Latin Grammys at Broadway's Million Dollar Theater Tonight???? UPDATE!

When I saw Broadway was closed between 4th and 3rd this afternoon, I was told that the Latin Grammy's were being held tonight. Does anyone know if that is true? I can't find anything on-line saying that.

UPDATE! Above link to Downtown News explains the event....

Kate Coe For Oscar Producer!

Over at FISHBOLWLA Kate Coe links to a number of chatting class suggestions about how to improve the Oscars, all of which are worth reading. But I like her suggestions best:

In today's LA Times, Patrick Goldstein, that brick-throwing radical, suggests that the Oscar producers are too old, too stuck in variety shows and that recruiting some fresh ideas from ESPN or FOX Sports might save the broadcast "event".

We think forget sports, and look at reality shows.

Why not have the Best Song nominees warbled by the Best Actor nominees, ala American Idol?

Screenwriters can try their luck at acting out their scripts.

Editors should recut each other's movies into very short YouTube films.

And new hosts? Why not Sarah Silverman and Margaret Cho with Gary Busey working the red carpet? Other than the whole good taste issue.

Good Magazine Taken In By Poverty Pimp!

The above CURBEDLA story will take you to the GOOD MAGAZINE link about 'journalist' Sam Slovick's 'expose' of Skid Row.

Well, below you will find a copy of my post exposing not just Sam Slovick's previous lies about Skid Row - but also how when he had a chance to publicly support (in the LA Weekly article) a program to get kids off of Skid Row - he instead lied about the program's existence - among many other things - to make himself look better.

He is the very worst kind of poverty pimp; someone who exploits the homeless to promote himself and his career, no matter how much damage he does to their lives.

http://lacowboy.blogspot.com/search?q=slovick

Saturday, March 11, 2006

LA Weekly's Lies About Kids On Skid Row!

So I pick up a copy of this week's LA WEEKLY and on the cover is a familiar looking kid I have seen around. Then when I saw his name, I recognized him as the kid who had made a film about Skid Row. I then started to read the article by Sam Slovick and while I had some misgivings about the first line - more on that later - when I saw that the article opened talking about the kids at the Union Rescue Mission - I thought - great!

The local media was finally going to talk about what is going right on Skid Row.

This is because the Union Rescue Mission last year closed escrow on an incredible ranch in the foothills of the Angeles National Forest - over 70 acres of heaven. And the 10 buildings on the ranch are going to be converted into transitional housing for up to 250 single mothers and children where they can live off of Skid Row before they are transitioned back into permanent housing.

http://www.urm.org/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID312006CHID630778CIID2103146,00.html

But since a handful of NIMBY's who live miles - yes, miles - from this secluded canyon ranch are giving the project some grief - I felt it was great that the LA Weekly was going to tell LA about this wonderful project and how it should be supported.

So I started reading - and reading - and reading - and reading... and there was - nothing. Absolutely - nothing about this project.

Instead, the entire article was devoted to bemoaning the fact that there was zero - yes - zero - political will to do anything to get women and children off of Skid Row. And not a single word about the URM program that is about to get so many of the kids and their mothers off of Skid Row - even though the Union Rescue Mission was the setting for both the opening - and the closing of the article.

Then, besides completely ignoring the single most important aspect of kids on Skid Row - the story was also filled with so many factual inaccuracies that it calls into question everything in the story.

To list just a few errors (and I am being more than charitable in calling these 'errors'):

Some live - off the radar - in makeshift apartments - small 10-by-10-foot rooms with no kitchens or bathrooms in buildings that don't require IDs, credit checks or security deposits. These are usually shared by a couple of single moms with four or five kids each.

The article states that single moms not staying in shelters usually share 10-by-10 rooms with other single moms with an average of 9 to 10 people in each of these ten-by-ten rooms with no kitchen or bath.

Well, other than the sheer physical impossibly of this being usual - the amount of money single moms with four or five kids have can get would allow each of them to get a lot more than a 10-by-10 room. And when I asked around today if this type of arrangement was at all 'usual' - I was met with laughter.

You could throw a rock from the Ford Hotel where Franklin stays and hit a sleeping senator in silk pajamas staying at a five-star hotel if the window was open and your aim was true... well, you might need a slingshot, but you get the point.

Well, yes, I DO get the point. The nearest hotel that any senator might stay in - much less a five star hotel - is the Biltmore. And that is well over one mile - about sixteen blocks - from the Ford Hotel. Now if he had just said a stone's throw and meant that as a metaphor, that would be wrong - but at least barely understandable as hyperbole. But to them modify that you might need a sling shot to propel a rock for - 16 blocks, is clearly meant to deceive the reader about the geography of Skid Row.

But what about my friend Joey camped out in the Midnight Mission's courtyard in the middle of the festering wound known as City Central?

City Central? There is no such neighborhood in Los Angeles. The business center of the downtown is called Central City and the larger Skid Row area is called Central City East.

In discussing the people he sees in the courtyard of the Midnight Mission:

All appear to be in need of a bath and a good 10 years of intensive psychiatric treatment, and even then you probably wouldn't want to leave them unsupervised around the kids.

Now I know a number of these people - and while they have battled alcohol and drugs, most of them do not need - nor do they appear to need - the 10 years of intensive psychiatric treatment the writer claims they need. And to suggest that even then, it would be unsafe to allow your kids around any of them after ten years of treatment is absurd. But this is typical of the way the writer unfairly demonizes the homeless in this article.

Another example of that is when he tags the kids of Skid Row as - 'Skids' - a term I have never heard before and a term none of the people I talked to today who work with these kids has ever heard before. However, one woman who does work with these kids on a daily basis, said it was shameful that the writer would tarnish these kids with a slur like that. Later, when he talked about the mother of one of the kids he profiles - he referred to her as - 'a walking disaster'.

Now you imagine how traumatized that kid will be when he reads that description of his mother in the LA Weekly? If that does not qualify as child abuse - I don't know what does.

His description of the project - Safe Sleep Room - at the Midnight Mission:

It's relatively clean, but it's stinky and creepy and dank.

I have been in that room many times, and it is not relatively clean - it is immaculately clean and it is less than a year old. Granted many of the homeless have not showered, but the room itself is clean and odorless - and this spacious, beautifully designed room is in no way - creepy - unless you feel that just being around the homeless is creepy (which he evidently does) - and the room is in no way the dank, which means, overly damp or humid.

But, lastly, his biggest lie is to hide from the reader the truth of what is happening on Skid Row; a new program large enough to hold every single mother and her children currently sleeping in shelters on Skid Row. And yet - here are his quotes about the lack political will to do anything about getting kids off of Skid Row:

... compassion in lieu of any legitimate political will to get children off Skid Row.

It's going to take lots of that famous political will. I've been living down here for a while now. I'm not sure the prognosis is good.

Eleanor Roosevelt once famously made a distinction between those who merely curse the darkness and those willing to light a candle.

Well, cursing the darkness is no longer enough for the LA Weekly.

When the Weekly discovered someone has at last lit a candle for the children of Skid Row - they feel compelled to blow it out.


# posted by Brady Westwater @ 12:34 AM 7 comments links to this post

Real World Economics

One of the reasons why I rarely get into national 'political' issues is the lack of anything resembling real debate, real world solutions - or even the possibility of anyone ever asking a real world question that should be asked.

The below article's handful of facts demonstrate just screwed up both the press's and the politician's view of this country is when compared to the reality.

February 10, 2008
Op-Ed Contributors
You Are What You Spend
By W. MICHAEL COX and RICHARD ALM
Dallas

WITH markets swinging widely, the Federal Reserve slashing interest rates and the word “recession” on everybody’s lips, renewed attention is being given to the gap between the haves and have-nots in America. Most of this debate, however, is focused on the wrong measurement of financial well-being.

It’s true that the share of national income going to the richest 20 percent of households rose from 43.6 percent in 1975 to 49.6 percent in 2006, the most recent year for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics has complete data. Meanwhile, families in the lowest fifth saw their piece of the pie fall from 4.3 percent to 3.3 percent.

Income statistics, however, don’t tell the whole story of Americans’ living standards. Looking at a far more direct measure of American families’ economic status — household consumption — indicates that the gap between rich and poor is far less than most assume, and that the abstract, income-based way in which we measure the so-called poverty rate no longer applies to our society.

The top fifth of American households earned an average of $149,963 a year in 2006. As shown in the first accompanying chart, they spent $69,863 on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care and other categories of consumption. The rest of their income went largely to taxes and savings.

The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that — an average of $18,153 a year. How is that possible? A look at the far right-hand column of the consumption chart, labeled “financial flows,” shows why: those lower-income families have access to various sources of spending money that doesn’t fall under taxable income. These sources include portions of sales of property like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts. While some of these families are mired in poverty, many (the exact proportion is unclear) are headed by retirees and those temporarily between jobs, and thus their low income total doesn’t accurately reflect their long-term financial status.

So, bearing this in mind, if we compare the incomes of the top and bottom fifths, we see a ratio of 15 to 1. If we turn to consumption, the gap declines to around 4 to 1. A similar narrowing takes place throughout all levels of income distribution. The middle 20 percent of families had incomes more than four times the bottom fifth. Yet their edge in consumption fell to about 2 to 1.

Let’s take the adjustments one step further. Richer households are larger — an average of 3.1 people in the top fifth, compared with 2.5 people in the middle fifth and 1.7 in the bottom fifth. If we look at consumption per person, the difference between the richest and poorest households falls to just 2.1 to 1. The average person in the middle fifth consumes just 29 percent more than someone living in a bottom-fifth household.

To understand why consumption is a better guideline of economic prosperity than income, it helps to consider how our lives have changed. Nearly all American families now have refrigerators, stoves, color TVs, telephones and radios. Air-conditioners, cars, VCRs or DVD players, microwave ovens, washing machines, clothes dryers and cellphones have reached more than 80 percent of households.

As the second chart, on the spread of consumption, shows, this wasn’t always so. The conveniences we take for granted today usually began as niche products only a few wealthy families could afford. In time, ownership spread through the levels of income distribution as rising wages and falling prices made them affordable in the currency that matters most — the amount of time one had to put in at work to gain the necessary purchasing power.

At the average wage, a VCR fell from 365 hours in 1972 to a mere two hours today. A cellphone dropped from 456 hours in 1984 to four hours. A personal computer, jazzed up with thousands of times the computing power of the 1984 I.B.M., declined from 435 hours to 25 hours. Even cars are taking a smaller toll on our bank accounts: in the past decade, the work-time price of a mid-size Ford sedan declined by 6 percent.

There are several reasons that the costs of goods have dropped so drastically, but perhaps the biggest is increased international trade. Imports lower prices directly. Cheaper inputs cut domestic companies’ costs. International competition forces producers everywhere to become more efficient and hold down prices. Nations do what they do best and trade for the rest.

Thus there is a certain perversity to suggestions that the proper reaction to a potential recession is to enact protectionist measures. While foreign competition may have eroded some American workers’ incomes, looking at consumption broadens our perspective. Simply put, the poor are less poor. Globalization extends and deepens a capitalist system that has for generations been lifting American living standards — for high-income households, of course, but for low-income ones as well.

W. Michael Cox is the senior vice president and chief economist and Richard Alm is the senior economics writer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

LA Observed's Los Angeles Script Project Misplaces Subway Terminal Building! UPDATE!

LA Observed launches today a reader written collective screenplay project. You can get all the details at the above link. It sounds like fun. But for a project named after this city, it's a little embarrassing when the first scene is set in a building that is really miles from the actual scene.

(UPDATE! - Got a very nice note from the author - Eric Estrin - of the site - and the correction has been made and the plot of the story... is thickening....

So go over and stir the plot pot yourself.

EXT. SUBWAY TERMINAL BUILDING - DUSK

RUSSELL NAPOLITANO, 48, rumpled sportcoat, scuffed satchel,
but still and dignified with a ramrod posture, strides
toward a chain-link fence on Lucas Ave. He slips unnoticed
through a bent section of fence and moves down a slope
alongside the graffiti-covered Toluca Substation toward an
abandoned tunnel embedded in a hillside.

Now while the description of Lucas Avenue and the tunnel was once upon a time correct - it has not been for sometime as the now sanitized tunnel is presently in the rear yard of a major housing project. But the real boner was moving the Subway Terminal Building from Fourth and Hill Street in the heart of Downtown to Echo Park adjacent Bevelry Boulevard. On the other hand, though, maybe this is supposed to be a science fiction script and it was moved there by a bored space creature.

Eli Broad's New Museum - Or - Even When Eli's Wrong - Eli's Still Right!

Below is a slightly expanded version of my recent CITYWATCH article about Eli Broad. LACMA and the Los Angeles Times:


Eli Broad has just donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a new $56 million art museum designed by architect Renzo Piano. He added to that gift an additional $10million to buy art for it. For this craven act he was, of course, properly reprimanded by the Los Angeles Times.

My first run-in with Eli and his 'misguided' concept of the public good was at the start of the Grand Avenue project process. He had the foolish idea that selecting a developer with deep pockets and the ability to survive downturns was more important than hiring the developer attached to the best architect. For that reason, I attended numerous meetings to denounce the third rate architect his favored developer, the Related Companies, had proposed.

Unfortunately, Related won. But two architect changes later, Frank Gehry was hired for what may be his only major commercial project in LA and, at a time other projects are being canceled, Grand Avenue will rise, notwithstanding current misinformation. So Grand Avenue ended up with a deep pocketed builder, a first rate local architect – and a project that will be built.

Eli Broad's most current crimes against nature, according to the Los Angeles Times, start with his showing part of his art collection at LACMA some years ago without his committing to donate the collection to LACMA. This was considered a mortal sin by the LA Times since some collectors have gotten the imprimatur of showing their collection at a museum – and then sold off their collections at auction. Except, Eli has been buying and not selling at auctions and he has promised to keep his collection intact in a foundation. He never profited from that show.

Next, he had the nerve to hire his own architect and pay for all the costs of the new museum building himself when no one else would.

As background, some years ago, it was realized that LACMA needed considerably more exhibition space and that the existing campus had to be redesigned. A plan by Rem Koolhaas was commissioned and approved and Eli promised the first $50 million of the needed $300 million that had to be raised.

The problem was - the fund raising started – and ended - with him.

Then a public bond issue to help fund the project failed at the polls.

So Eli committed to a $50 million-plus building as part of the first phase of the redesign – and to also pay for a master plan so that future projects could be funded by others in the future.

With that jump start, the needed $156 million for phase one was soon achieved – and over $200 million has now been raised. The extra money will go into programming, endowment growth, and art acquisitions.

He also agreed to have the galleries in 'his' building (BCAM - the Broad Contemporary At Museum) to be named after other donors, he did not restrict what art could be shown and he did not ask for curatorial influence other than some input in the initial show.

Clearly an out of control ego here.

Christopher Knight of the Times then finds the show offensive because all the art in it looks… expensive. He is also appalled that much of finest - and the most expensive (which is not always the same thing, of course) - work of the last century was created by white males (with not enough local women or artists of color in the collection) and that the Broad collections reflect the tastes of… the Broads.

All of which is… total bull shit.

There are dozens of local collectors buying local women and artists of color – and our museums will soon be filled with their works. But no one in LA is buying – in quantity - museum quality work of the most expensive artists of the second half of the last century. The Broad's collections also have many younger LA artists and many younger woemen aritsts and aritsts of color. But LACMA director Michael Govan chose instead to show the unique strengths of the Broad's collections; the masterworks that few oteher people are buying and donating to museusm.

The Broads are filling a gap no one else is filling for LACMA while others are buying the artists Knight feels the Broads should also be buying.

As for the collection having the Broad's taste – again, there is no requirement that the new building has to show any of their work. The museum is free to select – or reject – anything from any of the Broad Collections.

That brings us to the final attack. Eli has decided – for now - to keep his 2,000 works of art – 600 of which were purchased in the last two years – and he is still buying – in a foundation museums can borrow from – with LACMA always having first choice in selecting what to borrow.

Now, I have to admit when I first heard this, I was a little put off – until I saw the small fraction of his collections within the new building. I then realized how many of even these works of art would not be on view once the building was recurated a year from now to tell the story of 20th Century art.

I also thought of all the paintings I have seen over the years at his foundation that were not on display – and which would never be on display if they all belonged to LACMA.

So, reluctantly, I realized he was right.

Art should be seen. And at the rate at which he is buying, no museum will ever be able to show but a fraction of his art. So under his plan more people will be able to see…. more art. Now I don't know about you – but that sure sounds like a hanging crime to me.

Ironically, by not donating his collection, but allowing LACMA to borrow whatever they want from it, Eli is removing his personal taste from the equation of what is shown in the building – and he allows LACMA director Michael Govan – and all future directors – the maximum artistic freedom – and flexibility.

So this solves all of the reasons why Christopher Knight has for attacking Broad’s collections. Assuming, of course, those reasons have anything at all to do with the real reasons for the always highly personal attacks by the LA Times on Broad. (Brady Westwater is a writer, community activist and a regular contributor to CityWatch. ) _

Eli Broad's New Museum - Or - Even When Eli's Wrong - Eli's Still Right!

Below is a slightly expanded version of my recent CITYWATCH article about Eli Broad. LACMA and the Los Angeles Times:


Eli Broad has just donated to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art a new $56 million art museum designed by architect Renzo Piano. He added to that gift an additional $10million to buy art for it. For this craven act he was, of course, properly reprimanded by the Los Angeles Times.

My first run-in with Eli and his 'misguided' concept of the public good was at the start of the Grand Avenue project process. He had the foolish idea that selecting a developer with deep pockets and the ability to survive downturns was more important than hiring the developer attached to the best architect. For that reason, I attended numerous meetings to denounce the third rate architect his favored developer, the Related Companies, had proposed.

Unfortunately, Related won. But two architect changes later, Frank Gehry was hired for what may be his only major commercial project in LA and, at a time other projects are being canceled, Grand Avenue will rise, notwithstanding current misinformation. So Grand Avenue ended up with a deep pocketed builder, a first rate local architect – and a project that will be built.

Eli Broad's most current crimes against nature, according to the Los Angeles Times, start with his showing part of his art collection at LACMA some years ago without his committing to donate the collection to LACMA. This was considered a mortal sin by the LA Times since some collectors have gotten the imprimatur of showing their collection at a museum – and then sold off their collections at auction. Except, Eli has been buying and not selling at auctions and he has promised to keep his collection intact in a foundation. He never profited from that show.

Next, he had the nerve to hire his own architect and pay for all the costs of the new museum building himself when no one else would.

As background, some years ago, it was realized that LACMA needed considerably more exhibition space and that the existing campus had to be redesigned. A plan by Rem Koolhaas was commissioned and approved and Eli promised the first $50 million of the needed $300 million that had to be raised.

The problem was - the fund raising started – and ended - with him.

Then a public bond issue to help fund the project failed at the polls.

So Eli committed to a $50 million-plus building as part of the first phase of the redesign – and to also pay for a master plan so that future projects could be funded by others in the future.

With that jump start, the needed $156 million for phase one was soon achieved – and over $200 million has now been raised. The extra money will go into programming, endowment growth, and art acquisitions.

He also agreed to have the galleries in 'his' building (BCAM - the Broad Contemporary At Museum) to be named after other donors, he did not restrict what art could be shown and he did not ask for curatorial influence other than some input in the initial show.

Clearly an out of control ego here.

Christopher Knight of the Times then finds the show offensive because all the art in it looks… expensive. He is also appalled that much of finest - and the most expensive (which is not always the same thing, of course) - work of the last century was created by white males (with not enough local women or artists of color in the collection) and that the Broad collections reflect the tastes of… the Broads.

All of which is… total bull shit.

There are dozens of local collectors buying local women and artists of color – and our museums will soon be filled with their works. But no one in LA is buying – in quantity - museum quality work of the most expensive artists of the second half of the last century. The Broad's collections also have many younger LA artists and many younger woemen aritsts and aritsts of color. But LACMA director Michael Govan chose instead to show the unique strengths of the Broad's collections; the masterworks that few oteher people are buying and donating to museusm.

The Broads are filling a gap no one else is filling for LACMA while others are buying the artists Knight feels the Broads should also be buying.

As for the collection having the Broad's taste – again, there is no requirement that the new building has to show any of their work. The museum is free to select – or reject – anything from any of the Broad Collections.

That brings us to the final attack. Eli has decided – for now - to keep his 2,000 works of art – 600 of which were purchased in the last two years – and he is still buying – in a foundation museums can borrow from – with LACMA always having first choice in selecting what to borrow.

Now, I have to admit when I first heard this, I was a little put off – until I saw the small fraction of his collections within the new building. I then realized how many of even these works of art would not be on view once the building was recurated a year from now to tell the story of 20th Century art.

I also thought of all the paintings I have seen over the years at his foundation that were not on display – and which would never be on display if they all belonged to LACMA.

So, reluctantly, I realized he was right.

Art should be seen. And at the rate at which he is buying, no museum will ever be able to show but a fraction of his art. So under his plan more people will be able to see…. more art. Now I don't know about you – but that sure sounds like a hanging crime to me.

Ironically, by not donating his collection, but allowing LACMA to borrow whatever they want from it, Eli is removing his personal taste from the equation of what is shown in the building – and he allows LACMA director Michael Govan – and all future directors – the maximum artistic freedom – and flexibility.

So this solves all of the reasons why Christopher Knight has for attacking Broad’s collections. Assuming, of course, those reasons have anything at all to do with the real reasons for the always highly personal attacks by the LA Times on Broad. (Brady Westwater is a writer, community activist and a regular contributor to CityWatch. ) _

Downtown FREE Comedy Walk - TONIGHT!

First, come Downtown for the ART WALK - www.downtownartwalk.com and then see the new Comedy Walk.

Six Simultaneous 90-minute Shows, 30 Top Comedy Acts!

Valentine’s Day Feb. 14, 8:30pm-10pm, downtown Los Angeles

FREE TICKETS: www.comedywalk.com

Come early and check out the Downtown Art Walk: www.downtownartwalk.com from noon to 9 PM and then join us on the Comedy Walk from 8:30 - 10 PM all within one block and a half of Fifth and Spring Streets.

HOSTS: Garrett Morris, Ernie G, Melody Murray, Stefany Northcutt,
Claudine Guerrero, and Kimberly Douglas.

COMEDIANS: Nidhal Arbaza, Chris Adams, Amanda Alva, Joe Bartnick,
Competitive Awesome, Ernie G, Rene Garcia, Michael Goldstrom, Mark
Gonzalez, Hair of the Mangy Dog, Erik Lundy, Martha Marion, Annie
McKnight, Rebecca Meisl, Dave Mishevitz, Garrett Morris, Alex Nussbaum,
Sal Rodriguez, Melanie Reno, Iliza Shlesinger, Todd "JT" Thomas, Scott
Vinci, Joe Wilson and more.

VENUES: Downtown Comedy Club, the Palace Theatre, the New LATC, the
Wyatt Earp Room at the Alexandria, and the Onion Room and the Backstage
at Spring Arts Tower.

COMEDY WALK performers have appeared on Carpoolers, Pushing Daisies,
Saturday Night Live, and Seinfeld. They've appeared in televised comedy
performances on Comedy Central Comic Groove, Comedy Central Live at
Gotham, Comedy Central Premium Blend, Comic's Unleashed, BET Comic View,
and HBO Def Jam. They've been on radio with National Lampoon Radio, The
Playboy Morning Show, Sirius, and XM Radio. They've appeared live at the
Comedy Central Stage, the Comedy Store, the HA HA Club, The Ice House,
The Improv, and the Laugh Factory.

* Parking in the garage at Main and 6th for $5

Venue #1
Downtown Comedy Club
501 S Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
200-seat club
Hosts: Garrett Morris & Kevin Garnier
1. 8:25 Host Warm-Up
2. 8:30 Rene Garcia
3. 8:40 TBA
4. 8:50 Todd Thomas
5. 9:00 Rebecca Meisl
6. 9:10 Joe Bartnick
7. 9:20 Melanie Reno
8. 9:30 Sal Rodriguez
9. 9:40 Annie McKnight
10. 9:50 Garrett Morris

Venue #2
Palace Theatre
ALL LATINO COMEDIANS TONIGHT!
630 S. Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,100-seat theater
Host: Ernie G
1. 8:25 Host Warm-Up
2. 8:30 Amanda Alva
3. 8:40 Sal Rodriquez
4. 8:50 TBA
5. 9:00 TBA
6. 9:10 Mark Gonzalez
7. 9:20 Rene Garcia
8. 9:30 TBA
9. 9:40 TBA
10. 9:50 Ernie G

Venue #3
The New LATC
Los Angeles Theater Center
514 S. Spring St., Theater #4
Los Angeles, CA 90013
80-seat cabaret
Host: Kimberly Douglas
1. 8:25 Host Warm-Up
2. 8:30 Mark Gonzalez
3. 8:40 Melanie Reno
4. 8:50 TBA
5. 9:00 Iliza Shlesinger
6. 9:10 Erik Lundy
7. 9:20 Competitive Awesome
8. 9:30 Joe Wilson
9. 9:40 Alex Nussbaum
10. 9:50 Joe Bartnick

Venue #4
Wyatt Earp Room
Alexandria Building
212 W. 5th Steet
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,000 sq. ft. SRO
Host: Melody Murray
1. 8:25 Host Warm-Up
2. 8:30 Alex Nussbaum
3. 8:40 TBA
4. 8:50 Joe Wilson
5. 9:00 Nidhal Abaza
6. 9:10 Hair of the Mangy Dog
7. 9:20 Michael Goldstrom
8. 9:30 Chris Adams
9. 9:40 Martha Marion
10. 9:50 Dave Mishevitz

Venue #5
The Onion Room
Spring Arts Tower
207 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,400 sq. ft. SRO
Host: Stefany Northcutt
1. 8:25 Host Warm-Up
2. 8:30 Erik Lundy
3. 8:40 Competitive Awesome
4. 8:50 Michael Goldstrom
5. 9:00 Annie McKnight
6. 9:10 Dave Mishevitz
7. 9:20 Scott Vinci
8. 9:30 Todd Thomas
9. 9:40 TBA
10. 9:50 Iliza Shlesinger

Venue #6
The Backstage
Spring Arts Tower
211 W. 5th Street
Los Angeles, CA 90013
1,600 sq. ft. SRO
Host: Claudine Guerrero
1. 8:25 Host Warm-Up
2. 8:30 Hair of the Mangy Dog
3. 8:40 Scott Vinci
4. 8:50 Chris Adams
5. 9:00 Martha Mason
6. 9:10 Amanda Alva
7. 9:20 TBA
8. 9:30 Nidhal Abaza
9. 9:40 Rebecca Meisl
10. 9:50 TBA

For details see www.comedywalk.com.

Classy Credit By Nikki Finke To Joel Stein!

Last night when Joel Stein, as a WGAW member, heard in Shrine Auditorioum that the writers would - after all - be allowed to vote on the new proposed contract before returning to work - he messaged that to the Los Angeles Times and gave them the scoop.

Nikke Finke then got the email from the Times and, rather than texting someone in the Shrine - and waiting for a response - she went with the breaking news - and credited it to Stein.

A classy gesture from the lady who has owned this story from the beginning.

Getty Gets One Of 20th Century Photography's Greatest Series Of Works!

I had no idea Irving Penn's 252 full length photos of people at work he began in 1950 and continuing for decades was still in his possession. But it no longer is; instead it belongs to the people of Los Angeles, thanks to the Getty.

Now we only need a building big enough to display the photographic riches of the Getty Museum.

Stay tuned.

February 7, 2008
Getty Museum Acquires Penn Photographs
By RANDY KENNEDY
The subjects of the velvety black-and-white pictures are not exactly Irving Penn’s elegantly dressed, or undressed, regulars: a plump charwoman with her bucket and brush; a bespectacled seamstress draped with her measuring tape; a deep-sea diver disappearing into his monstrous helmet and suit.

But Mr. Penn considered these blue-collar portraits, called “The Small Trades,” some of the most important of his long and influential career. He began taking them in the summer of 1950 for Vogue, the magazine with which he has become synonymous, and now they have finally found a home together at a museum. On Wednesday the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles announced that it had acquired the entire series, 252 full-length portraits of workers — waiters, bakers, butchers, rag-and-bone men — that it called Mr. Penn’s most extensive body of work.

“This is a set of images that the Getty has been thinking about and wanting to get for several years,” said Virginia Heckert, an associate photography curator at the Getty, who helped negotiate a deal with Mr. Penn, who sold some of the pictures and donated others. “In the last year it finally managed to come together. It’s a very exciting acquisition for us.”

Mr. Penn, now 90, began the portrait project in Paris for a Vogue series on that city’s workers. He continued it for another year after the assignment, seeking out workers in London and then in New York, where he lived, asking them to come to his studio in their work clothes and carrying the tools of their trade.

Unlike the photographs of August Sander, who took more naturalistic, anthropological portraits of German tradespeople and professionals usually in the settings where they worked, Mr. Penn’s portraits, perhaps owing to his training as a painter and a fashion photographer, are more formal and personal. He posed each subject against a neutral background and tried to use natural northern light.

“There is something quite theatrical about the presentation of Penn’s subject to the camera,” Ms. Heckert said. “They’re basically on a stage.”

But because of the isolated setting, the pictures also seem to reveal something about the people as individuals, not just as functionaries. “It’s really about the subject presenting himself in a more intimate setting to his photographer,” she added. “It’s a more psychological relationship between the artist and the subject.” She added that, at a time when abstraction was becoming the dominant mode in the art world, Mr. Penn’s decision to dedicate himself to art portraiture was important and made the series even more significant. “He didn’t want to go away from the subject but to find a way to describe it in utter detail,” Ms. Heckert said.

Weston Naef, the Getty’s senior photography curator, said that the museum had been working to acquire the series for more than five years, but the sticking point had been copyright ownership of the images. In many cases, he said, Mr. Penn and Condé Nast, which owns Vogue, share the copyrights to Mr. Penn’s images. And the Getty, which had long insisted that it be given copyright power over the trade series, along with the master set of the photographs, decided in the end to abandon the copyright demand.

“This was a real advance for this institution to be able to do that on such a large scale,” said Mr. Naef, who added that when it comes to copyrights for Mr. Penn’s work, “it is always a complicated story.” (He and Ms. Heckert declined to say how much the museum paid for the silver-gelatin and platinum prints, whose sale was negotiated by the Pace/MacGill Gallery.)

In recent years Mr. Penn has been engaging in negotiations that have placed important pieces of his work at prominent institutions like the Art Institute of Chicago and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York. Mr. Naef said that the Getty made a compelling case that the workers’ portraits would be well served at the museum, which has extensive holdings of Sander’s work, for example, and one of the best photography collections in the world. The Getty plans an exhibition of the images in September 2009.

“We think he’s one of the greatest living artists in any medium,” Mr. Naef said. “And we like to focus on whole bodies of work. We’re seeing these pictures as if they’re Monet’s waterlilies, a single coherent body of work.”

And in the span of Mr. Penn’s work, he said: “They’re absolutely seminal. They’re like Jasper Johns flags or Rauschenberg’s ‘combines.’ ”

Is Matt Drudge Dead?

While I still check Matt Drudge throughout the day and clink on his links, when it comes to breaking news - he's increasingly not the place to go. Tonight's election returns coverage painfully demonstrate the gap between the old Drudge and the new Drudge.

Until recently - he would have sneaked leaks about exit polls during the day, had constant coverage of incidents at polling paces around the country (instead of just a few) and then - once the vote counting started - he would have been the first to list the first calls from networks and wire services.

But tonight...

Tonight there was little updating and the list of called states was at times... hours... old. There was also zero unique informtion on the results.

Maybe it's too many hours spent in the Miami sun and too many years in exile from LA in a resort town. Or maybe it's just when you're on top for too long - the hunger is gone.

But, whatever the reason, the old Matt Drudge is dead and he will be missed.

If You Only Read One Article All This Week...

Read Jill Levoy about her LA County Homicide blog. It tells the story of how political correctness and a fear of honestly dealing with race both at the Los Angeles Times - within the city and the county as a whole - has allowed so many neighborhoods to become unscrutinized killing grounds.

And still the Los Angeles Times newsroom - even today - is always far more interested in pandering to demagogues on any issue involving race and taking the cheap shot rather than asking any of the hard questions that need to be asked if we are to ever have any solutions to our collective problems whenever race is involved.

Below is just the opening of her piece:

This newspaper typically covers about 10% of the homicides in Los Angeles County each year. They are often the most sensational or shocking: a baby hit by a stray bullet, or a celebrity murder.

But for the last year, the paper's website, latimes.com, has recorded every homicide. It was my idea. I reported on crime for the paper, and I wanted readers to see all the killings -- roughly 1,000 violent deaths each year, mostly of young Latinos and, most disproportionately, of young black men. The Web offered what the paper did not: unlimited space.

So the Homicide Report, as it was called, began with the simplest of journalistic missions: exposing a painful, largely unseen problem.The first list of homicide victims, published just over a year ago, contained the names of 17 people. Eight were Latino. Six were black. Two were of Cambodian descent -- killed in a double homicide. None were white. Most were in their 20s.

Readers responded strongly. "Oh my God," began one of the first posts by a reader. "The sheer volume is shocking," wrote another. "Almost like they're disposable people," wrote a third.

Two or three homicides occurred in the county per day, on average. As the report developed, I filled notebooks with police jargon, scrawling the same details over and over. "Male black adult" or "Male Hispanic" -- accompanied by addresses in Compton, Florence, Hawthorne, Boyle Heights or Watts.

The coroner provided a basic list of victims. But much of the information about the killings had to be wrung from police agencies spread across 400 square miles, or from crime scenes or victims' families. I worked mostly out of my car, fanning to the south and east of my office.

Many agencies were not used to releasing details. One police press official was surprised to learn that victims' names were public information: No reporter had ever asked him for that, he said.

When I first presented a list of victims to the state Department of Motor Vehicles for photos, the clerks were baffled. Twenty young people every week? "What is this?" one asked. "Did a plane crash?"

One could know the numbers in the abstract yet still be unprepared for the sheer volume, similarity and obscurity of the victims. Los Angeles County's homicide rate was on the decline, and 2007 was destined to be one of the least violent years in a generation. Yet the concentration of killings remained the same -- a pocket epidemic of violent death among black and Latino men in neglected corners of society.

There was Manuel Perez, 17, whose homicide I chanced to hear mentioned in a detectives' staff meeting. As soon as I put his name on the site, a comment was posted: "I miss you so much, Manuel."

There was Fernando Tello, 15, Latino, stabbed, who took a week to die at a hospital. Isaac Tobias, 23, black, had no DMV record. Valdine Brown, 28, also black, seemed to have disappeared altogether: The coroner had a record of his death in a hospital, but the detectives had never heard of him. Eventually it was revealed that Brown's killing was filed under one of his many aliases.

At a crime scene in the Los Angeles Police Department's Newton Division, lifelong friends of a victim said they knew him only by a nickname. At another scene, a family had no recent photographs of their 19-year-old son. For some of those victims, a police mug shot was the only record of their presence in the world. A detective in Watts once asked me to run a photo of an elaborate norteño-style belt buckle, the only clue to the identity of a victim whose body had been burned.

Detectives routinely admitted that the names and ages they had recorded for victims were, at best, conjecture: Many victims, including illegal immigrants or career criminals, had lived entirely underground.

And...

The Homicide Report made no distinction between a celebrity and a transient. Each got the same typeface, the same kind of write-up. If you were the victim of a homicide, you made the blog.

The report included the race of each victim. Newspapers traditionally do not identify homicide victims by race. But failing to include race also served to disguise the disproportionate effect homicide has on blacks and Latinos.

I had met many people -- most of them black -- who had been bereaved not once, but twice -- and, in a couple cases, three times -- by the slaying of an immediate family member. Giving readers anything short of a full and accurate picture of this surfeit of bereavement seemed indecent. Some readers, though, were critical. The practice "just feeds into stereotyping of minorities," one wrote.

The blog's readership slowly grew. The death of "Sinister" drew more than 100 emotional posts at the end of the year as readers segued from grief and anger into an impassioned debate about race and murder.

Police agencies gradually grew more cooperative. A sheriff's deputy who throughout the year had been exceptionally helpful sent an e-mail in December praising the effort. He closed: "My younger brother was murdered . . ."

And more at the linked article above....

Giants Win Super Bowl - But LA Times Front Page Still Says - Patriots on verge of perfection

Not only did they miss the end of the game - but they also missed - by considerable time - the winning touchdown.

LA Times Front Page SuperBowl Coverage Now One Quarter And Two Touchdowns Behind New York Time's Front Page!

And LA Times sports section still missing Patriot's last touchdown.

LA Times 15 Minutes Late In Updating Giants Last Touchdown!

I wonder if the Times will update its website before the game is over. Begining to look doubtful.

UPDATE!

Turns out the story on sports page has been updated - but the incorrect score still shown on front page of website.