As I complained about here and here, the Los Angeles Times is further eviscerating its newspaper on March 2nd. For the past few years, the paper has been shedding sections and pages seemingly daily. Today — a Sunday — it took me longer to cut my grapefruit than it did to read the entire paper.

As I’ve been telling everyone I see, including an absolute stranger at Royce Hall on Friday night for the interview with Werner Herzog, I’m canceling my subscription. This has been a painful decision, given my lifelong love of newspapers. My first job, at age 14, was with the Atlantic City Press selling classified ads. (This was before every newspaper in the world was outwitted by a guy named Craig working out of his house. Craig now has all their classified ads. Now they’re Craig’s.) At various times in my young adulthood I was a reporter, an editor, or a freelancer. The paper, which ever paper it was, has always meant a lot to me. For 30 years, I’ve loved getting the paper off the lawn and reading it over my first cup of coffee.

But no more. I’m not interested in spending $350 a year to help Sam Zell make his mortgage payment — especially since he’s bankrupted the Times but not himself. And it makes me feel really stupid to spend that (or anything) while he’s shrinking the paper, and while 700,000 of us who buy the paper are subsidizing 12 million who are reading it all for free online. I think I’ll just join the freeloaders.

Will it be hard to give up? Probably, as with all addictions. But I’m going to wait until March 2nd. Because I’m sure that one glimpse of the new, anorexic and tubercular Times will convince me it’s time to remove life support.

…for only person in L.A. not to watch the Academy Awards once again goes to me.

Well, me and everybody else in our house.

I did just go online to read the news and there, among the news, were the results, so I know who won Oscars:  Everybody that everybody thought would win one. Except Mickey Rourke. So I saved three hours of watching Mickey Rourke not win an award everybody thought he’d win. That’s time well-spent.

I was delighted to see today’s New York Times editorial opposing a bailout of Chrysler (or, at least, admonishing caution). Chrysler, let’s remember, was purchased by Cerberus Capital Management; it’s not a public company in the way Ford and GM are. Cerberus made an investment — a bad one — and, to use the Times’ deftly chosen word, has a “cavalier” expectation of the public treasury saving them. Returns are rewards for risk well-made; bankruptcy should be the result of bad investments. Because while we’re at it, what’s to stop Daimler, the previous owners, asking for a do-over?

I feel somewhat differently about GM, which is such an enormous part of our economy that it may be hard-wired into the system. GM’s collapse would take down hundreds of thousands of other jobs in related industries — insurance companies, auto parts stores, uniform makers, and countless other suppliers. For the next 10 years, the U.S. economy would look like that last scene in “Planet of the Apes,” with all of us serving as Charlton Heston down on his knees pounding sand in the wasteland. Of course, that’s not to say that the next 10 years aren’t going to look like that anyway — but let’s do our best not to ensure that future.

So bad that the funeral business is dying.

Last night’s Sparks show at UCLA Live demonstrated again that new ideas keep you young. The band (or duo:  Ron and Russell Mael) has utterly changed its direction countless times in 22 albums over 39 years, resulting in what I’m starting to think is their best album of all, “Exotic Creatures of the Deep.” How passionate am I about this CD? I’ve mailed five copies to friends.

As with all acolytes to an arcane interest, Sparks fans are in it for keeps. An example:  KCRW’s Michael Silverblatt, had the Maels on his show, Bookworm, last week. Here’s that interview if you’d like to listen to it. You might note that the show is about books, and the Maels don’t write books, but that didn’t stop Silverblatt, who also said that he can overlook many things in people, but if they don’t like Sparks, that’s a deal-breaker.

(And while we’re on the subject, here’s a piece from Friday’s LA Times about the band and its quirky music.)

Until I asked someone last week, I didn’t know who Billy Mays was. Now I do: He’s an infomercial pitchman who has seized a small corner of the zeitgeist. I wouldn’t spend further time thinking about this, but I just Stumbled across something concerning his arch-rival Vince Offer (whom I also had to Google) that makes me laugh.

Offer offers (sorry, couldn’t resist) two products: The Sham-wow (!) and the Slap Chop. In true Ron Popeil fashion, Offer bundles the latter with another product that you get free with your purchase, a mini cheese grater called The Graty. If infomercials weren’t doing so well for Offer, I’d suggest a naming consultancy. Somehow, “Slap Chop” sounds just risque enough for this end of the marketplace.

Here’s part of the spot for the Slap Chop. (And no, you don’t need to watch it all.)

OK, now think briefly about what you just saw, and then go to this page and click on any of the sound files. (All of them are great, but the one above his head is best.) Context is everything.

I’d like to announce the winner of today’s Brian Wilson Award for Most Confused, and it goes to… Joaquin Phoenix.

I’m sure you’ll enjoy this clip as much as I did. Phoenix’s appearance provided David Letterman with probably the best several minutes he’s had in almost 20 years.

…by the time most people have heard of it, it’s over.

And then it’s a drag.

I first noticed this phenomenon back when there was something called the magazine industry. In particular with regard to these magazines that were called Time and Newsweek. (Are they still published?) By the time something made it onto the cover of Time or Newsweek, especially if it was one of their “cultural trend” covers, it was over.  In fact, I often wondered if it wasn’t the act of putting said cultural trend on the cover of Time or Newsweek that killed it:  “Uh-oh. Now it’s on the cover of Time or Newsweek. I am outta here.”

So it goes with the recent — and now over — Facebook phenomenon called 25 Random Things You Should Know About Me. According to Slate, the shelf life of this internet flash mob was slightly more than that of a mayfly:  about two months.

In those two months, here’s what I learned about some Friends:

1. that one had had an earlier marriage
2. that one wished he’d dated more when younger, but now thinks that door is closed
3. a whole lot of favorite colors (mine is/was red)
4. a whole lot of favorite movies (I couldn’t be bothered)
5. a whole lot of favorite bands (this one I bit on in yet another feeble attempt to jump-start Pere Ubu’s CD sales and help pay for, well, their meals)
6. not a whole lot that was truly interesting and memorable

I think the last item is because these “Random Things” tend to dwell in the realm of facts. And y’know, if facts were interesting to us, we’d all sit down and read the white pages of the telephone book. It’s full of facts. No, what’s interesting is stories. And stories come from conversation.

I’ve got something like 600 Facebook “Friends.” I even know some of them. I don’t think this Friend relationship is a substitute for friendship, and 25 Random Things are no replacement for a bottle of wine and some time spent together.

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is running for governor of California.

Given her launch, this is not a bid I think she’ll win.

First of all, I have doubts about any campaign that would allow the photograph above to be taken. I’m not sure which tortured saint she is affecting to emulate, but much as the shrinking GOP base purports to love their narrow slice of religion, they’re not so much into the suffering.  They want an action Christ to kick out the heathens and idolators and sodomites. The image above suggests someone who might, finally, be brought to say, “Please… just… don’t.” Whitman and her advisors have forgotten that the current governator was elected because he was a murderous rampaging robot. (And he then campaigned by smashing windshields with a sledgehammer. You just can’t make these things up.)

Secondly, if this piece in the LA Times is any indication, I honestly have no idea what the hell she’s talking about. And I’ve been listening to people run for office all my life, so this is saying something. She praises the governorship of Pete Wilson, but not his support of the anti-immigration initiative Proposition 187, or his having raised taxes to balance the state budget. Whatever one may think of them, these two items are the signal accomplishments of the Wilson governorship. Praising Wilson’s stewardship but not these policies is like saying that George W. Bush did a great job, except for that Iraq war, the botched Afghanistan war, the economic wipeout, the gulag in Guantanamo, the attorney general scandal, the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, the do-nothing run-up to September 11th, and at least a few more things. It’s like saying, “The roses on the East Lawn were nicely tended.”

The thrust of Whitman’s platform, which simultaneously seeks to be anti-gay and pro-gay, anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant, anti-environment and pro-environment, is this:   “I think maybe it is about time for a governor who has created jobs, who’s managed a budget, who’s led and inspired large organizations, who listens well, and who can drive an agenda.” This is the pro-forma rationale that seemingly “moderate” Republicans, of which Mitt Romney was only the most recent example, trot out to justify their candidacies. And I would ask:  Can they name a role model, a successful major business leader, who proved to be a success at high office?

By way of example, here’s the generally accepted list of greatest U.S. presidents:

• George Washington, a soldier and farmer
• Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, a lawyer
• Thomas Jefferson, a lawyer
• Theodore Roosevelt, a writer
• James Madison, a lawyer
• Andrew Jackson, a lawyer and soldier
• Woodrow Wilson, an educator
• Harry S. Truman, a businessman
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, a soldier

Judging by this list, if the country were in dire straits, I’d look around for a really good lawyer to fix it. Maybe they know things about compromise, and structuring deals, and getting warring parties to work together. (And, indeed, that’s just what we did recently.) It should also be noted that the lone businessman on this list above failed at that business, and then got a political position — which is where he started to actually succeed in life. It also shouldn’t go without saying that we recently had our first MBA “president.” His name:  George W. Bush.

Who are recognized as the best governors California has had, people who actually presided over the state when it worked?

• Hiram Johnson, a lawyer
• Earl Warren, a lawyer
• Pat Brown, a lawyer

And before entering politics, what was Pete Wilson’s career?

He was a lawyer.

Given this history, and the lack of evidence that big business experience ever translates into good public governance, I don’t think Meg Whitman’s gubernatorial bid is a Buy It Now.

So what happens when you’re on your way to Lake Arrowhead (elevation: 5191 feet) and a blizzard leaves snow at 3,000 feet and up and forces a shutdown of all the roads?

You wind up staying in the Fairfield Inn & Suites in San Bernardino. Which in an earlier time would’ve been called:  a truckstop.