The L.A. Times is A Damn Good Paper..So There.

So Kurt Anderson thinks the LA Times is irrelevant in its own city? What garbage. So he polls a few of his New York snob friends to determine that the LA Times is meagerly read by the educated class? And this is what passes for reporting? First of all, you need to live in a city in order to determine whether that city's paper is worthwhile or not. I'm wondering how assiduous Anderson's LA Times' reading might be. LA Times-bashing is becoming one of those odious West L.A. cliches; all of those virtuous liberals who are so proud of the fact that they only read the New York Times and hang on Frank Rich's every word. Do these folks even know who George Skelton is, and that he writes the best column on local politics in the city -- in the LA Times? The problem with most New York transplants is that they really don't give a shit what happens in this city, so their denial of the LA Times is justified. This is just an indication of their willful myopia and blinkered cultural outlook. I love both papers (I write for both of them, as well) and if you read them both daily, you find that they compliment each other quite nicely.

Please folks - ragging on the Times is not going to make anything better.

Lyons Without Claws

Yes! And it counts! Fox finally came to their senses and fired that racist moron Steve Lyons after he made one final thoughtless remark on the air. And better yet, they have replaced him with the superb Angels color man Jose Mota,who is everything that Lyons ain't - smart, insightful, classy. So it turns out Fox, whose coverage of the baseball playoffs is otherwise deplorably thoughtless and low-rent, does have a little horse sense after all. But it's just a good start - if you're going to pre-empt your entire Fall season launch for baseball, for Christ sake, compel your viewers to actually watch. Fox makes zilcho effort to engage casual fans, and that's one of the reasons why the ratings have been to sucky as of late. But dumping Lyons? A very good start.

Spiral, with Lined Pages

Among the many stratagems I have for avoiding work - and there are too many to list here - perhaps my favorite meaningless pastime is shopping for journals. I love blank journals almost as much as those literary quarterlies I was gushing about earlier. The pristine journal is a kind of promise, a mortgage on future writing. If I'm bogged down in my own bullshit, and can't seem to get any decent ideas, I convince myself that what I need is a nice, clean journal to get my mojo going. There are so many cool ones out there - the hipster diaries they market to teenagers are my favorite, with their brash graphic designs that connote nothing but associative down-with-it, but there's also those amazing Moleskine books - shit, I have three of those sitting here at the minute. Then I like to go to Target and buy some of the stuff they market as back-to-school-with-cool. For a buck or two, I am styling for my stylus, big time.

They're all sitting here, neatly piled up, the spines uniform and flush. Maybe I should write something in them. Oh wait, Sportscenter's coming on....

A-Rod Should be an Angel

Nothing warms the cockles of a Yankee hater like the aftermath of a thorough post-season drubbing, when all of the NY tabloids are finger-pointing, the team dissembles, Steinbrenner seethes and the second-guessing ensues for four months. I for one have the solution to their problems - talk A-Rod into going to the Angels. I despise A-Rod as a Yankee - I would love him to be an Angel. Away from the annoying glare, he would thrive. I mean, A-Rod and Vlady in the same line-up, with that pitching staff? Sit down, everybody!! Anaheim isn't even L.A., for Christ sakes - do you think A-Rod could handle the scrutiny of the O.C. Register? I think so. So welcome, A-Rod, to the next great Angels era. The weather is fine.

Dead Sticker Office

I had my 'Boys of Summer' moment yesterday. My 10-year-old daughter was rifling thought what remains of my vinyl collection when she came across The Grateful Deads' 1970 double-live album. Actually, she could have cared less about the album - she just moved it to get to the techno 12 inches. But imagine my surprise when a skull-and-roses dead sticker popped out of the album, intact and ready to be stuck?

Now, I have owned this album for almost as long as it's been in print - I must have popped the discs out of their inner sleeves many hundreds of times - and yet, there it was, my "Dead Head Sticker on A Cadillac." I snatched it up and wondered what to do with it - could I verify its provenance if I put it up on eBay? Would I look like some doofus Iowa State undergrad with a dead head sticker on my iPod? (Can I think of another product whose first letter is lower-case?)

In the end, I just decided to shove it in the ole bottom drawer. Don Henley was right - you can never look back.