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I love the Los Angeles Times. I hate L.A., but its newspaper is great.
I used to walk to the store and pay $1.62 for the Sunday edition. When the Times offered to deliver the paper to my door Thursday through Sunday for $1.50 a week, I became a subscriber (an exception proving the rule.) Now, thanks to my “self-employed” lifestyle, my weekend feels four days long, as I spend more mornings than not reading the most incredible things about the most fascinating people by some of the best reporters while lying on my couch.
Many blog-reading people get their news online. This should not negate the need for a newspaper, however, as the experiences are wholly unique.
Online news sites are fast and efficient — click<back, click<back and in two minutes it’s on to e-mail or Perez.
Reading the newspaper — the type that’s printed on newsprint — is a ritual, too, but in a pleasant sense. I retrieve mine from outside the front door as soon as I get up. I pull it out of its plastic protector and sort through the fresh contents. The front page, California, and the Calendar I keep (as well as Opinion on Sunday.) The rest goes into the recycling bin.
A small pot of green tea and a few slices of toast (Whole Foods’ freshly ground honey roasted peanut butter on one and organic Adriatic fig spread on the other) offer sustenance on the coffee table. I lie on the couch, with the rising sun glowing across the twice-folded paper I hold one-handed above me, and revel in our world. Now that’s what I call a ritual.
If you’ve never read the paper on a regular basis, or not since current events in second grade, pick one up this Sunday (a good one, like the L.A. Times or The New York Times.) Give yourself an hour and a latte, and indulge in an entertaining education.
In my self-assigned duties as L.A. Times advocate, I’ll intermittently (or until I receive my next cease & desist) feature select sections of the articles I enjoy. You can click on the title’s link to read the full story online, but it’s so much harder to hold this computer over your head when you’re sprawled upon your settee (and fig jam’s murder on a keyboard.)
New phase seen in Mexico’s drug war
May 18, 2008
Millan Gomez’s schedule was a closely guarded secret, known only to a few associates, officials said. But as he headed home accompanied by two bodyguards in an armored sport utility vehicle, four cartel hit men were waiting behind his front door.
The bodyguards dropped off Millan Gomez, who entered his home alone. Seconds later, they heard gunshots.
Though wounded by at least eight shots, Millan Gomez was able to grab one of the attackers, officials said.
“Who sent you?” he demanded. “Who sent you to kill me?” He died at a hospital, the third high-ranking federal police official killed in Mexico City in a week.
Young China quake victims fear loss of parents
May 18, 2008
The worst natural disaster to strike China in three decades shredded tens of thousands of families in Sichuan province in the blink of an eye. Many of those who died were children, killed when their schools collapsed. But many of the youngsters who survived now face the grim prospect of possibly living the rest of their lives as orphans.
On Saturday, a group composed of about 70 high school students who had lost contact with their parents was brought to a medical university here in the provincial capital. Each member was then paired with a college student who had volunteered to adopt him or her as a pal until the young survivors might reunite with their families.
“Don’t lose hope until you know for sure,” medical student Zhang Lei, 20, told Wang Chao, 16, who had yet to find his parents and 14-year-old sister.
As they ate lunch in a cafeteria packed with teens, a girl broke out in hysterical sobs that made everybody pause.
A crucial chapter for the storied Chelsea Hotel
May 18, 2008
“This hotel does not belong to America,” wrote playwright and onetime resident Arthur Miller. “There are no vacuum cleaners, no rules and shame.”
In these rooms, Leonard Cohen met Janis Joplin on an unmade bed. Bob Dylan stayed up for days, longing for his estranged wife. Both men memorialized the hotel in song. In one room, Thomas Wolfe wrote “You Can’t Go Home Again,” and in another Arthur C. Clarke penned “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The poet Dylan Thomas spent his last days at the hotel before a drinking binge finished him off in 1953. And 25 years later, the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious was charged with stabbing girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death in their room at the hotel.
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