Not sure who in the world scheduled this appearance, but racist, arbiter of public corruption and convicted felon Jack Abramoff was at Beverly Hills High yesterday to plug his new memoir Capitol Punishment. The LA Times’ Stephen Ceasar was at the event and penned this nausea-inducing graph:

[Abrmoff] spoke of his time as a powerful lobbyist with ties to Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill, commanding rates of as much as $150,000 a month from a single client, which drew “oohs” from the teenagers.

How was this asshole allowed to come anywhere near children wearing anything other than prison blues? Well, Abramoff is a Beverly Hills High grad, you see. And…he’s turned his life around…or something, and become, according to the Times, “an unlikely foe of the role and influence of special interests in Washington.”

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It’s certainly not unusual, sadly, to hear about another round of layoffs at a SoCal daily newspaper. But the idea that the Orange County Register would not be able to find a way to keep Latina columnist Yvette Cabrera on staff is truly mind-boggling.

FishbowlLA was tipped to this development around the same time that James Rainey sent out the first tweet and Kevin Roderick got up the first post. Cabrera is the executive director president of CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California and was voted Best Columnist in 2011 by the OC press club.

So far, the most impassioned and detailed reaction to this developing layoff news (word is as many as eight other Register staffers may also be involved) comes from Gustavo Arellano of the OC Weekly. He writes:

Yvette was always kind to me, penning articles on various members of my family over the years. I, on the other hand, didn’t return the favor, both as part of the “Spy vs. Spy” game that is the rivalry between the Reg and your favorite infernal rag, and because I always wanted her to be tougher, more radical, more of an Agustín Gurza than a feel-good columnist. Immaturity on my part, I can now say with a bit more years under my belt.

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Perhaps this is common knowledge in Hollywood, but it was still news to FishbowlLA.

During an Australian interview for his latest movie Contraband, actor Mark Wahlberg got a great final throwaway question from 7.30 current affairs show co-host Chris Uhlmann. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reporter posed, “Look, I have to ask this question – what happened to the prosthesis we saw at the end of Boogie Nights?”, to which the actor replied:

“It’s one of the only props that I’ve ever kept from a movie, and I still have it in my house, locked in my safe.”

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Since its start as a trade magazine, GQ remains the sophisticated older brother of the lad mag genre. And although editors expect nothing short of poised perfection in all pitches, senior editor Will Welch said they welcome irreverence with no shortage of humor in their front-of-book sections.

“There’s always a need for coverage with a super distinct point of view and the right sense of humor,” Welch said. ”The most immediate thing is for freelancers to show familiarity with the skeleton of our magazine: what the sections are and what the tone of the writing is.”

For contact info for GQ editors and more details on what they consider a perfect pitch, read How To Pitch: GQ. [sub req'd]

Hollywood is full of odd couples. Still, TMZ camera-totters would be hard pressed to find a visual grab as striking as the side-by-side sight of Slash and Betty White.

Calm down; they’re only an item for LA Zoo promotional purposes. Out of the five new ads touting the attraction’s upcoming reptile and amphibian shrine The Lair opening in March, this is FishbowlLA’s favorite (great comeback, frogs!):

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Despite the addition of Chris Paul and first place in the Pacific Division standings, the Los Angeles Clippers are still … well … the Los Angeles Clippers.

The front office wants superfan “Clipper Darrell,” aka Darrell Bailey, to drop the Clipper nickname.

After Bleacher Report was denied media credentials while doing a profile on the man who has stood by the Clippers through thick and a whole lot of thin, Bailey called team president Andy Roeser to get an explanation.

Carl Lahr, senior vice president of marketing and sales, eventually returned Bailey’s call last week and informed him that the organization didn’t need him doing stories or speaking to the media on behalf of the team.

“We got to talking and I said the way I feel, you don’t want Clipper Darrell no more,” Bailey told FishbowlLA Wednesday. “You want Darrell Bailey back. They said, ‘You would do that?’”

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Daniel Pearl, the Jewish-American Wall Street Journal reporter notoriously executed by terrorists in Pakistan in the months after 9/11, has been posthumously baptized by Mormons, reports the Boston Globe.

Helen Radkey, an excommunicated Mormon who combs through the church’s archives, said that records indicate Pearl, who was Jewish, was baptized by proxy on June 1, 2011 at a Mormon temple in Twin Falls, Idaho.

“It’s a lack of respect for Danny and a lack of respect for his parents,” Pearl’s widow Mariane told the Globe. “Danny would laugh…because it’s silly. It’s a bit surreal…But there is a more serious concern behind it, of respecting people’s identity and integrity.”

Mariane Pearl also called on Mitt Romney to use his sway with the Mormon church to publicly condemn the posthumous baptisms of Jews without the consent of their estates.

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The American Society of Magazine Editors announced the nominees for its “Digital Ellie” awards. The digital properties of The Atlantic and New York magazine as well as Slate and the Daily Beast lead the pack with three nominations each. People magazine’s website is the only LA-based digital pub to earn a nomination (at least that we were able to see). Mother Jones picked up a nod in the “Reporting” category for its Occupy Wall Street coverage.

Full list of nominees after the jump:

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The three-day conference “Based on a True Story: The Intersections of Documentary Film and Journalism” kicks off tonight at the University of Missouri School of Journalism with a special screening of The Waiting Room. But the real meat-and-potatoes discussions will take place Thursday by means of four different panels.

LA Weekly film critic Karina Longworth will be among those examining how transparent filmmakers should be about any manipulated aspects of their non-fiction, while LA Times film reviewer Betsy Sharkey will follow later in the afternoon for a discussion entitled “Documentary Entertainment and Its Audience:”

To what extent do new forms of documentary filmmaking overlap with entertainment? Has the recent success and expansion of documentary filmmaking altered audience expectations, and does that success promote or discourage filmmakers from telling the brutal truth? Are audiences expecting slices of life, melodrama, or groundbreaking journalism when they see a non-fiction film, and how have these varied expectations changed the task, the self-representation, and the films of documentary filmmakers?

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You’d think with names like Bill Simmons, Charles Pierce and Chuck Klosterman on its roster, plus the backing of ESPN, Grantland wouldn’t have any trouble getting its reporters credentialed to big events. You’d be wrong. Grantland writer Shane Ryan will not be allowed access to the big Duke/North Carolina basketball game this weekend, despite the pleas of his editor.

“The request was for a credential for one of their bloggers rather than one of their feature writers such as Bill Simmons,” Duke’s associate sports information director Matt Plizga told Poynter.

That decision did not go over too well with Simmons.