Thursday, June 21, 2007
Three great stories in one newspaper!
Took a quick break from my workday schedule to finally pick the LA Times up off my front doorstep today. Expected to see the normal melange of stories about Iraq, the clusterf&*k for the White House in 2008, and the like.
Sure, that's all in there, but looky here! There's some good stuff in this paper today. Take that, Tribune Company! Even your short-sighted dismantling of the most-read paper on the West Coast can't stop the occasional fascinating piece from trickling through the cracks.
First, there's this:
Turns out that one of the University of California campuses not too far from my home (the one in Riverside) has the world's foremost science fiction library, to which I can only say, "Kick Ass!"
I'm not much of a sci fi fan, but as a serious geek-minded guy, this is pretty cool. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that someday, when Our Woman in LA and I have little Wielands, I'm hoping that one will go to UC-Riverside. Not only will it save us some serious money (and it's not like UC schools are any slouch), but also I'll have a better than average excuse for ditching a campus tour to check out this part of the library. I'm just saying.
This, of course, will never work out. The wife and I both attended fairly expensive private universities, so appealing to any future children with the "Save your folks some dough and let Dad go see the sci fi books" strategy . . . well, it's never going to work.
Then there's this:
That's a fantastic photo of poor schlep Sergio Zavala, a traffic scofflaw who got one too many speeding and parking tix. Love it.
Finally there are these stories:
The Times has been covering this the last few weeks. L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, it seems, has been doing his best to out-corrupt the folks back in Our Man in LA's former home of Cook County. He's an amateur, sure. Nobody's gotten whacked. There's no reference to the Outfit or "trucking firms from Bridgeport."
Nope. It's about parking and cars and baby-sitting, stuff like that.
First, we learned that Delgadillo's wife used one of the GMC Yukons they reserve for him - just to run some errands. And then she wrecked it. And then it turned out that she didn't have insurance (required by law in California).
Then it turned out that neither of them actually had insurance for a couple of years. Now today, we have reports of Rocky asking his staff to baby sit, to get his dry cleaning, and take his kids on field trips to local museums. LA Times columnist Steve Lopez has offered to be official driver for the Delgadillos (he has insurance), and you should be able to find that invitation pretty easily at latimes.com.
Anyway, it's no Operation Silver Shovel, I'll grant you, but we're new at this big city evil stuff out here. You can read about Rocky and his peccadillos at the link above. Fun stuff.
Sure, that's all in there, but looky here! There's some good stuff in this paper today. Take that, Tribune Company! Even your short-sighted dismantling of the most-read paper on the West Coast can't stop the occasional fascinating piece from trickling through the cracks.
First, there's this:
Turns out that one of the University of California campuses not too far from my home (the one in Riverside) has the world's foremost science fiction library, to which I can only say, "Kick Ass!"
I'm not much of a sci fi fan, but as a serious geek-minded guy, this is pretty cool. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that someday, when Our Woman in LA and I have little Wielands, I'm hoping that one will go to UC-Riverside. Not only will it save us some serious money (and it's not like UC schools are any slouch), but also I'll have a better than average excuse for ditching a campus tour to check out this part of the library. I'm just saying.
This, of course, will never work out. The wife and I both attended fairly expensive private universities, so appealing to any future children with the "Save your folks some dough and let Dad go see the sci fi books" strategy . . . well, it's never going to work.
Then there's this:
That's a fantastic photo of poor schlep Sergio Zavala, a traffic scofflaw who got one too many speeding and parking tix. Love it.
Finally there are these stories:
The Times has been covering this the last few weeks. L.A. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, it seems, has been doing his best to out-corrupt the folks back in Our Man in LA's former home of Cook County. He's an amateur, sure. Nobody's gotten whacked. There's no reference to the Outfit or "trucking firms from Bridgeport."
Nope. It's about parking and cars and baby-sitting, stuff like that.
First, we learned that Delgadillo's wife used one of the GMC Yukons they reserve for him - just to run some errands. And then she wrecked it. And then it turned out that she didn't have insurance (required by law in California).
Then it turned out that neither of them actually had insurance for a couple of years. Now today, we have reports of Rocky asking his staff to baby sit, to get his dry cleaning, and take his kids on field trips to local museums. LA Times columnist Steve Lopez has offered to be official driver for the Delgadillos (he has insurance), and you should be able to find that invitation pretty easily at latimes.com.
Anyway, it's no Operation Silver Shovel, I'll grant you, but we're new at this big city evil stuff out here. You can read about Rocky and his peccadillos at the link above. Fun stuff.
