Two days later, a report that Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons NFL franchise, was recently approached by unnamed LA city officials remains the most viewed article on the Atlanta Business Chronicle website. Even though it quickly became clear after publication that a casual west coast inquiry does not signify a Peach Tree uprooting.

Still, it’s been fun to gauge some of the follow-up coverage. Commenters on Loganville-Grayson Patch seem to pretty much agree that frankly, they don’t give a damn if the team takes flight to Lalaland. ESPN football analyst Pat Yasinskas meanwhile warned this is already a tiresome and familiar drill:

The fact is the Los Angeles thing is going to come up any time a team is looking for public help for a new stadium or renovations. It already has come up in Charlotte, where Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson is looking for public money to help with renovations for Bank of America Stadium. It’s come up elsewhere and will continue to come up in other spots until Los Angeles does get a team.

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Laker great and sometimes columnist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hadn’t written a piece for Huffington Post in over three years. After blogging fairly regularly during the 2008 election, Kareem sat 2012 out. Today, however, he broke out of his slumber to randomly weigh in on the racial politics of HBO’s Girls–now well into its second season.

Last season the show was criticized for being too white. Watching a full season could leave a viewer snow blind. This season that white ghetto was breached by a black character who is introduced as some jungle fever lover, with just enough screen time to have sex and mutter a couple of lines about wanting more of a relationship. A black dildo would have sufficed and cost less.

Ha! Glad you woke up Kareem.

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Time to raise a Bic lighter – spelled perhaps in this case “Bicc LighT73er” – in the direction of ticketmaster.com. The Live Nation website has delivered news on par with the notion of surprise overflow-availability for the first weekend of Coachella: they’re doing away with the more-maddening-than-ever security hoop of conventional CAPTCHA.

From this week’s release:

Ticketmaster is beginning the process of upgrading the hard-to-read squiggly lines with new, friendlier, easier to use solutions…

During the purchase process, fans will be presented with phrases, questions or ads from Solve Media instead of the normal, hard-to-read mix of characters that needed to be deciphered before proceeding with the transaction.

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 With a total readership of 3.8 million, Marie Claire‘s audience is as passionate about human rights around the world as it is about the latest fashion trends to hit the runway. And enterprising freelancers can land a cool $2 a word with a successful pitch to the glossy.

For starters, newsy ideas for long-form reported features or first-person survival or adventure stories are very welcome. Examples of recent news features include an award-winner about scams operated by fraudsters claiming to be raising money for breast cancer research, and another focused on the dangerous effects of Ambien on women.

For more info and contact info for all editors accepting pitches, read How To Pitch: Marie Claire. [Mediabistro AvantGuild subscription required]

Even though Charlie Sheen has mercifully stopped making boastful “tiger blood” DNA claims, those three initials are still part of his Mulholland Drive gated community make-up. Only now, they’ve been re-arranged to spell NDA.

We know this because Karina Longworth leads off her fun house-call LA Weekly cover story with a reminder that celebs like Sheen are doing all they can to prevent a triggering of the TMZ coffers. With, in the reformed actor’s case, a little help from seasoned entertainment PR pro Larry Solters. From Longworth’s article:

I am intercepted in Sheen’s driveway by a security guard, a friendly, not-intimidatingly-large man who asks me to come with him into the garage to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

This is a first for me. I scan the five pages of legalese, in which the undersigned — me — is referred to as “the Employee.” To what extent, I wonder, will signing this document impede my ability to do my actual job of interviewing Sheen and his childhood friend, Roman Coppola, about their new movie, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III?

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Alan Smolinisky‘s 15-month old son Charlie was named in honor of billionaire investor Charles Munger. In his home, there is also a framed, flattering hand-written note from another three-comma titan, Warren Buffett.

So why would Smolinisky have paid seven figures for the money-losing Pacific Palisades weekly newspaper the Palisadian-Post? Because, like Aaron Kushner with the Orange County Register, Doug Manchester down in San Diego and the LA Times‘ imminent new owner, this savvy investor believes in the future of a well-targeted and storied print publication. Per Martha Groves‘ LA Times write-up:

Bill Bruns, managing editor since 1993, likes to joke that, if a resident of Brentwood won a Nobel Prize, the paper would not cover the story. But if the person lived in the Palisades the news would land on the front page.

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Following Mike Fleming‘s Tuesday night Deadline scoop about Warner Bros. giving the green light for an Entourage movie, other media outlets are playing catch-up. One of the more tantalizing headlines of this nature crossed the wire tonight:

Unfortunately, the MTV.com Q&A with Wahlberg that sits under this banner fails to live up to the tease. When reporter Josh Horowitz asked the show’s inspiration via telephone where the plot will take the beloved HBO series characters, he got this reply:

Wahlberg: You know what, I don’t know if I can give anything away. I haven’t really spoken to anybody about that particular thing. I think I can certainly get back to you about that.

MTV: OK, no worries.

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Responding to a recent LA Times article about an Eagle Rock resident who has placed a dozen and a half letters in the paper since 1990, a neighbor to the north revisited an even more impressive total.

Per Reader’s Rep Deidre Edgar, Trent Sanders of La Cañada Flintrige has since 1985 scored a whopping 54 published LAT letters to the editor. Along the way, he has kept things interesting by means of some additional personal challenges:

“At one time I set a goal of writing a letter published in The Times containing only one sentence,” Sanders said. “I met that goal on December 13, 2006, under the heading of ‘Bills Come Due.’ Shortly afterward, and much to my horror, another writer wrote a letter with not only one sentence, but it contained only three words!”

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TMZ reports that porn legend Ron Jeremy drove himself to the hospital yesterday after suffering severe chest pains, whereupon doctors discovered an aneurysm near his heart. The pop culture icon is in critical condition at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles. Jeremy’s manager Mike Esterman says his client’s condition is worsening. Surgery appears eminent imminent.

Here’s hoping the subject of the 2001 documentary Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy pulls through.

There’s something hilarious about the idea of the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Juno being housebound due to the care of a newborn. But such has been the case in recent months for Diablo Cody (pictured), albeit from the relative comfort of her well-appointed Hollywood Hills abode.

As any parent who has gone through that drill knows, the first real trip out of the house is one to both look forward to and savor. In Cody’s case, it will be when she heads to the east coast at the beginning of February to attend the third annual edition at Barnard College of the female-centric Athena Film Festival (February 7-10), for which she is one of the co-chairs.

“I have a toddler and an infant right now,” Cody tells FishbowlLA via telephone. “I don’t get out to the movies, I don’t get out to have dinner, I don’t get out to my friend’s Live Reads [Jason Reitman, LACMA]. I am so home-bound right now. That’s why I’m so excited about the Athena Film Festival and getting to go to New York for a couple of days. I’m going alone, so I don’t know what I’m going to do with all that “thinking” time.”

Cody will also have the opportunity to finally meet a fellow female Hollywood trailblazer, Gale Anne Hurd, who is receiving the event’s Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award. “I’m really excited about that,” Cody confirms. “I think it’s so cool that she’s getting this award. I’m really interested to hear the Q&A with her and hear about the experiences that she’s had. Especially making these films that I think a lot of people would consider not to be in a woman’s wheelhouse. She’s probably got a lot to say.”

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