Lots of people out there watching the Levitated Mass boulder slowly crawl toward Wilshire Boulevard. At this hour it's still trying to make the turn up Western Avenue from Adams Boulevard and climb north across the 10 freeway. "Hardest turn of the night," says the LACMA Twitter feed. "Once we get thru, we'll have a better ETA." The turn required removal of a streetlight at the corner. Between now and dawn, the convoy should roll west on Wilshire, turn north on Fairfax Avenue, back east on 6th Street and end on the LACMA lawn — more than 100 miles since leaving Riverside County 11 days ago.

Twitpic: LACMA

Francesca Lia Block, the author of more than 30 books and creator of the popular Weetzie Bat character, writes on Facebook today that even though her mortgage is current, she is in a refi run-around with Bank of America and may lose her Culver City home. I don't generally note postings I see on the walls of Facebook friends, but in this case she is hoping to widely circulate her account of the dispute and call for help. Excerpt:

I, Francesca Lia Block, working author/teacher and single mom with good credit and an up-to-date mortgage for an over-encumbered property (that has declined due to current market conditions and the recession), have decided, after much thought, to go public with my complaints against Bank of America.

In order to avoid potential foreclosure, I have been trying to work with the bank since March, 2010 to modify an unfair interest-only loan on a property that has declined in value. I have been subjected to inefficiency of unimaginable proportions, rudeness and inexcusable delays. After hearing about Obama’s plan to help people in a similar situation and reading various things on the Internet about what the bank is saying it will do to help people I am now bringing this to your attention.

I ask your help in spreading the word about this situation so that I may maintain my home for myself and my children.

The post is also on her blog.

Facebook photo of Block

• If you're going to see the Levitated Mass boulder arrive tonight, here's LACMA's advice on parking, facilities and timing [any tme between 2 and 6 a.m. Saturday.] The museum itself will be closed, but there will be a coffee cart on Wilshire beside Urban Light [the lamp post installation.]
• Former CHP officer Tomiekia Johnson was sentenced to 50 years in prison for killing her husband, Marcus Lemons, by shooting him.
• Billboard publisher Lisa Ryan Howard, editor-in-chief Danyel Smith and deputy editor Louis Hau have walked, say The Wrap and Deadline.
• The Los Angeles Times is discontinuing the use of star ratings on restaurant reviews - here's why.
• The story of two homeless single mothers in LA and their families. Reuters
• KCBS/KCAL reporter Kirk Hawkins is moving to the Fox station in Charlotte as an anchor.
• Public affairs executive David Gershwin loves the El Capitan Theatre.
• Peter Bergman, co-founder of the Los Angeles comedy troupe Firesign Theater and the host of "Radio Free Oz" on KPFK, died of leukemia at 72.

• The City Ethics Commission voted 3-1 Thursday to raise the campaign contribution limits for candidates in the current Los Angeles election cycle, allowing incumbents and their challengers to go back to their donors and ask for more. The limits in citywide races went to $1,300 from $1,000, and for the City Council to $700 from $500. Advantage incumbents. LAT
• Is the mayor behind the redrawing of school board member Bennett Kayser's district? Maybe. LAT
• The mayor's office sent out a schedule listing a meeting this morning between Villaraigosa and "Los Angeles Fire Chief Millage Peaks," then quickly sent out a fix: the meeting is with "Los Angeles Fire Chief Brian Cummings." Peaks retired last summer.
• A major plot turn in this weekend's "Desperate Housewives" was revealed in court Thursday during the civil lawsuit by actress Nicollette Sheridan over her firing from the show. LAT, E Online
• The Los Angeles Times has won the Nieman Journalism Foundation's $20,000 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism for the six-part series “Billions to Spend,” on the LA Community Colleges' wasteful and corrupt building program.
• Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook who was one of Mark Zuckerberg's roommates, has purchsed the New Republic and says his focus will be to make the magazine's writing available on tablets such as the iPad. Romenesko
• LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne opines from Japan that the tsunami recovery "has stalled at the cleanup stage" and so far lacks a vision.

Prosecutor Mario Trujillo will drop his campaign for Los Angeles County DA due to recent health news, the LA Weekly's Gene Maddaus reported Thursday. A colonoscopy turned up a medical condition that he needs to deal with, Trujillo confirmed. Though he's not very well known outside the DA's office, Maddaus writes that Trujillo was a serious contender in the open race to succeed Steve Cooley.

Though he had no prior political experience, he did surprisingly well in fundraising, bringing in $429,000 last year, the second-highest total in the race.

Trujillo also had the advantage of being the only Latino in the race, in a county that is half Latino. Recently, he hired veteran political consultant Ace Smith, further bolstering his campaign's credibility.

Smith ran Antonio Villaraigosa's campaigns for mayor, among others.

* Update: Chief Deputy District Attorney Jackie Lacey, who has Cooley's endorsement, formally got took out her papers to run.

At 9 p.m. tonight KCET's new Open Call series is airing a documentary I helped produce on UCLA professor and jazz guitar legend Kenny Burrell. A native of Detroit, he began playing clubs as a teenager and became a protege of Duke Ellington. Burrell started and heads the jazz program at UCLA, where his 80th birthday concert in Royce Hall last November featured performances by B.B. King, Lalo Schifrin and Dee Dee Bridgewater and a surprise on-stage appearance by Stevie Wonder. All of them plus Burrell perform in the 90-minute documentary, which also features behind-the-scenes action, interviews with music figures such as Stevie Wonder and Herb Alpert, and footage from Burrell's hometown. Set list and more at KCET's website

Weekend note: A reminder that on Saturday at 2 p.m. I'll be showing more than 100 pictures creamed from the best of the Los Angeles Public Library's Valley Times collection, at a free event in the Central Library's Taper Auditorium. The event is sponsored by Photo Friends of the Library. There are a lot of very cool photos from the '50s and '60s, mostly in the Valley.

Kenny Burrell concert photo: Reed Hutchinson/UCLA. Drive-in church: Valley Times/LAPL

The "slot" at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art where the Levitated Mass boulder will go on display. The rock arrives Saturday. More

Heal the Bay has prepared a sober, hype-free set of frequently asked questions regarding the likelihood of floating debris reaching our shores. One main takeaway is that most of the stuff washed into the Pacific last March 11 sank. Another is that floating debris from Asia washes up here regularly, so don't assume anything that you find is from the Japan disaster — and most beach junk originates here and gets to the ocean through storm drains, rivers and washes. "Marine debris in Southern California is an everyday problem, stemming from urban runoff and ocean sources throughout the Pacific," the FAQs say.

Beachgoers may notice a gradual increase in debris nearshore and on Southern California beaches over the next few years, but it will likely be difficult to differentiate tsunami-debris from trash that normally flows from land-based sources and washes up onto our beaches. Satellites tracking the initial floating debris field find it to have dissipated and dispersed....

It’s highly unlikely that any tsunami-related debris is radioactive, according to scientific consensus. It’s improbable that most of the debris came into contact with radioactivity associated with leaks at crippled nuclear power plants in Japan. Debris from the tsunami came from a large stretch of coastal Japan, while the leak from the damaged Fukushima reactor occurred in one location. Additionally, there was no likely source of debris exposure to radiation. When the radioactive leak developed, the bulk of the debris had already flowed offshore. Furthermore, results from monitoring conducted on debris found at sea from the Fukushima region in September showed no radioactivity.

On the radioactivity point, LA-based enviro journalist Michael Collins disagrees. He posts at EnviroReporter.com regarding airborne particles:

High radiation readings in Santa Monica and Los Angeles during a recent 42-day period from late December and to late January strongly suggest that radiation from the multiple meltdowns in Fukushima Japan is spreading over Southern California.

This radiation, detected by this reporter and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency separate from each other using difference procedures, does not appear to be natural in origin nor from radioactive fallout in rain.

Evidence points to a uranium-packed nanoscale sphere called a buckyball just detailed in a new study of Fukushima melted fuel and seawater. The fast-moving radioactive molecule could likely be what this reporter and the EPA have been detecting, having made its way across the Pacific in the 11 months since the meltdowns began.

Recently on LA Observed:
Found photos swept away by the Japan tsunami *
Channel 7 gets a jump on Japan tsunami anniversary
You can visit the Pacific tsunami debris
Japanese tsunami debris drifting across the Pacific

This morning on KPCC's "Airtalk with Larry Mantle," fellow Coliseum commissioners City Councilman Bernard Parks and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky pointedly disagreed with each other over the panel's closed-door negotiations with USC to take over the historic stadium. It threatened to get fun when Yaroslavsky brought up the money that Parks allegedly still owes for July 4 fireworks shows in the Coliseum. Parks denies owing anything.

Sample dialogue: "That's not true, Zev"..."Let me finish, Bernie" Audio link

Stephanie Lazarus, the former LAPD detective who was arrested on the job in 2009, was convicted today in the 1986 killing of Sherri Rae Rasmussen, the wife of a man Lazarus dated for awhile. District Attorney Steve Cooley came to the court for the verdict to be read. Lazarus was arrested in the cold case after her colleagues trailed her, collected a DNA sample and compared it with evidence at the murder scene. The victim's father had long pointed to Lazarus as a suspect. Now convicted of first-degree murder, Lazarus must be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Add LAPD: Chief Charlie Beck, who was the head of detectives when Lazarus was arrested, issued a statement of apology to Rasmussen's family: "To the family of Sherri Rasmussen, I am truly sorry for the loss of your wife, of your daughter. I am also sorry it took us so long to solve this case and bring a measure of justice to this tragedy." LAT