Morning Buzz: Thursday 9.25.08

Dodgers could clinch the NL West today, already ensured of at least a tie for first.
A non-resident of the USC area was arrested in that knife killing of a student. LAT
California bans text-messaging while driving. LAT, AP
Mayor Villaraigosa moved to block the eviction of activist Anthony Thigpenn's organization SCOPE by Councilman Bernard Parks, who says the group was organizing against his bid for the county Board of Supervisors. LAT, DN, Betty Pleasant, Liberty Hill, Witness LA
McCabe�s Guitar Shop on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica is celebrating its 50th anniversary "as L.A.�s premier triple threat of musicality: music store, music school and concert hall." LA Weekly
An old copy of the Weekly helps solve the Los Feliz arson fires. LAW
With today's Real Best LA issue CityBeat goes to a stitched and trimmed magazine style format and a glossy cover. CityBeat
Los Angeles Magazine held the first in a series called The Breakfast Conversation at the Foundry on Melrose, attended by among others Councilwoman Jan Perry, Kathleen Brown, Nicole Avant, Brenda Levin, Karen Hudson, David Abel, Rob Eshman, David Ulin and Warren Bennis. The panel was Anne Taylor Fleming, John Powers and Steve Erickson, moderated by the magazine's editor Kit Rachlis.
New beat assignments at LAT Metro: Charles Piller and Kim Christensen on the projects team, Kimi Yoshino on health care, Alexandra Zavis (from Baghdad) on general assignment. Reader's Rep blog
Developer plans the city's first vertical shopping mall at Wilshire and Vermont in Koreatown, not far from the seemingly struggling Wilshire Galleria in the former I. Magnin store. LAT
Getting information on an underground stream that flows from the Toyon landfill in Griffith Park. GP, Interrupted
Newsweek senior writer Lorraine Ali, formerly of the LA Weekly and L.A. Times, sold a "memoir of her life as an Iraqi-American, her rediscovery of her Iraqi family, and a portrayal of their lives before and after the American invasion of Iraq" to Holt. Publishers Lunch
A visit with former staffers for Mayor Tom Bradley, ten years after his death, this weekend on KPCC's Off-Ramp.
Bill Boyarsky writes, "When Ed Guthman died Aug. 30 at the age of 89, the Los Angeles Jewish community lost one of its most distinguished members." Jewish Journal