LAO: Fighting Signs with Signs

My latest post from LA Observed's Native Intelligence:

No stopping …
No Parking …
Loading Only …
Street Cleaning …
Permits Exempt …
Sundays and Holidays Exempt …
Anti-Gridlock Zone …

Los Angelenos learn the meaning of these terms the way most people acquire knowledge, by paying tuition, albeit in the form of parking citations and fines. Those who say we in LA don't read have obviously never parallel parked on our streets, where we not only read, but debate the subtext and hidden meanings intended by the author. Is "stopping" the same as parking, or something permanent? Is "Flag Day" a holiday? What exactly qualifies as "loading?" And, can Hondas park wherever in Beverly HIlls, or is that particular privilege afforded only to late-model Jaguars and UPS vans?

Confusing as it can be, there's now one more lesson -- a sign that regulates unregulated signage -- the course materials for which have been posted at various locations throughout the city, most recently along Olympic Boulevard on the Westside ...

Read the rest at LA Observed's Native Intelligence

Click to e-mail TJ Sullivan in LA

LAO: Q&A with Larry McMurtry

My fellow Native Intelligence blogger Deanne Stillman at LA Observed posted an insightful Q&A with Larry McMurtry this past week.

It begins with an unfortunate truth, McMurtry's take on the short life and quick death of cowboy culture in America:

... I don't consider us a cowboy culture. We're a suburban culture. The cowboy survives as an image because it's an image of independence. In reality, that independence only survived for about twenty years. The cowboy myth comes out of the trail drives. Once the railroads came into existence, there was no need for cowboys to do cattle drives. Since then, they've been workmen--hired hands in a rural trade, and have become more and more marginal.

Read the entire Q&A conducted by Deanne Stillman at Native Intelligence.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

LAO: Writing, And Righting, A Wrong

My latest post from LA Observed's Native Intelligence:

As noted on the LAO Blog, Los Angeles Times Calendar TV Critic Mary McNamara made one of those mistakes the other day, the kind that all writers dread, yet eagerly ridicule when a colleague falls prey.

Readers can be almost as vicious.

Nothing else is like this. Make a mistake in the day-to-day course of most any other profession and, at worst, a few dozen people become aware of it. But do so in a newspaper and … you quickly learn to understand why reporters can come off as cocky. If they didn't keep their confidence (some might say "egos") pumped up, they'd deflate daily at their desks.

The initial responses of writers vary, though most I've known jump right to denial and do all they can to prove the mistake is no mistake. Once the error is verified as an error, the next step is often to blame the copy desk: If they didn't inject that nonsense, then why in God's name didn't they catch it? The initial responses of writers vary, though most I've known jump right to denial and do all they can to prove the mistake is no mistake. Once the error is verified as an error, the next step is often to blame the copy desk: If they didn't inject that nonsense, then why in God's name didn't they catch it? A writer I knew in the late '80s became notorious for blaming his every gaffe on his computer, as though that boxy cyclops of a Mac had achieved consciousness and was determined to get him terminated.

But not Ms. McNamara.

When next I teach a journalism course, I will distribute copies of her LAT Show Tracker blog entry from yesterday (04/21/2008) -- A TV critic's walk of shame -- and explain that this is how to do the right thing, and do it with class. Before there was an Internet, newspapers never did anything like this. Here's an excerpt:

If you want to know if anyone is reading your stories, make sure you insert a mistake about George Washington.

Oh, if only I could claim it was all a ploy by Calendar editors to gauge readership. But when I wrote in Saturday's story about HBO that George Washington stepped down from the presidency after serving only one term, it was just a stupid, blind error, the sort that leaves you smiting your forehead, literally and repeatedly, the moment it is pointed out to you.

[Snip] ... we entertainment writers are held just as accountable for flubbed historical references as any other journalist. The correction runs today online and in tomorrow's print edition, and I will try to comfort myself with the knowledge that a good, strong dose of humility is always good for the soul. Especially the soul of a critic.

Click to e-mail TJ Sullivan in LA

LAO: Ramirez wins again

LA Observed has the lowdown on former LA Times cartoonist Michael Ramirez winning the 2007 Sigma Delta Chi Award, announced today. Ramirez already won a Pulitzer this year. The Sigma Delta Chi Award is the second-oldest national journalism award after the Pulitzer.

Regardless of how you feel about his, erhm, politics, you have to admit, he's a helluva cartoonist.


— TJ Sullivan in LA

Daily Primer

I've read a number of books about writing in the past four years, a list I hesitate to
post in its entirety because some of them aren't worth recommending. My favorites include:

Carolyn See's Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers

Robert McKee's Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting

Laura Whitcomb's and Ann Rittenberg's Your First Novel: A Published Author And a Top Agent Share the Keys to Achieving Your Dream

Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You

John Gardner's On Becoming A Novelist

Among others ...

Somewhere in those books, or perhaps in all of them, was the suggestion of priming the creative pump by reading the work of someone else before writing (taking into account, of course, the theory of "junk in, junk out"). It's something I've practiced most of my writing life, either on instinct, or maybe at the urging of some colleague or professor. So, I thought it might be interesting to start posting a paragraph or so here each morning from whatever I used to prime myself that day.

Today, it was The Pearl, by John Steinbeck:

It was a tiny movement that drew their eyes to the hanging box. Kino and Juana froze in their positions. Down the rope that hung the baby's box from the roof support a scorpion moved slowly. His stinging tail was straight out behind him, but he could whip it up in a flash of time.

Kino's breath whistled in his nostrils and he opened his mouth to stop it. And then the startled look was gone from him and the rigidity from his body. In his mind a new song had come, the Song of Evil, the music of the enemy, of any foe of the family, a savage, secret, dangerous melody, and underneath, the Song of the Family cried plaintively.

— TJ Sullivan in LA

LAO: Miss USA, NASCAR Style

From a new post at LA Observed's Native Intelligence:

NBC has begun promoting its coverage of this year's Miss USA competition — set to be broadcast live Friday from Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas — as though it were a car race in which anyone could crash and burn.

"Anything can happen!"

A commercial* that aired this weekend emphasized the event's unpredictability with a clip of Last year's Miss USA winner, Rachel Smith, as she fell on her rump during the Miss Universe competition. But the centerpiece of the spot was a sound bite from last year's Miss South Carolina, Caitlin Upton [see inset], now infamous for becoming horribly tongue-tied during her Miss Teen USA performance (That's TEEN, as in, like ...

Read the rest at LA Observed's Native Intelligence


— TJ Sullivan in LA