Hanna Pantle has what must be considered a dream job. She’s Assn’t VP of Corporate and Media Relations for BMI, and yet, she answered our old-skool prying questions. Which is just as well, because how could she possibly choose a theme song?

1. What newspapers do you read? LA Times, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, NY Post, LA Weekly, Tolucan Times (seriously)

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading Wall Street Journal

3. Which Web sites are on your favorites bookmark? All of them? I am a bookmark junkie so the ones I visited recently were American Express (gotta pay that bill), Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Nordstrom, BMI.com, American Airlines, Trip Advisor, Dressage Daily, Zappos.com, Drudge, ebay, LA Times, LA Daily News, New York magazine, Angels.com (Anaheim Angels), Freetranslation.com, youtube, Digital Hollywood, Simpsonizeme.com,

4. Where do you get your car washed? The car wash in North Hollywood at Burbank and Lankershim or Studio City car wash.

5. Do you know your dentist’s first name? yes, Jackie

6. Do you believe newspapers are going to die? If so, when? No. They won’t become the La Brea tarpits. They’ll figure out a way to do both– print and online. I am just more concerned that the days of a trusted beat reporter will be gone–so many reporters are having to cover 10 beats, blog, edit and take photos every day. Well, maybe not take photos, but multitasking journalists aren’t always the best, trusted, focused voice for the community.

7. What was the last book you read? All the way through? Kite Runner. Half way through–the Motley Crue book. It really disgusted me so I stopped.

8. What’s the last book you say you read? Where The Wild Things Are.

Read more

Sasha Pasulka entered our world when we auditioned for Hush-Hush, a VH1 blog gossip idea that never took off. Pasulka, the full time editor of The Evil Beet, recently left her benefits-intensive position in the software industry, thus sidelining her MBA, She’s busy launching a fashion site for RealNetworks, but still found the idle hour in which to answer our deceptively inane questions.

1. What newspapers do you read? I really don’t read any newspapers. I find newspapers unwieldy and I can never figure out where to click to leave my comments. I’m a child of the digital age; I get almost all my news from blogs.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? I pretty much only do this when proof-reading an article I wrote myself, to make sure it would sound good if read aloud.

3. Which Web sites are on your favorites–besides FBLA? I have to admit I’m a Perez Hilton junkie. I also love Defamer and TMZ. Sometimes when I want to feel like my life doesn’t revolve around celebrity gossip, I read TechCrunch or Slashdot, but then Lindsay Lohan gets a DUI and I forget about them for a couple weeks.

4. Where do you get your car washed?At the five-minute drive-thru car wash on Sepulveda and El Segundo. I love that place so much.

5. Do you know your dentist’s first name? No–in fact, I don’t even know his last name; he’s in my cell phone as “dentist” — but he has a TV in every patient room, and that’s all I need to know.

6. Do you believe newspapers are going to die? If so, when? Newspapers? Yes, probably. Not for another twenty or thirty years, but yes. I think magazines will outlive them, because there’s a pretty strong market for shiny pictures.

Read more

Entertainment journalist and author Alex Ben Block writes a column for Hollywood Today but still gave in to our pestering and answered those “so vapid they must be insightful” questions.

1. What newspapers do you read? L.A. Times, NY Times, Wall St. Journal, Variety, Hollywood Reporter and online gossip columns at NY Post, NY Daily News, Washington Post and where ever else tea leaves are being read.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? The LA Time-waster and WS Jerk when the articles are longer than the wars in Iraq, Vietnam and the Civil War combined.

3. Which Web sites are on your favorites–besides FBLA? Hollywood Today.net, of course; LA Observed, Defamer, Drudge, HuffPo, Roger Friedman (Fox News), Poynter, TV Newsday, CNN, LAPressClub.org, TCM, and for pure intellectual stimulation, The Sun from London.

4. Where do you get your car washed? If only it would rain in SoCal I wouldn’t have to do this at all but instead I go where ever they accept discount coupons.

5. Do you know your dentist’s first name? Bella. She’s from Russia.

6. Do you believe newspapers are going to die? If so, when? No, newspapers will be around until the end of time. There will be fewer but print remains the easiest, most efficient, portable way to rapidly scan and receive masses of info. However, they will look different, have shorter articles, be more analysis oriented, more opinionated, more oriented toward service, and serve as the central element of a range of distribution platforms online, wireless and stuffed into intellectual multi-vitamins for your brain. Of course they will be delivered online as a pdf file.

Read more

Journalist Darleene Powells, she of the three “E”s, keeps KCBS’s website news-a-licious. She blogs, she takes photographs, she’s all in love with her husband. She answered our uncannily revealing, albeit vapid, questions.

1. What newspapers do you read? It’s been a while since I regularly read a print newspaper. I, do however, get daily email summaries from the LA Times and the Daily News. I also read the Ventura County Star pages that my husband designs.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? Heehee. I haven’t moved my lips to reading since my Baby-Sitters Club Days.

3. Which Web sites are on your favorites–besides FBLA? I’m obsessed with local LA websites. I always read cbs2.com (of course!), LAO, Metroblogging LA and Franklin Avenue. Cute Overload, I Can Has Cheezburger?, Basic Instructions and Go Fug Yourself always make me laugh. I also like to read Luke Ford, The God Blog and Friendly Fire. I often like to see what my buddy and coworker beFrank is doing.

4. Where do you get your car washed? Um. What does that mean? What is this washing of the car?

5. Do you know your dentist’s first name? Heh. No. I hardly know his last name or the name of his practice. I think its in Calabasas?

Read more

Pat Saperstein, as befits a food blogger (Eating LA won the LA Press Club award for best individual food blog) is by turns spicy, salty, sharp, sour and sweet. She’s also a senior editor at Variety as well as a working mom, so we’re doubly grateful for her answers to our trivial yet insightful questions.

1. What newspapers do you read? LA Times, New York Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? the Los Feliz Ledger.

3. Which Web sites are on your favorites–besides FBLA? LAObserved, Chowhound, BoingBoing.

4. Where do you get your car washed? My daughter washes it in the driveway to make money for her Forever 21 fund.

5. Do you know your dentist’s first name? Dr. Brown … umm…Jonathan , but I had to Google it.

Read more

FBLA so seldomly encounters Pynchon enthusiasts among our readers. But Matt Haley, one of the creative talents behind Who Wants to be a Superhero as well as a superhero artisthero, defied our admittedly low expectations when he answered our mythic questions.

1. What newspapers do you read? They still make those?

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? Oh, the Onion, absolutely.

3. Which Web sites are on your favorites bookmark? The family-friendly ones are usually art sites, painters’ and illustrators’ blogs, people who are way more talented than I could ever hope to be. I bookmarked mine, too, just in case I get lost. The others, well…artists see naked people everyday, we’re like doctors. Right?

4. Where do you get your car washed?No car, I usually take the MTA. Don’t look at me that way.

5. Do you know your dentist’s first name? Wayne. He is the best dentist in the world. Dentists say they’re ‘painless’, this guy really is. First time I had oral surgery, I’m in the chair, and I’m envisioning that scene from Marathon Man where Dustin Hoffman is being tortured. He tells me to close my eyes (never a good sign), and I notice my jaw is starting to go numb, but I hadn’t felt that dry pinch of the Xylocaine needle. I pry open one eyelid and drunkenly ask if he’s using some kind of spray or brush to apply the painkiller, and he calmly replies, “No, I have a rather large needle in your jaw, I’m just really careful.” I’m putting his kids through college, now.

Read more

Sr. Editor at PR Newswire, Cathleen Cotter, fancies herself as an Arthurian enchantress. And we can see why. She did answer our insidiously insightful questions without the use of ancient magicks.

1. What newspapers do you read? L.A. Times on weekends, the Argonaut (local paper), LA Weekly, City Beat (otherwise I get my news online)

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? none, but I do enjoy reading the paper while out with my friends for breakfast on the weekend and we read interesting bits to each other.

3. Which Web sites (besides FBLA) are on your favorites bookmark? I don’t really use bookmarks. The tabs on my Firefox browser are set to Flickr, Gmail, CNN, LA Observed and Curbed L.A.

4. Where do you get your car washed? This place on Lincoln, north of Washington Blvd.

5. Do you know your dentist’s first name? Yes–Marilyn

Read more

PR Week’s Los Angeles bureau chief, Randi Schmelzer, somehow managed to find the time to answer our notorious questions. When not keeping her finger on the pulse of the world of public relations, Randi enjoys long walks on the beach, trying out new restaurants, and puppy wrestling. Turn-offs: mean people.

1. What newspapers do you read?
Los Angeles Times, LA Business Journal, New York Times, and parts of the Wall Street Journal, L.A. Daily News and NY Post. And the Cleveland Jewish News, so I know exactly whose bris, shower, wedding or funeral my parents have recently attended and feel the need to discuss at length.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? The Cleveland Jewish News, always. Passages like, “How else to celebrate the milestone 70th birthday of Mort Weisberg, well-known nursing-home mogul, than with a festive party?” were positively written for reading aloud.

3. Which Web sites are on your favorites bookmark?
PRWeek.com aside, way too many: MB’s FishBowlLA and AgencySpy, LA Observed, Gridskipper, Ray Richmond’s Past Deadline and Virginia Heffernan’s Screens blogs, Radar Online, Failure mag, BlatherWatch, Egotastic, RoadFood.com … and my very favorite, Snopes.

4. Where do you get your car washed?
I try to mix it up as much as possible, because I like to see what sorts of one-of-kind treasures are available in each facility’s attached gift shop. (Any suggestions?)

5. Do you know your dentist’s first name? I do know his first name, but how could I not? Aren’t all dentists supposed to have a wall in the waiting room labeled with huge, cardboard cut-out letters reading, “Dr. Dan’s Zero-Cavity Club”? Or whatever his/her first name is. Underneath, there are those Polaroid snapshots of grinning patients cuddling an oversized stuffed tooth. Maybe it’s just my dentists.

Read more

Journo/TV-film writer/novelist Frank Coffey used to just read blogs. Now he writes one. Coffey’s Venice-based parody sports website, eTrueSports.com, is “committed to taking scraps of truth and turning them into absurdist nonsense.”

Recent headlines include: Manny Ramirez Adopts Carbon Neutral Lifestyle and Woods’ Daughter Signs With Gerber.

Let’s see how well he does with our nonsense.

1. What newspapers do you read? You mean, like, newspapers made out of paper? NYT, LAT, WSJ, Variety and VenicePaper.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading?
Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, snarling.

3. Which Web sites (aside from FBLA, of course) are on your favorites bookmark? NPR, The Daily Tube, Slate, LA Observed, G-4, Rubber Chicken Cards and, in relentless self-promotion, eTrueSports.com.

Read more

Jesse Thorn is the creator of The Sound of Young America, which has nothing to do with Up With People!. As his website says,

Think of it like Conan O’Brien on public radio, or “Fresh Air,” but more fun.

Or think of it as Terry Gross on mescaline. A grad of UC Santa Cruz, Thorn lives in Koreatown where he blogs, produces his show, and obviously agonized over our carefully crafted questions. (If we were really clever, there’d be a podcast. Sigh.)

1. What newspapers do you read? The only actual physical newspaper I get is Current, the industry rag for public media. I read the New York Times online a lot, along with the San Francisco Chronicle’s sports section for a Giants fix.

Reading the NYT (and the New Yorker) is a contractual thing for us public radio personalities… there are pop quizzes, and you can actually lose your show if you don’t remember the subject of Frank Rich’s last column or whatever.

2. Which ones do you move your lips to while reading? I actually read everything out loud as slowly and clearly as I can (to practice my gravitas).

3. Which Web sites (besides FBLA)are on your favorites bookmark? Bloglines, for the quajillion blogs and news feeds I read compulsively. I love Boing-Boing and Ask Metafilter, and the Apiary family of comedy blogs particularly. A couple of forums–my site’s, where I mingle with my really cool smart interesting listeners, Okayplayer.com, where I argue about rap music, and aspecialthing.com, where I talk about comedy with fellow comedy super-nerds. A couple of sites of questionable legality, where I make up for the fact that I don’t have cable. The usual, in other words.

Read more