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Another Fein Mess
AF Stone’s Monthly
Jan -Feb. 2017
These Are The Times Of LA
A dozen, more, stories about Oakland warehouse fire, blame pointed, other cities now cracking down, Monday morning quarterbacking.
12 -3 Anniversaries of tragedies are our daily meat. “The San Bernardino shootings remembered” is the lede story in California. Yeah, good times.
12-6 Obit: Slain professor had many achievements, benevolent nature. So why didn’t Rosanna Xia write about him earlier!
12-8 Justin Bieber article. Do you think Mikael Wood will consider him seriously? Cannot, will not, peers peering.
That Bieber is a “polarizing singer” (????) with a “manufactured sound” is enough to deflect suspected boosterism.
12-11 Quadrenate (writer, producer, actor; book-writer too) Mark Montgomery, writing about Harold Russell, the still-around handless guy from the 1947 “Best Years Of Our Lives,” confides, re-viewing the film, that he, earlier, didn’t fully appreciate the film because of his “inexperience” (in what?) but now digs its “levels of complexity.” Who asked?
“In the midst of a whirlwind” press tour, an actress “stopped for breakfast tea” with a Times reporter, not just to plug a film …
Roger Ailes “harmed” a woman’s career, the woman said. Then Stephen Battaglio rehashed previous accusers’ stories. Ailes’ denial is given a half-sentence. The model of “even reporting” is soooooo dead …
Barbara Isenberg notes that a musical star, as a child, belted songs to her parents in a pink tutu - then reveals “she has come a long way” from that. Surprise!
12-12 Six months after the Orlando shooting a half-page rehash, featuring a guy who was shot but not kilt. The Nation’s only news.
Same ish, people in Oakland still reliving that warehouse fire - lede story of California section. Hey Joe, dig the sadness.
NO DATE ON PAGE Business Beat. A Trump appointee played (sat in) with the James Gang a couple of times.
He is not featured in the color pic, but it’s a picture.
12-15 When a Cosby defense attorney pointed out that all the accusers have the same lawyer, Steven Zeitchek hails Gloria Allred's stoicness.
Yes, she is modest - in upside-down world.
12-16 Biggest “State” news is that someone left his dog with a tumor at an animal hospital and left. Animal cruelty? No, didn’t wait for the bill!
Rick Anderson. Special report. “Washington gunman” (Sept 23) could have killed more if he had more weapons. Gosh.
12-18 Great time and effort was spent to make a double-truck color-photo “scrapbook” of everyone killed in the Oakland warehouse tragedy. Maudlin, craven.
12-19 Zsa Zsa died. Hed “Actress wed until she found love” is so cracked even the diamond-draped decedent would laugh.
12-20 The Nation, 66%-page discussion of North Carolina transgender law. Entire nation’s news this day.
Police ex-Chief, and his lawyers, march into court. One-third page color photo, for your locker, dorm room or cell.
Funny to see Mikael Wood twist in the wind (payola?) justifying Joan Baez’s upcoming entry into the R&R Hall of Blame.
12-21 Hed on huge explosion at fireworks factory avers “death toll expected to increase.” News would be if it decreased.
Three reporters combine to write “It was unclear” whether an accused has a lawyer. What about “We, together, don't know”?
12-23 In a child murder piece, must the twee “uptick” be used regarding such dire killings, Nicole Santacruz?
Hed declares robber is an “aspiring poker player.” He robbed guests at a casino. He’s a robber!
Viriginia Rocha reports that OD’d woman was found “next to her cellphone, iPad, clothes, pillows and toys.” Huh?
Police “think” the guy who grabbed that bag of gold flakes from a truck in New York “is hiding in LA” but “it” is unsure if he has the booty.
A/k/a nobody knows nuthin'.
Mark Olsen cites Ben Affleck’s “grimy” directorial debut. Dirt on the lens?
“The storytelling has an episodic quality (so?) as if one were binge-watching (not just watching?) some new television series rather than a single cohesive narrative.” Sounds like an architecture review.
12-27 Lily-gilding. An astronomer died. Did great work. She also was “proud that all her children earned doctorates” - according to her children. Couldn't she maybe dislike one of them?
Laura Nelson, re naming subway stops, wrote that a decision “has raised some eye brows among skeptics.” Well, how hard is it to make skeptics arch their brows? And who are the “Others” who “wondered”? (Not the Dion song.)
12-28 Hed on Carrie Fisher feature jump - was “Author, actor, activist, heroine.” Heroine? I pored over the obit, no mention of her running into a burning building to save a child, etc.
A guy killed the pit bull that was killing his poodle. In Riverside. Front page, California news.
Doyle McManus’s Op-Ed apology that he picked the wrong presidential candidate. He believes you are as shocked as he is.
12-30 Tonstant weader thwow up. Geoffrey Mohan lede: “For food shoppers, 2016 was a back-to-the-future experience.”
Debbie Debbie Debbie.
12-31 Atop the tonnage of Debbie Reynolds sendoffs, “An Appreciation” by Mark Olsen tells us she is remembered best (by everyone) for appearing in ‘Singing In The Rain,’ “a shining exemplar of Hollywood at its best.” Don’t get fancy. “Example” is most right; “exemplar” is, or was, a pattern, to be followed. Or did he mean more rain musicals.
NO DATE: The governor’s dog died. Skippy? Fido? No, Sutter Brown. The “charismatic corgi” was a “media sensation.” The rest of us, eh.
1-12 The Styles article hed,“Still a Maverick After All These Years” is beyond cliche into some nether region we want never to find, followed in the subhed by ‘innovative septugenerian.”
1-3 Bob Lloyd’s “roast” of the Rose Bowl Parade’s tv coverage was - well, what’s the opposite of gilding the lily? Making fun of the mawkishness of this corny old tradition is both riskless and trite.
David Sax, Editorial page, abashedly equates some people’s fascination with vinyl with his own nuanced appreciation of artisanal bread.
1-4 Stephen Battaglio tackles the news that a newsreader has switched tv stations. Will the quality of news improve at NBC? Only the ratings?
1-5 Charlie Manson sadness; “Old age is setting in” says his grandson. Oh, gosh, we love him so, as such daily reports imply.
Paige St. John milks the Oakland warehouse fire, front page of California. The disaster that keeps on giving.
1-13 Why fill The Nation page with a half-page pickup about police reform in Baltimore? (I’ll bet the LATimes owns the Baltimore Sun, or vice versa.)
1-15 The hed over a half-page jump about a movie is headlined “‘Monster Trucks’ is poised to flop.’” (Front page: “WILL ‘TRUCKS’ BE A WRECK?’)
Who the hell is Ryan Faughnder to hurl crap at such length? And why banner it?
If it lacks branding and an “exhibitor relations analyst” has doubts, ignore it. Crits love to bray..
New York, New YAWK Times
12-4 It’s who you know. Times’ Helen Stapinksi found a guy who makes CDs (formerly tapes) of Xmas music, which he sends to friends every year. Out of the thousands who do this, he’s the king - he has a 3000 albums! A thousand CDs! (Who doesn’t?) - because she knows him.
12-8 I know it’s how it’s done, but why is an art broker’s move to another gallery in The Arts? It should be in Commerce. “Christie’s Maestro,” indeed, overseeing transfer of money from one non-artist to another.
12-10 That Wells Fargo sold phony insurance (Stacy Cowley and Matthew Goldstein) on top of their other thieveries should make not anyone but everyone carry torches to their banks, like the prescient kids in Isla Vista did in 1970.
12-11 Cheap irony. Corinna de Fonseca-Wollheim sees huge irony, not coincidence, in a gay-themed NY play’s mid-June Cincinnati debut nearly (by a few days) coinciding with the Orlando gay-club killings. A reach too far, Corny.
Teddy Wayne uses the chiseled “from/to” to assert that tv shows shot around Harvard span “every genre from love stories to law-school comedies.” What genres, exactly, fall in between? “Oh, it’s just a cliche.”
12-12 How can anyone take the art world seriously. Scott Rayburn’s heart palpitates about a drawing that “is believed to be” by da Vinci. So saying, that same heart will collapse in disregard if it’s not Lenny’s. Documentation, that’s the name of the game, and each generation plays the same
12-21 Julia Moskin piece about a joint that makes flan, “The Way Flan Used to Be,” rails at people who do it wrongly. What people? Straw people.
A drama teacher paid for a name to be added - the wife - to a 19th century headstone. Writer Corey Kilgannon titters to tell us that among his students have been “the likes of” (imitators?) Jill Clayburgh and the guy from “Hamilton.” This is how you elevate teachers?
1-1-17 Dave Itzikoff apes his betters pretending he was fortunate to track down Kaitlin Olson to talk about her new tv project. “In a rare moment of down time” from her tv responsibilities she “spoke by phone” about her charging career. What steps did she take to evade him?
1-2 Unsigned AP story about Chicago 2016 killing total refers to (“reference” is not a verb) “a national dialogue about gun violence” that exists in the minds of self-inflated news kids. Who’s on the pro-violence side? It’s a interfraternal monologue.
1-4 Megan Kelly is charging forward, reading news someplace new: “An Anchor Becomes The News” is so sadly true. John Koblin AND Michael M Grynbaum tackle this behemoth.
Somebody tell Paul Krugman, on the Editorial page, to not use the word “arguably.”
It means “you can disregard this.”
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