Friends of the environmental attorney Roger Carrick held a well-attended life celebration last night at Para Los Niños, the Downtown childrens' center where he was on the board and the former chairman. Carrick was 60 and died Nov. 12. I'm told that former governor Gray Davis and journalist E.J. Dionne, a Harvard friend of Carrick's, were among the speakers. Also United Farm Workers figure Marc Grossman, lawyer Mickey Kantor and environmental leader Joel Reynolds. Others who I've heard were there include City Council members Jan Perry, Eric Garcetti and Paul Koretz, former assemblymen Robert Hertzberg, Wally Knox and Richard Katz, political advisors Donna Bojarsky and Andy Spahn, ex-DA Gil Garcetti, former Jerry Brown I aides Jody Evans and Cari Beauchamp, and former Clinton Administration official John Emerson. Carrick had served in the first Brown Administration and worked closely on the law (authored by Howard Berman, I believe) that created the state's Agricultural Labor Relations Board.

• Records show acting San Fernando police chief Jeff Eley did request dismissal of a traffic ticket for an aide to Rep. Howard Berman. Daily News , LA Observed Plus: The LA Times finally acknowledges that Eley has been suspended.
• The Assembly voted to pass a bill that would lift a 1996 ban on pre-arranged media interviews with certain prison inmates. Political Blotter
• Patricia McKeon, the wife of longtime Rep. Buck McKeon, is making her first run for office at 69, against his former staffer, Scott Wilk, for the state Assembly. "Her political acumen stops at seating charts,” says Wilk. National Journal
• Branimir Kvartuc will be communications director for Councilman Joe Buscaino, plus other key staffers. Daily Breeze
• James Franco's new web series "Undergrads" depicts USC as "a bacchanal a la 'The Hangover' [with] amorous, good-looking young people hooking up, wild parties, run-ins with the law and booze. Lots and lots of it." LAT
• Uggie, the dog in "The Artist," is being retired from show business. Reuters

The traffic fallout from President Obama's motorcades always seem more widespread when he ventures east from home base in Beverly Hills — like to West Hollywood or the Hancock Park area. When the security shutdowns are confined to the Westside it's bad out there, but the Obamajams don't seem to bother as many people. So I guess it's good news that the president's main venue on his Feb. 15 visit will be in Holmby Hills. The Democratic campaign fundraiser will be at the home of soap opera producer and writer Bradley Bell and his wife Colleen, the Hollywood Reporter says.

Actor Will Ferrell and his wife Viveca Paulin are among the co-sponsors of the dinner, THR has learned.

Event organizers are also working on a line-up of musical acts to perform on the lawn of the Bells' house for earlier in the day. Those tickets start at $250 per person.

Bradley Bell is co-creator, executive producer and head writer of The Bold and the Beautiful, a soap opera he started with his parents, William and Lee Bell, in 1987. (The elder Bells also created The Young and the Restless.) Bradley Bell's wife Colleen is a writer and one of Obama's top Hollywood "bundlers."

Um, couldn't the Dems just once hold a fundraiser for Obama on a weekend? The next day, THR also reports, Obama is set to attend a breakfast in OC's Corona del Mar at the home of Jeff and Nancy Stack.

Previously on LA Observed:
Obama fundraising 'packages' for Hollywood get creative
Look at Obama's leaked celebrity wish list

Obama visits with radio host Piolin in 2010

Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times did a story on the LAX-adjacent city of El Segundo becoming a trendy office location. It's got the ocean, a small-town feel west of Pacific Coast Highway, and plenty of jobs in big companies. I thought the story was fine, but some fans took umbrage at the line that El Segundo "has begun to attract a variety of creative businesses that might once have looked down their noses at the humble burg of 17,000 residents." Writes the scientist-blogger Bad Mom, Good Mom:

I've written many times about my affection for my daytime hometown of El Segundo. But I take exception to the categorization that my work--and that of my colleagues--is not "creative".

I was so mad to read a LAT columnist describe ES as "lily-white", I didn't trust myself to blog about it at the time. Take a look at the school demographics. Take a look around at lunch-time. Not only is the town diverse, but the dining parties are diverse. That is, friendships form over shared interests beyond superficial ones of race.

Can't we just all get along? I recommend BM/GM's past writing on El Segundo, especially her observations of the oil tankers maneuvering out in the bay.

Just another KPCC billboard pushing ideas over ideology — except this one is on the roof of the Cahuenga Boulevard building next door to fellow public radio station KPFK. (Perhaps the most ideological of all LA stations.) Via OC Weekly

Since taking over as editor of Los Angeles in 2009, Mary Melton has "continued to push the publication beyond its former Westside comfort zone into the far corners of our megalopolis," says The Frying Pan News, the city and politics website from the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. In a Q-and-A with Danny Feingold, the group's communications director, Melton talks about loving the city and about LAANE's issues of poverty and social justice. (She tends to agree with them.) She thinks public officials should be required to ride the bus once a week (she does so, sometimes) and on the media, Melton has this to say:

What is missing from the city’s journalistic landscape?

The mainstream press needs to reintroduce beats, cover California and L.A. issues, have more reporters devoted to local politics and politicians. Websites don’t have the resources to do deep reporting.

If you were editor of the L.A. Times, what would you do to change things?

The first thing I would do is hire a fleet of buses and have everyone in the building get on one and go see the city. Too many people at the Times never leave the building. I remember during the 2000 Democratic Convention, which was in downtown. I was working at the Times, and I decided to go over to check it out. I tried to get some folks to come with me, and everyone said, “It’s so far.” What?

I will continue to subscribe to the Times no matter what state it’s in – I think it‘s our civic duty. There’s still talent there and some excellent work being done, but they didn’t think through their downsizing, they lost so much talent. I don’t want it to become irreparable.

What could Los Angeles magazine do to tell the real stories of L.A.?

We do tell real stories. That said, there are other stories I would be all over, but they would require heavy lifting and investigative reporting – we don’t have the resources. This year we are planning on taking on some kind of cause, something that the magazine identifies that the city needs to fix and report on it in a very active way, whether it’s a social cause or civic improvement. We will declare that this thing is broken, and see what we can do to fix it. We will be looking for ways to motivate wealthy people to be part of that.

And in Los Angeles magazine: The February issue is billed as a guide to "Classic L.A." Melton says in her editor note: "It's not so much a 'service'" package as it is an ode. The writing is crisp and inspiring yet never sentimental, and the package couldn't make me prouder of the city we call home. The editors here clearly love L.A., and it shows on every page." Mark Lacter has a column in the issue on what the 1% mean to the rest of us, economy-wise.

Los Angeles Kings players Jarret Stoll and Matt Greene allowed a video camera guy to ride along as they drove from Hermosa Beach to a game at Staples Center. Like any other young millionaires, they talked about Starbucks scones, freeway traffic and the crime blotter in the Easy Reader — and how two young Russian rookies on the team missed a freeway sign and kept driving east past Downtown. "They probably shouldn't be driving together, those two guys," Stoll says drily.

Video: NHL.com

Adam Leipzig, publisher of the website Cultural Weekly, doesn't pretend to be objective about the city's move to remove the Latino Theater Company from the Los Angeles Theatre Center, its Spring Street home for six years. He writes:

Let’s be clear: I’m a partisan in this fight. I was on hand when the building was built and opened in 1985; some people called me “the kid.” I left a few years before our original theatre company sputtered to a halt. Then I watched as the City took over the building and occasionally booked lackluster shows while the structure became dowdy and forlorn. During those years I could barely walk into the lobby – it had grown sad, old, dull and lifeless. Its torn carpet got more ragged with each visit; its burnt-out lights went un-replaced.

Then, in 2006, the Latino Theatre Company became tenants, and brought the place back to life. Through unique partnerships with diverse theatre companies, LTC created an umbrella under which new work began to thrive. The four theatres, which under the City’s stewardship had been dark most of the time, once again filled up. The lobby grew vibrant with audience, actors and playwrights.

The city, for its part, contends "the Latino Theater Company and the Latino Museum of History, Art and Culture, which have been warring in and out of court since 2009, failed to keep basic accounting information regarding ticket sales and other revenues and that, against the orders of their lease, they depleted a building maintenance account."

The theater company has posted a statement: "The Board of Directors of the Latino Theater Company would like to reassure everyone that everything is being done to work constructively and amicably with the City of Los Angeles to resolve any and all issues arising from our current lease situation regarding our home at the Los Angeles Theatre Center." More

Stories on the dispute:
Downtown News
LA Times
KPCC

Geraldine Baum's farewell-to-the-newsroom note reminds you what a collegial family a newspaper is to its inhabitants. Posted with permission, inside.

An architecture student made a jigsaw puzzle out of Chicago's confusing ward lines. Via Poynter