SAD TIMES

My affiliation with the Los Angeles Times dates to (gulp) 1982, when, just out of high school, I worked in the sports department. I spent my weekend evenings taking prep sports scores, gathering fish reports and race results, and covering an occasional high school playoff game. I left the paper in 1984, just after the Summer Olympics in L.A., to attend college at UC Berkeley. I began writing again for the paper sporadically in 1993, for various sections. Most recently, I've been writing book reviews fairly regularly.

Having grown up with the Times, it's pretty clear it's not what it once was -- a paper so cushy and well-staffed it was known as the Velvet Coffin. Back then, the paper had national aspirations, and held its own with any daily that wasn't the Washington Post or the New York Times. I still have a soft spot for the paper and it's been an unrealized dream to land a steady gig there, but now I'm not so sure: After all these years and countless bylines, The Times actually misspelled my name in today's paper. It doesn't show up on this link (mainly because I bitched about it and it was changed), but it's there for readers to see in the print edition. I don't really know what to think. I was angry at first, particularly because the piece was edited by people I've worked with countless times. Now, I'm just sad.

Don't let the misspelling deter you from reading the piece, though -- it's a review of Instamatic Karma, May Pang's collection of photos of her one-time lover John Lennon.



In other personal hype, I also have a fairly extensive article on Harry Nilsson in this month's issue of Mojo, which you should buy on the newsstand, but can also see right here. There's another long story that goes with the publication of this piece, but the short version is that I turned it in to the Mojo editors in August of 2004, nearly four years ago. But I guess stories about dead guys are evergreen.