, provost at Georgia Tech, takes over from David Baltimore as president of Caltech on September 1. Chameau, 53, is a French-born civil engineer. Los Angeles Times, Pasadena Star-News,...
Eight lucky teenagers from Orange County who were squeezed into a Nissan Sentra survived a 200-foot plunge off Mulholland Drive near Beverly Glen. Two teens who were riding in the...
May 26, 2006
Nice LAT obituary today on the entrepreneur who painted the giant Felix Chevrolet sign downtown and who also came up with the KFC bucket and the Winchell's Donut and Denny's...
May 25, 2006
Behold the late-inning dessert cart for fans who make it into the luxury boxes on the Club Level at Dodger Stadium. Click on the photo for the whole chocolicious scene....
A post by Kirk Biglione at Medialoper is titled Why I Hate the Sunday Paper: It’s Sunday morning in Pasadena and my newspaper is sitting on the front lawn, untouched,...
The congressman from the Valley who used to Jdate—and maybe he still does—turns up as a "Jeopardy!" question....
Not since the days of Jerry Dunphy has Channel 2's news topped the local ratings, but the station says that the new book out today fixes all that. From the...
Revival of Hollywood, the place not the industry, has created "the hippest zone in Los Angeles," says the June number of Los Angeles the magazine. Features look at the reasons...
Steve Cooley tells California's other DA's to take their three strikes and shove it, Ken Starr helps out some amici, and Rocky Delgadillo loses another round in the media. But...
May 24, 2006
Couldn't she be, I don't know, a little less happy? Billboard at Melrose and La Cienega, from Defamer:...
The California Supreme Court has reinstated the controversial high school exit exam, leaving unclear what happens to the 46,700 seniors who haven't passed the graduation requirement that kicks in this...
From BillboardBiz.com via the Hollywood Reporter: One of the most colorful careers in music came to a close today as pioneering booking agent Ian Copeland died in Los Angeles of...
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa makes the the front page of today's Wall Street Journal—above the fold (subscribers only), complete with drawn portrait—under the headline "In the Straddle" in a piece about...
Santa Monica chief of police James Butts is leaving to run the Los Angeles airport police, which comes with the unwieldy title of Deputy Executive Director of Airport Law Enforcement...
The new blogger at Red Line Diary has made the switch: he's commuting from home in Burbank to the downtown civic center via subway. Not that the MTA makes it...
Earlier this month, NBC4's hidden-camera reporter Joel Grover aired "Is Your Mechanic Cheating?," a two-part series that showed Jiffy Lube mechanics charging for services they didn't perform. In response, this...
From an anonymous officer, posted at LAPD Wife: Exhaustion. I have been sleep-deprived for three months now. I kicked the caffeine habit before I ever set foot in The Academy,...
There's one federal judge in town who's mighty ticked off today, the mayor isn't shying away from immigrants, and a second day of complaining that LAX won't be any fun...
May 23, 2006
Tu Ciudad's June-July issue features an interview with Corina Villaraigosa, a report from the set of Jack Black’s Nacho Libre and the magazine's first Best of Latino L.A. guide. Magazine...
♦ USC isn't thrilled about the mayor's (and others') plan to drastically alter the Coliseum's innards to entice the NFL. University prez Steven Sample's letter uses phrases like "athletic program...
Andrew at Here in Van Nuys blogs about calling 911 after a pickup truck blocked his driveway and a man in para-military garb got out and began throwing things at...
LA Voice.org is having an up-and-down day due to server issues at DreamHost. Looks to be currently...very slow....
Restaurant listings site Menupages has officially launched in Los Angeles. Coverage is light in areas, most noticeably in the 35% of Los Angeles that lies in the Valley—they don't seem...
In addition to host Lisa McRee's web reports from the show's road trips, the "California Connected" crew at KCET is also posting to a newsroom blog that looks like it...
If the water in Santa Monica Bay doesn't make you sick, it turns out the sand might. Also in the Morning Buzz, there could be good news for L.A. today...
An always helpful LA Observed correspondent was digging around on the LA Weekly website and stumbled upon this chronicle of the many writers and editors who have passed through the...
May 22, 2006
Thirty-six points from Elton Brand wasn't enough to keep the Clippers' playoff hopes alive. They lost tonight in Phoenix in a high-scoring game, 127-107, and can start making their golf...
♦ A man who lives on a sandbar in the Los Angeles River near Griffith Park had to be rescued today when the channel flow swelled with rain runoff. ♦...
Folks in Colorado have much more connection to Roy Romer than Angelenos do. Before he came down to Los Angeles to run the school district, the 77-year-old superintendent served three...
Guess it was true about Michael Hiltzik landing in Sports when the defrocked Los Angeles Times columnist-blogger returned from suspension. He wrote the Sunday feature on Clipper Elton Brand's "checkered...
Sure we all know that Mayor Villaraigosa has spent a lot of time on the road—but this much? Dean Singleton, Zuma Dogg and Doug Dowie are also in the news....
May 21, 2006
News on Chowhound that Eurochow has closed brings to mind the history of arguably the most recognizable structure in Westwood Village. The domed landmark where Westwood Boulevard, Kinross and Broxton...
♦ "There is no exact moment when the cultural epicenter of the country shifted from New York to Los Angeles," Manohla Dargis writes in the NYT, "just a series of...
Seems that City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's resume, and his image, have been a tad inflated all this time. Patrick McGreevy in Saturday's LAT: In various speeches, campaign ads and written...
CJR Daily—"real-time media criticism from the Columbia Journalism Review"—has watered down its recent praise for the Los Angeles Times series about problems with the Kaiser Permanente kidney transplant problem. The...
May 19, 2006
♦ Former VLife writer Steven Kotler, contributing at Hollywood Wiretap, explores the role of local agency Grace Hill Media in marketing "The Da Vinci Code" to Christians. Grace Hill's principal...
There's been some movement on the mayor's plan to conquer the L.A. Unified School District, some second thoughts about the Coliseum deal for an NFL team and some exposing of...
May 18, 2006
Hey, this week is LA Observed's third blogiversary. Perfect reason for a fun night on the town—literally. Join us on Saturday, June 3 to kick off summer early with LA...
♦ Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will preview a gathering of the National Council of La Raza—"the largest national Latino civil rights and advocacy organization"—tomorrow at the Convention Center. Monica Lozano, publisher...
Councilman Tom LaBonge's penchant for handing out loaves of pumpkin bread made by nuns at Hollywood's Monastery of the Angels makes the pages of this week's Los Angeles Independent. Notice...
The founder, editor and publisher of The Argonaut—a useful and newsy community weekly centered in Marina del Rey—died yesterday at age 68. He had suffered from a rare blood disorder....
Attention hill dwellers: It's brush clearance season for you. Los Angeles Fire Department inspectors are out checking all 129,647 parcels in the scarily named Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone,...
If you thought the Times would put a Da Vinci Code story on the front page, you were wrong. They put two out front. Click the Buzz for a...
May 17, 2006
Anson Carter grew up in Toronto and has played in the National Hockey League for nine seasons, including an unimpressive fifteen games here with the Kings a couple of years...
It's not every day that a guy goes home from a bad day in federal court—conviction on twelve felonies—and blogs about life. Former Fleishman-Hillard VP John Stodder, of course, has...
♦ The 2004 law designed to keep Ron Burkle's divorce details private was thrown out by the California Supreme Court, which denied review without comment. ♦ Life & Times goes...
Wow, lot of response to yesterday's Where in L.A.? challenge. Most who emailed knew (or guessed) that the monument in the photo is a graffitied fragment of the Berlin Wall....
Franklin Avenue caught Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's appearance on "American Idol" last night, telling finalist Katherine McPhee that she was to sing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." She's the first Angeleno to...
Picket lines from Local 33 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees have been up around the Inglewood church-slash-arena still known as the Forum since April. The union's complaint...
The news for Ron Howard and the Da Vinci clan isn't good, higher trash fees slam through the City Council, and the Coliseum remake isn't far behind. Those items and...
May 16, 2006
Just for fun, who can identify this objet d'art and locate where it is on display? Here's a clue: it's found within the city limits of Los Angeles, and there's...
♦ The City Council is prepared to dare you to stop and run into Starbucks for a latte during rush hour. Members told their attorney to go ahead and draft...
Fired Fleishman-Hillard boss Doug Dowie and his former deputy in the Los Angeles office, John Stodder, were found guilty today of cheating on billings to the city Department of Water...
Santa Monica, which likes to regulate things, is looking next at the Segway. Kevin Herrera in the Santa Monica Daily Press builds his story around Allen Battino, who commutes from...
It's hard enough campaigning for state Attorney General against Jerry Brown when no one in Northern California has heard of you or has an opinion. But when you are in...
Question for the day: why would anyone wait in line for two hours for a Tommy's burger, whether they are sixty cents or the usual two bucks or so? Madness,...
May 15, 2006
♦ U.S. District Judge Gary Feess extended the full LAPD consent decree by three years, over the objections of chief William Bratton and the feds. ♦ The New Yorker has...
Incidents occurred seven hours apart, on the 91 Freeway in Carson Sunday night and on the 710 in Bell Gardens this morning. All three victims, including a 26-year-old man driving...
JournalSpace blogs, non-existent since a server crash on Friday, finally receive a somewhat reassuring missive from the mother ship: Monday, 0700 GMT: Down, But Not Out... The journals and blogs...
It's always been a mystery why Highland Avenue through the heart of Hollywood is so poorly engineered—especially the lack of left-turn signals at Hollywood Boulevard, given the number of vehicles...
The Los Angeles Business Journal is out with its annual guess of who is worth what, promoting Kirk Kerkorian ($9.3 billion) to the top spot over last year's champion, Sumner...
Profiling Fat Stefan, Anita Busch takes a consulting gig and a new number two at Christensen, Miller, Fink are just a few of the items awaiting below. Plus it's sixty-cent...
May 14, 2006
Some LA Observed posts from the past week... LAT loses another bunch of readers USC prof's topless photos...and a backstory Times muscles up in sports LAPD joins the blogosphere Maggots...
It's not the prices or the unruly crowds this time (or the blown ninth-inning leads.) First, in his Sunday column Bill Plaschke gave voice to fan frustration about longer and...
Robin Abcarian in the LAT observes the dandelions, daisies and bamboo shoots sprouting in the uniquely urban Los Angeles interface where the traffic lanes of the Santa Monica Freeway meet...
♦ The Clippers tie up their NBA playoff series 2-2, beating the Suns 114-107 at Staples Center on Sunday. ♦ USC basketball freshman Ryan Francis was shot and killed while...
May 12, 2006
Bloggers who use JournalSpace to host their websites have been offline for several hours today. Members are emailing me that they received no warning and still haven't heard from JournalSpace....
♦ The state's new high school exit exam was blocked by a judge in Alameda County, possibly affecting 47,000 students who did not score high enough to graduate. The state...
The LAPD added a new entry to its Most Wanted list this week. Twenty-year-old Armando Enrique Galaviz's alleged crime is felony hit and run: "The suspect collided with a motorist...
Channel 4 reporter Cary Berglund discusses his coverage of the topless USC professor, in a video report on the KNBC website and an exchange with David Markland at Blogging.la. Meanwhile,...
In response to a question from golfing journalist Geoff Shackelford at the Times Festival of Books, LAT Editor Dean Baquet said (as he had when I interviewed him last fall)...
More on maggots at the morgue, the sordid conditions inside our jails, Guerdon Stuckey files his report and other news and views after the jump. From late yesterday, don't miss...
May 11, 2006
The dutiful minions at the Times' Opinion blog know one way to keep the boss, Andrés Martinez, happy: they posted his observations from China, where I assume he is on...
The Los Angeles Police Department launched its official blog with a burst of opinion (a rebuttal to an editorial in the Daily News) and a welcome message from Chief William...
In the last three seasons the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim have done what the Los Angeles Kings have been unable to do in thirty years: twice reach the semi-final round...
A supposedly paralyzed woman who sued the cities of Long Beach and South Pasadena claiming she broke her arm in wheelchair falls jumped out of her chair and ran from...
Eric Lynxwiler and I will be signing and talking about Wilshire Boulevard: Grand Concourse of Los Angeles this evening In Pasadena at Vroman's Bookstore, "Southern California's oldest and largest independent."...
KMEX-TV's "Noticias Univision 34" has broken a story that maggot infestations affect up to 40% of the bodies kept at the Los Angeles County Coroner's facility on Mission Road. The...
This evening at 6 pm, Green Dot Public Schools will hold a lottery to in South L.A. to determine who gets 640 student slots at five new high schools serving...
How it feels when your dental hygienist somehow gets your number and asks you out, plus Chief Bratton argues for less oversight, Antonio's endorsement of a successor to Jackie Goldberg,...
As a sidebar to Time magazine's 100 people who shape our world, LAT op-ed columnist Joel Stein was given a spot on the Time website to post the Joel 100:...
May 10, 2006
Channel 4 on Monday ran a news story about Diana York Blaine, a USC women's studies professor, posting three topless photos of herself in her Flickr stream. Yes, that appears...
♦ Venerable Langer's Deli now has a website that lets you pre-order your pastrami online. ♦ Nora Ephron on Tom Cruise (at the HuffPost): "My son Jacob off-handedly pointed out...
Third Street Promenade may be the next spot where Santa Monica bans smoking. The city attorney is studying a prohibition on outdoor smoking anywhere on the Promenade, including on restaurant...
Grab bag of items for today, including a first look inside the new Griffith Observatory, stomping murder on Skid Row, the saga of Josh and Donna and the ballad of...
May 09, 2006
Guns, law enforcement badges and police cars were confiscated during today's serving of search warrants on the San Gabriel Valley Transit Authority, the company that has found itself in the...
Ducks win in overtime, 4-3. Joffrey Lupul, a 22-year-old from Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, scored all four goals for Anaheim. The Quacks lead their playoff series three-zip—long way to go, and...
Arianna Huffington told magazine editors in New York today that the Huffington Post makes money and within two months will spin off a sister site devoted to political satire. Even...
Does Anthony Pellicano want to bump off his former crony Alexander Proctor? The feds say yes. Dowie loses a round in court (but not that round), a City Hall communications...
May 08, 2006
In the two years that LAT travel writer Susan Spano has been living in Paris, I've noticed two kinds of reactions among LA Observed readers. One is envy and resentment...
In advance of the top editors going on retreat in the desert to noodle on the future of their newspaper, some juggling ensued in the mid-level lineup at the Los...
♦ Answer: Mayor Villaraigosa, Sheriff Baca, Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, Magic Johnson, Natalie Cole, Johnny Grant and Councilman Tom LaBonge. Question: Who shows up when Channel...
Patric Kuh, the food critic at Los Angeles magazine, won for best magazine restaurant review or critique at the James Beard Foundation journalism awards in New York announced last night....
The Los Angeles Times lost another 5.4% of its print readers in the March-to-March comparison, falling to 851,832 daily copies sold. Other local papers are not included in today's media...
Yes, those long lines of game geeks outside the Pantry all week can only mean one thing: it's E3 time again. Plus Nielsen has you covered, Scientology papers the house...
May 07, 2006
Some posts from the busy past week here at LA Observed: May 1 coverage: Nuggets, more nuggets, street fighting, La Opinión's solidarity, my favorite march photo Reaction to the Michael...
May 06, 2006
If there's one good thing to come from the Lakers' week-long meltdown and inevitable loss in Saturday's deciding game, perhaps it will be a permanent moratorium on sportswriters using the...
One day after Alex Padilla showed his hand and announced the endorsement of City Council President Eric Garcetti and nine council colleagues, Cindy Montañez countered with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The...
May 05, 2006
♦ The Pasadena Star-News also has a story about the school superintendent and the "borrowed" sermon. ♦ In the San Gabriel Valley, public health officials are using helicopters to spy...
The show backed and aired by California's public television stations returns for its fifth season tonight at 8:30 on KCET. Lisa McRee remains as "California Connected" host, but there's a...
Pay site FTVLive is reporting, based on unnamed sources, that KTLA's longtime Prime News executive producer Gerry Ruben has been replaced by Rick Goldner, currently executive producer of the KTLA...
Back in February, the New York Times ran a correction after a story by arts writer Carol Vogel placed the Los Angeles County Museum of Art downtown: Because of an...
Councilman Bernard Parks heads out to Valleywood this morning to speak at the First Friday breakfast group at the Wine Bistro on Ventura Boulevard. Parks, of course, is a leader...
Lots of news for a Friday, starting with the mayor's exhausting pace, Barry Munitz's new controversy, John Stodder's blog in the face of a jury, a new take on the...
Landmark's Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles is closing for renovation June 2-29. While it's being spiffed up, the every-Saturday-night Rocky Horror Picture Show will move over to the NuWilshire....
May 04, 2006
For its June 4 fundraising auction at the Skirball Cultural Center, PEN Center USA plans to let guests bid to have their name used in a writer's next novel or...
Updated below The on-air feud that erupted during Monday's march coverage between KFI shout hosts John & Ken and Fox-11's Tony Valdez is heating up behind the scenes (at least—I...
Watching Antonio squirm—Dowie and Stodder too, and Dodgers fans, and the art experts at Cal State Northridge who OK'd some suspect Chinese antiquities. Plus a big win for the Mighty...
May 03, 2006
Looking east on Wilshire Boulevard from a rooftop at Catalina Avenue, with Immanuel Presbyterian's gothic spire rising out of the crowd and the Talmadge behind it. The stream of humanity...
♦ Ken Bernstein, director of preservation issues for the Los Angeles Conservancy, moves to the city planning department as its first director of historic resources. (Press release) ♦ Laurie Pike,...
In his latest blog letter from Los Angeles, Times of London correspondent Chris Ayres goes off on Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible III: Like a sucker, I believed the advance...
After nine years in print, the guidebook LA Bizarro "retains a devout cult following among the perverse and overly informed in Los Angeles," says Los Anjealous. The blog interviews co-author...
Franklin Avenue points to a feature on the Channel 2 website detailing (in video and photos) the construction of a new broadcast center at the CBS Studio Center in Studio...
By now most people have probably heard of the Times' promotion-gone-wrong for Mission: Impossible III. Devices placed in newsracks to play theme music when the box is opened apparently look...
The National Football League won't be rushed, Doug Dowie decides the best defense is no defense, and the role of labor in the May 1 marches. Those news tidbits and...
May 02, 2006
Not only won't it cost the L.A. schools $2.1 million for yesterday's 27,000-plus protest absences, it pretty much won't hurt at all financially. School Me, the new Times blog on...
Well, I can report that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger beat the mayor back from the National Football League meetings in Texas. Two dark SUV's just pulled over in a red zone...
Business Week's Inside Wall Street column says some investment pros are betting that Tribune Co. will be a takeover target. Like most other newspaper stocks, Tribune has been beaten to...
In case there was any uncertainty, yes Mayor Villaraigosa did depart from yesterday's march podium to fly to Dallas and join Gov. Schwarzenegger in pitching National Football League owners. Today...
What, you might ask, does Arianna Huffington have in common with George W. Bush, Pope Benedict, Hugo Chavez and Matt Drudge? They are all among Time magazine's "100 people whose...
It's all about the Clippers today. When you've been the worst franchise in any major sport, making the second round of the playoffs—and having Billy Crystal watch your games—counts for...
This photo looks east on Wilshire Boulevard toward Hancock Park from the top of the former bank building (now a Korean church) at La Brea. The tall building in the...
May 01, 2006
Video posted on Buzznet shows Los Angeles police squaring off tonight with protesters who were not dispersing on Alvarado Street. Just before 9 pm, the video shooter writes, the police...
Denver Nuggets forward Reggie Evans was fined $10,000 by the NBA for "unnecessary and excessive contact" with Clippers center Chris Kaman in Saturday's game. What does that mean exactly? Evans...
The impressive photos of the afternoon are the aerial shots of a solid string of marchers extending across all lanes of Wilshire Boulevard for a couple of miles. At 6...
La Opinión published a symbolic blank page in support of Day Without Immigrants. Here's what the text says on the website page: We, the workers in the Hispanic media are...
There's an extra-long Morning Buzz chock full of good stuff after you turn the page, catching up to the weekend. Of course the news of the day in Los Angeles...
Michael Hiltzik came up, of course, during my interview of Los Angeles Times Editor Dean Baquet on Sunday at the Times Festival of Books. He beat me to the punch,...
