The News Blog with Eric Spillman

Violent Video Games: Harmless Fun or Serious Danger?

6:42 AM November 10, 2009

Modern Warfare 2 comes out today, and is expected to generate $500 billion in sales worldwide. Violent video games are now becoming a much bigger business than movies.

A few stores put some copies up for sale at midnight, and there were lines to buy them.

Is all this okay? Are these kind of games just "entertainment" or do they desensitize young people to killing?

Your comments below, please.

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Perils of Live TV: Example #345

7:02 PM November 9, 2009

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My Journey Into a DWP Pipeline

9:01 AM November 9, 2009

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What It Takes to Get Swine Flu Vaccine

11:11 AM November 4, 2009

Consider Valerie and Chris Bunker of San Gabriel.

They have two kids, a four-old-boy and an 18-month-old girl. Their pediatrician doesn't have any H1N1 vaccine. So they went to the L.A. County clinic in San Gabriel a few days ago.. No luck there. The lines were too long.

Same story in Glendale yesterday. Thousands of people were waiting in line ahead of them. They didn't get the vaccine there either.

They made their third attempt this morning at a clinic on the USC campus, where they were forced to wait several hours.

I hope they were successful this time.

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Live TV Can Be Hilarious

7:47 PM November 3, 2009

The last two minutes are pretty funny...

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Water, Water Everywhere

9:55 AM November 3, 2009

We take a closer look at L.A.'s aging water infrastructure and find out:

*Most of the water mains that are 100+ years old are underneath Downtown L.A.
*The list of the DWP's most problematic water mains shows that many are on the Westside or in Central L.A. (Check out our interactive map at www.ktla.com/dwpmap)
*New DWP interim boss David Freeman says the pipes are exploding because most of them are "as old as I am." Freeman is 83.

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May Day Melee: No Cops to be Prosecuted

6:24 PM October 30, 2009

Prosecutors have decided not to charge any of the LAPD officers involved in the 2007 melee at MacArthur Park.

The DA's office investigated 30 cops but was unable to find "sufficient evidence" of any crime. On that evening, officers were videotaped beating and firing rubber bullets at demonstrators and members of the media.

The L.A. County District Attorney Office, in its statement, says reporters got in the way of officers:

The media had innocently and unwittingly positioned themselves in an area directly in the path of officers attempting to clear the park.

That's not the way my reporter and photographer colleagues remember it. Those who were there remember police in riot gear hitting them with batons without warning.

It was clear that these journalists were only there to cover the story. After all, they were carrying large TV cameras on their shoulders. And yet some were knocked to the ground by police.

Reporters aren't the most popular folks in our society these days, those of us who are still employed.

But isn't there any sense of outrage over the fact that the police can beat up journalists without facing any consequence?

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Leaves Everywhere

5:40 PM October 28, 2009

I don't know about your neighborhood, but mine is a mess. .

Last weekend, my son and I spent an hour raking up all the leaves in the yard. Now, thanks to last night's wind storm, it looks worse than ever.

Add to that the fact that the guy who cuts the lawn hasn't shown up for two weeks. I know there's grass under that pile of leaves somewhere, even if I can't see it.

This afternoon, my daughter and I were playing ball in the alley behind our home. I noticed what looked like a long wire hanging from a tree.

I went closer to examine what it was, and I almost pulled it out of the branches.

Good thing I didn't.

Turns out it was a downed power line. Can't really tell if it's hot or not, but I'm not taking any chances.

I immediately phoned Southern California Edison. My neighbor called several times earlier in the day.

They finally showed up at around 5 PM. Guess we'll be without power for awhile, and the World Series is on, too.

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Tweets From the Mayor

2:03 PM October 26, 2009

From the official Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa twitter page last night:

I'm at the U2/Black Eye Peas concert with Lu and the world is watching. I love L.A. :)

Then, one hour later:

U2: A message of Peace tonight from L.A. to the world. I LOVE L.A.!!!

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McCourt to Wife: You're Fired

5:24 AM October 23, 2009

It's turning into the nasty divorce many insiders predicted.

Now comes word from the L.A. Times that Dodger owner Frank McCourt has fired his wife, who held the title of Dodger CEO.

"Jamie is disappointed and saddened by her termination," attorney Dennis Wasser said Thursday. "As co-owner of the Dodgers, she will address this and all other issues in the courtroom."

Wasser would not say whether she would continue to occupy her office at Dodger Stadium. He said that would depend on the outcome of legal proceedings he expected to initiate "in the next couple weeks."

What I want to know is how Frank did it. Did he call his wife into the Dodger personnel office and fire her that way? Did he just send a letter?

If there was a face-to-face meeting, "awkward" is a word that comes to mind.

When this story first broke, there was a lot of speculation that this split might lead to a sale of the Dodgers.

Now it sounds like a real possibility.

***UPDATE: TMZ has the letter Frank McCourt used to fire his wife. I love the part where he discusses how she can make arrangements to pick up the belongings in her office.

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