Weekly archive
April 18 - April 24, 2010
Saturday, Apr. 24
Mike Silverman was one of L.A.'s "realtors to the stars" before he retired in 2001. He used to say he got his start when when he sold Frank Sinatra's house...
Would you believe 110-89? The Thunder
tie the series 2-2, with play returning back to L.A.
Friends and admirers are passing around on line the news that longtime Los Angeles music critic Alan Rich died yesterday. He would have been about 85.
Floyd Dominy changed the map of the West as commissioner of the federal Bureau of Reclamation from 1959 to 1969. It was on his watch that Glen Canyon Dam was built, forming giant Lake Powell on the upper Colorado River.
At Friday night's Los Angeles Times Book Prize ceremony, Dave Eggers won the current interest award for "Zeitoun" and was given the event's first Innovators Award.
Candidate Steve Poizner's book about teaching at Mt. Pleasant High School in San Jose makes act one of this week's "This American Life" on NPR.
They fold 7-2 with two goaltender changes — and the goalies weren't even the problem — as the Canucks go up 3-2 in the series. The Canadians can clinch the...
Friday, Apr. 23
That planted rectangle on the 110 near Downtown that Caltrans sold to Toyota last year for a Prius ad is being given a baseball-themed message.
Host Conan Nolan will put questions to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Republican candidate for governor Meg Whitman on this weekend's "KNBC News Conference." Proposition 17 and its impact...
Dodgers lose their hottest hitter for two weeks, and a look at the Kings-Canucks series for KCRW.
I'll be signing "Wilshire Boulevard" and "San Fernando Valley" on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Angel City Press booth. LA Observed
authors will be all over the place, including on a
bunch of panels.
They can't both be right. I suppose we'll find out pretty soon which one is BSing.
Alicia Parlette was diagnosed at 23 with a rare form of cancer in her hip and a breast. The copy editor's 17-part series in the San Francisco Chronicle under the
Alicia's Story banner told of her experiences undergoing chemotherapy and coming to grips with her fate.
Glamour won the top honor as Magazine of the Year, while New York took four Ellies and The New Yorker and National Geographic each won three.
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich followed up top aide
Jane Usher's email critical of the mayor's budget with his own communication, saying that Villaraigosa's spending plan "shows a remarkable lack of leadership and imagination" and is a management failure.
Thursday, Apr. 22
Former LA Weekly film critic Scott Foundas won two awards, including print critic of the year, and KABC 7’s George Pennacchio also won a pair at the at the Los Angeles Press Club’s third annual National Entertainment Awards tonight.
Sharon Waxman sends word that while Joe Adalian is leaving as television editor of The Wrap, the TV blog he brought with him is staying.
Media analyst Ken Doctor parses the Huffington Post numbers at
Nieman Journalism Lab.
Campbell rises in a poll, dueling tax returns, packaging Beutner, radio ratings and another downtown police funeral scheduled.
This time, actually, the former planning commission president who now advises City Attorney Carmen Trutanich used an email to attack Mayor Villaraigosa.
Wednesday, Apr. 21
It's that jet stream sitting right over us and sweeping in a Siberian air mass,
Bad Mom, Good Mom explains, tracing the cold air all the way back to the old country.
HL commissioner Gary Bettman just met the press underneath the stands at Staples Center and was asked about the prospects for staging one of the league's popular New Year's Day outdoor games here. His answer — that he assumed the suggestion was a joke — was surprising.
Matthew Belloni of The Hollywood Reporter finally got to read the script for a potential HBO series about a "no-holds-barred show biz blogger." His main question going in was answered: it's definitely based on Nikki Finke.
Austin Beutner will be on "
Which Way, L.A.?" on KCRW this evening at 7:30 p.m. to talk about his plans for serving awhile as interim head of the Department of Water and Power (while still doing the rest of his $1-a-year job as deputy mayor and jobs czar.)
Joe Adalian just joined the Wrap
last June, but he's taking his address book and his
TV MoJoe blog (originally started at TV Week) to New York Magazine's entertainment site Vulture.
The Journalism Shop,
created last summer to help unemployed former Los Angeles Times journalists find freelance gigs and other work, is opening up to experienced reporters across the country.
Hitler reacts to news that YouTube is taking down the Hitler parodies. "Before people started making fun of this scene, there were only a few people outside Germany who knew...
Gabriel Snyder, let go recently as editor-in-chief at Gawker after several media stints in L.A., is joining Newsweek Digital as executive editor.
If you're the Los Angeles Times and you want to go top of page one with a story attacking the credibility of the mayor, you probably shouldn't misspell
credibility in the headline deck.
Amusing piece at LA Eastside by guest blogger Matt Lucas on waiting at that Angelus Plaza bench for Zooey Deschanel to appear, as she did in "(500) Days of Summer."
Romney comes back for Whitman, Kaus and Ann Coulter, editorializing against Beutner and a new Knott's history book.
This morning's Los Angeles Times carries a correction to that Op-Ed piece from last week that stated the LA logo on the Dodgers cap sprang from team executives and a...
A roundup of coverage and reaction following Mayor Villaraigosa's State of the city speech.
Journalist/author Charles Bowden will discuss his new book, "Murder City: Ciudad Juarez and the Global Economy’s New Killing Fields," tonight at Aloud at the Central Library. KPCC's Adolfo Guzman-Lopez will...
David Cay Johnston, the ex-NYT reporter who's been getting a fair amount of attention for his Daryl Gates post here at LA Observed, talks to John Rabe on this weekend's "Off-Ramp" on KPCC.
Tuesday, Apr. 20
The federal court lawsuit by an unidentified 25-year-old Mexican was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, which allows foreign victims of human rights abuses to bring their perpetrators to justice in U.S. courts.
Jeanie Buss of the Lakers tweeted the photo of the
newest statue outside Staples Center, with a short and sweet caption:
Chickie baby.
The little shop on Huntley Drive where you or someone you know probably lined up for tart yogurt-like icy stuff — and possibly earned a parking ticket or two —...
L.A. Cityview channel 35 on cable in Los Angeles will carry Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's 4 p.m. speech, to be held this year at the LAPD headquarters across from City Hall.
My take on the Kings' exciting playoff win last night was really just a sequence of quick observations. Brian Kennedy, my seatmate in the press box who covered the game...
Regarding all those web parodies using footage of the Adolf Hitler character from the film "Downfall," the German production company that owns the film has
asked YouTube to
yank them all.
Mayor Villaraigosa was at LAX to see off President Obama this morning.
A statue honoring the late broadcaster Chick Hearn will be unveiled outside Staples Center before tonight's game 2 of the Lakers' playoff series with Oklahoma City.
Rain on the way, less-dire budget news all around, the morning news battleground, a new book show and more.
Monday, Apr. 19
President Obama's official remarks at the Democrats' fundraiser, as provided by the White House Media Affairs office. After the jump....
Fans came in jerseys dating back to the Marcel Dionne days (that would be the 1970s and 80s) ready to stomp and cheer at the first Stanley Cup playoff game...
Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times is the pool reporter with the president in Exposition Park. Here's the first pool report, via the White House press office. About 1,000...
Crisis PR meister Mike Sitrick has been sued in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by a former employee (on behalf of them all) who says the boss at Sitrick and Company manipulated the ESOP to deprive current and former employees of millions of dollars
Former CityBeat editor Rebecca Schoenkopf, who blogs as
Commie Girl, went with her boyfriend and the other writers for Fourstory.org on a recent trip to Cuba.
She posts that Havana was Havana was "so dreamy and beautiful and different—different from our homes, from anyplace we have been, and from how we thought it would be. It is massively crowded, 2.2 million people squashed into a city you could walk across in not so very many hours."
David Cay Johnston's
visiting blogger piece for LA Observed on Friday about his experiences covering Daryl Gates and the LAPD in the early 1980s has been getting some nice attention and attracting favorable emails. Johnston will be a guest on "Which Way, L.A.?" with Warren Olney on KCRW at 7:30 p.m.
In a post Sunday
on his blog, Cardinal Roger Mahony calls the new Arizona statute "the country's most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law."
Democrats wrap up in L.A. before Obama visits, LAT's in-house anti Obama blogger spins the trip, a letter from L.A. and Animal in the new New Yorker, a new blog and more.
Jerry Brown, shown with L.A. political consultants Julie Buckner and Donna Bojarsky, turned up Saturday night at the
Calbuzz dinner at Cafe Pinot during the Democrats' state convention. Brown kibbitzed with Demo adviser Garry South, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, Patt Morrison and other media types, including LA Observed.
Sunday, Apr. 18
President Obama will arrive a little before 5:30 p.m. Monday to raise L.A. campaign cash for the Democrats — Sen. Barbara Boxer and the DNC specifically — and wreak a little unfortunate havoc with local mobility. At least it will be a Monday, so the natural afternoon traffic should be a bit lighter than usual — but there's a Kings playoff game at Staples Center at 7 p.m.
Now comes L.A. Times media columnist James Rainey with his take on The Entryway, the project where two white journalists (soon to be one) are embedded with an immigrant family near MacArthur Park.
Three years ago, the family that owns the Hollywood property where Yamashiro and the Magic Castle sit put the 10 acres up for sale. They accepted an offer from Sean MacPherson, impresario behind the Maritime Hotel, Jones, Bar Lubitsch and other hip spots.
AEG's Tim Leiweke and sports mogul Casey Wasserman are considering reviving the NFL stadium plan they first aired eight years ago.
Mayor Villaraigosa will announce Monday, as expected, that he is appointing Austin Beutner to be interim general Manager of the Department of Water and Power.
I noticed at LAX the other day that the skin is back on the iconic Theme Building, with a fresh coat of white paint. Renovation only took, what, three years? New York Times bureau chief Jennifer Steinhauer
explained the meaning of it all this weekend for the out-of-towners.
The Lakers began their playoff run with an
87-79 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder at Staples Center. Kobe led the way with 21 points, Pau Gasol 19.
Some of today's printed Los Angeles Times editions carry no report on last night's Kings' playoff game, which started early about 7 p.m. and, though it went into overtime, ended with a Kings win
at 10 p.m. — well within the Saturday night deadlines of previous years.
