Weekly archive
July 5 - July 11, 2009
Saturday, Jul. 11
I can't remember the last time I saw the Hotel Rosslyn roof signs on display over Downtown, but I was pleased to see the northern one of the pair fired...
Friday, Jul. 10
Well, he is if his Twitter posts are real. @villaraigosa Good to be back in LA! And good to see @revcarr 's work in action: check out this Summer Night...
Former UCLA chancellor Charles Young filed suit asking the California Supreme Court to invalidate the state's 2/3 vote requirement for raising taxes. Dan Walters More chest-beating and attention-seeking by...
For the first time in what feels like forever, Michael Jackson isn't mentioned in this week's LA Observed segment airing at 4:44 p.m. on KCRW. The subject this time is...
I don't know — I'm kind of thinking Steve Greenberg is no fan of the distracting digital billboards popping up around Los Angeles. With the issue due to get hot...
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is trying to remove its Los Angeles president, Rev. Eric P. Lee, over his support of gay marriage. It's reopening the rift over African American...
Abbreviated Friday edition... Chief Bratton says he's selling his Los Feliz home to get free of the unused pool and will buy another home in or around Los Angeles. L.A....
Thursday, Jul. 9
Channel 7 reported tonight that Michael Jackson's casket was removed from Staples Center after Tuesday's memorial while hidden in a SWAT van. Chief Bratton would neither confirm nor deny, saying...
Jonathan Kirsch reviews "A Windfall of Musicians: Hitler's Émigrés and Exiles in Southern California," Dorothy Lamb Crawford's study of the 1930s emigres to Los Angeles such as Igor Stravinsky, Arnold...
Aaron Sorkin will take over the script, Steven Soderbergh will no longer direct, but Brad Pitt is still attached to star and the movie remains at Sony, says Variety's Marc...
Hmm, selling in a down market. Let the speculation begin. The Times' Hot Property column says that LAPD Chief William Bratton and his wife Rikki Klieman are asking 1.875 million...
Her husband Eric Weisbard posts on Facebook that he will be teaching in Tuscaloosa. Powers says in a Facebook note that she will continue to write as L.A. Times pop...
Joel Kotkin posits five suspects in a new piece at Forbes. It took some amazing incompetence to toss this best-endowed of places down into the dustbin of history. Yet conventional...
Catching up to this via the SoCal Minds blog: Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec, a regular on op-ed pages and elsewhere in the media, was nominated by President Obama to...
The Getty remains closed today due to that mostly contained fire in Sepulveda Pass, and Sepulveda Boulevard is still closed from Sunset to Mulholland. LAT, KNX Capitol Weekly's Anthony...
Back in June, when I posted about Mayor Villaraigosa's Twitter updates lagging behind by hours, the account at HTRimalower tweeted the link and a question: "Why is L.A.Observed hating on...
The L.A. Times says its comparison of LAPD crime stats to the department's online maps that are supposed to show what's going on in neighborhoods found that 40% of serious...
Wednesday night's opening performance of "Monty Python's Spamalot" at the Ahmanson ended with creator Eric Idle taking the stage (to a standing ovation, though his name was never used) and...
Wednesday, Jul. 8
The Los Angeles staffers for Current TV have now been held in North Korea for 113 days. Lisa Ling sends word of a new website — lauraandeuna.com — to galvanize...
Mayor Villaraigosa's posts on Twitter during his Africa trip have all been about Los Angeles — and until further evidence appears I'll assume they have been written by @Matt_Szabo or...
Smoke is much reduced out here. Jonathan Alcorn shot this photo when the plume was still growing....
The Getty Museum is being evacuated down through Brentwood as a precaution due to a fire burning in brush a ridge or two to the north in Sepulevda Pass. Damn...
The Los Angeles Business Journal site went dark on Tuesday and didn't come back until late this morning. No, they weren't mourning Michael Jackson. Editor's note posted today: The Business...
Steve Greenberg picks up on the local politics of the Michael Jackson event seen 'round the world. Click to view larger; see more cartoons by Greenberg in the LA...
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich appeared at the City Council podium to say he is investigating how the city got the tab for the police costs of staffing the Michael...
Tuesday, Jul. 7
The real estate developer who may have had a hand in 100,000 new homes was a condo and strip mall pioneer in Southern California and built office towers in Century...
AEG chief Tim Leiweke, asked by Mark Coogan on Channel 2/9 to respond to Councilman Dennis Zine's demand that the company cover the public costs of the Jackson memorial, sounded...
Eerie media silence regarding the return trip to wherever Michael Jackson goes now, and the continuing buildup of costs for public services. Will freeway closures occur again this afternoon? 1:28...
Live in Los Angeles on channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 34 and 52 (translated), MSNBC, Fox News Channel, CNN. And on many L.A. radio stations, as well as...
A hearse is driving through Forest Lawn and falling into procession formation. Which route to Staples Center? Updates: Left the cemetery at 9:25, east on Forest Lawn Drive. 134 eastbound...
The Times is reporting that the unidentified detective shot herself last night after walking into the Santa Clarita sheriff's station and speaking to a deputy. She placed a box of...
Wags are cackling that Mayor Villaraigosa is on vacation in Africa and missing the city's biggest media day in years — all those cameras, perhaps a billion people watching L.A....
Several dozen black limousines (and other vehicles) are starting to move away from the Jackson family home on Hayvenhurst Avenue, presumably headed toward Forest Lawn. They have a police escort,...
Monday, Jul. 6
In the same issue of The Atlantic where Sandra Tsing Loh finishes off her marriage, the editor's choice book is Kevin Starr's eighth in his series on Golden State history:...
Ex-Dodger Nomar Garciaparra took the field today in Boston for the first time since the 2004 trade that broke off one of the great sports love affairs. The Red Sox...
Dodgers manager Joe Torre is on Fox Business Network today talking with David Asman about, of all things, the Yankees he used to manage. Some highlights from FBN: On Roger...
Who's the ringmaster of the circus in Sacramento? We are, ultimately. Steve Greenberg nails it. See more by Greenberg in the LA Sketchbook archive....
The Forest Lawn cemetery wedged between Griffith Park, Burbank and Toluca Lake calls itself FL Hollywood Hills for marketing purposes, but make no mistake: it's in the San Fernando Valley....
Sam Zell's Tribune Company has a written agreement to sell the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field and other assets to the Ricketts family for about $900 million, says the Chicago Tribune....
City Council prez pro tem Jan Perry has released the city's map on street closures designed to keep the ticketless masses far away from the Michael Jackson memorial at Staples...
So to attend the Michael Jackson memorial, you have to be a web user, able to print your instructions, have free time today and the transportation to get to...
Channel 11 reporter John Schwada blogs that the recent layoff of 99 staffers cost his newsroom "a lot of good young people, with energy and dreams (fortunately, not all of...
Sunday, Jul. 5
I skipped right past this Steve Coll piece in last week's New Yorker skimming revelations from a forthcoming book by Osama’s first wife, Najwa Bin Laden, and his son. Coll...
Today's New York Times Magazine devoted more than 8,000 words to the question: "Who can possibly govern California?" Reporter Mark Leibovich gets at his inquiry through Gavin Newsom, the other...
In a move to save space, the Los Angeles Times weather page dropped 43 international cities, 16 U.S. cities and four California locales — Blythe, Mt. Wilson, Rialto and Santa...
Lori Jablons sends this photo of a brush fire burning this afternoon in the hills behind her Lake View Terrace neighborhood. "You can see the flames within the smoke, and...
They're talking now about a private family funeral at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, with no motorcade through the city. Cops will have their hands full with Tuesday's Staples Center memorial,...
From the Adventures in Grave Hunting blog: While the world's media focused on speculation about where Michael Jackson would be buried, lovely Farrah Fawcett was quietly laid to rest two...
