Weekly archive
November 9 - November 15, 2008
Saturday, Nov. 15
Why am I blogging on a Saturday night? Because PCH to Santa Monica, where I was supposed to meet friends for dinner and a movie, is a parking lot. An...
That's the word from the National Weather Service, which expects high winds in LA County to last until 2 p.m.. Meanwhile, fires now burn in Montecito, Sylmar, Corona and Brea....
Chief Tribune innovation honcho, Lee Abrams, was in town this week for a Press Club event and, in addition to this YouTube video, left a flurry of news stories...
Between the Times' photogs and picture editors, they've got some great fire photo galleries on the site. But just as remarkable are civilian shots like this one. Here's a link...
The strong smell of smoke woke me and we've got another fire. In Sylmar this time, driven by what the LAFD called near-hurricane-force winds. At least 2,600 acres burned and,...
Friday, Nov. 14
The latest stats on the Tea fire in Santa Barbara County stand at 2,500 acres burned, more than 100 homes destroyed, and more than 1,800 news items that mention Oprah...
Oops -- the NY Times' travel section on Sunday will have a piece about visiting Santa Barbara, our own Mark Lacter points out. One week from tomorrow: the Great Los...
Martin Eisenstadt, who has a blog but doesn't actually exist, is a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy, which also doesn't actually exist. None of which...
There's a cottage industry of black humor and killer irony at the Times thanks to Lee Abrams' smug memos, with their hefty helpings of hubris tinged with Tourettes. Here's one...
Talk about a power vacuum. The LA Times Washington bureau is no more. What we get instead is a Tribune Washington News Bureau which, as Kevin blogged earlier, will feed...
Even as water-dropping aircraft dip into low reservoirs in the Santa Barbara area, residents have been asked to cut their water use to near-zero. Wash your face and brush your...
The fire in Montecito, now called the Tea fire, has burned 1,500 acres and destroyed at least 80 homes in the high-priced enclave. (Insurance execs are losing serious sleep right...
Thursday, Nov. 13
Mandatory evacuations as a wildfire races through the Santa Barbara area, tears through Montecito. Winds gusting to 50-plus mph. Power out in parts of the city. Stories from LA Times,...
First more than a thousand anti-Prop 8 protesters gathered at the Mormon temple in Westwood. Now, after employees reported receiving an envelope filled with white powder, the temple has been...
Here's another body blow for our hometown paper -- Virginia Ellis, the Times' Sacramento bureau chief, is retiring. She'd been planning to leave last year but, when asked to please...
Here we go again -- more hot and windy weather on the way. Guy McCarthy at Watershed News gathers the details: Just a few days after a cold front contributed...
One of my favorite assignments ever while at the Daily News (pre-web so I can't link) was a profile of Robert Jastrow, the brilliant physicist who, in addition to helping...
Anand Jon, the Indian-born fashion designer who has dressed celebutante Paris Hilton and singer Janet Jackson (big photo gallery on his still-live web site) faced a jury on multiple charges...
OK -- man, alligator, bar. The patrons freak out, the Huntington Beach cops get called to Johnny's Saloon, and even though this all happened on Saturday night, word about the...
Did anyone really think the same-sex marriage issue in California was over? According to a new story in Capitol Weekly, the move to repeal Prop 8 is already taking aim...
Yeah, me neither. But the Great SoCal Shakeout just got started so millions of our fellow Californians are role-playing the disaster, Metro trains are slowing down and, this being the...
Kevin's taking a break and here I am, doing my best not to break the blog while he's gone. See any bad links or (I do not have the copy...
I'll be vacating the virtual premises through the weekend and into next week. If there's posting to be done — and there surely is — Veronique will be doing it....
Wednesday, Nov. 12
The Variety name went up in giant letters today on the former People's Bank tower in the Miracle Mile stretch of Wilshire. The Hollywood trade moves into the top floor...
Without any inside info, I did wonder if Rebecca Schoenkopf would be staying on as editor of CityBeat after new publisher Will Swaim — her former boss at OC Weekly...
The El Coyote manager who donated to Proposition 8 through her church probably should not have been invited to the press conference....
Los Angeles-born Olympic wrestling champion Henry Cejudo will write his memoir, "The Americano Dream," for Celebra. It's about growing up Mexican American in South Los Angeles, being moved to New...
Assistant national editor Millie Quan will become the new Column One editor at the Los Angeles Times, not the senior editor in Features as announced in August. Of course, the...
Anger — and the resulting finger pointing — continues apace over the passage of Proposition 8, which appears to have added a ban on same-sex marriage to the California Constitution....
Back from the holiday...here are some news notes. The Supreme Court rules that the Navy's interest in conducting sonar tests whenever it wants trumps concerns about the damage to sea...
Tuesday, Nov. 11
Jay Fiondella moved to Los Angeles to act, roomed with Leonard Nimoy, and opened Chez Jay near the beach in Santa Monica in 1959. It became a showbiz hangout for...
Monday, Nov. 10
For a writer at a New York gossip blog, Gawker's Alex Pareene seems to have a strong opinion that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa should not be advising the president-elect....
The race's new operator finds the last Monday in May preferable to the President's Day holiday in February, so runners get three extra months to prepare — and a greater...
Esha Momeni, a 28-year-old Iranian-American working on a documentary about the women's movement in Iran, has been held since being arrested on Oct. 15. A friend of her family says...
Harcourt has been music director and host of Morning Becomes Eclectic for ten years. He'll leave Nov. 30 to pursue independent projects and host a three-hour show on Sunday evenings...
Gov. Schwarzenegger hopes the state Supreme court overturns Proposition 8 and urged the Republican Party to move away from some of its core conservative principles and embrace spending on...
Volunteers to leave, that is. Time is asking staffers in its magazines to raise their hands if they want to get bought out before the axe falls. At People magazine...
Sunday, Nov. 9
Congrats to former City Controller Rick Tuttle, who was married tonight to Rebecca Rona. I'm told the festivities at UCLA's Faculty Center attracted, among others, Reps. Howard Berman and Brad...
Noon on Saturday was the deadline for candidates to file their declarations of intent to run in the March 3, 2009 primary election in the city of Los Angeles. No...
