Archives: October 2005

- Urban slobber is contaminating our beaches. Too bad, because I really liked the first Urban Slobber LP.

- Why do Angelenos flake on Evites? Calendar Weekend tackles this important social issue. Coming soon on FishbowlLA: an look at Evite response messages, an exciting new literary sub-genre.

- Speaking of literary sub-genres, good lord.

- I have a feeling that I’m the only person in the entire city who actually reads this recurring feature. And I usually skip breakfast.

In today’s LA Weekly, Jonathan Gold reviews gr/eats, the restaurant owned by the Asian culture magazine/retail empire Giant Robot. He’s clearly a fan of the magazine, although he seems politely non-plussed by the food:

So the food at gr/eats is re-contextualized Asian-American home cooking: bland Thai shrimp curry and Japanese omelet rice; a mild Salvadoran seafood stew served over a yellow rice “paella” and slightly clumsy Vietnamese spring rolls wrapped in rice paper; a quite decent pan-seared Chilean sea bass drizzled with Asian pesto and squishy, salty, fried tofu “meatballs” painted with an orangey sweet-and-sour sauce.

So: read the magazine. Maybe don’t eat at the restaurant. Meanwhile, I hear Cat Fancy is opening a place by its offices in Irvine.

VVM/New Times merger: How bad is it? Dan Savage tells everyone to relax. And of course, his advice is always sound.

LA Fashion Week: Lots of celebrities, but not so much actual business.

Celebrities: Turns out they like guns! I’m never hanging out with Leo again.

Say you are a struggling Vegas casino/hotel. You don’t have the leverage to get a good placement deal a la the Bellagio’s starring role in Ocean’s Eleven. So what do you do? If you’re the Stratosophere, you agree to get blown up and riddled with bullets in Domino. Is that really going to help business? Weirdly, it might.

- I hate to say it, but Barbara Boxer’s novel sounds pretty awful.

- Over-consumption in Los Angeles! Imagine that!

- Most-emailed-stories analysis: People are slightly more interested in the Plame leak investigation than real estate or luxury-scrambled-eggs preparations.

Infinity Broadcasting has confirmed the long-time rumor that Adam Carolla will be taking over for Howard Stern on the West Coast. (On the East Coast, it’s David Lee Roth.) Reportedly, Carolla will announce on tonight’s ‘Loveline’ that he’s leaving the show– a loss for sexually confused teens everywhere.

Nobody seems to be sure how, or if, the LA Weekly will change under ownership of the New Times. According to an article at the Village Voice website, Voice CEO David Schneiderman claims that union contracts at the Weekly (and Voice) will be honored, despite the New Times organization not being unionized. In the LAT, LA Weekly EIC Laurie Ochoa is quoted as saying “there are definitely a range of reactions and emotions” about being acquired by New Times. I’ll bet there are.

Anyway, it’s going to take the DOJ several months to approve the transaction, so there’s plenty of time for prognostication. We’ll try to post about it at least two or three times a day.

I’m pretty certain that the overlap between people who visit FishbowlLA (dour, poorly-dressed media professionals) and people whose photos end up at the cobrasnake (inebriated, stylishly-dressed party-goers) is virtually nil. So today’s LAT Column One profiling Mark Hunter, the cobrasnaker himself, is worth reading, if only to find out what the editorial assistants in your office are talking about. Basically, the cobrasnake party photos are just like the mediabistro party photos, except that everyone in them is underage and completely wasted. Hunter himself has parlayed the website into international micro-celebrityhood, and given that he’s only 20 years old, he seems admirably level-headed about the whole thing. So mazeltov to cobrasnake.

Good, sweet, baby Jesus: If you needed any additional indication that two of Hollywood’s three top creative guilds have gone totally, wild-eyed radical, look at any paper this morning gaze upon the mayhem at the Screen Actors Guild.

Yes: Newly-elected SAG president Alan Rosenberg has shot recently-installed SAG CEO Greg Hessinger out of a cannon. Also toast: The new heads of organizing strategy John Russum and commercials contracts oversight capo, JoAnne Kessler.

Agog, SAG insiders say privately this sort of senior-level executive bloodbath hasn’t been seen since since Elliot Richardson and Bill Ruckelshaus got the FBI bum’s rush out of Nixon’s Justice Department.

Expect litigation, as Hessinger has three-and-a-half years on his contract (and just moved here from New York) and SAG’s militants are essentially willing to give him busfare back from whence he came.

Perhaps “M*A*S*H’s” Mike Farrell says it best, in the Los Angeles Times, calling this is an “ugly, brutal development, surprising only in that its happening so soon.”

Yes, Mike, like so many, has seen the handwriting on the wall: Rosenberg’s and his Membership First cadres recent ascent at SAG immediately presaged two things, as Variety’s Dave McNary sagely observes today:

“Rosenberg and his allies are sending a dual message: SAG’s leaders are adamantly opposed to a merger with AFTRA, and they plan to take a far more confrontational stance with employers in negotiations and in organizing non-union work.”

Now, if these guys get into bed with the screenwriters, even reading about Hollywood labor coverage might require that minors be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

A Swedish journalist has been accused of plagiarizing this LAT article about the emerging hybrid dialect of Spanglish. Unfortunately, most of the press coverage of the incident is in Swedish, but this is what I’ve pieced together via translation websites:

Newspaper asserts: Pascalidou has plankat krönika
First accused Alexandra Pascalidou, 35, in order to use itself of spökskrivare.
Now in order to have stolen a kr̦nika in Los angeles Times Рand done the to your own in the newspaper metro.
- I worked with the article an entire year, says Daniel Hernandez on LA Times.
The newspaper Resumé discloses that Alexandra Pascalidou, krönikör in the free of charge newspaper metro, has plagierat a krönika in the American newspaper Los angeles Times.
Bodes krönikorna acts about tvÃ¥sprÃ¥kighet, “spanglish” – or “spangelska” that the is called in Alexandra Pascalidous translation.
And at a comparison is the resemblances the average texts majority prominent many.
Alexandra Pascalidous krönika, that was published in metro December 29, 2003, was typed on-the-spot in Los angeles in USA.
Two days earlier, December 27, had the American journalisten Daniel Hernandez your published text in Los angeles Times.
- the each on the first side and has been quoted in many newspapers in USA, but then has the to stood each the comes from. The acts about protecting about the readers’ confidence, says Daniel Hernandez to Aftonbladet.
In your personal kr̦nika in metro uses Alexandra Pascalidou same quotation and examples as Daniel Hernandez two done days earlier. In paragraph after paragraph reviews she to same persons Рin same order that Hernandez. But not somewhere in the text mentions she the American journalisten or LA Times.

Anyway, it’s nice to know that even if elitist East Coast media types don’t read or care about the LA Times, the paper gets noticed by Swedish plagiarists.

(link via L.A. Observed)