LA Times Festival of Books

Sunday, April 29

Royce Hall
PANEL 2051 10:30 AM
Walter Mosley in Conversation with Karen Grigsby Bates

Young Hall CS 24
PANEL 2083 1:30 PM
Litblogs: Words Online
Moderator Tod Goldberg
Ron Hogan, Andrew Keen, Carolyn Kellogg

Haynes 93
PANEL 2044 3:00 PM
Memoir: Lessons Learned
Moderator Amy Alkon
Jessica Hendra, Arianna Huffington, Aimee Liu, Karen Stabiner

Jury of Your Peers
Phil Spector’s trial includes a juror who’s a producer for NBC but a guy with a blog gets tossed from the Will & Grace case.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?
There’s no truth to the rumor that Ireland Baldwin has been begging Madonna to adopt her.

Un-Connected
California Connected, KCET’s public affairs show, pulls the plug due to lack of funding, says EP Bret Marcus, whose relocation package was reputed to come out of the production budget. Is Marley sorry now? And another’s dream is shattered.

NBC Dateline producer Adam Gorfain has a front row seat for the legal shenanigans expected today when Phil Spector’s trial really gets going. But Gorfain’s not working the story, he’s a member of the jury, according to Eric Longabardi of ERSNews. Gorfain even admitted on his questionnaire that he’d been investigating the case and reading court documents for several months.

Longabardi didn’t get any comment from NBC. Gorfain’s done a number of stories involving DNA evidence, but more relevantly, he produced a jailhouse interview with a woman convicted in the Texas Cadet murder case.

FBLA thinks this is already sounding too much like the Robert Blake and O.J. Simpson trials. Where do the D.A.s go when they think? (Of course, defense lawyer Bruce Cutler already called one male DA “girly”.)

Read more

Spector of Violence: Prosecutors in Phil Spector’s murder trial said they had evidence that the music producer ranted at comic Joan Rivers’ annual Christmas party that women “deserve to die. They all deserve a bullet in their … head.” (We’re sure he was just referring to the hostess).

Battlestar Gallactica Fans … have way too much time on their hands.

But Guys Who Blog About American Idol … have even more time on their hands.