Lee Watters tried to register for CalendarLive. It didn't go well. He emails:

I registered. They sent me the confirmation email. I logged in. They sent me to the screen that told me I had to register. I registered. They sent me a confirmation. I logged in. They send me to the screen that told me I had to log in. Arrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

His blog. I also got email last night from somebody trying to read a Times story online who couldn't get the IndyMac Bank ad obstructing the page to close.

The Silent Movie Theatre scuttled plans to screen D.W. Griffith's landmark but racist film The Birth of a Nation tonight because of threats and complaints. The Times website reports:

Charlie Lustman, owner of the Fairfax Avenue theater, announced the cancellation in the morning and said that he had received not only personal threats but also warnings that his theater would be destroyed if he showed the film.

The theater, Lustman said, had been flooded with phone calls and e-mails since a Los Angeles Times story on Saturday detailed his plans to screen the film, which has drawn explosive reactions ever since its 1915 release for its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan and its depiction of blacks as buffoons and villains.

"I apologize to everyone on all sides — to those moviegoers who wanted to see this in the right context and to those who were offended," Lustman said.

Also in the LAT.com headlines this afternoon: Fay Wray dies at 96, docs say Brad Penny will only miss one start for the Doders, and the poobahs behind the Grand Avenue reinvention downtown chose Related Cos. — the Thom Mayne group — to develop the project.

The wire service (oops, "financial news and information provider") will set up a newsroom in Bangalore to replace higher-priced editorial staffers elsewhere in the world, AP says.

They will focus primarily on providing greater information about small and medium-sized firms that are publicly traded in the United States, London-based spokeswoman Susan Allsopp said.

The new employees will compile tables of financial data to accompany longer stories written by Reuters journalists elsewhere, and also provide information from news releases and filings to national regulatory authorities such as the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission.

Reuters hopes to find new positions for the staffers whose jobs will be outsourced to India.

"There will be some impact, but we're trying to minimize that," Allsopp said.

Thanks to Dennis for the tip.

The Ahmanson family made a lot of money in Los Angeles and left a lot of it here. The theatre at the Music Center is named for Howard F. Ahmanson, who built the largest savings and loan in the country and commissioned those ex-Home Savings locales with the Millard Sheets architecture and murals spread all over town. These days the family name is big in Orange County, where the Register today began spooling out a five-part series about press-shy philanthropist Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. (the son, who attended Black-Foxe Military Institute in Hancock Park), his wife Roberta, and their born-again Christianity. The couple, pictured in today's paper saying grace at an OC restaurant, cooperated at length after having a campaign donation to a Hawaii Republican returned because they were deemed too controversial. From part one today:

"When a politician sends money back, it's serious," Roberta Ahmanson says.

The Ahmansons came to believe they had an image problem, which they blame on the distortion, intentional or not, of their views by others.

They also came to believe that they held some responsibility to explain themselves and their beliefs, so that people might understand them and their work, which they see as a calling to do good in the world....

So Howard Ahmanson, the Home Savings and Loan heir whose zeal for privacy had left him a shadowy figure in the minds of many, and Roberta Ahmanson, a small-town Iowa girl who grew up to be a religion reporter, decided to start talking.

The "about this series" blurb says: "With God as his compass and wife Roberta Ahmanson as his partner, he set out to find useful ways to unburden himself of his money."

Television Week editor Alex Ben Block accepted an invitation into the Fox News lair of Bill O'Reilly and lived to tell about it.

It was an irresistible invitation to go a few rounds with the undisputed heavyweight champion of American news talk. To face all of my fears and push aside my natural paranoia, to take the risk that I might end up O'Reilly roadkill. His was an electronic bully pulpit that he used to praise the chosen and punish fools who dared to disagree...This was Mr. Bill the killer interviewer, the most dangerous man with a microphone currently prowling prime time.

[skip]

I kept wondering whether I was somehow being ambushed. About a week earlier, I had written a column about the unusually aggressive methods employed by Fox News Channel public relations personnel, including the selective blacklisting of journalists they don't like...Then the truth came out...My job was to be the straw horse for all the ills of the media.

[skip]

My appearance turned out to be the quickest seven minutes of my life. By the time I was in the chair being wired with earpiece and mike, I was aware the whole setup was an opportunity for Mr. Bill to rage against the media machine that spit out those stories he didn't like. They weren't present, so he vented in my direction. I wasn't having any of it. I wasn't from Daytona or Miami. I would stand by every word in TV Week...

The TV Week website has a new design since the last time I looked, and a free but lengthy registration barrier.

The same night that Bill Clinton guests on "The Daily Show," his favorite fiction author is being featured on "Life and Times" on KCET. Walter Mosley's latest Easy Rawlins mystery is Little Scarlet, based on his own experiences in South L.A. after the Watts riot in 1965. Also on tonight's show, Jeffrey Kaye reports on the seaweed that is invading land in L.A. Tomorrow, Charles Phoenix brings on his slides of SoCal life in the '50. "Life and Times" now airs at 6:30 p.m.

A conversation with Times editorial and opinion editor Michael Kinsley will be first up when Zócalo returns to the Central Library on Sept. 7. This week's program at California Plaza downtown features theater director Peter Sellars, who will discuss his current project, The Children of Heracles, with Sasha Anawalt on Tuesday.

New York real estate lawyer John Odoner hopes to launch Jewish Television as a 24-hour digital cable channel early next year, the New York Times says. His planned programming includes a "Crossfire"-inspired show of dueling pundits called "Two Jews, Three Opinions'' and "Jewishly Incorrect,'' a show with comedic political commentary. "Nice Jewish Boyz'' is called "a Jewish 'Man Show,' which will smash the myth of the over-mothered Jewish male" and include scantily dressed women.

"There is a serious nature to this network,'' he said, "but it's not going to be Nebbish Central.''

Advisers include novelist Cynthia Ozick and the newspaper columnist Sidney Zion.

Choire Sicha of Gawker.com is being promoted with the title of Editorial Director of all the websites at Gawker Media, including Defamer here in L.A and Wonkette. Sicha had replaced Elizabeth Spiers, now an editor at New York magazine, just about a year ago. The new editor of Gawker has a Los Angeles connection. Jessica Coen had worked here for an unnamed studio and wrote the blog The Blueprint: A Girl With a Plan before moving to New York in July.

Another batch of questionable public relations contracts with a political twist has caught the media's eyes. The Times' Jason Felch reports today that the giant Metropolitan Water District has paid $4.5 million to various ex-officials and friends of friends to provide advice in the past five years, with scant written justification. Prominent Orange County Republican Curt Pringle got $139,000. Local Democrat Richard Polanco received $105,000, and also has an old quote turned back on him. In 1991, the Times writes, he blasted the MWD in an appearance before its board:

"I'm here to talk about sweetheart contracts, shadow lobbying — and the general underhanded way this agency operates."

Another ex-state assemblyman. Mike Roos, sits high on the list. He received $245,000 in consulting fees in just two years.

* Also: A Fleishman-Hillard subcontractor charged the DWP higher than usual rates, the L.A. Business Journal reports on the front page. Julie Gertler of Consensus Planning Group says no, they didn't.

I'm reading The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith by David L. Ulin, which must be the prettiest, most thought-provoking writing about the propensity of Los Angeles to shake that I've encountered. He's done some readings around town and has an op-ed essay on the value of quake legends in today's Times:

This morning, I'm listening to the birds outside my window. It's a soothing sound, a harmony of chirping just above the level of background noise. Were I anywhere else, I might not even notice, but in Southern California, the simplest things often come loaded, carrying a weight far greater than themselves.

This is, after all, earthquake country, and in earthquake country, the story goes, birds stop chirping three hours before a major quake. Is that true? Probably not. But on both a conscious and a cellular level, I keep an ear out for the birds.

[fast forward]

Faced with the uncertainty of an earthquake, we need the myths, the stories, the larger frame of reference that speaks to our imagination and our fears. We need, in other words, to make sense of the incomprehensible, to come to terms with seismicity by giving it a context we can recognize.

Not that any of this will protect us. But in the buildup to the next earthquake, it may provide a measure of solace, a strategy for coping, not all that different from listening to the birds.

Ulin told the crowd at his Central Library "Aloud" reading in July that the last science course he passed was in high school. But he brings a ton of reporting on seismology to the book, which in some part is the product of his personal search for sufficient comfort with the tectonic realities to let him and his family keep living here. Apparently, they're staying.

The LA Weekly shares owners with the Village Voice and must be closely observing the tremors shivering the timbers of the New York weekly. As the New York Times summarizes Monday, the Voice recently fired executive editor Richard Goldstein and online editor Matt Haber and laid off six editorial staffers. Don Forst, the former L.A. Herald Examiner editor who runs the Voice, says there is a fundamental change underway:

"The restructuring situation is tied into our efforts going from a weekly product to, with the Web, daily journalism electronically, in which we're putting stuff up on a daily basis, sometimes on an hourly basis," he said. "The restructuring is putting new resources there, to the Web site, while at the same time maintaining the paper."

Staff at the Weekly had to pick up on that and wonder if changes are coming here too. The Weekly began last year to post occasional stories on the website ahead of the print paper, the majority of them from Hollywood columnist Nikki Finke. But the Weekly's desk has been slow to post scoops when it has them, and the paper seems anything but eager to embrace the news-breaking and audience-building powers of the Web. With what's going on at headquarters in New York, I wonder if it's only a matter of time. Also: The NYT stresses, again, that the recent resignation of Voice media columnist Cynthia Cotts was unrelated to the staff restructuring. Forst says she will be replaced.

After scouring the forest around Big Bear for nine days, searchers on Sunday told the parents of nine-year-old David Gonzales that most of them were giving up and heading home. San Bernardino County sheriff's spokeswoman Cindy Beavers, who usually seems pretty stoic on camera, broke down in tears relating the news that the parents were "devastated." Gonzales wandered away from his church camping group in Fawnskin on July 31, and the search has turned up no good leads.

   • They're out there: George Noory sends "Coast to Coast AM" into the overnight air from a studio on Ventura Blvd. (LAT Mag)
   • Business as usual: Mayoral candidates still raising money from special interests. (LAT)
   • Blogging on deadline: Nichelle D. Tramble owes them a book on Monday.
   • Bothering Jimmy: Police nab animal rights protesters at Mayor Hahn's San Pedro home before the neighbors get them. (Daily Breeze)
   • It's here: Northridge woman dies of West Nile after mosquito bite. (Daily News)
   • Feels like 10 minutes: Erik Himmelsbach remembers his mother's death 10 years ago. (CityBeat)
   • Going to Texas: Ed Humes speaks to the Pulpwood Queens. (via CalAuthors.com)
   • Downtown events: From Fumiko Amano at AtelierZero.

In advance of going out to the stadium tonight, I decided to look at how Eric Gagne has done in the week since the Dodgers traded his bullpen setup man, Guillermo Mota. Looks to me like the fears expressed after the trade — that Gagne might become overworked and lose his dominance — are worth some attention. It's still early, but there are signs.

In the past 2½ seasons, Gagne only faced as many as 10 batters in a game once. This week he has done it twice. In a week without Mota he has faced 30 batters and let 11 get on base (6 scored). He only struck out 7 of the 30. In July, for contrast, he struck out half the 54 batters he faced, and let only eight get on base all month. Doesn't mean he's tanked, just that the Dodgers need to be careful with him. Alas, last night's loss, his first in a year, also means that I probably won't be seeing him tonight. Blogger 6-4-2 is more worried: "This is the penalty for tossing out Mota. Gagné under little rest is going to get worse..."

Back to non-sports programming...

* Not so fast: Jim Tracy used Gagne again, to better effect: 2 batters 1 batter, 3 pitches, save number 33. Dodgers win 6-3 playing Moneyball (11 walks), move 6½ ahead. Amusing aside: ESPN must be outsourcing game play-by-play to Bangalore; Gagne's first out is credited to "fielder's indifference." Note to self—pay more attention: As a commenter notes, Gagne faced just one batter, got him out. During the at-bat, a Phillie stole second without a throw, hence "fielder's indifference" was the right call. Sunday's game was weird: the Dodgers' new starter Brad Penny strained his arm on his 14th pitch and came out in the first inning, and in the third the Phillies' David Bell hit a grounder and never got out of the batter's box because of back spasms. Dodgers lose 4-1, hold at a 6½-game lead.

Where else but here would deem an eight-story parking garage as a cultural monument. The Beaux Arts-style design by Curlett and Beelman at 816 S. Grand Avenue downtown got its new status Friday from the state Historical Resources Commission. Next stop is the National Register of Historic Places. The garage opened in 1925, when downtown streets were horribly congested — much worse than today. For 50 cents a large elevator lifted cars to the upper floors. It's the exterior that received the landmark designation — the interior has recently been converted into the South Park Lofts. The story and photo are in Saturday's Times.

Preserve L.A. has an update on the old 1920s subway tunnel entrance visible on West 2nd Street at Beverly near downtown. There was a City Hall hearing today about the plans by Meta Housing Developers to convert the tunnel mouth and makeshift dirt soccer field into 276 loft-style apartments. Turns out the site has a name: when the Red Cars were running, it was the Toluca Subway Yard. Westworld has a photo tour. (Via L.A. Blogs)

New entries added at end

   • Former LAT publisher David Laventhol is writing the history of Times Mirror for Public Affairs. The company's former chief exec, his working title is A Family's Will, a reference to the Chandlers, who sold the company to Tribune. (NYDN)

   • Reporter Pat Maio has left the L.A. Business Journal. His media beat is, as yet, unfilled.

   • L.A. Times Olympics reporter Alan Abrahamson will appear regularly on MSNBC during the Athens games.

   • Columnist T.J. Simers gets his hair cut in a big photo on page 2 of today's Times sports section.

   • Six members of People's L.A. bureau (plus two staffers in New York) get credit lines on this week's story about Paris Hilton's bruises.

   • Jeff Kearns of the Sacramento News & Review guests Sunday on KPFK's "Deadline L.A." to talk about the governor's use of the media.

   • The Times is said to be at work on another profile of Doug Dowie, the ex-head of Fleishman-Hillard in Los Angeles. Tina Daunt is the reported writer.

   • Los Angeles Magazine contributor David Davis has inked a deal with Angel City Press to write Play by Play: A Century of L.A. Sports Photography, 1889-1989. The book's release will coincide with the October opening of an exhibition of photos at the Central Library downtown.

   • City controller Laura Chick guests on KNBC-4's "News Conference," Sunday at 9 a.m. Laurel Erickson hosts.

   • The New York Times Sunday Styles section is working on a story about literary L.A., Cathy Seipp learns.

   • The LAist blog has lost its founding editor. Tom Berman is leaving to "work in the political realm," but might be back. Adrienne Crew will be co-editor with Marleigh Riggins.

Fark is one of the most popular blogs that links to stories, but competitor (see comments) Jason Calacanis tells Wired News that the site asked him for money in exchange for highly placed links to his sites. Calacanis says a Fark salesman, Gogi Gupta, told him "We don't hold ourselves to the same standards as (The New York Times), and I would urge you not to either." Calacanis, the founder and editor of the late Silicon Alley Reporter in New York and Digital Coast Reporter here, posts at his blog:

After trying to figure out a deal they told me that I could just buy the editorial. The cost? Like $300 to $400 for a story.

I was shocked…. all this time I’ve been reading Fark.com it turns out that some percentage of the stories are paid for. Looking back on it I’m now sure the adult links are all paid for, as are the ifilm.com links.

I feel like I can never trust Fark again.

The stupid part about all this is that Fark.com could easily just put “Advertisement” by the stories and their readers would click them 2x as much just to support Fark. It is so dumb.

Say it ain’t so Drew! Clean up Fark, I want to love it… really I do.

Fark's publisher, Drew Curtis, says the salesman was fired, but declined to clear up his policies. Says Wired: "Curtis refused to deny that Fark accepts payment for placement of links. He did not respond to requests for clarification from Wired News."

* Fark is not a blog: Sean Bonner explains it well.

** Fark responds: "If the same material -- e.g. clip, news story -- is available in several locations, we may enter into a commercial agreement to prefer one host site over the another. We will also link stuff that I just happen to like..." Curtis says he is working on a disclosure page to clarify the policy, and adds: "We apologize for not being clearer about what we do and don't do."

Manohla Dargis' first film review for the New York Times runs in today's paper. A.O. Scott takes Open Water; she reviews the L.A. movie.

In Collateral, the edgy new thriller from the director Michael Mann, the city never sleeps; it doesn't even relax. Set in Los Angeles mostly after dark, after the city's sunshine has given way to cool noir, the story centers on a taxi driver, Max (Jamie Foxx), and the assassin Vincent (Tom Cruise), who hops a ride with him deep into the night. As the pair cover the city, looping over interchanges and down wide open boulevards, they travel a landscape alive with wild animals and wilder men, noisy with unfamiliar music and chatter, and punctured by the hard pop of occasional gunfire.

It's always interesting to see how writers from the L.A. Times take to the tighter, more rigorous copy editing in New York. Readers more familiar with the Dargis style will have to judge how much of her voice made it into this first effort at getting through the desk there. It's just the first of many to come, of course. I can tell you it's about 1,100 words, a bit longer than her last review for the L.A. Times: The Bourne Supremacy.

* Scott weighs in on Collateral: In Sunday's paper.

Previously on L.A. Observed: Welcome NYT style, NYT raid on L.A. Times writers

Mark Glaser writes in USC's Online Journalism Review that more newspapers are cooperating with bloggers to link stories and drive readers to the paper. The prime example is the Wall Street Journal's opening of one big story a day to free access with an email the night before to bloggers, urging them to link the story. The New York Times now runs 27 separate RSS feeds that bloggers are encouraged to use. The L.A. Times, as usual, is charting a different course, going for higher rankings on the Google News page.

Add OJR: There's an unconfirmed report that the review has a new editor, Robert Niles, formerly of LATimes.com. The job has been filled on an interim basis by the former OJR editor Larry Pryor since Michelle Nicolosi left for the investigative team at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the spring. No confirmation yet from Niles or Pryor, but both have been asked.

* Add ex-OJR: Estranged former OJR stalwart Matt Welch performs an archival feat of some note and compiles the name, author and publisher of 41 anti-Bush books. He writes on his blog: "I'll add new titles as they come, and I will also soon compile a 'Liberals Suck Eggs' collection, for 'balance.' Enjoy"

L.A. Observed is pleased to introduce a new Premium Sponsor: The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. The community paper is published weekly on Fridays. Click on the logo at the the top of the right-hand column to read the latest issue, which has a front-page story on local Jews at the Democratic convention and a Q-and-A with the departing Israeli consul general in L.A.

This gives me an opening to encourage other publications, companies and institutions to look into becoming a sponsor. Here's the pitch. On the tangible side, sponsors get their name and weblink — and a message if they wish — posted prominently on every page. It will be seen by Los Angeles media types, communications professionals, public officials, writers and others engaged in L.A. life. The July traffic log shows the average weekday audience surpassed 3,400 "unique visitors." For the month they made 696,132 hits on the pages here. I'm thrilled by the numbers, but it's the rarefied nature of the readership that should be valuable to advertisers. L.A. Observed is read in the mayor's office, in the editor's office at the L.A. Times, and in most of the newsrooms and public relations shops in town.

Sponsors also enjoy the less tangible benefit of helping support L.A. Observed as the site expands as a community resource. In that vein, I'm offering a couple of new sponsorship levels. In addition to Premium Sponsorship, I welcome media, literary and community organizations that are non-profit and wish to support L.A. Observed to contact me about alternate arrangements. Also, through BlogAds, authors, independent bookstores, bloggers and other friends of L.A. Observed may now announce their latest works and events at a special reduced rate. For the details on all ad opportunities, see Be a Sponsor.

Nothing to advertise? You can still help support L.A. Observed. Click on the PayPal button below to make a voluntary subscription. As the site grows, the cost of storing the archives and buying bandwidth keeps increasing. If you need a little nudge, consider this: it's a one-person operation that is updated days, nights and most weekends and holidays. (Though there may be a short summer hiatus coming up—stay tuned.)

Finally, on the right you'll see a new BlogAd from the Hertzberg campaign for mayor. It showed up unsolicited, a total surprise. He's on other blogs, but I'm a journalist who is actively covering the race for mayor here and offline. I discussed it with several people and decided to accept the ad and others like it, based on my conclusion that blogs are both a news medium like TV, radio and newspapers, which run campaign ads, and also a new form of media where the rules need to adapt.

I don't think I can make this next part too clear: Campaign ads here do not represent an endorsement. I'll accept tasteful ads from any of the candidates, but I won't solicit them. Hertzberg et al need to know that their decision to advertise here or not changes nothing. I'll still cover their good points and bad, and give my take on how they are doing where I feel it serves readers. (My August 5th take on Hertzberg is that he's a wild card in the race but probably won't win. Hahn probably will, but who knows come March 2005.) That's how I try to approach campaign reporting, and it's easy in this case because I truly don't care who wins. Thoughts on my ad policy are welcome by email or in the public comments.

For those following the mayor's race, don't miss my new links to the candidates' websites in the left-hand column. Look for more enhancements soon.

KFI's "John and Ken Show" is holding five local Republican members of Congress hostage in a fashion over illegal immigration. The talk show hosts are mobilizing their large-for-radio audience to choose a Republican to target for defeat in November to protest immigration policy — then demanding that each potential "political human sacrifice" (their term) come on the show to defend themselves before the final victim is chosen. "Fulfilling their obligation" to John and Ken, as the team's website puts it. So far, Reps. Mary Bono, Darrell Issa, Chris Cox, and Dana Rohrabacher have done the hosts' bidding, but John and Ken seem unhappy that David Dreier hasn't and urge their listeners to persuade him:

Be sure to let Congressman David Dreier know that coming on the show and addressing illegal immigration is more important than planning “Apple Martini and Bowling” parties.

The Washington Times, covering the spectacle today, says that Dreier is "negotiating" to come on the show. In the story, John and Ken say they are trying to deliver a "wake-up call to Republican leaders who ignore their constituents' pleas for stronger border enforcement."

Slate magazine's Andy Bowers does a little poking around and discovers that in many cities — including Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Pasadena — SUV's exceed the tonnage allowed to use residential streets. Yes, they are illegal, except for occasional business trips, on any street with signs posted that ban trucks over 6,000 pounds. He engages councilwoman Janice Hahn on the subject, and she demurs on enforcing the law. What else is she going to say — her brother the mayor rides around town in an official SUV.

* And on NPR: Bowers chatted about it with Noah Adams on today's "Day to Day"

Yes, blook. Ian Williams in the LA Weekly uses the term to describe the recent books by Arianna Huffington and the sister-brother team of Amy and David Goodman. He calls them blogs on paper more than fully realized books, but urges they be given a read anyway.

The current torrent of polemical publishing is producing “blooks,” blogs in print. Blogs can be fun, informative and stirring, but they don’t necessarily have a beginning, middle or end. They display the blogger in all the resplendent and occasionally self-indulgent glory of free association. You can read a blook on the train, on the beach or in the bathroom, and it’s worth looking at these two...

Also in the Weekly, Robert Greene recalls when Antonio Villaraigosa promised voters two years ago that he would not run for mayor: "Not only will I serve out my four years on the council, I’m going to run for a second term." And Nikki Finke on the secrets of IMDB.com. In Thursday's CityBeat, Catherine Seipp's media column is a walk into the past with Elise DeWolfe, "decorating’s first grande dame and also, as it happens, its most famous lesbian." There is a new reissue of her book, The House in Good Taste, which predated "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" by almost a century.