Foreign Legion

It never gets old. More than 42 years after successfully sending a message from one host computer to another, UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock (pictured) still occasionally does media interviews about that historic October 29, 1969 day.

The latest reporter to reminisce with Kleinrock is Australian afternoon radio show host Bernadette Young. The professor recalled that the first-ever Internet-like message was LOL… without the second “L”:

“There was one programmer upstairs… All we wanted to do was to log in from our computer to their computer. In order to log in, you have to type L-O-G, and that other computer was smart enough to add I-N…”

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Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

The New Yorker‘s Dana Goodyear just gave a nice interview to San Diego Magazine about her recent piece on Chef Javier Plascencia and Tijuana’s efforts to land on the international foodie map. (The piece is  well worth the read if you missed it).

A choice tidbit:

We are outright fans of Plascencia in San Diego. Do you sense Angelenos clamoring to “claim him,” too? Did you end up rooting for him and the BajaMed movement by the end of your trip/reporting? How could you not root for Plascencia and his fellow Baja chefs! I do think that people in L.A.–and certainly the food-obsessed–are increasingly aware of him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he opened a place here. My sense is that he fields offers all the time.

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In the wake of Corbis’ recent acquisition of LA celebrity photo agency Splash News, Der Spiegel reporter Philip Bethge has paid a visit to the former’s Seattle office and the latter’s Venice HQ. The result is a highly entertaining look at the business dynamics of “the thugs of the telephoto lens.”

In LA, the man who makes Splash tick is British native Kevin Smith. While today’s shifting media landscape has become a revenue challenge for many outlets, it has proven to be a gold mine for savvy picture peddlers like this former London journalist. Splash revenues in the past year have grown by more than 20%. Per Bethge’s report:

The company has supplied the photography for 500 magazine covers over the last five years, Smith says, adding that Splash News sells photos in close to 70 countries. “I was amazed when we hit the million dollar [mark] in revenues,” says Smith, who drives a Bentley. “Now I am laughing about it.”

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Two twentysomething tourists visiting Los Angeles from the UK got an unpleasant surprise when they landed at LAX last week. Leigh Van Bryan and Emily Bunting were arrested and questioned for five hours by American Homeland Security officials for posting two supposed inflammatory tweets prior to their arrival. Van Bryan tweeted that not only was he going to “destroy America” he was going to “dig Marilyn Monroe up!”

Sounds bad…kind of. But when you actually look at the tweets in question, they’re obviously not meant to be taken literally.

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Australian House of Representatives leader Anthony Albanese was just busted lifting lines from the 1995 film The American President, written by Aaron Sorkin, in a speech to the National Press Club of Australia.

Here is the part of Albanese’s speech in question:

“In Australia we have serious challenges to solve and we need serious people to solve them. Unfortunately, Tony Abbott is not the least bit interested in fixing anything. He is only interested in two things: making Australians afraid of it and telling them who’s to blame for it.”

And here’s are Sorkin’s lines delivered by Michael Douglas in the film:

“We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it.”

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Terrible news. Manhattan Beach surf journalist Michael Scott Moore has been taken hostage by Somali pirates. Moore was in central Somalia researching a book on the subject of pirates when he was abducted.

The LA Times has the story:

Moore was en route to an airport when 15 men in two SUVs kidnapped him. They have taken him to Ceel Huur, a village on the Indian Ocean.

The U.S. State Department issued a statement saying it was concerned about Moore’s safety.

“We are aware of news reports that a U.S. citizen has been kidnapped in northern Somalia and we are concerned about the individual’s safety and well-being,” the State Department said in a statement.

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From Leeds in Northern England, 30-year-old video game PR manager Paul Rayment (pictured) recently chatted with KPCC reporter Ashley Bailey about his surprise at the success of a map he created tracing the notable touchstones of late rapper Tupac Shakur.

FourSquare users can download the map and check in to various Tupac places. Rayment meanwhile has already completed a second such interactive tool, which locks into Jay Z‘s “Empire State of Mind” references. Per Bailey’s report:

The map plots Tupac as he zigzags from his pre-fame days in Baltimore to school in Oakland to his record label in LA, and on to Las Vegas–where someone shot him in 1996 when he was 25-years-old. “Some of them had to be included like where he was shot and hospitals–that kind of thing,” Rayment said. “But, I wanted to do something more original. For instance, what he did in school, how he was first talent-spotted.”

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This is surely a first. In the wake of a very poorly chosen photo to support a January 19 Mitt Romney gag on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, India’s ambassador to the U.S., Nirupama Rao, has promised to “take the matter up with relevant authorities in Washington.” That information comes from Tom Wright, New Delhi-based South Asia correspondent for the Wall Street Journal.

There is also a Facebook protest group, all because a Leno staffer selected for the Romney summer home joke a picture of the sacred Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. The shimmering structure is the Sikh religion’s holiest shrine. From Wright’s dispatch:

India’s Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi, who is traveling in the U.S., also said the embassy would lodge a complaint, according to the Press Trust of India.

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Throughout the 69th Annual Golden Globes telecast this past Sunday, there were frequent audience shots showing Rupert Murdoch seated at one of the tables, next to his wife Wendi Deng.

Murdoch may be instantly recognizable to FishbowlLA, but apparently it was a different story for some on the Beverly Hilton red carpet. Here’s what happened when the media mogul crossed into the pre-show real estate where HFPA member Ruben Nepales was working. Per Nepales:

Our instruction at the red carpet entrance was to ask arriving guests for their IDs only if they didn’t look familiar. Well, an assistant helping us asked Murdoch for his ID. Before we could say, “Not necessary,” the media tycoon had whisked it out.

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Following the lead of sister publication Billboard, which spun off a Russian edition in 2007, the Hollywood Reporter is set to launch a glossy Russian-language monthly print publication in March. To be followed in short order by companion website thehollywoodreporter.ru.

The investor group backing The Hollywood Reporter: Russian Edition is the same one that underwrote the aforementioned Billboard Russia and includes Studio Three T, the production facility of writer-director Nikita Mikhalkov (pictured). Mikhalkov competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival with Burn by the Sun 2 and received a special career achievement honor at the 2007 Venice International Film Festival.

The Russian editorial team will be guided from LA by editorial director Janice Min, creative director Shanti Marlar and international news editor Kevin Cassidy. From the press release going out today:

“The Hollywood Reporter: Russian Edition represents the return of high quality field-reporting to the Russian entertainment market. We will offer readers a rare behind-the-scenes look into the Russian entertainment industry along with in-depth features and hard-hitting market analysis,” says THR: Russian Edition editor-in-chief Ivan Kudryavtsev.

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