So most of us felt the earth move under our feet, at the same time no less.

Here is a round-up of some LA bloggers write-ups:

• Carly Milne: “It’s best to just ride it out. Like an earthquake.”

• Ed Padgett: Rides it out in the LA Times Pressroom — “not fun at all,” he says

• Richard Allen: Felt it in San Diego

• Darleene: Did the earthquake knock latimes.com offline??*

• Siel: Quaked awake

• Ken Levine: Doesn’t feel it in his car

• MJ: DOES feel it in her Jeep, all the way out in Palm Springs

• Annika: I feel the sky tumblin’ down, a-tumblin’ down

• Slackmistress: Earthquake wrap-up (ala Twitter)

• Tony Pierce: doesn’t “react all omg omg to earthquakes”

And for kicks, here’s mine: Shake shake shake!

Of course, we can always count on the LAFD to provide us a Disaster Preparedness Handbook. Thanks, LAFD!

Photo: Ceiling Tiles Dislodged by Earthquake at the Times Olympic Facility

Talk about a trainwreck.

Last night as I was running out the door, I caught a snippet of the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS. It was a point-counterpoint discussion between Steve Wasserman, the former editor of the now-axed LAT Book Review, and Kassia Krozser, the founder & editor of booksquare.com, a book review site & publishing industry hub that, FWIW, I’d never heard of.*

The segment was intended to discuss the elimination of the LAT Book Review from the Sunday paper. Tribune loose cannon Sam Zell deep-sixed the little insert, which was one of the few sections of the paper I read anymore (and for which I had the privelege of penning two book reviews). Wasserman called the elimination of the review a “philistine blunder,” while Krozser seemed to have been brought in to defend the Internet, which to my mind is a separate issue from whether the paper Review should have been cut or not.

Throughout the segment, I found myself whipsawed over which interviewee I detested more… (more…)

Remember when I posted that I would be teaching a class at The Little Knittery?

Well it’s this Saturday (August 2nd) and space is still available.

During the 3 hours I will show you every part of knitting a sock using the awesome (and embarrassingly easy) Magic Loop technique.

Class is $40 and Julie takes a big percentage off yarn and needles if they are materials for the class -

Sign up!

at The Little Knittery
3041 Glendale Blvd
(in Atwater, right near the 76 station)
323-663-3838
knittery@thelittleknittery.com

• With most of the nerds back in hibernation, it’s safe to go back to the Apple store. RackedLA is reporting stockage of the iPhone and shorter lines at most local stores. Go. Buy one. Then Twitter all day about how cool you are.

• Under the Alexandria shows us the way to the Los Angeles Bong District. In these trying times, it’s a good idea to buy wholesale to support your habit.

• Ahem… Dear White Dude in Unit 234: An Advanced Guide to Being Professionally Fabulous wants you to buy some curtains, and put some damn clothes on. You may also want to turn up the thermostat.

• Did you know L.A. had a Tofu Festival? Well, it doesn’t anymore. Sha in LA laments its demise after a 12-year-run. In tribute, Sha leaves us a tasty recipe for Tofu Tostadas.

• And Tony Piece blogs about Comic-Con. At least, that’s what think this post is about. He also shows that he can *OMG* with the best of them, and that the shift key is overrated. He’s very big in Canada.

Photo from Under the Alexandria

Joint venture with The 99 Cent Chef and Pedro’s Sports Shorts.

Weekends are meant to be silly.  Two of my favorite goofballs from blogworld combined forces for this video.  Pete Handelman brought out his character “Pedro Pe” to co-star on a 99 Cent Chef adventure in making Shrimp Quesadillas.  Silliness, its a good thing.  Now pass the salsa.

Tony Pierce issued a memo yesterday morning to LA Times bloggers requesting they not to discuss John Edwards alleged affair.

From: “Pierce, Tony”

Date: July 24, 2008 10:54:41 AM PDT

To: [XXX]

Subject: john edwards

Hey bloggers,

There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.

If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don’t hesitate to ask

Keep rockin,

Tony

After this leaked to the MSM, Executive Editor Meredith Artley sent a follow up email doing damage control:

Various colleagues on the 3rd floor have been working on reporting the story. I made the decision that while we are working on verifying if this has any truth to it, we should stay away from joining the fray. We still don’t know that, and national and metro are still pursuing.

If the Times was working on an exclusive of some sort, and they’d asked their bloggers to not write about new details found in house, that would be one thing. But Tony’s email told them not to even opine on the existing controversy.

I’m speechless.

Hey, I never said I knew how to write headlines.

Oh well, here goes…

• This past March, Matt Logelin became a new dad and a widower in a 27 hour window. As he applies for a passport for his now 3.5 month old baby, he discovers that the regular requirement is that the rules dictate that both parents must be physically present for a passport application to be filed. Matt says, “for most families, this is likely just an extreme inconvenience, trying to find a time when both parents can meet in the same place, to focus on the same objective, at the same time. but for me, it’s a process that creates an extreme amount of anxiety. anxious about walking into the passport office with madeline’s birth certificate, social security card. and, um, her mother’s death certificate…”

• Walking in LA with Google Maps: Siel of Green LA Girl shows how useful this function will for barhopping sans drunk-driving.

• Apuykat attends a creative writing workshop and shares a couple of the exercises she did.  “Prompt 1 : 21 year old woman, 42 year old guy. Woman is pregnant. Time: 5 minutes to write. Style : California Porn.”  You wanna take a stab at that?

• El Chavo shares some stuff he learned this weekend: “piles of broken eggs on a hot day stink” and Flamin’ Hot Funyuns makes the the cashier at a local store “pee blood”. Check out the other lessons of the weekend here.

• Ed Padgett, the Blogging Pressman, shares some video clips of live music in Southern California

Photo stolen from EL CHAVO!

• Have you been to Downtown L.A.’s new park at Vista Hermosa yet? Militant Angeleno likes the way it smells. Give it a week.

• M-M-M-My Pomona calls out the L.A. Times for “getting its front-page stories from blogs.” Maybe the newspaper should, you know, hire some people. Oh, wait…

• molls…she wrote wants to become “one the most fresh to the death bitches in the city of Los Angeles.” To achieve this, she has ordered her own vagina costume.

• Happy Birthday to SnarkyDork, which turned 3 last week. She’s celebrating by attending Comic-Con. Our challenge to her is to obtain a group photo with Darth Vader, a Cylon and a midget. Bonus points for all four of them holding drinks.

• Antisocial Networking wants you to stop lying on your online profile. You do not like walking on L.A. beaches at night. You do not like theatre. Suck it up, and admit that you’re a geek about… whatever you’re a geek about.

• And congratulations to Blogdowntown, as they snag the Editor’s Choice Award in the 2008 Best of Downtown Awards for Best Website. If it weren’t for guys like BDT and Angelenic, we’d never know where to drink after a Lakers game. If we ever actually went to a Lakers game. We prefer tacos and Scrabble.

*shoot with a camera, now put yer gun away pal!

The guys over at the Foothill City Blog are running a contest.  Simple rule, shoot a picture of ANY LA Metro or So Cal city hall, or part thereof in the final image.  Enter it in a contest for nifty prizes.  Full rules, judge list and prizes at their “Take a shot at city hall” post that ran earlier today.

Be creative, have fun with it.  How you do it is wide open to interpretation.  When done upload your favorite three to the FCBlog Flickr Group tagged “cityhallcontest”. Flickr is the preferred method of entry.  If you are one of the three in LA who don’t flickr you can send your jpeg’s via email to centinel@thefcblog.com as a last resort.

There will be a prize for the worst photo submitted to the contest.  Could be a nice way to clear out the old recycle bin while you are at it.  The lucky winner in this category will get a coveted “mistakes will be made” t-shirt from the Proctor for Mayor collection.  Competition is tough for this one as cass71898 has already set her eyes on winning it for itself.  (You’d think since I volunteered to help with the judging they could just give me the shirt, but NOooo, I gotta pay the full 18.99 +tax and shipping like every other schmoe).

“Spent Shells” used with the permission of the ever popular Ruth666 from her Flickr Photostream.

• Did you know it’s an annual tradition to moon Amtrak and Metrolink trains in Laguna Niguel? This year’s event drew 8000 people. CurbedLA has the assets photos.

• The revolution continues in Downtown L.A., as Blogdowntown reports on the latest building to go under the knife: The Van Nuys!

• B-Side Blog reviews an L.A. Times restaurant review. Gladstones in Malibu is torn a new one. “It’s terrible to gaze out to the ocean and imagine the volume of precious seafood being pulled out and ruined every day by this restaurant.”

• The Hollywood Temp Diaries knows that you can’t afford to go to ArcLight every weekend. This temp shares insider secrets to seeing flicks on the cheap. (Once again, something that could have been brought to our attention when we saw THE HAPPENING!!!)

• And to celebrate the storming of the Bastille, one should eat. LAist has targeted some local French eateries for consumption. France has already responded by surrendering.

Photo of Train Mooners From CurbedLA

The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is their power to harm us.