September 2006 Archives

As I gaze upon the list of recent blog posts on the home page at dailynews.com, I find myself saying, "Space for five stories, and all five have something to do with sports, from high school to college and the pros."

Now I love sports as much as the next guy. Well, actually somewhat less than the next guy, but that's another topic, another day. Since there's a lot of sports news happening from Friday through Sunday, and not a whole lot of other things going on (plus, the rest of us have things called "lives"; well, not really, but that's the kind of front we're trying to put up), I've pretty much got nothing for you.

So I post for no other reason than a desire for you, the reader, to have something non-sports-related upon which to gaze. Am I saying anything other than that? No, I am not, because I've really got nothing.

OK. I've broken down. Let's talk Oaks Christian. I finally drove by the place when we were headed to Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark. Yeah, Oaks Christian (does anybody call them "OC" for short? I'm gonna start) has been steamrolling over every other high school football team in town. And all, apparently, on the strength of running back Marc Tyler. I heard he turned down UCLA and Notre Dame to commit to USC. Shouldn't he try to bring another team to college glory and not get an easy ride with powerhouse 'SC, where he doesn't have the same chance of being the team's star?

What do I know? My name's not Gittleson.

And how did Oaks Christian (or as I like to call it, OC), which is obviously a private, Christian school in Thousand Oaks, get such a good team, anyway? Is it prayer, recruiting, or a combination thereof?

The problem is that all the stories about high school football assume the reader knows what's going on. This reader doesn't. I need a bigtime backgrounder on OC.

I did see a Daily News story about one of the city's top high-school players. He doesn't play for OC. He's 5-foot-7, 170 pounds. So all I needed to do in high school was pack on 40 extra pounds, stay my same height, and develop a tolerance for getting slammed to the ground? Why didn't anybody tell me?

Back to Dailynews.com. All I wanted to do was get my blog listed on the home page. And the only way to do that is be one of the last five blogs to post. So I've done that, pondered high school football, and now I take my leave.

We've been unable to post for most of the day to due to some kind of trouble somewhere in MediaNews Group land. Denver. That's where it all happens, or doesn't.

It all seems to be working now. In the interim, I did my thing over at 2,000 Days in the Valley, which preceded Come on Feel the Nuys and still exists for the random bits.

I give you a tease in the form of a Nietzschian "Family Circus," from Los Anjealous' The Nietzsche Family Circus.

Whenever we go to Santa Barbara, we park right behind the Santa Barbara News-Press building, and I've always wondered what kind of people work there, given it serves one of the country's most-expensive cities to live in.

Now that the News-Press is in turmoil, people who once worked there are trickling over here, according to Editor & Publisher (Santa Barbara News-Press' Staffers Who Quit Head to L.A. Daily News).

Now I'll get the chance to ask Kim Burnell and George Foulsham that eternal question: What's the deal with Santa Barbara and not being up to your neck in money? For sure, you don't want to piss off Rob Lowe. (Cue "St. Elmo's Fire" theme.)

And on the 1,666,954,979,925th day, God created the Dishmaster.

On Sunday, however, I -- once again -- rebuilt it. (Insert Steve Austin metaphor).

I had to pull the entire thing just to get the plastic washer thingy out on the hot-water side. Last time I did this, I also couldn't get it out, but Ilene figured that if I hit it from behind (insert non-Steve Austin metaphor), it would pop right out. Worked both times.

I got a look at the valve seats, and they were more than shot. I had already gotten new ones (as with all Dishmaster parts, they must be Dishmaster brand -- nothing else fits). But there was nowhere for the valve-seat wrench to grab onto (I have a special tapered wrench -- gets troublesome valve seats out easier than the square-ended wrenches). Turns out you have to remove the valve seats from behind (insert appropriate joke). It's notched back there, but the valve-seat wrench still wouldn't grab.

So Ilene looks and says, "Try a screwdriver." I'll admit, I was thirsty, but she mean the tool, not the cocktail. So I did, and wouldn't you know it, a standard slotted screwdriver fit right in there, and I pulled the two valve seats. The new ones go in with a supplied allen wrench -- thank God and the Dishmaster company.

(I always recommend replacing valve seats when rebuilding a faucet -- makes the washers last much longer.)

I got the whole thing back together, and the leaking from the spout and the hot and cold valves themselves stopped.

But it still leaked from the joint where the spout turns. I've rebuilt it once before, and I had the kit ready to do it again. I took the spout off, but in the interest of eating dinner, put it back on. I tightened it a bit (you need to leave a little play so the thing turns -- kitchen faucets are a bit more complex than their bathroom bretheren).

Still leaked.

But later I gave it a tweak the other way, loosening a bit, and the leak stopped.

The ultimate test: Hooking up the portable dishwasher. Under dishwasher pressure, lesser faucets will leak like rusty buckets, but the Dishmaster held.

Previously: Do you have a Dishmaster?

Why, oh why did I list Thomas Hobbes' "Leviathan" as one of the books I was supposed to know something about for my oral exam at UC Santa Cruz? (Relax, hombres, that was back in 1988. We banged two rocks together to make fire, it was that long ago.)

The point: More entries. Shorter. Quicker. (Better. Faster. Stronger.)

I can't bring myself to actually read The Other Style Council, the L.A. Weekly copy editors' blog. But I just want you to know it's there. I'm OK with nerding it out (even copy editors can invent their own phraseology, especially when it's me) over things that I'm not doing day in, day out. But copy-editing? (Notice that copy-editing is hyphenated, but copy editor ain't -- and yes, I do mean to say ain't because I want to piss you off). I do it all day and don't need to get in a circle jerk over it.

Question: Are the Daily News' copy editors cool enough to have their own blog?

I leave the question unanswered -- to ponder, as it were.

You gotta love L.A. City Nerd. He's anonymous but knows all about the innerworkings of city government. Zach Behrens of In the Oaks interviews him on Laist, which has been turning up the heat -- and turning once again into a daily must-see L.A. blog.

Here's the Nerd on Neighborhood Councils:

I do believe in the Neighborhood Council System. I believe it has brought new people together in neighborhoods that often lacked a sense of community. Some of my favorite communities have real community voices again because of the NC system: Palms, Reseda, Pico-Union, etc. The one thing that hinders them is that so many try to be mini City Councils instead of unique neighborhood councils that are truly responding and acting to their immediate communities. The most successful are the ones that don't get mired in minutia and really just focus on community issues and how to solve them.

Among other things, the Nerd busts the city's Web site for stinking and gives a quick history on how he found his space in the blogging world.

A few months, back, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa came in for two editorial board meetings in what seemed to be as many weeks. I know this because the path for political candidates through the Daily News newsroom goes literally (if not figuratively) right past my desk.

The second time through, I said something like, "See you next week." The mayor had some kind of snappy comeback -- he's a snappy-comeback kind of guy, but I'm sorry to say it eludes me at the moment. At least he had a comeback (and his goons didn't tackle me -- trust me, they all have goons, but Arnold's are bigger).

Since then, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been here but didn't come upstairs, and yesterday I saw former Gov. Jerry Brown going up the stairway with an entourage of one. Him and one other person, to be exact. That's traveling light. Kudos to the current Oakland mayor and state attorney general candidate.

But I miss Antonio. Where you been, bro?

I want it. The Orange Line is great, but what I really want is Antonio Villaraigosa's Subway to the Sea. Oh, and I also want the Sepulveda Pass monorail. This city needs a compelling reason not to drive on the 405. If I can get from Van Nuys to Santa Monica without a car or a 3-hour multiple-bus odyssey, we, as a community, will have arrived.

There are goats in Van Nuys. Cute little goats. Our neighbor is keeping them until her son is ready to bring them to his rural property to be living, breathing lawn mowers. They'll eat anything. They've been muching on leaves and other stuff in their custom-built goat pen. In Van Nuys, I add.

There used to be a small vegetable garden behind the gate, but now it's these two goats. One of them is, indeed, named Billy. I can't remember the other one's name. And they like to be pet like dogs. But they have horns.

So if anybody tells you Van Nuys, ain't country, tell them we've got goats. Britney Spears should be buying a house here any minute.

And if that's not enough, how many neighbors do you know a) own a backhoe? (or is it a skip loader?) and b) park it in front of their house for months at a time?

Remember when I wrote about the deafening sillence from the city's Neighborhood Councils, specifically the Van Nuys NC?

It turns out the city of Los Angeles, and the wonderful thing called the Internet, are here to help. Just go to the Early Notification System page for Neighborhood Councils and start your e-mail subscription. Here's how it works:

Listed below are the certified Neighborhoods Councils that have elected governing boards and which are holding formal meetings that require the posting of agendas. Each of these certified Neighborhood Councils have been offered an opportunity to post its agenda on the Early Notification System so that people may subscribe and have them delivered automatically to their e-mail systems. One-by-one, certified Neighborhood Councils will decide whether or not to become part of this unique system. View a list of participating certified Neighborhood Councils. If a certified Neighborhood Council is not yet participating, feel free to subscribe now, and its agendas will be sent to you if the Neighborhood Council decides to make its agendas available.

"Decides to make it available"? What the hell is that? It's a public meeting, public money, and public-frickin'-office, so the agendas should ALL be there. No "decision" needed. It should be there. End of story.

I just subscribed to 25 of them. Yes 25, because I'm here for you. I'll report back.

Shouldn't all of these agendas be on the Internet, going way back, for us to peruse? Yes. Are they there? No. As always, the city's Neighborhood Empowerment Web page can sort of, kind of help

My favorite is the events calendar that's completely empty. Yeah ...

There's trouble at the Los Angeles Times. Perhaps you've heard about it? It's all over the news, even in the Times' own pages. The Chicago Tribune, NPR, even the New York Times have weighed in.

Long story short: It's not looking so cozy in the Velvet Coffin these days.

There's a war going on between corporate owners Tribune -- personified by CEO Dennis FitzSimons -- and the Times itself, as represented by editor Dean Baquet and publisher Jeff Johnson, who are openly refusing to make the 14 percent staff cut demanded by the parent company. That would make a 33 percent cut in editorial staff since Tribune assumed ownership of the Times. That's a lot of people.

While I'm following this pretty closely, I defer to my better in this manner, Kevin Roderick, for a fuller report.

I heard the same NPR report last night, and while Kevin mentions that the Times brings in 20 percent margins, it's the 30 percent that the Chicago Tribune drags in that FitzSimons and company are expecting out of the Times.

Nobody tells me how much the formerly-Tribune-owned Daily News makes, or doesn't, for that matter. So there I can't compare.

It's really apples and oranges, pitting the DN vs. the LAT. Maybe it's apples and burritos -- who the hell knows? Some things we do better, some they. Most we do differently. We are in no way swimming up to our necks in the kind of money that fuels the Los Angeles Times -- that I can tell you with complete and total confidence.

Being in this very business, in this very city, I can't scream bloody murder over what's going on at the Times. Nobody over there ever complained about the pay or the workload.

Back when I was city editor of the Glendale News-Press, shortly after the Times bought the small, scrappy paper (for reasons I still can't fathom), I was summoned to a meeting downtown and got inside what used to be called Times Mirror Square. It's pretty f'n sweet. Marble floors, lots of guys in suits. Pretty quiet in there.

I tell everybody who'll listen that after I was laid off at Electronic Media (now TV Week) after a wild two-year ride, and the Daily News hired me back, I was pretty glad to see the same dirty carpet, crusty telephones and seepy restrooms.

There are petitions going around the Times newsroom in support of Baquet and Johnson. L.A.'s various and sundry billionaires are all begging to buy the Times (no word yet from Santa Barbara's Wendy McCaw, though). What do the people think? I mean the readers who aren't billionaires.

We can talk about the particulars of the Velvet Coffin, the greed of the Chandlers and the cutthroattery of Tribune all day. But at the end of that day, it's all about what lands at the end of your driveway at 5:30 a.m., give or take. That's where my eye is. For both the Times and Daily News.

Most of the homes in my Van Nuys neighborhood that haven't undergone extensive kitchen remodeling are cursed with a wall-mounted faucet with 8-inch centers. That means out of the thousands of kitchen faucets available, approximately four will fit in my kitchen.

Ours came with the Dishmaster, which I had never heard of until we moved in.

I've heard of it plenty since then. Repairing the thing requires specialized parts available at fewer and fewer places. Home Depot sells the faucets but not the parts. The great Snyder-Diamond in Van Nuys still has them. The also-great Franklin's Hardware in Woodland Hills is running out of parts -- whatever they've got in a dusty box behind the counter, you can buy.

Lately I've been getting my parts from OSH. Nothing like $9 to replace the washers (that's them at right). And rebuilding the center section -- ours is leaking there, AGAIN -- runs about $19 for the parts. I know, I should probably get a new Dishmaster and at least start from there, but those damn things run $150. Yeah, they have a hose that squirts water (mixed with special dish soap, if you're so inclined), but really -- can't they retail the thing for $100 -- it doesn't even have ceramic valves, meaning it needs to be rebuilt about once a year. With those special washer assemblies.

A new company acquired the Dishmaster brand recently -- Silverstream LLC. Can't they make a totally new Dishmaster with ceramic valves and a housing that isn't ... plastic? One could always dream. Meanwhile, there's a $79 faucet from OSH -- no fancy hose, but with 8-inch centers -- that's calling my name.

Will I listen?

First I'll try to fix the Dishmaster one more time. After all, we've got a history together, know what I'm sayin'?

I just yesterday saw the Orange Line station being built at Canoga Avenue, and now there's talk of extending the line north to Chatsworth.

Sounds like a good idea to me. For one thing, it would get people a whole lot closer to CSUN (albeit dumping them a bit far west) a whole lot quicker. And it would give people taking the Metrolink train to the Chatsworth station a way of getting into Warner Center and the rest of the Valley proper.

Target date for completion: 2012. The downside: It would mean displacing 36 businesses leasing MTA land.

The story by Rachel Uranga and Sue Doyle does point out that there's greater need for a busway along Van Nuys Boulevard, adding the following:

"The idea is that this is the first in a series of improvements," said Richard Katz, a mayoral appointee to the MTA board. "It's not the end-all or the be-all."

I hope this doesn't stop the MTA from extending the Orange Line from Canoga Avenue to Owensmouth Avenue, somewhere between Vanowen Street and Victory Boulevard -- if it doesn't go to the Westfield Topanga mall, what good is it, anyway?

Tired of waiting for the candles to burn on Hanukkah? Quicken it up with the matchstick menorah. Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.

I've already been sloggin' with the bloggin' this morning: Check me on Paris Hilton:

... since when is it news that Paris Hilton drives like crap? Well, she blew a .08 on the breathalyzer -- just kissing the limit. As America's greatest legal mind once said (and I do mean Dr. Phil), "That dog won't hunt."

And if your thoughts turn from DUIs to CPUs (everybody needs a hobby), read about my computing exploits on Macs and PCs.

How's that for a rough transition?

And for those of you who really love technology, it may take a village to raise a child, but it took Popular Science magazine in 1940 to give us the three-hole punch. (Thanks to BoingBoing for the tip from one of my very favorite blast-from-the-technological-past blogs, Modern Mechanix.