The view from Variety’s 30th floor window: Quite a spectacular rainbow this afternoon right over Mid-City. As a matter of fact, some lucky Park La Brea resident may have stumbled across a pot of gold.

Meanwhile, the other end of the rainbow rested over the Grove. Yes, the Grove. Dammit, Rick Caruso, must you manufacture everything?

I’m again surprised at what the state will approve with its vanity license plates. Really, “Boner 79″?!

Thanks to Franklin Avenue reader Heidi, who sent the photo and wrote:

I was finally able to take a license plate pic for you! This car was parked outside my apartment last week. My first thought (embarrassingly enough) was, “I wonder if it’s the guy from Growing Pains!” Sorry it’s from far away, but I just thought it was an odd choice for a plate… for a grown-up.

Thanks, Heidi! For the rest of you, please feel free to send shots of vanity plates to our Franklin Avenue email.

You can hear the disappointment in the voices of our local newspeople, as they slowly begin to realize that, nah, that’s not Chris Brown in a Bentley on Lankershim Blvd., locked in a standoff with police.

Damn, you can hear them think. They’ve invested hours in what might have — strike that, should have — been this decade’s O.J. Simpson moment.

Instead, hours of news time were wasted on what was absolutely a non-event. Commercial time was yanked — not an easy decision for these stations, which are already hurting for revenue — and pricey helicopter time was wasted on, well, what?

Good thing there’s not any real news to cover.

KCAL stayed with the coverage the longest, finally signing off at 12:08 a.m. when it became pretty apparent that it was DJ Khaled, and not Brown, behind the wheel. (At least, KCBS/KCAL anchor Laura Diaz kept repeating phone callers who were claiming it was Khaled — but that’s now pretty uncertain as well. The L.A. Times just says it was a “businessman of Pakistani origin,” who later killed himself.)

Congrats to Franklin Avenue reader Jessica, who won tix to see Lucha VaVoom this Wednesday at the Mayan Theatre.

Didn’t win? Tix are still available for the Feb. 11 and Feb. 12 shows — head over to TicketWeb,com.

Still trying to figure out your Valentine’s Day plans? The Museum of Neon Art is holding special “Sweetheart Neon Cruise” this Saturday, Feb. 14.

The $150-per-couple fare includes the museum’s double-decker bus tour of L.A.’s classic neon signs, as well as champagne and chocolate at MONA’s downtown site. The cruise departs downtown at 7:30 p.m.; check out their website for more info.

Check out our posts on the MONA museum and on the Neon Cruise, which we enjoyed last fall.

From downtown’s Nickel Diner: The Bacon Doughnut. I don’t recommend eating this all in one sitting.

January 2009

28 Butts — Little Jackie (3:09)
Kim And Jessie — M83 (5:23)
Down To Earth — Peter Gabriel (5:59)
Heartless — Kanye West (3:32)
Daylight — Matt and Kim (2:51)
Monster Hospital (mstrkrft rmx) — Metric (5:19)
Say Hey (I Love You) — Michael Franti & Spearhead (Feat. Cherine Anderson) (3:56)
I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You — Black Kids (3:40)
Sleepyhead — Passion Pit (3:00)
Being Here — The Stills (3:29)
Oscar Wilde — Company of Thieves (4:43)
ABC’s — K’naan (3:07)
The Fear — Lily Allen (3:26)
The Next Time Around — Little Joy (2:37)
O…Saya — A R Rahman & M.I.A. (3:36)
Morning Tide — The Little Ones (4:05)
Half Asleep — School of Seven Bells (4:41)
You’re Not All That — The Herbaliser (3:37)
Lassoo — The Duke Spirit (3:02)
Fitz and the Dizzyspells — Andrew Bird (3:37)

I was about to go on a rant on how the Glendale News-Press completely ignored the death of Lux Interior, the Cramps founder and frontman who died on Tuesday at the age of 62.

Not only did Lux die here in Glendale, but he and wife/fellow Cramps member Poison Ivy lived right here in Adams Hill. The GNP is such a small-town newspaper that it runs photos of people holding up the newspaper on vacation, yet it can’t be bothered with the death of a local icon. Blogs and newspapers all over the country mentioned his death in Glendale. But the hometown newspaper? Nothing.

So on to the GNP. Yes, it’s a small-town newspaper… but Glendale isn’t exactly a small town. It’s a city with a population of 207,000. Take Glendale away from the L.A. region and it would be big enough to support a full newspaper, as well as TV and radio stations. (At least before the economic collapse; but I’m comparing it to smaller cities like Rockford or Duluth, both of which support a slew of media outlets.)

Once upon a time, the Glendale News-Press was, indeed, a full-fledged newspaper, but in 1993 became a part of the Los Angeles Times’ community news division (now known as Times Community News) after Times-Mirror bought Coast Community News, the publisher of the Daily Pilot, the Huntington Beach Independent, the Glendale News Press, the Burbank Leader, and the Foothill Leader.

The News-Press became a local supplement of the LAT, and was stripped down to just local news and sports. (Those were ambitious days at the LAT, back when the paper was aggressively moving into the Valley, Orange County and Ventura County, and was also launching all sorts of community supplements. As you know, most of those are now gone.

In recent years, the Glendale News-Press has gotten thinner, and its staff smaller — and these days carries just as much or even less content than your average college paper.

Now comes word that Glendale News-Press and Burbank Leader editor Danette Goulet is departing the papers and moving to Boston. A search is already underway to find her replacement. Given the limitations of the small GNP team, I’ve got a few suggestions for the new editor:

– Set up a working internship program with Glendale Community College’s journalism program, sending out students on general assignment stories. That will free up staffers to focus on beat journalism — namely, city hall, education, courts and cops.
– Strike a deal with local bloggers to aggregate their content on the GNP website, or even repurpose blurbs — fully sourced — in print. Perhaps even launch a few in-house blogs yourself.
– Clean house with your freelance restaurant and movie reviewers who, best I can tell, don’t have much critique experience. Again, it’s not hard to find a few strong writers in the local blogosphere who might be willing to pass along their services in exchange for promoting their sites.
– DreamWorks Animation and Disney, among others, call Burbank and Glendale home. Yet the GNP rarely mentions the business — or when it does, it’s woefully late (such as the paper’s strange decision to write about ABC’s layoffs a day after everyone else — including the LAT — wrote about it). Find someone in the business, perhaps a working crew member, who has the talent and qualifications to write a weekly column about life in the biz.
– And while we’re at it, take a better look at your columnists, some of whom seem to write variations on the same column every week, and most of whom aren’t writing much that is actually relevant to Glendale. For a publication as small as the GNP, and with such a small news hole, the fact that the paper carries a lengthy column each week on grammar — yes, an entire weekly column on grammar — is embarrassing.
– Start updating the GNP website more frequently — or at least when big enough news happens that an update is warranted. The paper still appears to update just once a day, when the next day’s content is uploaded to the web around 10 p.m. A few times there have been Glendale-centric stories that have happened overnight — but I’ve been forced to wait an additional 24 hours in order to read the GNP’s take.

I could go on, but that’s a start. Despite its size, Glendale is woefully under-served by media (something Tropico Station’s Scott has noticed as well). Yet, Glendale has no alternative paper and a surprisingly small number of active community blogs. Glendale deserves better.

Hail is rare enough around these parts… so twice in two weeks is definitely rare (see our last bit of hail here). Above, the sight from our backyard deck, just about 20 minutes ago.

7 p.m. update: Thunder! They must be wetting their pants in the local TV newsrooms. “Storm Watch” is on!

And now for something a little different: Some old, B&W TV commercials. This collection includes spots from Sugar Smacks, Alka-Seltzer, Bosco syrup, Tootsie Roll pop, Nabisco swiss creme sandwich cookies, Old Gold cigarettes (“made by tobacco men, not medicine men”), Ovaltine, Tang and Lifebuoy soap.

But my favorite has to be the one featuring Mike Wallace, pimping shortening — P&G’s “Fluffo.” “Ahh man, that’s SOME apple pie!”