Browse FishbowlLA January 2005 archives - FishbowlLA

Fishbowl LA Presents: Therapist Reviews

Mike — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 16:10:34 +0000

Do you like your shrink? Do you not like your shrink? Does he or she have any annoying habits? How’s the waiting room? As a consumer service to media professionals, FishbowlLA will be compiling reviews of Southern California psychiatrists and publishing them, Zagat-style, on the blog. Email your review here or in the anonymous tip box.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Santa Barbara to the Media: Pay for Jacko Access!

Mike — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 15:45:44 +0000

The Los Angeles Times reports that Santa Barbara County is asking news organizations covering the Michael Jackson trial to come up with a total of around $800,000 to defray the expenses the county will incur through having all those journalists and camera crews to deal with. The costs break down to about $125/day for newspapers and about $300/day for national tv crews- much much more than the Peterson trial.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Weinraub Says ‘Ciao, Baby’

Mike — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 10:22:51 +0000

Bernard Weinraub’s farewell piece in yesterday’s New York Times is full of great cameos, among them Jim Carrey, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michelle Peiffer, along with a poignant tale about Julia Phillips confiding to Weinraub on her deathbed. Weinraub also confesses that a) he should have left the movie beat as soon as he started going out with Amy Pascal and b) he drives a Range Rover.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Stephen Glass, Raconteur

Mike — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 00:41:44 +0000

On Friday night, disgraced journalist Stephen Glass performed at the UnCabaret Say The Word night at the Skirball Center. After being introduced by MC Beth Lapides as a “wonderful and infamous writer” he told two anecdotes from his life: the first about a psychiatrist he started seeing “around six years ago” (in other words, when his fabrications at The New Republic were unearthed); the second about his dog Eugene, who has a giant penis and loves to masturbate. (Seriously, that’s what it was about.)

Glass was dressed like a television writer trying just a little too hard to be hip: black Converse-ish sneakers, aggressively baggy khakis, a T-shirt festooned with an image of a cannon.

As previously reported in this space, Glass is living in Echo Park. Is he putting his JD to use at a local purveyor of legal services? Or is he trying to “break in” to the “industry?” Or both? Stay tuned.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Thank You for Stopping By

Mike — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:37:39 +0000

Welcome to Fishbowl LA. This blog will explore the nexus between gossip and social analysis. For instance, I will be posting things like What Peter Bart Ate For Breakfast Today. But I will also be eavesdropping on people in Whole Foods, from which I will derive insights on how we live. In addition, there will be contests. You may win a T-shirt.

Meanwhile, if you know what Peter Bart ate for breakfast today, please email me. Because he doesn’t take my calls. Thank you.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Weekend Gross Predictions: Farmers’ Markets

Mike — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 08:42:45 +0000

Hollywood: $14,438
Santa Monica: $11,339
Silver Lake: $10,103

The chance of rain is going to keep attendance down this weekend, particularly in Santa Monica. However, the new asparagus that the blond hippie guy at Hollywood introduced last weekend should continue to sell strongly.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Publicist

Mike — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 18:53:59 +0000

Bumble Ward, who handles PR for Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and many other noted directors, is quitting the business to write a novel. According to Variety:

“I discovered writing is where my heart is, and I am going to give it a shot,” she said.

What will Bumble write? We’re hoping it’s something like The Devil Wears Prada in reverse: a thinly-veiled roman a clef from a grizzled media veteran about her annoying assistant.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Firewood: The New Plasma TV

Mike — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 11:34:01 +0000

The LA Times today reports on the new SoCal status symbol: firewood. Yes, apparently Angelenos crave ‘specialty woods’ like almond and birch (“the white Cadillac of firewood”):

“Southern Californians buy firewood for the snap, crackle, pop,” says Fred Ford, 68, who has been logging local mountains for more than 40 years. “It’s not about heat; it’s what I call the $20 romantic evening: a rainstorm, a nice bottle of wine and a bundle of firewood.”

One of the things I love about Los Angeles is that even the lumberjacks talk like Thorstein Veblen.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Who Lives Where: Michael Kinsley

Mike — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 18:21:00 +0000

New LA Times editorial page overseer Michael Kinsley has reportedly taken an apartment in the fortress-like Bunker Hill Apartment Towers at 3rd and Figueroa Street for the half or so of the year he’s spending in LA

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Yahoo Comes To Town

Mike — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 15:43:28 +0000

The LA Times reports that Yahoo has signed a lease on 256,000 square feet of office space in the Colorado Center in Santa Monica (which will be renamed the Yahoo Center). The office will be staffed by 1,000 employees, including former ABC TV chief Lloyd Braun who has been tapped to head Yahoo’s media group.

No, this isn’t going to be yet another analysis of the synergy between new media and the entertainment industry, a subject I find so tiresome that I can’t even finish typing this sentence without falling asleezzzzz.

What Fishbowl really wants to know is, how will 1000 Yahoo-ites in our midst affect the social fabric of the world of Los Angeles Young Adult Culture Industry Workers (who, from now on, will be known on this blog by their acronym: LAYACIW)? Right now, LAYACIW culture is driven by a daisy chain of envy. Most of the journalists I know in LA want to be screenwriters. Most of the screenwriters want to be TV writers. Most of the TV writers want to be journalists. Meanwhile, the development executives want to become social workers or open artisan bakeries.

Where will the Yahooites fit in? Will they succumb to envy, Los Angeles-style, or will they maintain their distinctive Northern California self-satisfied smugness (Which I will refer to hereafter as NCSSS)? Stay tuned.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Stockard Channing: Drunk Driver

Mike — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 12:16:03 +0000

Wow. Stockard Channing? A hypothetical, unanswerable question: Would this get more or less coverage if it was Tara Reid?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Five Words That Shook The World

Mike — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 11:49:12 +0000

The two dozen or so people who watched Henry Rollins’s movie talk show ‘Henry’s Movie Club’ on IFC this weekend witnessed a rare Hollywood occurence: a movie star admitting to not liking a movie. When Rollins asked guest Daryl Hannah what she thought of ‘The Woodsman’, after a few sentences of hem-haw, she replied “it didn’t work for me.”

I would predict that this public utterance would send Hannah’s career spiraling downward, but, uh…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What I Really Want To Know About Sundance

Mike — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 20:00:53 +0000

Any male Ugg sightings? Send word to michael@fishbowlLA.com.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Someone Give These People an E! Show

Mike — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 19:18:55 +0000

The John Birch Society takes on AMPAS. In all seriousness, if I were the People’s Choice Awards, I would rush to capitalize on the Academy’s overlooking of the highest-grossing movie of all time by launching a PR blitz: the ‘Passion’ snub demonstrates that Oscar is out of touch with the pulse of America, blah blah blah. Then I would hire some smart jews to renegotiate my broadcast deal.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

BREAKING NEWS: STEPHEN GLASS TO PERFORM STANDUP COMEDY

Mike — Tue, 25 Jan 2005 15:59:09 +0000

this Friday at the ‘Say the Word’ show at the Skirball which features “great original non-fiction from top comedy writers.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.