NYT blog: Alex Chilton, the mercurial if influential rock musician, whose work spanned an eclectic gamut from the soul songs of the Box Tops to the multiple incarnations of his pop band Big Star, has died, The Commercial Appeal of Memphis reported. He was 59. The cause of death is believed to have been a heart attack.

Wikipedia entry

Adrienne Crew has posted her latest Angeleno Social Diary, listing some upcoming events of interest. Find it at Native Intelligence. In addition, an event on my calendar:

• Frank Gehry will be interviewed by author Barbara Isenberg on Thursday evening at Santa Monica High School's Barnum Hall, to benefit the school's orchestra program. Cellist Lynn Harrell will also perform.

Also around LA Observed:

• Visiting blogger Ellen Alperstein has a beef with Anthem Blue Cross' new bill.
• Steve Greenberg's also not a fan of Anthem. LA Sketchbook
• Jenny Burman wades into the Downtown Art Walk management controversy.
• Veronique de Turenne sees slutty sex in the orange blossoms.
• Bill Boyarsky calls Mayor Villaraigosa's proposed DWP surcharge an unfair rate increase.

Plus: Mark Lacter's daily news, notes and smart analysis of the financial scene from the L.A. perspective. LA Biz Observed

Thousands of Los Angeles city employees have been targeted for layoffs or had their pay reduced in response to the city's budget crisis. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has taken a voluntary pay cut; so have eight City Council members. But Michael Linder at KABC AM-790 reports that members Richard Alarcon, Bernard Parks, Greig Smith, Tony Cardenas, Herb Wesson, Bill Rosendahl and Paul Krekorian — the new guy — have so far declined to cut their highest-in-the-nation salaries. Parks, of course, also takes home a substantial city pension for his years of employment by the police department. Linder says the subject will be the main topic on Peter Tilden's show at 7:05 a.m. on Thursday.
furlough days.

* Fixed: Yipes, it's Tony Cardenas, not Jose Huizar. The latter and his staff are taking furlough days.

President Obama plans to visit Los Angeles in mid-April and speak at a fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer. The location hasn't yet been disclosed. It will be a joint fundraiser for Boxer and the Democratic National Committee.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca testified before the House subcommittee on Homeland Security today and, before he was done, had accused a Republican congressman of acting "un-American." The dust-up occurred when Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana raised questions about Baca attending ten fundraisers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The congressman called the group radical, and Baca bristled at the implication. KPCC's Kitty Felde was there:

Baca interrupted, saying "and I’ll be there 10 more times."

Baca said CAIR did not support terrorists. "That is my experience, that is my interaction. And if you want to support that, you’re on your own."

Fighting mad, he cited his four decades in law enforcement, his service in the Marines, and his many trips to Israel. He said, "the security of Israel has always been at the forefront of my thinking. And for you to associate me somehow through some circuitous attack on CAIR, is not only inappropriate, it is un-American."

Souder said he didn’t question the sheriff’s patriotism – only his relationship with one group.

"When a member of Congress is that misinformed, you gotta question whether or not they understand what their constitutional obligations are when it comes to public safety," Baca said afterward.

Photo: Kitty Felde / KPCC

Barely a week after telling Tribune newscasters to stop using 119 words and phrases, CEO Randy Michaels has sent Tribune staffers — that takes in the L.A. Times and KTLA — an email reminding everybody that he tries to be a cool boss. No strict dress code, unnecessary rules (ahem) or retaliation for speaking up. Oops—on that last one, Michaels must not know that all anyone can gossip about at the Los Angeles Times this week is the masthead editor exiled from power in part for criticizing the LATExtra experiment. (Which continues to wreak havoc with weekend sports deadlines, as boxing fans learned this past Sunday.) Or that Times employees fear the wrath of Eddy — now more than ever, I'm told — for talking to me. Or for that matter, that the refusal to link to LA Observed posts helps explain why the related links in LATimes.com stories are consistently lame and embarrassing to the paper.

Judging by the reader comments on the recent lizard story, readers apparently also aren't too keen on the paper's lack of basic science expertise. Especially the confusing of entomology — the study of insects — with taxonomy — the classification of plants and animals. And lumping in salamanders as reptiles.

Today's Michaels email is after the jump.

LongBeachReport.com just talked to Heather Swaim at the District Weekly, who confirmed last night's report that the paper is on the verge of closing. She left open hope that something else could come up.

This is a very sad time for me and it looks like we're closing the paper but I am open to anything can happen.

And I love this paper and I have always loved what it meant to the community. I love alternative journalism and the paper has been important to me in what it represents. Long Beach is a tight community and it feels like the paper truly represents that. It was a community service.

All I have left to say for today, because there's so much for me to do...is that I love the people that I work. It is [voice catches, long pause] it's just a really talented group of people who I've loved working with, and if the paper closes I will miss them dearly.

LB Post.com is reporting an email from editor-in-chief Ellen Griley saying the District Weekly is indeed closing. The OC Weekly, which had a close relationship with the Long Beach paper from the start, posts: "Godspeed, friends." Nothing since Monday at the District Weekly's staff blog.

* Post-lunch update: Griley sent an email this afternoon breaking the news to writers and others:

Friends,

It is with deep sadness that I deliver news that you may have already heard: The District is folding. And . . . there's not really much else to say, other than to thank you—SO MUCH—for working with me these past few years. It's been an honor. We made quite a beautiful baby.

Last month's pretty funny and creative spoof of Jeffrey Deitch's selection to run MOCA (with some great insider references to the L.A. arts scene and digs at Eli Broad's power) went unclaimed for awhile. But now LA Weekly senior features editor Tom Christie has come forward to claim his due accolades, posting at Facebook what some suspected: "36,229 views later, what the hell: I confess." As I advised when I first posted it up in the video box, if you can't laugh at anything Hitlerian, don't go there.

Today's observation du jour regarding Angels Flight: the Downtown funicular, in a scene evoking its authentic pre-1969 setting, makes an appearance in a You Tube video for the End Times album by the band EELS. Angels Flight shows up right around 1:47 (and again later in a mystery location.) (The film is by Norwood Cheek.)

Previously on LA Observed:
Back to 1930s Los Angeles: "Angel's Flight"
One more interpretation of Angels Flight

Double praise in the L.A. Times today from friends of Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries for his new memoir, "Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion." Op-Ed columnist Tim Rutten writes that he sat down to read the book with a friend's trepidation for what awaits. But he concludes "I got up glowing with the exhilaration that contact with first-rate literature confers. 'Tattoos on the Heart' is destined to become a classic of both urban reportage and contemporary spirituality." In Calendar, Celeste Fremon also gets personal:

Boyle was already not writing his book when I met him in the fall of 1990. I'd heard that a Jesuit priest operated some sort of gang ministry out of a small Catholic church located east of the Los Angeles River between the public housing projects of Pico Gardens and Aliso Village....

there was nothing particular to suggest that the smart, Hancock Park-raised boy with the triple master's degrees (masters of divinity, of sacred theology and of English) would find himself radicalized by a year among the poor of Bolivia and come home to run the nation's best-known gang intervention program, surrogate-fathering the kids whom most of the rest of the culture wanted to lock up and forget.

[skip]

At last count, he's buried 168 young men and women whom he's surrogate-fathered. Burying kids you know causes a psychic rending. Over the years, I have watched the deaths take pieces out of Boyle. But here's the thing: his is a heart that regenerates, miraculously so.

Fremon is the author of "G-Dog and the Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles," published in 1995. Boyle is back east this week for readings.