The NY Times might have some fancy writers, editors and such but the LA Times has a secret weapon: Edward Padgett, pressman, blogger, and relentless teller of truth. And the truth comes out, when he answers those “so random they must be profound” questions of ours.

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning? LAObserved, LA Biz Observed, Fishbowl LA, Media Bistro, Los Angeles Times, San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? Fling.com

3. What job do you fantasize about having? Tour guide on the Island of Cozumel for non Spanish speaking tourist.

4. Last movie you saw? I-robot with Will Smith

5. Last book you read? On Death and Dying, by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross M.D.

6. Best show legendary biz/movie star encounter. Met Debra Wilson from MAD TV at Naja’s in Redondo Beach, we danced, drank, and laughed. Just met Danny Bonaduce at the 2007 Love Ride, and found him to be much calmer than portrayed by the media.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

As Fashion Correspondent for E! Networks The Daily 10, Amanda Luttrell-Garrigas is not only a disher, she’s a dish. You’d think Viacom would give her a series. Until then, she answered our kinda new and semi-improved questions.

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning? My emails then nytimes.com
2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? People.com
3. What job do you fantasize about having? The one I have only more of it.
4. Last movie you saw? Shampoo
5. Last book you read? Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
6. Best show legendary biz/movie star encounter. I’ve had many, Leonardo DiCaprio who is wonderful and Kate Bosworth who is lovely, Cate Blanchett who is so elegant and radiant, but Tom Hanks tops my list. We crossed paths on the shuttle bus to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation carnival. He is a force of nature.
7. Proudest media moment? I’m working on it.
8. Ever had a brush with the law? Describe. Nope. I’m the good girl.
9. If you got a unicorn what would you name it? Intrepid Lavinia Shenkunde of the African plains and Irish Moors
10. What does your TiVo think about you? It thinks I love football… hmmm maybe it thinks I’m my husband…
11. Character of fiction you most resemble? It changes depending on the day, perhaps Tatyana Larina from Eugene Onegin
12. Who plays you in your bio-pic? I do. Or Angela Bassett
13. What’s your ringtone? Marimba
14. Favorite electronic device? iPhone
15. What do your friends say is your best quality? kindness
16. What do your enemies say is your worst? kindness
17.What natural talent do you wish you had? A more flexible body
18. What’s your theme song? It changes depending on the day. Today it is the theme song from Star Wars. Nobody does it like John Williams, except maybe Alexandre Desplat
19. Do you believe in love at first sight? No. But I am a romantic.
20. When’s the last time you volunteered? Where? This morning at my daughter’s school.

Earlier:
FBLA 20 Questions

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Nancy Rommelmann, formerly of Los Angeles, now of Portland, writes frequently about food, life, loss, and love. Her compassion for her subjects never cloys; her probing of their foibles never crosses the line into cruel exploitation. And thus, she kindly answered our probing, exploitative questions.

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning?
Currently: War and Peace, the new Pevear/Volokhonsky translation.
Eternally: The New York Times

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? Dlisted

3. What job do you fantasize about having? Novelist

4. Last movie you saw? Beowolf, about ten minutes ago

5. Last book you read?
Steve Almond’s Rants, Exploits and Obsessions (Not That You Asked)

6. Best show legendary biz/movie star encounter. At age fifteen, I stopped Paul Newman on Madison Avenue, knowing full well it was him behind his mirrored shades, and asked, sweetly, “Can you tell me what time it is?” At which he took a two-second pause, drank in my long, bare, mini-skirted legs, and slowly pulled off his glasses.

7. Proudest media moment? Winning AAN and LA Press Club awards back-to-back was pretty good, but really, it’s every story I’m working on where I sense the greatness and just keep chipping away.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

So, if you get off on hearing the insights of complete strangers, then you’ll want to close the office door and dim the lights before you read this:

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning? The graffiti on the ceiling of my apartment

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? www.farmersonly.com

3. What job do you fantasize about having? Key grip

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Journalist Mark Ebner has investigated Scientology, pit bull fighting in South Central Los Angeles, the Ku Klux Klan in Texas, celebrity stalkers, missing porn stars, sports groupies, college suicides and Hepatitis C in Hollywood. He’s got a book deal with Simon & Schuster and a tv deal with Court TV. Despite his busy blog, he yielded to our muscle and answered those deceptively duplicitous questions.

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning? The cereal box.

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? Gallery of The Absurd The artist known as “14″ is a genius, and twice the woman of the LA Weekly’s “Seven.”

3. What job do you fantasize about having? Sidewalk Sign Flipper.

4. Last movie you saw? In The Valley of Elah. Surprisingly, Paul Haggis can actually make a good film and, not surprisingly, Tommy Lee Jones can act. Too bad few will see this film until they’re reminded to around Oscar acting awards time.

5. Last book you read? Aftermath, Inc. Cleaning Up After CSI Goes Home — a fascinating participatory adventure in the nasty business of bioremediation by crime writer Gil Reavill. The author takes the Discovery Channel’s conceptualization of “Dirty Jobs” to a whole new level.

6. Best show legendary biz/movie star encounter. In 1985, I spent a night sniffling, shaking and watching bad movies with Liza Minnelli at a resort in the Land of Ten Thousand Rehabs.

7. Proudest media moment? I have three:

Accepting the Genesis Award (for humane reporting) for Pit Bullies
(New Times, 1996); appearing as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to promote Hollywood,Interrupted and hearing that South Park’s infamous Trapped In The Closet episode (the Scientology expose I consulted on) was nominated for an Emmy award.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Kim Cooper is a cultural historian, as well as founder of Scram (the journal of unpopular culture), Esotouric, the 1947 Project and third generation Angelena. We’re guessing she needs little sleep. She also answered our provocative yet puerile questions.

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning? The emails my husband Richard has sent in the three hours he’s been up, then my local bloglines feed.

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? Ask.metafilter.com or the Rigorous Intuition boards.

3. What job do you fantasize about having? International art cop.

4. Last movie you saw? Walk on the Wild Side (script by John Fante, and truly a shocker)

5. Last book you read? The Family by Ed Sanders (boning up on Manson Family connections to the Sunset Strip scene for our new Esotouric rock and roll tour, Where the Action Was)

6. Best show legendary biz/movie star encounter. Nastassia Kinski teaching me to walk a tightrope on the set of One From the Heart.

7. Proudest media moment? Front of the LA Times with a 76 ball in my hand.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Investigative satirist Paul Krassner dropped acid with Groucho, founded the Yippies with Abbie, and is in the Counterculture Hall of Fame. He also writes for High Times, Huffington Post, and is in hot demand as a standup comic. He writes:

Just returned from the Austin Film Festival which opened with a screening of “Chicago 10″ followed by a Q. & A., during which I pretended the vibrator in my cell phone went off, I took it out of my pocket and said hello, then said to the audience, “It’s Rudy Guliani’s wife.” I couldn’t resist the impulse.

Krassner couldn’t resist our entrities, and answered those 20 innocent questions that have been the downfall of so many.

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning? LA Times

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? NY Post gossip

3. What job do you fantasize about having? Radio talkshow

4. Last movie you saw? The Lives of Others

5. Last book you read? Deer Hunting with Jesus

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The fragrant Mark Sarvas hosts the popular and controversial lit. blog The Elegant Variation. His debut novel, Harry, Revised, will be published by Bloomsbury in May 2008. He was able to find time to answer our pointless questions, and we hope that no weak, cowardly review escaped his gaze as a result.

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning? The New York Times–it’s my home page–and email, to see who I’ve offended now.

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? David Lebovitz blogs about Parisian food, with which I am obsessed, and love to torture myself with his pictures in between my own Paris trips.

3. What job do you fantasize about having? Yours.

4. Last movie you saw? The Rape of Europa, a documentary about the looting of Nazi Art. I’ve wanted to see it for ages but it’s been hard to catch up with in guerilla distribution. It finally arrived in LA last week (for a day) but I saw it a week earlier in NY.

5. Last book you read? Hah! You’re kidding right? Books I just finished include Phillip Knightley’s The First Casualty and Kevin Sites’s In The Hot Zone for a review I’m working on. The last book I finished for pleasure was Jane Gardam’s wonderful novel Old Filth from Europa Editions. Other recent remarkable reads include David Leavitt’s new novel The Indian Clerk, and Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Bookshop.

6. Best show legendary biz/movie star encounter. Meeting Paul McCartney when I was sixteen. You can find the whole story here, replete with embarrassing photos.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

After a year, FBLA has revised our insightful yet banal questions. David Seidman comics writer, consultant, and publicist volunteered to test drive the new version.

1. What’s the first thing(s) you read in the morning?
My e-mail, followed by MediaBistro’s job listings and home page. (Honest. I’m not just sucking up.) Then it’s on to The Beat, Heidi MacDonald’s comics-related news column at Publishers Weekly, the blogs of my colleaguesPeter David and Mark Evanier, the day’s Doonesbury strip, and often the political blog Crooks and Liars.

2. What’s your favorite guilty pleasure website? There are two: Defamer and Go Fug Yourself. I don’t usually like celebrity gossip or fashion bitchery, but they’re both funny. And theyusually have pictures of good-looking women.

3. What job do you fantasize about having? I’m usually too busy for much fantasizing (about jobs, that is), but the most fun for me is conceiving and developing new projects, particularly in publishing. Put me in that job and surround me with people who want to do the same thing and have the talent to accomplish it, and I’m a happy guy.

4. Last movie you saw? All the way through? (I catch a lot of bits and pieces on TV.) Probably the HBO documentary ALIVE DAY MEMORIES.

5. Last book you read? 300 by Frank Miller.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.