Although the term “Yves St Laurent manifesto” sounds like something of an oxymoron, the politically fashioned standalone mag is actually a well-known quantity within the clothing design industry. Come March 5th, for the first time ever, the YSL Manifesto will be handed out on the streets of LA to the tune of 2,000 random copies.

The New York Times has an exclusive first look. In addition to LA, other cities on the spring 2011 target list are New York, Paris, London, Milan, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Via advance interview excerpt, YSL creative director Stefano Pilati explains the basic idea behind the magazine:

“I wanted to create a wider influence for the message that was being sent from the catwalk, by taking imagery of a collection and giving it to people on environmentally friendly paper in the street without targeting a specific demographic…”

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Accomplished music journalist Darryl Morden died this past Friday from cancer. He was only 52.

Morden, a Los Angeles native, wrote for a number of media outlets, including Billboard, Grammy Magazine, Buzzine, and Music Connection. He wrote concert reviews for The Hollywood Reporter for almost two decades. Today THR published an obituary of their longtime contributor. An excerpt:

Born in Hollywood, Morden graduated from Cal State Northridge and began his career in 1981, working for ABC-Watermark on American Top 40, the most successful program in radio history. He was a writer for the show hosted by Casey Kasem — including its syndicated TV spinoff America’s Top 10 — penning and editing scripts, conducting artist interviews and working PR for the show. By 1988, he was associate producer for AT40, then hosted by Shadoe Stevens, and was head writer and associated producer of special programming projects for ABC Radio Networks.

The complete obit can be read here. Morden is survived by his wife Barbara and son Declan.

Amazon Studios, the much ballyhooed movie development arm of Amazon.com, today announced the winners of its January contests. Among that group is Playa Vista based director Christian Davis, who landed $10,000 for a two-hour video recording that was judged Best Table Read.

The 43-year-old Davis connected via the service with 38-year-old Malboro, VT screenwriter Alex Greenfield, author of Memory, a thriller loglined as “Memento meets Se7en.” It’s the story of a former homicide investigator with a photographic memory who revisits his most traumatic case.

Davis got some actor friends together and shot the table read in about three hours. A few more hours of editing, and it was done… “Right now, I’m concentrating on the development of Memory,” he said. “I really think this script has a solid, commercial premise. I’ve never seen a hero like Nick. I’m especially excited to explore the visual potential of the script as the test movie develops.”

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For most of us ink-stained wretches, throwing a book party in Los Angeles during a torrential downpour would whittle the attendees down to single digits. But when Arianna Huffington and Wendi Murdoch (yes, wife of Rubert) host such an event, everyone grabs an umbrella and braves the rain.

Friday night’s event, hosted at Arianna’s Brentwood home, was held in honor of Kathy Freston‘s newest book, “Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change The World.” Notable guests included Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Moby, Frances Fisher, Lorne Michaels, and Rob Reiner. So naturally, there was plenty of starfuckery going on. This fishie was making polite conversation with an elderly gentleman when he abruptly shoved me out of the way to get to Marla Maples. Remember her? Other 90′s flashbacks in attendance included Elizabeth Berkley, Tracey Ullman, Candice Bergen, and Oliver Stone.

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The awards keep rolling in for LA Times reporters Ruben Vives and Jeff Gottlieb, who broke the story about the outrageous salaries of various city officials in Bell. It was announced today that the pair picked up the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting–an award given out by USC’s Annenberg J-school. Vives and Gottlieb beat out finalists from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.

A winners ceremony will be held at USC on March 25.

Press release after the jump.

Previously on Fishbowl LA: LA Times Bell City Scandal Coverage Garners Another Award

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It’s only been two months, so we’re not sure how much to read into this, but Oprah’s network OWN isn’t doing very well in the ratings. In fact, it’s getting its butt kicked. OWN is averaging about 135,000 viewers at any given time, far lower than the network that preceded it: Discovery Health. Oprah’s ratings are a full 10 percent lower then her predecessor’s, according to a big Sunday story in the New York Times.

Of the seven shows that had their premieres in January, the stand-out was “Ask Oprah’s All-Stars,” a four-part panel discussion featuring Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Phil McGraw and Suze Orman. The flop was “Your OWN Show,” a “Survivor”-style competition to groom a new talk show host for OWN.

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San Francisco Chronicle pop culture critic Peter Hartlaub has posted a tongue-in-cheek apology for the part he played in helping feed local hysteria over the possibility of a weekend Bay Area snowstorm that failed to materialize.

Hartlaub points to his February 17th and February 23rd historical photo galleries shared on the site as culprits #1 and #2, and his Twitter feed as culprit #3. Admirably, he says thought it would be easy to do so, he is not interested in shirking responsibility:

It’s easy to pretend like the snow hype never happened with things like Charlie Sheen‘s meltdown and the James Franco‘s Academy Awards hosting disaster (my theory: instead of being too stoned, his poor performance was a product of not being stoned enough) causing new distractions. But I know sins of overhype were committed in the past two weeks, and this time I’m not going to let it pass.

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Andrew Sullivan is leaving The Atlantic and bringing his wildly popular blog The Daily Dish to Tina Brown‘s Newsweek/Daily Beast love child. Sullivan broke the news late last night.

The chance to be part of a whole new experiment in online and print journalism, in the Daily Beast and Newsweek adventure, is just too fascinating and exciting a challenge to pass up. And to work with media legends, Barry Diller and Tina Brown, and with the extraordinary businessmen Sidney Harman and Stephen Colvin, is the opportunity of a lifetime. Barry was the person who first introduced me to the Internet in the early 1990s, and we have remained friends ever since. Tina Brown needs no introduction, but to see her in action as we have discussed this new adventure over the past few weeks has been quite a revelation. The Daily Beast, in a mere two years, has made its mark on the web, with 6 million unique visitors last month, and an eight-fold jump in ad revenue over the last year. It will give the Dish a whole new audience and potential for growth and innovation. I’ll also be contributing columns and essays to Newsweek.

This is a huge get for Brown but it’s a tidal wave of a catastrophe for The Atlantic. The magazine posted its first profit in a decade last year, thanks largely to online revenue. It has until April, when Sullivan starts at NewsBeast, to figure out how compensate for the loss of Sullivan’s web traffic.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Charlie Sheen made a magnanimous appearance on the Today Show this morning. And by magnanimous we mean he was delusional and somewhat vampiric-looking. Perhaps he’s angling for a role in the next Twilight movie. Anyway, Sheen had his own mini-Wisconsin moment, agreeing to return to work on Two and a Half Men, provided he’s given 50% raise. Now that’s some collective bargaining.

Previously on Fishbowl LA: Charlie Sheen Commits Career Suicide

Will airlines never learn? Unhappy with the response she got from British Airways after complaining about bedbug bites suffered during flights from Los Angeles to London and Bangalore to London, 28-year-old LA based Yahoo! product manager Zane Selkirk launched a website about her ordeal.

The URL pun says it all – BA-bites.com. And when you are a senior manager at a leading media company, posting accounts of flight #1 (January 28th) and flight #2 (February 5th) along with incriminating photos is no trouble at all. Writes Selkirk:

BA “Customer Service” refused to acknowledge absolutely anything about my situation, nor protect future customers from a second possible infestation. I was told by the Customer Service desk that they do not have the authority to help customers with any complaints. (Literally.)

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