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Oscar noms, labor vs. Parks, Mark Kriski comes home again, Rashida Jones and more.
"The KIng's Speech" received a dozen Oscar nominations, the most of any film, followed by "True Grit' with 10 and "The Social Network" and "Inception" with eight each. Oscar.com
Gov. Jerry Brown appointed Mona Pasquil, a longtime Democratic operative, to be his appointments secretary, and Gareth Elliott, state Sen. Alex Padilla's policy director, to be his legislative affairs secretary. Brown also retained H.D. Palmer as the Department of Finance's deputy director for external affairs. Capitol Alert
The City Council moved closer Monday to the possibility of shutting down most city services for one day a week to deal with the ongoing budget shortfall. DN
City Attorney Carmen Trutanich escalated his budget battle with the mayor and city council by making LAPD detectives drive downtown to file all cases. Witness LA
The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor re-upped its opposition to Councilman Bernard Parks by endorsing his little-known election challenger, Forescee Hogan-Rowles. "This is the same group of people that spent $10 million to buy a puppet in the 2nd District [he means Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas] and now they are trying to buy one in the 8th District," said Parks. LAT
Questioning whether the San Fernando Valley is getting its fair share of housing funds, City Councilman Richard Alarcón has requested an audit of the city's Housing Department. DN
City Council field deputies and case workers are "on the front lines of constituent calls and the liaisons to L.A.'s political leadership for the vast majority of Angelenos who never visit City Hall or watch a City Council meeting," says Kerry Cavanaugh. DN
SCI-Arc's quarter-mile-long campus is changing hands as one of ten Downtown properties involved in a settlement agreement approved today between bankrupt property owner Meruelo Maddux and one of its largest investors. Blogdowntown
KCET "SoCal Connected" will go live at 6 p.m. for the State of the Union speech and the Republican response, with a panel that includes anchor Val Zavala, Larry Elder of 790 KABC, Patt Morrison of KPCC and "SoCal Connected" correspondent Brian Rooney.
KTLA's Mark Kriski, home from the hospital again in his months-long battle with Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococci infection, says his pneumonia began with the office cold. Kriski says he's still hooked up to drain fluids from his lungs and elsewhere and in 6-8 weeks will need more surgery to remove dead tissue. Fishbowl LA
Public broadcasting is on the ropes in Washington. Wilshire & Washington
L.A. Times music writer Chris Lee is leaving to be a senior entertainment writer at the new Newsweek/Daily Beast. New York
L.A. food blogger Foodinista has a story on picking cabernet grapes at night for Shafer Vineyaeds in the Napa Valley in the February issue of Bon Appetit. Neither childbirth nor running the Los Angeles marathon "was as physically taxing as picking 11.75 tons of grapes on the side of a mountain in the middle of the night." Foodinista
The Slake party in Santa Monica (celebrating the journal's second issue) drew 700 guests, says Fishbowl LA.
A federal jury Monday found that former LAPD officer Joseph Cruz used excessive force in the fatal 2008 shooting in Hollywood of Mohammad Usman Chaudhry, a 21-year-old man with autism. LAT
The El Segundo blue butterfly is continuing to flourish in a sand dune habitat just west of Los Angeles International Airport, LAX officials said Monday. Daily Breeze
Actress Rashida Jones on growing up in Brentwood near O.J. Simpson, visiting her grandparents on Broad Beach and having Passover seder at Chasen’s. "There are a lot of dangers to growing up in L.A. There’s no guarantee that your kid is going to turn out to be a hardworking, ambitious, not-superficial person with fire under their ass." Los Angeles
Chris Burden's "Urban Light" installation of vintage lampposts outside LACMA is "fast becoming a cultural symbol of Los Angeles," says Jori Finkel. LAT
Church & State owner Yassmin Sarmadi has leaesed the former Royal Clayton's space across the street and plans to open another British-style pub. Squid Ink
Gov. Jerry Brown will deliver his State of the State address next Monday.