Weekly archive
February 10 - February 16, 2008
Friday, Feb. 15
It wasn't until I saw the 10 o'clock news that I fully appreciated how many people lined Vermont and Slauson to greet the procession escorting the remains of Randal Simmons...
Kareem Abdul Jabbar's blog on the Times website seems to be working its way through his personal African American Hall of Fame — the latest subject is Charlotte E. Ray,...
One of my favorite quirky L.A. public sculptures — the gold panner of Carthay Circle — has been stolen and recovered. The bronze cast in 1925 by Henry Lion recently...
By coincidence, an alumni group from the campus where a gunman killed five students and wounded sixteen others is having an event tonight at the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica....
I switched my LA Observed commentary subject to the Randy Simmons funeral. In it I wonder why there were no mainstream media clips on him while he was alive. KCRW...
Every network owned TV station in Los Angeles plus KTLA has switched live to the Simmons funeral. Channel 4 handled the bringing in of the casket nicely: no talking. Just...
Motorcycle officers working the route of the Randy Simmons funeral procession have marked their helmets with the radio designation of his SWAT unit: 41-D. Holy Geography, Batman: Furnell Chatman, holding...
The shrinking L.A. Times needs to get better in some areas and to "walk away from" some subjects it has traditionally covered, new editor Russ Stanton says. He wants the...
Larry Lipson wrote up restaurants for the Daily News starting in 1958. From his exit column: Sure, there have been editors who have leaned somewhat heavily on me - especially...
Randal Simmons funeral and burial See last night's post for details and street closures. Burke makes Parks endorsement official Retiring Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke said at a Thursday news conference,...
These didn't occur on Valentine's Day, but they hit the Homicide Report en masse. Got my attention. Athens: Antwan Cole, a 19-year-old young black man, was shot multiple times at...
Enough members of the City Council are attending this morning's services for slain LAPD officer Randal Simmons that the regular Friday session was cancelled. TV stations have agreed on pool...
Thursday, Feb. 14
Mayor Villaraigosa told the city DOT today to bar most rush-hour parking as far east as Fairfax and to re-time the lights on Pico to favor eastbound traffic and Olympic...
Portfolio's Jack Flack tries to answer a provocative question: who is the smarter newspaper owner, Sam Zell or Rupert Murdoch. It might be an unfair question, since Murdoch has run...
Once the home of long-running hit movies, the National at Lindbrook and Gayley in Westwood Village is most of the way demolished. The Daily Bruin at UCLA poked behind the...
It was almost a year ago that West Magazine (remember it?) profiled Cory Kennedy, the under-age teenager from Santa Monica who became the It Girl of the club and fashion...
Developer Dan Palmer falsely claimed that his company is the sole owner of the property in Newhall Pass where he wants to build the Las Lomas project with L.A.'s blessing,...
The first of hundreds of stores to get a toned-down design hoping people will stick around is located off the 60 freeway in Hacienda Heights. Eater Los Angeles digests the...
Joel Stein and his mother, Clinton supporter Rosalind Byrd-Leszczuk, were guests on today's "To the Point" episode examining the support for Barack Obama. Others talking with Warren Olney on KCRW...
Russ Stanton gets the job of Los Angeles Times editor, as expected for the past few weeks. The announcement had been delayed by the presidential debate in Hollywood, and apparently...
The paralyzed former LAPD officer and her husband, officer Tim Pearce, welcomed Lucas Braedon Pearce into the world yesterday. All are doing well. Ripatti was shot in South L.A. in...
County looks at closing clinics Health officials put forth a plan that would close all but one clinic and reduce hospital services to deal with costs. LAT Chick has a...
L.A. Now has gone live on LA Times.com, with posts on the news and the region from the recently hired Veronique de Turenne (yes, that one) and veteran Times staff...
The first print edition of the free culture weekly Metromix — "reverse-engineered" from the Times-run website of the same name, Ad Age says — hit the streets yesterday. It will...
An internal memo leaked out of the Gawker blog empire (which is Defamer here in L.A., plus Wonkette, Gawker, Valleywag, et al) advises writers on what makes a good blog...
Wednesday, Feb. 13
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa put on his jeans and outdoor boots and helicoptered up to the Eastern Sierra this morning to all but apologize to the locals for Los Angeles stripping...
While I was on the road, Mark Lacter picked up the news that Sam Zell ordered staff cuts at the Times and across Tribune, citing the need to reduce costs...
President Felipe Calder�n of Mexico was in Chicago and the Bay Area yesterday. Today he'll address the Legislature in Sacramento and visit the Napa Valley, then be greeted at LAX...
Inspectors from the state's Department of Health Services visited the busy emergency room on Feb. 1 and said they would issue a citation of "immediate jeopardy" due to overcrowding and...
Of the 3,775 votes cast by members of the Writers Guild of America, 92% were for going back to work. "The strike is over," union president Patric Verrone said last...
Tuesday, Feb. 12
Long Beach Press-Telegram reporter Greg Mellen and photographer Jeff Gritchen are in Cambodia covering the effort to bring DaVik Teng to the U.S. for heart surgery. They have been blogging...
L.A. author, humorist and kitschy snapshot collector Charles Phoenix will share his vintage Valentine's Day slides with Martha Stewart on her syndicated TV show on Thursday. I have no idea...
In his last piece left in the can for the LA Weekly before taking his keyboard to Mexico, Daniel Hernandez uses Elizabeth Palacios's troubles with the law to tell the...
Marc Cooper sinks the hooks on Speaker Fabian Núñez at the LA Weekly website: With great pride, I accepted the honor a few months back of being labeled 'the state's...
Crews are on hand today at the old Ambassador Hotel site on Wilshire Boulevard, taking down the Cocoanut Grove, ballrooms and last remaining remnants. The Los Angeles Conservancy recently gave...
Jet Blue to launch service at LAX Three daily nonstops to Kennedy and one to Logan begin in May. More flights also at Long Beach and Burbank. "This isn't necessarily...
Monday, Feb. 11
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has taken up a blog for the Times. So far he has talked about the Giants' win in the Super Bowl, the video he helped make for Barack...
Mark Lisanti has posted, by his estimate, 9,000 to 10,000 posts since he began as the original, and anonymous, Defamer. This one today was the hardest:...
Bad timing. As soon as I finished and posted the previous item on some LAT concerns about the reaction to Sam Zell's style, I received an email that went out...
So you get the choice assignment: illustrate a story on the science of orgasm. Problem: How do you depict something you can't see? Caveat: It's for a big family newspaper,...
I know firsthand that media types who mention Paris Hilton (or Britney Spears) are likely to hear harangues from readers/viewers/listeners turned off by all the celebrity worship that's on the...
Trader Joe's will give up single-ingredient items from China, such as garlic and frozen spinach, by April 1. Products that include ingredients from China will still be sold. "We feel...
Count Los Angeles cartoonist Donna Barstow (who writes the blog Griffith Park, Interrupted) unimpressed by this story about minority cartoonists banding together to draw identical panels in yesterday's newspapers. It...
Two state lawmakers want to see what Sacramento can get for the land under the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. They say the proceeds could help out the state budget shortfall....
William Booth, resident feature writer in L.A. for the Washington Post, lurked at Saturday night's Scientific and Technical Awards given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
Sam Zell apparently got enough feedback about his boorish (at best) remarks at the Times and Orlando Sentinel last week that he sent out a mea culpa this morning posing...
At least two Los Angeles blogs are included in a new book, "Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks From the Wild Web," edited by the NYT's Sarah Boxer. They are Go Fug Yourself...
Rep. Tom Lantos dies The Northern California congressman, who was 80, said recently he wouldn;t run again due to cancer of the esophagus. He passed away at Bethesda Naval Medical...
You may have noticed a few changes on the site. We're part way through a thorough freshening of the pages at LA Observed. There's more than 10,000 of them, so...
The pressmen at the Times' printing plant asked Sam Zell during last week's visit why the bosses wouldn't let them have a pool table to blow off steam during breaks....
Sunday, Feb. 10
If the members vote to lift the strike as Writers Guild leaders expect they will, some writers could go back to work on Wednesday. As it is, show runners are...
Leo Greene chronicled his fight with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis for more than a year in the pages of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, where he was a reporter, columnist and...
