2,000 Days in the Valley

Wealth Pilgrim

2009-11-02T16:38:00.000-08:00

I found Wealth Pilgrim via Julia Scott's Bargain Babe, and while both are well-worth reading daily, I've known about Julia's blog since it began but only discovered Wealth Pilgrim today.

That's a long way to say, "I'm going to write about Wealth Pilgrim at this particular moment."

The blogger, Neal Frankle, bills himself as a Los Angeles-based certified financial planner. His personal story is the reason the blog is compelling.

I'll nutshell it:

When I was young, my father was a real estate speculator who took big risks. Sometimes, he didn’t consider all the potential consequences. My family lived in constant financial fear and stress, and eventually, we lost everything. We were evicted from a beautiful big house in the suburbs of Los Angeles and moved into a dinky apartment in a lousy part of town. Shortly before we were evicted, my mother died. Within two years of this, my father was killed in an airplane crash.

I was 17 then, and for a short time thereafter, I was homeless and broke

OK then ... so we've established that he had a harrowing upbringing. In the blog proper, he's surely hawking his services as a CFP ... not that there's anything wrong with that. I've always told people that making money off blogging is a total fluke. Better to use it as a way to promote the other things you do.

That's what Neal Frankle is doing, all right. Julia linked this article, Living Without Television, which is a good an analysis as any on the pros and cons of eliminating TV from your life.

As with all ascetic practices, I particularly appreciate this admonition from Neal:

First, most decisions are reversible. It rarely hurts to implement a change in your life like this because you can almost always go back. Had I realized that, I never would have waited so long to give it a try.

In an unrelated matter, this is the first time I've used Blogger in many, many moons. I'd like to report that it's as awkward as ever.

Anderson Cooper endorses Christian Audigier hoodies

2008-04-01T13:18:00.001-07:00

Newscaster Anderson Cooper lets us all know a little bit more about what makes him tick with his first-ever product endorsement for Christian Audigier hoodies.

"The tie comes off and the hoodie goes on," says Cooper, who can often be seen breakfasting at Le Pain Quotidian in the Audigier signature hoodies, which run upward of $300 each at forward-looking menswear establishments in L.A., New York and wherever men want a Bedazzled look that's sure to be noticed.

"There's nothing like a yogurt parfait and the soft, cutting-edge feel of a genuine Christian Audigier hoodie to get me going every weekday morning," says CNN's Cooper.

Sources tell 2,000 Days in the Valley that Cooper will be inking a second endorsement deal soon -- this time with Ed Hardy, for which he'll receive a free Old English-style tattoo across his previously unmarked back. Oh, that and a closetful of Ed Hardy hoodies.

Leaf blowers -- if they were banned, somebody forgot to tell all the guys still using them

2008-01-10T17:56:00.001-08:00

I thought they banned leafblowers. Nope, says Ilene.

Yep, it rained ... and I fixed the dishwasher again

2008-01-10T16:49:00.001-08:00

This 39-inch Early 1950's Wedgewood stove was restored by Savon Appliances, which has locations in Reseda and Burbank. The Reseda store is right next door to

Just saw November's post. It finally rained. Quite a few times, in fact.

If I had scattered a big bag of rye grass seeds in the back yard, we'd have something going right now. As it is, there's barely enough crab and Bermuda (the grasses, not the mollusks and islands) to keep it from being a mud patch.

I did my third repair on the Maytag portable dishwasher. I had to replace the faucet coupler -- the thing that connects the dishwasher to the sink -- it kept blowing off under pressure (I bet that's a familiar refrain), covering the kitchen -- and anyone in it -- in a spray of water.

Again, I got the part from Authorized Appliance Service, 18450 Vanowen St., Reseda (just east of Reseda Boulevard on the south side of the street), where I've gotten parts for both the dishwasher and the Maytag clothes washer in the recent past. The guys there are tremendously helpful in figuring out what part you need and then getting it from warehouses all over the place. They'll do the repairs themselves, too, but since I'm so damn cheap, I do all I can myself.

Call them at (818) 342-2055.

Sometime in the recent past, Authorized Appliance Service was divided in half, with the right side of the building devoted to a companion business, Savon Appliance, where they refurbish old stoves -- and will refurbish yours, if you want. Check out the classic stoves they've restored. There's also a location in Burbank, which I've driven by -- it's way bigger, for one thing. I think Savon Appliance and Authorized Appliance Service are connected by more than physical lumber and concrete, but I can't exactly confirm that just yet.

I've also heard that Authorized Appliance sells restored Maytag washers -- the old, hard-as-freaking-nails kind that last forever. Something to think about.

But if you just want to keep your old appliances running and want to do the work yourself, Authorized Appliance Service can really help you get it done. If you tell them what's not working on your washer/dryer/dishwasher/what-have-you, they can probably tell you what parts you need, and if you pull the offending part and bring it to them, they can probably tell you whether or not you need a new one. It's worked for me every time I've done it.

Sunny and cold in Van Nuys

2007-11-10T12:38:00.001-08:00

I thought fall would never come. And Nov. 10 is 10 days too late. We always mark the real beginning of fall as Halloween, but it's still been plenty hot until now.

And it's barely rained. For years.

Could use some rain.

I rebuilt the shower fixtures today with the help of my 4-year-old assistant. Took them apart, cleaned them up and put in new washers (and greased everything up). Then I cleaned the shower, took a shower, and we're about to eat at Leonor's. Yeah!

Old Van Nuys Library sold

2007-10-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

Before it leaves Dailynews.com forever, don't miss the story that recounts the fate of the old Van Nuys Library -- the 1926 Deco/Spanish/Colonial mixed breed building that, unfortunately, is leaving the public domain for that of a new owner who's got a little money. Since, for reasons that don't hold water, stories only last two weeks on Dailynews.com, here it is:

Auction of Van Nuys Library is one for the books
BY KERRY CAVANAUGH, Staff Writer
LA Daily News
Article Last Updated:10/01/2007 10:46:09 PM PDT

The historic Van Nuys Library fared well on the auction block Monday as a longtime admirer doled out $1.52 million to become the building's new owner.

Winning bidder Tony Nasr with NTR Consultants said he's admired the 1926 Spanish Colonial Revival-style building for more than 20 years and used to frequent the building for business when the Fire Department used it as an office.

"I was in love," Nasr said after placing the winning bid during an auction at City Hall.

"I studied in Greece and I love the history of the buildings. I respect historic things. I want to keep the building as it is."

Nasr - who paid more than a half-million dollars above the library's appraised value of $950,000 - said he plans to restore the building and use it as an office.

The auction capped several weeks of controversy as some San Fernando Valley groups tried to persuade the city to retain ownership and let a local nonprofit use the building as a public space.

The one-story masonry building at 14553 Sylvan St. is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was designed by Allison and Allison, which built many public buildings - including Royce Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The building was among the Valley's first libraries but was vacated in 1964, when the library moved to a more modern home in the Civic Center complex.

The Fire Department used the building as an office until 2005, and it's been vacant and surrounded by a chain-link fence since.

The city decided to auction the historic building to expand library services in the area and, perhaps, build a new, larger library if the city can raise additional money, officials said.

Said Reginald Jones-Sawyer, director of real estate for the Department of General Services: "$1.5 million, that's a lot of books."

The money from the sale will be used for libraries in Council District 6, which includes Van Nuys, Arleta and Sun Valley.

"The proceeds of this sale will give the other libraries in the Valley the resources necessary to better serve our families," said Councilman Tony C rdenas, who represents the area.

"If we had not sold this facility, we would have denied these families a vital funding opportunity and we would have risked burdening the taxpayers with hefty costs."

Some in the community noted that the library's final sales price was higher than they had expected.

"That's certainly higher than I would have been able to bid," said Sara Fisk, president of the New Valley Symphony Orchestra.

Fisk had collected about $500,000 in pledges toward buying the building and is still hoping to find a home for the orchestra.

"I'm so sorry," Fisk said. "We already have a glut of office space in Van Nuys. It had the feel that it should have been an arts center," she said.

Bidding on the library started at $950,000. Although the building has been modified over the years and the interior looks more sterile than the original version, bidders quickly pushed the price up to $1.52 million in the fast-paced auction.

Susan Kudo-Leeds, who owns Leeds Investment and Management with Ben Leeds, was hoping to buy the library and restore it to its former glory.

"It's stately and old," she said. "And it just needs a little help."

kerry.cavanaugh@dailynews.com

(213) 978-0390
Copyright ©2007 Los Angeles Newspaper Group.

How does Blogger compare to Movable Type

2007-10-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

Blogger kicks Movable Type's ass.

But at the Daily News, we're getting Movable Type 4.0, if the upgrade ever goes through.

Blogger will continue to kick its ass, but MT will at least be better (and eventually have Captchas to keep out the spam comments).

Ilene update

2007-10-09T15:44:00.001-07:00

Ilene has a lot going on. Besides teaching nutrition to five dozen or so at CSUN, her father is in a coma after falling from a ladder. In lighter news, she got a new bike.

Other things we're doing: dealing with clutter. Ilene moved a bunch of our Lulu's boxes o' crap out of the living room and into the kid's own room. It's her crap, and she's got her own room, so there. The 4-year-old loves to collect and save any old thing.

We've got bags upon bags of old clothes, toys, baby detritus, plus assorted electronic gear and other various and sundries in The Back Room. We need to have a garage sale to get rid of as much as we can. We must reclaim The Back Room, which is also filled with various two- and four-wheeled vehicles, has become a staging area for crap and the spiders who love it.

It's easier to make mess than it is to deal with it. But dealt with it must be.

Van Nuys auto dealers shuttered

2007-10-09T15:25:00.001-07:00

Have you noticed the now-closed car dealerships on Van Nuys Boulevard. One is the Suzuki dealer (who ever bought a Suzuki car, anyway?), and I'm not sure, but I think the other one is/was Miller Nissan. There's still Miller Infiniti a few doors North.

Is it me, or is Van Nuys Auto Row (or whatever it is they call it) going totally updscale. Sure, there's Toyota and GM on the other side of Burbank Boulevard, but with Keyes replacing its Hyundai dealership with Acura, which is directly across the street from Hummer.

And south of Burbank Boulevard, I think used BMWs are now in the lot that used to be Chrysler. So you've got BMW, Mercedes (Keyes European), Lexus, Infiniti -- I don't even think Honda is there anymore (yeah, I do drive by every single day, and it's still a bit of a blur. And I already name-checked Acura and Hummer.

Still, I bet that Toyota dealer sells more cars than just about all the others combined.

Al fresco dining in Van Nuys adjacent

2007-10-09T15:22:00.001-07:00

Four 'N' 20 Pies used to be in Van Nuys proper, in that funky, totally-early-'70s building that was replaced, I believe, by the Toyota dealership on Van Nuys Boulevard.

After the demolition, Four 'N' 20 moved south of Burbank, into what is nominally Sherman Oaks. No matter.

Anyhow ... they have a few outside tables, and we had a nice coffee/tea 'N' pie afternoon there last Sunday while the little girl was at grandma's.

As always, the service, the coffee and the pie were all great. And at 2-ish, the place was packed.

2,000 Days, 10,000 page views

2007-10-09T15:16:00.000-07:00

I'm almost never over here, yet this site manages somehow to draw 15 to 20 page views a day.

Kinda makes you think. My Van Nuys-ish site under the auspices of the Daily News, Come on Feel the Nuys, is similarly neglected, and I bet it doesn't get as much traffic as this one.

As has been the case for almost a year now, most of my blogging is about technology. It's just easier, for the most part -- both to write and in terms of finding an audience.

When you focus on one subject over almost all others, your world closes in. I haven't been to L.A. Observed in a few months. Not because of anything over at the blog itself, just because my attentions are elsewhere.

It wouldn't kill me to pay a little more attention.

More Van Nuys items coming right up.

Possums!

2007-07-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

The L.A. Times reports on what we already know. Possums may be ugly, but they get medieval on your snails and slugs:

But as disgusting as the animals may appear, they actually do quite lovely
work in the garden. Opossums are nature's clean-up crew, working the
graveyard shift. Like little dust busters, they cruise the landscape, round
ears tilted like satellite dishes, fleshy pink snoots to the ground. They
feast on snails and slugs, perhaps even a cockroach or two.

Gardeners may blame opossums for the messes and mischief made
by rambunctious raccoons, skunks and squirrels rooting out insect grubs, but
the reality is that opossums don't dig. They can't. The soft pink skin on
their paws is too delicate for such manual labor; their weak nails are built
for tree-climbing.

Though opossums are excellent at scaling trunks, they rarely sample the
fruit above. Instead, they might salvage a fallen peach or munch avocados
knocked down by squirrels. Opossums prefer their produce at ground level and
well rotted — all the easier to sniff out as they forage the night garden.

It's all true, Angelenos. And Southeast Van Nuys is lousy with possums. We've got a big family in the back yard. And who broke into my compost? Not possums. It was rats. I've since secured the can and have had no problems. Then again, it could be the fighting cats who are keeping the rats at bay.

The cat's out of the Daily News bag

2007-07-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

The new features section we've been planning isn't a secret per se, but it's not exactly something that has had the benefit of a pre-launch PR blitz, either. Since L.A. Observed has reported on another blog's reporting of it, I guess it's OK for me to hold up the cat for a little inspection.

(Clicking through Kevin's L.A. Observed link, Laura Stegman's PR blog, which has an interview of sorts with our entertainment editor Rob Lowman, looks like a pretty good source for those who practice the craft of flackery).

But back to the matter at hand: Yep, we're starting the new section -- called LA.com or Go!, depending on your locale -- this Monday. It also means all the features content from the Daily News (and the entire Los Angeles Newspaper Group) is moving from Dailynews.com to LA.com. There will be much less duplication of effort among the various newspapers in the group, but there will still be room for zoned stories from the various communities our papers serve. That's the PR version. So far I've enjoyed working with the features people from the Daily Breeze, MediaNews' most recent acquisition, and they've already added a lot of good copy to the pages of the soon-not-to-be-called U section.

One thing we do have at the Daily News that isn't part of the entire LANG group is a dog-choking monthly "expanded" health section. The most recent one ran last Monday. And with the many three-week vacations that have hit our staffing in recent months, I nearly expired trying to get the damn thing out the door. I counted five stories inside that, on a regular week, would each be cover-story worthy.

Back to the new section. It'll be called LA.com for the Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram and Torrance Daily Breeze. The title will be Go! in the San Gabriel and San Bernardino valleys. Combined sections, with some zoned pages, aren't exactly new in the newspaper game, but it's a big deal for the features departments at the various LANG papers.

Local coverage will not go away from these newspapers. One thing I can tell you -- as an "efficiency" move, this whole deal should make a stronger section, one that has the potential to increase advertising both in print and online, giving us all a better forum in which to what it is we do here. When it comes to the Daily News, I've always told anybody who'll listen that there are a whole lot of great writers in this features department -- and that is something that won't change at all as we make the move from U to LA.com.

Blogger -- I've missed you

2007-07-12T11:15:00.000-07:00

In the time I've written 300 or so Movable Type blog posts, I have lost touch with the Blogger Dashboard interface. It's pretty great. Writing, formatting and saving happens so quickly (I suspect a lot of Ajax improvements in the Web interface, for those who know what that means, and I don't include myself in that number).

One feature I like is autosaving -- it's hard to lose something in a browser crash or by inadvertently closing a window. There's more polish coming to everything Google offers, and Blogger is no exception. Google Docs is also getting better, but until it includes a browser extension or other kind of app for printing that doesn't have the constraints of the browser itself, it won't be of that much use to me. I still need to make printouts. It seems that we live our lives -- and our writing lives -- exclusively online, but I'm not all the way there just yet.

While musing on the greatness of Blogger, let me also say that I'm using the new Yahoo Mail beta, which attempts to mimic a standalone e-mail client -- and does a great job at it. Add to that Yahoo's promise of "unlimited" storage and integrated chat client (which works OK but not great) and when it comes to e-mail functionality, Yahoo is currently beating Google's Gmail (which I've never used very much but recently revisited to make just this determination).

It isn't often that Yahoo bests Google, but it's a great thing for Yahoo Mail users.

I wouldn't cry if Yahoo added a Google Docs-like Web-based office suite and an AOL-like storage service like Xdrive. Than I'd never need to leave Yahoo for anything. More than likely, though, Google will steamroll over both Yahoo and AOL with its own office suite and still-in-the-planning Gdrive storage service, along with an improved Gmail.

But for now, there's more than my e-mail address keeping me with Yahoo Mail.

L.A. Voice revisited

2007-07-12T11:03:00.001-07:00

See my post below on Mack Reed's departure from L.A. Voice?

There was some talk at transition time about the new L.A. Voice blog-runners being politically conservative. That's not the problem. While I enjoy many conservative bloggers (beginning with the late, very great Cathy Seipp, and continuing today with Bridget Johnson, even conservative Daily News editor Chris Weinkopf, a fine stylist, to be sure), I sense a certain listlessness, lack of focus and some fundamental design errors over at today's L.A. Voice (the wideness of the type, and its persistence in being centered are the main design errors).

I guess I miss Mack. And ever since Cathy's death, I haven't really kept up with the L.A.-centric blogs. Most of it has been my focus on the Daily News' Click technology blog, for which I've written hundreds of often-lengthy posts in the past few months, mostly about free, open-source software (and specifically the Linux operating system). I don't even keep up with L.A. Observed much these days (although I do try to drop in every other day, at least -- Kevin Roderick is still the barometer of L.A. media, and that barometer needs checking).

As far as writing about Linux goes, it's been pretty easy for me to get a large readership. The Linux community is rabid, wants to read anything. And mostly, as a user of LXer, I can put up links to my own stories (and others that I find interesting, but mostly my own). You can get drawn in by what "works," by what draws readers, and it's not musing about San Fernando Valley bedroom communities, or random thoughts.

But there is room for that.

And there's a certain value to blogging on my own time, on my own sites. So I'll be doing that more and more in the weeks and months ahead. I still have the blogs you see at the right, along with the many at the Daily News to which I contribute either heavily or lightly, and I plan to add at least one Blogger site related to my life in technology. I'm not sure what I'll call it, or what the focus will be, but it will appear when I've figured it all out.

2,000 Days comes back to life

2007-07-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

Here I am, Van Nuys.

Our pockmarked street isn't fixed, our driveway is turning into an arena for two orange tabby cats to square off in a turf war, the only vegetables doing well in the garden are ones that sprouted on their own, we still have housepainting to do (the project began last October), I still need to call the city for a bulky-item pickup to get rid of my water heater (which we replaced ourselves, thank you), and I've entered the kids-birthday-party zone.

Yep, went to Chuck E. Cheese last Saturday and Sunday for birthday parties. It's not as bad as I thought. There is a stage with animatronic Chuck E. and his pals singing an endlessly rotating string of summer-related songs, and a rat-suited employee does come out to help the birthday boy/girl celebrate, dancing in step with one of the other Chuck E. employees. Refreshing: our 3-year-old Lulu loves it, the whole damn place is pretty clean, and all the games and rides go for one token, i.e. a quarter.

And the pizza isn't artisanal, but it could be a lot worse. And there's a real salad bar for those who crave something less greasy. Don't know if they had coffee, but Starbucks should do me a solid and open up next door.

Mack Reed getting out of the game

2007-01-23T14:38:00.000-08:00

(Note: The Daily News blog server is ailing, so I'm posting here for the moment instead of the usual spot for this sort of thing.)

As far as I'm concerned, the top three L.A. blogs are L.A. Observed, Laist and L.A. Voice. Now comes word that L.A. Voice creator and ringmaster Mack Reed is leaving the blog in a couple weeks due to his other (paying) commitments.

Can you believe that a leading L.A. blog isn't a rampant moneymaker? I can -- it's tough out there, even for somebody with the talent and passion of Mack Reed.

But he wants L.A. Voice to keep going and is willing to set somebody else up in his seat to shape, run and grow the blog. He says it requires a commitment of 12 to 15 hours a week, but I can't believe he ever spent that little time on it, ever. Here's part of his pitch:

If you're interested in taking on a virtually non-paying, 12- to
15-hour-a-week job - for the chance to re-shape, grow and drive a
well-respected, L.A.-centric community blog toward being something brilliant,
edgy and cool, then maybe this gig is for you.Here's who I'm looking for:

Candidate:
A strong, clever writer with solid content-development
skills in Photoshop, HTML, Unix and a willingness to get your hands dirty with a
little code. I'll train you on our crazy-quilt platform and provide tech support
where necessary.

A die-hard Angeleno - someone who has a long history (7+ years in greater
L.A.) and a healthy love/hate (or love/love) relationship with all of Los
Angeles.

A serious blogger with an overwhelming desire to write two to six times a
day.
(Very important)
An open-minded citizen of the world, with strong
opinions but complete respect for all points of view - even the ones you
disagree with violently.

I sure do hope somebody comes out of the woodwork to run L.A. Voice -- I can think of a few current contributors to the site who would be great stewards of all that Mack has built. You know who you are ... but who's got the time for this kind of thing?

Another thing I hope for is that Mack Reed continues to contribute to L.A. Voice, or continues his blogging and writing in one capacity or other -- his voice is an important one both online and in the general conversation of Los Angeles.

And while I'm here, I'd like to thank Mack for linking to me back in the dayswhen 2,000 Days in the Valley was new, the Daily News didn't have blogs, and I needed all the linking and blogrolling I could get.

The best TV show you're not watching

2007-01-19T17:20:00.000-08:00

It's "Campus Ladies," on the network you're also not watching:
Oxygen. It's also a network I'm not watching because, A)
I don't have cable, and ... B) I don't have cable. Oh, also,
I'm not a woman.

I've seen two episodes of "Campus Ladies" on DVD, fishing
them out of a bin replenished during the infrequent visits
of Daily News TV critic David Kronke. That and TiVoed DVDs
from Ilene's mom are our only sources of cable programming.

Anyway, I get the feeling I'm somehow supposed to know who
the ladies of "Campus Ladies" are. I don't. They are very,
very funny, though.

The premise of the show is that two housewives of a certain
age (and no, I don't know what that age is), one widowed,
the other divorced -- and both lifelong friends (can you
see why Oprahcentric Oxygen bought this?) decide to go to
college together.

They move into the freshman dorm, fall in with three college-age
friends, and hijinks most definitely ensue.

It's like a 3-minute "Saturday Night Live" skit extended
to a half-hour, except that it doesn't suck.

Is "Campus Ladies" better than my other favorite show,
"The Office"? No, but it's very close -- it's that good.

I'm on the new Blogger now

2006-12-28T14:36:00.000-08:00

It took about two hours to move the four old Blogger blogs over to the new Blogger, and this is my first 2,000 Days post with the new system.

I was pleased to find out, in my pre-move tests, that the new Blogger is just as good with old browsers as is the old Blogger. In fact, I started a new blog, This Old Browser, just to test this theory before making the move. Then it took Blogger a whole month or so to re-invite me over. I don't mind it taking two hours, but the first message I got indicated that it would take two minutes. I guess it gets more complicated when you have multiple blogs on both the new and old systems. But it happened, and everything looks great.

And publishing a blog post in the new Blogger is quicker than it was before. There's a benefit for you.

I haven't posted here in over a month

2006-12-25T17:50:00.000-08:00

... and still this blog gets more traffic than This Old PC and This Old Mac, the latter of which I've posted to about 50 times in the past month.

I can feel myself getting to a point where I will write less about the arcane technology that enables me to do this work -- and do more ... work.

What I'm up to

2006-11-03T12:07:00.000-08:00

It's been more than a month since the last 2,000 Days post, but I've been pretty active on the Daily News blogs.

We started a technology blog called Click, which has been mostly me, so that's a good place to dump every techy-geeky think I come across.

I've done a few entertainment updates lately at Hollywood Babble-On, including a quickie on Tom Cruise's ascent to the head of UA, and a few entries on Bob Barker's exit from "The Price Is Right," with my first suspicion of who will replace him, then a more educated guess (and a push for my most unlikely candidate).

At Table Talk, I pimp the Daily News food pages, and keep up with the controversial "ghetto latte."

And there's 2,000 Days' Daily News doppelganger, Come on Feel the Nuys, which is where everything else goes. Including a visit to the Museum of the San Fernando Valley's Museum Sundaes event, where we screwed around with markers at the kids' table. Then there's the excitement involved in painting our house ... which will continue tomorrow with Scraping: Part V.

Thanks for showing up, you 23 people you

2006-09-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

The Daily News blogs, including Come on Feel the Nuys, were down again this morning, not even accessible to readers, let alone the bloggers who write them. But once again, all is well with the server in Denver, and we're back in the proverbial saddle.

This site's been pretty much fallow, not counting my Writely rantings in previous entries. That's a quick and sloppy way to link four blog posts in a single clause. Apologies.

And I'm only excited about 23 people hitting 2,000 Days yesterday because ... guess I don't know.

If you blog in the forest, and nobody reads it, is it still there?

That makes no sense whatsoever.

Daily News blogs in stasis

2006-09-28T14:49:00.000-07:00

The reason I don't post here too much is that I do a whole lot of blogging for the Daily News.

But today the Movable Type interface over which we blog is down, even though most of the blogs themselves are up (although comments are kind of wobbly at present).

Stiill, we can't post. Over here in the Blogger universe, I've been keeping This Old Mac and This Old PC going pretty good, and we're in the process of creating a new, technology-related blog over at the Daily News, so all the techie crap will go there when the time comes.

Quickly, here's what I saw today that's cool:

Get the first five years worth of BoingBoing, the world's premiere techno-geek blog, in one big, geeky 17,000-post file. This link isn't the file itself -- would I subject you to that without warning? -- but it will get you there. Seriously, if you want to know what's what with the Internet, technology and just plain geekiness in all its forms, BoingBoing is there for you, multiple times a day.

I know you use Mac OS X, but have you ever tried Mac System 1.0? You can read about it and actually download the damn thing here. Go back to the Mac's very beginnings ... although I suspect this bad boy will only run on 68K machines. Don't have a working Mac Plus lying around? Didn't think so. Go here to emulate it. Even a PC can do it.

Does "Marmaduke" puzzle you. This guy explains each and every comic.

The U.S.-Mexican border ... as volleyball net. From the L.A. Weekly.

A Nietzsche-"Family Circus" mashup from Losanjealous.com.

And last but really first, because it's a blogger doing real get-out-of-the-house journalism, Mack Reed of L.A. Voice does an LAPD ride-along on Skid Row, where a greatly increased police presence is trying to deal with a very out-of-control drug-fueled situation.

Your applications are moving

2006-09-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

Besides Gmail, Writely, Google's web-based spreadsheet, the calendars offered by both Yahoo! and Google, and the big daddy, Microsoft's rumored Web-based Office, the move is on from programs installed on individual PC hard drives to hosted applications and storage on servers somewhere out there on the Internet, maintained and upgraded automatically for you, with functionality from any Web-connected device.

Of course, we'll have to pay for it, but if prices are good, it just might be worth it. And some might be ad-supported and hence free to users. It's where computing -- and the world of work -- is headed.

Writely to Blogger -- what's the frequency?

2006-09-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

As I said a couple of posts down, Writely is a cool tool for posting to Blogger, but is there a compelling reason to use it instead of the Blogger Dashboard?

Well, the big fly in the Writely-to-Blogger ointment is that none of my Writely-created blog posts come over with the title, even though they are titled in Writely.

The thing is in beta, so I can't expect the world, and as I said in the post directly below, Writely does what it does pretty well -- but is it worth doing?

As a replacement for the little-known Pote, which has proven very useful to me when I wanted to write a review and save it to the Web for later downloading and e-mailing, Writely is a proverbial quantum leap forward. The fact that it's so darn fast is a serious plus. Also in its favor are the ability to save in some key formats: Word, Open Office, HTML and RTF (add Save As Text, please!).

As I've said, true Word format with margins and smart quotes are what I really need. Have you ever sent a text file without the smart quotes and relied on your editor to get them right? I have. It's never worked out. And that's why writers NEED to submit copy in Word format with the smart quotes all set up -- it saves work for the editor and makes the writer and editor happy. And we all want to be happy.

Writely can indent and print ... but nothing's perfect

2006-09-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

Someone suggested that using the Tab key in Writely would indent the paragraph -- and possibly also work in HTML.

Now I'd prefer a true indent that Microsoft Word recognizes as such and would be able to modify in Word format, but even looking like a paragraph indent would be preferable to the typical Web situation in which all paragraphs begin flush left and the only way to tell one paragraph from another is to double-space in between.

Hey, that tabbing worked. Not as good as an automatic indent when you hit the Enter key, but I'll take it. (In case you didn't notice, the tabbing didn't hold up as HTML in this blog post.)

And how's the printing? I'll try it now.

Well, it prints great ... except for the "Page 1 of 1" at the top and the URL at the bottom. I guess for REAL printing, you'd have to Save As Word or Open Office and print from there. Not having to do that -- another feature that Writely needs, along with margin control, to be ready for prime time. Meanwhile, I'll publish this to the Blog.

For those reading this -- and not This Old Mac or This Old PC -- you may be wondering why I'm blogging on this very computer-centric topic at 2,000 Days in the Valley. If you need a reason, let that reason be that, at its core, it's about blogging and blogging tools, so maybe it's OK at 2,000 Days. And it's equally PC- and Mac-related, and not so teched-out that the average person couldn't potentially benefit from.

One thing about Writely, what it does, it does pretty seamlessly and quickly. There's almost no waiting for the page to refresh because little pieces refresh on their own. I think it uses the browser's ability to write HTML on the fly to do this -- a programming triumph that really makes the user experience better. And the reason why it won't work with Safari, I believe.

Writely just a few rocks short of a full load

2006-08-31T16:16:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I get that Writely can do basic HTML, like bold, italic and such, and there's even provision to bring in photos.

But to make this useful for writers who are submitting material for publication, it's vital that Writerly kick out both text files and Word-formatted documents with "smart quotes." So far, the quotes don't look all that smart.

And I can't seem to get an indented first line on a paragraph. That's HTML-y but not very writerly -- sorry Writely.

I appreciate such HTML hacks as writing in different colors. But what about turning all this mush into a traditional Mac or PC file that can be e-mailed to an editor?

Wait!

Click on the File menu and you can Save As a Word, RTF, Open Office (yeah!), or PDF (double fuckin' yeah!) document. Do it, and a dialog box pops up with a file name ready to be saved on your own PC. Yeah! Now we're talking.

All they've got to do is keep building this thing, and when the Internet flows like air and water, we'll never "buy" applications again. While Writely, Blogger, Gmail and the like are free at present, I'm not opposed to paying if they help me get stuff done.

At present, as an aid to writing on Blogger, Writely is pretty much a toy -- it uploads instantly, but the title of my Writely document doesn't make the leap -- I'm left with title-less blog posts, for which I have to insert said title via the Blogger Dashboard.

And you can only configure Writely to post to a single blog. That wouldn't work for me, since I've got four Blogger blogs. And while the HTML formatting is great, why wouldn't I just work in Blogger's Dashboard in the first place? Well, one reason is that Blogger chokes on browsers that aren't IE 6 and above or Firefox. Writely, like Blogger, doesn't work on Safari, but if Writely functions as promised -- and continues to do so -- on such oldies as IE 5 and Netscape 4, it'll be a boon to my Powerbook 1400 and the whole world of This Old Mac.

If for some reason I didn't have instant Web access (and this happens a lot more than you'd think), Blogger already allows posts to be e-mailed in. I can blog offline with a mail program on This Old Mac, for instance. That means Netscape 4.7. Writing blog posts, if you don't factor in HTML links and photos, is pretty simple and well-suited to e-mail composition.

So is Writely more than a toy at this point? Well, it's better than Pote, which I actually have used to compose documents. But any competing text-editing product, in my view, must confront the basic formatting of Microsoft Word, and by that I mean indents, smart quotes and adjustable column widths.

Give me that, and I'll be pig-in-shit happy. That's what makes Open Office such a marvel of free-software success. You can play in the Microsoft Office world without paying $300 plus whatever it takes to upgrade periodically for the privilege. Even the Daily News is on board with this one -- we all have Open Office, not Microsoft Office.

For now, just give me my Writely paragraph indent. And soon.

What the hell is Writely anyway?

2006-08-31T15:44:00.000-07:00

Want to try Google's latest assault on the desktop before it even becomes Google-ized?

Well, I'm doing it right now -- Writely, the technology that Google recently bought, brings Microsoft Word-like text editing to the browser, with a toolbar surprisingly like Word's, document length of up to 500k, and the ability to take what you write here and open it to collaboration with others. No extra software required. And you can create and modify documents from anywhere with Web access and with a ton of browsers, old and new. It even supports Netscape 4 and IE 5, both of which I use on This Old Mac .

Did I mention that it's wicked fast? Hell, give me a ton of disk space on some Google server somewhere, and I'd pay real money for such a service, as will, I suspect, businesses large and small. Imagine never having to update or maintain an application, nor a server. That's where Google is headed -- and the world wil march with it, I expect.

There's even a Print button, which I assume takes your document and prints it out on your local printer. Have to try that one.

You can also bring in documents from various formats (I'm a bit shaky on which ones besides Word and regular text at this point) and take your Writerly documents and directly publish them to your blog. I'm not quite sure why you'd want to do the latter, but it can be done, and if there's a compelling reason to do it, I'll sure tell you.

Until now, I've used the little-heard-of Pote.com to write text files online -- and Writely sure looks better, as it has actual formatting, like bold, italic, underline and even did the links you see above.

I tried to start a Writely account a month or so ago, in the wake of the Google announcement, but they were closed to new users. No longer.

Update: It took a couple of tries but I did manage to publish this entry to 2,000 Days in the Valley from here. It was pretty easy to set up (about 80 percent intuitive) and of course works on Blogger because both Writely and Blogger are owned by Google. All went well except that the entry had no title -- I thought it would pick up the document title from Writely, but it didn't, and I finally entered it manually through Blogger Dashboard.

Valley restaurants get robbed, New York Times notices

2006-08-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

We can debate from today to tomorrow, or from today to an hour from now, why it's a big deal when the New York Times covers L.A. or the San Fernando Valley, and I really don't keep an eye on what the NYT is doing.

Luckily Kevin Roderick does it for me, so I have him to thank for pointing me to this New York Times story on the takeover robberies plaguing Valley restaurants, including the new Barone's location in Valley Glen and the Valley Inn (in Sherman Oaks??).

The biggest thing I got out of the story is that the Ski Mask Bandits, as they're being called, just might have a law-enforcement or military background:

“I heard the rumors like everyone else that it is ex-cops,” said Sophia Brodetsky, who owns the Valley Inn, a restaurant in the Sherman Oaks section where robbers struck this month. “They used very short sentences, were very on top of what they were doing and had this whole intimidation routine.”

Police officials say those theories are pure conjecture, but they concede they are baffled.

“Anything’s possible,” Sergeant Sands said. “We don’t know who these people are. Sometimes people who are organized may have had some prior training, but there are police magazines that show the movements, too.”

Wearing ski masks and sometimes two sets of clothes, the robbers enter restaurants at closing time and order everyone to the floor. One robber presses his gun against the cheek of the bartender, while the other brandishes a rifle for the cashier.

Within three minutes, it is all over; the till is cleaned, and the safe, too. Sometimes, they take the money and watches of any customers unfortunate enough to have lingered until closing time.

“They had their finger on the safety of the gun,” said Mr. Monteleone, a co-owner of Barone’s in the Valley Glen section. “They were very, very calm. There was no shaking, no range even, in their voices.”

Alas, they're not all THAT bright when it comes to the risk/reward equation:

Because most restaurants make most of their money in credit card purchases, the take for the robbers is usually under $1,000, the police said.

“Who would do an armed robbery for a few hundred dollars?” said Rodolfo Costella, the owner of Ca’ Del Sole, a restaurant popular with Universal Studio executives, and the latest one hit by the robbers. “If you think about the time they spend planning this, if they really worked, they would make more money.”

So it's true -- crime doesn't pay. And one of these Ski Mask Bandits could end up a very unhappy, seriously wounded camper, like one of the guys who tried to knock over the Maxon's Pharmacy in Sherman Oaks on Aug. 18.

It's the end of the world as we know it

2006-08-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

I followed a few links from the Blogger site, and it lead me to the Blogger Help Group, where people have been plagued by this problem SINCE JULY.

The upshot: Blogger ain't gonna do nothing. But you can get your photo capability back by DUMPING INTERNET EXPLORER AND SWITCHING TO FIREFOX. I've been avoiding Firefox because I like Safari on the Mac and use IE at the office, but I finally bit the bullet and downloaded Firefox, and as you can see, I can get photos on the entries with no problem.

How could Microsoft let this happen? They've already lost the entire Mac market for browsers, now the same thing has happened for PCs? Guess they're too busy with Windows Vista to notice.

Another day and Blogger is still screwing me

2006-08-16T13:37:00.000-07:00

I STILL can't succesfully upload a photo. What gives? Megan uploaded a photo. What makes her so special and me a pile of shit? I've got photos I want to upload, dammit.

And now I learn that Blogger, already owned by Google, is being assimilated into the whole Google Accounts nexus of services. Voluntary at this point, eventually the Blogger-only accounts will be eliminated and you'll have to convert your blogs over to the new Google Accounts system in order to keep them. I hesitated, because they say you "can't go back," but I'll do whatever it takes to get the godforsaken photo uploading to work again.

I looked over the new "features" of what they're calling Blogger Beta, and nothing there excited me too much. They say it will be easier to do new posts in the Dashboard, and there will be no waiting for a blog to be republished when an entry is added. Instead, the blog will build itself "on the fly," whenever it's accessed by a reader. Can't say that I care about that, but if it works better, I'm all for it.

And there's a whole thing about creating "private" blogs that can only be accessed by those whose e-mail address are approved in the system. It's supposed to be for "family" type blogs, or perhaps business-related ones. I guess it's just another way to communicate between individuals or groups. My whole idea of blogging is that it's supposed to be there for all to see (or ignore, as it were), but I can see the value in using blogging technology for other, less-public forms of communication.

I remember when I first heard the word "blog." I had no clue. In the past, I had published my own Web pages through Yahoo, but I didn't understand what a blog was all about. Well, the whole thing blew up pretty fast, and the Web became, for a short while, all about blogs. Now that blogging has jumped the shark (was it the Huffington Post that signaled the "jump the shark" moment?), it can be seen as what it is: a software mechanism and organizational method for presenting content on the Web. How's that for heavy theory? More simply put -- blogging helps people manage the information they want to publish on the Web. It arranges it by chronology and topic, and it streamlines the presentation and programming required. That wasn't any simpler. Damn.

Why can't I post a photo?

2006-08-15T17:56:00.000-07:00

Why, Blogger, oh why, can't I upload a photo?

The end is nigh

2006-08-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

Don't let our daughter get wind of this.

Six Thousand

2006-08-03T17:56:00.000-07:00

The counter just hit 6,000 visitors (there are 7,475 total page views), so I'd like to thank all of you who have clicked over this way in the past year since I started counting. Between my other Blogger sites and the new Daily News blogs, I haven't been posting here quite so much, but 2,000 Days in the Valley will continue.

I know blogging has jumped the shark, but I can't say exactly when it happened, or what specifically caused the shark-jumping, but it's probably all for the good. It has gotten me writing (albeit not for money, but that's another story for another day), and there's something very attractive about instant, middle-man-free publication.

And now that I've used Movable Type over at the Daily News, I have to say that Blogger is pretty darn good as far as blogging software goes (although, as I've said before, I am waiting for Safari support, you Blogger people, you).

Pin the tail on the blogger

2006-08-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

Since I'm posting to, at last count, seven separate blogs, it's time to sum up:

At the Daily News' Hollywood Babble On, I go on about CBS' summer reality staple in He Ain't Heavy, He's My Big Brother.

Over at Table Talk, there's Bubba Gump's ~~Shrimp~~ Vegan Co., on the city-mandated vegan menu at the Santa Monica location.

At Come on Feel the Nuys, I whine about what it takes to keep a blog atop the Dailynews.com home page in The Daily News Is a Harsh Mistress, and I bemoan our rising electric bills -- and the plasma TVs that use as much electricity as a refrigerator -- in Our Friends Electric.

I take my musical temperature at Jazz Guitar Journey (it's tepid at best) in I Have a Confession to Make.

At This Old Mac, I examine the recent Internet-borne love for a 10-year-old Macintosh laptop in Powerbook 1400 love.

2,000 degrees in the Valley

2006-07-22T21:11:00.000-07:00

It's 99 degrees at 9 o'clock at night -- hell, it hit 110 today on both of my outside digital thermometers. One hundred ten. The air conditioning can't keep up. We've had it on 80 for the past two weeks -- otherwise it stays on all the time. Now it's on 80 and the house refuses to dip below 82 degrees. There's just too much heat.

We did escape. One of the grandmas babysat the almost-3-year-old, and we went to a barbecue in Pacific Palisades. Yeah, it was sort of cool enough to be outside, but not really. We left at 5 p.m. schvitzing plenty, just in time for the 106-degree return.

It's all numbers. And way too many over 100.

Gotta prep for tomorrow's 6:30 a.m. tricycle ride. See ya.

Recent rants

2006-07-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

In keeping with the Daily News' recent outpouring of blogging, I've been doing a lot of ranting and raving over there. Here's a summary:

Get ready for Talk Like Gordon Ramsay Day

It's called 'raw food' because it's not cooked

The New York Times discovers the Valley, sort of

And over in computer geekdom:

Wireless Internet -- so close ... so close and yet so faarrrr-rr

Ted Greene -- fighting over the legacy

2006-07-12T17:57:00.000-07:00

Over at the Daily News blog, I've written about the controversy over what will happen to the musical legacy of Ted Greene, the legendary guitarist and teacher who was found dead in his Encino apartment little more than a year ago (and who I saw perform exactly a year before his death).

Is your blog backed up?

2006-06-20T16:57:00.000-07:00

Ilene brought this up recently, and I have started to look into how you can back up a blog. Of course you could just go through the archives and save each page, month by month.

But there are services that will take care of it for you, including BlogCollector and Backupmyblog.

And for users of Blogger, there's How do I create a backup of my entire blog? but sheesh, that looks complicated.

Over at Come on Feel the Nuys

2006-06-20T16:16:00.000-07:00

A posting flurry today over at Come on Feel the Nuys:

Today Van Nuys, Tomorrow the World

The Potty Chronicles Part I and II

Joe Pass and the San Fernando Valley

Movable Type vs. Blogger

2006-06-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

The new Come on Feel the Nuys blog uses Movable Type, so that's a bit of an adjustment. The best thing about the Blogger front end is that it handles photos so easily. You upload the image, select the size and placement, and it does all that Photoshoppish crap for you. I've resisted image editing of any kind up until now (even though I semi-regularly post to the big Daily News Web site and should be uploading photos with the stories.

But overall, Movable Type is intuitive enough to let me upload photos, create links and add to the blogroll. Police-reporter-turned Web guru Josh Kleinbaum cleaned up some of the problems -- he outclasses me in geeky knowledge and is so enthusiastic, I think we'll have to hose him down periodically.

So for the moment, this blog is turning meta -- a blog about blogging. Is blogging all about compulsion? Yes.

Come on Feel the Nuys

2006-06-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

With the online world of the Daily News cranking itself up -- way up, my official Daily News blog, Come on Feel the Nuys, makes its debut.

I've been blogging as an "amateur," or whatever you call blogging for yourself and not for The Man, for over a year now. Hard to believe that. And I don't know how it's going to feel writing a blog with the official Daily News logo on it. It may be no different, but I can imagine there will be things that will fit better over there, some over here. I'll work that out as I go along. I do feel that blogging is somewhere between total wanking and a transformative force in journalism, literature and self-expression. Depends on what day you catch me. So raise your double espresso. Then drink it.

Later.

Peeling the Orange

2006-06-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

So even though the Orange Line is the most popular thing since double espressos, the Westbound Ventura Freeway has been total, absolute shit the past two days.

Here's part of Rachel Uranga's story:

With the Orange Line nearly surpassing its 15-year ridership goals in just seven months, transit experts say the MTA should consider expanding the line and even adopting a light-rail system - sooner rather than later - to meet soaring passenger demand.

and

Considered the Cadillac of the MTA system, the ($330 million) busway boasts its own landscaping, right-of-way and a bike path. The 57-seat, train-like buses see more riders than the $898 million Gold Line that runs from Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles.

I figure the line will eventually get tracks and electric trains -- but they've got to finish the final station somewhere near Canoga Park High and get the buses off the streets of Warner Center first. There hasn't been any news of late about buses running into cars and vice versa, but if they do go for rail, they'll have to put up crossing arms at all the intersections. There just aren't enough Camrys to go around otherwise.

Shifting at the Daily News

2006-06-14T13:40:00.000-07:00

Usually the way inside-the-Daily News news gets out there is through business reporter and union guru Brent Hopkins' The Paper Trail. But since he's the news in this case, I figure he won't be trumpeting his move from the business desk to the news side.

He's not moving desks or anything -- that would mean toting all his junk less than 5 feet to the west, anyway. But he shifts from one editor (Dan Anderson) to another (poker aficionado Aron "All In" Miller), and since he does so many great features anyway, he'll continue in that capacity, but probably in more of a general-assignment and less of a business vein. (He never did the "Netflix of porn" in Van Nuys story I tipped him to, but what can you do?)

Anyway, Brent is an all-around great guy, with a superb collection of hats and an impossibly cool 1960s Mustang (just don't get behind it -- those old cars can really kick out the exhaust).

Coming into the business slot is Julia Scott of the Newark Star-Ledger. Let's all say it together: "Neuwak!"

In other Daily News transitioning, police reporter Josh Kleinbaum leaves the dead bodies behind to become the new Newsroom Online Content Editor. Yes, there is now an actual Editorial person in charge of the Web side of the operation. Josh has been tearing it up something fierce for the past two weeks, so expect to see big changes at Dailynews.com.

In the wake, Susan Abram moves from nights to days, and Angie Valencia goes from the Simi bureau to nights in Woodland Hills.

And I'm not just saying it because I work here, but the business and metro staffs have really been cranking it out over the last long while. Those who don't see the paper every day, especially on the weekends, are missing out on some quality journalism and insight into what makes the San Fernando Valley tick. If I felt otherwise, I'd just say/write nothing, but what these men and women are able to do, given their small numbers and all the space they have to fill is pretty inspirational.

Starbucks Gossip

2006-06-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

Jim Romenesko's Starbucks Gossip has been very busy of late. And our local Starbucks has been plenty busy as well. The line was out the friggin door the other day, and I really, really wanted a double E (that's double espresso for those who don't know my idiotic slang). Where else can you get so much pleasure and wakefulness for $1.75? At least when the line is long and it's the morning, the crew at the Van Nuys SB knows how to move it along, with one barrista calling out for drink orders and relaying them to those manning the machines.

One thing that annoys me: the new board on which the coffees of the day are posted. It's too small for me to read without my glasses. Shit, I'm old, but not THAT old. Oh well, since I'm in a double E stage of life, it really doesn't matter anyway.

By the way, Romenesko's main blog is where all the action is in regard to inside-ish journalism news. I try to get there once a day just so I know all the poop in the chute.

Another Daily News blogger

2006-06-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

How could I forget Bridget Johnson, she of the news copy desk and the Viewpoint section, who blogs under the title of GOP Vixen? I'm not saying I agree with her politics, because I don't, but she a very nice woman who gives out candy. Literally. And candy can help get you through a day here in Woodland Hills.

Bridget has a very good blog. To find out a whole lot about her, start here.

Two new blogs

2006-06-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting much lately for a variety of reasons, so it's a great time to start two new blogs. As you may know, in addition to 2,000 Days, I also have Jazz Guitar Journey.

What I've been doing and thinking about lately hasn't had much to do with the generally accepted topics, not to mention blogish vibes, of those two forums, so I've started This Old Mac and This Old PC, which have a whole lot to do with my recent activities.

It's all part of my quest over the past couple of months to rehabilitate and make useful two 10-year-old computers, one a generic PC with a Pentium II-MMX 333 mHz processor that's currently running Windows 2000, the other an Apple Macintosh Powerbook 1400cs/117 mHz now running OS 7.6.1.

Through about a hundred Web sites and online forums, as well as the expertise of my friend Bruce -- computer guru and junk purveyor extraordinaire -- I've been able to make these two ancient hunks of metal, silicon and plastic into usable computers that don't have to be thrown out or recycled. Part of it is the expense of getting new hardware (and the new software that inevitably goes with it), part is the environmental factor and the desire to not be wasteful. And part is just the "fun" that goes along with the tinkering, tuning and prodding to get this junk up and running. And don't forget the "free" factor. When stuff is this old, you can often get all the parts and software you need for little or no money. Once people know you're doing this kind of thing, they're practically begging you to come over and look through their junk, hoping you'll take some of it away. Really though, all you usually have to do is ask, and you'll soon be receiving free stuff.

Part of the urgency for those who will gift you with freebies is that it's ILLEGAL to dump computers in the trash, and most charitable collection agencies like Goodwill and the Salvation Army WON'T TAKE IT. You either have to haul it to the city refuse collection site in Sun Valley ... or find someone who wants it.

How many of you are using a decade-old computer? If your crazy-nuts about technology, you might get a new computer every two or three years. Regular people? I'd say the average PC (or Mac, for that matter) probably has a five-year shelf life, seven years if you stretch it. But after that, there's usually some kind of software you can't run, add-on gadgets that won't add on (like digital cameras and all the crap that comes with them). One of the sorest points of all this is that the No. 1 use for computers by far is Web browsing, and the people and companies that create Web sites are constantly packing new technologies into their Web pages that increasingly can't be handled by older computers (or any kind of Mac -- even the newest ones -- in many cases). Flash, Java, and a host of other add-ons muddy the HTML waters, and the new browsers that can handle the increasing complexity often run slow as mud on older computers, or not at all. On my Powerbook, for example, I can't -- and never will -- be able to run OS X, and since Firefox won't run on the "classic Macintosh" OS, and Microsoft infamously ceased support for the Mac version of Internet Explorer (for both OS X and classic Macs), there's not much to turn to. The best I've found is IE 5.0, believe it or not -- thanks to Dan Palka of System 7 Today for that and so much more.

My bottom line: Something that costs $1,000 shouldn't have a three-year shelf life. That' s just wrong. These things should be more easily upgradable, or a lot cheaper out of the door. The fact that you can get a bare-bones PC for $200 or less at Fry's goes a long way toward pacifying me, but it's just crazy that this industry has lulled us into a constant upgrade path.

In closing, a lot of this was borne out of my frustration at the old Daily News computers, which we just got rid of a few months ago. They were mostly Celerons that ran at about 400 mHz with 32 MB RAM and Windows 98. Crashing ... every ... five ... minutes. For the editorial software system, there was adequate resources, but to run that AND an IE5 browser window? Forget it. We were rebooting between five and 20 times a day. For our new Unisys system, we all got new Dell Optiplex GX520 computers running Windows XP, and I must say, these are really sweet. If you are in the market for a new PC, you won't go wrong with one of these Dells. IE7 still crashes about six times a day, but you don't have to reboot the whole machine. It's just that IE happens to suck, although it's does feel like a well-worn glove. (Say it: Smell the glove.)

I will be back

2006-05-26T13:59:00.000-07:00

I've been gone for awhile. Apologies to all. I will be back.

You know how blogging is. It all begins in a torrent of activity. Posting all the time, checking the counter, looking for stuff to link to, finding kooky, illustrative photos. Then you sort of get tired of it. Other things start to shuffle to the front of my brain queue. Yes, there's a line, so get in it, blogging.

You may have read my previous post about the Powerbook 1400cs. I've been getting this 10-year-old laptop ready as it can be for use in the '00s, and that's been my extracurricular pursuit for the last long while. I've toyed with starting a blog just for this Macintosh project, but I'm wary of this geeky side eclipsing all others -- hence the lack of posting here over the last month and a half.

Among things Ilene and I have been doing is getting our back yard in shape. Yeah, it's been more than 10 years since we moved here, and we're just getting to it, but hey, life intervenes. We've done quite a bit of cleaning up, including taking out half of the patio, which consisted of heavy 12-by-12-inch paving stones and poured concrete in a checkerboard fashion -- that's where the eventual lawn will go. After I dig for and subsequently install sprinklers. And Ilene did a great job getting plants in the side portion (we took out a few dead trees and such -- and I only inadvertently cut off our phone service once).

She just trimmed the giant fountain grass and surrounded it with marigolds and nasturtium, and I began trimming the giant trees that are depriving our future lawn of the sun it needs to keep from dying. I'm doing my own tree trimming BECAUSE GETTING PROFESSIONALS TO DO IT IS FREKIN' EXPENSIVE. So far I've used the 5-foot stepladder and loppers, but Bruce, Mr. Jack of all trades, is providing one of those trimmers-on-a-pole, albeit not one with a saw on the end. I'll try to get that and the extension ladder in my car sometime this weekend so I can really start trimming away the canopy in the Van Nuys rain forest (with no rain).

And there's also been Big Cat's surgery and subesequent move into the house. Yes, we live with a cat. A big cat. Formerly, we thought, a tabby, but now a Norwegian Forest cat.

Old computers don't always die

2006-04-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

Geek alert:

I'm posting via e-mail from a Macintosh PowerBook
1400cs, with System 7.5.3 and Netscape 4.7. Ilene
saved this computer from way back in her record
company days, and lately the kid has been banging away
on it.

I remembered that its modem card (22K speed, I
believe), also has an Ethernet option, so I was able
to configure it and get it on a network connection (I
think you need a router to do this -- I don't think it
would work straight through a DSL modem).

So that's my geeked-out moment.

(For those keeping geek score, any art that appears on
this item was added with a "modern" computer that is
supported by Blogger.)

Village People

2006-03-28T17:18:00.000-08:00

The former lead singer of the Village People was arrested in South San Francisco.

Yes, they arrested the cop:

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) -- Victor Willis, the original policeman in the 1970s disco band the Village People, pleaded not guilty Tuesday to drug possession and giving false identification to a police officer.

His arrest Sunday ended a five-month search for the former hitmaker.

Willis, 54, was pulled over by a South San Francisco police officer for a routine traffic stop but was arrested after cocaine and drug paraphernalia was found in his car, Lt. Jeff Azzopardi said.

The officer did not immediately recognize Willis, who was the subject of a bench warrant after failing to appear at his sentencing hearing on drug and weapons charges in October, police said.

Both Willis and his companion, Staci Brandt, who also was wanted for a parole violation, initially gave false names to the officer, Azzopardi said. Willis was later identified through fingerprints.

Brandt also pleaded not guilty to the same charges Tuesday.

Both are scheduled to return to court on April 10.

Last July, Willis was arrested in Daly City for possessing cocaine. He agreed to a plea bargain that would have resulted in a prison term of no more than 16 months, but he never showed up for sentencing. His bail jumping now gives a judge the right to impose the maximum four-year, four-month sentence.

A new sentencing date for that case has not been set, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney's Office.

Willis, who co-wrote such hits as "YMCA" and "In the Navy," left the Village People in 1980. His case was first featured on the television crime show "America's Most Wanted" in December.

For those who are, shall we say, deficient on their Village People trivia, rotten.com is here to help.

Here is Victor Willis' bio from that page:

Victor Willis

(b. 1952)

The Policeman

Victor Willis performed lead vocals for the Village People from 1977 to 1980.

In the late seventies, he was married to actress Phylicia Rashad - better known as Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show.

He indulged in a generous hit of freebase prior to each performance, prompting a meeting among the producers. They replaced Willis with Ray Simpson.

Willis was arrested in February of 1997, charged with robbery and cocaine possession.

MARRIED TO PHYLICIA RASHAD??? And did you note the FEMALE companion in the arrest story?

Why has there never been a movie of the week about the Village People's coke-guzzling, woman-loving, cop-impersonating lead singer?

Daily News bloggers -- they are out there

2006-02-28T16:50:00.000-08:00

There have got to be more Daily News bloggers than this, and if you know of any, I'd like to hear about it. Besides myself, of course, there are:

Editorial assistant Ben Jauron's edgy, whacked-out, noirish, insert your own adjective here, http://www.sgtwest.com/, which features in one of its "episodes," Ilene's and my long-ago boss Gregg Miller. Yes, Mr. Jauron is currently the coolest, edgiest Daily News blogger, or more precisely, Web artist, since this doesn't really meet the definition of "blog."

Columnist Mariel Garza's lightly updated http://www.marielgarza.blogspot.com/.

Editorial page editor Chris Weinkopf's also lightly updated http://www.weinkopf.com/.

Cops reporter Josh Kleinbaum's also lightly updated http://kleinbaum.org/.

Who could forget the official Daily News Red Carpet blog http://www.insidesocal.com/redcarpet/, featuring the bloggish stylings of Fred Shuster, Valerie Kuklenski, Bob Strauss, Glenn Whipp, David Kronke, Sandra Barrera and who knows who else.

And last for now but never least, business reporter Brent Hopkins' blog, which is mostly filled with items pertaining to our CWA union local (of which he is the more-than-capable leader) http://thenutgraph.blogspot.com/.

I'll start a special blogroll for all of these when I get a chance. But for now, enjoy them starting right here.

Is the real-estate bubble bursting?

2006-02-28T13:19:00.000-08:00

Mack Reed of L.A. Voice thinks it might be. One thing's for sure, it can't go on like this forever, and another catastrophic event (earthquake, oil shock, terrorist attack) could really bust the market down.

What I always say is that the current run-up in home prices is due largely to the lending industry's radical change in the kinds of loans available. Home prices are based on what you can afford to pay, or what the bank thinks you can afford to pay, with crazy terms such as interest-only, variable-rate, 80 percent principal with 20 percent second, balloon payments, 40-year terms, and more that I don't even know about. And this is OK for many people because they figure they don't need to have any real money tied up in the house -- equity will fall from the sky in the form of 20 percent and higher yearly appreciation. The best way to tap that equity is to sell and get the hell out of Dodge. But if you need to live somewhere else, you plough that money right back in and at least have some actual cash equity in your home. Find all these colors annoying?

Let me pose this colored-type question: Has your income risen by 20 percent a year? How about 10? Do I hear 5 percent? I didn't think so.

All I can say is that the current pace of appreciation can't last forever.

Best case: Prices will stabilize for a period of five or so years, then will rise again, provided the economy can support it.

Worst case: The aforementioned catastrophic event throws the economy for a loop and prices plummet, making it impossible for people to recoup in a sale. Of course, if you didn't put anything down, it's like you had a very expensive rental for a few years, and "walking away," isn't quite so painful as if you put 20 percent down in cash money when you bought. But then again, if you based your purchase on equity gained from a previous home sale ...

Other worst case: Economic conditions cause the loan industry to stop offering so many "creative" products (notice how everything is a "product" these days?) and the amount of house that new buyers can afford is substantially reduced, leading to a crash in prices in which a overwhelming number of homeowners rush to sell before prices really fall, further lowering the prices due to oversupply.

Back to Van Nuys: Curiously, in our neighborhood the more expensive homes seem to be selling quickly. Stuff from $700,000 to $1 million (never thought you'd see the $1 million Van Nuys home? Well, it's about to happen) is going a lot quicker that the "lower-priced" houses. That's probably because the homes that have a bit more square footage and which have been extensively refurbished are going for $650,000-$850,000, while the trashed-out properties that will need $50,000 or more just to become habitable are starting at $550,000 and going up to $600,000.

The other part of this lopsided equation is buyers who are looking to flip the property and make quick money vs. those who actually need a place to live. I think the speculators are realizing that they need to get a below-market price to actually make money on the deal. The entire low end of the market seems to have a large percentage of sellers who:

a) inherited the property and for some reason think it's worth more than market value (and don't need to sell in a hurry)

b) bought the home with the expressed intent of flipping it and need to hit a certain price to make their profit.

Nothing scientific here, just anecdotal meanderings on my part.

Still who wouldn't want Rainn "Dwight K. Schrute" Wilson's house?

Breaking News on Dwight Schrute!

2006-02-27T21:13:00.000-08:00

Rainn Wilson will be in tomorrow's (February 28th) Daily News talking about his blog, Schrute Space. Mr. Wilson writes his own stuff! No studio flak for him. Here's something that didn't make it into the article: Many of the times he writes it when they're shooting a multitude of background shots. So, he says, if you see him in the background looking particularly busy and pounding on the keyboard, he's probably writing something to post.

The story didn't make it to the Daily News Web site, but you can see the full story here. Ok. You've been warned. Yet again, I've given you something to make that click from your
Google search for Dwight Schrute worthwhile.

And there's also this: Dwight K. Schrute is an heir to Barney Fife. And here, Rainn Wilson says, "I think Dwight is America." And, Rainn Wilson gets a film role. And Rainn Wilson speaks to Newsweek.

And this tidbit: I figured out which house for sale was his, and they even had an open house this weekend, but even with Steven nearly jumping up and down wanting to go, it just seemed to much like a sicko stalker move to tromp through his house.

Before and after

2006-02-21T22:42:00.000-08:00

Before ...

... and after (note the change in clock time).

Hair by Ilene.

Remembering Busch Gardens

2006-02-15T12:24:00.000-08:00

(Image from Kenneth A. Larson via Places Earth)

I do remember Busch Gardens in Van Nuys. A bit of tropical/jungle paradise in the middle of a brewery. Now all that's left is the brewery (and the overpowering smell of ~~hops~~ malt), but it used to have exotic birds, tours, a tram (the tracks are still there) and, of course free beer. Did I taste the free beer as an 8-year-old. It was the '70s, so I'll leave the answer to you.

(Discovered via L.A. Observed), this guy has virtually re-created Busch Gardens and other amusement parks -- past, present and future -- in an Atari game program called Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 .

There's a disclaimer on his site: You may not host the files at your site. They are only available here. So click to see what Busch Gardens would look like in a video game.

Here's a quote from the text:

Most of Busch Gardens Van Nuys was scenery and drinking lots of low cost, high quality Beer!

Not so sure about "high quality," but we'll let that pass.

Note: Hops/malt controversy addressed in the comments here and on The Valley Observed, Kevin Roderick's revamped companion to L.A. Observed. Suffice it to say, it kinda smells like urine.

The 2007 Camry Hybrid, America's Automobile

2006-02-14T16:29:00.000-08:00

Like it or not, the Toyota is America's Automobile (yes, Automobile with a capital "A"), especially if you're not, shall we say, under 65. Why just today, while passing through one of the "watch out lest you get T-boned by a Camry" stretches of my morning commute, I turned onto Van Nuys Boulevard and got into the middle of three lanes behind a new Camry -- it didn't even have license plates yet. The woman drove no faster than 34 miles per hour. I know the speed limit is 35, but let's face it, it's morning rush hour, and 34 was her top speed. So I pull into the right late to get on the Ventura Freeway and speed ahead because I am NOT driving a Camry, nor do I drive like I'm driving a Camry.

I pass the Camry but watch in my rearview mirror. It suddenly shifts into the right late - "Hey, I'm actually going somewhere, and wouldn't you know it, I'm already here." Then it makes a full stop and rolls up the driveway sans accelerator, using only the power of the transmission in Drive (and stopping traffic behind it). Ah, Camrys.

That brings me to my other point, only tangentially related of course, but the title of this post nonetheless: the 2007 Camry Hybrid, which Pulitzer Prize-winning Dan Neil of the Los Angeles Times assesses here. This link probably won't be here forever, so click TODAY but enjoy the following excerpt, which will be here for the foreseeable future:

By certain lights, the 2007 Camry Hybrid is not particularly revolutionary. Here we have a nicely equipped, 3,637-pound, five-passenger sedan with 192 horsepower, costing about $30,000 (final pricing has yet to be confirmed). Styling reminds me of the old Merle Travis song: So round, so firm, so fully packed. The ride and handling are straight-up Pink Floyd: comfortably numb.But, ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is the Buick from another planet. Beneath the almost laughably stately sheetmetal is a still-slightly radical, state-of-the-art gas-electric powertrain allowing the sedan to post estimated EPA fuel economy numbers of 43 miles per gallon city, 37 mpg highway, and 40 mpg combined driving.

...

There's nothing rakish or aggressive about the car's new styling, no trick graphics or plunging hood lines. What the Camry is on the inside — safe, reliable, sturdy, bourgeois — it is on the outside. This car is the radon of midsize exurban transportation: odorless, colorless, invisible.How does it drive? Quintessentially Camry-like. Unlike the spanking-quick Honda Accord Hybrid, which uses the hybrid power to boost the performance of its V6 powerplant, the Camry moves at a deliberate and unhurried pace — which is to say, it's kind of slow. Although it has enough asphalt savvy for ordinary driving, it's rather yacht-like in its cornering and steering responses.

(Check out the Camry Hybrid's computerized console, above right. Does it come with Photoshop and Word? How about Frogger?)

You can't make the Camry fast, because ... well, just because. And on a serious note, the trade-off of better mileage for non-sportscar-like performance is what a hybrid should be, in my opinion. And making America's Automobile, its best-selling car, in a hybrid version is probably the smartest thing any car company has done in recent memory.

Now if they could only hybridize my Ford Focus (not exciting, but not a Camry either), which can haul ass if called upon, but which also gets less-than-stellar gas mileage.

Previous Camry musing:

Orange Line vs. Camry
The ultimate car

And from Ilene:
Duck and cover, it's a Camry!

"The Office" on Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T16:00:00.000-08:00

Dwight Schrute with his bobble-head.

The Valentine's Day episode of "The Office," summarized here by Northern Attack, was a television masterpiece. It deftly yet subtly explored many stages of romance, from Ryan the intern and Kelly's "hookup" the night before (they kissed, she thought she now had "a boyfriend," he tried to pull his own hair out), Pam's endless engagement to Roy, who in lieu of a gift, offered "the best sex of your life"; Angela's gift of a Dwight bobble-head to her secret sweetheart, and his gift in return of a mystery key (to the cellar at the beet farm, maybe? There was also Phyllis' endless parade of gifts from her refrigeration-obsessed husband, Meredith's passing out drunk, Oscar's gift from a mystery admirer who only we know (yet with whom Dwight Schrute has been comfy on the couch), and of course that kiss between Jan and Michael after he first dropped her ass into the frying pan and subsequently saved it.

Note that I didn't mention Jim and Pam? Because NOTHING happened between them. And that's the story there. I'm not in "The Office" for what Northern Attack readers call the JPI or Jim-Pam Index -- there's so much more to the show, and a coupling of these two threatens to be a shark-jumping moment, for that matter. There are already 133 comments on the episode at Northern Attack, and I just don't have the will to go on.

Here's the Dwight K. Schrute quote of the night, and I quote Dwight Schrute because quoting Dwight Schrute, heck, even mentioning the name Dwight Schrute is like catnip to Internet searchers who should be enjoying the witty repartee herein. Anyway, back to the quote:

Dwight : Women are like wolves. If you want a wolf, you have to trap it. You have to snare it. And then you have to tame it. Keep it happy. Care for it. Feed it. Lovingly, the way an animal deserves to be loved. And my animal deserves a lot of loving.

Food as heroin REVISITED

2006-02-14T15:51:00.000-08:00

REVISED: Per Ilene's queries, the FlavorBlasted Color Changing Goldfish turn either red or blue in your mouth, and they do so almost instantaneously. And here's the relevant Nutrition Facts: In 51 crackers (yes people, a serving is 51 crackers -- check it!), 14o calories, 6g fat, 1.5g saturated fat (1.5g polyunsatured, 3g monounsaturated), 5 mg cholesterol (cholesterol???), 250 mg sodium, 17g carbohydrates), less than 1g fiber, less than 1g sugars (how do they do that??), 3g protein. 4% calcium, 4% iron.

These were floating around the office -- the best Goldfish crackers ever. Why? Because they're "flavor blasted," and they also supposedly change color in your mouth!

Seriously, though, if you didn't think that original Goldfish crackers could be improved upon, think again, cause these things are freakin' great. Here's Pepperidge Farm's description:

Flavor Blasted® Goldfish® CrackersBlast off to a new galaxy of flavorful fun! Just one bite will send your taste buds into orbit. When you're ready to try something extreme — try satisfying your hunger with Xtra Cheddar, Xplosive Pizza, Nothin' But Nacho or Burstin BBQ Cheddar Flavor Blasted® Goldfish® Crackers. They blow other snacks away.

Indeed, they do blow other snacks away. Ilene would want to know the nutritional information, but it's not on the Web site, and I'm getting too logy with carb overload to get out of the chair. Hey, at least they've eliminated trans-fatty acids.

I remember Goldfish crackers from when I was a wee-little, finicky kid who didn't eat much besides Cheerios, dry.

Seriously again, I should never, ever be around these.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Muppets and Sesame Street but were afraid to ask

2006-02-09T15:21:00.000-08:00

Thanks to our Big Bird-loving daughter, we've seen enough "Sesame" for a few lifetimes, and she's only 2.

For those who want "Sesame Street," and especially the Muppets, in exhaustive detail, here's a Wiki on everybody's favorite puppets. It's not that old, and is still growing, but there are currently 5,615 articles there.

Drill down to "Sesame Street" right here. For a sample, click on Big Bird Through the Years.

As for Cookie Monster, who seems to enjoy chewing things but never swallowing them (such is the life of an overgrown sock puppet), HE USED TO HAVE TEETH. Yikes.

Northern Attack, another "Office" Web site

2006-02-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

I came across yet another "The Office" fan Web site, Northern Attack.

Particulary notable is Northern Attack's exhaustive synopsis of the "Boys and Girls" episode, complete with dialogue and analysis throughout.

The many people commenting on this site even have something called the JPI, which I think stands for Jim-Pam Index. But they're all talking about whether the JPI is up or down. I guess it's like the NASDAQ or something in "Office" terms.

Here's a quote:

About the JPI…
I know we all want to be as optimistic as possible (me included), and I know events in this episode are setting up events later that will most certainly send the JPI skyrocketing, but just considering the situation at the exact end of the episode (and I’m pretty sure that’s what must be done, instead of including parts of hypothetical future episodes), it’s gonna be a negative.
But hey, I might be wrong. Just my thoughts.

and this:

The thing I love best about this show is that it’s so great to watch the first time around, and even so every episode is always better the second time through.
My take on Pam’s final look at Jim is that having just transferred a call, she’s acknowledging to herself what Jim said about always being a receptionist – and that transferring calls is much of what that life would be like. The look shows that what he said is already hitting home.

And yes, they have lots of screen shots (see above).

Dunderball on "The Office"

2006-02-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

A great fan site for "The Office" is Dunderball. Lots of quotes from the show, news and more.

Curiously, it's hard to find out the character and actor names for the supporting players in "The Office." Even Imdb doesn't have complete info.

The Van Nuys Diet

2006-02-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

(Isaac Newton Van Nuys,
patron saint of the Van Nuys Diet)

The Daily News is awash in cookies, doughnuts and fudgy confections, and with that in mind -- and under my nose -- the Van Nuys Diet begins RIGHT NOW.

Much of this comes from Ilene, who besides her training in nutrition and food science (now culminating in her master's thesis) has a lot of good ideas on how to avoid going face first, entire body second, into the plethora of sugary foods that dot the file cabinets and desktops of newsrooms and offices everywhere. She says that if a free dessert is that good, you should have a container ready and take some, holding it for later when you can eat it at the proper time and enjoy it (i.e. not while standing up over a trash can).

Nothing here today is good enough to do that, and I brought food for lunch and snacks, so I'm sticking to it.

Another major component, not endorsed by Ilene, is coffee, and lots of it. America's wonder elixir is my friend. As is the double espresso. They're building a Starbucks across from the Daily News, and it is taking a very, very, very long time. But right now, despite two cups of coffee, I could really use something stronger.

More on the Van Nuys Diet later, including my weighty history.

How a 2-year-old thinks

2006-02-03T10:58:00.000-08:00

Find insight into the mind of our toddler at Ilene's blog. Gum, candy, ice cream, little cars, 50-cent rides at the mall, what she refers to as "little men," stickers, "Sesame Street Karaoke," these are a few of her favorite things (although she's only had gum once, and wasn't exactly clear on the concept, swallowing it pretty quickly).

Valentine's Day on "The Office"

2006-02-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

Last night's "The Office" was not the Valentine's Day episode, though it was one of the better shows this season. Michael's boss Jan (a recent divorcee with whom he had a drunken tryst after a successful sales meeting at Chili's on a previous episode) comes to the office to conduct a seminar exclusively with the female staff. Michael just can't leave them alone -- and Jan banishes him from the office when he starts his own men-only meeting outside the female-filled conference room.

The men go to the warehouse, where Michael gets the idea of forging a white/blue-collar dialogue, during which he nearly destroys the downstairs part of Dunder-Mifflin with a forklift. In the middle of this, warehouse worker Roy, longtime fiance of receptionist Pam, confronts Jim, longtime admirer from much closer than afar of Pam, about what everyone at the company now knows of as Jim's "crush" on her. Roy assures Jim that he's "cool" with the seemingly former crush, and he appreciates Jim's friendship with Pam because all the talking the "Office"-mates do during the day saves Roy from having to do it at night.

In the middle of all this, the warehouse workers realize that the upstairs employees make much more money then they do, and they think things can be made right by forming a union, and they bully Michael -- who's pretty much wrecked the warehouse with the forklift mishap -- into meekly supporting (or at least not opposing) them. Upstairs, in Jan's women's seminar, she tells the "documentary" crew (whose interviews are part of every "Office" episode) that one of the purposes of her meeting is to scout for potential female executives. So she asks the women what their hopes and dreams are, and when Pam says she loves art and graphic design, Jan tells her that Dunder-Mifflin offers a graphics training program at Corporate in New York. The usually meek Pam finds reasons why she can't do it, but the hard-charging Jan convinces her to seriously consider it.

When Michael informs Jan (during the women's seminar, of course) about the unionization effort, she tells him to deal with it, but knowing he cannot, she goes down to the warehouse herself and lays it all out: Forming a union will mean one thing -- the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin will be closed down, and everybody will be out of a job, simple as that.

Back upstairs, the camera sees Roy and Pam through glass, and we see (but don't hear) Roy convince her that nothing will come of her going to New York for the graphics training program. When Pam talks to the "documentary" crew, she has an emotional moment over the dreams she is deferring.

Along with this Pam's other deferred dream, her non-relationship with Jim. He confronts her about passing on the New York training program and whether she wants to be a receptionist forever, but what's really at issue here is the chance they are not taking in terms of pursuing a relationship together (which means she'd have to dump fiance Roy, and she's not the breaking-up or rocking-the-boat type). While Jim pushes Pam to do what she really wants, he can't bring himself to lay it on the line and tell Pam that he is, in fact, in love with her.

So it was an emotional episode, probably one of the best of the series so far. And it sets up next week's Valentine's Day show. Here's the description from NBC:

VALENTINE'S DAY 9:30pm 2006-02-09 ALL NEW!
'THE OFFICE' GOES ON LOCATION TO NYC -- When Michael (Golden Globe nominee Steve Carell) visits Dunder Mifflin corporate headquarters in New York on Valentine's Day, he and Jan (Melora Hardin) are both in for a surprise. Meanwhile, back in Scranton, the office staff celebrates Valentine's Day grade school style. Jenna Fischer, John Krasinski, B.J. Novak and Rainn Wilson also star. TV-14

Go to Ilene's blog for more "The Office" fun, including pictures from next week's episode and a tribute to Dwight Schrute, Scranton's No. 1 beet-growing paper salesman.

In case you need to catch up (and I've probably missed a couple of these myself), season one of "The Office" is on DVD. And in case I haven't mentioned it, "The Office" -- yes, the American version -- is the best show on television, period.

Does Blogger's Dashboard work with Internet Explorer 6.0?

2006-01-25T13:38:00.000-08:00

Not so well. I don't think the problem is in the composing of blog posts but in the reading of them via IE 6.0.

Trying to center type or do block quotes in the "compose" mode is an exercise in frustration, and photos that appear at the top of a post often obscure the headline below. It might look OK to users of other browsers, but it looks like hell on IE 6.0.

And type is occasionally not appearing but does show up when you screw with the window a bit.

NONE of these problems happen on the Mac with Safari (which doesn't support full Blogger functionality). Guess I'll have to go back to Firefox, even though the Blogger help pages insist that IE 6.0 works just fine (although the Blogger people all use Firefox, so you know which browser gets all the love).

Maybe I'm missing an IE update.

The troubles of KCRW

2006-01-25T12:15:00.000-08:00

Chris Douridas, above, from his Web site.

Famous Van Nuys resident Sandra Tsing Loh guest-blogs for Cathy Seipp on the trouble, past and present, of KCRW-FM, touching on her own firing for the expletive that indadvertently reached the air, but centering on the current controversy surrounding Chris Douridas, who is under suspicion of attempted kidnapping and drugging a teenage girl at a Santa Monica bar. (Note to all: L.A. Times is requiring registration these days, but you don't have to be a subscriber to do it). Sandra's comment was prompted by the break in the media silence by L.A. Times columnist Megan Daum, who I think was pretty darn kind to all concerned. At one insipid point, this happens in Daum's piece:

Others, though, are nearly choking on the drool of their schadenfreude. When the news of Douridas' arrest broke, even the fact that it was buried on page B3 didn't keep people from circulating e-mails filled with catty conjectures about who might be next. What if Daniel Schorr was caught shoplifting at Wal-Mart? Imagine if Terry Gross was nabbed on Sunset Boulevard in a compromising position with Divine Brown. Imagine!

Is she outing Terry Gross here? That aside, the whole paragraph trivializes a serious matter -- potential kidnapping and rape of a child. If I was her editor (and I am not), I would kick that one right back with a "What are you thinking?" note.

However, Sandra hits it right:

KCRW, of course, has a long history of removing people from the air any time for any reason. After (was it?) 10 years, Ruth (Seymour, who runs the station)
recently thought afternoon announcer Cindi Burke’s voice suddenly sounded funny -- gone. Joe Frank has a horrific story to tell about being fired by Ruth just before his new series was scheduled to start, with the twist that KCRW then issued a statement that Joe had decided to take a voluntary leave for health reasons. . .

...

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere (aka: in LA Times), I came of age in a time when KCRW’s signature broadcaster was Joe Frank, a writer who spoke openly to us, across the ether, about our deepest, darkest, weirdest, most embarrassing, and at times most hilarious predilections. When he satirized KCRW’s own pledge drives ("Do you enjoy long moonlit walks on the beach in Bali? Do you. . . ? Do you. . . ? Sorry--in fact no, you DIDN’T win the Bali sweepstakes"), it was the break in the sonic wash that gave KCRW, for me, a kind of. . . call it a kind of three-dimensional personality. It was something recognizably human.

My "relationship" with public radio in general, and KCRW in particular, is, for want of a better word, fragmented. I do listen to a lot of public radio, but my listening time is divided between KCRW, KPCC, KKJZ and KCSN, and I'm mostly trying to catch NPR news and jazz or classical music (the latter two of which barely appear on KCRW and are nonexistent on the mostly talk KPCC). So I was happy to see Sandra's commentaries picked up by KPCC, including the new "Loh Down on Science" (am I spelling that right?), produced by Loh's alma mater Caltech and which airs at 9:20 a.m. weekdays in the middle of "Day to Day" on 89.3.

I've blogged recently on the salaries of top public radio on-air talent, and I don't know where Douridas falls in this spectrum. But he went from host of the daily "Morning Becomes Eclectic" to a much-lower-profile weekend shift, supplementing his income all the while by doing soundtrack supervising and other record-company work. While not disturbing as alleged kidnapping, the fact that most of the big KCRW DJs (including Nic Harcourt and Tom Schanbel) have outside jobs in the record industry is a giant red flag (as in conflict of interest). Especially if you're dragging in $100k from the station, do you really need to be supervising soundtracks or doing A&R?

I don't know Ruth Seymour or any other KCRW employees for that matter, but it's pretty clear from listening to the station and reading about it that the whole operation is basically Seymour's personal fiefdom. It may be a "public" station, it may be housed at Santa Monica College, but Seymour is firmly in control of it. One thing's for sure, the station's profile has risen tremendously under her tenure. It's a big business that drags in a lot of money from listeners and corporations. I don't know if this is good or bad, and I don't really doubt that the public interest is being served to some extent, but I sure do miss Cindi Burke and Joe Frank.

I also miss the great jazz shows I remember from the '80s -- "Smoke Rings," and "Straight, No Chaser" (although I can't for the life of me remember which one aired on KCRW and which was on KPFK). I also think it's a crime that Marian McPartland's excellent "Piano Jazz" has no L.A. outlet.

But it all comes down to this. I don't have cable TV, so for news it's all about NPR in the car. As long as the "Morning Edition," "All Things Considered" and "Day to Day" keep flowing, I'm reasonably happy.

Other things I love about public radio: Chuck Cecil's "The Swingin' Years," on KKJZ and KCSN (no, I'm not 80, I just act like it), KPCC's Larry Mantle (he deserves his $100K) and Kitty Felde, Les Perry's "British Invasion" show on KCSN, Chuck Southcott's KKJZ bop program on weekend mornings and afternoons, those "Car Talk" guys, Terry Gross (gay or not) and "Fresh Air," the fact that "Day to Day" is produced in Los Angeles (or is it Culver City?), the entire KPCC news team, KCRW's "Left, Right and Center" (so that's where I know Robert Scheer from).

Modular, baby

2006-01-23T15:39:00.000-08:00

Andrew at Here in Van Nuys has this ultra-cool Van Nuys-manufactured KitHaus entry. These prefab structures are so freakin' cool, it hurts -- you can make lots of different dwelling configurations and bolt them together. A bit pricey though, the free-standing one-module model is $59,500, and that doesn't include all the work you have to do to get electrical and plumbing in there.

I'll see YOU over on the couch

2006-01-22T18:46:00.000-08:00

I turned on the charm, laid back these flappy ears and wagged my tail, and damn if someone didn't spring me from the joint! It's very exciting. I hope they have a decent couch, or at least sprung for an Isaac Mizrahi dog bed from Target. Funny thing, though, I went to lick my nuts this morning and they're gone! What do you make of that? Oh well. I have to concentrate my efforts on finding someone's bed to sleep in at night, and endearing myself into some really expensive chow, or even better, table scraps. Then I can go look for my nuts. See ya!

Get me outta here!

2006-01-19T13:55:00.000-08:00

I'm at the East Valley Shelter, ID #A771906, and you can find me at www.petharbor.com, East Valley Shelter site. I will be ready for adoption in 2 days. TWO long days. I was found with no tags, and despite signs no one has come for me.

I'm part Chihuahua, part dachsund and maybe some mini-pinscher, which accounts for my outstanding good looks.

I have my jingle bells, they need to come off because at the moment I would hump absolutely anything. The shelter will be taking care of that. I love everyone though. Well, except cats, and birds, and well, the idiots who found me weren't pleased that I tried to chase and eat their pets. They won't let anything bad happen to me and are monitoring me, but who needs them anyway, they can keep their overgrown bastard of a cat and little yellow bird. Take me home, feed me something, hold me because I like that, and I will be your best buddy. I am housetrained, very well mannered and love every person I meet. Look at this face, would I lie?

Chainsaw Chick

2006-01-19T13:16:00.001-08:00

Check out Cherie Currie, formerly of the runaways, on the cover of the Daily News, doing chainsaw sculptures. Rocker chick wielding a chainsaw, now THAT's how you get the 18-24 male demo, ladies and gentlemen.

Ilene is here

2006-01-16T22:27:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Ilene, my much better half, for writing about Vista Ford and the Woodland Hills area way back when. Anything past Encino seemed like a foreign country to me in the 1970s, and there were certainly no pastures of any kind in Van Nuys and North Hollywood at that time.

Look for Ilene's other blogs, Drawerspace in a Cluttered Mind and Food Smack for more good writing, including her master's thesis on antioxidants in rooibos tea, a noncaffeinated beverage from South Africa. (Nothing is perfect, unless you don't like caffeine -- and in that case, what's wrong with you?) Rooibos is surprisingly good-tasting, especially the unfermented or "green" kind. Since rooibos means red bush (at this rate I'll be speaking Afrikaans by morning), green red-bush tea, as a beverage name, would seem to pose a marketing problem. I also say this because we can only find one kind of green rooibos on the shelves, and that is a rooibos-honeybush blend made by Numi that Whole Foods carries. Try it -- it's probably one of the best herbal teas out there.

Vista in the Valley

2006-01-16T15:32:00.000-08:00

Woodland Hills, 1949, courtesy the CSUN Oviatt Library digital collection.

Steve Shuken, the founder of Vista Ford on Ventura near Canoga, has died. In his obit, it says that he opened the place in 1974. I was raised in the West San Fernando Valley, and it must have been funny to open a place in that spot back then.

It was pretty damned nice, but fairly rural. I was still a squirt in 1974, and we'd hop on the traffic-free 101 for a few stops to the Canoga exit to get to Topanga Plaza. At the bottom of the exit there were horses in a very large pasture (now the Warner Center apts that were just converted to condos with some more fabulous sounding name). Kaiser Permanente's rather large campus off DeSoto was a corn field. Pierce College had more acres of unencumbered farm land.

Topanga Plaza, now in the process of becoming a behemoth Westfield Shopping City was a big deal -- an enclosed, air conditioned mall that featured (to us kids) a "fountain" that dripped beads of oil down large strings suspended from the ceiling. It was surrounded by a circular rainbow tiled floor (!) and my sister and I pondered it a lot as kids after a trip to The Jolly Roger, where it was dark, foreboding and at one time they even had a magician who my sister called "The Man Magic" after the Heart song (She was 3 at the time).

As you can see, 25 years or so before Steve moved in with his Fords, it was pretty much farmland. Our house in the Van Nuys went up that year. Thirty-two years later and it's a suburban metropolis by comparison. I'm not entirely against progress, but a little nostalgic about the open space. Let's hope that they keep Pierce from becoming some horrible development. Meanwhile, Burt Boeckman might be rubbing his hands together over at Galpin Ford. We bought a car there, and the employees were swell, but I hope Vista stays open because Mr. Shuken ran his service dept. a bit better. Bye Mr. Shuken, we're glad you came to the party.

Dutton's North Hollywood is closing

2006-01-16T11:19:00.000-08:00

L.A. Observed reports via the Daily News' Dennis McCarthy that Dutton's Bookstore in North Hollywood is closing after 45 years in business.

I remember spending many hours of my youth at this great, unkempt mismash of books on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Magnolia boulevards. I'd pedal a mile and a half or so from our North Hollywood house, lock my Schwinn 10-speed out front next to the boxes of stuff they were trying to blow out the door, and head in to see what I could discover. I wouldn't call the layout logical, and it certainly bore no resemblance to a modern-day Borders or Barnes & Noble.

At Dutton's, books were (and probably still are) stacked on the floor in such a way as to allow minimal passage for a human book-seeker, used volumes mingling with new and shelved two-deep in a chaotically beautiful series of corners, warrens and nooks. (If there's a difference between a warren and a nook, I'd sure like to know, but it just is so English-languagy to use both, no matter what they mean.)

I discovered Charles Bukowski among those shelves, as well as numerous (and more dubious) authors in science fiction, along with everything from impenetrable literary criticism and philosophy to music, science, history and more. I'd also pick up the New York Times Book Review there for something like 50 cents. Yep, I was more high-minded in those days (but no so high-mined as to have any interest at all in the New York Review of Books).

Owner Davis Dutton was a nearly constant presence at the store and didn't seem to mind the hours of browsing that only led to a few minutes of actual buying. You really could get lost in the store's far back recesses.

The North Hollywood never got the publicity that the other Dutton's in Brentwood (independently owned by Davis' brother Doug) sought, and that's too bad, but they really were different kinds of stores, the Valley one being a whole lot more scrappy and just simply packed with books.

I'm not much for used-book buying these days -- it's more about getting rid of stuff then acquiring more, and the North Hollywood area isn't exactly on my current itinerary (which runs more through Van Nuys' Bargain Books, which I hope stays open a long while), but for the whole Valley, the closing of Dutton's is a loss, to be sure.

Seems like nobody was crazy enough to buy Dutton's, but I somehow wish there was such a person. Guess if you're rich, you're not so crazy as to get into the retail book business ...

Ernani Bernardi is dead at 94

2006-01-05T16:31:00.000-08:00

Via L.A. Observed.

I especially love the part about him being a working alto saxophonist in the big bands during the 1930s. He played with the Dorseys, Benny Goodman and Kay Kyser.

As a Los Angeles City Councilman representing Van Nuys, he served eight terms, retiring in 1993. I moved (back) to Van Nuys in 1995, so I missed out on getting an Ernani Bernardi potholder.

Sudoku

2005-12-27T14:32:00.000-08:00

Ilene is better at the Sudoku puzzle than I am. I file Sudoku under "too hard, head hurts," for the most part. By following the puzzle's rules, it is possible, by process of elimination, to figure out where one missing number goes, then another, and so on, until the puzzle is complete. That works for the easy ones. But in the harder puzzles, you reach an impass very quickly, and that technique no longer works. You can't find a single 3x3 grid in which there aren't multiple possibilities for every missing number. So what do you do? Guess? Or is there another technique?

Not that I'm going there myself, but there is more than one way to skin the Sudoku, as Wikipedia illustrates. And for a look at the mathematical implications of Sudoku, try American Scientist Online, which also includes some history on the puzzle, and how it was probably invented by an American way before it became a nationwide obsession in both Japan and the U.K.

If I was better at these kinds of puzzles, I would probably be a mathematician, theoretical physicist, or, at the least, grooming-challenged eccentric.

To check the New York Times Crossword Puzzle here at the Daily News, I have to figure out at least two clues to make sure the grid matches the clues, and let me tell you, that's sometimes pretty difficult.

We also run the poker column by Chicago Tribune writer Steve Rosenbloom. I can pretty much figure out what's going on, but poker is so jargon-heavy, I think you have to watch about 20 hours of it on TV before you can speak the language (and no, I haven't done that and furthermore won't do it).

Out-Firefoxed

2005-12-27T12:13:00.000-08:00

Update: More Boing Boing readers use Firefox than IE.

Do you have Firefox? It's rapidly becoming a must. On the Mac, the Blogger is one of the sites that works somewhat with Internet Explorer 5, a bit better with Safari but only functions fully with Firefox.

The move away from IE and toward Firefox, especially for Mac, is being hastened by Microsoft's announcement that it will no longer support IE for Mac, with the reasoning being that they're unwilling to put any resources into it now that all Apple computers ship with Safari.

And for those still using OS 9 on the Mac, there's NO Firefox or Safari (both are available for OS X only). You have to stick with the aging IE 5, or possibly Netscape. It's getting to the point where pre-OS X Mac users can't really use the Web properly, since many developers are assuming that you have Firefox or IE 7 (which will never make it to Mac).

I like Firefox and all the things you can do on Blogger with it, like WYSIWYG for photos, bolding and italic, block quotes and more. But Safari is still faster for the Mac, and I can only hope that Blogger's promise to fully support the Apple program comes through eventually. And if Firefox gets even more stable, I might be able to live with the slowness at startup.

Speed and stability are my No. 1 and other No. 1 criteria for a Web browser -- quickness is everything, and I don't want it to ever crash. And for Mac, Safari beats Firefox on this count.

Meanwhile, Firefox seemingly went from nowhere to a major player, and I have no idea how Microsoft is going to counter it.

For Mac users, I hope Apple doesn't give up on Safari. And at least ONE of these developers should take pity on users of pre-OS X Macs and offer an updated browser.

Does Microsoft's abandonment of IE for Mac mean it will do the same for the Office software package? Since Apple is already in that space, too, with its iWork bundle, it could happen. It would be a bad move for Microsoft, but getting out of the Mac browser business -- when surfing the Web is what many computer users do about 99 percent of the time -- seems just as bad.

LAvoice.org has it much worse

2005-12-23T13:52:00.000-08:00

Mack Reed of L.A Voice has DSL problems of his own, and he took notice of my broadband journey, which is thankfully complete. I did a speed test last night, after DSL Extreme bumped the line back to 1500 bps, and everything is running better than ever. We can use the Internet and make phone calls at the same time in perfect digital harmony.

For those having trouble with DSL, here are some resources:

For no apparent reason, a picture
of the Fonz on the phone.

For speed tests and techies, disgruntled and not, discussing the fine points of broadband, go to DSL Reports and start digging in.

If you suspect a problem with your inside wiring, want to upgrade your telephone setup or even add a heavy-duty DSL filter that will eliminate your need for those little ones on each line, go to the Phone Man's Home Phone Wiring Advice Page.

And, of course, there's always DSL Extreme, which will provide you with broadband service in areas wired by both SBC and Verizon.

How well do you know YOUR DSL support tech

2005-12-22T10:58:00.000-08:00

DSL Extreme has been calling for the last day or so, and I finally caught one of their calls at 8 this morning. Seems my friend Dan wanted to check on how the service was working. I said great, because that's how it is, and he inquired about my Xmas preparations. Sure my name is Rosenberg, but since Christmas and Hanukkah coincide, I'm giving everybody a free pass. Thank you, Jesus and the Maccabees. I inquired about HIS Christmas shopping -- he still has to get something for "the wife." Well, since everything was working, I asked him to bump up our speed from 768 bps to 1500 bps. He checked the line, and since it was working fine, said he would do it.

He calls back 5 minutes later. I pick up the phone, "Hi, it's me," he says. Yes, Dan became a "me" in my life. But now that all is flowing fine on the DSL line (I'll check the speed tonight just to make sure), I expect my relationship with the tech support staff at DSL Extreme will become a more distant one. One can only hope.

DSL, you complete me

2005-12-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

It's been three months or so, but we FINALLY got the DSL working right. I converted our DSL Extreme dialup account to DSL (at $14.95 a month vs. $12.95 for dialup, resistance is futile) At first, we couldn't get a signal at all. I'm not sure what happened, but we did get up and running. But the signal would cut out whenever we picked up a telephone to make or receive a call.

Now I had already dragged the modem, telephone and cables outside to the NID (that's network interface device), unplugged the house's wiring at the test jack and plugged in everything there to eliminate any influence of the household wiring (which the DSL Extreme techs were CONSTANTLY blaming all my problems on, even though I was outside bypassing it entirely). Glad I didn't spend five hours under the house rewiring the phone jacks (all two of 'em) because being under the house is a special thing that should only be done once every two years, and I'd already been under when we had termites last year.

Don't get me wrong, the Billing and Technical Support staff at DSL Extreme (both of which I've had to deal with) are extremely helpful and responsive. But they are loathe to get SBC involved. See, even though DSL Extreme sells the service and has the routers and other techie equipment at their Winnetka, Calif., headquarters, the lines themselves are still the responsibility of SBC (and yes, I could've ordered the DSL through them,.but I liked the DSL Extreme deal and terms better, and I already had an open account with them for the dialup, which was way more rock-solid than any other dialup service we had, including AOL and AT&T). And e-mailing Tech Support with my signal problem was not enough. I had to call them from home and be ready to do wiring and modem gymnastics in order for them to get "a ticket started" with SBC.

"NID," "a ticket started," it's a whole new language.

Finally I bit the bullet on Sunday and called them. First they lowered the speed of the line from 1500 bps to 768, and the line supposedly got more "stable." They figured I was too far from the phone company office. I told them, "Van Nuys is the center of the entire fucking universe, and if we are not close enough to the central office, nobody is.'' Stability be damned, the speed reduction didn't work. We still lost DSL signal when using the phone.

So finally, they agreed to open a ticket with SBC, telling me that there could be a $125 charge if the problem was with my inside wiring. Since I was 100 percent confident that this was not the case, we proceeded to set up an appointment. SBC came a day early, the guy right away went to the phone box (or NID, for those who have been paying attention), got into the "phone company only" part and removed an MPU, which is some kind of electronic circuit that's either supposed to remove interference or alert the phone company when there's a problem on the line. The SBC guy told Ilene that these now-ancient circuits are a real pain in the ass.

Now everything works great. We can talk on the phone and use the Internet simultaneously -- and hopefully DSL Extreme will soon see fit to bump the speed of the line back up to 1500 bps. DSL Extreme offers a speed test on their support page, and it's easy to check up on how fast it's going.

With a little more dogged determination, I could've gotten this all resolved in the first month (I still have to caulk the bottom of the toilet, and we all know how long THAT's been going on -- and I do have all the things I need to complete THAT job), but the thought of having to spend an afternoon on the phone with DSL Extreme wasn't high on my personal list of ways to spend said afternoon, so I delayed.

Still, the tech support from DSL Extreme is pretty good. I've only had to wait on hold once when calling -- there's usually someone on the line to help right away, and for $14.95 per month, it really is a whole new world for those of us who have been stuck with dialup.

So problems notwithstanding, I would recommend DSL Extreme. But the whole process of getting a working line should be easier for those with nary a computer-nerd bone in their bodies. Both SBC and DSL Extreme are praying, when they start a new customer on the service, that everything in the physical setup -- from the telephone pole to the wiring down to the house, the DSL filters, the house wiring, the home computers -- is working fine so they can send a "self-install" kit and not have to physically show up. For newer dwellings and newer computers, this probably works a whole lot better "out of the box," literally and figuratively.

I think when we get to the next generation of broadband, whether through an upgraded fiberoptic network or via wireless, this will all be easier. I suspect that ease already extends to cable Internet service, but I promise you nothing.

L.A. Times does Tom Cruise

2005-12-19T17:43:00.000-08:00

The L.A. Times ran a large Tom Cruise/Scientology story Sunday, but the whole affair is just a rehash of pieces that appeared in Radar magazine and on Salon.com

What left me thinking "huh?" in Sunday's L.A. Times piece was all the talk about excessive pampering for Tom Cruise and Scientology leader/Cruise buddy David Miscavige. So what if the leader of a large, profitable religion and its most well-known adherent get a lot of special treatment? And it's no news that the worker bees of Scientology do a whole lot for a little, all the while signing "billion-year contracts." It's also no news that the advanced teachings of Scientology are wacky.

What I want to know about is the money, what happens to the lives of the regular Scientology people, how the lower-level Scientology "celebrities" are treated, and what kind of proselytizing is done in the many Scientology splinter organizations (which, like Narconon, often don't mention Scientology in their names) that are concered with drug abuse, education and especially the organization's fight against psychiatry.

And it took the Times about 40 inches of copy before they mentioned a few other celebrity Scientologists in the context of the religion's recruitment efforts among actors and musicians. In the case of singer Beck, his parents were/are Scientologists, as are/were the parents of current Scientology celebrities Juliette Lewis, Danny and Christopher Masterson, Giovanni Ribisi and Erika Christensen. Would be nice to hear about how celebrities present and hopeful, are treated. Some say that you can get a leg up in Hollywood by joining Scientology and networking through the Celebrity Centre in Hollywood.

Still, kudos to the Times for covering the subject at all, even though I got all I needed from Radar a couple of months ago.

Public radio pays

2005-12-16T12:10:00.000-08:00

The silence about public radio salaries either means they're abysmally low or unashamedly high. Are these seemingly dedicated people filling the commercial-free air and shilling for pledge dollars only to live like paupers themselves?

Well, here's something: Laist reveals that KPCC's Larry Mantle, host of "Air Talk," makes $115,000 per year, and Nic Harcourt, keeper of the "rare, live import demo remixes" * for KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic" makes "a little over $100,000, all this information presumably gleaned from the stations' annual reports.

Now I don't know about you, but I find $100,000 to be a lot of money, but I don't begrudge it to these guys one bit -- especially Larry Mantle, who I admire very much and who works very hard for that money.

We all know the kind of money Howard Stern and Katie Couric are making. When you're in a certain stratosphere, it's national news. And we all look at and judge the salaries of others through the prism of how much we, ourselves, have earned.

Still, I don't think people knowing that the top public radio on-air talent drags in $100,000 a year will be much of a help to the stations' pledge-drive efforts. And it begs the question: Do these people's salaries have a direct link to their ability to pull in donations, both individual and corporate?

*Neither a direct, nor indirect quote. Just my summation of Nic Harcourt. Have a live, cassette-only B-side remix demo -- on the house!.

Another one rides the bus

2005-12-15T17:04:00.000-08:00

It wasn't that big a deal, since I've ridden MTA (and formerly RTD) buses plenty of times in the past, but I did make my maiden Orange Line journey last night. The bus neither struck nor was stricken (is that proper verb conjugation?) by other vehicles, and our driver, whose voice announcing the stops could've been way louder, duitifully slowed down at all intersections.

I hoofed it out of the Daily News about five minutes after 6 o'clock and got to the "transit hub" across from the Promenade mall on Owensmouth Avenue at about 6:15. The bus was idling about 30 yards from the stop, and the lighted signs said it would leave at 6:22 p.m. I bought my ticket from the fancy electronic kiosk with an MTA token, and the bus pulled up right on schedule.

Suprisingly, I was joined by about 20 other people (this is NOT the portion of the day when buses arrive every 5 minutes, but it damn well should be). More people got on with every stop, and it was soon standing room only. And hot. They had the heat cranked up to 79 degrees.

Yes, I carry a thermometer with me at all times. What's it to you?

I couldn't see much -- it was dark outside, and the lights inside the bus make it hard to see out. I sat in one of the "high" seats, about 10 feet ahead of the "bend" in the accordion-style bus. If I looked at the moving floor too long, I started to get bus-sick. So obviously no reading or looking at the floor for me on the Orange Line.

The trip was uneventful. As said before, the driver did call out the stops -- essential at night, because you really can't see much, and the busway is at many points off the beaten (or auto-driven) path.

We arrived at the Van Nuys stop about 6:50 p.m. Not bad, but I wish I could have caught an earlier bus. There were transit cops at the station checking tickets, so anybody who thinks they can get away with not paying, think again.

Then came the choice, should I wait for a bus on Van Nuys, or walk the rest of the way? I hadn't bought a transfer but still had another token. I chose walking, and a good thing, too, because three buses passed me going the wrong way -- and none going the right way. You get to see the neighborhood, too. I witnessed one guy yelling at somebody on a cell phone outside a stretch of storefronts and couldn't help noticing the strong marijuana smell coming from an apartment building.

So I got a brisk walk in on both ends and arrived home about 7 p.m., just in time to feed the kid her nighttime snacks and read her the customary eight books before bed.

Back to the bus: I couldn't figure out where the supposed on-bus bike racks were, and it was so crowded, I wouldn't recommend traveling with a bike anyway.

After dinner, I went to Auto Zone, bought a gas can, filled it up across the street, came home, walked the gas to my car, figured out how the gas can worked and poured the 2 gallons into the Focus. It started, and I drove to the gas station to fill up the rest of the way. Back in the solo-driving business.

Will I ride the Orange Line again. Probably will. Check back with me.

Orange Line virgin

2005-12-14T16:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry to be late to the party. I missed at least two Orange Line accidents, including one on The Worst Stretch of Road in the Entire East Valley, which is today's pet name for Kester Avenue between Victory Boulevard and Oxnard St. I swear I saw a llama crossing the other day, along with various and sundry produce trucks, bicycles, pedestrians AND Orange Line buses.

Never mind all that. My car is dead. Whenever I go under 1/8 of a tank, it won't run on a cold morning, so it's parked a block away from home awaiting gas. Me, I've got plenty, but nothing that can run an automobile. Ilene gave me a ride this morning, but it's me and the MTA on the way home. Even though I'm hot-blooded (check it and see), Ilene wisely insisted I take a jacket, a garment I've pretty much dispensed with over the last few years (that along with anything long-sleeved, since the Daily News' windowless megabox in Woodland Hills maintains a constant 73 degrees year-round).

After the original hoopla died down, I knew it would take auto-related desperation to get me on the bus. Newly minted daily Orange Line rider and Daily News cops reporter Josh Kleinbaum is NOT riding the bus today, so I will be representing, as it were.

Notice how you can deflect the absurdity of a white guy using rap phraseology by following it with as it were? Trust me, you can. Peace out, as it were.

Meeting the neighbors

2005-12-06T16:51:00.000-08:00

Ilene has a great post on how we're meeting the neighbors. It's definitely been getting more Mayberry-like in our corner of Van Nuys, partially because our kid is so darned cute ... also because of the rash of daytime robberies. This led to a Neighborhood Watch meeting with somewhere between 70 and 100 attendees who listened to our senior lead officer talk about what the LAPD is doing to stop the robberies and who/what to look out for.

Whatever the reason, when it comes to strolling the neighborhood, there's a lot more stopping, chatting, dog-petting, ball playing, flower picking and baked-goods-exchanging going on lately.

The Honda Civic

2005-12-06T09:02:00.000-08:00

Aaron of Partial Transcripts reads the Toyota Camry rants and wonders what kind of person drives a Honda Civic. He asks, presumably, because he has one.

Now I've owned two Honda Civics over the years. The first being a 1979, which looked much like the one pictured above. That Civic and today's model bear little resemblance. Cars back then were much smaller. Over the past 20 years, the size of small cars has gotten bigger and bigger -- just look at what's happened to Hondas and Toyotas over that time.

This Civic was small. It was dwarfed by whatever car was parked next to it. Being so tiny, it was easy to lose in a parking lot between two normal-sized cars.

It took unleaded or regular gas, although the cheaper leaded variety tended to gum up the carbuerator. Said carbuerator also cut off the flow of fuel on sharp turns, stalling the vehicle as it swung around the corner into the California State University Northridge "A" lot. The tape deck duitifully included an alternator whine that went up and down with engine RPMs. And above 60 MPH, the whole thing would shake uncontrollably.

Then there was the time I removed the back seats and the passenger seat, built a wooden platform and slept in the damn thing for awhile. What a car.

It eventually met an untimely (or was it timely) end on the 110 Freeway downtown.

In between I got a sweet 1978 VW Bus, another untimely end there, too, but after that I got a 1983 Honda Civic Wagon with 80,000 miles on it. It was the last model of that Civic redesign phase, and was just a great car, running until about 160,000. It needed a new engine and some bodywork, and wouldn't come anywhere near passing the smog test. At that time, the state was buying back "gross polluters," so I got the paperwork done, took it to a wrecking yard in Sun Valley, and they gave me about $500, which I put toward my current car, a 2001 Ford Focus, which, on the surface seems like a better car than the Civic (except for gas mileage, which is a bit low at 21-24 MPG).

You see, round about the 1990s, the Civic (and Hondas in general) got pretty boring. And the domestics started beating them in price and just about matching them in quality. Reputation aside, a Honda is just a car. I went through my share of water pumps, clutches, transmissions, thermoswitches, alternators, even radio antennas, and more -- like any car.

The 2006 Civic looks a lot better (and is available as a hybrid), and Honda has that cool/quirky Element, so all is not lost. Maybe Honda can get back some of that '80s mojo. I haven't checked the prices. It'll be 10 more years and 150,000 or so total miles, auto gods willing, before I need or want a new car.

You need a newspaper

2005-12-06T06:50:00.000-08:00

I wrote this a few weeks ago, but it never got posted. The numbers have probably changed, but no newspaper fairy has sprinkled any pixie dust on anyone, that's for sure, given the latest news about layoffs at the Tribune papers, including the L.A. Times.

According to L.A. Observed (via password-protected L.A. Business Journal):

Weekday circulation at the Daily News fell 5.1% to 169,379.

L.A. Times down to 843,432 (or 869,819, depending on who you ask), a drop of about 3.6% to 3.7%.

As an employee of one of these publications, I think what these newspapers do is often vital and entertaining, comprehensive in a way that television news is not -- and simply the vital trunk from which blogs like these form the weaker, more annoying branches.

Ah, the convenience of taking the newspaper with you to the breakfast table, the local Starbucks, even the bathroom -- surely a place no laptop need venture.

And newspapers are changing. They want to be relevant, and nobody has their head in the sand. Nobody's talking about the magazine business closing up shop because people like to read things on the Web for free. All print media, newspapers and magazines alike, is experimenting with the right mix of paper, traditional Web pages, blogs, e-mail, even cell-phone-delivered news, to figure out the best way to grow their news business.

I will say one thing. You will be smarter if you read a newspaper daily. At least you will seem smarter, and that's what counts, isn't it?

Bush's second term in the crapper

2005-12-06T05:21:00.000-08:00

(Another old post that for some reason didn't make it until now)
Do poll numbers really matter when you never have to face re-election again? President Bush's overall approval rating is down to 37 percent, according to ~~the latest~~

last month's USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll. Approval on his handling of terrorism -- Bush's bread (guns) and butter issue -- 48 percent. Approval on Iraq, 35 percent. The economy, 37 percent.

Love him or hate him, it's not looking good. And reports are that Bush's inner circle continues to isolate him from dissenting voices. He also hasn't spoken out about the Rove/Libby Plamegate situation, nor has he cleaned house. This is the kind of disaffected, remote president that can be used as fodder for Democratic gains in the 2006 elections. The GOP needs a clear, emphatic and engaged leader to convince voters to stick with them through to 2008. The Democrats need that too (and no, Howard Dean does not qualify).

So whichever party nails down a clear, consistent philosophy and plan for where they want to take the country -- AND gets a viable presidential candidate out front to articulate that vision -- stands a good chance of dominating Washington beginning in 2008.

Pick that up -- and put it down PROPERLY

2005-12-06T04:50:00.000-08:00

(My favorite line from the film of "A Clockwork Orange" that is in the movie but not the book)

Who knows what evil lurks beneath your plumbing. Adee-do. And I do, too.

Licensed tradesmen are not in the budget, so we take care of the plumbing ourselves, and the toilet has been leaking out of the base -- between the toilet and the drain pipe.

I'm no virgin in this department. Upon moving in 10 years ago, Ilene and I, after first flush with the supplied water closet (that's what it's called "across the pond," as it were) immediately hoofed it to Home Depot and picked out a new American Standard (which is, as I learned Sunday upon examining its underbelly, was made in Costa Rica), got a wax ring (which up to that point I'd never heard of), picked up the old bowl, dropped the new one in, assembled the tank and lived happily ever after ... until recently that is.

Yes, Ilene told me that something suspicious was happening down there, and yes, I initially wrote it off to "condensation" (we're living in CALIFORNIA -- THERE IS NO CONDENSATION), but it did get me to keep an eye on it, and I saw the error of my ways.

This time I planned. I got all the parts I'd need -- new wax ring, new "johnny bolts" (attaches toilet to floor), new seals and bolts for tank, plus adhesive grout with which to replace tiles (two pieces of concrete "wonderboard," upon which the tile sits, meet there, and it has cracked all the way across).

Disclaimer: When we had the tile put in by A LOUSY INSTALLER WHO SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS (principally because I forgot his name), he had to remove the toilet and re-attach it to do the job, so I blame this all on him.

I figured I would knock out the bad tiles that were half-under the toilet while I had the bowl and tank in pieces on the floor, then wait for the tiles to dry an hour or so and then replace the bowl.

Now in plumbing, as in all home repairs, there's a lot that can go wrong (remember the sink trap I tried to remove but which disintegrated as soon as I turned the nut?).

First I turned the water off outside (the little shutoff to the toilet stopped working long ago -- those things REALLY don't work), then flushed all the water out and unbolted the tank. Then I removed the nuts from what are called the "Johnny bolts," which attach the toilet to the floor and the flange around the waste line.

I had towels ready and laid the bowl on its side next to the tank (I eventually took both outside -- it gets mighty crowded with toilet parts everywhere).

Yeah, it was a little leaky, all right. I spent a long time cleaning up, wearing one of many pairs of latex gloves and using ample bleach. The subfloor appeared to be in good shape, the tiles, though cracked, were still stuck down pretty good, so I decided NOT to chisel them out and replace, mostly because I'd have to cut the new tiles in order to fit them around the toilet flange. And in a one-bathroom house, you've don't have the luxury of leaving the toilet unassembled -- A household of three needs somewhere to, shall we say, conduct business, if you get my meaning. If you don't, you probably have more than one bathroom.

I had all new hardware, Johnny bolts and tank bolts and washers, plus a new wax ring -- which attaches between the bowl and the toilet flange to keep things water-tight. Now these wax rings last about 10 years, the package says, so I guess it was time. But it's probably sufficient to watch for leaks at the base of the toilet and around the Johnny bolts (that was our first clue), and for those as fanatical as myself, to get under the house (provided you have a raised foundation) at least once a year to check all your drains and pipes for leaks. It's great exercise crawling under a house, believe me.

So I got the wax ring on, firmly attached the bowl to the flange, squished the wax around as instructed, then put the nuts on the Johnny bolts, taking care to tighten them -- but not so tight that I broke the bowl (a disaster that can only be remedied with a trip to Home Depot for a new toilet). Then I bolted the tank to the bowl, reattached the water line, turned the water back on and FLUSHED, checking for leaks between tank and bowl, and bowl and floor.

All looked good. We had a toilet, if not an uncracked tile floor. I also reattached the toilet seat better -- it doesn't wobble so much now.

Sitting on the toilet, however, I did hear a "clop." I'd hoped to avoid caulking around the base, but it turns out the floor is not exactly level, and the toilet was rocking slightly, so I stuck a few folded-up magazine-subscription cards (1,001 uses for those) into the gap to level it out. And I will caulk the base, then remove the cards and caulk where they were, but I'm just so glad to have a non-leaking toilet ...

I will finish the job, I promise. But after rebuilding the shower valves, snaking the bathroom sink (a hair-clog magnet) and figuring out how to hook up our portable dishwasher (thanks, Mom!), all I have to do is fix the leaky kitchen faucet (a Dishmaster ... now that's another rant for another time), I'm taking a break from amateur plumbing. Nothing's leaking TOO much, after all.

Daily News begins blogging

2005-12-01T16:24:00.000-08:00

It's starting out slow, but blogging has begun over here in the Daily News Features department, where I ply my copy-editing trade. It's kind of hard to find at the moment, but hopefully that will change soon -- and I hate when one graf of a post appears and you have to click to get the rest. That's what I hate most about L.A. Voice, too, which I otherwise think is pretty great, by the way.

In today's entry, the wonderful Valerie Kuklenski challenges readers to guess who the anonymous torsos are in the new Oscar posters. We'd all love to know.

Anyway, the Daily News blog is called Red Carpet, presumably to compete with the L.A. Times' much-hyped The Envelope, which, among its "stable" of writers includes recently-ex Daily News Tinseltown Spywitness correspondent Elizabeth Snead. She bequeathed the Daily News column to her husband, Joel Stratte-McClure, but they supposedly troll (or is it trawl?) the beat together. Sounds like a sitcom pitch, no?

Elizabeth wrote a great story for us on her double hip replacement. She's 52, but sure doesn't look it (no pictures with the story online, unfortunately). She had a new, minimally invasive form of the surgery that they don't offer at Cedars-Sinai. Her recovery was swift, to be sure:

Even with an attentive husband/nurse, the first week home was challenging. But I did twice-daily neighborhood walks, tossed one crutch at day five and the other at day nine. At week three, I was swimming with a kickboard in the West Hollywood pool and seeing personal trainer/therapist Paul Drew. He'd long treated traditional hip replacement surgery patients and observed traditional HRS but devised a new drill for me, his first anterior client.
"The anterior surgery lets you rotate your hips at all angles with no fear of dislocation," Drew told me. "Using fitness balls and bands, you'll be able to restore your balance, strength and flexibility much faster."
I got back on track - weights, yoga and spin classes - fast. And at six weeks, I hiked the French Riviera, climbed the Maui volcano and snorkeled the Molokini Crater.

Mannnn. That's the jet-setting life all right. Double hip replacement, then traveling around the world. Such is the life of a high-powered gossip columnist.

So that's why over 100 people have looked here today

2005-12-01T16:17:00.000-08:00

Turns out this blog was listed in the box alongside today's blogging story in the L.A. Times. I even read the story online -- after discovering that Cathy Seipp ripped it and its writer a new one -- but didn't bother to even look at the side of the screen. Daily News film critic Glenn Whipp says to me, "What's the name of your blog? Didn't you get mentioned in the L.A. Times today?" I said, "I don't think so, I read the story and didn't see anything." But a check of the Bravenet referrers (Ilene clued me in on how to do that) reveals that tons of people are coming here from Calendar Live.

Anyway, nice to see you. Do stay for a spell.

Orange Line vs. pickup truck

2005-12-01T08:04:00.000-08:00

I knew something was up when the helicopters were hovering over Van Nuys and Robert Blake wasn't on trial for anything.

An Orange Line bus and a pickup truck collided at Kester Avenue at 6:30 a.m. today. Here's the full story from Channel 4:

LOS ANGELES -- A Metro Orange Line bus and a pickup truck collided Thursday on a busway in Van Nuys, and two ambulances were sent to the scene, authorities said. Following the collision, aerial video showed that the bus ended up with its front end up against a building.

The ambulances were sent to Oxnard Street and Kester Avenue at 6:30 a.m., said Ron Myers of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The circumstances of the crash were under investigation. The collision is the latest involving the reticulated buses, which recently went into service along a limited-access roadway.

Channel 4 even has this image gallery.

~~The latest I heard from flipping through TV channels is one injury~~.

Three injuries.

Can't remember if I've blogged on this street before, but Kester Avenue between Victory Boulevard and Oxnard Street (the bus crosses just north of Oxnard) is one of the busiest, most unpredictible and dangerous stretches of roadway in the entire Valley. You have to drive it every day, know it and respect its capricious nature to avoid an accident. The area is at once heavily populated, crowded with auto repair shops, and a major crossing for trucks, cars, bicycles, strollers, darting children, and now giant buses.

We've called it the Valley's own "Paper Boy" game, for those familiar with the video-game equivalent.

You have to really watch out, drive cautiously and know anything can happen.

Still, the TRAFFIC LIGHT at the busway, which is clearly marked with a sign that says "Busway," makes it plain that YOU NEED TO STOP WHEN THE BUS IS COMING AND THE LIGHT IS RED.

Columnist back from the brink

2005-11-30T15:54:00.000-08:00

Via Romenesko, from the Chicago Sun-Times. Neil Steinberg begins this way:

THOSE COLUMNS I WROTE ABOUT MY HOME LIFE OVER THE PAST 10 YEARS WERE NOT A LIE. I really live in a rambling old house with a pair of eager, mischievous boys and a pretty, wisecracking wife. We really remodeled our kitchen on a pharaonic scale. We really have three cats.

But the stories in the newspapers (and on TV, and radio) last month were also true. I probably shouldn't say that. But you have come to expect a certain candor in this space and now does not seem the time to change. I got drunk and slapped my wife during an argument. I immediately knew it was a mistake -- I used to say that if I ever hit Edie, I would draw back a bloody stump, and that wasn't far from what happened. She called the cops, they came, clapped me into handcuffs and hauled me off to jail. When I asked her later why she had to have me arrested, she said, "Nobody hits me, buddy." Pithy as always.

(snip)

The next day in court my wife made a statement that can be accurately condensed as "He drinks too much and needs help." When she had tried, again and again and again, to tell me that in previous years, I would always muster my charm, lie low a few days and wriggle out. Drinking was what I did, who I was, my comfort and my joy and I wasn't about to give it up for any lecturing wife. But after 14 sleepless hours behind bars, I passionately wanted to get out, and when the judge offered me the choice of going through the fine rehab program inside the Cook County Jail, or somewhere else outside, I eagerly opted for the latter.

Go to the link above for the rest.

The dream is alive

2005-11-30T14:45:00.000-08:00

David Letterman has Starbucks coffee pumped directly to his desk.

In order to make this work, they need to insulate the tubing so the beverage remains hot on its journey.

From the Letterman site, via Starbucks Gossip, which, curiously is run by Jim Romenesko of the vastly more famous media site:

Dave is thirsting for some Starbucks coffee and tonight, to satisfy his desire, we rigged up something really special. From the Starbucks across the street and down the block, we have a direct link via 550 feet of clear plastic tubing. Dave has a spigot at his desk. The source is in Starbucks. The power to get the coffee from Starbucks to Dave's desk is supplied by a nitrogen tank at Starbucks. We turn on the camera at Starbucks and meet and greet Brad Simanski at the counter. ...

When all is ready, Brad the Barista turns on the power and Dave's decaf coffee is sent on its way. The camera follows the coffee leaving the n/e c/o 54th and Broadway. Across 54th is goes, then across Broadway, through the Ed Sullivan Theater doors, through the lobby, down the side of the theater and to the spigot. Dave turns on the faucet to enjoy a nice delicious cup of Starbucks. Complains the customer; "It's too cold." This technology is still in its infancy stage and portions still need to be worked out. Over all, though, a success. The coffee from Starbucks was a success. Big money was lost on this bit. No, not on the creating of the whole thing . . . but on the money bet that it wouldn't work. It was rehearsed once with a modicum of success. For the show, we were very happy with the results.

Robert Hilburn takes a buyout

2005-11-30T10:10:00.000-08:00

L.A. Times music critic Robert Hilburn is taking a buyout but will still freelance for the paper, L.A. Observed reports.

Back in the days before the Web, in the late '70s, I looked to the Times and Hilburn for my pop-musical education and was introduced to the wonders of punk rock through its pages. Yes, in those days the Times was somewhat ahead of the curve. It was before the L.A. Weekly became a big force, and all the local clubs -- the Starwood, the Roxy, the Whisky -- would advertise in the Sunday Calendar.

The whole Dylan and Springsteen fixation was annoying yet amusing; it's been a newsroom game over the years to count the grafs until one of them is mentioned in just about any Hilburn story, no matter who or what the subject. Still, he remains a legend.

The most fascinating person of 2005

2005-11-30T09:41:00.000-08:00

Camilla.

HRH Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, nee Camilla Parker Bowles, was named the most fascinating person of 2005 in the world of Barbara Walters on last night's prime-time special.

My pick, Jon Stewart, didn't even make the list. Well, I guess he was more fascinating last year.

I almost forgot the show was on and didn't start taping until the halfway point. Most of the interviews were EXTREMELY short, and there was no Camilla chat. Is that the way it always is with the "most fascinating person" -- no interview? That way they're not tipped off as to their fascination, I suppose.

Yeah, Camilla is plenty fascinating all right, having caught Prince Charles' eye some decades ago, not being suitable, but carrying on an affair for years and finally marrying him some years after the death of Princess Diana. Sure, the prince of Wales is pretty much an idiot, but she's gotta be comfortable with that, having known him all these years.

Here's the screwiest take on the list, from the Manufacturers Blog:

The Ten Most Fascinating People of 2005: Barbara Walters Misses the Boat

The Blogger-in-Chief was hesitant to write on this topic, so it looks like his humble apprentice gets the leftover scraps.

We were only just slightly annoyed when we turned on ABC last night to watch the Barbara Walters' (anybody remember Barbara WaWa?) special, "The Ten Most Fascinating People of 2005."

We waited in great anticipation through the entire hour-long special to see if she decided to lump a manufacturer--any manufacturer--into her list.

Nope.

Here was her "list" of "fascinating people":

Dakota Fanning
Jamie Foxx
Condoleezza Rice
Teri Hatcher
Thomas Mesereau
Lance Armstrong
Beth Holloway-Twitty
Tom Cruise
Kanye West
Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall
Wup dee do. Kinda lame, if you ask us.
A couple questions:

Where are the manufacturers in that list? We only make everything that these "fascinating" people use everyday.

What was Barbara Walters' criteria?Perhaps these people were chosen because many are considered popular and "cool?" Manufacturers are cool too, ya know. We even make cool stuff. In fact, this blog has a whole section on Cool Stuff Being Made.

When was the last time Barbara Walters went on a plant tour? We think if she went on one, she'd surely find it fascinating.

Loyal readers of this blog (both of you) will recall that when People magazine listed their Hottest Beach Bodies we called for a boycott because not one manufacturer was included in that list.

Somebody should call for a boycott of Barbara Walters.

Any takers?

Oh, and Barbara, 2005 isn't over yet. There's still a month to go, by our count. Anytime you want to amend the list, we'll happily invite ourselves.

By the way, Cool Stuff Being Made is, indeed, cool. Today's movie is on makin' bacon.

L.A. Observed is back out of commission

2005-11-29T18:00:00.000-08:00

UPDATE

L.A. Observed is back. The explanation herein. The world can continue to spin on its axis.

"Bandwidth limit exceeded," is the message I get when I go to L.A. Observed. Guess you can be too popular. Hope Kevin Roderick gets it sorted out soon -- it's like we're in the dark here.

Mack Reed elaborates and sympathizes at L.A. Voice.

This underscores the order I go in. Fire up the browser, go to L.A. Observed, then L.A. Voice, the two best sites for this particular city. And even though L.A. Voice is billed as a community of bloggers, it's pretty much Mack who pulls the freight. L.A. Observed is all Kevin, of course. A great job done by both gentlemen, and quite a public service as well.

Here in Van Nuys on leaf blowers

2005-11-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

Andrew defends leaf blowers, on the grounds that they offer a tangible benefit along with their noise and pollution.

Our gardener (yes, we have a gardener, don't start with me), Larry, has a rather quiet leaf blower, but it's a blower nonetheless. I'm ambivalent -- those things sure do work -- but I also have a broom.

I also favor letting leaves stay where they fall and/or moving them into my compost bin. Composting is the best thing we can do to both fortify the garden and dispose of organic wastes (both yard and kitchen varieties) with maximum efficiency -- no truck needed to haul it away, all processing done by critters and micro-organisms.

I'm off track and not betting. So goodbye.

Holiday hell week

2005-11-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

Any week that includes a "day off" holiday is HELL WEEK at the Daily News. For the privilege of having a day away, we spend an entire week inundated with extra work and earlier deadlines, no time to breathe.

And there's not enough free food here. Just as well, since I could stand to drop a few pounds. (I've gained 5 to 10 pounds since I returned here in 2002 for my most-recent Daily News stint. It's a long story, but I have worked here three separate times.)

So that's why posting is low to nonexistant at present. I know you all want to hear about my toilet repairs, why I'm pissed off about winshield wiper refills and how the dry weather is affecting the inside of my nose, but it'll have to wait.

Until then, all the best to you and yours for the happiest (blah, blah, blah) of Thanksgivings. Vegetarians that we are, we will be feasting on this, made by Ilene from the new Real Food Daily Cookbook.

The great Real Food Daily restaurant offers full Thanksgiving meals, praised in this case by Laist.
Alas, it's too late to order, but if you drop by in Santa Monica or West Hollywood, you can probably get yourself a nice plate of faux turkey breast, potatoes and more.

L.A. Times cutting 85 jobs

2005-11-16T16:26:00.000-08:00

L.A. Observed has the memo. L.A. Voice says it's going to hit the copy desk the hardest because LAT is heavier there than other Tribune Co. papers.

Deadline to apply for a "separation package" (a.k.a. buyout) is Nov. 25 (a.k.a. the day after Thanksgiving).

Orange Line: Honeymoon phase?

2005-11-15T13:22:00.000-08:00

Daily News staffer Lisa Mascaro looks at the zeitgeist of the Orange Line, with Joel Kotkin offering the following:

The (Red Line) subway, Kotkin reminds, carries only a fraction of its projected ridership more than a decade after it opened.
"They go through an early honeymoon period where everyone takes it," Kotkin said about shiny-new commuter lines. "Try it in three months. When the Red Line started, there were all sorts of people in ties and jackets."
He thinks Orange Line supporters should see the busway for what it is - a cheap alternative to rail for transit-dependent people - and not fantasize that the Valley is a new center of world-class urbanity.
"We're not talking about sashaying on the Champs-Elysses," he said. "If people want to get all enthused about it, that's great. ... Cafes and dancing seals at every stop? That's not what you're going to get."

Forget the "dancing seals," but a lot could happen along the busway, both commercial and residential. And yes, your friends from Starbucks and Coffee Bean could be a part of it.

Kotkin doubts middle-class riders will trade their cars for buses in great numbers in the long run.
But he still thinks the Orange Line should be extended to crisscross the Valley and go out to Thousand Oaks - since busways are so much cheaper than rail lines. The Orange Line's original plans included similar north-south busways near Canoga Avenue and Van Nuys Boulevard.

Van Nuys Boulevard, especially, is primed for a busway. The street is WIDE because the famed Red Cars used to travel along tracks in the middle of the street. All MTA has to do is reclaim the median.

Now I know Zev Yaroslavsky is set on Canoga Avenue, but I think the second north-south busway should be on Reseda Boulevard.

On the Ventura Boulevard end, you would hit Tarzana and the Tarzana portion of Encino-Tarzana Regional Medical Center, then head by the park at Victory Boulevard (and the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, which is nowhere near Sherman Oaks, by the way), by a whole bunch of businesses, including the hub at Sherman Way and eventually up to California State University Northridge -- which is notoriously hard to reach by bus in a timely manner. After that, head up to the 118 Freeway.

Next candidate for an east-west line (besides Ventura Boulevard, which MUST be dealt with at some point) would be Nordhoff Street, which takes in Panorama City to the East, CSUN and the Northridge Mall farther West. Ideally it would head south where Nordhoff hits Corbin Avenue and eventually link to the Orange Line around Victory.