With the writer’s strike kicking off today in Hollywood and New York, it got me searching around for other entertainment from alternative distribution.

The LA Times found a not-quite amateur Internet-only TV show, Clark & Michael, starring Michael Cera (aka George Michael Bluth from the late-great Arrested Development), with titles that say it all: “The Internet presents…”

Posting this IMG (thx: AP/DollyMix) makes me feel dirty.

Paris Hilton’s case has moved beyond being just about celebrity.

And today, the country’s major newspapers point out that her jailing (and re-jailing) actually have major legal and social implications for us — especially Angelenos.

This time, there is an even bigger issue than the valid discussion about “two tiers” of justice — celebrity and otherwise — that is always sparked by cases such as these, including O.J. Simpson. In the Paris Hilton case, the debate is even greater because its about judicial authority — and law enforcement’s prerogative.

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The Los Angeles Times, in the sort of local story it can run with, carried a story on the arrest of a wookie-costumed man on Hollywood Boulevard Friday.

Reporters Andrew Blankstein and Bob Pool were lucky enough to be the ones to cover it, and covered exactly as they should, going high up with:

The incident — witnessed by Superman and other impersonators — is the latest clash outside the landmark cinema between visitors and performers dressed as movie and cartoon characters.

… The whole thing has the creators of the “Star Wars” character shaking their heads.

“The street performer doesn’t have any affiliation with Lucasfilm,” said company spokeswoman Lynne Hale. “Nevertheless, we are disappointed that someone dressed as Chewbacca would behave in this way.”

The Sacramento Bee has a good summary of the new talk of a westside extension of the Los Angeles metro system.

The idea has long been intriguing and promising, but because of political manuevering by Rep. Henry Waxman and his Beverly Hills resident-voters, the possibility was killed in the 1980’s when the metro was being constructed.

As the Sacbee story recounts, Waxman’s obstinance is similar to how Georgetown residents, in Washington, D.C., successfully fought the construction of a D.C. Metro stop in their neighborhood, likely because of fears over a rise in crime and a drop in property prices.

Per the Sacbee, “Regardless of the cause, Los Angeles residents have been trying to rebuild their mass transit system since 1980, when they approved a half-cent sales tax for transit.”

Early plans called for a westside subway line that would have likely covered some of the same territory as as a subway to the sea. But some west Los Angeles residents fretted about the influx of outsiders and tried to block the proposed line.

A dramatic 1985 methane gas explosion along the subway’s proposed route did the job for them.

A Ross Dress for Less store employee unwittingly ignited a basement full of the odorless gas, triggering four days of subterranean fires that sent flames shooting through cracks in the street.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, responded with a law prohibiting subway tunneling in the area where methane gas collected, effectively killing any hope of a westside subway line.

But Waxman, and the westside rich, have mostly dropped their opposition these days. So the extension seems like a real possibility. Stay tuned…

(HT: linkz, LA Observed and flickr, hexod.us)

You’d think the Los Angeles Times should win this battle, hands down. It is their backyard after all.

But as a recent Zocalo event revealed, it is actually a horse race as to who has better coverage — and why. Kevin Roderick has a good summary of the talk at LA Observed:

A quartet of Hollywood old hands — Patrick Goldstein and John Horn of the LAT and Sharon Waxman and Laura Holson of the NYT — agreed last night at Zócalo’s event downtown that blogs and the Internet have sped up the entertainment news cycle, that the New Yorkers won the Pellicano story and that The Envelope and other naked grabs for Oscar ads are an unfortunate trend.

One thing I’d note is that Goldstein, Horn, Waxman, and Holson aren’t all “old hands.” Though some of their coverage is so insider-y that it seems like it. Bernard Weinraub? Now he would have old hands!

The LA Weekly is an amazing piece of the Los Angeles news landscape (let’s be honest, where else could Nikki Finke wallow in all her gossip gloriness?), and the rag trying to maintain its relevancy even in the face of the continuing New Times dismantling of the Village Voice alt weekly franchise.

But its fun to be in a new city, especially one in Europe, and find a thriving English-language alt weekly monthly, exberliner. It makes a media wonk’s heart good to know that quality alt-journalism is being done no matter where you are.

(I realized, after the fact, that exberliner is a monthly publication)

Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet will remain at the newspaper despite the departure (firing?) of publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson earlier this week.

This comes directly on the heels of the news that Johnson refused to make job cuts asked for by the Times’ owners — the Chicago-based Tribune Co.

As the New York Times media beat reporter Kit Seelye put it:

“Ousting the publisher, Jeffrey M. Johnson, enables the Tribune Company, the newspaper’s parent, to reassert control over a renegade publication while averting further turmoil for now. Many of Mr. Baquet’s senior editors were considering leaving with him if he were fired or quit.”

Johnson and Baquet said Tribune asked for 100 editorial positions to be cut, out of less than 1,000 left. At it’s peak, the newsroom employed 1,400 people.

No one wants to mention it, lest to blame Seelye, but Johnson’s firing probably has as much to do with this glowing profile of him she wrote in the New York Times on Sept. 28, as it does with his refusal to make cuts.

As Seelye wrote:

“…Mr. Johnson — who has worked for Tribune for more than 20 years — seemed to many Los Angeles Times employees to transform himself as dramatically as Clark Kent does when he removes his glasses, steps into a phone booth and turns into Superman.“

The Tribune Co. is known for two things — cost-cutting and uniformity. And for Johnson to be displayed as a cult hero couldn’t have been seen as a good thing back in Chi-town.

So now Johnson is out — and Tribune lackey (and toe-the-line extraordinaire) David Hiller is in.

What will this mean for the LA Times? One thing is that David Geffen and Eli Broad won’t be buying it anytime soon. And another is that more cuts may be on the way — and if that happens, maybe the third top editor in as many years.

One of my favorite things to do on vacation here in the U.S. is to take the train somewhere. Last March, I rode the California Zephyr from Denver to the Bay Area.

It took more than a full day (when a flight would have taken 3 hours), but it was, how should I say…romantic.

My favorite Amtrak route so far is the Pacific Coast Starlight, which I’ve rode from Los Angeles to Tacoma. But, news today that the starlight is having major scheduling problems.

Its a big problem for the train vacationers, like myself, but its an even bigger problem for people who actually do take it for short commutes. People in places like Salinas, or San Luis Obispo, Calif. — where other trains don’t run.

Its not a new problem — or a unique one to the Starlight. That trip I took from Denver west? Arrived in Emeryville, Calif., five hours late.

(Photo thx, flickr: mistermoss)

As a one-time contributor to LAist.com, I know a bit about how the so-called professional blogging networks work. There’s Nick Denton’s Gawker empire, there’s the Gothamist network, and there’s a ton of others. Gawker recently slashed two of its affiliate sites and shed some staff.

Which leaves us wondering why (and how?) former Los Angeles Times reporter Kevin Roderick has leveraged the success and readership of his LAObserved.com into a whole network of Los Angeles-specific sites. This may or may not work — the basic question to whether the other LAO sites work is if the writers/bloggers/contributors are as astute and prolific as Roderick is (was?) in posting.

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